Peter Frase

For the time being, mayor Bloomberg and the owners of Zuccotti park have backed down, abandoning their plan to clear out Occupy Wall Street after a huge crowd gathered at the park and prepared to nonviolently resist the police. My favorite reaction came from historian Angus Johnston on Twitter: “We won. We NEVER Win. Wow.” I think that pretty much sums up why the Occupy movement is so exciting even to those of us who are critical of some aspects of it. Of course, the city may have decided to wait until most of the crowd goes home before moving in for the kill, but this still looks like a huge win. (Also, from what I’m seeing on Twitter, there’s still some ongoing craziness between marchers and police downtown, which I can’t yet get any confirmation about.)

• Just a reminder that if you’re near New York City, you should be going to this.

• Occupy Denver looks to be getting more police heat than its New York counterpart.

• New York City’s police are literally working for the bankers.

• Latest evidence that OWS has changed everything: Foreign Affairs is asking Hardt and Negri to help them figure out what’s going on.

• For the next time you encounter annoying Ron Paul “end the Fed” types at an Occupy event, Doug Henwood has you covered.

• The bezzle just keeps growing. “Accounting data seem to be less and less related to the natural data-generating process”.

• I could basically link to every new thing JW Mason writes, but you definitely want to read him on capitalism’s re-merging of ownership and control.

• Obama’s drones-and-death-squads foreign policy is leading the way to a more lawless world.

• I recently finished David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years and Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind. You should read both of them. You should also read Sheri Berman’s The Primacy of Politics, even though I don’t quite agree with her thesis and her review of Robin’s book was breathtakingly stupid.