I'm all for a persons right to protest but active duty or reserve personnel participating in a protest of any kind is wrong. Especially in uniform. When a soldiers or Marines begin to organize themselves into a questionable situations that may lead to a conflict with local or state police, maybe even national guard goes against their oath and is breaking the law according to:
http://www.sdmcp.org/Regs/Guidelines4Dissent.htm section 3.5.6. and DoD Directive 1334.1 (reference (d)
If they are just veterans and no longer subject to the UCMJ. More power to them and exercise their right to protest. But leave the uniform at home. Now you are just a tool if you protest in uniform with hippies.

they need to get their message out better... most americans, myself included still have no idea what they are trying to accomplish

my personal 3 step approach to getting america back on track..

1- decriminalize marijuana and taxing it to bring in huge revenues while cutting spending on war on drugs and saving a ton of money keeping these people in jail
2 - end wars and bring troops home and give them jobs rebuilding shitty infrastructure
3 - and my personal favorite - legalize and tax poker :)

huge money to be made on all of the above for the government

"Bulls make money, Bears make money... Pigs get slaughtered."

Heard that before, still like it :thumbsup

Maybe it will be called the Million Moron march.
It's the same anti-everything crowd of losers switching to their latest target.

I get the feeling that initially most of them didn't know either. What they did know is that the mainstream Democrats, Republicans and the teabaggers were all full of shit and that something else had to be accomplished.

It's looking now like something worthwhile just might emerge however.


Not bad :thumbsup

Actually the whole student loan is thing is so fucked up they should be fighting against it. If you are in your late 20's or 30's and your parents went to college, ask them where they got their school loans from.

I bet they damn sure wont tell you it was some private sector company.. They will almost certainly tell you their college tuition was funded by govt programs.

Kids today com,e out of school with outrageous debits and very little of it was backed by the govt at minimal interest rates. Our education system is fucked from the ground up these days. Our country stopped investing in it's young quite some time ago and now you start to see the product of it.

Education should be a right and any country that doesn't think so is bound to eventually fail.

It's more complicated then that. Prohibition is used to control people mostly. Here's something I wrote in another thread, theses are things we need to fix in order to build a strong system. You cannot base a system that rewards risk taking and short term vision. It just won't be stable.

I normally try not to get into theses discussions, as it's way too complex too explain on a message board. It's a bunch of inter-connected issues that are creating the problem. Everyday folks can see there is a problem, but aren't capable of wording it proprely.

1st - The financial crisis
The main problem I see right now is accountability. The people running business are the ones responsible for the current crisis. The governement didn't de-regulate itself. The financial industry lobbied the gov to do it. The CDs, derivatives and other toxic products weren't meant to be. Extending pretty much unlimited credit lines to anybody without verification sure as hell dosen't sound like a good plan to me. That's why they insured it and passed the hot potatoe to the genral populace, in form of AAA rated financial products. The people who created theses products should be held accountable, they knew damn well that the market was gonna fail, years ahead of time. Hell GFY was talking about it a long time before it crashed, it couldn't be that hard to see it comming. Yet Greenspan was denying it until the last minute.

And when you talk wall street, you're also talking about the FED. The FED is 'giving' money left and right to rich businessmen. It's NOT tickling down to the middle class. See : http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...ilout-20110411

Yet I don't see the people responsible in jail. They all got richer, and are better off after the crisis then before. The people who created this problem are now the ones in charge of fixing it, when they should be in jail.

2 - The politicisation of corporations
Corporate is more and more involved in politics. It's involvement will be on levels unprescented in the next election, with the supreme court considering corporations as human beeings as far as first amandement rights goes. The problem is that they're not bound by a moral code, and most of the time, breaking the laws is better for the wallet. They took over the Tea Party and made sure to marginalize it, they will do the same with this org. Instead of the Koch brothers, it will be the unions this time who will try to manipulate the speach in their favor, instead of focusing on the real problem.

Look at what happened with the wisconsin recalls... Corporates (kochs & cie) made sure that it was very hard to vote. They sent disinformation about the dates (wich should be downright criminal) , instaured fake opposition candidates to leech a small percentage of the voteaway , made sure it was as hard as it could to vote for minorities... They are basicly using private money to manipulate and destroy the political system.

3 - Military industrial complex
The americans are paying to police the world for their corporations. They are the one opening the markets, wich coups d'états and military operations. (South america anyone ?). But the corporations are refusing to give back to the system. They try everything they can to avoid paying taxes, the burden then falls on the middle class. They are the one gathering the ressources made avaliable by the army, the CIA and other military orgs and pushing for open markets. Mr Friedman already had a lot of blood on his hands came the time of his death.

4 - War on the middle class
The right wing of the republican party is attacking the middle class directly. They are starting a race to the bottom by deregulating everything. Competing for the cheapest wages. In Wisconsin, Scott Walker declared war on the unions. He started by creating a big hole in the budjet by giving corporations a huge tax break, then proceeded to ask the unions to cut about the same ammount in fees. The union accepted, and he still proceeded with his agenda to dismantle bargaining right. He was backed by corporatists Koch brothers and the rest of the establshement, passed bills in last minute votes and disrespected the democratic process the whole time. See https://youtube.com/watch?v=SGDp581g9t0

In michigan, they cut founding to the municipalities, while at the same time passing a bill saying that they would dissolve the local govs of any towns in financial trouble. Basicly firing the mayor, the council and disrespecting the voters once again. They would appoint one administrator, wich once again will strip off the hard working people of their barginnign rights.

5 - The commodity market
The deregulation of the commodity market is another big problem. It's driving the food and the petrol prices way up, once again on the back of the middle classes. Theses tools were meant as way to stabilize the prices, not to drive them up. With all the cheap credit avaliable out there, they need to better regulate them. While buying a house is cheaper then it was before the crisis, filling the grocery cart is twice as expensive. The market is global, and people in the rest of the world are starving while rich people make money off theses markets. You shouldn't be able to inveset multiple times the ammount of money you put in, while never taking delivery of the product.

6 - Conclusion
I could cite hundreads of instances where people in positions of power (politicians or businessmen) abused it and should be in jail. People fail to realise how deep they have to dig to get out of trouble. The jobs aren't comming back. America's biggest asset to the world is that it's a net exporter of intellectual propreity, but everything gets pirated or stolen. When they wake up, it will be too late.

Sept 11 was probably the day where there was the most 'unity' in the world. Everybody wanted to help. The administration used it to polarize the country in order to better manipulate the population. They are dividing the people, making them focus on abortion and gay rights while pillaging and destroying the foundation of the world they live in.

The financial elite clearly declared war on the middle class, not the other way arround. I don't like the 1% beeing used, as a lot of people making 300k a year are legit. But there sure are a lot of crooked people in positions of power.

The tea party was mostly ron paul supporters in the beginning. It was to audit-abolish the FED. It got turned into something else by corporate money. They will do the same with this movement, it's gonna be the unions this time instead of the Koch brothers. They are the one who have the most to gain financially from controlling the speach.

Hmm maybe I should put on my dress blues and head over to tampa

All I know is they have much hotter chicks protesting than the tea baggers did..

http://abcnews.go.com/US/occupy-wall...ry?id=14652698

Someone should get that hottie on their site!

Though I admire what they are doing, I do find this movement to be not unlike the Tea Party movement as it's more a theme than a movement for a specific cause. If they where to rally to demand the closure of the Federal reserve for example, or if they where saying No More Corporate Bailouts, then I would see where they have something they can organize for.

However, it is more these open demonstrations that lead to organized movements where over time, their thoughts gain cohesiveness.

If anyone has access to a specific strategy, I would love to see as I am intrigued.

Without better organization and focus, this movement will be hijacked by a more organized interest group, kinda like what happened with the Tea Party.

You're probably right.

But having said that, the unions despite all of their faults are rather less hostile to middle class interests than the folks currently in charge.

lol unions have zero power in the states now. and if you are a working person and you choose a koch backed movement over a union supported one you are insane.

get back to me when "occupy wallstreet" candidates get elected to congress

MORE

http://occupywallst.org/forum/specif...washington-dc/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/propos...all-st-moveme/
http://occupywallst.org/article/a-me...reet-day-five/

http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbus...allstreet.html

For those wishing to donate: http://www.adbusters.org/donate

its so funny listening to the left describe the Tea Party as they wish them to be instead of what they actually are.

Yeah, the left wishes the Tea Party would consist of intelligent and sensible people, instead.

Good point! You are truly a genius!

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

This is all just sad. The United States, its citizens, its corporations, and its politicians should be working together to ensure that the country maintains its position as the world's leader in democracy, freedom, and commerce. They're not, though. Everyone's afraid. Everyone's jealous. Everyone is full of hate.

The whole fucking world is falling apart, and no-one has the balls to even try to save it. Sustained and violent clashes between protesters and the authorities never end well. America has gone through numerous periods of violent turmoil and upheaval - and that appears to be what is happening again.

The world needs a leader - and I sure as hell do not want a shithole fucking country like China in charge.

BTW, Canada (and I LOVE this country) will never be the world's guiding light. Asking Canada to lead the world is like asking your socks to be the highlight of your wardrobe.

It could happen...

http://imgs.inkfrog.com/pix/UncleDea...oker_Socks.jpg

it amuses me to see some people just laugh and point fingers at those trying to make the world we live in a better place...they never have anything positive to contribute, just point fingers and stir trouble. I feel sorry for such people, it must surely be a hard thing to do to carry that much hate on their shoulders.

not picking any names...but it should be obvious.

for every moron holding a "down with capitalism" sign in NY, there's someone else hard at work getting rich.

one guy is smart.

I'll let you decide which one that is.:winkwink: