Occupy Wall Street - Page 111

On October 24 2011 23:46 aksfjh wrote:

Concern for your children can basically be equated to the same concern you would have for close friends. It is reinforced by the social community that we developed through evolution, but has less to do with preserving our own DNA. To use it as an excuse as to pick out who has better genetics is a huge fallacy.

On October 24 2011 23:46 aksfjh wrote:

Concern for your children can basically be equated to the same concern you would have for close friends. It is reinforced by the social community that we developed through evolution, but has less to do with preserving our own DNA. To use it as an excuse as to pick out who has better genetics is a huge fallacy.

On October 24 2011 23:50 Kiarip wrote:


No one has better genetics in this respect, only sociopaths/psychopaths who are deep outliars don't care about their children.

I'm not talking about one's abiltiy to give their children a better life, I'm simply talking a motivation in life, liek maternal/paternal instinct, that a lot of the time makes people put the wellfare of their kids above their own wellfare.

Few economists have been more correct about the economic crisis of the last several years than the proudly liberal Paul Krugman.

Krugman spotted the "liquidity trap" early on (since the problem with the economy was too much debt, cutting rates and creating easier money would not get us out of it).

Krugman shot down the hyperventilation about a coming hyper-inflation, arguing that the global labor glut would prevent easy credit from inflating wages.

Krugman quickly pronounced the Obama Administration's stimulus as far too small and said it would not get the job done.

Krugman scoffed at the idea that interest rates were about to skyrocket as our creditors decided en masse that we were so fiscally irresponsible that they couldn't possibly lend us any more money.

Krugman has been wrong about some things, but he has been right on all those counts.

Recently, Krugman has denounced the "austerity" push of the GOP, arguing that tackling our debt and deficit problem right now with spending cuts is the worst move we can make. Such cuts, Krugman argues, will put more people out of work and shrink the economy. And this, in turn, will increase, not decrease, the deficit.

Krugman thinks we should tackle the debt and deficit problem later, when the economy is on more solid footing. He points to record-low interest rates as a sign that the world is still willing to lend us as much money as we want, practically for nothing. And he argues that, instead of cutting back, we should be using that money to build infrastructure, strengthen the economy, and put more Americans back to work

On October 25 2011 00:10 aksfjh wrote:

Except most people put their needs before their children's in the long run. Does that mean that they don't make sacrifices for them? No, but when push comes to shove, most parents would rather secure their future over their children's. This is why so many college graduates are in debt instead of parents of college graduates.

On October 24 2011 23:50 Kiarip wrote:


No one has better genetics in this respect, only sociopaths/psychopaths who are deep outliars don't care about their children.

I'm not talking about one's abiltiy to give their children a better life, I'm simply talking a motivation in life, liek maternal/paternal instinct, that a lot of the time makes people put the wellfare of their kids above their own wellfare.

Protests and actions inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement proliferated around New York City this weekend one week after thousands of demonstrators made headlines around the world by taking over Times Square. While none of these actions had the size or the drama of last week’s convergence on Times Square, they did suggest the movement’s reach in New York is growing well beyond its base camp at Liberty Plaza.

On Friday, hundreds of protesters marched on the 28th police precinct in Harlem to voice their opposition to the NYPD’s “stop-and-frisk” policy. Thirty-two people were arrested after blocking the entrance to the precinct building including Princeton professor and activist Cornel West. In 2010, the NYPD recorded more than 600,000 stop-and-frisks. Black and Latino males are subject to 85 percent of these searches though only a small number lead to criminal charges or a summons.

Labor unionists and folk musicians were also on the march Friday. More than 500 unionized Verizon workers who struck for two weeks in August and their OWS supporters rallied outside Verizon headquarters in Lower Manhattan late Friday afternon and then marched to Liberty Plaza and then on down to the Stock Exchange, or at least as close as they could get. Later on Friday evening, legendary 92-year old folk singer Pete Seeger led a crowd of 1,000 people on a march through the Upper West Side from the Symphony Space on West 95th St. to Columbus Circle where he and other musicians including his grandson Tao Rodriguez Seeger and Arlo Guthrie led the crowd in singing “We Shall Overcome”. During the march to Columbus Circle, the younger Seeger “walked among the protesters playing songs…and others enlivened the night protest with the sounds of the accordion, banjos, and guitars,” according to one report.

Friday night also saw 500 parents and children camp out at Liberty Plaza in an area specially cordoned off for them. Activities included a sing-along, art projects, pizza, a bedtime story, even meditation. For more, see this report from Jessica Samakow of HuffPost. The event was organized by Parents for Occupy Wall Street.

Here are some of the actions that went off on Saturday:

*Hundreds of people marched from Union Square through Lower Manhattan as a part of the annual October 22 protest against police brutality.

*100 protesters - including 30 who took the bus up from Occupy Wall Street - rallied outside the New Canaan, CT home of General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt. Immelt has overseen layoffs of thousand of workers since the beginning of the recession and currently pulls down $21 million per year. He is also the head of President Obama’s “Jobs Council.”

*Occupy The Bronx held its second General Assembly on Saturday at Fordham Plaza. Before the Assembly, Sisters and Brothas United a Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition led a teach-in. The group’s Facebook page now has more than 700 followers…There are also growing Occupy groups in Brooklyn and Queens and on all the subways in between.

Tao Rodriguez-Seeger was halfway through Friday night's march down Broadway to support the Occupy Wall Street movement, a guitar strapped over his shoulder and his grandfather Pete Seeger at his side. Suddenly a New York City police officer stepped from the crowd and grabbed his elbow.

"Are you Tao Seeger?" the officer asked tersely. "Was this your idea? Did you think of this?"

Rodriguez-Seeger was certain arrest was imminent. The officer reached for his hand and he readied for the cuffs. Then something unexpected happened.

"He shook my hand and said, `Thank you, thank you. This is beautiful,'" Rodriguez-Seeger said. "That really did it for me. The cops recognized what we were about."

That moment affirmed the message that his grandfather has preached tirelessly across nine decades. The causes and movements have changed from time to time over 75 years, but his message has always been the same: Song is the key to understanding and change.

"Music does something to you," Rodriguez-Seeger said. "It can cross rivers of meaning that entire books can't get across. ... You take any one of Bob Dylan's songs and you get to the heart of the matter where it took Homer volumes and volumes of books to get to the same point."

Today, Pete Seeger is approaching the far end of a life lived walking hand in hand with American history, often at odds with the government that runs things. It failed to shut him up. The courts had no chance. Changing tastes and values? Never. Even time seems to have taken a step back in deference to the musical rabble-rouser's resolve and determination.

This time around, Seeger was carried along by two canes, not the sound of his banjo. But his presence, in a crowd of nearly 1,000 with guitar players and chanting sign-holders and police swirling around, gave the new protest movement something it seemed to lack over the last month.

A momentary clarity, longtime friend Guy Davis thinks. A purpose. A direction.

"It's his humanity," Davis said.

Seeger's voice first rose in the 1930s against Hitler. He met Woody Guthrie, Alan Lomax and Lead Belly, and began to advocate for migrant workers and miners in the 1940s. He stared down Sen. Joseph McCarthy and endured a blacklisting he simply shrugged away. In middle age, he was a key figure in the folk revival that produced Dylan and, later, the protests that helped shape modern America.

Seeger still takes delight in lending his presence to important things, even if his voice doesn't carry like it used to. He found himself attracted to the studied inorganization of the Wall Street protesters.

"Be wary of great leaders," he said Sunday in a phone interview full of songs and stories when asked what he identifies with in the Occupy Wall Street message. "Hope that there are many, many small leaders."

Other than the canes and snowy beard, Seeger hasn't changed much since he began singing out against fascism in the mid-1930s after dropping out of Harvard in frustration.

"The sociology professor said, `Don't think that you can change the world. The only thing you can do is study it,'" Seeger said. "... But this was 1937 and Hitler had taken power. He was murdering people and was ready to go to war."

You could say Seeger inherited his activism. His great-great grandfather came to America seeking self-determination after reading the Declaration of Independence. His great-grandfather was an abolitionist. His father was a socialist who spoke out against World War I.

His views didn't always make him popular. He was a member of the Communist Party, something he later apologized for. He was initially for staying out of World War II, but changed his mind when Hitler broke his nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union. He also spoke out against the war in Vietnam, a move that got him censored on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," and visited North Vietnam in 1972.

Seeger's influence is incalculable, however. He's the rare artist whose music and message transcends time, speaking to his children and their children and on and on.

The son of a musicologist and a violinist, he began leading others in song at 8 and was introduced to protest music around 12. Early on, he saw beauty and possibility in traditional songs often considered regional hokum or race records unfit for an upstanding white audience.

His message found an eager audience in the young generation of kids who would go on to define rock `n' roll, changing American and world culture in myriad ways. He introduced Martin Luther King Jr. to "We Shall Overcome." In his hands, songs like "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)" and "Turn, Turn, Turn!" became galvanizing anthems.

He remains a voice for the disenfranchised – the poor of Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta and victims of racism and greed.

Kira Moyer-Sims, a 19-year-old participant in the Occupy Wall Street movement, was introduced to Seeger's music on mix CDs from her high-school social studies teacher. Those songs, from a time that seems far away in the age of the iPod, spoke to her with modern urgency and helped push her into the protest ranks.

"Hearing this new music for me was huge and made me realize totally the importance of our nation's history and the fact that we can change it if we want to," she said. "Seeing Pete Seeger there in solidarity with the thing I've been living the past 38 days ... was phenomenal for me."

The idea of protesting for progressive change seemed to have gone out of vogue in the U.S. – or at least disappeared from public view. After the flower children moved on to mid-life and minivans, Americans turned their focus inward. Fewer people had time for simple songs with complex meanings.

Rodriguez-Seeger said he was attracted to the nascent Occupy Wall Street movement when he joined a support march two weeks ago in Las Vegas. He was drawn to the anti-establishment message but noticed immediately that something was missing.

"I saw a lot of people getting angry at us for marching, getting out of their SUVs and giving us the finger and screaming obscenities" and using anti-gay slurs, Rodriguez-Seeger said. "I thought, if we were singing right now my gut tells me they'd be less inclined to behave like that because it's very difficult when you're hearing music to get that angry."

Davis, a 59-year-old Bronx bluesman who has been friends with the Seegers for 50 years, saw more than a little something of the grandfather in the grandson when he looked over at the pair Friday night. Rodriguez-Seeger helped organize the march, which came together in 30 hours and was driven for the most part by social-media sites like Twitter, Facebook and now YouTube, where dozens of videos mark the night.

"Pete is seeing his life come to fruition," Davis said. "He is seeing the fruits of his labors. All the years he invested in Tao, all the years I used to see him take Tao around when Tao was just a teenager, have paid off beautifully."

And the grandfather doesn't mind the fact that a new generation of Seegers is lifting its voice, even as he gladly slides into the background. Pete Seeger, in fact, says he's a little bemused by all the attention.

"Of course it's a great honor, but I'd just as soon be anonymous," he said. He would like to go down to Zuccotti Park, the heart of the movement, but he hopes he can just do it on the sly without the star power. Maybe next week on Halloween. "I won't be recognized," he muses. "Everybody will be in costume."

On October 25 2011 00:08 TanGeng wrote:


Concern for children is far stronger than concern for community, and that instinct and associated social values is about preserving one's own DNA at its base.
I don't know where you are coming from with these assertions or how you are jumping into the idea of picking better genetics.

On October 25 2011 00:12 BioNova wrote:
David Frum speaking about Paul Krugman and what we need to fix the problem. I'm not in agreement.



Source

On October 24 2011 23:45 Kiarip wrote:

I'm simply stating the obvious that most of those in the "99%" would probably prefer to be in the "1%" and they're not... that's all. I'm not making a conclusion of whether it's because they're not as good, or not as lucky, or whether it's because they don't believe in santa clause... I'm just stating the premises of what is normally considered social darwinism, not its consequences.

On October 25 2011 00:47 semantics wrote:

So would you say that adopted children are loved less?

PORTLAND — Occupy Maine protesters say Sunday morning's attack with a chemical explosive has left them with a mixture of anxiety and resolve.

"We are more motivated to keep doing what we're doing," said Stephanie Wilburn, of Portland, who was sitting near where the chemical mixture in a Gatorade bottle was tossed at 4 a.m. Sunday. "They have heard us and we're making a difference."

Wilburn said she was startled and briefly lost hearing in her left ear when the device exploded beneath a table about 10 feet away. Wilburn's hearing returned and police said no injuries were reported.

Portland police Sgt. Glen McGary said the bomb was thrown into the camp’s kitchen, a tarped area where food is cooked and served. Protest organizers said the explosion lifted a large table about a foot off the ground.

"There was no fire . . . We had a good 20 feet of thick smoke rolling out from under the table," Wilburn said. They could see the "G" on the 24-ounce bottle and its orange cap, as well as bits of silver metal, she said.

On October 25 2011 02:12 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
PORTLAND — Occupy Maine protesters say Sunday morning's attack with a chemical explosive has left them with a mixture of anxiety and resolve.

"We are more motivated to keep doing what we're doing," said Stephanie Wilburn, of Portland, who was sitting near where the chemical mixture in a Gatorade bottle was tossed at 4 a.m. Sunday. "They have heard us and we're making a difference."

Wilburn said she was startled and briefly lost hearing in her left ear when the device exploded beneath a table about 10 feet away. Wilburn's hearing returned and police said no injuries were reported.

Portland police Sgt. Glen McGary said the bomb was thrown into the camp’s kitchen, a tarped area where food is cooked and served. Protest organizers said the explosion lifted a large table about a foot off the ground.

"There was no fire . . . We had a good 20 feet of thick smoke rolling out from under the table," Wilburn said. They could see the "G" on the 24-ounce bottle and its orange cap, as well as bits of silver metal, she said.

On October 25 2011 00:53 H0i wrote:


This might be obvious for you from your selfish greedy point of view, but it's nothing like that. Have you even talked with some of the people in the movement? They don't want to be in the 1%! They want fairness for everyone, they don't want to live in a world where billions suffer because a few people have nearly all the wealth!

They're not protesting because they want to be in the 1%, they're protesting because the 1% is ruining it for everyone. They're not protesting mainly because they can't afford student loans or things like that... they're not just protesting because they individually feel they need to, they're doing this for everyone!

On October 25 2011 00:10 aksfjh wrote:

Except most people put their needs before their children's in the long run. Does that mean that they don't make sacrifices for them? No, but when push comes to shove, most parents would rather secure their future over their children's. This is why so many college graduates are in debt instead of parents of college graduates.

On October 25 2011 03:42 Kiarip wrote:



Ok, the point is they want more stuff than they currently have... How's that? I guess I misphrased it, the entire problem with the 99% vs 1% thing is that if you remove the top 1% there's just going to be another top 1%, maybe they don't necessarily want to be part of the 1% for the sake of having mroe stuff than the other 99% of the people, but they just want more stuff in general.