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OMG! Shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

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This should make CAR happy

http://eastcountymagazine.org/node/7985
November 26, 2011 (San Diego) – Startled shoppers in two San Diego Walmart stores received a message delivered by 75 Occupy San Diego protesters forming a human microphone. The protesters urged Walmart shoppers to support locally-owned small businesses instead of corporate-owned mass merchandizers.

http://occupywallst.org/article/solidarity-striking-chinese-workers/
This Black Friday, as millions of Americans scramble to find the “best deals” on consumer goods, thousands of Chinese manufacturing workers are striking to demand livable wages, job security, and other basic rights. In Huangjiang alone, 8,000 striking shoe factory workers took the streets Thursday, blocking roads and standing down lines of riot police.

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Well if this doesn’t have capitalism written all over it I don’t know what does? Feral consumerism rears it’s ugly head again. That behavior shares a gene with the mass bad behavior that caused the housing bubble.

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[quote=sd_matt][quote=Arraya][quote=AN][quote=sd_matt]To me this whole protest is like the chicken protesting the fox when the chicken should be protesting the farmer for lifting the fence.[/quote]
That would require some connecting of the dots. Way too complicated and time consuming. Chickens don’t think that deep.[/quote]

Maybe some of the chickens might ask why the farmer is controlled by the fox? What is the motivation for the farmer lifting the fence? Let’s connect some dots.

Here is some video of the farmer abusing the chickens again.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/19/uc-davis-pepper-spray-video_n_1103075.html%5B/quote%5D
LOL…punishment for being stupid! They should be occupying Congress or the City or State Govt.
Correct me if I’m wrong here…hasn’t the Tea Party’s focus been more on government? I’m not saying that I agree or disagree with the Tea Party philosophically.If they are indeed focusing more on the farmer than the fox than that would make them smarter than the Occupy folks.[/quote]

The financial system is where the power resides. It should be apparent to all that capital dictates to governments. In Modern “liberal” governments, the rich are pitted against the poor, gaining their wealth by appropriating the work of others; and the government is in “business” to protect the ruling class or what James Madison called the “leveling impulses” of the propertyless multitude. What you are seeing is the naturally arising leveling impulses that grow out of system built on such contradictions.

The capitalist class runs the government and their power resides in the financial system – which demands and dictates abhorrent and anti-social behavior.

Regulating this abomination of system is a complete waste of time – only complete dissolution will do.

I agree that they should not be solely focusing on the financial system but our whole socioeconomic paradigm and its ontological underpinnings.

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[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]The other real problem, as good Marxists know, is that Marxism, while defining the problem, offers no good, workable solution for fixing it.

While Russia, China, Cuba are all poor examples of Marxism at work (largely because Marxian/Marxist goals weren’t truly pursued, power was), they are emblematic of the “structural” and “systemic” problems one encounters when trying to create large-scale change.

And that is exactly what OWS is trying to do: Create change. Unfortunately, all the good articles in Progressive Magazine to the contrary, they (the movement) don’t have a clue as to how to do this. Many of the demands that OWS has cohered around: $20 Living Wage, $1T in infrastructure investment and $1T in environmental investment, has to come from somewhere.

So where? Does OWS advocate working within the present capitalist system to achieve its goals? Is it advocating a move to a Marxist system? Or, does it have something completely new in mind?

Even an eminence grise such as Paul Krugman doesn’t seem to have an answer to that one, and I’m pretty sure OWS doesn’t, either.[/quote]

Alan, as usual, you bring up points that would take me hours to properly respond to.

I will say this about OWS for now… It is a thought convention at the momement. They are largely clueless and disorganized, as a whole, for the most part. With a growing uneducated element, which makes thing even more difficult. Looking at the economic horizon I don’t see it diminishing too soon, though.

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http://vcnv.org/intellectuals-and-occupy-seven-reasons-to-reject-condescension

But the real problem, good Marxists know, isn’t simply or primarily selfishness and avarice. It’s structural and systemic. It is the de facto class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, rooted in capitalism: the private ownership of the means of production and distribution and their operation on behalf of the creation and accumulation of surplus value and profit, leading by its very nature to the ever-greater concentration of wealth, the rise of gigantic corporations, and the inter-penetration of corporate, financial, and state power. The solution is what Dr. Martin Luther King called “the real issue to be faced…the radical reconstruction of society itself.”[2] It isn’t simply less greed and materialism. It’s popular revolution leading to democratic control over the economy and a new politico-economic order that privileges the common good over private profit.

Exposed! Girls of occupy gone wild!

Oh great! The hippies are back.

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[quote=AN][quote=sd_matt]To me this whole protest is like the chicken protesting the fox when the chicken should be protesting the farmer for lifting the fence.[/quote]
That would require some connecting of the dots. Way too complicated and time consuming. Chickens don’t think that deep.[/quote]

Maybe some of the chickens might ask why the farmer is controlled by the fox? What is the motivation for the farmer lifting the fence? Let’s connect some dots.

Here is some video of the farmer abusing the chickens again.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/19/uc-davis-pepper-spray-video_n_1103075.html

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[quote=KSMountain]Wow did this thread come back to life!

I’d like to take a little time to consider eaves’ post. Certainly the description of mountain top removal was apalling.

But I couldn’t let the quote below go unchallenged:

[quote=Arraya]
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/this_is_what_revolution_looks_like_20111115/

Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation workers Tuesday morning into garbage trucks in New York City. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future

.[/quote]

I wonder, rather than the elites no longer innovating or contributing, is that quote more a reflection of the author’s own sense of inadequacy and despondency?

Innovation has by no means stopped. To give just a few recent examples without even trying:

The Boeing 787 (finally)
The iPhone (passé now but what an amazing device)
Skype

While that author is bemoaning soggy sleeping bags and the unfairness of it all, others are following their dreams and changing the world.[/quote]

Sure, there is always innovation going on. You don’t need “elites”, competition, corporations or capitalism for that. Humans have an innate drive towards mastery.

Actually studies show that large monetary incentives actually stifle innovation.

Innovation rarely comes from CEOs these days or the finiancial parasites making billions. Truth of the matter is, only a tiny tiny fraction people come up with a truely socially beneficial technology and they are STILL standing on other peoples knowledge and work. All innovation rests on the work of others. How many thinker’s work over the millenia have gone into the iphone and the new boeing. Chemical, electrical, aeronautical, ect..

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Unions were an emergent social response to bitterly resisted 19th century capitalism. Unions and the turn of the century labor movement actually put a humane face on capitalism known as the welfare state.

The only culprit to today’s issues is the system itself. It will keep on concentrating wealth and disenfranchising people until social forces overturn it. It’s systemic

http://davidharvey.org/2011/10/rebels-on-the-street-the-party-of-wall-street-meets-its-nemesis/

The Party of Wall Street has one universal principle of rule: that there shall be no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely. And that power is to be exercised with one objective. Those possessed of money power shall not only be privileged to accumulate wealth endlessly at will, but they shall have the right to inherit the earth, taking either direct or indirect dominion not only of the land and all the resources and productive capacities that reside therein, but also assume absolute command, directly or indirectly, over the labor and creative potentialities of all those others it needs. The rest of humanity shall be deemed disposable.

These principles and practices do not arise out of individual greed, short-sightedness or mere malfeasance (although all of these are plentifully to be found). These principles have been carved into the body politic of our world through the collective will of a capitalist class animated by the coercive laws of competition. If my lobbying group spends less than yours then I will get less in the way of favors. If this jurisdiction spends on people’s needs it shall be deemed uncompetitive.

Many decent people are locked into the embrace of a system that is rotten to the core. If they are to earn even a reasonable living they have no other job option except to give the devil his due: they are only “following orders,” as Eichmann famously claimed, “doing what the system demands” as others now put it, in acceding to the barbarous and immoral principles and practices of the Party of Wall Street. The coercive laws of competition force us all, to some degree of other, to obey the rules of this ruthless and uncaring system. The problem is systemic not individual.

http://www.iwallerstein.com/fantastic-success-occupy-wall-street/

Even if the Occupy Wall Street movement were to begin to peter out because of exhaustion or repression, it has already succeeded and will leave a lasting legacy, just as the uprisings of 1968 did. The United States will have changed, and in a positive direction. As the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” A new and better world-system, a new and better United States, is a task that requires repeated effort by repeated generations. But another world is indeed possible (albeit not inevitable). And we can make a difference. Occupy Wall Street is making a difference, a big difference.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/this_is_what_revolution_looks_like_20111115/

Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation workers Tuesday morning into garbage trucks in New York City. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future

.

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The vast majority of drug money winds up in US banks and some gets pumped into the stock market. It is a half trillion dollar industry. I assume it’s a pretty vital liquidity stream.

Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/dec/13/drug-money-banks-saved-un-cfief-claims

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Short-term profit maximization encourages and rewards sociopathic human behavior. The corporate structure is not humanities best work for fostering moral, rational and responsible behavior. It won’t last.

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Interestingly major health gains for the human race were made from simple things like sanitation measures and understanding of nutrition. “Mircle” drugs and the medicalization in recent decades of so many of life’s vicissitudes—birth and death, for example—frequently cause more harm than good and rendered many people in effect lifelong patients. Modern medicine has not positively impacted modern life in aggregate.

The parabolic trajectory of unhealthy people over the past few decades props up the medical behemoth. With most of the unhealthyness caused by modern society..

Monetary success has less and less a corolation with really adding something beneficial to society as time goes on. We seem to profit off of problems generated by the same system. You might say, patterns of unhealthy behavior are needed for continuance.

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I’d like to see RP win just to see what the power structure does. I mean, removing the Fed is a swipe at some powerful people. The Fed is not some abstraction – it represents the ruling class. It also represents an arrangement with the other global powers. Of course, a major change like RP is suggesting requires coordination with those other global powers. It makes you wonder if he is talking to anybody behind the scenes.

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Naa, that’s alright. The current social train wreck is not fixable within the current system. We need broad based cultural and ultimately institutional changes. This is not going to happen by voting.

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