a question:

you know that the democrats and republicans don't want to reform the financial sector and want to keep it going like it is.
you have a two party system. what are your options to change it?

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HOCKEY IS BACK!

a mass movement. there is no other way. money controls everything at the moment and money drives decisions. the whole "republican vs democrat" was a fallacy from the start, perpetuated by the businesses that support one or the other. now it's almost impossible to get away from.

I follow US-media (TV and newspapers) for a few years now. correct me If I am wrong, but I have the feeling that the mainstream media is in the hand of the two parties; there is not much information any more;

it's very hard to creat such a mass movement with so little support of the media...
I hope they/you don't give up.

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HOCKEY IS BACK!

The mainstream media is absolutely in the hands of the parties.

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Wheelhouse

how is this justifiable? i don't see any tents. there are reports on reports of police brutality, and this one there are dozens of videos and sources where there was NO PREEMPTIVE ACTION to deserve this. this is like an execution line. he's walking up and down a line of people sitting with their heads down. he isn't worried about shit. the media tried to spin this to say the students surrounded the cops and cut off their support. then the media tried to say that the UC Davis dean was in trouble for her life when she was meeting about the above incident. then video surfaced proving the media was lying through their freakin teeth and trying to discredit everything because they could. so the dean gives this cop a paid vacation.

media spin started the spanish american war, too...remember the MAINE.

and how stupid is that guy to spray like that right in front of a damn video camera?

you bet your ass i'd be arrested if i saw that, i'd empty the can in his eyeballs. that's bullshit. my great grandparents, grandparents, uncles, and family friends did NOT serve in the military and protect our constitution and way of life to see this kind of bullshit in a non-violent protest ON OUR OWN SOIL. embarrassing.

Really...there is zero contextual setting which makes this picture 'ok'.

And what a dumb-ass cop, does he really think there will be no repercussions for assaulting unarmed citizens like this? This is the type of shit that makes me want to be a libertarian, not taxes, but 'authority figures' who think they are above the law.

Pat - I never said that it was OK, what the cops did. I don't think it was. I'm discussing the "occupy" movement.

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i know, but your arguments are what some of those people use. i'm not mad at you or anything. just providing other related counterpoints, i guess.

Remove business from politics. It sounds simple until you try to take away politicians free money. I saw something that like 40% of the Senate have their yearly salary above 1 million dollars. Seems a bit much to me but what do I, a lowly peasent, know anything about realistic income amounts for political figures. Seems as though enjoying the perks of being a federal employee is not enough.

Again...playing devil's advocate here - escalation of force.

If you ask and they don't move, you escalate to telling them. If you tell them to move and they don't, you forcefully move them. If they're immovable, well, this is where he went with it.

Also - I really hope this picture shows up:

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IMO, the only time an "occupy" movement will succeed is when it becomes a full-fledged takeover.

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So I clicked on a link at the bottom of this thread. I don't think I've ever done that before (except for the Philipino brides ad, of course!). It was for Alan Grayson, who I've never heard of before now. He's a Dem, but the video I watched was him reading an Eisenhour speech verbatim. It's pretty fucking relevant to this day, if you ask me. (And I didn't even vote for Ike!!!)

Anyway, there are obvious libertarian vibes, so I figured this would be a good place for it.

I'll spare you Grayson's speech. Here's the text.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dwight_D._ ... .281953.29

No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice. ... No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. ... Is there no other way the world may live?
A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.
The free world knows, out of the bitter wisdom of experience, that vigilance and sacrifice are the price of liberty.
This we do know: a world that begins to witness the rebirth of trust among nations can find its way to a peace that is neither partial nor punitive. With all who will work in good faith toward such a peace, we are ready, with renewed resolve, to strive to redeem the near-lost hopes of our day.
The details of such disarmament programs are manifestly critical and complex. Neither the United States nor any other nation can properly claim to possess a perfect, immutable formula. But the formula matters less than the faith -- the good faith without which no formula can work justly and effectively. The fruit of success in all these tasks would present the world with the greatest task, and the greatest opportunity, of all. It is this: the dedication of the energies, the resources, and the imaginations of all peaceful nations to a new kind of war. This would be a declared total war, not upon any human enemy but upon the brute forces of poverty and need. The peace we seek, founded upon decent trust and cooperative effort among nations, can be fortified, not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton, by milk and by wool, by meat and timber and rice. These are words that translate into every language on earth. These are the needs that challenge this world in arms.

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This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
--Emerson

you can't kick students out of a common area at a college they pay tuition to be at.

You sure the fuck can when they're preventing students and staff from getting to school or work by blocking public areas.

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they weren't impeding anyone's progress.

I suppose we're reading conflicting accounts. If they're blocking access, appropriate force was used. If they weren't, then the cop was as fucked up as a football bat.

I tend to believe they were blocking, just because of the way their arms are linked across a sidewalk. Granted, you can walk the fuck around, but......

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i read somewhere, i'm not sure if it's true, that it is legitimately illegal to use pepper spray on peaceful protesters. i also know this guy shouldn't be on paid vacation for this bullshit. these kids are lined up and sitting down with arms at their sides, and he's treating it like an execution line. bullshit.

i don't trust much of the media on this specific story, (or usually) because the media reported there was violence and that's why pepper spray was used, and these students were "actively" threatening the officers by encircling them. but all the pictures blow that shit out of the water.

i've got to say it's really weird only about 3 of us are talking about this.

This is a campus cop showing authority rather than doing what was needed. Campus police are known for exercising muscle to get the "respect" they think they deserve instead of acting in accordance with morality and common sense. If you watch that show Campus Police you can see other examples of some fat pseudo-cop acting more like Farva from Super Troopers than a real cop. It takes brains and compassion to be a cop, not just a baton, pepper spray and a tazer. I would hope that this guy and his buddies that let this happen get fired. Law and order have no room for some cowboy with daddy issues and a badge pumping peaceful demonstrators in the face....giggity.

From the news reports their was nothing that would make this okay IMO.

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