World Politics

[auscyclefan94]

Has anyone been out to any Occupy protests who are on the forum? Any interesting stories from your cities?

 

[craig1985]

I was going to go to the one in Brisbane but I cbf.

 

[Ferminal]

We should all just take our money out of our bank accounts & only use cash for the next 8 weeks or so and that will send a very powerful message to all the banks & the financial industry globally. The only problem is loads of us work for banks .. etc and most of us have way too much money in our accounts [and we can't just cash it all]. If only we could organise a "cash out" on all our accounts the global financial industry will start to listen.

Quite sure this has been suggested/done in recent weeks.

Under normal circumstances I think it would be quite hard to cause a run on a bank.

And most of us have our money in actual banks, which are not the same as the financial megaliths.

 

[craig1985]

That's why the Government places a guarantee on people's accounts and deposits up to a certain monetary amount so it would stop a bank run from happening. IIRC that's sort of what happened in Argentina as people preferred to hide their peso's under the mattress when the Government brought in the Convertibility laws to keep the peso at the sane rate of US Dollars as people preferred to deal with US Dollar's instead (except that Convertibility failed majorly).

 

[blutto]

....ahhh...finally an idea from the guys running for the GOP that will tap the potential productivilty inherent in the US of A....and would, if properly implemented, hurl the US of A back into the Golden Age of American industry...

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.co...laws-preventing-child-labor-are-truly-stupid/

....oh...wait....that has been done already...never mind...

Cheers

blutto

 

[Master50]

In Victoria we had the naked girl (pretty) that was trying to apologize to the Sequoia tree we decorate for Christmas. Seems the electrical panel is mounted to the trunk with a chain and she thought that was offensive to the tree. So she took all her clothes off to pray to the tree.

The Occupy Victoria started as a protest and quickly was overrun by street people. Mostly has become a junkie fest. After a week or two is became obvious that 1/3 of the tents were unoccupied. Court order to diapers was passed.

Now as for their cause. I think we all dispose the new royalty and class of executive royalty. A group of very overpaid fat cats who are rewarded financially far beyond any measure of contribution to the corporate bottom line.

What value anyone person can bring that is worth a million dollar salary with bonuses never mind some of the 20 or 50 million dollar bonuses we read of.

The thing that really scares me is my pension is tied to corporate profitability as are many of the big pension plans. If the pention plan does not show investment growth then the fund shrinks and with it the ability to pay. Maybe I will wish I took that job in Alberta. At least that fund is backed by oil.

 

[MarkvW]

Why try to "Occupy" Wall Street & have events like Buy-Nothing-Day?

As the saying goes : Hurt them where it hurts them most, their wallet.

We should all just take our money out of our bank accounts & only use cash for the next 8 weeks or so and that will send a very powerful message to all the banks & the financial industry globally. The only problem is loads of us work for banks .. etc and most of us have way too much money in our accounts [and we can't just cash it all]. If only we could organise a "cash out" on all our accounts the global financial industry will start to listen.

One possible suggestion (not intended to be a theory or a determinative answer):

Politicians are telegenic (often half-witted) [people who take money for sex] hunting madly for a constituency. The occupy movements are telling these politicians that there is a constituency available that they might want to pander to.

 

[BroDeal]

Actually I cannot decide which of these is stupider.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...claim-that-water-can-prevent-dehydration.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/18/pizza-vegetable-congress-says-so

The EU spends three years of study to determine that bottled water does not prevent dehydration or the GOP decides that pizza is a vegetable. Good thing these august bodies are spending their time working on these important matters.

 

[El Pistolero]

Really? Most people in the western world live fromp paycheque to paycheque.. and the vast majority of the world dont have bank accounts. Which I i think is the point.

Most of us do take all the money out of our accounts.. On a weekly, or monthly basis.

I can't speak for the world, but in Belgium people have a lot of money on their bank accounts.

 

[Greenflame]

I talked to some people who went to the London Occupy thing. What struck me most is that most of them have no clue what they want. They're just angry at the government and the bankers, and that's why they protest. No one has a decent alternative to the current system, no suggestions to improve it. It's purely a movement against the status quo, without a vision of its own. And those people I talked to were largely students even, who are supposed to know more about it that the average person.

I'd say a movement first needs a vision of where it wants to go before it decides to break down the current system by causing a run on the banks or whatever.

 

[Martin318is]

I have merged the latest Occupy Wallstreet discussion over to here as there are already several posts on the topic in this thread. I left a redirect in the original location which will disappear in a few hours

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Thanks Martin.

I talked to some people who went to the London Occupy thing. What struck me most is that most of them have no clue what they want.

Same in my town. Over 10,000 km away, same exact thing.

Today a group in my home town formed calling themselves the "Unoccupy" group. But these aren't Tea Party uber-conservatives. They said they were the "98.999% supporting taxpayers, police costs, and the city's budget", and were claiming there needed to be proper focus, occupy protesters had become an annoyance, and protests shouldn't get to the point where they are so costly and waste resources.

 

[redtreviso]

Thanks Martin.


Same in my town. Over 10,000 km away, same exact thing.

Today a group in my home town formed calling themselves the "Unoccupy" group. But these aren't Tea Party uber-conservatives. They said they were the "98.999% supporting taxpayers, police costs, and the city's budget", and were claiming there needed to be proper focus, occupy protesters had become an annoyance, and protests shouldn't get to the point where they are so costly and waste resources.

baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

 

[auscyclefan94]

I talked to some people who went to the London Occupy thing. What struck me most is that most of them have no clue what they want. They're just angry at the government and the bankers, and that's why they protest. No one has a decent alternative to the current system, no suggestions to improve it. It's purely a movement against the status quo, without a vision of its own. And those people I talked to were largely students even, who are supposed to know more about it that the average person.

I'd say a movement first needs a vision of where it wants to go before it decides to break down the current system by causing a run on the banks or whatever.

+1
It is a universal phenomenon. Some present at these protests are what are known as "professional protesters". I am not necessarily against what the movement is suppose to be about but I think they could be smarter about what they are doing than just camping out.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

A full seventy dump trucks were required to haul away all the trash left behind from the Occupy people in my city. Horticulturists and engineers are now evaulating the damage done to the soil, grass, plants and trees and how to build the park back up. It remains fenced off.

 

[redtreviso]

""Un-Occupy Portland counters Occupy protestors at downtown rally, march
Published: Sunday, November 20, 2011, 5:29 PM Updated: Sunday, November 20, 2011, 7:20 PM

Armed with snarky signs and at least one false mustache, a group of about 10 anti-Occupy Portland protestors, who called themselves Un-Occupy Portland, stood near Ankeny Plaza to deliver a message to the Occupy movement: "We're seriously annoyed, and we want you to stop."

As members of Occupy Portland gathered for a rally on the plaza, the Un-Occupy protestors held signs with sayings such as "We are the 98.999%. We are seriously annoyed with the 0.001%," "I'm bored and easily influenced," and "Un-Occupy Portland: The 98.999% for Portland Police, Taxpayers and the City's Budget."

As the rally went on below them, the anti-protestors handed out flyers and discussed their complaints with the Occupy movement, citing a lack of direction, tense relations with police, lofty law enforcement expenditures, traffic congestion, vandalization and crime as reasons the protestors should end their occupation.

"No one will disagree with the serious problem of wealth inequality in this country. But we don’t feel that — 'Let’s totally, like, stop corporate greed, dude!' is a realistic or attainable goal worthy of the protests’ consequences," reads a piece of the group's mission statement.""

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/11/un-occupy_portland_counters_oc.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter


""They said they were the "98.999% supporting taxpayers"" all they of them?

 

[ramjambunath]

Successful revolution?

During the revolution

November 2011

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/11/2011112082333907688.html
This is the biggest problem that a country faces when undergoing a regime change (not just govt but type of govt) has a powerful military.

13 confirmed dead by the Beeb.

 

[ramjambunath]

Actually I cannot decide which of these is stupider.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...claim-that-water-can-prevent-dehydration.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/18/pizza-vegetable-congress-says-so

The EU spends three years of study to determine that bottled water does not prevent dehydration or the GOP decides that pizza is a vegetable. Good thing these august bodies are spending their time working on these important matters.

The EU parliament is factually correct though, nothing wrong about what they said. Money well spent.

Shocker-
Zapatero's Socialist Party loses convincingly in Spanish elections.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/world/europe/spanish-voters-punish-socialists.html

 

[rhubroma]

I talked to some people who went to the London Occupy thing. What struck me most is that most of them have no clue what they want. They're just angry at the government and the bankers, and that's why they protest. No one has a decent alternative to the current system, no suggestions to improve it. It's purely a movement against the status quo, without a vision of its own. And those people I talked to were largely students even, who are supposed to know more about it that the average person.

I'd say a movement first needs a vision of where it wants to go before it decides to break down the current system by causing a run on the banks or whatever.

It isn't their job to fix things, but to bring to everyone's attention how awfully malfunctioning and unjust financial capitalism is.

They're not a political movement (thank God!), so they have no leader. What unites all of them is that each is trying to find answers to questions millions and hundreds of millions of people are asking themselves today.

Questions like: Why is it that if I study allot, I can't get a job? Why can't I afford a decent education and adequate medical care? Why is it that when the financialists mess up, they never have to pay for their mistakes? Why do the brokers earn million dollar bonuses when they only profited through speculation?

Recently one Ows protester at Zuccotti Park, a smiling female university student, raised a sign with the following written on it: "The conventional mass media wants you to believe that I'm an anarchic, punk without a job and communist supporter. The truth is that I'm a 19 year-old university student who works two jobs in order to afford a tuition that's exaggeratedly high. If I don't do my job well, I get fired. When those guys who work at Wall Street lie, defraud and rob, they receive record salaries and enormous bonuses. I refuse to stay quiet, while my fellow citizens suffer the consequences for the incautious and irresponsible actions of some in our economy. I'm in the 99%. I'm smiling because I know that the power of the people is stronger than those in power."

Now apart the ingenuousness in her last statement, if it weren't clear what those in the Ows represent and want, then you guys can crawl back into your conservative, bourgeois dens and continue to hibernate.

We'll wake you up when it’s over. In the meantime, I think it would be a fine idea to have the state send in the bankers to clean up the parks. Its the least they should be made to do for having our political leaders force upon us all the onerous responsibility of bailing out their system, and to make tidy a mess they created during a party we weren't even invited to.

 

[craig1985]

So what do you actually propose happens to these 'financialists'? Look them up and throw away the key?

 

[rhubroma]

So what do you actually propose happens to these 'financialists'? Look them up and throw away the key?

Eureka!

And what would you do about the protesters? Lock them up and throw away the key?

It is clear which side you are on. And, indeed, we are have arrived to the point at which one is being asked to take a position, decide which side they are on.

In this sense bourgeois conservativism is only surpassed in its mendacity, by apathy and indifference.

 

[craig1985]

Actually I would let people protest all they like, but I'm on the side of actually having practical solutions that actually work.

 

[craig1985]

On a different topic, Cambodia's three most senior (and still alive) trio from the Khmer Rogue regime have finally gone on trial:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15814519

About time.

 

[auscyclefan94]

Eureka!

And what would you do about the protesters? Lock them up and throw away the key?

It is clear which side you are on. And, indeed, we are have arrived to the point at which one is being asked to take a position, decide which side they are on.

In this sense bourgeois conservativism is only surpassed in its mendacity, by apathy and indifference.

I am going to ask you a simple question (well maybe not). Would you prefer a socialist or communist style of government?

 

[rhubroma]

Successful revolution?

During the revolution

November 2011

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/11/2011112082333907688.html
This is the biggest problem that a country faces when undergoing a regime change (not just govt but type of govt) has a powerful military.

13 confirmed dead by the Beeb.

Not surprising when you have a military establishment that has the privileges of a cast: a veritable state within the State, which nobody can support any more. The country, moreover, has had a history of presidents who came right out of the military ranks (Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak).

In Egypt today the military doesn't want to simply relinquish its power and privileges to a popularly elected civil governemnt in the voting booths, hence the democratic process has been put on indefinite hold and the protests brutally repressed.

The minister of culture has stepped down as a form of protest against such barbary.