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  • WORTH A READ!

    Published on Wednesday, September 28, 2011 by Salon.com
    What's Behind the Scorn for the Wall Street Protests?
    by Glenn Greenwald

    It's unsurprising that establishment media outlets have been condescending, dismissive and scornful of the ongoing protests on Wall Street. Any entity that declares itself an adversary of prevailing institutional power is going to be viewed with hostility by establishment-serving institutions and their loyalists. That's just the nature of protests that take place outside approved channels, an inevitable by-product of disruptive dissent: those who are most vested in safeguarding and legitimizing establishment prerogatives (which, by definition, includes establishment media outlets) are going to be hostile to those challenges. As the virtually universal disdain in these same circles for WikiLeaks (and, before that, for the Iraq War protests) demonstrated: the more effectively adversarial it is, the more establishment hostility it's going to provoke. [(Occupywallst.org)] (Occupywallst.org)


    Nor is it surprising that much of the most vocal criticisms of the Wall Street protests has come from some self-identified progressives, who one might think would be instinctively sympathetic to the substantive message of the protesters. In an excellent analysis entitled "Why Establishment Media & the Power Elite Loathe Occupy Wall Street," Kevin Gosztola chronicles how much of the most scornful criticisms have come from Democratic partisans who -- like the politicians to whom they devote their fealty -- feign populist opposition to Wall Street for political gain.

    Some of this anti-protest posturing is just the all-too-familiar New-Republic-ish eagerness to prove one's own Seriousness by castigating anyone to the left of, say, Dianne Feinstein or John Kerry; for such individuals, multi-term, pro-Iraq-War Democratic Senator-plutocrats define the outermost left-wing limit of respectability. Also at play is the jingoistic notion that street protests are valid in Those Bad Contries but not in free, democratic America.

    A siginificant aspect of this progressive disdain is grounded in the belief that the only valid form of political activism is support for Democratic Party candidates, and a corresponding desire to undermine anything that distracts from that goal. Indeed, the loyalists of both parties have an interest in marginalizing anything that might serve as a vehicle for activism outside of fealty to one of the two parties (Fox News' firing of Glenn Beck was almost certainly motivated by his frequent deviation from the GOP party-line orthodoxy which Fox exists to foster).

    The very idea that the one can effectively battle Wall Street's corruption and control by working for the Democratic Party is absurd on its face: Wall Street's favorite candidate in 2008 was Barack Obama, whose administration -- led by a Wall Street White House Chief of Staff and Wall-Street-subservient Treasury Secretary and filled to the brim with Goldman Sachs officials -- is now working hard to protect bankers from meaningful accountability (and though he's behind Wall Street's own Mitt Romney in the Wall Street cash sweepstakes this year, Obama is still doing well); one of Wall Street's most faithful servants is Chuck Schumer, the money man of the Democratic Party; and the second-ranking Senate Democrat acknowledged -- when Democrats controlled the Congress -- that the owners of Congress are bankers. There are individuals who impressively rail against the crony capitalism and corporatism that sustains Wall Street's power, but they're no match for the party apparatus that remains fully owned and controlled by it.

    But much of this progressive criticism consists of relatively (ostensibly) well-intentioned tactical and organizational critiques of the protests: there wasn't a clear unified message; it lacked a coherent media strategy; the neo-hippie participants were too off-putting to Middle America; the resulting police brutality overwhelmed the message, etc. etc. That's the high-minded form which most progressive scorn for the protests took: it's just not professionally organized or effective.

    Some of these critiques are ludicrous. Does anyone really not know what the basic message is of this protest: that Wall Street is oozing corruption and criminality and its unrestrained political power -- in the form of crony capitalism and ownership of political institutions -- is destroying financial security for everyone else? Beyond that, criticizing protesters for the prominence of police brutality stories is pure victim-blaming (and, independently, having police brutality highlighted is its own benefit).

    Most importantly, very few protest movements enjoy perfect clarity about tactics or command widespread support when they begin; they're designed to spark conversation, raise awareness, attract others to the cause, and build those structural planks as they grow and develop. Dismissing these incipient protests because they lack fully developed, sophisticated professionalization is akin to pronouncing a three-year-old child worthless because he can't read Schopenhauer: those who are actually interested in helping it develop will work toward improving those deficiencies, not harp on them in order to belittle its worth.

    That said, some of these organizational/tactical critiques are valid enough as far as they go; the protests could probably be more effective with some more imaginative, concerted and savvy organizational strategies. The problem is these criticisms don't go very far -- at all.

    * * * * *

    There's a vast and growing apparatus of intimidation designed to deter and control citizen protests. The most that's allowed is to assemble with the permission of state authorities and remain roped off in sequestered, out-of-the-way areas: the Orwellian-named free speech zones. Anything that is even remotely disruptive or threatening is going to be met with aggressive force: pepper spray, mass arrests by highly militarized urban police forces, and aggressive prosecutions. Recall the wild excesses of force in connection with the 2008 RNC Convention in Minneapolis (I reported on those firsthand); the overzealous prosecutions of civil disobedience activists like Aaron Swartz, environmentalist Tim DeChristopher, and Dan Choi; the war being waged on whistleblowers for the crime of exposing high-level wrongdoing; or the treatment of these Wall Street protesters.

    Financial elites and their political servants are well aware that exploding wealth inequality, pervasive economic anxiety, and increasing hostility toward institutions of authority (and corresponding realization that voting fixes very little of this) are likely to bring London-style unrest -- and worse -- to American soil; it was just two weeks ago that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned that the unemployment crisis could trigger "riots." Even the complacent American citizenry -- well-trained in learned impotence and acquiescence to (even reverence for) those most responsible for their plight -- is going to reach a tipping point of unrest. There are numerous weapons of surveillance and coercion that have been developed over the last decade in anticipation of that unrest: most of it justified in the name of Terrorism, but all of it featuring decidedly dual-use domestic capability (illustrating what I mean is this chart showing how extensively the Patriot Act has been used in non-Terrorist cases, and how rarely it has been used for Terrorism).

    In sum, there is a sprawling apparatus of federal and local militarized police forces and private corporate security designed to send this message: if you participate in protests or other forms of dissent outside of harmless approved channels, you're going to be harmed in numerous ways. As Yves Smith put it this week:

    I’m beginning to wonder whether the right to assemble is effectively dead in the US. No one who is a wage slave (which is the overwhelming majority of the population) can afford to have an arrest record, even a misdemeanor, in this age of short job tenures and rising use of background checks.

    This is all designed to deter any meaningful challenges to the government and corporate institutions which are suffocating them, to bully those who consider such challenges into accepting its futility. And it works. In an excellent essay on the Wall Street protests, Dennis Perrin writes:



    The dissident children were easily, roughly swept aside. Their hearts are in a good place. Their bodies a minor nuisance. They'll stream back to prove their resolve. And they'll get pepper sprayed and beaten down again. And again.

    I admire these kids. They're off their asses. Agitating. Arguing. Providing a living example. There's passion and feeling in their dissent. They're willing to be punished. It's easy to mock them, but how many of you would take their place? . . . .

    Yet I have doubts. The class war from above demoralizes as much as it incites. Countless people have surrendered. Faded from view. To demonstrate or occupy corporate turf doesn't seem like a wise option. You'll get beaten and arrested. For what? Making mortgage payments is tough enough.

    Given the costs and risks one incurs from participating in protests like this -- to say nothing of the widespread mockery one receives -- it's natural that most of the participants will be young and not yet desperate to cling to institutional stability. It's also natural that this cohort won't be well-versed (or even interested) in the high arts of media messaging and leadership structures. Democratic Party precinct captains, MBA students in management theory and corporate communications, and campaign media strategists aren't the ones who will fuel protests like this; it takes a mindset of passionate dissent and a willingness to remove oneself from the safe confines of institutional respectability.

    So, yes, the people willing to engage in protests like these at the start may lack (or reject the need for) media strategies, organizational hierarchies, and messaging theories. But they're among the very few people trying to channel widespread anger into activism rather than resignation, and thus deserve support and encouragement -- and help -- from anyone claiming to be sympathetic to their underlying message. As Perrin put it:



    This part of Michigan [where I live] was once militant. From organized labor to student agitation. Now there's nothing. Shop after shop goes under. Strip malls abandoned. Legalized loan shark parlors spread. Dollar stores hang on. Parking lots riots of weeds. Roads in serious disrepair. Those with jobs feel lucky to be employed. Everyone else is on their own. A general resignation prevails. Life limps by.

    Personally, I think there's substantial value even in those protests that lack "exit goals" and "messaging strategies" and the rest of the platitudes from Power Point presentations by mid-level functionaries at corporate conferences. Some injustices simply need anger and dissent expressed for its own sake, to make clear that there are citizens who are aware of it and do not accept it.

    In Vancouver yesterday, Dick Cheney was met by angry protests chanting "war criminal" at him while he tried to hawk his book, which prompted arrests and an ugly-for-Canada police battle that then became part of the story of his visit. Is that likely to result in Cheney's arrest or sway huge numbers of people to change how they think? No. But it's vastly preferable to allowing him to traipse around the world as though he's a respectable figure unaccompanied by anger over his crimes -- anger necessarily expressed outside of the institutions that have failed to check or punish (but rather have shielded and legitimized) those crimes. And the same is true of Wall Street's rampant criminality.

    But for those who believe that protests are only worthwhile if they translate into quantifiable impact: the lack of organizational sophistication or messaging efficacy on the part of the Wall Street protest is a reason to support it and get involved in it, not turn one's nose up at it and join in the media demonization. That's what one actually sympathetic to its messaging (rather than pretending to be in order more effectively to discredit it) would do. Anyone who looks at mostly young citizens marching in the street protesting the corruption of Wall Street and the harm it spawns, and decides that what is warranted is mockery and scorn rather than support, is either not seeing things clearly or is motivated by objectives other than the ones being presented.

    Read more at Salon.com
    © 2011 Salon.com
    Glenn Greenwald

    Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy. His next book is titled "With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful."

  • #2
    Re: WORTH A READ!

    Methinks I hear a lone voice calling as they sink beneath the waves for the third time........................ "somebody told me it was ""The Land of the brave and the Home of the Free""..................... What went wrong???????????????

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: WORTH A READ!

      Originally posted by 1938 Observer View Post
      Methinks I hear a lone voice calling as they sink beneath the waves for the third time........................ "somebody told me it was ""The Land of the brave and the Home of the Free""..................... What went wrong???????????????
      It happened when we settled for a two party democracy. The extremes got to take turns implementing national policy. The middle ground got disenfranchised. The country transitioned from an agriculture-based economy to an industrial economy, to a service-based economy, and to a debt based economy in the short span of 100 years. It is now flirting with feudalism but haven't returned to an agricultural economy.

      We used to send people who had benefitted from our opportunities, to Washington, to serve for a brief periods of time, now 'politician' has become a career field and those in it have become self-serving. We passed laws saying they can only hold office for a span of time and they sued us indicating we were trying to violate their constitutional right to be self serving.

      We traditionally were isolationist and over the last 100 years a series of administrations have had us looking at events in other parts of the world, sometimes responding to appeals to get involved, other times butting in without being asked. Our federal government has put our finances in disarray without any real will to fix it. Meanwhile we are no longer able to tend what needs fixing inside our own borders.

      The late Paul Harvey, used to say "you cannot have self-rule without self-discipline." I guess no one listened.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: WORTH A READ!

        Similar situations are appearing "Downunder", two party [democracy???] following USA into needless conflicts [Vietnam onwards] , none won....enormous casualty lists, and thousands still suffering from this mindless subservience to "The Leader of the Free World" .........of course George Dubya did present a medal to his "Man of Steel" [ex Prime Minister John Howard"] his diminutive "Deputy Sheriff"........methinks the "Lone Ranger" & "Tonto" could have done a better job....or "Batman & Robin"

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: WORTH A READ!

          Originally posted by 1938 Observer View Post
          Similar situations are appearing "Downunder", two party [democracy???] following USA into needless conflicts [Vietnam onwards] , none won....enormous casualty lists, and thousands still suffering ... methinks the "Lone Ranger" & "Tonto" could have done a better job....or "Batman & Robin"
          Your points were right on and well taken. I do know a number of people who came home from Vietnam because of the presence of allied military. I have heard from an number of era Veterans who believed that much needless suffering occurred because of our involvement in Vietnam and our government's lack of any workable strategic objectives. Those veterans told me that they attributed the circumstances that allowed them to survive their deployments to the presence of either Australian or, in some instances, Korean troops. They used to say that the Australians and Koreans were among the toughest people they came into contact with.

          As far as your suggestions as to who could run things better (e.g., the Lone Ranger & Tonto), all I can say with certainty is that Mutt & Jeff and Laurel & Hardy haven't done so well.

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: WORTH A READ!

            Heh, Folks, I started this thread and have been absent of the discussion because we are still being clobbered with rain, rain, rain. The other morning we had a solid two hours plus of monsoon type rains and a nearby meteorological annex estimated we had four inches in one thirty-five minute stretch. I'm tired of having wet feet.
            Anyhoo, it would seem correct the foreign policy of the United States was based on an isolationist trading only basis prior to World War 11. But it was realized there is money in 'them thar wars' and the appetite of greed was fueled. In his farewell speech Eisenhower warned of the Military Industrial Complex. So very prescient! And, it seems the USA has been in a continuous war state since - always finding some new enemy to foment public support for aggressiveness against less dominant countries. I wonder who it will be after the Muslims. I read recently about a plan to build a fence along the Canadian border. <grin> A friend laughed as ludicrous my prophesy that 'this man is going to war' six months prior to 9/11. I explained that he had cut back on Pell Grants. He needed fodder. Where does a poor kid go when he/she cannot afford college. They join the military. It is a form of economic discrimination as there would be no war if the children of the elite were drafted. But 'greed is good', and war is so good for filling the purses, and so it is all volunteer military. Oh so sneeky! And the Kleptomaniacs dictating policy to their lackeys in Washington found another great source of profit - shipping manufacturing abroad to sources of cheap labor. And, sure enough the self-serving hacks gave them the necessary legislation with NAFTA, etc. etc,. etc. Enough never seems to be enough. There was the time when the salary of a CEO was twenty times the average of his staff. Now it can be four hundred times. They have systematically maneuvered the political system to drain the wealth from the masses
            So they assemble to protest the avarice and criminality of Wall Street, mostly college kids and graduates, probably up to their eyeballs in loans with little optimism of finding employment, confronting a bleak future and a standard of living far below the expectations of their parents who had worked hard to provide one better than theirs for their offspring.
            And, I wonder where the Kleptomaniacs will seek refuge when the evil they have wrought on this earth turn on them. There is surely no wall they can build high enough to check the tsunami of social unrest. Accountability is on the horizon with the young. They have not been indoctrinated with the compliance of older generations and still retain the youthful outrage against unfairness. And, it is interesting how in the midst of the words depicting protest we hear, almost inaudibly, but rising in regularity, the use of the word revolution. Perhaps it might be the only broom capable of sweeping out the corruption in Washington.

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: WORTH A READ!

              I found an uplinked photograph at another website posted by a young veteran of Afghanistand and Iraq with the veteran's slant on the Wall Street protests

              Click image for larger version

Name:	297306_10150335900166506_832961505_8236137_1771435448_n.jpg
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ID:	23511

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              • #8
                Re: WORTH A READ!

                Young lives gone and one ruined. I think back to that Vietnam era song - 'What's war good for - absolutely nothing'. Well, we may wish to avert our eyes from his notice but we should not because what was done to him was in our name - 'We the People'. Before the tsunami hit Indonesia, approval of the US was in the single digits. When the US sent in ships and helicopters with aid approval shot up to the 60's. Washington should give a thought to that, changing course, and stop bombing countries to smithereens. Might be time for a Department of Peace and Goodwill to counteract DOD. We have not come close to that great thought 'it's coming yet for a' that, that man to man the world oe'r shall brithers be for a' that'.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: WORTH A READ!

                  Occupy everywhere: the ghost of protests past
                  6 October 2011

                  Source........... The DRUM Opinion............ from ABC Australia. by Jeff Sparrow.

                  ************************************


                  In the midst of September's 10-year commemoration of 9/11 in September, another anniversary passed largely unnoticed.

                  That date also marked 11 years since the huge protest against the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, the most dramatic manifestation of the anti-corporate globalisation movement in Australia.

                  Well, after a long absence, the anti-corporate movement - or, at least, something very much like it - has returned.

                  As Kellie Tranter noted here yesterday, the wave of protest spurred by the Occupy Wall Street action is spreading all across the globe.

                  If you were there at S11, much of what's been called Occupy Together seems familiar: the mix of carnival and protest; the unlikely alliances between mohawked teens and angry grandmothers; the innovative and colourful actions, from zombie marches to tent cities.

                  But what we're seeing now represents more than a revival of the past, if only because the world's now a very different place.

                  The originally anti-corporate movement was derailed, at least in part, by 9/11. The outbreak of the War on Terror abruptly changed the political landscape, with protests dying away as a turbocharged, militarised jingoism came to the fore.

                  But that was 10 years ago - and for the kids organising in New York, war's no longer a novelty. On the contrary, it's the only reality they know: the US has been in Iraq and Afghanistan for the entirety of a 20-year-old's adult life.

                  Not surprisingly, when even a third of military veterans no longer believe the wars were worth fighting, waving the bloody shirt of national security no longer has the same chilling effect on dissent.

                  Even more importantly, these new protests take place in a fundamentally different economic climate.

                  Those who marched in Seattle in 1999 were concerned about global poverty. But today that concern has become far more immediate, with the participants in Occupy Wall Street recognising that they're personally standing right on the edge of the abyss.

                  The most dramatic expression of that comes from the tumblr site We Are The 99 Per Cent, which consists entirely of ordinary Americans holding handwritten signs explaining their circumstances. Here's one testament:

                  Lost my job in 2006. Sold my home and moved in with my 87-year-old mother.
                  Worked temporary jobs on and off for over 5 years with little or no benefits.
                  Cancer survivor. Need medical care. Can't afford health insurance.
                  TOO YOUNG TO RETIRE.
                  Watching my retirement funds and savings shrink.
                  Moved to Mexico to get medical care. Rent a room and live on $250 a month. No car. No phone.
                  Mom is in the hospital and I wonder if I can afford to come home.

                  Here's another:

                  I am 45 years old.
                  I was laid off twice in 18 months.
                  The second time 6 months after I got married.
                  I am "unemployable" because of layoffs.
                  I have not worked since November 2008.
                  We have NO healthcare.
                  My husband works so that I can go to college to get a degree.
                  We are also dependent on family to make ends meet.

                  The media has responded to Occupy Wall Street by sending down journalists to interview protesters and insist, with varying degrees of sniffiness, that they explain themselves. Yes, yes, they say, we know you are angry – but what are your demands? Exactly what do you want to happen?

                  But that rather misses the point. At this stage, Occupy Together, quite justifiably, represents a refusal rather than an affirmation.

                  That is, merely by existing, the movement challenges the validity of the current political and economic consensus. The stories on We Are The 99 Per Cent implicitly turn the reporters' questions back on the mainstream. Here is what's happening to us, they say – so what solutions do you offer? What exactly is your program?

                  And, of course, those questions contain their own answers, for everyone knows that the politicians have got nothing.

                  For even before the looming recession starts to bite, the situation's already intolerable for much of the country.

                  Latest figures show 46 million Americans living in poverty. Those numbers have grown by over 2.5 million in the last year, the greatest increase since statistics on poverty were first recorded in 1959.

                  Household incomes are declining across the country, and have been for the last three years; more than 15 per cent of Americans live in poverty.

                  Between 2002 and 2007, 65 per cent of income growth in the US went to the top 1 per cent of the population. Income inequality is higher than at any other time since the Great Depression, with the US now less equal than the Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, and Pakistan.

                  While 45 million Americans survive on food stamps and 50 million lack health care, in 2009 the top 25 hedge-fund managers earned, on average, more than $1 billion each.

                  So what do politicians propose?

                  Both Republicans and Democrats prescribe more of the same, an intensification of the pro-market consensus we all know so well. That is, after spending unimaginable wads of money on war (Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost a trillion dollars; the long-term costs will be perhaps triple that) and equally dizzying amounts bailing out the nations largest corporations, the major US parties are united by the necessity of cutting welfare and social services to the bone.

                  In other words, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

                  That's why, even if Occupy Wall Street simply represents a loud 'No!', it's still entirely justified.

                  For politicians, and even some journalists, a protest movement of this sort might seem unfocussed or naive or contradictory.

                  But that's because so many of them don't see anything fundamentally wrong with the way the world works at the moment.

                  "It is difficult," Upton Sinclair famously pointed out, "to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

                  Occupy Wall Street gives voice to a different perspective.

                  As We Are The 99 Per Cent explains:

                  We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 per cent is getting everything.

                  Now, you can't expect a movement that's only existed for a few weeks to offer solutions to a crisis that's been years in the making.

                  But if the movement grows, if it spreads around the world, it will create a space in which alternatives can be discussed, in which strategies can be debated and tested and refined.

                  Who knows exactly what will happen – it's early days yet.

                  But as Tranter noted, Occupy Wall Street at least represents the seeds of hope.

                  The slogan of the anti-corporate movement was 'Another World is Possible'. And as the world teeters into another economic crisis, it's a slogan that's only become more relevant.


                  Jeff Sparrow is the editor of Overland literary journal and the author of Killing: Misadventures In Violence. On Twitter, he is @Jeff_Sparrow.




                  http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3317902.html

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: WORTH A READ!

                    Great post, Gordon. But none of this need not have happened if there had been a hundred like Wilkie with the courage to refute and ask questions ten years ago. BTW where did you post about him. I skimmed over the article and wanted to return and read it properly.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: WORTH A READ!

                      Just catching up with these posts. You may have noticed that I am currently on a US base watching all these young people from many countries passing in and out of Afghanistan.
                      The European economies are also in one hell of a mess having followed the "greed" economic model. UK forces and capability are being cut to the bones so perhaps that will help keep them out of more "trouble spots". A war is great for the economy in times of hardship. Manufacturing gears up to support the effort - if you have any manufacturing that is.
                      Ireland has recently felt the fall out from MultiNational companies having taken advantage of tax breaks moving on to greener pastures.
                      The US seems from my "outside" view to be retreating back inside its borders - even the ludicrous suggestion of building a fence across the 49th Parallel. Wonder how they will manage it through the Great Lakes.
                      Unrest is been happening in the UK - the disaffected and feral youth - spurred on by the Educated Left Wing. We are supposed to be heading toward to a winter of discontent with the remaining Unions and their extremely well paid full time leaders trying to justify their existence.
                      Just take a look at the fiasco that is the attempt by Legal process to remove a bunch of Irish travelling people (NO they are not gypsies, who do not seem to do any travelling either). Spurred on by young well-educated "rebels" to make all sorts of ridiculous claims (e.g. Ethnic cleansing).
                      I know this is beginning to veer off topic (an old standard for ES) and I do not have any immediate answers to the problems - I would not be here if I did.
                      GREED has been the cause of all the economic woes throughout history and it seems to me that we are once again we are in one of these "natural cycles" (just like "Warming") and some leaders will appear to drag us back to some form of prosperity.
                      I have to hope that happens - but this one is going to a really tough one - let's see what happens with the Greeks as stage 1.
                      Good old Laissez-Faire economics at work!!!!
                      Sandy

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: WORTH A READ!

                        In many respects we're all to blame as our pension companies are some of the largest investors and they all demand high dividends which in turn spurs these huge corporates to go after the money while cutting costs to the bone and hence the BP Oil disaster in the Gulf.

                        Email is not reliable these days but will Microsoft, Google or any of these companies do anything about it? They make it as difficult as possible to contact them to ask questions. They make billions so why can't they hire more customer service staff to make it easy to contact them and get answers to our problems. Why can't they devote resources to make email more reliable?

                        Right there you have millions of job possibilities.

                        Alastair

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: WORTH A READ!

                          A statement from the Occupy Wall Street participants - the 99 percent tired of being exploited by the 1 percent.

                          As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

                          As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

                          They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

                          They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

                          They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

                          They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

                          They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

                          They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

                          They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

                          They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

                          They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

                          They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

                          They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

                          They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

                          They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

                          They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

                          They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

                          They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

                          They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

                          They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

                          They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

                          They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

                          They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

                          They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

                          They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *

                          To the people of the world,

                          We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

                          Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

                          To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

                          Join us and make your voices heard!

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: WORTH A READ!

                            Originally posted by Lizzie View Post
                            Great post, Gordon. But none of this need not have happened if there had been a hundred like Wilkie with the courage to refute and ask questions ten years ago. BTW where did you post about him. I skimmed over the article and wanted to return and read it properly.

                            Hi Lizzie,

                            Here is the link back to the topic on Andrew Wilkie for you....



                            http://www.electricscotland.org/show...=andrew+wilkie


                            Gordon. :angelic:

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: WORTH A READ!

                              SO THAT'S THE REASON FOR WORLDWIDE CHAOS!


                              Stopping the Insanity
                              by David Sirota

                              Like most people living through this jarring age of economic turbulence and political dysfunction, you can probably recall a moment in the last few months when you thought to yourself that our lawmakers and corporate leaders are all crazy. And not just run-of-the-mill crazy, a la George Costanza's parents, but the kind of crazy that makes films like "Silence of the Lambs" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" so frightening.

                              The good news for you is that you aren't insane for thinking this. The bad news for all of us, though, is that according to two new scientific analyses, you are more correct in your assessment than you may know.

                              The first revelation came from Dr. Nassir Ghaemi of Tufts University. In his recent book, "A First-Rate Madness," he went beyond merely restating the old adage that anyone crazy enough to run for public office probably shouldn't occupy that office. Instead, the book sheds light on what Ghaemi calls an "inverse law of sanity," whereby tumultuous times like these actually reward and promote political figures who are "mentally abnormal (or) even ill."

                              Now comes a new study from Switzerland's University of St. Gallen showing that the most successful of the global financial elite probably pose more of a menace to society than known psychopaths.

                              As the website Newser reported, the researchers "pitted a group of stockbrokers against a group of actual psychopaths in various computer simulations and intelligence tests and found that the money men were significantly more reckless, competitive, and manipulative." Even more striking, the researchers note that achieving overall success was less important to the stock speculators than the sadistic drive "to damage their opponents."

                              The findings build on similar research in the recent past. In 1996, investigators at Glasgow Caledonian University discovered connections between psychopathy and successful financial speculation, concluding that "with the right parenting, (psychopaths) can become successful stockbrokers instead of serial killers." Likewise, in 2004, researchers at the University of British Columbia reacted to similar findings and created a test to help firms detect "corporate psychopaths" within their ranks.

                              That same year, the award winning-documentary "The Corporation" used World Health Organization metrics to show that if companies really are "people," as our Supreme Court insists, then many of them are mentally ill.

                              Obviously, these results reflect the not-so-surprising fact that the extreme nature of the modern political process and of today's casino economy inherently self-select for certain kinds of traits. And no doubt, wholly changing that dynamic may be impossible or undesirable — or both.

                              However, the findings are a reminder of why now — more than ever — we must refuse to succumb to political apathy and laissez-faire demagoguery. Indeed, it's time to redouble our commitment to strengthening checks on political and corporate power because that power is often being wielded by the most unstable among us.

                              So what does that mean in practice? It means that when we see a wild-eyed White House ignore the constitution and claim the despotic right to assassinate American citizens without criminal charge, we demand that Congress stop the madness — rather than quietly acquiesce. It means that when we see a spontaneous grassroots movement physically occupy Lower Manhattan and challenge banks' deranged rapaciousness, we applaud the effort as long overdue — rather than scoff at it as unrealistic. It means, in short, that we refuse to stay silent in the face of insanity.

                              Frankly, if we have scientific proof that the inmates are running the Wall Street and Washington asylums, this is the least we should do — and we really should do a whole lot more.
                              © 2011 Creators.com

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