Two weeks into Occupy Wall Street protests, movement is at a crossroads

Kalle Lasn, the Vancouverbased editor whose left-wing magazine launched the Occupy Wall Street movement, hopes that protest tents remain through the winter in this city and others in North America.

Lasn, editor of Adbusters Magazine, also predicts that the Occupy movement has enough momentum to inspire a left-wing third-party in the U.S. - a scenario that one American political author said would be a disaster for liberal Democrats and a boon for conservative Republicans.

In its July issue, Lasn's anticonsumerism Adbusters called for an "occupation" of Wall Street on Sept. 17. The idea caught fire in the American activist community - and the success of the Wall Street camp became a big media story, prompting activists in other cities, including Vancouver, to create their own versions of the protest.

Now, six weeks after the start of the Occupy wave, Lasn, a puckish 69-year-old, is delighted at how far his initial concept has travelled.

"I've never seen anything like this in the 25 years that I've been playing this game with the Adbusters Media Foundation," said Lasn.

"I mean who could have predicted that this would have grown in a space of just over a month into a global movement that has created this national conversation in America and Canada."

To the former, I disagree. I think people there are representing themselves. I believe you're projecting.

The division isn't arbitrary though.

Even if they didn't have shared interests, they deserve a place at the table; they deserve adequate representation

So go to a GA and be heard.

I think you're struggling, yes. Call it arrogant if you wish. I think you're comfortable in an older political paradigm that has people divided against their own interests, but flatters their ego.

Hardly. I'm not sure how you take that away. A diverse group will have a diverse message. The desire for uniformity is misplaced.

Bank of America Pays No Taxes, Gets $1B Refund: Report

Dan Freed
03/25/11 - 10:16 AM EDT

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Bank of America (BAC) will pay no Federal taxes for 2010, instead receiving a refund of $1 billion, the Charlotte Observer pointed out in an article published Friday.

The bank told the newspaper the reason is that the bank lost $5.4 billion before taxes in 2010.

Nonetheless, a group called U.S. Uncut has been protesting at Bank of America branches around the U.S. and also at Bank of America's investor conference earlier this month.

As TheStreet has pointed out in a series of articles, many banks and financial companies, as well as others that racked up big losses during the crisis will not be paying taxes for several years, even after they become profitable.

Both TheStreet and prominent hedge fund investor Bill Ackman have highlighted Citigroup(C) as one prominent example of a company that will pay no taxes for years to come. Others include Regions Financial (RF)Synovus(SNV), CIT Group(CIT), AIG(AIG) and General Motors(GM).

Indeed, one of the big advantages of GM's acquisition of AmeriCredit is that the car company will be able to "carry forward" its losses to shelter the profits of AmeriCredit, creating an estimated $3-5 billion windfall.

I am not interested in being heard by the folks at any of these gatherings; nor am I interested in them representing me. I'm satisfied with what I do to be heard. Why should I respond to your silly challenge about "doing something?"

If you believe they are doing a good job of representing you, that's wonderful. I'm not going to sit here and pompously tell you that you don't know what your interests are and that you shouldn't be supporting this group.

Herman Cain's campaign theme is "I am America,"

halt legal action against Occupy camp
Tuesday 1 November 2011 18.51 GMT

Cathedral announces U-turn and initiative to 'reconnect financial with the ethical' – but corporation qualifies its move as a 'pause'


A spokesman for St Paul's said it had decided to stop legal action and engage with the Occupy activists camped outside the cathedral. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian

Activists campaigning against financial inequality and banking excesses look set to remain camped outside St Paul's cathedral well into next year after both the church and the Corporation of London, which jointly own the land the protesters have occupied for more than two weeks, said they were halting moves to evict them.

While the corporation said it had merely "pressed the pause button" on its legal bid, St Paul's delighted the Occupy London movement with a statement that explicitly lined up the might of one of the Anglican congregation's most celebrated institutions behind their call for greater social justice.

"The alarm bells are ringing all over the world. St Paul's has now heard that call," said the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, who was called in to help the cathedral change course after its dean, the Rt Rev Graeme Knowles, resigned on Monday following heavy criticism of the decision to close St Paul's for a week and cut off all contact with the protest camp.

In a statement that drew repeated cheers as protesters read it aloud at their daily assembly, Chartres said the doors of St Paul's were now instead "most emphatically open to engage with matters concerning not only those encamped around the cathedral but millions of others in this country and around the globe".

The statement also announced plans for a new group, headed by Ken Costa, a former top investment banker, with the aim of "reconnecting the financial with the ethical". This will also involve Giles Fraser, the canon chancellor at St Paul's, who stepped down last week over concerns that the cathedral's support for eviction could see it complicit in eventual violence.

A spokesman for St Paul's said the governing chapter had decided to cease legal action and instead engage with activists within the camp of 200 or so tents, which was set up on the western edge of the cathedral 18 days ago........

......He and other officials met camp representatives on Monday evening and agreed that the two sides should instead work together. "I believe we had a very useful beginning to what must be an ongoing dialogue," he said. "This is not a PR stunt, it is a breakthrough in Christian dialogue."

.....The Corporation of London had been expected to serve legal papers on the camp on Tuesday morning, giving activists 48 hours to pack up their tents or face court action. But the cathedral's U-turn left them in a near-impossible position given that the protest site is part-owned by St Paul's, and that even a joint action was expected to last several months.

Following the cathedral's announcement, Stuart Fraser, the corporation's policy head, said it had briefly suspended its own legal plans to allow "time for reflection". He added: "We're hoping to use a pause – probably of days not weeks – to work out a measured solution. ......

What the rich doesn't seem to understand is that sharing the money/wealth with more people means they'll get richer - not poorer, because the economy will become healthy again. More people with more people means they will spend money to buy the goods and services people produce - with jobs, pay, and benefits.

Their greed, the captains of industry, have replaced their common sense for the common good.

If they had shared the profit from their companies with all the workers, tax revenue would take care of themselves to pay for the needs of governments.

The deficits would have been reduced or completely disappeared - depending on governments fiscal management.

Quote:

We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money.

Go **** yourselves. It's everyone's job to make money. But you make money by creating nothing and doing nothing productive whatsoever. You make money by using tricks and gambles. It's deeply dishonorable and pathetic in a way, not something to be proud of. It is a drain on all of us in society in a variety of ways. It benefits nobody but the already rich and parasites like yourselves. You should be reviled and I dearly hope that one outcome of the current movement is a larger societal condemnation of those in your position.

Quote:

Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves.

You're not going to hurt me one bit, because I don't give my money to assholes like you.

Quote:

What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours.

Good luck with that. See, my job requires people skills, and you are a bunch of heartless dicks. You are not qualified to do my job. Cycloptichorn

Quote:

We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money.

Go **** yourselves. It's everyone's job to make money. But you make money by creating nothing and doing nothing productive whatsoever. You make money by using tricks and gambles. It's deeply dishonorable and pathetic in a way, not something to be proud of. It is a drain on all of us in society in a variety of ways. It benefits nobody but the already rich and parasites like yourselves. You should be reviled and I dearly hope that one outcome of the current movement is a larger societal condemnation of those in your position.

Quote:

Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves.

You're not going to hurt me one bit, because I don't give my money to assholes like you.

Quote:

What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours.

Good luck with that. See, my job requires people skills, and you are a bunch of heartless dicks. You are not qualified to do my job. Cycloptichorn

The piece is so filled with inaccurate and contradictory statements it certainly wasn't written by someone that knows the ins and outs of the financial system.

It's either satire or an attempt to support a belief system that is so out there it would be pointless to satirize it.