I am fairly certain that by the time these white, urban rich kids get the idea into their little heads to protest something, it is already at least a year too late to effectively protest anything. Wall street will rape who it wants, when it wants. You know why?

Because they fucking can, that's why.

Rioting is the only form of protest left that stands a chance of changing things.

(Note I did not say for the better.)

Then I bought this pitchfork for nothing?!

Well you can bet this is just the beginning.

It's all economic shitstorms and underclass destruction from here on out.

When the millions cut from the Postal Service and other government jobs, and all the outsourcing and automation starts really kicking in, the unemployment and welfare checks start drying up, we'll see who's still laughing.

It should be said that half the financial sector and political system could and should legally be behind bars getting raped by Bubba the ex-construction worker who lost his pension and 401k to pay for the CEO's hundred million dollar bonuses. It's just a matter of gathering the popular and legal steam to dump their asses in prison.

80 arrested today, little violence. The nypd is rounding them up using netting, then pepper spray, and cuffing them for transport while incapacitated. Not sure if the cops didnt feel they would submit to arrest since some kept trying to avoid the barriers or if one cop just finally got pissed. Looks like the organizers, and there are organizers, led them out of the park to block traffic to draw the arrests. Good move as it gets the coverage they're looking for and will radicalize some. Previous experience shows most won't be charged, unless they resisted, so they can get sprung Monday. Getting sprayed blows though, I wonder how many realize this was the intent? I wonder when they're going to try to enter or block the entrance to NYSE?

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The nypd is rounding them up using netting

Somebody's been watching Planet of the Apes movies on the Superstation.

I'm waiting for police to employ those net guns a la Batman. Complete with *THWACK* sound effect.

Pressurized semen.

"Disperse, or we will spray you with semen collected from prison inmates."

Whoosh!

Tumbleweed rolls through.

New worst job in the NYPD? "High pressure semen tank filler"

ooops I forgot to put an NSFW on this post.

Despite receiving widespread media coverage since Saturday’s initial attempt to ‘take Wall Street’, on Monday protesters were still complaining about a ‘media blackout’. The self-delusion and the childishness of this protest seems to be apparent to most of the 99 per cent of Americans who the protesters claim to represent, seeing as they haven’t bothered to join them in their pizza-catered Monty Pythonesque circus camp.

Ouch. The reporter's personal blog notes that immediately she was deluged with anti-Semitic hate mail from supporters of the protest.

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Greek translation needed for this video of students interrupting a live news broadcast. Striv, would you take a listen?

This is OT, but not much.

Well said, Twilight. I've enjoyed this thread, thanks. And here's another bump for Max Keiser. Episode 188 is a work of art.

I'd trust those glibertarian chuckleheads at Living Marxism spiked online about as far as I could comfortably spit out a rat. ((c) Douglas Adams)

Despite the jabs at Occupy Wall Street's "simplistic naivete", the intellectual bankruptcy of that Spiked article is on par with a Michelle Bachmann-Rick Perry-Bill O'Reilly liberal gangbang on Faux News. The above is a textbook example of a common infotainment pundit tool: a twisted inversion of the classic argumentum ad verecundiam fallacy. Guilt by proximity. This is like saying that because some politicians water down the overwhelming edifice of scientific evidence supporting global warming into charged, memorable soundbites to rally constituents like, "it pays to be green", that therefore the science is somehow invalid.

And then there was the gratuitous throw-away comment about how behavioral science is a tool politicians use to "steer citizens into adopting certain behaviours." "Pol Pot breathed air. You breath air, so you must be a mass murderer!" It was with the insights of behavioral scientists like Daniel Kahneman that we were able to overcome the Gormenghastian edifice of the economics academics establishment, those math and in particular Excel formula-centric theories of the Gaussian Copula curve, mean variants, and portfolio theory -- which were instrumental in the global meltdown of 2008. which has been and remains in cahoots with the financial sector. It was only with the work of behavioral psychologists that the straw man of Homo Economicus that fully rational robotic agent functioning in the marketplace as perfect utility-value calculator was finally burned, and the possibility that people do not behave rationally, and often even self-destructively in the world of economics gained traction -- a claim whose mountain of evidence continues to pile up like the tens of millions of unemployed.

All this sniping cynicism from a comfortable armchair, but maybe if she didn't just leech incorrect facts off other mainstream media outlets, shallowly flip through her Twitter feed and the top Google News results and rant, maybe if she wasn't just cherry picking excuses to trot out liberal stereotypes and mischaracterizing the crowd, maybe if she instead of handwaving them with snide laughter actually made contact with the real world she purports these "scraggly hippies" know nothing about, she would discover that a) The protesters were not just targeting Wall Street but the entire ecosystem of corruption, public sector to private, demanding specifically an end to corporate personhood and a revision of campaign contributions b) the "banksters" are not just the poor "scapegoat" little kid who gets called names but that these people are actually are criminals who have stripped trillions from ordinary citizens and have destroyed untold trillions more when their schemes blew the world economy into an economic Hiroshima. They deserve much worse names than "bankster", but you can't write a dissertation-length evisceration of the financial-political complex' crooks in sharpie on a cardboard sign. Like every successful protest and movement, be it Egypt, Spain, or the US a half century ago, you use the degree of brevity appropriate to the situation. Or perhaps the author is aware of all this but chooses to ignore it, like that recent New York Times article. I wonder how many police pensions' worth it costs Wall Street to buy out a small British online "Marxist" publication?


And maybe we should question the premise: Was the hippy movement really so terrible? If it wasn’t for all those wanderlusting, aimless kids tye dying their shirts and tossing flowers in fields, just getting out there, women like her might still be the uneducated, 2nd class arm candy/love dolls for their husbands, nodding “yes dear” instead of the other way around. Maybe blacks would still be sitting at the back of the bus, no future to look forward to beyond being “The Help”. What’s wrong with people enjoying themselves at a movement? So they’re out there singing, dancing, laughing. Maybe that release is necessary, seeing as all they have to come home to is a life of working at McDonald’s to pay off $100,000 in unclearable student loans. No bailouts for them. The comment about the crowd-sourced donations used to buy pizza for protesters was also illuminating: “At least the anti-capitalists are helping to boost local businesses.” This fully misses the point. It’s not about being “anticapitalist” (a label projected by the author) enough. It’s not about pushing this or that ideology. It’s about people. It’s about people tired, jobless, broken, just getting out there, sharing their pain, joy, frustrations, hearing each other’s stories and being part of that community. It’s about people seeing that the traditional institutions and channels, left and right, capitalist and anticapitalist, public and private, have failed, utterly, and continue to fail, giving us only endless wars, impending enviro-agro-hydro-cataclysm, a great depression with no end in sight, a squandered future, and a completely dysfunctional, useless political system unable and unwilling to do anything about it, that brings the country to the brink of collapse for fun and political points like kids beating on a sick homeless man for kicks and change. It’s the people in desperation, stumbling together in the streets, in the parks, unsure of how they got there and how to fix it, but trying to find some way forward, and just talking, trying to get others to join in the conversation. One of the Wall Street Occupiers put it aptly, “I think we’re fucked either way but, you know, it’s worth a shot.”

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Nobody Can Predict The Moment of Revolution

A nice cross section of the Wall Street Occupiers.

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Originally posted by tarj:
I'd trust those glibertarian chuckleheads at Living Marxism spiked online about as far as I could comfortably spit out a rat. ((c) Douglas Adams)

I admit I am not familiar with it, seems hardly like a bastion of Fox News wannabes though.

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"All this sniping cynicism from a comfortable armchair"

She actually spent all weekend out there with them it seems. She also covered Arab-Jew protests against Israel and didn't blast the protesters there as being quite as pathetic as the wall street folks. I think your backing the wrong horse here TM. Legitimate problems with the wall street machine and a few asshole cops don't make this a 'movement' in any true sense. Attacking one of the only reporters that has spent real time on the scene is like blaming the guy who pointed out the emperor was naked. Maybe this is why most reporters are mentioning it, every news outlet has covered the protests even our local news here in Tampa carried video, but nobody is really taking it seriously.

I guess I should note that my work is on the myriad shady ways in which banks and non-bank entities fund mortgage lending schemes. Specifically, my thesis is on how neighborhoods can be shattered by the pointless capital accumulation of these schemes. So my point of view is hardly sympathetic to the banks. But these folks have failed to articulate a clear message, co-opt mainstream support, or impact the functioning of wall street (which remains a critical agglomeration economy in financial culture). They also seem to be attracting the scorn of mainstream reporters who have been happy to cover other protests, including the 20,000 that occupied Wall Street in May.

She isn't the only reporter who has spent real time on the scene, and certainly isn't the least biased. She does a good job towing the party line of ridicule. Obviously somebody is taking it seriously, or we wouldn't see this massively disproportionate police presence and eighty protesters locked up on suspicious charges. The power players and their bought and paid for media outlets may try to laugh it off/dismiss/downplay what's happening but the facts on the ground suggest they are worried as hell about Occupy Wall Street and protests like it growing, gaining traction, as they should be.

And at any rate, why try to downplay it? At least there is something happening other than people sitting around talking about problems and posting angrily on the internet, and it certainly is drawing at least some attention (CNN did a 30 second piece on it, amazingly). We should be throwing gasoline on the kindling, not trying to snuff it.

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She isn't the only reporter who has spent real time on the scene

I thought she was in a comfortable armchair? lol The simplest answer is not that banks have bought off every news outlet on the planet. Even dedicated liberal sources such as MSNBC, AlJazeera, and HuffPost are not dedicating tons of resources to covering this. I would expect to see more coverage on Fox News since this plays to their whole fear-mongering agenda. There remains a serious class distinction between the protesters and the public that would need to be overcome to attract media attention. It was best shown perhaps when the employees of the local Burger King called police to remove protesters from the property for loitering.

quote:

Originally posted by editengine:

quote:

She isn't the only reporter who has spent real time on the scene

I thought she was in a comfortable armchair?

That was an oversight on my part. She was physically there. But since she was airing out all the same dismissive, skewed ad hominem name calling used in mainstream coverage and even a recent "liberal" New York Times article, and when she managed to talk about what the actual protest was about, used a lot of baseless claims attacking behavioral science and in defense of the banks who screwed us over, it was hard to tell she was a real reporter.

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Even dedicated liberal sources such as MSNBC, AlJazeera, and HuffPost are not dedicating tons of resources to covering this.

Occupy Wall Street Article from HuffPost, an hour ago. Firstly, it's not like there isn't coverage. Secondly, "liberal" and "conservative" mainstream media are increasingly becoming like two different flavors of ice cream -- easy, tasty, fast-food news and both not so good for your health. Even when Michael Moore showed up on Keith Olbermann to talk about the protests, Olbermann mostly just used the protest to score one-ups on the "other team" Repubs and Tea Partiers who would've gotten more coverage if they were the ones protesting, without going into why the actual protesters were there. Probably because the protesters were out in force not just against the Republicans or Rick Perry or Michelle Bachman, but against both parties, the Republicrats. Bopping and hair pulling each other like Itchy and Scratchy as the audience chows down popcorn, sating their need for entertainment and be told that "their in the right!" in a crazy world instead of getting their ass out on the street and using the last available channel for real change. And the murky tangle of the news is to be expected, seeing as how these protests hit at the root of Big Money which permeates every avenue of the media. There are some bright spots of coverage, mostly independent reporters, individual reporters in larger organizations who feel drawn strongly to the cause, and I think that the dissonant, grey wash of reports and in-fighting even within the "liberal elite" and news organizations themselves with respect to this movement are telling. Even the police are divided, the blue-shirts have been saying things like, "we should be out there with the protesters", while some bad-apple white collars have apparently taken a liking to hair pulling, macing and throwing down protesters. Not unlike the whistleblowers at the major banks and SEC: who are mostly younger, fresh gum shoes and lower level personnel, who still believe their job is to actually do beat work and keep the financial sector honest rather than score some loot, gain appointments and get their foot in the government-Wall Street revolving door. Who disagree with the conduct of their corrupt bosses and try to call them out on it.

A good example of the internal disagreement: from the above-mentioned HuffPo article which shoots down a lot of the claims of "disorganized hippy kids partying" and gives a good examination of the recent dismissive, questionable article in the NYT and others like it:

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The purpose of Occupy Wall Street is simple: gather as diverse a group of demonstrators as possible to make a peaceful statement about government corruption and the privileging of big business and the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans in policy making.

Yet, if one were to read the New York Times article published Friday or see the front page of Sunday morning's New York Post, one would think that Occupy Wall Street was disorganized and full of naïve rabble rousers looking to riot for rioting sake.

However, these portrayals could not be further from the truth.

On Sept. 24, I had the opportunity to spend time at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in Zuccotti Park. I had been downtown at the beginning of this past week and had witnessed the early stages of the protests, but had heard little about the evolution of the demonstrations in the media as the week wore on. Due to the lack of media attention being given to Occupy Wall Street, I decided to head downtown and see it for myself.

To say that the demonstrators are only hippies and radicals pining for 1968 would be a gross misstatement. Rather, the demonstrators come from diverse backgrounds: environmentalists, feminists, former and current Wall Street bankers, traders and brokers, anarchists, socialists, members of the LGBTQ community, teachers, students, Republicans, Democrats, libertarians, people of color, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, retired NYPD police officers, members of the FDNY, journalists, musicians, photographers...the list could go on and on. Yet, the one thing that this varied group of people has in common is that they are tired of government corruption and the privileging of corporations and the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans by the American government.

Additionally, the demonstration was not as disorganized as some media outlets have argued. Rather, it was highly organized and based on consensus. To make announcements, a "mic check" would take place. Whoever wished to speak would yell, "Mic check!" to gain the attention of fellow protestors. The speaker would then share four- or five-word snippets and those around her or him would loudly repeat what was being said to allow the message to reverberate throughout the park. If a decision regarding whether or not to take some form of organized action needed to be made, a consensus amongst the demonstrators first had to occur. Schedules for the day were distributed in the morning and alterations were made when necessary--alterations based on consensus.

Read the rest.

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Well said, Twilight. I've enjoyed this thread, thanks. And here's another bump for Max Keiser. Episode 188 is a work of art.

Thanks, and thanks for the Max Keiser shout out!

EDIT: Multiple articles in the Washington Post recently80 arrested as ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest of bank bailouts, mortgage crisis marches in NYC

Why We Occupy Wall Street

'Nother recent article in Suite 101 96 year old grannies show solidarity, having experienced the last Wall Street-led depression.

Looks like they're gaining steam.

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