Oh the hypocrisy.

You can't be a consumer whore and protest the same people you purchase from.






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There's some sort of big camp-out in the middle of downtown Portland, Oregon right now... do they honestly think that they can completely change the way the government is working?

Plus, everything in a capitalist society is either owned or has connections to corporations. They're basically viewing all corporations that make money as "evil", which is honestly really stupid.

We just never know how reliant we are on corporations and their products until we actually ask ourselves, "Where did these items come from?"

On a slightly-related note, the Westboro Baptist Church will be protesting Steve Jobs' funeral. Do a Google search for it in the news and you will find out that the WBC made this statement public on Twitter... from an iPhone.

AuraBlaze : I saw that. Those people are so deluded it's not even funny.

And yeah, it's amazing how many things we buy on a daily basis are from corporations.

Many people have very negative views on corporations, but they are mistaken. Corporations are not all evil, in fact, corporations are one of the most successful economic entities, as well as the backbone of the American economy. The problem is many people (mainly younger ones and people of my own age) do not:

1. know much, if anything, about politics and economics

2. They only watch a singular news channel, which most of the times is biased. If problem 1 applies, the person watching the news will likely think the channel is 100% correct, so then they stick with the biased views of the news channel.

I could go deeper into explanation, but I would rather open a new thread since it would take too long to explain everything, plus it might derail this thread slightly.

If they were talking about banks,oil or tobbaco companys maybe id agree but not manufacturers.life would suck without people making the latest and greatest.

Wow you guys are missing the point. They are protesting against the social inequality in the country, not the existence of corporations. Does it so happen that that wealthy 1% usually own corporations, yes, but they are going after the CEOs, not the corps themselves.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/08/occupy-america-protests-financial-crisis

"One of the favourite messages of the protesters is that almost 40% of US wealth is held in the hands of 1% of the population, who are taxed more lightly than the majority of Americans."

Who researched this article? The top 1% are actually having their money taken from them even though the vast majority of them are also giving money away to charities and other philanthropic endeavours.

Elara : CEO's don't own corporations.

Well yes, the shareholders own them... CEOs just run them. The shareholders are usually also rich.

The researcher for the article was quoting the protestors, hence the "one of the favourite messages of the protesters"

That said, I'm not going to get into the debate on how much the rich really pay, because there is no way to know how honest they all are with their finances unless we audit them all... and that won't happen.

However, that still doesn't change the spirit of these protests. These are people who have been hit hard by the recession, who have lost their jobs and cannot find new ones, or who are making a pittance and barely getting by. They are angry, and they are focusing their anger on the rich because they do not appear to have been affected by all of this. They still have their jobs, they still have their money. Oh no, they lost 50k in the stock markets... they still have $1.3M or something like that.

 This isn't about a communist movement to remove all privately owned corps, it's a movement to have the greedy people close to/at the top pay for us because few people understand how an economy works, few understand who exactly is responsible for things like market crashes, and few are willing to own up to making poor choices (fiscally and morally).  These aren't people shouting, "We need to cut the head off this capitalistic snake!" These are people shouting, "It couldn't possibly be my fault, so it must be someone else!"

If you think this protest is about bringing down corporations, I suggest you do more research. I have heard many reasons why the protesters are there, but none of them have been to end corporations.

There is a reason why the protests started on wall street and not outside factories/manufacturers... the banks. Banks played a major part in the financial crisis which caused many people to lose their houses and jobs. What did the American government do when this happened? They gave "bail out" money to the banks, while the CEO's broke records for receiving bonus money.

If your tax money was given to the same people who took your house and caused you to lose your job (somewhat indirectly but that is besides the point) ,  I am sure you would feel the same way.


My biggest question about this situation: Why didn't this happen sooner?!

That is all you have to say? Well I guess that you are talking about gamers and their "hate" of Gamestop but all that I can think of is if we hate it so much then who the hell is buying from them?

As far as the picture goes I also agree. You tell them to go and die and what not yet you fuel them. Don't throw gas on a fire and complain that it burns.

billythekidmonster : Should probably look at Elara's post. They weren't protesting the corporations themselves. They were protesting the way CEO's run the corporations. It is nearly impossible to not buy from some corporation unless you were completely self sufficient, which almost no people are. So it really isn't hypocrisy in which they are throwing gas on a fire and complaining that it burns.

rcarter2 : Oops. I guess that I did not read it. Though there are many people that are like how I say that they complain at what they have made. They are like Dr. Frankenstein and it really upsets me. That is more or less how the world works the CEO's make a ton of money and you do not. You may riot about it but really it is how it has worked for pretty much ever.

Well I suppose what they are protesting for makes sense, but it is too generalized. They would have a much easier time protesting for a specific law or something. 

leetboi68 : Agreed. The biggest criticism of the Occupy movement is that their scope is just too broad. You have people out there really trying to make a change, and then you have the gamut from them to the ones that are just out there because they have nothing better to do and don't really understand anything... and the trolls... because they don't just exist online.

Occupy Pittsburgh seems to mostly be going after the biggest bank in the region, PNC, from what I can tell.

What's been really ticking me off about these protests lately is that I've seen video on Fox News and a photo in my local paper, both showing kids of primary school age (I would estimate around 8 or 9 years) being brought out to the protest for field trips. Idiotic teachers! These kids don't understand how political this crap is! I'd post some links here, but I couldn't find what I was looking for.

What you think the Occupy Movement is about:
-  Anti-Capitalism
-  Anti-Rich People
-  Just hippies
-  Anti-Corporations

What the Occupy Movement is REALLY about:
-  Stop the fractional banking system
-  Get Corporate money out of politicians hands (to make laws in favor for profits)
-  Stop illegal foreclosure of homes, despite not having the original mortgage
-  End the Federal Reserve and make a debt free currency
-  Stop reckless government spending on deploying and stationing troops over seas (also pushed by Corp. Who profit)


"Give me control of a nations money supply, and I care not who makes it’s laws. "
Mater Amschel Rothschild, founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty.


REVOLUTION!

A bit of food for thought: Article from The Guardian

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy
Naomi Wolf The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality

Naomi Wolf · 25/11/2011 · guardian.co.uk


US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.
But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National UNION of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."
In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.
To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.
I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.
Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.
That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.
The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.
The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.
No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.
When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the s*** kicked out of them.
For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).
In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.
But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.
Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.
So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.
Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.