My general thoughts on OWS is that it's a fantastic movement. This movement is quite honestly the beginning of something very big and revolutionary in our lifetimes, at least I'm hoping. As long as these movements stay non-violent and outsmart the powers the be that want to see them basically nuked off of the face of the planet, this movement cannot be stopped.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ahx-LPIkY4
The majority of these people don't understand money. It is no wonder that they can't figure out exactly what they need to protest, or where the problem is.
They should read
The Mystery of Banking
Can be read for free here:
http://mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf
There is no excuse for ignorance in the Internet age.
I agree, there is no excuse for ignorance in the internet age. Unfortunately though, a lot of people are just lazy.
I don't agree with your premise that the movement doesn't have an understanding of what they're protesting and what needs to be protested.
Cherry picking a few "morons" for a video is hardly evidence that a majority people within "the movement" don't understand what's going on. The only complaint I'll levy against the OCW movement is that they have no set posts for where they stand (just a direction), which certainly has its pros and cons.
The great thing about this movement is the vast collection of ideas and issues that they are moving for and against. There is no one thing in this society that needs to be protested. The whole financial system is completely fucked, the government has their hands in way too much of our daily lives, income disparity is continually an issue being brought up, the wars overseas are completely senseless, etc etc etc. There are plenty of issues these protests have been bringing up. The problem is trying to cover them all since the various movements are so prevelant.
The greatest thing about this movement is that they're faceless in the sense that there is no one perceived leader to be targeted and taken down. It's not a movement of one person being supported by the people ala politicians, it's the people representing themselves since there's such a lack of representation in government to prevent the catastrophes we've endured. Again, as long as these movements continue in the formats they're in; no "leaders", peaceful but powerful demonstrations, and growing support, there's nothing "They" can do about it and maybe some real change is in store.
It's possible that the media has cherry picked. But the Corbett report would be looking to prove the OWS is actually a movement against the Fed, not a movement to push more government. The amount of signs picturing people demanding student debt forgiveness paints the movement as backed by the whiny and ignorant.
The fact that the official movement is backed by Soros and uses Communist symbols also does not lend itself credibility.
It's not "possible," it's reality. Some of the media for the longest time refused to even attempt to understand what the movement was about and why so many people in this country are fed up with the status quo (COUGH FOX NEWS). I've seen quite a bit of coverage on MSNBC and CNN but that's about it. But regardless, the MSM isn't a factor in deciding what's news nowadays anymore. I wouldn't say they're irrelevant, but they certainly don't hold the candle for the end all be all news sources anymore, thanks to the internet and social media.
zabu of nΩd;10077422 said:
I realize it's actually a bit sad how few people are following this topic and/or forming opinions about it.
http://occupywallst.org/article/world-us-occupy-lives/
What do you think of the whole issue of blocking bridges? Apparently there was some big push done by the movement lately to block major bridges in large cities across the country, and a sizeable quantity of people got arrested. Seems like a somewhat counterproductive way to do things.
It would be really interesting though if the protestors were somehow able to arrange for 'new work holidays' where shittons of people took the day off from work to march. i wonder if a major city could survive that without massive waves of stress being sent throughout most of its customer service relationships, haha. People need to get to work to keep the global economy running, no? I guess the businesses could always use it as an excuse to customers. Question is whether they would really be willing to help 'facilitate' the movement in that way, what with the pressures of social darwinism and all.
I'm also very curious about the general layout of office parks, and how much zoning engineering goes into their placement. Theoretically a bunch of protestors could hang around the entrances of office parks, or crowd the parking lots of nearby shopping centers, and try to draw a crowd that way. In my case, there's just so much private property surrounding the office park i work in. Hard to imagine a large gathering being possible without immediate grounds for trespassing arrests.
IIRC, the Brooklyn Bridge incident was the result of the police using a corralling technique forcing the occupiers break the law against their own will, aka entrapment. I don't remember specifics but I'll look it up here in a bit.
If they want to protest specific issues such as instances of corruption then I'm all for it and support it. But just crying because CEOs make a lot of money? Childish and pointless.
There will always be a percentage of people who are stupid and do no justice to any unified group of people, that's just reality. However, insinuating that OWS is all about people "making money" aka anti-capitalist is false.
zabu of nΩd;10077438 said:
A better aproach than the "crying" would be to demand new taxes on large corporations aimed specifically to make up the budget deficit. I mean, how much of your average McDonalds or Microsoft's annual profits would you have to tax across the country in order to cover up the budget deficits of all the governments in the u.s.? probably a lot. it might incentivize large corps to lobby more co-operatively and actually think about cleaning up the budget bloat.
Proto-typical Democrat rhetoric right there. Why should profitable companies have to pay more in taxes because the
government is stupid and corrupt? And the government is the one who is spending assloads of money on shit they shouldn't be spending? Taxes do no good and solve no problems.
