Occupying Wall Street?

[SephreniaRidesABroomstick]

I've just come across this occupation of Wall Street(]]www.thetruthdenied.com/news/2011/09/29/the-declaration-of-the-occupation-of-new-york-city/ link]]) but I really don't understand how it all started and what results it's meant to yield.

Can someone dumb it down for me? I'd like to understand it but as it appears to be already way under way, I've become kind of lost. It does all appear to be rather idealistic and hopeful (which is no bad thing!) and movements and rallies like this always seem to get beaten back down again by the state.

I'd like to know what, if anything, makes this one different to others.

chandellina I suspect 'they' might be talking about the more obviously disturbing aspects of global capitalism. The overthrow of capitalism is a valid political aim, but not one you might like.

alice it's not so much the validity of these aims which are being questioned - but their practicality and even desirability. Would the people who call for the end of capitalism really be prepared to give up much of what it gives them? After all - Consumerism is the new "opiate of the people". .

Sephrenia haven't you heard of Google?? An enemy of the people to be sure but quite darned handy in getting info.

chandellina really is quite embittered about people protesting. So either a) she's an ex lefty who's since sold out to the Man and is consumed by self loathing or b) is a victim of media propaganda deriding/diminishing whoever dares to rise up or c) has personal interests in delegitimising this movement.

Which one is it?

And jack, jack you seem quite alright but severely misguided in what capitalism has given us. Vast quantities of tat made in far flung sweat shops by exploited children and women? Anything made/done with only profit in mind is flawed. I don't buy that shit anyway.

'When I can be bothered (!) will seek out an extract from a book that debunks the whole "progressive" press myth. The Guardian has actually stifled alot of independent, truly left, radical voices.'

I would be interested in that book. I've always thought the same about the self-appointed 'progressives', 'building a progressive future'. Don't forget that it was the Guardian which 'enthusiastically' backed Nick Clegg and urged their readers to vote for him.

Check this out claig. The Guardian and your beloved Daily Mail are, I believe, in it together. Read carefully.

The Chatham House
www.chathamhouse.org.uk

Background & Membership: The UK's Chatham House, like the CFR and the Brookings Institute in America, has an extensive membership and is involved in coordinated planning, perception management, and the execution of its corporate membership's collective agenda.

Individual members populating its "senior panel of advisers" consist of the founders, CEOs, and chairmen of the Chatham House's corporate membership. Chatham's "experts" are generally plucked from the world of academia and their "recent publications" are generally used internally as well as published throughout Chatham's extensive list of member media corporations, as well as industry journals and medical journals. That Chatham House "experts" are submitting entries to medical journals is particularly alarming considering GlaxoSmithKline and Merck are both Chatham House corporate members.

No better example of this incredible conflict of interest can be given than the current Thai "red" color revolution being led by Chatham House's Amsterdam & Peroff with consistent support lent by other corporate members including the Economist, the Telegraph and the BBC.

In one case, the Telegraph printed, "Thai protests - analysis by Dr Gareth Price and Rosheen Kabraji," within which Price and Kabraji make a shameless attempt at defending the Western-backed, Maoist themed, violent protests. While the Telegraph mentioned that Price and Kabraji were both analysts for the Chatham House, they failed to tell readers that the Telegraph itself retains a corporate membership within the Chatham House as does the Thai protest leader's lobbyist, Robert Amsterdam and his Amsterdam & Peroff lobbying firm.

Notable Chatham House Major Corporate Members:

Amsterdam & Peroff
BBC
Bloomberg
Coca-Cola Great Britain
Economist
GlaxoSmithKline
Goldman Sachs International
HSBC Holdings plc
Lockheed Martin UK
Merck & Co Inc
Mitsubishi Corporation
Morgan Stanley
Royal Bank of Scotland
Saudi Petroleum Overseas Ltd
Standard Bank London Limited
Standard Chartered Bank
Tesco
Thomson Reuter
United States of America Embassy
Vodafone Group

Notable Chatham House Standard Corporate Members:

Amnesty International
BASF
Boeing UK
CBS News
Daily Mail and General Trust plc
De Beers Group Services UK Ltd
G3 Good Governance Group
Google
Guardian
Hess Ltd
Lloyd's of London
McGraw-Hill Companies
Prudential plc
Telegraph Media Group
Times Newspapers Ltd
World Bank Group

Notable Chatham House Corporate Partners:

British Petroleum
Chevron Ltd
Deutsche Bank
Exxon Mobil Corporation
Royal Dutch Shell
Statoil
Toshiba Corporation
Total Holdings UK Ltd
Unilever plc

Conclusion

These organizations represent the collective interests of the largest corporations on earth. They not only retain armies of policy wonks and researchers to articulate their agenda and form a consensus internally, but also use their massive accumulation of unwarranted influence in media, industry, and finance to manufacture a self-serving consensus internationally.

To believe that this corporate-financier oligarchy would subject their agenda and fate to the whims of the voting masses is naive at best. They have painstakingly ensured that no matter who gets into office, in whatever country, the guns, the oil, the wealth and the power keep flowing perpetually into their own hands. Nothing vindicates this poorly hidden reality better than a "liberal" Nobel Peace Prize wearing president, dutifully towing forward a myriad of "Neo-Con" wars, while starting yet another war in Libya.

Likewise, no matter how bloody your revolution is, if the above equation remains unchanged, and the corporate bottom lines left unscathed, nothing but the most superficial changes will have been made, and as is the case in Egypt with International Crisis Group stooge Mohamed ElBaradei worming his way into power, things may become substantially worse.

The real revolution will commence when we identify the above equation as the true brokers of power and when we begin systematically removing our dependence on them, and their influence on us from our daily lives. The global corporate-financier oligarchy needs us, we do not need them, independence from them is the key to our freedom.

For more information on alternative economics, getting self-sufficient and moving on without the parasitic, incompetent, globalist oligarchs:

The Lost Key to Real Revolution
Boycott the Globalists
Alternative Economics
Self-Sufficiency

Glasnost -none of your categorisations would apply to me. Maybe I have been more left in the past but there is plenty of left still in me. I also couldn't be deemed particularly to have sold out, as I make my living from monitoring the activities of some of the world's largest corporations, rather than working to further the aims of one. It is also wrong to say I'm bitter about people protesting or that I have any self-loathing about my current views.

Protest and the opportunity to do so are crucial to a healthy society. And on reflection, I do have a lot of sympathy for the motivation of a lot of the Wall Street protestors, which is that they've come out of university rearing to get into the workforce and can't find a job. I had that experience myself (though I was able to find retail work) and it is completely demoralising.

What I find silly is to make sweeping and uninformed judgements against the role of "the banks," "the government," "corporate interests" and the like.

I think most people want to work, want enough money to raise their family, want to enjoy access to credit to buy a house or start a business, and generally benefit from a democratic and capitalist system that encourages participation, aspiration and hard work.

I don't think all corporations (or governments) are evil, though there must be serious checks and balances - and for the most part there are - and I also support globalisation and its myriad of benefits for workers and consumers.

There are always abuses, but the "exploited workers" I've encountered in third-world countries making tat for the west are for the most part genuinely happy to get work and support their families. As I said, that is all most of us ultimately want.

Yes. I know the Daily Mail is not the whole truth and all of the media is part of the spin machine, and I disagree with lots of its positions. But I agree with some of them, too.

If you really want to understand the globalists etc., then you need to read the people on the right. They were talking about the Federal Reserve, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations etc. etc. for years and years, before any on the left discussed them. The left e.g. Chomsky say a lot of good, true things - but they miss a hell of a lot out.

I like the Daily Mail because it is one of the only papers that sometimes partially escapes the straighjacket and tells the public things about global warming or swine flu etc. that the other papers are not allowed to say. It does it because it knows its readership is sceptical and won't swallow the media line.

I followed your link to Chatham House and of course one of teh first things highlighted on the page was a conference on climate change.

www.chathamhouse.org/climatechange2011

I'm not surprised, the good, old global warming drum that the elite want to drum into the people. Read the thinkers on the right and they explain why.

If you read the page, you see all of the globalists' buzzwords
'global framework', 'global energy mix'
The globalists love stuff about 'global' and their favourite is 'global warming'

Just wanted to say I didn't write that conclustion in my Chatham house link.

David BetrayUS..ooh sorry I meant PETRAEUS ex commander in Iraq for the US Army and now head of the CIA is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. There really are some intriguing mixes of corporations, military, government, intelligence agencies, aren't there?

Maybe chandellina could enlighten us on this seeing as she "monitors" corporations for a living. The protests have a defining, unifying element which is revulsion and refusal of these dodgy ties and corrupt cronyism that's ruining our lives while keeping that 1% filthy rich and making it ever richer.

actually most people are doing just fine and their lives are not being ruined, i'm going now thanks.

There are a lot of these elite global institutions, such as the Club of Rome.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_rome

Rightwing thinkers discussed all of these institutions years and years ago, while most on the left were denying their existence.

The Club of Rome were early publishers of reports similar to today's green 'sustainability' agenda, talking of 'limits to growth'. Elites want to limit the growth of the people.

'In 1993, the Club published The First Global Revolution.[5] According to this book, divided nations require common enemies to unite them, "either a real one or else one invented for the purpose."[6] Because of the sudden absence of traditional enemies, "new enemies must be identified."[6] "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill....All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself."[7]'

It's not about capitalism, because we don't have real capitalism. Real capitalism requires free and fair competition between different players, and it requires laws, rules and regulations to prevent cartelism, monopolies and interest groups joing together to limit growth and stifle the free market.

Crony capitalism is not real capitalism.

'The real enemy then, is humanity itself'

That's what the elites think, and that is why they carry out their media "hearts and minds" propaganda campaigns to "change attitudes and behaviour" of the ordinary people.

If you read some of the eugenicist writings of the early Fabian socialists, such as George Bernard Shaw and HG Wells, you can see that nothing much has changed

I don't agree with many of teh objectives of teh people protesting in New York, but they are right about some of them. Good on them for trying to change things and doing something about it. That's what democracy is all about. As Edmund Burke said
'All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing',
and as Thomas Jefferson said
'the price of freedom is eternal vigilance'

All of the public have been ripped off by the bankers and we can probably expect more of the same, before the bankers are satisfied.

Protestors are on the whole well-intentioned people trying to stop the tide. That's why the elites and their media outfits try to ridicule them.

Brava claig! They are well intentioned.

Where we probably disagree fundamentally though is that as far as I'm concerned crony capitalism, casino capitalism, corporate capitalism all have ONE thing in common. They're capitalist. It's the very system that engenders these nefarious permutations because the logical conclusion of capitalism is its own self destruction. It's inherently illogical. I don't think there's a benign form of capitalism.

Viva la rivoluzione!

I can't quite go all that way, but I am sure we can agree on teh half-way mark

Viva il populo e il suo giornale, il 'Daily Mail'

Just for you I'll resort to emoticon speak with a hefty even though I hate the bloody things but seemed apt here. Daily Mail il giornale del popolo!!! Go on I'll give you another !

I knew you'd come round . It's the paper that the elites and New Labour love to hate. That's good enough for me.

But I might join you in singing 'Bella Ciao', one of the best and most moving political songs ever.

What does the DM make of the Tea Party movement? This is very interesting I think:

www.truth-out.org/top-five-reasons-why-occupy-wall-street-protests-embody-values-real-boston-tea-party/1317739240

Una mattina mi son svegliato..........

I sing it to my son. Antifascism is in the blood.

The occupation of The London Stock Exchange is on the 15th October?

It's a Saturday :o can't quite see who they're going to inconvenience