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The intellectual foundations of the Occupy Wall Street movement

By Frank J. Vandall
One of the chief attacks on the Occupy Wall Street Movement is that it has no articulated rational basis. It s just a bunch of unwashed neo-hippies who are wasting time, public resources and park-space while not looking for a job. Careful attention to Occupy Wall Street interviews manifests four foundational complaints, however.

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Albert Pujols, Occupy Wall Street, and the Buffett Rule

By Edward Zelinsky
As every baseball fan knows, Albert Pujols has signed a ten year, $254 million contract with the Los Angeles Angels. Pujols, a three-time MVP who has hit 445 home runs so far in his major league career, deserves every penny he is paid. The competition for Pujols demonstrated meritocracy and markets at their best.

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Occupy Wall Street, Adam Smith, and the Wealth of Nations

By Louis René Beres
“Eat the rich.” This palpably unappetizing sign can still be seen at certain Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. Although obviously silly at a literally gastronomic level, the uncompromising message’s sub-text remains deeply serious. Above all, it reaffirms the steadily hardening polarities of growing class warfare in the United States. Plainly, America’s Edenic myth of “equality” continues to unravel before the sobering and relentless statistics of a continuously-entrenched plutocracy.

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Occupy Wall Street: Can the revolution be trademarked?

By Dennis Baron
Psst, wanna buy a hot slogan?

“Occupy Wall Street,” the protest that put “occupy” on track to become the 2011 word of the year, could be derailed by a Long Island couple seeking to trademark the movement’s name. The rapidly-spreading Occupy Wall Street protests target the huge gap between rich and poor in America and elsewhere, so on Oct. 18, Robert and Diane Maresca tried to erase their own personal income gap by filing trademark application 85449710 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office so they could start selling Occupy Wall St.™

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What Occupy Wall Street learned from the tea party

By David S. Meyer
The Occupy Wall Street movement, several weeks strong and gaining momentum, reminds us that tea partyers aren’t the only people unhappy with the state of the nation.
The two groups are angry about some of the same things, too, especially the government bailouts for big banks — a similarity that Vice President Biden observed in remarks. They’ve taken different tacks for expressing their anger. The Occupiers camp out in New York’s Financial District, while

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Occupy Wall Street: Why the rage?

Paul Woodruff
As thousands continue their march on Wall Street for a fifth straight week, an ancient story has much to tell us about the demands of justice.

The occupation of Wall Street is about a colossal failure of justice. When justice fails, anger grows into rage. And rage can tear a community into shreds. When a few people reap huge rewards they do not deserve, while others get nothing but insults — even though they have worked hard and been loyal to their workplace –- justice has failed. Bankers carry away huge bonuses, while more and more of the workers who do the heavy lifting are laid off.

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What Occupy Wall Street stands for

By Elvin Lim
To understand the Occupy Wall Street movement, it is helpful to understand that it is the antithesis of the Tea Party movement, though for now, much smaller in scale. Occupy Wall Street protesters are, like the Tea Party protesters, disenchanted at the state of the economy, and impatient for solutions. But unlike their compatriots on the Right, their animus is directed at corporate America (Wall Street), not at government (Washington, DC).

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How austerity measures hurt the COVID-19 response

The 2008 global financial crash brought with it a series of aftereffects that are shaping how different nations face the current pandemic. Austerity politics took a firm hold across Europe and other countries whose economies were hard hit, with governments and financial institutions arguing that they were an unavoidable consequence of the crash. While many […]

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Protest songs and the spirit of America [playlist]

In a rare television interview, Jimi Hendrix appeared on a network talk show shortly after his historic performance at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair. When host Dick Cavett asked the guitarist about the “controversy” surrounding his wild, feedback-saturated version of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Hendrix gently demurred.

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Moving from protest to power

Now that the National Guard and the national media have left, Ferguson, Missouri is faced with questions about how to heal the sharp power inequities that the tragic death of Michael Brown has made so visible. How can the majority black protestors translate their protests into political power in a town that currently has a virtually all-white power structure?

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Collective emotions and the European crisis

By Mikko Salmela and Christian von Scheve
Nationalist, conservative, and anti-immigration parties as well as political movements have risen or become stronger all over Europe in the aftermath of EU’s financial crisis and its alleged solution, the politics of austerity. This development has been similar in countries like Greece, Portugal, and Spain where radical cuts to public services such as social security and health care have been implemented as a precondition for the bail out loans arranged by the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund and countries such as Finland, France, and the Netherlands that have contributed to the bailout while struggling with the crisis themselves.

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Taking stock: Human rights after the end of the Cold War

To mark the date on which the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, World Human Rights Day is celebrated each year on 10 December. The first Human Rights Day celebration was held in 1950 following a General Assembly resolution that “[i]nvites all States and interested organizations” to recognize the historical importance of the UDHR as a “distinct forward step in the march of human progress.”

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Friday procrastination: Webby honoree edition

Thank you to our wonderful contributors, staff, and most of all readers. OUPblog is one of nine 2013 Webby honorees in the ‘Blog – Cultural’ category. I can’t tell you how thrilled we are to be alongside the New Yorker’s Page-Turner and Perez Hamilton. And further congratulations to the Oxford Islamic Studies Online team or their Religion & Spirituality Websites nomination and the Oxford Music Online team for their Best Writing (Editorial) honor.

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Occupied by Images

By Carol Quirke
Media buzz about Occupy Wall Street’s first anniversary began by summer’s end. That colorful, disbursed social movement brought economic injustice to the center of public debate, raising questions about free-market assumptions undergirding Wall Street bravado and politicians’ pious incantations. Most watched from the sidelines, but polling had many cheering as citizens marched and camped against the corrosive consequences of an economically stacked deck.

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Obama, take a page from Reagan

By Steven J. Ross
Once upon a time, Barack Obama understood the power of a good story. His campaign mantras — “Yes we can” and “Change we can believe in” — inspired voters, especially young people, blacks and Latinos, and propelled him into the White House. But once in office, Obama lost the thread of the plot. He abandoned his original message and embraced compromise and bipartisanship rather than pushing for dramatic change. That narrative hasn’t gotten far with a recalcitrant Congress, especially Republicans, who have their own high concept to pitch: Just say no to Obama.

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