If you have any doubts or questions about the Occupy Movement - go visit one
Hi hooah212002
Just a note:
... Why are conservatives REALLY anti-OWS (aside from Fox news telling them to be against it)? What is the real reason? What does the OWS movement stand for (facts please) that has the conservative base so upset? ...
I have met conservatives, independents and libertarians at the Occupy Providence protest, so this is really more than a liberal and socialist movement.
It isn't being reported that way, because the news media do have an agenda - especially Fox - to protect the big corporations and rich.
Fox tries to make it an : us vs them : liberal vs conservative : because it suits their agenda.
News also tends to focus on the confrontations and violence, just as they did for the civil rights protests -- it makes "news" to show on the half hour broadcasts. Showing people peacefully protesting does not make news, people in rational debate does not make news.
If you have any doubts or questions about the Occupy Movement - go visit one ... who knows, you may end up learning something or (gasp) staying ...
... you could create a public bank with the money you didn't use on the bailouts making sure the benefits from this new bank gets directly to the taxpayer(this bank would have only been for lending/depositing avoiding the mess in the markets).
Restore the Glass-Steagall act and this become a regulation on all banks.
quote:Provisions that prohibit a bank holding company from owning other financial companies were repealed on November 12, 1999, by the Gramm—Leach—Bliley Act, named after its co-sponsors Phil Gramm (R, Texas), Rep. Jim Leach (R, Iowa), and Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R, Virginia).[2][3]
The repeal of provisions of the Glass—Steagall Act by the Gramm—Leach—Bliley Act in 1999 effectively removed the separation that previously existed between investment banking which issued securities and commercial banks which accepted deposits. The deregulation also removed conflict of interest prohibitions between investment bankers serving as officers of commercial banks. This repeal directly contributed to the severity of the Financial crisis of 2007—2011 by allowing Wall Street investment banking firms to gamble with their depositors' money that was held in the commercial banks[4][5][6][7][8][9]
This act was put in place after the first bank fiasco, commonly known as the Great Depression.
Re: hear from a conservatively inclined but not entirely lunatic person
Hi Catholic Scientist
In what way? I'm not gonna occupy anywhere but my computer chair(s). I get what they're complaining about. I feel sorry for them.
Would you put up a sign on your lawn that supports OWS? A bumper sticker on your car?
But I don't feel like I'm one of them. I don't sympathize with their plight.
But you admit you are one of the 99%, yes?
We've set-up my life to avoid most of the problems I've heard from them. I don't owe on a student loan, I have a moderately salaried position with benefits, I bought a modest home that I don't have problems affording, I'm purposefully frugal and don't blow a lot of money, own a small amount of diversified investments. In a another post, crashfrog mentioned that "medium chill" thing. That's been me for a while.
We also have no loans or debts of any kind, we are in the middle of renovating our fourth house, bought with the cash from selling our third house, I have a small business that, so far, covers expenses and benefits, we're frugal and do not buy frivolous things, my car is 10 years old, my computers are several years old, and we have investments that will ensure a retirement life of comfort.
And we are 100% for the OWS protest and approach to resolving social and financial injustice.
Not because we would benefit directly from it, but because society as a whole would benefit from it.
Do you think it is just for a CEO to "earn" over a million dollars a year, while their lowest paid employee's annual salary is below the poverty line?
I'm with them in that I don't like that the banks got bailed out when it was their fault and they were fucking everybody (but I can understand that the bail out could have been necessary).
My opinion is that much better would have been to bail out the people.
Note that IF the people had been able to pay their mortgages that the whole financial "crisis" would not have occurred (ie - IF trickle-down HAD worked, people would have gotten the raises that would have allowed them to pay their mortgages).
I do think that the guy who bought a really expensive house that he could barely afford because he thought the value would keep going up took a risk, himself, and is partially to blame for the problem.
If it is a primary residence, they should have gotten some help -- they could have been given an interest free loan from the government (due when the house is sold, adjusted for inflation). This would have been an investment in America, rather than an investment in bank profits.
If it is a secondary residence, then it is an investment, and should be treated as such.
I do think that the guy who bought a really expensive house that he could barely afford because he thought the value would keep going up took a risk, himself, and is partially to blame for the problem.
Why? The bank approved the loan. The problem is not that he bought the house but that the bank approved an overextended mortgage. The mortgage broker is supposed to check and ensure that the person would be capable of paying the mortgage. If they haven't done that, then they have made a bad investment. This is why the banks should NOT have been bailed out.
Is an investment in real estate different from an investment in stocks and bonds? You either have the money to pay for them or you don't. If you make an investment, you either make money if the value goes up, or you lose money if the value goes down.
When you get a loan, that is someone making an investment in you. If they make a bad investment, then they are also to blame, and they should bear their share of the loss.
Consider a person who makes an investment in a second home (not primary residence) by paying cash -- they make a profit/loss when they sell it.
Now consider a partnership that makes an investment in real estate -- they make a profit/loss when they sell it. The partnership shares the profit or the loss.
A mortgage on the other hand, is an unequal partnership, where one partner, the mortgage company, makes a profit whether the house value increases or decreases, as long as the mortgagee makes payments. They only lose when the mortgage is not paid. If they have made a bad investment, then they need to bear the loss. This is why the banks should NOT have been bailed out: it is not capitalism if they never lose.
Too, the kid who owes $50,000 for an education that didn't prepare him for aquiring a job that he could pay back the loan with did something stupid, himself.
When you get a loan, that is someone making an investment in you. If they make a bad investment, then they are to blame.
Personally, I feel that an investment in education will pay off in the long run, whether it results in lucrative employment or not, but that this is more of a social program than a money investment issue. I would support an extension of government paid education for those who want to pursue higher education.
I would take senior year out of high school and then add an optional three year program that would terminate with an associates degree, fully paid for those who want to take it.
This would also replace freshman year and universities, so that a Bachelor's Degree would only take three years instead of four and the kids would be better prepared than they are currently from most high schools.
One of the biggest shocks for me when I grew up (that is, got out of college and into the 'real world') was realizing that nobody is going to hand you anything. I sorta (naively) figured that after I graduated that I would just get in the job line and be handed a position somewhere. But that never happened. I had to go and root through shit and claw my way into and carve out my position. I think that some of the protester still need to learn that lesson that the real world is tough, and it ain't pretty.
I don't expect any handouts. I do expect a level playing field.
Is this the America you want to live in? that you want for your children?
Hi Artemis Entreri,
just a parting shot.
It is easy to cherry pick photos to suit your biases. I can post a peaceful picture of an Occupy protest for every one of your Tea Party photos. so pictures on their own prove nothing.
Obviously, from your links, you are taking this propaganda from a biased source rather than doing your own homework.
Nice list of the aggressive tactics of police against Occupy Protesters. Curiously they do not show any wrong behavior by the protesters, just by the police.
Unarmed protester/s vs Police with riot gear, "weaponized" tear gas, bludgeoning tools, blockades
Now let's look at an actual example of an actual protester and the LA police:
quote:My Occupy LA Arrest by Patrick Meighan
I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people at Occupy LA. I was sitting in City Hall Park with a pillow, a blanket, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Being Peace when 1,400 heavily-armed LAPD officers in paramilitary SWAT gear streamed in. I was in a group of about 50 peaceful protestors who sat Indian-style, arms interlocked, around a tent (the symbolic image of the Occupy movement). The LAPD officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted We Are Peaceful and We Are Nonviolent and Join Us.
As we sat there, encircled, a separate team of LAPD officers used knives to slice open every personal tent in the park. They forcibly removed anyone sleeping inside, and then yanked out and destroyed any personal property inside those tents, scattering the contents across the park. They then did the same with the communal property of the Occupy LA movement. For example, I watched as the LAPD destroyed a pop-up canopy tent that, until that moment, had been serving as Occupy LA’s First Aid and Wellness tent, in which volunteer health professionals gave free medical care to absolutely anyone who requested it. As it happens, my family had personally contributed that exact canopy tent to Occupy LA, at a cost of several hundred of my family’s dollars. As I watched, the LAPD sliced that canopy tent to shreds, broke the telescoping poles into pieces and scattered the detritus across the park. Note that these were the objects described in subsequent mainstream press reports as 30 tons of garbage that was abandoned by Occupy LA: personal property forcibly stolen from us, destroyed in front of our eyes and then left for maintenance workers to dispose of while we were sent to prison.
When the LAPD finally began arresting those of us interlocked around the symbolic tent, we were all ordered by the LAPD to unlink from each other (in order to facilitate the arrests). Each seated, nonviolent protester beside me who refused to cooperate by unlinking his arms had the following done to him: an LAPD officer would forcibly extend the protestor’s legs, grab his left foot, twist it all the way around and then stomp his boot on the insole, pinning the protestor’s left foot to the pavement, twisted backwards. Then the LAPD officer would grab the protestor’s right foot and twist it all the way the other direction until the non-violent protestor, in incredible agony, would shriek in pain and unlink from his neighbor.
It was horrible to watch, and apparently designed to terrorize the rest of us. At least I was sufficiently terrorized. I unlinked my arms voluntarily and informed the LAPD officers that I would go peacefully and cooperatively. I stood as instructed, and then I had my arms wrenched behind my back, and an officer hyperextended my wrists into my inner arms. It was super violent, it hurt really really bad, and he was doing it on purpose. When I involuntarily recoiled from the pain, the LAPD officer threw me face-first to the pavement. He had my hands behind my back, so I landed right on my face. The officer dropped with his knee on my back and ground my face into the pavement. It really, really hurt and my face started bleeding and I was very scared. I begged for mercy and I promised that I was honestly not resisting and would not resist.
My hands were then zipcuffed very tightly behind my back, where they turned blue. I am now suffering nerve damage in my right thumb and palm.
I was put on a paddywagon with other nonviolent protestors and taken to a parking garage in Parker Center. They forced us to kneel on the hard pavement of that parking garage for seven straight hours with our hands still tightly zipcuffed behind our backs. Some began to pass out. One man rolled to the ground and vomited for a long, long time before falling unconscious. The LAPD officers watched and did nothing.
At 9 a.m. we were finally taken from the pavement into the station to be processed. The charge was sitting in the park after the police said not to. It’s a misdemeanor. Almost always, for a misdemeanor, the police just give you a ticket and let you go. It costs you a couple hundred dollars. Apparently, that’s what happened with most every other misdemeanor arrest in LA that day.
With us Occupy LA protestors, however, they set bail at $5,000 and booked us into jail. Almost none of the protesters could afford to bail themselves out. I’m lucky and I could afford it, except the LAPD spent all day refusing to actually *accept* the bail they set. If you were an accused murderer or a rapist in LAPD custody that day, you could bail yourself right out and be back on the street, no problem. But if you were a nonviolent Occupy LA protestor with bail money in hand, you were held long into the following morning, with absolutely no access to a lawyer.
I spent most of my day and night crammed into an eight-man jail cell, along with sixteen other Occupy LA protesters. My sleeping spot was on the floor next to the toilet.
Finally, at 2:30 the next morning, after twenty-five hours in custody, I was released on bail. But there were at least 200 Occupy LA protestors who couldn’t afford the bail. The LAPD chose to keep those peaceful, non-violent protesters in prison for two full days the absolute legal maximum that the LAPD is allowed to detain someone on misdemeanor charges.
As a reminder, Antonio Villaraigosa has referred to all of this as the LAPD’s finest hour.
So that’s what happened to the 292 women and men were arrested last Wednesday. ...
Now I don't know about you, but I have a little trouble reading that account without getting very angry at the police behavior.
This is the kind of brutal police behavior we see in the (arab etc) dictatorships on the other side of the world, not the kind of behavior we expect to see in America.
This is not the kind of America I want to live in, nor is it the kind of America I wish for my children.
quote:The CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. received a pay package in 2010 worth $18.7 million, ...
Mike Duke, 61, received a base salary of about $1.2 million and a performance-based bonus of nearly $3.9 million for the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31.
Over a million in annual salary without the "bonus" payoffs.
quote:In 2001, the average pay of a Wal-Mart worker was $8.23 per hour, more than two dollars less per hour than the average supermarket employee wage of $10.35 per hour. Furthermore, Wal-Mart associates only average 32 hours a week, causing many employees to be classified as part-time, thus restricting their access to health care and other benefits exclusively earmarked for full-timers. In fact, Wal-Mart wages are so low that the average Wal-Mart worker’s annual salary in 2001 was almost $1,000 below the federal poverty line of $14,630 for a family of three.
Poverty level wages are bad enough. But Wal-Mart apparently feels that not paying wages at all is even better for its bottom line. As of December 2002, 39 class action lawsuits in 30 states were filed against Wal-Mart claiming tens of millions of dollars in back pay owed to hundreds of thousands employees. These lawsuits included instances of Wal-Mart forcing employees to work through breaks, forcing employees to work off the clock, and even deleting hours from employees’ time sheets without their knowledge. According a former Wal-Mart manager in Alabama and Mississippi, Wal-Mart’s central office threatened to write up managers who didn’t reduce labor costs and this led to managers leaning on assistant managers to falsify time sheets and force employees to work without pay.
So now that this is no longer a hypothetical question ... I repeat:
Do you think it is just for a CEO to "earn" over a million dollars a year, while their lowest paid employee's annual salary is below the poverty line?
Or if people were just responsible, and not so retarded, then they would have purchased things that they could afford, instead of taking a risk, failing and then blaming everyone else.
How do you know they weren't responsible? How do you know they were "so retarded" in their purchases? It's easy to pin labels on them so you can convince yourself that they are to blame.
If a person wants to buy a home, and they go around to all the mortgage companies and NOT ONE turns them down, are they not being responsible in their approach to buying a home?
That is just it. The playing is not and never was level.
Just because it isn't level doesn't make it right does it?
So should we work to make it more level or less level?
Oh you are sooooooo altruistic. I am sooooo impressed. LOL
quote:We the People of the United States, in Order c, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
That's pretty altruistic too. Curiously, I note that "because society as a whole would benefit from it" is promoting the general welfare.
Curiously, the goals of the Occupy Movement are in line with the constitution ... " ... to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity ... " ... don't you agree?
Re: Is this the America you want to live in? that you want for your children?
Hi Artemis Entreri,
Never said they did, I just found it amusing.
So you find it amusing when law abiding US citizens are beaten up by police and arrested for VERY minor (trumped up?) charges? Charges that were not used for the first several days -- does this mean they were okay until they were arrested? Is this the kind of police treatment you expect for a speeding violation?
Obviously you are on that OWS kool-aid. I just took those from a google image search (I had no crazy motive other than making a joke). I am not in the tea party or the flea party. The media double standard on both groups is funny, and prompted me to post them, I find the OWS thing silly, and was shocked that so many intelligent people on here support it. In my first couple posts I was just being an ass, im done with that now.
Really? looks to me like you are now saying the same things, behaving the same way as before.
Y’all should totally be armed at your protests, the police aint stupid, well they aint that stupid. Basically act like a peasant, get treated like one.
Sorry to vehemently disagree. The Civil Rights movement was not won by armed conflict with police, but by non-violent protests.
By being peaceful, and assembling in peaceful protests, these protests are not breaking the law. The US Constitution specifically allows peaceful assembly to address grievances.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
color for emphasis.
You are advocating breaking the law and revolution.
Occupy is advocating working within the laws and the evolution of a more just government.
Don’t get it twisted, I dislike the police very much. But sitting in on city hall, after you are asked to leave, sounds like a crime. Resisting arrest, sounds like a crime. I also noticed some errors in the large quote, but it is not important.
City Hall Park -- not city hall. The park is public land.
So the "crime" is not leaving when requested? and "resisting arrest" means not leaving when requested?
Really? How many protesters were shot? How many died? How many were locked up and NEVER seen again? Oh yeah, NONE. Only the truly ignorant would compare getting arrested in the US to getting arrested in an Arab dictatorship.
quote:Scott Olsen, the Iraq war veteran who had his skull fractured in late October at the Occupy Oakland protests, made his first two media appearances since being injured on Tuesday. First, IndyBay.org posted an interview to their site that they had conducted on Sunday, where Olsen talks about the injury and his recovery. Later, Olsen appeared on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, and fielded questions from Ed Schultz about his symbolism among the Occupy protesters.
IndyBay.org asked Olsen if he could remember anything from the night he was knocked out. Olsen said he had his phone out and was texting a friend when he was hit in the head with a projectile. Next thing I know, I’m down and on the ground, and there are people above me trying to help me, and they ended up carrying me away.
... Schultz then asked him why he was in the protests, and why he says he will return to them.
I’m there protecting the rights that we have, he said. When I took the enlistment oath, when I joined the Marines, I swore to uphold and defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. And I’m continuing to do that.
Rather ironic that a vet from the Iraq war, dedicated to protecting the US Constitution, is injured by projectiles fired from police rifles in the US, yes?
Arresting people who openly and defiantly break the law in front of the police. I think I probably do support police who do their job.
Never claimed it didn’t exist if you notice at the end of my sentence there was this symbol ? that means I was asking a question, and not making a statement. I know you are just being snarky and wanted to call me ignorant, but I could careless.
Wow 2001 and 2002. I am not sure which industry you are employed in, but data from 10 years ago is hardly relevant today. Somehow I am ignorant, yet your outdated example still holds true. You are hilarious.
I am not really sure, I am still searching for a relevant example with update non biased information, I’ll let you know when I see it.
And since 2001/2002 CEO salaries have risen while base worker pay has stagnated or declined. There are more people in the US below the poverty line than ever before.
Amusingly, I note that you still have not answered the question, all you are doing is dancing around it and finding excuses.
Do you think it is just for a CEO to "earn" over a million dollars a year, while their lowest paid employee's annual salary is below the poverty line?
Yes or no.
That is why they are retarded.
No, that is why you call them retarded -- it is your personal justification: if they are retarded then they will get hurt, so if they got hurt, then it is because they were retarded. Therefore everyone that got hurt must be retarded. That's retarded reasoning.
I know what is in my means and what is not. If you have no idea, because a mortage company doesn’t say no, they you are either retarded, or a crook trying to take advantage of the system.
How convenient. Of course what is in your means never changes for the worse ...
Take care of yourself and to hell with everyone else.
To hell with your wife and kids, eh? parents? uncles? aunts? grandparents? grandchildren?
Does conservative ≡ selfish? or is it just that being selfish makes you think you are conservative?
Amusingly, there are rats that behave better:
quote: ... rats can be compassionate. They freed another trapped rat in their cage, even when yummy chocolate served as a tempting distraction. Twenty-three of the 30 rats in the study opened the cage. The rats could have hogged all the chocolate before freeing their partners, but often didn't, choosing to first help, then share.
No one could have known that when a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in a public square, it would incite protests that would topple dictators and start a global wave of dissent. In 2011, protesters didn’t just voice their complaints; they changed the world.
Once upon a time, when major news events were chronicled strictly by professionals and printed on paper or transmitted through the air by the few for the masses, protesters were prime makers of history. Back then, when citizen multitudes took to the streets without weapons to declare themselves opposed, it was the very definition of news vivid, important, often consequential. In the 1960s in America they marched for civil rights and against the Vietnam War; in the '70s, they rose up in Iran and Portugal; in the '80s, they spoke out against nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Europe, against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, against communist tyranny in Tiananmen Square and Eastern Europe. Protest was the natural continuation of politics by other means.
There were a few exceptions, like the protests that, along with sanctions, helped end apartheid in South Africa in 1994. But for young people, radical critiques and protests against the system were mostly confined to pop-culture fantasy: "Fight the Power" was a song on a platinum-selling album, Rage Against the Machine was a platinum-selling band, and the beloved brave rebels fighting the all-encompassing global oppressors were just a bunch of characters in The Matrix.
"Massive and effective street protest" was a global oxymoron until suddenly, shockingly starting exactly a year ago, it became the defining trope of our times. And the protester once again became a maker of history.
I think everybody goes into a loan negotiation expecting that the way they're going to be screwed is, the bank is going to require monthly payments that they're not going to want to pay, but they can afford it by cutting out the luxuries.
What they appear to have been unjustified in thinking was that the banks were being honest with them.
What they appear to have been unjustified in thinking was that the banks were giving them the complete picture.
What they appear to have been unjustified in thinking was that they would continue to have the jobs they had.
What they appear to have been unjustified in thinking was that the economy would continue to grow as it had all their lives - a little bumpy but generally up.
But what remains in the debris of this colossal failure of the banking industry, is that IF the trickle-down theory was correct, people would have kept their jobs, would have gotten raises and would have been able to pay their mortgages: IF the mortgages HAD been paid then the failure\collapse would NOT have occurred.
But trickle-down did NOT occur, failure occurred, and the failure shot from the bottom to the top in DAYS, demonstrating that the economy is based on and dependent on the BASE, not the top.
The economy is based on the 99% going about daily business and generating a movement of funds, not on the 1% accumulating funds and taking them out of the economy, rather than recirculating them back to the base.
The economy is the movement of money, not the accumulation of it.
And again you fail to answer it. Do you think it is just for a CEO to "earn" over a million dollars a year, while their lowest paid employee's annual salary is below the poverty line?
Do you approve of Walmart forcing people to use food stamps and medicare to get by, because their wages and benefits are not sufficient, thus causing governments to subsidize Walmart with tax dollars?
Usually when you resist arrest you get beat up. While that may be a minor charge for you, I do not consider it minor.
They were probably tolerating the trespassers in an attempt to find another solution to the problem rather than out right arrest.
Must be nice to think that everyone beaten up by police deserved it and that whatever reason the police had was necessarily not a minor charge . . . a convenient way to hide yourself from the truth of the matter. I thought you didn't trust the police, yet you back them up every time.
Obviously there was no major situation if it was not dealt with when it first arose. And there was no reason to resort to violence to arrest people one day that had not been arrested on a previous day for doing the same thing -- peaceful protests.
I don’t know, I do not speed.
Another dodge. Is this the kind of police treatment you expect for a person getting arrested for a speeding violation?
No I am not, I was wondering how many posts it would take before you started building one of your famous RAZD strawmen? What was it 2 responses?
Message 117: Y’all should totally be armed at your protests, the police aint stupid, well they aint that stupid. Basically act like a peasant, get treated like one.
So you are saying that an armed group of people demanding that government change and responding to police with bullets would not be considered a revolutionary act?
quote:Clause 15: To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
Clause 16: To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, ...
If your advice was followed the National Guard would have been called in. Do a little research on armed groups and rebellions, and you will see that your advocacy of using guns to solve a problem means the state\federal governments respond with more guns and less regard for the people.
Riiiight. That is why so many people get arrested at OWS events, while the terrorist racist tea party people don’t get arrested at their events. Do you live in the twilight zone?
Now who has the straw man argument? The Tea Party is neither racist (though some people at their gatherings may be) nor are they terrorists.
Curiously the Tea Party is also advocating working within the laws and the making changes for what they see as better government.
Amusingly there are Tea Party people that are involved in and that support the Occupy Movement - because they agree with both the methodology and the call for justice.
It’s not for bums and squatters, to camp out on. You visit a park enjoy it, and leave it, you don’t stay for weeks, and litter all over the place, and then refuse to leave when asked by city authorities.
Ooo. Another straw man. They are neither bums nor squatters - those are your terms you use to delude yourself that the police action is justified. Most occupiers have college degrees, many have jobs and homes. In addition, there are people that don't spend full time there but phase in and out in order to work and take care of homes, and there are more people that support the movement during the day. They also have been keeping the parks clean and picked up during the occupations, not littering. According to the Providence Police the incidence of crime in that particular park is down since the occupation started.
This is a peaceful assembly of citizens with a list of grievances that they want the government to address.
Not ironic at all, that our police use non-lethal, and less-than-lethal means of crowd control and dispersal. What is ironic is that hippies think our methods are the same as the methods used in Bahrain, Syria, and Libya, and try to actually act like they know what they are talking about.
And yet a veteran of the Iraq war was nearly killed, a veteran that had survived several tours of duty in Iraq.
What is ironic is that narrow minded conservative patsies think the methods used are somehow justified because they are supposed to be non-lethal, even though the goal of the methods is the same as in dictatorships -- to control the people that object to the government actions. This is done by causing bodily injury, whether lethal or not ... with people ending up in hospital emergency wards.
Somehow it is better than a third world country to walk up to a peaceful assembly and just open fire or bash people over the heads with lead weighted sticks.
No family is protected because blood is thicker than water, but those outside of the family? whatever. Nah we are either a higher evolved species, or God created us to rule this planet.
Thus confirming that you are selfish, ignorant, arrogant, and possibly deluded.
Amusing that you think rats behave better you silly hippy.
Nothing like finishing with one of your famous ad hominem attacks - the sign of an inferior debate position.
Egyptian activists have gathered in Cairo for a mass protest against the ruling military and its handling of a series of clashes between security forces and demonstrators that killed 17 people and drew international criticism, even as thousands of others demonstrated their support for the army.
Tens of thousands protested in the capital's Tahrir Square, the focal point of protests against the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) after Friday prayers.
"They are also saying the recent violent crackdown, specially the violence soldiers used against women, is unacceptable."
The now iconic pictures and videos of a woman protester being dragged and stripped by military forces during bloody clashes that erupted last Friday dominated the media and heightened criticism against the SCAF.
"The women of Egypt are a red line," the protesters in Tahrir chanted. "We either die like them or we get them their rights," followed.
Protesting to end oppressive government, to transition to a true democracy that represents the people . . .
Protesting for respect, equality and justice . . . how dare they!
Let me add this video that summarizes one persons experience from visiting many occupy protests:
quote:Uploaded by OccupyTravels on Dec 23, 2011
In October 2011 I visited 10 different "Occupy Wall Street" encampments to gain a better understanding of the movement. I edited a short film that documents my experiences in Chicago, D.C., New York City, Providence, Boston, Montreal, Albany, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. My film shows the Occupy Movement in its first phase, which I'm calling "The Awakening".
Please take a moment to view this and share it with others. I'm hoping to generate interest in the project and continue covering the movement into its next phase.
Apparently, there is no longer any pretense that the myth of trickle-down (voodoo) economics ever had any basis in fact.
May it forever lay on the trash-heap of history.
According to the leading candidate for Obama's house, people who want to discuss the increasing income gap between the rich and the middle class (outside of quite rooms) are simply envious, and perhaps sinfully covetous of their rich brethern.
They'd likely be trying to win a lottery without understanding that just being a millionaire is not enough.
The other Republican candidates are being encourage to stop pointing out problems with Romney's work at Bain because doing so is bad for the Republican party.
Don't look at the man behind the curtain ... you may find out that a lot of transactions amount to theft from the top, and they don't want the general public to know this.
There's no need to make this stuff up.
People are increasingly aware of this issue -- due to the Occupy movement -- and this leads to it becoming a part of the discussion ... just as raising awareness of the injustice of racism in the 60's brought it into the general consciousness, and then into legislation to resolve the injustice.
We are in the general consciousness stage. It will be interesting to see how this affects the debates for the upcoming elections. If republicans are branded as defenders of the 1% it could be bad for them across the nation.
Especially if it can resonate on an emotional level.
Re: hear from a conservatively inclined but not entirely lunatic person
Hi Catholic Scientist
I think it can be. Sure, the floors need to be cleaned, but a CEO who brings in 10 million dollars in new revenue is worth the million he got to do that.
You're assuming that the money brought in is distributed. We see companies being bought up, the new executives pay themselves high wages, borrow against the company and then leave it bankrupt while they walk off with their millions. See Bain for example.
Personally I think it is immoral for any company to pay anyone less than a poverty level wage for full time work. Paying less is abuse.
Once you are able to do that, THEN you can think about padding your pocket.
Note that IF the people had been able to pay their mortgages that the whole financial "crisis" would not have occurred
Yeah, I just don't know about that.
It is pretty universally agreed that the mortgage failures is what caused the crisis. There is no arguing that point.
It is also pretty universally agreed that actual income of people in the lower brackets has been going down for the last decade or so.
No trickle-down, failure of people to continue to afford mortgages they already had, failure of the whole mortgage program. Failure of trickle-down.
When you get a loan, that is someone making an investment in you. If they make a bad investment, then they are to blame.
I dunno, if you enter a contract that says you're gonna pay back a particular amount every month, and they're betting on you fullfilling that contract, then when you don't/can't then that is your fault for violating the contract.
Investments are risky. That is part of the reality of capitalism. Should they be protected by public tax funds from making bad risk investments? Really?
I haven't heard much about the Occupy movement in the last week.... What's the next stage?
As DC85 said, it is getting the issue into mainstream conversations, just as the civil rights movement moved from initial protests to national discussions and then to actions to resolve the injustices.
The next stage is actions that return some justice to the economic and political systems.
Already we see the republicans responding to some of the issues. It will be interesting to see how the election proceeds, and how much the democrates paint the republican incumbents as protectors of the 1% at the increased expense of the 99%.
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