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Reply With QuoteNo, I don't expect vandalism or riots...Originally Posted by thanatos144
But causing a disturbance in order to get noticed should be part of such a protest.
There is no point if they are easy to ignore
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Vice President
Acts of protest, demonstrations & acts of civil disobedience are very common in the U.S., so common a lot of people hardly notice them.
Many municipalities are applying a soft hand(even assisting) the protesters and sending under-equipped police to deal with the protest so as to not escalate the situation.
Secretary of State
No, I don't expect vandalism or riots...
But causing a disturbance in order to get noticed should be part of such a protest.
There is no point if they are easy to ignore
"So called 'energy-experts' claim that the switch to renewable energy sources would take a very long time and that it would 'not be profitable'.
But there is no objective denomination of "not being profitable". One must always ask not profitable for who?"
-- Hermann Scheer
Secretary of State
breaking the law and being dirty crapping on the street junkies should never be part of protests. These kids have allowed themselves to be less than animals. Even a dog doesn't shit were he fucks.No, I don't expect vandalism or riots...
But causing a disturbance in order to get noticed should be part of such a protest.
There is no point if they are easy to ignore
Moderates are not republicans
Citizen
Individuals have the power to change things themselves, which is why we dont have riots. These protestors simply havent learned that yet. Most of the country has.
Secretary of Defense
I really don't understand your comments at all?No, I don't expect vandalism or riots...
But causing a disturbance in order to get noticed should be part of such a protest.
There is no point if they are easy to ignore
Clearly the demonstrators are being heard. These occupations have more or less been front page news for nearly a month.
And clearly the police are doing a perfectly reasonable job of keeping the peace. Except for a handful of incidents where unruly demonstrators were given a taste of the pepper spray or the batton this hasn't in any way turned into a major disturbance.
The protestors have done their job and the police have done their job.
What's the problem?
Or is this just more of your silly (and totally predictable) America bashing?
Hmmmmmm...
(Moderators please note that I am not talking about El_Zoido as a person but rather about El_Zoido's contribution to this conversation and the silly America bashing bent it takes, which is totally predictable.)
I ♣ Ideologues!
Secretary of Defense
Right. They would have been way better off if the government had let the financial industry collapse. (Or are we going to pretend that wasn't going to happen?)
Secretary of Defense
Whether or not that happened, that's exactly what should have happened. Unfortunately, what happened is a delay of the inevitable.
"If swearing is so immature, why is it referred to as... adult language?" - Philosoraptor
Vice President
It was a damned if you do, damned if you don't' sort of situation wasn't it? It was one heck of a government intervention and not one one that seemingly served all it's stated goals.
Secretary of State
TARP 1 funds have been repaid--with interest. And if you would reflect upon Black Thursday--1929--you would have a much better understanding of why TARP 1 had to happen to keep this country from going into a total financial collapse--with runs on the banks--totally wiping out everything in your bank account--stocks--savings EVERYTHING GONE.
Last edited by Oreo; 10-12-2011 at 09:04 AM.
Vice President
I'm aware of repayment, nothing I wrote would contradict that. I'm sure most of the bozos in the street aren't entirely aware of that.
Repayment wasn't the goal of TARP. We haven't seen the re-lending TARP was supposed to buy, granted there are many economic factors contributing to that, including ones imposed by the government that supplied the TARP funds.
Secretary of Defense
I'm calling BS on the suggestion that all the signatories to that letter are, in fact, millionaires.
If you'll go to their website, you'll see there is no restriction on who can sign the letter: Each person desiring to sign can, then, click a statement affirming "I make more than $1,000,000." And, further, there is no one vetting the list to ensure those who click the statement really do make a million bucks...
Secretary of Defense
I saw that too.
However, that there is "no official list of demands" raises several questions in my mind such as:
- How does everyone there protesting know what they're there protesting? and
- DOES everyone there protesting know what they're there protesting?
My guess is, they do not, given all the media to which we're being treated every day showing a lot of ranting and a lot of venting, but not a lot of cohesive passion about any single topic.
I've also heard a few of the protest's "leaders" interviewed and even THEY cannot present a cohesive message (or, in two of those cases, any real message at all other than "corporations = bad" ... which is very near a direct quote).
Further, with no mandates having been writen, I call into question the passion and committment of those leaders (both ... they obviously have passion because they're always screaming): They don't have the time or the committment to write down their complaints. THey apparently just expect others to lope along merrily behind them, completely ignorant of "...so why are we here?"
I have been watching the pundits on this. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is the Wall Street Bail Out did not help main street, and Wall Street is now rolling in dollars while the 99% suffer. The protestors seek jail time for Wall Street millionaires who profited from the 2008 financial crisis. Implications beyond that are undefined, and intentionally so. The bottom line is, someone screwed up America, fix it now. The pundits feel, and so do I, that the minute a list of objectives is surfaces the bickering will begin. OWS seems to be taking a page out of the Teabaggers book that worked in their early stages - keep it simple and use broad generalizations So, the common theme of the 99% is "We are pissed off because Wall Street greed ruined our lives, destroyed our futures, and is causing America to fall apart as a nation.
Secretary of Defense
I have a friend who went and spent the day down there, wandered around and talked to people, and the following is his take on the situation:
The OWS movement is really two groups, the occupiers and everyone else.
The "everyone else" are the folks who show up in mass to march, the folks who head over to the park after work to hold a sign, and the people sending money or buying food for the occupiers.
The occupiers are the "core" of the movement, those actually spending the night in the park.
Most of the "everyone else", and some of the occupiers, are level-headed folks who honestly have good intentions and a message that that is not completly unreasonably and which could be rationally communicated and sold to a wider audience (repeal the right of corporations to pay their c-level execs in stock options, money isn't speech and corporations aren't people, enforce the regulations that are on the books and fill the obvious loop holes, etc...). It might be a dispirate message, and it obviously isn't for everyone, but if it could be distilled down to three or four main points it wouldn't be anything that would get the general population cringing.
However, majority of the occupiers are radicals (vegans, truthers, communists, homeless bums) and their message is complete bullshit from the perspective of ever being translated into real policy (a Constitutional amendment madating veganism, allowing wikileaks access to the NSA's databases, default on all foreign debts, disbanding all corporations, etc...).
The problem is that these nut job occupiers are stakeholders in the occupation to a much greater extent than anyone else.
The folks who are actually living there and occupying Wall Street, though they're very much in the minority in terms of total numbers, own the OWS movement for better or for worse (it's named after them, after all). And these radicals aren't going to allow any formal demands or position statement unless it includes whatever it is that they happen to personally be advocating for.
You want the movement to be about holding corporations and government officials to account in terms of how their obvious collusion to enrich corporations and reelect politicians is having a damaging effect on the overall economy of the nation? Well then, you're going to need to carve Che Guevara's likeness into Mount Rushmore and give voting rights to kittens too.
That's why they're stuck and it's taking weeks to arrive at some coherant message.
You can't go over the heads of the occupiers without turning them off and ending the centerpiece attraction of the movement. But you can't get the occupiers to compromise on anything rational because they're just not rational people.
Last edited by soot; 10-12-2011 at 10:26 AM.
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