Occupy Wall Street

[Duck Rodgers]

However, the defaults that we faced a few months back by the tea party wackos? And now the problems we face today? Sure, there might be some people that want a default to happen, or support the tea party efforts to run our country off a cliff (I wouldn't be surprised if LG, as an independent, was one of them). But the rest of us don't want a default. And the rest of us find the no rise in taxes pledge ridiculous. Most of Americans want both new revenues and cuts, not just cuts.

The funny thing is that default is really the only solution . Not unilateral default, but multilateral default and multilateral debt forgiveness across the board. Every bank, every government, every private company, every individual in the entire world that has ever lent or borrowed money would have to agree to pretend those contracts never existed and start over with a clean slate. That is how absurd all this debt talk nonsense and all these different protest groups are. You cannot fix the problem unless you do what I said above and the above is never going to happen for obvious reasons.

What's OWS going to do about derivatives? They are already out there, they are already worthless, and with MF Global going bankrupt, not being able to cover even 900 million of personal accounts, and the CME refusing to provide any backup funds because they know it's just going to be one of many in they near future, they are admitting it's a ponzi scheme by their actions. They are admitting that if enough people wanted to call in their contracts, they wouldn't receive anything in return. What happens when a $1.5 Quadrillion ponzi scheme blows up? We're about to find out.

 

[LogGrad98]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5vV4zw-cus

 

[Gameface]

Can anyone list the objectives of the OWS movement?

 

[Gameface]

Can anyone list the objectives of the OWS movement?

Other than to be able to live in public (sometimes private) parks, of course.

 

[bat]

Can anyone list the objectives of the OWS movement?

Reminds me of this.

Guess which one you are!

 

[babe]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5vV4zw-cus

This example of police hooliganism ought to bring thinking people to revulsion at what our police have been trained to do. Send a copy to your city fathers and ask them if the federal government's handouts for police toys and training are producing a police force that will protect human rights, or abuse them.

 

[LogGrad98]

The funny thing is that default is really the only solution . Not unilateral default, but multilateral default and multilateral debt forgiveness across the board. Every bank, every government, every private company, every individual in the entire world that has ever lent or borrowed money would have to agree to pretend those contracts never existed and start over with a clean slate. That is how absurd all this debt talk nonsense and all these different protest groups are. You cannot fix the problem unless you do what I said above and the above is never going to happen for obvious reasons.

What's OWS going to do about derivatives? They are already out there, they are already worthless, and with MF Global going bankrupt, not being able to cover even 900 million of personal accounts, and the CME refusing to provide any backup funds because they know it's just going to be one of many in they near future, they are admitting it's a ponzi scheme by their actions. They are admitting that if enough people wanted to call in their contracts, they wouldn't receive anything in return. What happens when a $1.5 Quadrillion ponzi scheme blows up? We're about to find out.

So fight club was right. Cool.

 

[LogGrad98]

This example of police hooliganism ought to bring thinking people to revulsion at what our police have been trained to do. Send a copy to your city fathers and ask them if the federal government's handouts for police toys and training are producing a police force that will protect human rights, or abuse them.

Isn't it illegal to block a public walk like that? Also it looked like he told them what he was going to do before he did it so they had a chance to move. I'm not so sure this was as far out of line as you portray it. Also from the video we get very little context. We have no idea what had happened up to that point. This may have been the exactly correct response given the circumstances. No matter what romantic ideas people may get about the inviolability of protests, there are laws governing them. Should they just not be enforced at all?

 

[bat]

Pretty much every eye witness says they'd been standing there non violently before being attacked by the police officer.

I don't buy the he showed them the pepper spray so it's okay if he uses it argument either. If he showed a stun gun or a night stick, then stunned them or whacked them over the head that is okay too because they got a warning?

That's police brutality at it's finest. Police are here to protect, that action protected nobody and was wait out of line with the offensive force being used against them which was locked arms and chanting.

Seriously this is just the police attacking our own citizens and there are still a lot of people allowing political bias to blind them from right and wrong. If the police are allowed to physically assault the citizens because of non violent protest, what can't they do?

 

[babe]

Isn't it illegal to block a public walk like that? Also it looked like he told them what he was going to do before he did it so they had a chance to move. I'm not so sure this was as far out of line as you portray it. Also from the video we get very little context. We have no idea what had happened up to that point. This may have been the exactly correct response given the circumstances. No matter what romantic ideas people may get about the inviolability of protests, there are laws governing them. Should they just not be enforced at all?

There are a lot of laws I don't think are Constitutional, including some that pertain to use of public spaces such as parks and streets, as well as university campuses. In these places the right to peaceably assemble and petition government for the redress of grievances is more important.

Police are supposedly sworn and under oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and in any case the whole strategy of shock and awe weoponry turned against ciizens in these precise circumstances is reprehensible. It is being reported in the news that the UCD chancellor authorized the use of force to remove the protestors from campus, and the faculty and many students are now calling for her resignation. Universities of all places should be bastions of human rights.

Hey, I don't like vital public spaces being taken over permanently by any mob, let along deranged misfits who are anti-social and unwashed and noncompliant and right about our cartelist banks and other businesses with inordinate access to our representatives. It's only fine upstanding hard-working taxpayers who are pleased to bail out crooks when their frauds need public support who should have the right to speak or express any sentiments in regard to our public policies. It would be a tragic derparture from the norms of established civilization to let noncompliants express opinions in places our impressionable youth might be able to see or hear. It is dangerous especially when our youth are not trained to reliably think right.

In regard to the groundskeeping budget, it obviously did not provide for the wear and tear due to the Occupy crowd. But it's still probably less than the cost of cleaning up the campus theatre/music hall/museum/library/sports arenas after the public comes on campus to use them. So shouldn't the campus ticket office just start selling tickets to see the Occupy play?

 

[LogGrad98]

Pretty much every eye witness says they'd been standing there non violently before being attacked by the police officer.

I don't buy the he showed them the pepper spray so it's okay if he uses it argument either. If he showed a stun gun or a night stick, then stunned them or whacked them over the head that is okay too because they got a warning?

That's police brutality at it's finest. Police are here to protect, that action protected nobody and was wait out of line with the offensive force being used against them which was locked arms and chanting.

Seriously this is just the police attacking our own citizens and there are still a lot of people allowing political bias to blind them from right and wrong. If the police are allowed to physically assault the citizens because of non violent protest, what can't they do?

They are not standing, they are sitting. In my opinion the police were not claiming it was a violent protest. There are laws governing protests, even peaceful demonstrations. One of them states that you cannot impeded pedestrians or traffic in the course of the protest. It looked to me that police were trying to get them to clear the walkway, as would be required by law. You fall into the same logical fallacy (is it confirmation bias? I forget), that as long as the protest is "valid" and "peaceful" it is automatically "legal". That is not necessarily the case.

It strikes me that pepper spray would be preferable to nightsticks or stun guns. Don't you think so? They are not equal in force. Pepper spray would be used first to disperse the protesters illegally blocking a public walkway. If that doesn't work, then they resort to other methods to enforce the law. Again, what makes the laws invalid? If you disagree with the law or agree with the protesters then the law is wrong? Also, what method should the police have used to get them to move other than pepper spray?

Not much of what they did actually looked all that brutal actually. If that is your idea of police brutality then I am not sure how the police would ever be able to enforce any laws at all when perpetrators resist.

https://pittnews.com/newsstory/laws-govern-restrict-peaceful-protests/

In the 1989 court case Graham v. Connor, the Supreme Court found that “the ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, and its calculus must embody an allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second decisions about the amount of force necessary in a particular situation.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/...-the-state-restrict-a-peaceful-protest/single

But what constitutes a reasonable time, place and manner restriction? "It depends on the context and circumstances," said Geoffrey Stone, a professor specializing in constitutional law at the University of Chicago. "Things like noise, blockage of ordinary uses of the place, blockage of traffic and destruction of property allow the government to regulate speakers."

 

[LogGrad98]

There are a lot of laws I don't think are Constitutional, including some that pertain to use of public spaces such as parks and streets, as well as university campuses. In these places the right to peaceably assemble and petition government for the redress of grievances is more important.

That is fine, you and every american have the right to disagree. But do you have the right to dictate which laws the police are supposed to enforce? I thought that was up to the supreme court. Do you think that protesters should be allowed to block whatever they want whenever they want regardless of the circumstances? Or does it depend on who is protesting what? That is why there are laws that govern those circumstances. The police need to follow some guideline. Otherwise, how do they enforce anything?

And these issues have come before the supreme court and have had an impact on the way the police plan for this type of thing, so it isn't like it has never been considered by the supreme court, or that the laws were drawn up in a vaccuum.

I am sure more will surface about this particular incident over the next weeks. It will be interesting to read details of the situation and see how it plays out in court. At this point I have a hard time saying if the force the police used (pepper spray) was extreme or not. Again, to me pepper spray seems like a first line of force or low level of force considering the other tools at the officer's disposal (night stick, taser, fists, gun, etc.)

It is interesting though how many people think that just because someone is protesting they are automatically within their rights no matter what they do, as long as they don't get "violent".

I wonder, would those of you being so vocal about automatically condemning the police be exactly so vocal in exactly the same way if you disagreed with the protest itself?