I passed a notice on a wall as I was coming in to work this morning that read, “Occupy Melbourne”. They are apparently opposed to greed. No doubt the demonstration will be in favour of taking from the productive with redistribution towards the mendicant class, ie themselves. There are no doubt such movements popping up everywhere across Australia and the world, just as they have popped up everywhere across the US following the Occupy Wall Street “protest”. Amongst the strongest characteristics of anti-Americans is how slavishly they follow every American trend on the left. Here is yet another example.
Once again I am reminded that the left does not argue from reason but from sentiment. There is nothing there. It is all at the bumper sticker level of depth and sophistication. There must be some definition of greed, for example, that I might subscribe to – such as when applied to any of these “socialist” Presidents-for-life who squirrel away hundreds of millions, sometimes literally billions, in foreign bank accounts while their populations sink into poverty. But an actual ability to argue out a point, of this there is next to nothing. Whenever representatives of the people with the sentiments of the brain dead who show up at these protests actually take power, the misery that follows is unparalleled. That they never learn from history is just another part of the syndrome.
These people can know nothing at all about how things work, how economies create wealth or how individuals become free and more secure. They just wish to describe those who have earned incomes through running a business as a per se definition of greed. The aim is to take their wealth and give it to someone else, with themselves at the top of the list of the deserving.
We shall see where this goes, but it is a not a good sign for the future.
Update: Who knows. I might yet warm up to Herman Cain. He is the only one on the Republican side who is saying anything hard line on the Occupy Wall Street mobs, at least so far as I have heard reported, and he is saying the right sorts of things in just the right sort of way.
Republican presidential contender Herman Cain amplified his criticism Sunday of the growing Occupy Wall Street movement, calling the protesters ‘jealous’ Americans who ‘play the victim card’ and want to ‘take somebody else’s’ Cadillac….
Cain, surging in popularity among many conservatives, seems to have had among the most virulent responses to the protests.
On CBS, Cain suggested that the rallies had been organized by labor unions to serve as a ‘distraction so that many people won’t focus on the failed policies of the Obama administration.’
The banking and financial services industries aren’t responsible for those policies, Cain said. ‘To protest Wall Street and the bankers is basically saying you’re anti-capitalism,’ he said.
My very thoughts.
The Australian left: still apeing the American left after all these years.
I don’t think it matter much Steve. Every one ignores asshats like this.
Screw them.
Part of the problem, I think, is a culture of protest. This exists independently of the specifics of the protest. Protests are exciting. You’re part of a large crowd who share a common cause, there is certainty and a sense of belonging; and you’ve identified a “Them” – an other – that you can all hate on.
For many young participants, these protests may be the most interesting, significant thing that’s happened in their lives; or at least, it will certainly feel that way.
DD is right about a culture of protest – and the youthful excitement of being against something.
Iconic poster for a new generation:
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/322370.php
Have you checked out their FB page? http://www.facebook.com/occupymelb?ref=ts
In Australia this will just be the permanent protesters that hang out in the CBD of every major city on a Friday night.
While the folks here wouldn’t agree with them in a lot of ways they, like the Tea Party, show that we are in a free society.
After 80+ years of babbling this stuff and support declining though, it’s really not that important.
Also, the irony that this is largely being organised on Facebook and on Smartphones is just wonderful. Perhaps it would be profitable to design some t-shirts and flog them?
The funny thing about the Occupanties is that they’re saying big corporations control governments and they want government to do something about it, damn it!
From the facebook manifesto
“Isn’t Australia being illegally occupied already?
Is certainly is. ”
Wonder which country all these people are going to
move to then??
It’s a form of primitivism, just like the green movement. They want to return the world to an idyllic, pre-modern state.
Because modernity is crass and ugly and smoky and is all about cars and picket fences and greed and useless gadgets that people don’t need anyway.
Students
Wildly
Indignant about
Nearly
Everything
Hzhousewife, that strikes me as extremely offensive; it seems to be denying my right to identify and be accepted as an unhyphenated Australian. Do you think I could sue them for racism?
Too true. Look at how right-leaning Australians are labelled “Tea Partiers” by the antipodean Left. I guess they don’t see the irony of applying that label to (mostly) monarchist conservatives.
lol
(but they’e POOR – you won’t get a penny !)
productive with redistribution towards the mendicant class. lolollololol. you typing this with a straight face? lololol
So whats the trend smartipants? Is wealth going up or down? lol.
What figure are you tories happy with? How far is too far? top 20% own 60% (Aus)? 70%? 84% (USA)? 90%? 99.999999999%? Corporate fascism?
This is at best a stream of consciousness.
The US protests are based on disappointment in government for its’ inability to find any solution to the economic slump that has claimed millions of jobs.
Sure, it’s unfocussed and filled with people who are not nicely dressed but the underlying dissatisfaction in the disastrous policy of austerity over the last 12 months is a clear basis for the protests. People are angry that the administration’s policies are not focused on improving the situation.
People are upset that the administration is not focusing, with laser-like attention, on the cruelty that has been inflicted on millions through unemployment.
And, yes, for failing to deliver a stimulus that could solve the problem. Lack of regulation delivered the asset bubbles that lead to the 2008 financial crisis. The austerity that is touted as a ‘solution’ only magnifies the suffering and misery of the unemployed.
Those claiming austerity as a solution have responsibility for the millions of unemployed on their shoulders.
For many years now I have been strongly opposed to Melbourne and I think it is about time people took to the streets to protest about it. Why can’t Melbourne be warm? I’m in Brisbane this week and nobody here is protesting.
pray for rain
Rain on it’s own won’t do much good. Pray for soap as well. Or disinfectant.
Umm this isn’t the UK, at least try to update your boilerplate talking points to reflect the current situation, not the last one. Unless you’re actually trying to suggest that the US is currently undergoing “austerity”, which if true is highly amusing.
No what this is, is a bunch of bored, pampered and spoiled upper middle class college students wishing to give their nihilistic lives meaning and have fallen in under the direction of a bunch of radical leftist extremist groups and various democrat controlled unions doing what they always do: throwing shit at “big evil corporations” and “the rich”.
The broad left will align itself with this mob at their peril.
unfair. these protestors are from the educated middle class.
george wallace once asserted that the only four letter words of which hippies did not know were w-o-r-k and s-o-a-p.
twostix is right abour the previous protests in the city of london during a 2009 G20 meeting.
must have been quickly forgotten
I (an I suspect Mark P) was referring to the recent government and student protests against cutbacks in the UK, like this charming one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmudJafnQh0&feature=relmfu
I shouldn’t have to tell you what you already ought to know. If you don’t know there was not a stimulus in the US, and gross government spending is now falling, then there’s not much I can do.
Id prefer to occupy Brisbane. It’s warmer here.
“They just wish to describe those who have earned incomes through running a business as a per se definition of greed”
Umm… isn’t the very point of such protests to show that profits were made in a situation where risks were socailised while profits privatised (eg. banking)? Their definition is greed is taking profits without taking the risks.
Do you really think protesters are unhappy about business owners earning profits as a result of their hard work?
Sod off swampy!
good point Mark P.
the usual suspects at anticapitalist riots would go to the austerity protests of the educated middle class in training (university students) and hijack them
Yes.
Did MacDonalds get a bailout Cameron? If not, why are they always the first to get their windows smashed in when the ferals get their riot on?
Refreshing comment. This strange attempt to somehow equate looters in the UK to legitimate protesters in the US is naked propaganda.
Of course the protests have fringe elements and are unfocussed with people who aren’t elegantly dressed. Or, according to this blog, require ‘soap’. The basic thought underlying it all for anyone who cares to even undertake a cursory look is: “The banks got billions and now I’m out of a job.”
It anyone really thinks the unemployed are ‘dole bludgers’ and responsible for their situation at 9.1% unemployment, then put your hand up.
The majority of the people protesting are not unemployed Mark.
They are the same professional leftists who protest everything. It’s not some mass movement of the poor.
Did you say there was *not* “stimulus” spending in the US??
Or are you using some arcane self-defined definition of “stimulus”.
Either way you’re out of your mind.
They are exactly the same groups of fringe left extremists, PSU’s, college students and professional leftists.
They dress that way because they’re part of a ideological group. It’s not 1930 anymore, there’s no “working poor” who can’t afford decent clothing taking to the streets. It’s wealthy middle class urban college kids, union thugs and extremist leftists.
But by all means, align yourself with them, it just makes the broad left even less palatable to decent people.
No, you simply do not know the facts. State and local spending cuts offset federal stimulus, so overall spending growth was no more than pre-GFC trends.
Also that wasn’t a video of “looters” it was a video of “students” protesting Austerity in the UK and smashing the Tory headquarters up.
You’re the one who tried to link the two events, I just showed the outcome of the last one and what the outcome of this one will inevitably be.
Aaah, so an arcane self-defined version of the word.
Thanks.
How do you define government spending?
Mark,
Is that a trick question?
But the rules they set doesn’t apply to them.
lol.. Don’t they just hate progress.
Possibly that’s part of it, but I suspect it’s mostly the usual anti-capitalist suspects. If they were just objecting to the government bailing out banks (one point I’d agree with BTW), then they should occupy the white house, not Wall Street, and they’d have no business in Melbourne because as far as I know, no banks here were bailed out with taxpayer funds.
So yeah, my money is on miscellaneous iPhone carrying, Nike wearing anti-capitalist riff-raff, Maybe a core anarchist fringe as well – thouhg it would have to be some pretty thick anarchists if they’re protesting for more government spending!
What you described was the TEA party.
Yes. You are ignorant of the American left and the rhetoric that the people organising and supporting the OWS mob use.
They are exactly the same groups of fringe left extremists, PSU’s, college students and professional leftists.
Do you or any of the others making similar assertions here have any evidence whatsoever to back up your claims?
No, it’s a sensible one.
I repeat – if you look at gross government spending, state, local and federal, there was no stimulus.
If you need confirmation, go to the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis and check out their excellent charting and statistical tools.
If you define spending impacts on an economy by looking at just one level of government, then say it straight out.
Normal, rational people when talking about the various stimulus packages are talking about the various governments the world over borrowing and printing billions and trillions of dollars. Something the US federal government did with joy.
They even setup websites where you can follow all that money being shoveled into politically beneficial areas.
You may wish to redefine the word in your own way and claim that there was “no stimulus” because it wasn’t what you personally wanted, but just because you wish something was so, doesn’t make it so.
Why would I do that, you ignoramus? The so-called stimulus came from Washington which at the time was controlled by the Demolition party. Nearly all the money was directed to their own constituencies so it wouldn’t shock me in the least that while the Feds were funneling money to Demolitionists at the local level most of States and locals were cutting spending.
Net result… bullshit stimulus and more debt at the federal level.
I’ll take your word for it that what I’m suggesting actually happened.
Yep.
Nearly all the federal stimulus was spent to save the skins of Odumbo’s constituencies, which is why he should be thrown out on his arse come the 12 election, as he’s a lying untalented, leftwing lying sack of shit.
Twostix..
Can I suggest a small edit?
This
Should read:
They even setup websites where you can follow all that money being shoveled into politically beneficial areas for the Demolition party.. which is why they got a severe kicking in the mid term elections.
Ah. So the new apologia for the failure of the Keynesian stimulus is that there was no Keynesian stimulus.
Lol… yea… that’s the new mantra from “centrists” like MarkyP.
Thankyou for confirming facts do not matter.
There wasn’t, and now there’s austerity.
If the Occupy Wall St turds are protesting bank bail outs I can only hope that Occupy Melbourne types will be protesting primary schools and suburban roof insulations.
Mark P is a space cadet with the long leftists trusted bio-neural regenerative metaphasic shields.
Facts and rational multiphase consequential cannot penetrate and therefore a rebuttal is deemed unnecessary as evidenced in his ‘response’ to to twostix.
Leftists reside in a parallel universe where the meaning of english and commonly used terms is ‘relative’.
Relative to lies, damn lies, statistics using data points from anywhere that could superficially be construed to deny the bleedin’ obvious.
What Austerity?
Oh good grief it’s been entirely seeded from the extreme left boards: the hard left were and are the first to show up at every “occupation”. Normal people don’t go “occupy” a street corner all of a sudden and then start forming “citizen assemblies” – that’s entirely the terminology of commies.
This is all mundane stuff go follow some hard left blogs, it’s “their” tea party and they’re salivating that it’s their chance for “revolution”. Now the unions are on board and the rest is self evident.
Facts do matter. markP. Your swill doesn’t.
You stupid evidence does nothing to prove my assertion to be incorrect… you centrist you.
I understand the anger and frustration at being proven wrong. What you have been fed about US stimulus is completely incorrect. There was none.
As I have said ad nauseum, but clearly need to repeat is state and local cuts offset federal spending. If anyone would care to post the chart proving there was no stimulus in the US, and has now been replaced by austerity, then please go ahead before more commenters embarrass themselves.
Otherwise, I’m just going to sit back and enjoy the show.
You think so? You think he’s a cadet. Personally I reckon he’s not even smart enough to be a space cadet. He’s just an leftir idiot pretending his legs are either side of the fence. As though that swill would bamboozle anyone here.
That’s what I find most offensive. He thinks he can pull the wool over our eyes.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rlSBe8sDsNE/TlbYHXuStkI/AAAAAAAAAEw/BdxYymDL60k/s1600/ey ED-AO137A_1budg_G_20110824191803.jpg
Hey Mark p, if only the Feds had wasted even more in ono-stimulus stimulus spending why there wouldn’t even need to be a techical recession
Dickhead, MarkP, Centrist,
You understand the US is running a deficit to GDP of around 10%? How in god’s name is that anything but expansionary, you fucking imbecile. These sorts of deficit levels are unprecedented and not even Keynes himself would be advocating that sort of level.
Go away or stop being a fucking moron.
non-stimulus stimulus spending – damn dyslexia!
No it will be exactly the same US left rhetoric, exactly the same message and *exactly the same people* – useful idiot urban uni-students and a smattering of greying, outmoded commies and a contingent of opportunistic radical leftists ranting and raving on about evil corporations, how they “represent” everyone while the Socialist Alliance, other radical left organisations (and if anybody bothers to turn up) various unions hand out signs and posters.
A green or two will turn up, rant about the evil corporations, the evil murdoch and the evil Tony Abbott and that’ll be that.
They could even save the time and not turn up. That stuff is pretty boiler plate these days and could just run it as a recorded message.
Masturbating in front of the mirror again, Mark P?
They’re also cynically co-opting the imagery of the Tea Party movement – that they condemned the Tea partiers for using because of its “uncivil” tone:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/09/1024213/-The-American-Dream-renewed-by-OccupyWallStreet?via=blog_1
The left can’t even come up with their own protest imagery anymore.
$64,000 question though, will the Occupuppy Melbournies also target Max Brenner shop and Westfield? Double the target for extra pleasure.
Sorry, I don’t respond to profanity.
Mark P a reincarnation of Kennedy?
Thankyou. I’m not a fan of Castro, so I will take the compliment.
Who cares? Post a stupid twerpy leftwing comment and get ready to be clipped over the head.
No response is necessary and in fact it isn’t advisable, as all you’re doing is bringing more attention to your stupidity.
Well, if you think that spending less is somehow expansionary, you certainly need to be taught a lesson.
When you have the facts and can debate without resorting to name calling, I’ll engage.
MarkP says…
Oh oh look people. Even though the Odumbo administration of misfits, mediocrities and liars spent $1 trillion on things they thought it would help the Demoltionist Party it reary reary didn’t have much affect on the economy… Isn’t that interesting?
Dickhead.
Fuck you’re moron. The US Deficit is around $1.3 trillion. There is nothing contractionary about that,. you fucking idiot. In fact it’s massively expansionary to use a Keynsista term. Also the State overall are still in deficit.
Please fuck off. And stop the pansified bullshit.
What you don’t appreciate JC is that the nonstimulus stimulus was simply not nearly enough.
If they spent $4 trillion there may not even have been a recession in 2009.
Spend $8 trillion and everyone coulda taken the year off and had a holiday.
Just think of the multiplier effect…….
Mark P says,
to wit Hermann Cain (in the WSJ) replies,
How can you prove there was “no stimulus”. Every chart of US Federal spending goes vertical in 2008.
You’ve simply defined the term to suit your own political wishes and now demand that the entire world adjust.
Not going to happen.
You had better take your “no stimulus” rage up with the White House though, because they’re fairly sure that they had one:
White House: Stimulus funded 3 million jobs
White House: Stimulus created nearly 1 million jobs in South
White House: Stimulus Law Working as Promised
P.S It would appear that you are the show.
What don’t you agree with Hermie’s point, Rexinald?
You have idiots at the Wall street leftie convention whining they have huge student loan debt because they studied art history.
It doesn’t seem to me that anyone has refuted MarkP’s claim that total government spending did not increase post-GFC.
It would seem pretty central to do so, if poo-pooing MarkP is what you want to do.
Arguing that the Fed spend went to projects deemed beneficial to the Dems is irrelevant. Was there an increase in total Govt spending or not?
If not… no stimulus, right?
Umm, maybe the part where he is proposing adding 9% of direct tax to people who presently pay no tax.
That sort of makes it harder to work up from the very bottom.
Yes I have FDB.
It’s just that you don’t comprehend well enough to underhand.
Let me repeat it for you. Maintaining a deficit of around 10% of GDP each year is stimulatory in the Keynesian sense.
What you and the hard boiled egg for a brain don’t seem to understand is that just because there was a cut from x to y in state and local spend doesn’t mean the total US fiscal position isn’t still on an expansionary bias.
What you and the egg also don’t understand the relative interplay fiscal policy has with where monetary policy has been at recently.
MarkP is an eggnog and you’re just as ignorant to be listening to the leftist twerp.
Anyone who suggests that Federal spending at 8 to 10% deficit with state and local spending also in deficit is not stimulatory needs psychiatric treatment.
You also need to compare fiscal to where the economy was and is now too to get a better gauge.
Stick to bongos.
oops… understand.
Exactly. You will now see them all trying to slip and slide around the facts. Spending cuts are not really spending cuts as a % of this or that.
The fact is, US spending is now contractionary (aka austerity) with the resulting stall in the recovery and a disgracefully high unemployement rate.
Way to go, Austrians.
Mark P could you give a brief summary of:
1. What you think should be done to solve the US austerity problem.
2. What would be the circumstances of a failing/failed monetary policy.
BTW a ‘Kennedy’ posted here for a while with similar views to your own.
MarkP
Why are you discussing macro economics when you have absolutely no understanding of topic and to top it off, influencing feeble minds like FDB?
Why?
US fiscal policy has not contracted at all you moron.
Spending is still on the same trajectory. Receipts however are a little better because the economy isn’t in as big a hole as it was in 08 and 09 so the deficit has come down a smidgeon in the the three lawyers.
Stop talking crap you don’t understand.
Apologize to FDB for misleading the idiot
No Kennedy was an Ideological MMT’er.
MarkP is just a moron. Big difference.
There has not been a contraction in US spending, MarkP. The narrowing has been disguised through slightly better tax receipts.
You understand now, you twobit loon.
And I’m the moron?
YES you are a total and complete moron, with lashings of idiocy.
Sorry, I posted too soon.
If you don’t understand the difference between spending and tax receipts, I’m afraid there’s not much I can do to help.
Here are federal government tax receipts.
Here total state government debt. Still rising.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/SLGSDODNS
Thank the blue states.
“By Jove! I think she’s got it“
Dickhead
You said there was a contraction in the US fiscal position. There has NOT been as Spending continues to go higher.
I do understand the difference.
It’s you that doesn’t understand the dynamics of what is going on, you mental midget.
Now fuck off and stop wasting everyone’s time.
Next time you make a claim post the evidence as you have no cred.
To augment what I have been saying, if you don’t understand the difference between total government expenditures and federal, there’s not much I can do to help.
State government tax collections.
going down
I mentioned earlier it would be interesting to watch the show, but on reflection, it really wasn’t.
To augment your deceit, Mark P
Here is your same ‘graph’ annualised since Jan 2009
Mark P an utterly dishonest leftist, willing to bend however fancifully any data points to superficially give support to his left drivel activism.
Now. Rack off!
No James
Markpee is a centrist, as we’ve seen since he’s been posting his leftist swill here.
An honest to goodness centrist.
Thankyou for reposting my graph. Not for the irrelevancies. What was your specific issue with the data?
@Jc / JC ?
Facts are not swill.
I have put up with insane commentary, literally. I’m getting tired out by the absence of fact based discussion here, and perhaps I’m demeaning myself by responding to the ridiculousness.
@Jc / JC ?
Facts are not swill.
I have put up with insane commentary, literally. I’m getting tired out by the absence of fact based discussion here, and perhaps I’m demeaning myself by responding to the ridiculousness.
The graph doesn’t say what you say it says.
At best the marked increase in real government spending is trending back on a quarterly analysis, whilst on a yearly its still trending up steeply.
I posted the link after annualising it but it obviously reverted back.
It’s easily done manually.
Not that any of that is necessary.
You have an infantilely mistaken interpretation of that graph.
An negative quarterly trend line on the background of YOUR graph showing marked increasing ‘real’ government spending does not equal “contraction’.
Not unless you want to use MarkP-redefined macroeconomic terms, you T0sser.
You are a liar Mark P. And in my short time on this site, clearly an inveterate one.
You are posting swill pee. Always have.
To suggest the US is contracting it’s finances is pure swill.
And one other thing Mr. Keynes
Keynesian fiscal policy is supposed to be counter cyclical in a nature.
Seeing the US has been growing for the past 18 months you may want to discuss how you justify running a deficit of 10% of GDP now when it ought to be a surplus when GDP scores positive?
If don’t wish to respond then fuck off as it’s no great loss. No one gives a shit.
And spineless too.
To attempt to refute it without linking to a reputable graph or even making an argument is lazy and thoroughly unconvincing.
Huh? Negative spending growth does not equal contraction? OK. My last response to you.
And my last response to you.
I guess facts simply do not matter if you have already concluded you are right.
JC linked to data. If you think the data is wrong, the ball’s in your court.
JC already did that. But if it didn’t, perhaps you can explain why total US debt has climbed from 10 trillion to 14 trillion under Obama. It would be tricky to blow your debt position out while cutting spending.
Given the charts, given the exploding debt, announcing that the US has contracted spending is rather like explaining that the moon is hexagonal.
Oh Fuck, this is impossible with people like you.
Here. Go here FDB.
Now go to Observation date range.
Now stick a beginning year for the chart starting say at a nice round year like 2000. The key in 2011.
Tab annual
Plot the Chart.
Show us where there is any contraction in US spending, you dummy. It’s still going straight up.
It’s MarKpee’s own link smoothed out annually like James did earlier.
Don’t get taken in by this thorough idiot.
Sorry, you just don’t have any credibility in the face of the facts.
Says the Keynesian centrist. You’re perhaps the biggest clown here Pee. You can only get beaten by FDB if he continues to agree with you.
Fuck off Mark P.
You’re a charlatan carpetbaggin’ leftist activist.
You lie.
When caught, you’re brazen, presumably only in the hope that there are some fools that moght think this is a mere ideological disagreement.
It is not.
You are a liar.
You are a pathetically shameless nut
@ James,
If you have a legitimate gripe with the data, let’s hear it.
@FDB – you see how the arguments go.
1. Insane hypothesis.
2. Data.
3. Abuse.
No gripe with the data, Mark of the dark arts
LOL now I know you’re just here to troll and shit-stir. Everyone’s producing facts but you. All you’ve got is assertions.
I’m actually astounded that you can be -as James described it – so “brazen”.
What a lying leftist douche bag you are Pee.
Insert annual… 09 to most current
The chart begins at 2,540 billion and ends at $2,556 billion one year later.
To suggest that is a contraction is not just a lie, it a shameless lie.
You ought to be thrown off here on your backside first.
Oh good grief it’s been entirely seeded from the extreme left boards: the hard left were and are the first to show up at every “occupation”.
Yeah and… The ‘hard’ left (by whom I presume you mean the Trots) will as you say turn up to any and every protest, they will support them online etc. That doesn’t mean that those people sitting on Wall St are all confirmed Marxist-Leninists. Christ not even most of the members of the Green-Left Weekly crew are confirmed in that ideology. They’re simply trying to ‘do something’.
Normal people don’t go “occupy” a street corner all of a sudden and then start forming “citizen assemblies” – that’s entirely the terminology of commies.
Is that right? Normal people? Whose normal? You? I’ve been doing a little reading about what passes for democratic capitalism in Russia. There’s normal people there protesting all the time not that it does much good. Are they Marxists too?
I have no idea who wrote “Occupy Melbourne” up on a wall or what their political creed is. I’m just amused at the stark similarities between actual Communist regimes and the rhetoric expressed here that appears to find it entirely acceptable to label anyone protesting as something less than human because they’re opposed to ‘capitalism’. which indeed they’re entitled to be. got:
These people can know nothing at all about how things work
Yeah? You don’t say. Given the retreat into technocratic babble every time a hard question is asked about, say, a government bail-out; given the constant erosion of education I can’t say I’m entirely surprised.
What I especially love is the declaration, on the basis of nothing whatsoever, that these people are ‘unproductive’ whereas the financial sector which has behaved disgracefully, and which has shown no signs whatsoever of any soul-searching are, ha ha ha, productive.
It’s actually the government that has behaved disgracefully, and the financial sector has simply reacted to government policy.
Adrien
Any comment on the bailout of GM and Chrysler? The US government lost 50 billion there, or rather transferred 50 billion to the UAW pension fund.
IS any fucker on an American street corner protesting that?
This is the problem with you, you’re so book smart, so “learned” about structural marxism, blah, blah and have spent so long reading and soaking in the ridiculous desconstructions of last centuries leftist theory that you’ve entirely removed yourself from actual contemporary leftism. You’re a museum piece stuck in the 70’s.
There’s no “Trots”, no marxist lenninsts anymore, nobody on the left (except for a tiny few losers) describes themselves in such ridiculously outmoded terms.
The hard left now has little to do with “classical” leftism, when I talk about the “hard left” I’m talking about the hate filled nihilistic technocrats that make up enourmous numbers in the urban middle class. They hold many marxist views, believe in a totalitarian state (though don’t understand that) but pour scorn on anybody who talks about marxism and communism. They are a mob and I say again, anyone on the broad left who aligns with this mob will regret it later.
You’re trying to be too clever by half. We’re not talking about Russians demonstrating against the russian version of capitalism (which certainly isn’t “democractic” in any reasonable sense) we’re talking about US and Australian leftists. It’s quite bizarre that you’re attempting to question that this occupy wall street “movement” is an entirely leftist creation, you’re the only one who is given that every leftist and centre left blog and board on the Internet is awash with enthusiasm and support for it.
Full of strawmen this evening aren’t you? They’re perfectly entitled to “protest”, the original statement was that OWS like the anti-Austerity protests in UK are comprised purely of useful idiot college students, PSUs, and various hard left organisations.
The Tea party asked plenty of hard questions about the bailouts AT THE TIME and were throughly denounced by the very people “protesting” and co-opting and corrupting thier symbols and message now.
This is farcical, a riling up of a lynch mob by leftist opportunistic thugs who would just as soon throw a classical Trot or Marxist off a bridge as they would a Libertartian or Conservative.
This is the face of the contemporary hard left.
Yes.
This!
Any comment on the bailout of GM and Chrysler?
It’s always an excellent idea to spend 7 figures on terminally-ill patients in the vain hope they’ll live another 3 weeks. 🙂
Shame about Chrysler, beautiful design. But that’s what you get with a complacent corporatist set-up where the Teamsters and the Shysters sit down and decide how to run a major industry.
IS any fucker on an American street corner protesting that?
I don’t know, I really haven’t looked that hard. I’ve got a couple friends in NYC I could ask them. But I reckon what you’ve got there is a whole variety of heads. The vast majority of them will be even more disorganized than TwoStix link. There’d be people there raving about the Illumanati I shit you not.
This isn’t about ideology, it’s about interests and hard times. My point is that if economic liberalism doesn’t fit in there somewhere, if those people just don’t get it, then something’s amiss. This is after the collapse of communism, after the 1970s stagflationary period.
Why haven’t the points gotten across? Partially because those making them aren’t exactly living up to their own standards. What’s political debate in the Western World? It’s about two groups of people pointing out how rotten the other side is. They’re both right. 🙂
Yobbo – It’s actually the government that has behaved disgracefully, and the financial sector has simply reacted to government policy.
I agree. I’d like to expand on that just a tad:
The government that has behaved disgracefully, and the financial sector has simply reacted to government policy by behaving even more disgracefully. 🙂
Bullshit.
Why do you ‘fink Rev Al Sharpton is turning up now?
And Nancy Pelosi chief Tea Party denouncer, who was in charge of Congress when the bailouts were passed throwing her support behind it.
But yeah, nothing political or partisan about it.
This is the problem with you, you’re so book smart,
Streets too old bean. And I’ve seen the view from a skyscraper office or two. Not to mention the bush.
You’re a museum piece stuck in the 70?s.
In the 70s my political discussion was always with an Egyptian friend. he was pro-Soviet. He’d lived there and liked that there was all this free stuff for kids. I knew Russia was not democratic and was against it. Then we talked about Asterix, Tintin and James Blond movies. Actually thatwas the late 70s. In the early 70s I was occupied with toilet training, learning to read, write, ride a bike. Like that.
I’m talking about the hate filled nihilistic technocrats that make up enourmous numbers in the urban middle class. They hold many marxist views, believe in a totalitarian state (though don’t understand that) but pour scorn on anybody who talks about marxism and communism.
And now that this Wall St thing is big I’m sure they’re there physically or in spirit but they didn’t start it. I don’t know who did. But if they’re full-time activists their similarity to those you describe pretty much ends at their mutual hatred of bankers.
You’re quite right about the persistence of ‘Marxist’ thinking however. The notion that you can fix everything with taxes and laws dies hard.
We’re not talking about Russians demonstrating against the russian version of capitalism (which certainly isn’t “democractic” in any reasonable sense)
The Russian version of capitalism consists of the thieving of State assets by the very people that were running the Soviet Union’s darkest ministries. The technocrats that helped them do it were neoliberal enthusiasts.
we’re talking about US and Australian leftists.
We’re talking about angry people who are not entirely known. Just because there’s a Socialist Alliance banner there doesn’t mean everyone belongs to SA or even thinks that way.
you’re the only one who is given that every leftist and centre left blog and board on the Internet is awash with enthusiasm and support for it.
No I just imagined that’s what would happen. The only pro-Wall St sit-in shindig post I’m aware of is Mark Bahnisch’s. I didn’t read it. I don’t know who those people are but if there’s enough of them you can’t write it off as a ‘leftist’ thing. The Left is a fragmented assortment of people who harbour incoherent notions about resistance and progress. Underneath all that is the same old peasant revolt vibe.
Here, we have the typical Romanov response: label it something inherently nefarious and then vow never to try and understand it.
They’re perfectly entitled to “protest”
So you disapprove of the draconian measures of the NYPD? So do I. 🙂
But yeah, nothing political or partisan about it.
On the surface.
LOL this is spreading across Stupid World in just the same way that Slutwalk did. Can’t the left ever be the least bit original?
Why do you ‘fink Rev Al Sharpton is turning up now?
Because it is in his interests to do so? Check this out:
What has happened here is that you have something organic that various ‘professional revolutionists’ are seeking to lead. So Al Sharpton is attending, he’s giving speeches, he’s broadcasting.
But he didn’t start it.
You guys carry on sometimes with the most preposterous daydreaming. I’ve read comments here in which people seem to believe that Russian workers and peasants were happy as larks until Lenin and Trotsky came along. There’s a dude who precedes Lenin and Marx and even Saint Simon and Rousseau. he never wrote anything. Name of Spartacus. He was mad as hell and didn’t wanna take it anymore.
This isn’t about ideology:
It’s basic human nature. Humans will accept that those at the top get to be rich and most of us don’t but they draw the line when they’re getting poorer and the rich are doing fine. And if the best answer you have to that kind of anger is to call them hypocrites because they’re wearing Nike trainers…
Can you dig it? No? Funny that.
You’re late to the party Adrien.
The Tea party was the spontaneous popular revolt against the bailouts. This is organised.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/235924-The-Origins-of-Occupy-Wall-Street-Explained
The entire beggining of the movement is a bunch of superannuated Candian commies openly “using young people” to “ignite a revolution”….in America.
And then they admit they have no idea what they’re doing:
Such blind, irresponsible utopianism should frighten any reasonable person. They’re creating a monster and hoping that it will create a diamond.
Insane.
Like I said, you’re a museum piece. This isn’t 20th century russia. There is no peasants, just over entitled, bored upper middle class nihilists who want to flex their collective muscle to see what they can make happen.
You’re all over the place on this topic, twostix. These protesters seem to be genuinely troubling, even traumatic to you. Recently, you tried to say they’re mindless automatons, subsumed into the collective hive-mind, and then claim they’re all narcissists and egotists. You try to dismiss them as marginal, yet seem to be going all Chicken Little. You’re confusing Marxism with pomo theory. And, at a fundamental level, you don’t understand what people usually mean when they talk about ‘class’. ‘Upper middle class’ is a descriptor for those inside the Wall St buildings, not those outside of them.
You simply don’t know what you’re talking about, but your hysteria prevents you from being able to shut up about it.
Here is another six-figure salaried white guy near the top of the Aboriginal Industry pay scale, clarifying the difference between the “Keynesian social democratic consensus” [this is not p.kwigg’n, shirley?] and the “belated neoliberal time of Canberra consensus in the early 21st century”. The former were the goodies who supported an Apartheid Australia, with Aborigines being paid a fortune to live in outback humpies.
How do these people get these jobs?
http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/10/10/economic-rationalism-hits-the-homelands/
Oh my. This is him again. He’s an ANU Professor in economics!
“What do we want?”
“Water cannons!”
“When do we want them?”
“NOW!”
The OWS people are irrlevant tossers who will achieve nothing except to turn off mainstream opinion. Of ourse there will be the usual suspects amongst the commentariat who will adore the OWS movement when it gets more violent or disruptive. his is because many a soft little lefty opinionista canonly respect a movement if it is violent. They think that if someone is willing to go against all the mores of civilisation they must be really serious about what they want. Hence the left’s deep respect for islamists. Why wouldn’t a coward lefty adore people who go out on a killing spree because a Danish paper published a few cartoons? It’s edgy, it’s daring, it’s so butch and primeval that little wussy boys like David Marr get the hots just thinking about it.
You left out the “S”.
Please explain, Old Mother.
Meanwhile at his Melbourne penthouse retreat a distraught JC carefully irons his fatigue pants and prepares to OccupyOD
http://tinyurl.com/OccupyOD
Seriously, some academic economist wrote that.
I don’t believe in forcing people to do much. However there is one rule I would make. I would not allow anyone to teach at university unless they have spent time in the private sector… and I don’t mean the freaking public service. No economist should be allowed to teach unless they’ve worked in a factory for 12 months. These people are so fucking divorced from reality it’s unbelievable.
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Peter of paddo… ANUS.
I ought you’d be right onto that!
This makes my blood boil!
I personally have lived abroad for the last 4 years and have just recently returned to Australia to live again, only to find out that this country is such a beautiful place, filled with self centered capitalistic arseholes!
I never noticed until I had experienced it from the outside. Australians are incredibly individualistic. who ever heard of the phrase ‘love thy neighbor’.. its a long forgotten term in Australia. Now its more like “if im not winning, nobody is winning”….
Im embarassed to be an Australian now. Take a look at yourselves, what ever happened to a concept called a community????
This countries Idealisms follow closely that of Americas, and will inevitably follow their countries inequalities and segregation of class.
No more greed!
Take a good look at yourself.
Abu Chowdah, thanks for putting Pete P right.
Student, that is pretty much the point of the post. All the people “opposed to greed” are only opposed to other people’s greed.
You are deluding yourself if you think you are not motivated by self interest. The brain is a powerful rationalization machine.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/php/galleries/image.php/218/25/25.jpg
To anyone who actually bothered to do their research,it should be quite obvious that the occupy movement is non-partisan. It is for people who have had enough of the left and right endless bickering. It is always the same, someone doesn’t like capitalism so they must be a socialist or communist. Someone has an issue with socialism so they must be a capitalist. Boooooooooooooooooooooooring! BTW, judging by the number of ad hominem statements in a lot of the commentary here, we occupiers must be really pushing your buttons. Good!!!
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