Larson addressed a group of activist and journalists from Egypt and Tunisia on October 4 and later gave an exclusive interview to reporter Vince Coglianese of the Daily Caller in the course of which he said that the United States had drawn inspiration from their countries. It is required on such occasions to throw rhetorical bouquets in the direction of the audience. Mr. Larson continued to advise the activists that as a result of their exertions the United States, considered by some to be a crucible of constitutional revolution, is experiencing its own “Arab Spring, if you will.”
The Arab Spring in the United States was occurring on Wall Street even as he spoke. The “Occupy Wall Street” protest is now in its second week, and plans are afoot to plant sprigs of the coming revolution in other state capitals, including Hartford.
At the point when Mr. Larson let loose his effusions, The American Arab Spring was yet a diffuse movement; protesting groups had not issued, as is usually the case with leftist anti-business groups, a set of demands, preferably non-negotiable. But the group’s website outlined a common frustration: “The one thing we all have in common is that we are the 99 percent that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent.”
No one, even on the far fringes of the right, is for greed and corruption.
Following his speech, Mr. Larson told the Daily Caller that left wing activists with “’the right morals’ are pushing America’s democracy to ‘evolve.’”
Mr. Larson, his communication director nowhere to be seen, then lapsed into a sort of pre-campaign poetry:
“They see the inequities that exist in this country, and the point is that even an advanced democracy like ours — the Constitution says, ‘We the people, in order to create a more perfect union.’ We’re not there. It’s something that continues to evolve... They’re standing up and saying the things they feel deep inside that are working unjustly and unfairly against them, and everybody ought to take heed, that it’s not only an ‘Arab Spring,’ but there is an ‘American Fall’ as well.”
Presumably, Mr. Larson would be grievously disappointed should protests against greedily capitalists in the United States evolve into the kinds of mob scenes that have become common in Greece, a country flat on its economic back once considered the birthplace of both democracy and republican government.
Following Mr. Larson’s hearty approval of the group’s aims and perhaps reacting to claims that its program was rather amorphous, The American Arab Spring protesters released their non-negotiable demands on their web site. They are, according to a piece in Fox Nation, as follows:
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" (sic) by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise (sic) the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr (sic).Not all of the 13 demands (why 13?) are equally absurd. And who in the world is the “I” in "Demand one", and why is the word “books” capitalized and imprisoned in quotes? Is the author of the “demands” perhaps a student anarchist preparing to default on his student “loan”?
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. (sic) investors.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
Demand four: Free college education.
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same (sic) bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.
Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone (sic) can travel anywhere to work and live.
Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah (sic) or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.
Following publication on their site of the demands, someone at the official site, while not disavowing the list, lately has claimed that the demands are not "formal" and were issued by a single commentator.
In any case, the 60’s radical political showman Abbie Hoffman would be proud of the Arab Spring authors. Mr. Larson, not having had the advantage of seeing the demands before he made his remarks, may be considering, some political watchers suppose, a re-think of his perhaps premature poetic ejaculations
UPDATE
An Iranian military commander, apparently agreeing with Mr. Larson’s views, said on Sunday, October 9 that “the protests spreading from New York's Wall Street to other U.S. cities are the beginning of an ‘American Spring,’ likening them to the uprisings that toppled Arab autocrats in the Middle East,” according to a recent Reuter’s story.
"'The failure of the U.S. president to resolve the Wall Street crisis will turn this economic movement into a political and social movement protesting the very structure of the U.S. government,' the official IRNA news agency quoted Gen. Masoud Jazayeri of Iran's Revolutionary Guard as saying Sunday."
The far right may be against corruption, but they sure as hell aren't against greed.
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