Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Bdthemag]

Wow, wonderful how the media is saying that police officers wearing riot gear just gently "nudge" the protesters.

I really wonder how much "nudging" the protesters will be able to take.

[Vector]

I've heard that some were nudged all the way into the ICU.

[palsch]

Linky

Some of the posters that've been cropping up about OWS are amazing. (Watch the vid)

Just got to say, love Molly Crabapple.

Her latest OWS piece on tumblr.

[Felius]

Now I'm not saying I'm a supporter of the movement. Sure, politically I'm certainly on the left, but I'm not going to go camp out to support a protest with no real goals. However I am in favour of democracy and what was done here was clearly undemocratic. Violation of free speech, and circumvention of the democratic process...Mayor Peter Kelly, who I've always supported, has lost my vote!

This. The government have been making a wonderful job of increasing the support for the occupy movements. The attempt at brutal repression is making sure even some who vehemently disagree with the movement ideals and message move to support them.

[Bauglir]

Now I'm not saying I'm a supporter of the movement. Sure, politically I'm certainly on the left, but I'm not going to go camp out to support a protest with no real goals. However I am in favour of democracy and what was done here was clearly undemocratic. Violation of free speech, and circumvention of the democratic process...Mayor Peter Kelly, who I've always supported, has lost my vote!

This. The government have been making a wonderful job of increasing the support for the occupy movements. The attempt at brutal repression is making sure even some who vehemently disagree with the movement ideals and message move to support them.

This is so true that I'm getting genuinely confused. These people can't be that stupid, right? To think that crackdowns are going to do anything but get support for the underdogs? Half the time I wonder if some of them actually want OWS to succeed or something because that is the only thing that makes sense.

[GlyphGryph]

I've actually been wondering that myself... but honestly I think at least a few of them would have tried open support by now if that was the case.

No, I think the better way to look at it is: They simply can't help themselves.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I think it's just that so many of them are self-entitled thugs who don't understand how to be elected officials, which caused most of the problems OWS organized about in the first place.

[SalmonGod]

It can also be that the institutions being protested simply aren't capable of dealing with a non-violent challenge.  All of the problems people have with them are forms of violence, even they aren't direct physical violence, and they only exist due to the implied threat of direct physical violence against any non-compliance. 

When non-compliance is organized in a fashion that calls the establishment to make good on its threats, without behaving in a manner that common sensibilities will see as deserving a physically violent response, it creates a Catch 22.  The 1% and their allies are forced to decide between allowing protesters to go about their business or revealing their own true nature.

[mainiac]

But if the establishment just let the occupy people occupy to their hearts content, there wouldn't be anything to hurt the establishment about that.  The occupation is only a danger to them if they act stupid.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

If they weren't stupid, the occupation wouldn't have been necessary in the first place.

[mainiac]

You can't be greedy and smart?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You can, but people who are greedy and smart find inventive and non-malicious ways to make mountains of filthy lucre without angering anyone else, so they can swim laps in their solid gold swimming pool all day long without fear of being assassinated due to stepping on so many people to get where they are.

There are very few people who are both greedy and smart, but plenty of people who are greedy and dumb, who will go in a straight line from point broke to point rich without worrying about who gets trampled along the way. I would say that our government mostly consists of the latter at this point.

[mainiac]

Very few of the rich people in our society were ever at "point broke".  We have one of the lowest levels of class mobility in the advanced world.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I just mean making money, not literally going from broke to uberrich. If it were that easy to do such a thing in reality, the American Dream philosophy might actually still be relevant.

[Dsarker]

I'm still waiting in hope for the establishment to collapse.