Banker Brutality: Beyond Tony Bologna

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/29-2

At the Wall Street protest, a young woman carried a sign, “REVOLUTION IS FUN,” and I don’t doubt that she was having a great time, because it can be exhilarating to engage in a just and noble fight, and to feel that you are an agent of change, a participant in history even, and not just one of its faceless victims, as is the common lot. So fun, yes, at least for her, and at least up to that moment, until the violence explodes, as nearly always happens in anything approaching a political revolution.



The violence of September 24th, the 8th day of the anti-Wall Street Protest, appears to not have caused severe or permanent injuries, though it was brutal enough, and some outrage has even flared in the mainstream media. Anthony Bologna, a 28-year-veteran of the New York Police Department, has emerged as a clear cut villain. Without provocation, he pepper sprayed two young women in the faces, and for this he should certainly be fired, then locked up, but this commotion has overshadowed, at least momentarily, the real target and meaning of this protest. Though police brutality is never to be taken lightly, Occupy Wall Street is aiming to expose and hold to account goons much more vicious than any garden variety Anthony Bologna. Though they maim and cripple countless households, even entire countries, these bigger thugs are rarely condemned and never indicted. In fact, some are given plush jobs in the US Treasury, if not a Cabinet appointment.

Who am I talking about, exactly? Here is where it gets murky, and all by intention. (Theirs, not mine.) When people say Wall Street, as in Wall Street has ruined this country, and it certainly has, what do they mean, exactly? Though there are those who object to financial speculation of any kind, most people have in mind the biggest banks when they rail against Wall Street. They’re really talking about Citibank, for example, that gargantuan money-laundering house, or Goldman Sachs, the world’s leading swindling outfit. Their criminality is well documented, though hard to untangle, since most of us are fairly clueless about the intricacies of the dismal science, and since financial, white collar crimes aren’t as vivid as, say, a middle-aged cop pepper spraying the eyes of two defenseless young women, then calmly walking away as they collapse and scream.

But consider this: there are those who are defending Bologna even now and think that these “hippie chicks” got what they deserved, just as there were those who saw nothing wrong with cops whacking Rodney King with a baton 56 times, kicking him 6 times, then bragging and joking about it afterwards, and even the sadism of Abu Ghraib was cheered by many Americans, so it often comes down to where you’re coming from, but what kind of bias can blind anyone to the fact that it’s criminal for Stephen Friedman, Chairman of the New York Fed and a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, to give 10 billion dollars of our money to Goldman Sachs? Bad publicity over conflict of interest forced Friedman to resign, but if you really think about it, there was no conflict. The Fed can give money to these monster banks because the Fed is owned by these monster banks. If you grant private banks the monopoly to create money, of course they will shower themselves with cash, year in and year out, and use this unlimited power to buy up all of our politicians.

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