Your phone company is spying on you. This shouldn’t be news to anyone. Most of the Republicans candidates want todstrengthen Patriot Act rules that allow this, and then claim to be supporting your freedom by doing so.
If you are wondering what the crowd is a gathering around when the government thugs use a flashbang, it’s this man.
If you are wondering what kind of low-life scum sucking socialistic parasite he is to be attending such a protest, first up, fuck you, second, here you go.
Oakland’s independent police review body will examine the clashes between riot officers and protesters that left an Iraq war veteran in a critical condition as Occupy protestors prepare to rally at the same spot for a third night of protests.
Police battled protesters following an Occupy Oakland march to demonstrate against the closing of two occupations in the city in the early hours of Tuesday morning. More than 100 people have been arrested in Oakland since police cleared a camp in Frank Ogawa plaza.
Scott Olsen, 24, suffered a fractured skull and brain swelling after he was allegedly hit in the head by a police projectile during the clashes on Tuesday. A spokesperson for Highland hospital in east Oakland confirmed he was critically ill after being admitted on Tuesday night.
One thing I generally know is that when people have nothing left, or very little to risk other than their own skin in the game, they tend to push toward extreme solutions. There is a race on now, and that race is whether or not our society can change fast enough to keep itself relevant to the vast majority of the people in our society. It’s dang near an article of faith around here.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
To be clear, I don’t think OWS is, as of yet, a full-on revolutionary movement. But there is a stark difference in what is going on here and what happened with the Tea Party.
It’s evident now that “Tea Party” is really just code for “Hardcore Republican”. I call them “Fox News Republicans” and their ultimate act of defiance culminated in the 2010 elections. This hugely revolutionary act was to elect a bunch of…wait for it…hardcore Republicans to the House, and give control of that chamber back to the folks who had it under Bush. (they failed in the Senate, because Senate districts, known as “states”, are harder to gerrymander and get nutjobs elected on straight party votes than house districts).
So any comparison between the two “movements” is shallow at best, and more likely the result of lazy “left-right” thinking than any real analysis.
There’s a book that one needs to read to understand why I’m being so melodramatic (I’m not) about the situation, and throwing out big words and bloody pictures. It’s here. A very quick read, in it you will find a section about this.. (from the ‘pedia).
To be successful, these mass movements need the adherents to be willing to sacrifice themselves and others for the future goals. To do so, mass movements often glorify the past and devalue the present. Mass movements appeal to frustrated people who are dissatisfied with their current state, but are capable of a strong belief in the future. As well, mass movements appeal to people who want to escape a flawed self by creating an imaginary self and joining a collective whole. Some categories of people who may be attracted to mass movements include poor people, misfits, former soldiers, and people who feel thwarted in their endeavors.
I’m not sure if you folks are aware, but our President (the one who won a Nobel Peace Prize) is ending wars left and right. He’s going to end the one in Afghanistan before the 2012 election, bank on it. That’s a whole lot less soldiers being needed, a whole bunch of which are going to get shafted by a government now focused on cutting spending (on them).
That’s, as they use to say in that commercial, two great tastes that taste great together, a purpose…and an army.
OWS isn’t going away. A good portion of the 99% are paying attention, and now there’s blood on the ground. Our blood, on our ground.
And then there’s the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”
But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you’d think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a “collectivist agenda,” that she believes that “individualism is a chimera.” And Rush Limbaugh called her “a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it.”
What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.
I got to see some of this with conversations regarding the recent protests over the weekend. There are some *very strong* attacks going against Warren, and really she did nothing more than explain how a modern society functions.
Heck, I’ve seen Adam Smith and Reagan quotes dismissed as “socialist propaganda”. It would seem, as one who rejected it at the outset, that the anti-intellectual bent of modern conservatism is finally starting to eat itself, as these folks have no idea how to engage this debate on a rational level, and instead retreat to 60”s-era stereotypes and hope that 50 years of cultural propaganda against a word will suffice as a coherent political argument (i.e. We have to do everything the rich say because otherwise *socialism*).
This is not to say that the Occupiers can have no impact on the Democrats. Nothing good happens in Washington –regardless of how good our president or representatives may be –unless good people join together outside Washington to make it happen. Pressure from the left is critically important.
But the modern Democratic Party is not likely to embrace left-wing populism the way the GOP has embraced –or, more accurately, been forced to embrace –right-wing populism. Just follow the money, and remember history.
This general shift of populism is a curious thing to watch…as it has been for a good long while.
“Well, I’m down here because Wall Street’s been bailed out, and the American people have been sold out,” said one protester. “I’m a former United States Marine…. I love the country, I love the people, but the government is criminal.” “I am currently a law student, I’m at law school, and it is taking a lot to adjust to make that possible in terms of education, because of the debt,” said another protester. “The interesting thing about our school is that we have a social mission. And a lot of us would like to serve that social mission upon entering law school, but we can’t because we need to find a job that’s going to satisfy our debt, so we won’t be in it for 25 years.” “Message is, you know, I was a business owner and lost my business because of the economy. My dad’s house is in foreclosure because of the economy and being taken away from him right now, and there’s just too much money in too little pockets,” said a third.
…with, of course, a lot of different demands. This is fun to watch grow.
Robot Pirate Ninja 