Some Thoughts on "Occupy" Wal nuts

from the commments
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/11/16/f-rfa-macdonald-occupy-wall-street.html

"The people won't make a revolution until revolution costs less than status quo".

The tent cities have mostly come down. The problems that encouraged their advent have not gone away.

From Neil MacDonald, CBC
Wall Street, in the years leading up to the crash in 2008, created what amounted to a giant, multi-leveled con, packaging and selling garbage, while secretly placing bets against the very products they were peddling.

When it all collapsed, the 'Masters of the Universe' turned to the politicians they'd helped install in Washington, to be rescued with a few trillion in taxpayer dollars.

The business model here was nakedly obvious: privatize profits, socialize loss."



Don't make saints out of the Silicon Valley types. Much programming and data centre work is farmed out to developing countries so they can pay much smaller wages taking jobs from domestic markets.


OWS has focused media attention on the 1% corporate-government kleptocracy in a way that Neil and his complacent colleagues somehow failed to do -- despite their messaging virtuosity and fine hygiene -- over the decades that this system of organized looting has taken shape.


1. Revamp tax law to close loopholes. Not until you plug the holes can you have time to fix the sinking ship.

2. Remove Corporations as people in law. Make executives directly accountable for their actions and decisions.

3. Better distribution of pay in business, perhaps like a military pay scale.

4. End Too Big to fail. If a business can't maintain itself it doesn't deserve tax-payer bailouts. Add regulation to stop that from ever happening again.

5. Limit the number of lobbyists per business sector. It's ridiculous right now.

6. Government prints their own currency again. Every dollar borrowed from the central bank is repaid with interest. You can not get rid of debt by adding more debt


Take heed, we have only seen the beginning of a revolt, that will not go away Neil, mark my words.
Now that they have a clear message(s), bigger and general strikes are bound to be the next level in this bar of social revolt. Look Out!!

MSM press performance is something to be either 1) explained or 2) ashamed of.



To say the Occupy Movement has thrown it all away or that it's over and done with when the unfairness of the current social structure is becoming more obvious and affecting more people as time goes on seems quite premature at this point. The media should not be too quick to tie a neat bow on this and move on to the next sound bite. It's not over yet.

Citing Apple as somehow 'good' or at least not as bad as Wall Street shows a misunderstanding of the extent of the rot. Apple products are made by virtual slave labour at Foxconn (13 suicides) in China. Apple is an advocate of software patents which act to stifle innovation.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the
support of Paul.'
-- George Bernard Shaw


The movement is more than tents in a park. It's profoundly anti-death-of-the-planet, profoundly opposed to life as a series of opportunities to consume. It is the antithesis of the trivialization of the human being. It is revolutionary, not reformist.
Note, as well, it is occurring before the massive cuts in social spending coming down the line.
It is a majority opinion that bourgeois media will not be successful in ridiculing. Time is on its side.
The problems won't go away with the tents


let me get this straight. A group of people who do not have the capacity or resources to function well in a complex capitalist society cannot articulate precisely what needs to be changed in order to give them the capacity and resources. Well, I guess that means everything's okay then.


Me?

I agree with what Neil has said.

Those encampments are being pulled down, but the people are still riled.

By removing them, the government may be creating a subterranean monster, out of sight and much more deadly.

It isn't over until its over.