• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

OWS plan on blocking New York Bridges, Tunnels, and Ferries on May 1st.

Re: 'Occupy' Promises 'Biggest Shut Down The City Of New York Has Ever Seen,' Blockad

They will not succeed. No one can block the tunnels and bridges in NYC. Especially not the paltry numbers of people they have at their disposal. Seriously. One ticked off cab driver wading through them, and they will disperse. Cabbies in NYC don't even stop for folks at crosswalks, let alone people in the middle of the street, protesting.
 
OWs are commies. Obama is a marxist, who fomented and embraced OWS. What do you need, honey on the bread crumbs ?

Chrissakes stupid post.

OWS are not commies...they are anarchists.

Obama is not a marxist...he's a liberal.

I noticed you didn't mention slavery.
 
Re: 'Occupy' Promises 'Biggest Shut Down The City Of New York Has Ever Seen,' Blockad

Hey. Wish I had thought of it. FWIW, such as the Tea Party is millenia closer to sanity and solutions than OWS.

But "yeah". Wish I hadn't been in such a rush, and found your brevity first :)

Those racist, gun toting, anarchist crazies?
 
Re: 'Occupy' Promises 'Biggest Shut Down The City Of New York Has Ever Seen,' Blockad

I like this... They are for the 99%, but the ones they are going to hurting are the 99%...
 
Re: 'Occupy' Promises 'Biggest Shut Down The City Of New York Has Ever Seen,' Blockad

What I find interesting is that the conservatives don't like oocupy Wall Street movement however many of the ideals that they represent are things that most conservatives want as well.

And what do you think these common ideals might be?
I think it takes balls to do what these folks are doing even if I don't agree with all the methods.

Balls to do what specifically?

The end result that OWS wants is achieved either way and that is to get people regardless of views to pay closer attention to how our economy operates.

I doubt that any of the OWS people understand how an economy operates, and probably never will. If they would look after themselves and become contributing members of society the economy would probably start improving soon after.
 
Re: 'Occupy' Promises 'Biggest Shut Down The City Of New York Has Ever Seen,' Blockad

Interesting take on today's supposed OWS activities.... sounds like it was a hyped up uber bust.

By Kevin D. Williamson
May 1, 2012 12:33 P.M.


Talking with an NYPD officer in Union Square, I was able to confirm something I had suspected: NYPD’s main reaction to Occupy Whatever has been boredom. Same thing with the police dispatched to the city hall subway station this morning. “You know what this really means to us?” one cop said, a bemused grin spreading across his face. “Overtime.”

Today has seen about two dozen protesters in front of the Bank of America building and news of a plan to blow up a bridge in Cleveland. Terrorizing the country’s poorest major city and loitering in front of a bank: Welcome to the revolution.

What a May Day RIOT eh? You 99% sure know how to party!! :lamo
 
Re: 'Occupy' Promises 'Biggest Shut Down The City Of New York Has Ever Seen,' Blockad

Interesting take on today's supposed OWS activities.... sounds like it was a hyped up uber bust.



What a May Day RIOT eh? You 99% sure know how to party!! :lamo

OWS just never made itself a coherent movement. If there is a lesson on how not to drive a sociopolitical movement, it's OWS.
 
OWs are commies.
There are communists within the movement sure. But overall they are not "commies". Its like calilng the Tea Party a racist movement because there were some racist within the movement..

Obama is a marxist,
Dear god no! HAHAHAHAH This cracks me up! This **** again! :lamo

who fomented and embraced OWS.
Tell me how Obama started this movement again?

What do you need, honey on the bread crumbs ?

Chrissakes stupid post.
Less ignorance is what we need from you on your part so we can actually take you seriously
 
Anyone post this yet?

U.S. Attorney Dettelbach called this a violent terrorist plot, and said: “The defendants stand charged based not upon any words or beliefs they might espouse, but based upon their own plans and actions.”

What’s troubling is that the government has had a heavy hand in creating the very plot it thwarted.

And on top of that, the defendants, by the admission of the FBI, said repeatedly that they had no intention of harming anyone. At one point Baxter and Wright “stated they don’t want people to think they are terrorists.”

This isn’t an isolated instance.

The criminal complaint reads like the spitting image of the case of Eric McDavid, who was coaxed by an undercover FBI operative named “Anna.” In that case, like this one, the FBI supplied bomb making recipes, bomb making materials, and attempts to distill activist boasting and hyperbole into a coherent plan.

McDavid did nothing, and was arrested on conspiracy charges, like these defendants have been. As readers of this site know, conspiracy charges are the fall-back for the government when there is not enough evidence to get anything else to “stick.”

FBI Supplied the Anarchist “Terrorists” Arrested in May Day Plot
 
The People’s Bishop

"Retired Episcopal Bishop George Packard was arrested in Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza in New York City last Tuesday night as he participated in the May 1 Occupy demonstrations. He and 15 other military veterans were taken into custody after they linked arms to hold the plaza against a police attempt to clear it. There were protesters behind them who, perhaps because of confusion, perhaps because of miscommunication or perhaps they were unwilling to risk arrest, melted into the urban landscape. But those in the thin line from Veterans for Peace, of which the bishop is a member, stood their ground. They were handcuffed, herded into a paddy wagon and taken to jail."

‘‘Occupy,” he went on, ‘‘is a political movement. Let’s not be naive. But it also has a moral core. We are in the midst of a reawakening of a spiritual anthropology. All of the groups that have risen up, across the globe, have this reawakening. Those who took to the streets in the Middle East were not simply unsettled. They were called together because they had a connection with each other. Many, many people have reached a point where the only option left is to place their bodies, their beings, in a location where they can finally have some say and some control over their own lives. As Carne Ross points out in his book ‘The Leaderless Revolution,’ people have lost their agency; they have lost control of their lives. The only control many have left is the control of their physical being. They place themselves in locations where they can demonstrate that they no longer support current systems of power. If you don’t have any money in our political system you not only have no say, you don’t have any dignity. And the only way left to reclaim our dignity is to occupy, to reinhabit the environments that have been taken away from us.”

Chris Hedges: The People’s Bishop - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig
 
The People’s Bishop

"Retired Episcopal Bishop George Packard was arrested in Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza in New York City last Tuesday night as he participated in the May 1 Occupy demonstrations. He and 15 other military veterans were taken into custody after they linked arms to hold the plaza against a police attempt to clear it. There were protesters behind them who, perhaps because of confusion, perhaps because of miscommunication or perhaps they were unwilling to risk arrest, melted into the urban landscape. But those in the thin line from Veterans for Peace, of which the bishop is a member, stood their ground. They were handcuffed, herded into a paddy wagon and taken to jail."

‘‘Occupy,” he went on, ‘‘is a political movement. Let’s not be naive. But it also has a moral core. We are in the midst of a reawakening of a spiritual anthropology. All of the groups that have risen up, across the globe, have this reawakening. Those who took to the streets in the Middle East were not simply unsettled. They were called together because they had a connection with each other. Many, many people have reached a point where the only option left is to place their bodies, their beings, in a location where they can finally have some say and some control over their own lives. As Carne Ross points out in his book ‘The Leaderless Revolution,’ people have lost their agency; they have lost control of their lives. The only control many have left is the control of their physical being. They place themselves in locations where they can demonstrate that they no longer support current systems of power. If you don’t have any money in our political system you not only have no say, you don’t have any dignity. And the only way left to reclaim our dignity is to occupy, to reinhabit the environments that have been taken away from us.”

Chris Hedges: The People’s Bishop - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig





you gotta love how the left values the opinions of some veterans over others.... btw, why didn't the front group "Veterans for peace", list the other members arrested? Perhaps because they probably weren't vets?


I also like how his naivety about the rise of the muslim brotherhood is somehow similar to #ows of dubious causes. And this Veteran should show more respect to the memorial of those who died in his economic protest. Just sayin.
 
you gotta love how the left values the opinions of some veterans over others....

I value the veterans most that still stand up for their fellow citizens. Bishop Packard is a good example.
 
I value the veterans most that still stand up for their fellow citizens. Bishop Packard is a good example.



Yet you insult and besmirch troops and veterans whenver it suits you..... We know what the litmus test is for you.
 
Yet you insult and besmirch troops and veterans whenver it suits you..... We know what the litmus test is for you.

Only those who act without consideration of the safety of their fellow troops or their mission. Honorable conduct is required to receive honorable respect. That is my litmus test.
 
Yet you insult and besmirch troops and veterans whenver it suits you....

"The troops" are people that get paid and volunteer to do what they do, so who cares? The myth surrounding "the troops" is a joke.
 
Re: 'Occupy' Promises 'Biggest Shut Down The City Of New York Has Ever Seen,' Blockad

I can't tell if they are intentionally being assholes, or just pushing the limits on human stupidity. Probably both
 
Only those who act without consideration of the safety of their fellow troops or their mission. Honorable conduct is required to receive honorable respect. That is my litmus test.



Like you would know. :roll:
 
I value the veterans most that still stand up for their fellow citizens. Bishop Packard is a good example.

Well what do you think those veterans of WWII, the Korean War, Iraq War, etc. were doing?

Certainly much more than locking arms in the safety of American Streets where they can gain some favorable sympathy from the sheeple.
 
you gotta love how the left values the opinions of some veterans over others.... btw, why didn't the front group "Veterans for peace", list the other members arrested? Perhaps because they probably weren't vets?
I also like how his naivety about the rise of the muslim brotherhood is somehow similar to #ows of dubious causes. And this Veteran should show more respect to the memorial of those who died in his economic protest. Just sayin.

Yes, to claim they share a "moral core" with the Muslim Brotherhood demonstrates an ignorance not seen since the anti American marches during the Cold War. These people are dangerously stupid, and the fact that they admit to not having any control over their own lives speaks directly to that issue.
 
I think it is safe to say after watching nothing really happen on May 1st that OWS is dead. The final nail in the coffin will be when May is over and no one noticed OWS did anything. BTW these people in Spain believe that they are the pioneers of the OWS movement.

TACTICAL BRIEFING #32 Last May 15, a hundred thousand indignados in Spain seized the squares across their nation, held people’s assemblies and catalyzed a global tactical shift that birthed Occupy Wall Street four months later. Our movement outflanked governments everywhere with a thousand encampments in large part because no one was prepared for Occupy’s magic combination of Spain’s transparent consensus-based acampadas with the Tahrir-model of indefinite occupation of symbolic space. Now exactly a year later, a big question mark hangs over our movement because it is clear that the same tactics may never work again.

Spring re-occupations have largely failed here in North America. The May Day General Strike was stifled by aggressive, preemptive policing that neutralized Occupy’s signature moves. In light of these challenges, Saturday’s May 12 rebirth of the indignados could be a tactical turning point.

The funny part is how it was signed: for the wild, Culture Jammers HQ OccupyWallStreet.org / Tactical Briefing #29, #30, #31 / Be present on May 12 and on May 18 spark the #LAUGHRIOT then swarm Chicago.

SHARE URL: Tactical Turning Point | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters


And then there is this fine piece at the official OWS website: Occupy Wall Street's anarchist roots | OccupyWallSt.org Which is written by none other than David-Graeber himself. For those that dont know he is the owner of Adbusters.

And he says this:
How, then, did OWS embody anarchist principles? It might be helpful to go over this point by point:

The refusal to recognise the legitimacy of existing political institutions.

One reason for the much-discussed refusal to issue demands is because issuing demands means recognising the legitimacy - or at least, the power - of those of whom the demands are made. Anarchists often note that this is the difference between protest and direct action: Protest, however militant, is an appeal to the authorities to behave differently; direct action, whether it's a matter of a community building a well or making salt in defiance of the law (Gandhi's example again), trying to shut down a meeting or occupy a factory, is a matter of acting as if the existing structure of power does not even exist. Direct action is, ultimately, the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free.

The refusal to accept the legitimacy of the existing legal order.

The second principle, obviously, follows from the first. From the very beginning, when we first started holding planning meetings in Tompkins Square Park in New York, organisers knowingly ignored local ordinances that insisted that any gathering of more than 12 people in a public park is illegal without police permission - simply on the grounds that such laws should not exist. On the same grounds, of course, we chose to occupy a park, inspired by examples from the Middle East and southern Europe, on the grounds that, as the public, we should not need permission to occupy public space. This might have been a very minor form of civil disobedience but it was crucial that we began with a commitment to answer only to a moral order, not a legal one.

The refusal to create an internal hierarchy, but instead to create a form of consensus-based direct democracy.

From the very beginning, too, organisers made the audacious decision to operate not only by direct democracy, without leaders, but by consensus. The first decision ensured that there would be no formal leadership structure that could be co-opted or coerced; the second, that no majority could bend a minority to its will, but that all crucial decisions had to be made by general consent. American anarchists have long considered consensus process (a tradition that has emerged from a confluence of feminism, anarchism and spiritual traditions like the Quakers) crucial for the reason that it is the only form of decision-making that could operate without coercive enforcement - since if a majority does not have the means to compel a minority to obey its dictates, all decisions will, of necessity, have to be made by general consent.

The embrace of prefigurative politics.

As a result, Zuccotti Park, and all subsequent encampments, became spaces of experiment with creating the institutions of a new society - not only democratic General Assemblies but kitchens, libraries, clinics, media centres and a host of other institutions, all operating on anarchist principles of mutual aid and self-organisation - a genuine attempt to create the institutions of a new society in the shell of the old.

Why did it work? Why did it catch on? One reason is, clearly, because most Americans are far more willing to embrace radical ideas than anyone in the established media is willing to admit. The basic message - that the American political order is absolutely and irredeemably corrupt, that both parties have been bought and sold by the wealthiest 1 per cent of the population, and that if we are to live in any sort of genuinely democratic society, we're going to have to start from scratch - clearly struck a profound chord in the American psyche.


The question should be why is a person from another country heading an attempted revolt? I mean WTF this guy has no say so on what happens in America.
 
And further the OWS has developed a Global May Manifesto. [thats three different links]

Whats funny is that they start out with "The statement below does not speak, or claim to speak, on behalf of everyone in the global spring/Occupy/Take the Square movements. This is an attempt by some inside the movements to reconcile statements written and endorsed in the different assemblies around the world." Yet every OWS site has the exact same canned "Manifesto". One can guess that the statement is for adherence to anarchy and not anything else.

They say all kinds of stuff that one would expect them to say. But here are some statements that should get peoples attention:

Every human being should have access to an adequate income for their livelihood, so we ask for work or, alternatively, universal basic income guarantee.

Apart from bread, we want roses. Everyone has the right to enjoy culture, participate in a creative and enriching leisure in service of the progress of humankind. Therefore, we demand the progressive reduction of working hours, without reducing income.

We demand policies that function under the understanding that our changing patterns of life should either be organic/ecological or else not occur. These policies should be based on a simple rule: one should not spoil the balance of ecosystems for profit. Violations of this policy should be prosecuted around the world as an environmental crime, with severe sanctions for convicted.

We demand the creation of international environmental standards, mandatory for countries, companies, corporations, and individuals. Ecocide (willful damage to the environment, ecosystems, biodiversity) should be internationally recognised as a crime of the greatest magnitude.

To achieve these objectives, we believe that the economy should be run democratically at all levels, from local to global. People must get democratic control over financial institutions, transnational corporations and their lobbies.

At all levels we ask for the development of a democracy that is as participatory as possible, including non representative direct democracy.

We call for the democratization of access to and management of media (MSM). These should serve to educate the public, as opposed to the creation of an artificial consensus about unjust policies.

We ask for democracy in companies and corporations. Workers, regardless of wage level or gender, should have real decision-making power in the companies and corporations they work in. We want to promote cooperative companies and corporations, as real democratic economic institutions.




And this one just in case the reader was unable to see the obvious and what the Occupy movement is all about: Some of us believe a new Universal Declaration of Human Rights, fit for the 21st century, written in a participatory, direct and democratic way, needs to be written. As long as the current Declaration of Human Rights defines our rights, it must be enforced in relation to all – in both rich and poor countries. Implementing institutions that force compliance and penalize violators need to be established, such as a Global Court to prosecute social, economic and environmental crimes perpetrated by governments, corporations and individuals. At all levels – local, national, regional and global – new constitutions for political institutions need to be considered, like in Iceland or in some Latin American countries. Justice and law must work for all, otherwise justice is not justice, and law is not law.

In other words for those here that keep denying what the Occupy movement really is, the occupiers want to dissolve American Government and create a new global government. In other words they fancy to take over the world under the name of Anarchy. And the goal is right there in black and white for all to see. Yes OWS has a plan and its called WAR.
 
And further the OWS has developed a Global May Manifesto. [thats three different links]

Whats funny is that they start out with "The statement below does not speak, or claim to speak, on behalf of everyone in the global spring/Occupy/Take the Square movements. This is an attempt by some inside the movements to reconcile statements written and endorsed in the different assemblies around the world." Yet every OWS site has the exact same canned "Manifesto". One can guess that the statement is for adherence to anarchy and not anything else.

They say all kinds of stuff that one would expect them to say. But here are some statements that should get peoples attention:

Every human being should have access to an adequate income for their livelihood, so we ask for work or, alternatively, universal basic income guarantee.

Apart from bread, we want roses. Everyone has the right to enjoy culture, participate in a creative and enriching leisure in service of the progress of humankind. Therefore, we demand the progressive reduction of working hours, without reducing income.


This caught my attention, in particular. Typical Occutard ignorance about the most basic principles of economics. Income comes from wealth. Wealth is created by people working. If people work less, then less wealth will be created, and people will have less income. Only someone with an Occutard level of stupidity could believe that it makes any sense to demand that working hours be reduced, without a corresponding reduction in generated income.
 
This caught my attention, in particular. Typical Occutard ignorance about the most basic principles of economics. Income comes from wealth. Wealth is created by people working. If people work less, then less wealth will be created, and people will have less income. Only someone with an Occutard level of stupidity could believe that it makes any sense to demand that working hours be reduced, without a corresponding reduction in generated income.

The real problem is that too many people believe that this is possible. When ignorance of this sort permeates society, and we can see on here that it's happening, then it becomes very difficult for any society to survive.
 
Last edited:
This caught my attention, in particular. Typical Occutard ignorance about the most basic principles of economics. Income comes from wealth. Wealth is created by people working. If people work less, then less wealth will be created, and people will have less income. Only someone with an Occutard level of stupidity could believe that it makes any sense to demand that working hours be reduced, without a corresponding reduction in generated income.

I'm also unsympathetic because from my angle, the whole movement seems to be represented by people who can't identify with the joys of being able to work long and hard and make your way as opposed to being denied the opportunity wholesale. I gladly take up the idea that I will be busy from morning to night, because it gives me a sense of accomplishment, the job will carry prestige, and I earn a decent living.

They are supposed to represent me in every sense, yet I feel like they are alien creatures who do not appreciate real problems and are lazy.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom