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Reply With QuoteOccupy Wall street is a great example of latte fueled Astro-Rage.
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Concerned Citizen
Here is a most interesting review of how the "Occupy Wall Street" movement actually got started.
Who would believe the architect of this movement was among the biggest capitalists and corporatists of all, financial investor George Soros, who debuted in September of this year as one of the top 10 wealthiest Americans!
The irony of this statement is obviously lost on many of the liberals and socialists who have joined the movement and continue to donate their time and their money to its messy and undefined cause!
The Beginnings.
"The protests began in earnest on September 17, triggered by an Adbusters campaign featuring a provocative poster showing a ballerina dancing atop the famous bronze bull in New York's financial district as a crowd of protesters wearing gas masks approach behind her.
Dressed in anarchist black, the battle-ready mob is shrouded in a fog suggestive of tear gas or fires burning. Some are wearing gas masks, others wielding sticks. The poster's message seems to be a heady combination of sexuality, violence, excitement and adventure."
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Anti-Wall Street protesters say the rich are getting richer while average Americans suffer, but the group that started it all may have benefited indirectly from the largesse of one of the world's richest men.
There has been much speculation over who is financing the disparate protest, which has spread to cities across America and lasted nearly four weeks. One name that keeps coming up is investor George Soros, who in September debuted in the top 10 list of wealthiest Americans. Conservative critics contend the movement is a Trojan horse for a secret Soros agenda.
Soros and the protesters deny any connection. But Reuters did find indirect financial links between Soros and Adbusters, an anti-capitalist group in Canada which started the protests with an inventive marketing campaign aimed at sparking an Arab Spring type uprising against Wall Street. Moreover, Soros and the protesters share some ideological ground.
"I can understand their sentiment," Soros told reporters last week at the United Nations about the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, which are expected to spur solidarity marches globally on Saturday.
Pressed further for his views on the movement and the protesters, Soros refused to be drawn in. But conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh summed up the speculation when he told his listeners last week, "George Soros money is behind this."
Soros, 81, is No. 7 on the Forbes 400 list with a fortune of $22 billion, which has ballooned in recent years as he deftly responded to financial market turmoil. He has pledged to give away all his wealth, half of it while he earns it and the rest when he dies.
Like the protesters, Soros is no fan of the 2008 bank bailouts and subsequent government purchase of the toxic sub-prime mortgage assets they amassed in the property bubble.
The protesters say the Wall Street bank bailouts in 2008 left banks enjoying huge profits while average Americans suffered under high unemployment and job insecurity with little help from Washington. They contend that the richest 1 percent of Americans have amassed vast fortunes while being taxed at a lower rate than most people.
BANKING LIFE SUPPORT
Soros in 2009 wrote in an editorial that the purchase of toxic bank assets would, "provide artificial life support for the banks at considerable expense to the taxpayer."
He urged the Obama administration to take bolder action, either by recapitalizing or nationalizing the banks and forcing them to lend at attractive rates. His advice went unheeded.
The Hungarian-American was an early supporter of the 2008 election campaign of Barack Obama, who will seek a second term as president in the November, 2012, election. He has long backed liberal causes - the Open Society Institute, the foreign policy think tank Council on Foreign Relations and Human Rights Watch.
According to disclosure documents from 2007-2009, Soros' Open Society gave grants of $3.5 million to the Tides Center, a San Francisco-based group that acts almost like a clearing house for other donors, directing their contributions to liberal non-profit groups. Among others the Tides Center has partnered with are the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation.
Disclosure documents also show Tides, which declined comment, gave Adbusters grants of $185,000 from 2001-2010, including nearly $26,000 between 2007-2009.
Aides to Soros say any connection is tenuous and that Soros has never heard of Adbusters. Soros himself declined comment.
The Vancouver-based group, which publishes a magazine and runs such campaigns as "Digital Detox Week" and "Buy Nothing Day," says it wants to "change the way corporations wield power" and its goal is "to topple existing power structures."
SLOW START
Adbusters, whose magazine has a circulation of 120,000 and which is known for its spoofs of popular advertisements, came up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, said Kalle Lasn, 69, Adbusters co-founder.
"It came out of these brainstorming sessions we have at Adbusters," Lasn told Reuters, adding they began promoting it online on July 13. "We were inspired by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt and we had this feeling that America was ripe for a Tahrir moment."
"We felt there was a real rage building up in America, and we thought that we would like to create a spark which would give expression for this rage."
Lasn said Adbusters is 95 percent funded by subscribers paying for the magazine. "George Soros's ideas are quite good, many of them. I wish he would give Adbusters some money, we sorely need it," he said. "He's never given us a penny."
Other support for Occupy Wall Street has come from online funding website Kickstarter, where more than $75,000 has been pledged, deliveries of food and from cash dropped in a bucket at the park. Liberal film maker Michael Moore has also pledged to donate money.
The protests began in earnest on September 17, triggered by an Adbusters campaign featuring a provocative poster showing a ballerina dancing atop the famous bronze bull in New York's financial district as a crowd of protesters wearing gas masks approach behind her.
Dressed in anarchist black, the battle-ready mob is shrouded in a fog suggestive of tear gas or fires burning. Some are wearing gas masks, others wielding sticks. The poster's message seems to be a heady combination of sexuality, violence, excitement and adventure.
Former carpenter Robert Daros, 23, saw that poster in a cafe in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Having lost his work as a carpenter after Florida's speculative construction boom collapsed in a heap of sub-prime mortgage foreclosures, he quit his job as a bartender and traveled to New York City with just a sleeping bag and the hope of joining the protest movement.
Daros was one of the first people to arrive on Wall Street for the so-called occupation on September 17, when protesters marched and tried to camp on Wall Street only to be driven off by police to Zuccotti Park - two acres of concrete without a blade of grass near the rising One World Trade Center.
"When I was a carpenter, I lost my job because the financier of my project was arrested for corporate fraud," said Daros, who was wearing a red arm band to show he was helping out in the medic section of the Occupy Wall Street camp.
Since its obscure beginnings, the campaign has drawn global media attention in places as far-flung as Iran and China. The Times of London, however, was not alone when it called the protests "Passionate but Pointless."
Adbusters' co-founder Lasn dismisses that, reeling off specific demands: a tax on the richest 1 percent, a tax on currency trades and a tax on all financial transactions.
"Down the road, there will be crystal clear demands coming out of this movement," he said. "But this first phase of the movement is messy and leaderless and demandless."
"I think it was perfect the way it happened."
Source: Who's behind the Wall Street protests? - Yahoo! News
Vice President
Occupy Wall street is a great example of latte fueled Astro-Rage.
Moderator
And now being 'shaped' by Journolist... far left "journalists" the very same ones that got Obama elected.Originally Posted by JDJarvis
All the news that fits... they print. - Even if they have to make it up themselves...Big Journalism has learned that the Occupy Washington DC movement is working with well-known media members to craft its demands and messaging while these media members report on the movement. Someone has made the emails from the Occupy D.C. email distro public and searchable. The names in the list are a veritable who’s who in media.
Journolist 2.0 includes well known names such as MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, Rolling Stone’s Matt Tiabbi who both are actively participating; involvement from other listers such as Bill Moyers and Glenn Greenwald plus well-known radicals like Noam Chomsky, remains unclear. The list also includes a number of Occupy organizers, such as one of the Occupy Wall Street main organizers Kevin Zeese.
Journolist 2.0: OccupyDC Emails Show MSM, Dylan Ratigan, Working With Protesters To Craft Message - Big Journalism
Secretary of Defense
I smell a Con-spiracy.
The Tea Party was/is funded by Koch money.
No big deal either way.
These things have to be started by someone, and who knows in the long run both groups could have a beneficial effect on the Country.
Vice President
"Expose my plans will you?
blofeld_cat.jpg
Brave but, on the whole, stupid."
Vice President
Uh, no. Part of the tea party was/is funded by Kochk money, they were not there in the beginning, they did not launch it.
Moderator
You keep saying that, and yet I have not received my check. No one else I know in the Tea Party has gotten one either.
Could you look into that for us?
Thanks!
Secretary of Defense
George Soros gave money to Open Society, among the many other things he does with his money. Open Society gave money to the Tides Foundations, among the many other charities and causes it supports. The Tides Foundation supported Adbusters, among the many other charities and causes it supports. Adbusters floated the idea of an occupation of Wall Street to their email following and ran a single advertisement, among the many other positions and causes it supports.
From there a truly grass roots response sprung up which was almost completly and totally inconsequential, about 20 hippies sleeping in a park.
Then the NYPD pepper sprayed and strong armed peaceful demonstrators who came out to gawk at those 20 hippies and the Occupy Wall Street movement became front page news around the world.
George Soros is five steps removed from the OWS movment becoming anything at all yet he is the mastermind.
:rolleyes:
Grasp at any partisan straws lately?
I ♣ Ideologues!
Citizen
The direct catalyst of the Tea Party movement was Rick Santellis comments on the floor of the Chicago stock exchange about mortgage bailouts. I think the point here though is you have a capitalist funding a anti-capitalist movement (secretly). Which isnt unique. There are a lot of 1%'s supporting this anti-1% movement.
Vice President
Thats the whole point of money laundering, to escape responsibility for ones actions.
Soros doesn't want power. He won't be around long enough to enjoy it.
But he thinks the American system of popular sovereignty is an impediment to collective progress, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and is attempting to rectify that.
Last edited by Commodore; 10-17-2011 at 09:31 AM.
Vice President
Accept any Appeals to Diversion lately? Ever hear of the term laundering?
Let me see if I get this straight, one can do all manner of ill provided one ALSO does other stuff. Gotcha!
"No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."
-- Patrick Henry
Secretary of Defense
No. I'm not "accepting" anything. I'm telling you that even the suggestion that Soros is "the mastermind behind" OWS is silly, and I only use the word "silly" because if I used the proper word I'd get you're-a-naughty-boy PMs from the mods..
Sure. It doesn't apply to this situation in the slightest. Unless you can prove that it does without basing you're entire agrument on an affirmation of the consequent. Note that this will require proof rather than simple speculation.Ever hear of the term laundering?
No, you didn't get it straight at all. And you didn't "get me".Let me see if I get this straight, one can do all manner of ill provided one ALSO does other stuff. Gotcha!
In fact, that conclusion is so preposterous I can't even begin to imagine how you might have arrived there.
Look at it this way, if I give money to the Church, then the Church gives money to a homeless shelter, then the homeless shelter uses that money to feed some street bum which prevents him from starving to death, then that street bum goes out an murders someone in an armed robbery, I may be complicit in the murder in some completly obscure way but I'm sure as shit not the "mastermind" behind the murder.
Soros donates money to dumbfuck ultraliberal causes every single day of the year. 99.9% of the time you never hear anything about the donation or the charity. But this one time in a million one of the obscure charities that his money eventually found its way to becomes front page news so all of a sudden you're going to fall all over yourself to make it seem like OWS was something that Soros actually dreamed up, planned, and orchestrated?
That's just silly.
Screaming "Yehhhhhhhh!!! MONEY LAUNDERING, MONEY LAUNDERING, Ehhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
Like some little girl at her first horror movie is even sillier.
I ♣ Ideologues!
Vice President
I think you're missing the point. You very well might be correct in saying that Soros is not "the mastermind" behind OWS. What he does do is heavily fund the organizations responsible for this type of ideology. From that funding of an ideology the type of fruit that is brought about can definitely be predicted.
"The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." - John Maynard Keynes (admits his philosophy is not viable)
Secretary of Defense
Well that kinda goes without saying right?
Funding liberal causes is going to result in liberal movements, funding conservative causes is going to result in conservative movements, funding political campaigns is going to result in tax cuts for businesses and free trade agreements.
I wouldn't dispute that for a second.
What I dispute is the OP's claim that George Soros is the "architect" of the OWS movement.
That's what the OP said, that's the comment I quoted in my initial response to this thread, and that's what I've been arguing.
I'm perfectly happy to concede that because his money (along with a lot of other peoples' money) was granted to the organizations that initial planted the seed of the OWS movement, George Soros played some small role in it coming about.
But folks (at least in this thread) are acting like OWS is Soros' baby. He thought it up, he planned it, he funded it, he organized it, he was the first occupier (incognito, of course) to occupy Wall Strret and he was the flame to which the other moths gravitated.
And therefore, OWS is not a legitimate grass roots movement because the MARK OF GEORGE SOROS is all over it.
Which is complete bullshit.
The point of this thread is to discredit the "popular uprising" as a Soros bought-and-paid-for political movement.
Which it's not.
George Soros (again, along with lots of other people) gave a little bit of money (not a lot of money, as the organization is funded primarially by monies they raise themselves) to the public advocacy organization that initially suggested, "Hey, y'all should occupy Wall Street".
From there it took on a life of it's own.
Grass roots.
Just like the TEA Party movement.
Personally I think both movements are stupid (for different reasons) but I won't deny that either of them were grass roots at the point of origin (though the TEA Party saddly no longer is).
Last edited by soot; 10-17-2011 at 11:38 AM.
I ♣ Ideologues!
Vice President
regardless of who funds it, this movement was destined to come to life. It's a reaction against what they see as injustice.
IMO, this one here, the beginnings of a movement is young, and there is no doubt it won't be that long before average folks join in in great numbers. You cannot impoverish average folks in your path to maximize the profits of the few. Blood generally flows unless it is corrected. This protest I think will get bigger and become larger as unemployment runs out and kids start going hungry. Humans never learn lessons when it comes to greed corrupting and causing suffering of others. Except this time around there is not an FDR to calm things down with promises of helping out average folks affected by this madness. In his place you have cons telling folks this is their own fault, for being lazy no account bums. But that won't suffice as things get worse. And there will be gun sights on cons and the rich. It is inevitable unless there are drastic changes done to get big business and banking out of it. Just remember I told ya so early on. I have been wondering when the revolution was gonna start, as it is a long time in coming.
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