Occupy Wall Street

[dilute micro]

But federal money isn't spent according to the rules, is it? It's spent according to the whims of the powerful. You can't change that by yelling "follow the constitution", but by stripping the powerful (NOT the politicians, they're irrelevant, BUT the capitalist class) of that power.

I guess you're arguing in favor of a government where everyone behaves themselves and yet has no rules.

I agree they need to be stripped of that power. But you have to have rules otherwise they'll come right back. The issue isn't that the rules are useless - but that people don't want to follow the rules. That's a point I've made in this thread about the OWS. They're not against disregarding the rules - they're against other people's success at disregarding the rules. That's why the movement will fail.

 

[ayatollah]

My analogy is bang on actually. There was, and is, a class of people in the United States (and the world) who hold a monopoly on the means of production and distribution. Who determined what was made and distributed if not the owners of private property? I'll ask again, what possible constitutional arrangement could have prevented that class of people from dominating the country?

I really can't see what the opposing posters are offering in opposition to Lo Siento's perfectly straightforward view that if the overwhelming majority of , Land, productive equipment, natural resources, distributive mechanisms, press , TV, etc , are owned by a tiny fraction of the population, (Yup I'm afraid it really IS that old cliche, the "CAPITALIST CLASS") that some set of "constitutional rules" are going to stop the tiny minority of owners from abusing their very obvious disparity in real power as against the majority of citizens.

Also to set up some "golden age creation myth" about the nature of the US as founded is truly pathetic. Come on, most of the US Founding Fathers were slave owners for goodness sake - and the whole of the USA is historically based on stolen indigenous American Indian land and genocide of the same ! Come on folks , face up to the harsh realities of the USA from foundation - rather than trying to make out some lovely fair US Constitution, which should have guaranteed "Fairness for All" has somehow been subverted. The beast was sick from day one guys. Time for it to be PUT DOWN.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Anyone want a pen pal?

Life sure is tough for those at the top and it must get awful lonely. So we thought to ourselves… what could we do so they don't feel so alone? So they know there's somebody out there thinking of them. And then it struck us. Maybe they could use some pen pals. Well, today is their lucky day!

http://www.occupytheboardroom.org/

 

[AKA pseudonym]

As I was saying...OWS will fail because it doesn't really stand for anything. The haves will see this as nothing more than a tug-o-war between them and the have nots. The have nots see this as a tug-o-war between them and the haves. The haves are going to win.

The fact they'd have to bring in people means they aren't going to get any help from the people who are there now - even if they were able to piece together a unified platform. They aren't going to change lawmaker minds. At best they'll get a hushpuppy thrown at them.

The mere fact that you in the UK? are even discussing the protest... suggests one of the core issues has been a success... awareness raising?
and of course the call for solidarity... how many countries now hey???

 

[dilute micro]

The mere fact that you in the UK? are even discussing the protest... suggests one of the core issues has been a success... awareness raising?
and of course the call for solidarity... how many countries now hey???

I certainly won't disagree that awareness is a must. But it's one thing to say you don't want things as they are - it's yet another to know what you want.

 

[dilute micro]

I really can't see what the opposing posters are offering in opposition to Lo Siento's perfectly straightforward view that if the overwhelming majority of , Land, productive equipment, natural resources, distributive mechanisms, press , TV, etc , are owned by a tiny fraction of the population, (Yup I'm afraid it really IS that old cliche, the "CAPITALIST CLASS") that some set of "constitutional rules" are going to stop the tiny minority of owners from abusing their very obvious disparity in real power as against the majority of citizens.

Also to set up some "golden age creation myth" about the nature of the US as founded is truly pathetic. Come on, most of the US Founding Fathers were slave owners for goodness sake - and the whole of the USA is historically based on stolen indigenous American Indian land and genocide of the same ! Come on folks , face up to the harsh realities of the USA from foundation - rather than trying to make out some lovely fair US Constitution, which should have guaranteed "Fairness for All" has somehow been subverted. The beast was sick from day one guys. Time for it to be PUT DOWN.

Not sure what you're calling "golden age myth"...are you?

 

[Treacle Toes]

Here Are The Four Charts That Explain What The Protesters Are Angry About...

​

Earlier this week, we published a chart-essay that illustrates the extreme inequality that has developed in the US economy over the past 30 years.
The charts explain what the Wall Street protesters are angry about. They also explain why the protesters' message is resonating with the country at large.

Here are the four key points:
1. Unemployment is at the highest level since the Great Depression (with the exception of a brief blip in the early 1980s).

Image: St. Louis Fed
2. At the same time, corporate profits are at an all-time high, both in absolute dollars and as a share of the economy.

Image: St. Louis Fed

Image: St. Louis Fed
3. Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low. In other words, corporate profits are at an all-time high, in part, because corporations are paying less of their revenue to employees than they ever have. There are lots of reasons for this, many of which are not the fault of the corporations. (It's a global economy now, and 2-3 billion new low-cost employees in China, India, et al, have recently entered the global workforce. This is putting pressure on wages the world over.)

Image: St. Louis Fed
4. Income and wealth inequality in the US economy is near an all-time high: The owners of the country's assets (capital) are winning, everyone else (labor) is losing.
Three charts illustrate this:
The top earners are capturing a higher share of the national income than they have anytime since the 1920s:

CEO pay and corporate profits have skyrocketed in the past 20 years, "production worker" pay has risen 4%.

After adjusting for inflation, average earnings haven't increased in 50 years.

It's worth noting that the US has been in a similar situation before: At the end of the "Roaring '20s," just before the start of the Great Depression. (See some of the charts above).
It took the country 15-20 years to pull out of that slump and fix the imbalances. But by the mid-1950s, employment, corporate profits, wages, and inequality had all returned to more normal levels. And the country enjoyed a couple of decades of relatively well-balanced prosperity. But now, everything's out of whack again.
Importantly, the inequality that has developed in the economy over the past couple of decades is not just a moral issue. It's a practical one. It is, as sociologists might say, "de-stabilizing." It leads directly to the sort of social unrest that we're seeing right now.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-four-charts-that-explain-what-the-protesters-are-angry-about-2011-10#ixzz1at6UXC8M​

 

[ayatollah]

Not sure what you're calling "golden age myth"...are you?

The gist of many of your posts - mainly in response to the position of Lo Siento, seems to be that at its creation the US Constitution was an honest attempt to prevent the abuse of power by vested interests, at a number of different levels. Many of the "Occupy Wallstreet" protestors seem similarly to be demanding that a range of existing US laws and the Constitution, are enforced to "reign in" the power of Finance Capital. The Constitution was drawn up by a bunch of capitalist slave owners, and whilst the avoidence of overbearing state power was certainly one of its aims, its context was always the support of a rapaciously dynamic capitalist society. Thus as Lo Siento says, it's no good looking to some greater enforcement of the Constitution to protect US citizens, it is the unequal ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, that have to be dealt with, ie, by creating a non-capitalist society. "Good" constitutions themselves can not prevent abuse of power again and again by a capitalist ruling class.

 

[dilute micro]

Oh we're out of the recession huh?

Well that's good news.

 

[dilute micro]

The gist of many of your posts - mainly in response to the position of Lo Siento, seems to be that at its creation the US Constitution was an honest attempt to prevent the abuse of power by vested interests, at a number of different levels. Many of the "Occupy Wallstreet" protestors seem similarly to be demanding that a range of existing US laws and the Constitution, are enforced to "reign in" the power of Finance Capital. The Constitution was drawn up by a bunch of capitalist slave owners, and whilst the avoidence of overbearing state power was certainly one of its aims, its context was always the support of a rapaciously dynamic capitalist society. Thus as Lo Siento says, it's no good looking to some greater enforcement of the Constitution to protect US citizens, it is the unequal ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, that have to be dealt with, ie, by creating a non-capitalist society. "Good" constitutions themselves can not prevent abuse of power again and again by a capitalist ruling class.

Yes I know what Siento meant but seriously if you can't do capitalism right - you can't do communism right. The leaders we have are worthless. I wouldn't trust them to run a lemonade stand. Oppression and making up the rules as you go isn't just a capitalist thing you know.

 

[ddraig]

@OccupyWallStNYC


#OCCUPYWALLSTREET
Hundreds of police entering corner of 7th and 46th to try to control peaceful #OccupyTimesSquare PIC:pic.twitter.com/AQqdfT2Y

 

[dylans]

This is mental. Citybank arresting its customers for closing their accounts on mass.

In what can only be the stupidest public relations move in corporate history, financial behemoth Citibank reacted to customers trying to close their accounts today by… bringing in a ton of cops and having them arrested.

 

[yield]

This is mental. Citybank arresting its customers for closing their accounts on mass.

Thousands protest banks, corporate greed in U.S. marches
Reuters Sat Oct 15, 2011

New York police said 24 people were arrested at a Citibank branch in Manhattan's Greenwich Village neighborhood, mostly for trespassing. Protesters said those arrested were trying to close their accounts. A Reuters reporters saw another five people arrested as the protest neared Times Square.
Citibank was not immediately available for comment.

They're going to cause a bank run if they keep that up.

 

[audiotech]

Is this as Slavoj Zizek recently put and I'll paraphrase:

'Some wisdom that needs to be resuscitated, to think about the possibilities of the future? To define it clearly as it is presently - "a veneer" - to bravely confront it, without illussions and expose its imminent logic, which is in reality "no future". This then to open up the space for the other dimension'?

 

[teqniq]

This is mental. Citybank arresting its customers for closing their accounts on mass.

That is indeed mental. Anyone who had any illusions about who the cops work for especially after that JP Morgan thing will most likely be having a rethink.

 

[ayatollah]

Yes I know what Siento meant but seriously if you can't do capitalism right - you can't do communism right. The leaders we have are worthless. I wouldn't trust them to run a lemonade stand. Oppression and making up the rules as you go isn't just a capitalist thing you know.

I have to admit I really don't know where you "are coming from" ideologically here. Oppression and making up rules certainly isn't just a capitalist thing as you say ... pretty much the entirety of recorded human history and sundry social systems in fact - and indeed the stalinist bureaucracies of the Soviet Union and China win the equal top prize for "most people oppressed and most of your own citizens slaughtered in world history" award - well ahead of even the Nazis. However , that rather significant point notwithstanding, capitalism is such a chaotic (Ok, and incredibly dynamic) system , based on grossly inbuilt disparities in power - flowing from grossly unequal ownership of resources, with at its heart a casino mentality in the finance capital sector, that governance and rules are bound constantly to fall apart spectacularly in major world economic crashes. And even in the stable periods vast numbers of the world's inhabitants are left to starve amidst abundance.

There has to be a better way to run a world economy. Stalinism aint it, but that doesn't mean that a democratic, rule of law-based socialist system isn't the way forward.

 

[albionism]

This is mental. Citybank arresting its customers for closing their accounts on mass.

I very nearly spat at my computer screen watching that.
Absolute cunts.

 

[dilute micro]

There has to be a better way to run a world economy. Stalinism aint it, but that doesn't mean that a democratic, rule of law-based socialist system isn't the way forward.

I don't trust any type of government. Every type will corrupt eventually so long as people assert themselves above the rest. But I do think you can take measures to prevent its degradation by founding and structuring it on principles that recognize that governments do go wrong. From that point it's a matter of keeping everyone on the same page...which is hard as hell to do.

Anybody can write up a bunch of laws. When those people leave office the next group of lawmakers write up their own laws everyone serving themselves by using the tools of government to get what they want. That's the government we have now and why you see the protesters on wall street. It's all reduced to who at the moment is doing the law making. That's not a viable government.

 

[Jon-of-arc]

That citibank thing is...I don't know. It sort of sends a message from the bank and the police that people are not free to take their custom away from financial institutions, especially not as part of a protest. It says banks are too important to be fucked with in this manner. Whether that was the intention (or, more likely, just overzealous security and a branch manager who flapped under pressure), it's hard for me not to take certain inferences from what happened there.

Surely that's very anti-competition, anti-american? To stop people closing taking their business elsewhere, under threat of arrest? Isn't there some shit in their constitution about this? Or at least in their business/financial regulations? I hope they can sue, and I hope this video goes viral in the states.

 

[dilute micro]

To stop people closing taking their business elsewhere, under threat of arrest? Isn't there some shit in their constitution about this? Or at least in their business/financial regulations? I hope they can sue, and I hope this video goes viral in the states.

I think you nailed it about the manager and the pressure. The patrons themselves may have been disruptive which would have them escorted out of a bank anywhere and if they refused to leave could be arrested. Still it looks like the whole ows thing has the police on edge. The girl standing outside the bank was arrested for having earlier been inside. She looked well dressed and well groomed. I would have let her go. The dude with the goatee is what did her in.

 

[spring-peeper]

imo - everyone has the right to work in a safe environment. If someone is disruptive or abusive, the company has the right to ask the person to leave. In Canada, this is the law. I'm not sure if the US has the same law.

Two dozen people were arrested on charges of criminal trespass Saturday morning when demonstrators entered a Citibank bank branch near Washington Square Park and refused to leave, police said. One protester also was arrested on a charge of resisting arrest.

Citibank said in a statement that the police asked the branch to close until the protesters could be taken away. ''One person asked to close an account and was accommodated,'' Citibank said.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/a...-in-the-us-70-arrested-in-times-square-141503

The incident earlier today between Citibank and OWS protestors has more information than earlier reported. Eyewitnesses are saying that the people inside the bank weren't just there to withdraw money. They were there to raise hell and be loud about it. Today the protestors in New York seemed to become a bit more bold than usual.

According to a story in the NY Post, a flash mob of about 30 people stormed the La Guardia Place branch, entering the building, yelling, and chanting at the bank employees. A bank employee told reporters, "[They] all went in a big flash mob to close their accounts. There were about 30 of them. They were screaming and chanting while they were going in. Security told them to leave, but they didn't. They stood in a group chanting things to the tellers. There were locked in, and then they were taken away."

An official statement by the financial behemoth was short, and described the protestors as loud and disruptive, refusing to leave the premises after arriving. One person, the bank said, actually closed their account. One of the protestors, however, told a different story. Hillary Caldwell, a 27-year-old student from Harlem, said a group of protestors were in the bank branch complaining about student loans when they were locked in and arrested.

So, on one side you have a bank official describing an angry mob storming a bank, and on the other side, you have a protestor who said they were simply complaining about their student loans. The video only shows the portion of the protest where those involved were arrested. However, seeing a woman being dragged inside the building is, nonetheless, disturbing.

http://news.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474980587852

 

[butchersapron]

Why post comments from blogs or other forums? Does it add anything?

 

[flutterbye]

Why post comments from blogs or other forums? Does it add anything?

If it expands the discussion here I dont see why not tbh.

 

[butchersapron]

It didn't.

 

[dilute micro]

So it was the protesters after all.

 

[nino_savatte]

If it expands the discussion here I dont see why not tbh.

How does it "expand the discussion" here? It appears to reinforce the hoary old stereotypes that the right has of anyone who doesn't subscribe to their Social Darwinian point of view.

 

[flutterbye]

How does it "expand the discussion" here? It appears to reinforce the hoary old stereotypes that the right has of anyone who doesn't subscribe to their Social Darwinian point of view.

I was responding to a generic point, not related to this thread.
On another thread (threads crossed) I raised the issue of mass bank account closures across the US that wasnt being discussed, pulled straight from a discussion on reddit.
So more generally if a reference to a discussion on an another forum broadens the debate then I dont see it doing any harm.

 

[AKA pseudonym]

Police in Chicago and New York have arrested around 265 'Occupy' protesters who were rallying against corporatism, social inequity and poverty in United States, Press TV reports. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/204902.html

 

[Dr Dolittle]

On a more general note, this whole campaign, having spread around the world, is going quite well. The organisers of the original Wall Street event said they didn't expect it to last more than fifteen minutes. It reflects how people are feeling, but I remain sceptical that it lead directly to any change - it's just people letting off steam. For governments and the establishment generally, it's probably what they expect, and by giving people their demogratic right to protest, it acts as a safety valve. Although police action on these kinds of events tends to be erratic, as we saw from the City of London protests in 2009.

 

[audiotech]

Glenn Beck: "This is a Marxist revolution" and "partly led by the unions". Good grief! Beck has some really shocking news! These people are using insurrectionist tactics! Not paying their bills and marching.