STWR - Share The World's Resources

As #OccupyWallStreet protesters continue to gather in the streets of New York and other cities across the country, a selection of commentators give their views on the United States' version of the uprisings occuring throughout the world. Are we witnessing the birth of a new commonwealth of economic equality?

President-elect Obama's campaign promises of ‘hope' and ‘change' offered a blank slate on which voters could write their wishes. But Obama's actions as president remain unlikely to live up to his soaring rhetoric in key policy issues, argues Noam Chomsky.

The history of America took a sharp turn after the millennium into a chamber of horrors. What we may be seeing is the end of the Anglo-American Empire, and the birth of a multi-polar and more compassionate world, writes Richard C. Cook.

The US military has followed two principles - direct military invasions and fomenting separatist movements, with the 'right to self-determination' for separatist regimes used as a pretext to extend the American empire.

It’s time to leave behind old ideas of superpowers. A changing world brings new opportunities for peace and the chance to join a community of nations.

Global confidence in the US economy has reached zero, as was proved by last month’s stock market meltdown. But there is an enormous anomaly in the US economy above and beyond the subprime mortgage crisis, the housing bubble and the prospect of recession: 60 years of misallocation of resources, and borrowings, to the establishment and maintenance of a military-industrial complex as the basis of the nation’s economic life.

As voters head to the polls, the economy remains one of the top issues for US voters across party lines. Economic figures show that in 2005 the top ten percent of earners received 48.5 cents of each dollar earned - the highest percentage since just before the Great Depression.