COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
Showing posts with label Occupy Wall Street. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Occupy Wall Street. Show all posts

Saturday, October 15, 2011

This May Not End Well



"This video is “laugh out loud” funny. Sort of George Orwell meets kindergarten class."

Worldwide 'Occupy' protests held over financial crisis


Protesters took to the streets in Sydney, Tokyo and Taipei

Related Stories

Protesters in cities across the world are taking to the streets to demonstrate against alleged corporate greed and government cutbacks.
Organisers say rallies will be held in 951 cities in 82 countries from Asia and the Americas, to Africa and Europe.
Hundreds of people have already protested in Australia and New Zealand as well as other Asian cities.
Many protest groups are taking their names from the high-profile Occupy Wall Street rally in New York.
Organisers of the 15 October worldwide protests said on their website that the aim was to "initiate the global change we want".
"United in one voice, we will let politicians, and the financial elites they serve, know it is up to us, the people, to decide our future," it said.
Criticisms
In the Australian city of Sydney, some 2,000 people - including representatives of Aboriginal groups, communists and trade unionists - took to the streets outside the central Reserve Bank of Australia, Reuters news agency reports.

Economic protests

  • Original protest began on 15 May in Spain, badly hit by economic crisis
  • Sit-in at Madrid's Sol Square became a weeks-long protest camp
  • Israel also hit by summer of protests over high cost of living. Protest camp in Tel Aviv
  • Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest began in New York in September with small number of activists but soon grew to 1,500
  • OWS organisers say they are defending 99% of US population against wealthiest 1%
  • OWS used as model for global protests
Around 1,000 people gathered in Melbourne, and hundreds were marching in the New Zealand cities of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
'Occupy' protests were also being held in South Korea, the Phillipines and in Hong Kong.
As many as 1,500 people had said, via Facebook, they would participate in the "Occupy Taipei" protest planned outside Taiwan's tallest building.
The BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei says such a demonstration is unusual for Taiwan, which has a tradition of looking to family rather than the state for welfare support.
But, our correspondent says, the island's wealth gap is at its worst in history and many middle-class Taiwanese have begun to question whether the system is fair.
Large protests are expected later in the day in the European cities of Madrid, London, Rome and Athens.
It remains to be seen if any of the demonstrations turn into protest camps, such as Occupy Wall Street, which began with a small group of activists in New York's financial district a couple of months ago and has now grown to include several thousand people at times, from many walks of life.
Naomi Colvin, an organiser of the protest outside the London Stock Exchange, said the nature of the rally would be dependent on those that turn up.
"We take the position that we will convene a general assembly in London and like all the other protests which have happened elsewhere, it is the general assembly which is the decision-making body," she told the BBC.
"If the general assembly, made up of everybody who comes today, decides that we want to try and stay, then we will make some efforts to try and stay."
Protests over the global crisis first began in the Spanish capital Madrid back in May, when hundreds took over the city's Puerta del Sol square.
Forming a movement called "Indignant", the protesters said they wanted to demonstrate at the influence of powerful financial institutions over policy-making, and the impact of Spain's deepest economic crisis in decades.
Observers say that, while protesters in Spain had concrete demands such as seeking a cut in working hours to tackle unemployment, many of the 'Occupy' protesters are vague in their demands.

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

A Wall Street Protester, Obviously Confused.




 …  and Another Point of View:


Occupy protests spread across U.S. Unions join 'Occupy Wall Street'


(CNN) -- Like the spokesmen for Arab dictators feigning bewilderment over protesters' demands, mainstream television news reporters finally training their attention on the growing Occupy Wall Street protest movement seem determined to cast it as the random, silly blather of an ungrateful and lazy generation of weirdos. They couldn't be more wrong and, as time will tell, may eventually be forced to accept the inevitability of their own obsolescence.

Consider how CNN anchor Erin Burnett, covered the goings on at Zuccotti Park downtown, where the protesters are encamped, in a segment called "Seriously?!" "What are they protesting?" she asked, "nobody seems to know." Like Jay Leno testing random mall patrons on American History, the main objective seemed to be to prove that the protesters didn't, for example, know that the U.S. government has been reimbursed for the bank bailouts. It was condescending and reductionist.

More predictably perhaps, a Fox News reporter appears flummoxed in this outtake from "On the Record," in which the respondent refuses to explain how he wants the protests to "end." Transcending the shallow partisan politics of the moment, the protester explains "As far as seeing it end, I wouldn't like to see it end. I would like to see the conversation continue."

To be fair, the reason why some mainstream news journalists and many of the audiences they serve see the Occupy Wall Street protests as incoherent is because the press and the public are themselves. It is difficult to comprehend a 21st century movement from the perspective of the 20th century politics, media, and economics in which we are still steeped.


In fact, we are witnessing America's first true Internet-era movement, which -- unlike civil rights protests, labor marches, or even the Obama campaign -- does not take its cue from a charismatic leader, express itself in bumper-sticker-length goals and understand itself as having a particular endpoint.

Yes, there are a wide array of complaints, demands, and goals from the Wall Street protesters: the collapsing environment, labor standards, housing policy, government corruption, World Bank lending practices, unemployment, increasing wealth disparity and so on. Different people have been affected by different aspects of the same system -- and they believe they are symptoms of the same core problem.

Are they ready to articulate exactly what that problem is and how to address it? No, not yet. But neither are Congress or the president who, in thrall to corporate America and Wall Street, respectively, have consistently failed to engage in anything resembling a conversation as cogent as the many I witnessed as I strolled by Occupy Wall Street's many teach-ins this morning. There were young people teaching one another about, among other things, how the economy works, about the disconnection of investment banking from the economy of goods and services, the history of centralized interest-bearing currency, the creation and growth of the derivatives industry, and about the Obama administration deciding to settle with, rather than investigate and prosecute the investment banking industry for housing fraud.