Birch Society spotlights a call

for Occupy the Fed protests 

The Occupy Wall Street protests have stirred the John Birch Society to give favorable coverage to a similar initiative dubbed Occupy the Fed.

"Perhaps surprising to some, many conservatives sympathize with the Occupy Wall Street protesters because they understand the motivating factors behind the protests: increased costs on everyday items, unemployment, inflation, etc.," according to a Birch Society article.

"However, those conservatives recognize that much of the anger of the protesters is directed at the wrong target," the society said. "The real enemy, they contend, is the Federal Reserve, and it is for that reason that those conservatives have chosen to use the momentum of the Occupy Wall Street protests to stage Occupy the Fed protests instead.

One organizer, known only as “Anonymous A99,” announced the first operation targeting the Fed, called “Operation Empire State Rebellion,” on March 12. The announcement explained that the movement was intended to be a “decentralized non-violent resistance movement.” Anonymous A99 said of the intent of the organizers:

Above all, we aim to break up the global banking cartel centered at the Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund, Bank of International Settlement and World Bank.

We demand that the primary dealers within the Federal Reserve banking system be broken up and held accountable for rigging markets and destroying the global economy, effective immediately.

As a first sign of good faith, we demand Ben Bernanke step down as Federal Reserve chairman.

Until our demands are met and a rule of law is restored, we will engage in a relentless campaign of non-violent, peaceful, civil disobedience.”

Boston protesters said to get rough handling
Anti-Wall Street protesters say they were roughly handled when Boston police moved in early this morning to arrest more than 100 people for civil disobedience, including a legal observer for the radical National Lawyers Guild.

Had the police simply approached those who were congregating in a "forbidden zone" and asked them to move off site, many might have done so. Had they approached them one by one and escorted them to police vans, there would have been less of a fracas.

But, according to some observers, the police "attacked."

If so, a likely contributing factor was lack of media presence, who had not been assigned to show up at 1 a.m. Police nearly always behave differently when under a media spotlight.

One question that needs answering is whether a backroom deal was made whereby financial elitists held back the press and encouraged the cops to move in during the dead of night (by the way, it seems unlikely that protester presence in "forbidden zones" at that time of night posed any threat of traffic tie-ups).