Ferguson protestor: "St. Louis is going to burn."

Whoa! I told you these Ferguson protestors aren't going to crawl back under their rocks if Wilson isn't indicted. They are not going to let a crisis go to waste, that's for sure. Conn Carroll from Townhall.com seems to agree with me. Excerpt:

"This is not a black and white thing," Ferguson activist Angela Whitman told CNN after The New York Times story Friday, "this is about what's right and wrong. St. Louis is in trouble, because if this is what Darren Wilson said, and they believe him, St. Louis is going to burn."

Whitman's let it burn attitude seemed to be the prevailing sentiment among Brown supporters this Sunday when they harassed people outside a St. Louis Rams game, holding the American flag upside down, while punching and spitting on passers by.

Will the violence at the next Rams game be worse or better now that it is becoming clearer Wilson will not be indicted? If it does get worse, it is hard to see how more leaks could possibly prevent a full blown riot.

I suppose some commendation should be given for this "leak strategy" which is attempting to let the air out of the anger balloon a little bit at a time. But what if that isn't the way this kind of blind rage works? What if this will just give everyone more time to recruit their old OWS buds from years back for when the big news hits?

People can gripe about how "oh, the authorities mishandled this" all they want but in the end, this is all about an idiot who was so high he thought he could take on an armed policeman.

More laughs from OWS

Here's a treat for your Easter Basket. Excerpt from beginning:

As the nascent Occupy movement attempts to revive interest in its radical left-wing agenda, it is burdened with a host of organizational and financial problems left over from some of the bitter infighting that took place during the winter.

Last night, the two main organizational bodies of Occupy Wall Street were dissolved, and a new group running OWS’s finances is admitting to a lack of transparency, financial discrepancies and poor financial decisions by the previous custodians of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

There are a lot of laugh lines in here like "Who’s accountable if this is a ‘leaderless’ movement?" But the main takeaway for me is that no one among the general populace really cares that much for their ideas, let alone their methods. Sure, they may get propped up by Soros or Obama if they are needed for the election, and for that reason I don't think OWS is dead as a political force. Who knows, maybe the ranks will be combed for drones to staff the next incarnation of ACORN.

However, the Occupy movement is not vibrantly alive as a grassroots organization like one of the Tea Party groups. I believe that one reason is that the Tea Party groups aren't tied to bizarre manifestos touting obscure ideals like horizontalism, General Assemblies or Facilitation Working Groups. My theory is that most of the people who really believe these kinds of structures can work on a large scale are dyed-in-the-wool academics who have seen it work in some pointless non-profit agency or a group home they worked in while working on their degrees. In other words, only on a small scale in a controlled environment. These theoretical models haven't been tested for real until now, and they are failing.



This is a bit rambling, but I'll offer a line to sum this development up as follows: "Seeking to be peaceful anarchists, they became contentious bureaucrats." Maybe someone can improve on this summation. Or just enjoy a laugh at their expense.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!

Oh, too sweet, too choice. Check out this piece, "Why Bank Transfer Day actually helped banks" about the worthless and back-firing efforts of the Bank Transfer Day movement. Here's the money quote from the top summary:

Bank Transfer Day helps commercial banks by removing less profitable accounts, explains Motley Fool and DCDecoder.

Translation: Thanks for lowering our overhead.

Guy Fawkes gets burned again, so sad.....

Occupy Oakland in Photos

I can't believe that this Occupy movement has been going on for this long and this is the first visit I made to Zombietime for his excellent photo coverage of Occupy Oakland. He's a truly skilled photographer documentarian who always gets the most pertinent footage by embedding himself within the protests.

I mean, who wants to see pictures of police hitting a guy who asks for it? That happens everyday, thankfully, but it's sort of boring. Or, what about photos of cute protesters? Go to a Russian Bride site for cuties, for heaven's sake. Zombietime captures the essence of the movement from the inside actually exposing the audience to it. Pictures like this one with the man's comments really do speak a thousand words:

Even more disturbingly, all over the camp were signs that said 'Not a toilet,' because some occupiers basically relieve themselves wherever and whenever they feel the urge. Disgusted campers started putting up signs so that their particular tents wouldn't be on the receiving end of any effluvia.

The entire page is long but worth it and ends an update on the teargassing the city was forced into complete with video and news links. I don't know if mainstream outlets don't want to show drug use, buckets of human filth and words on like shit and fuck but how else can you really capture the zeitgeist of the Occupy Movement?

"Slurp up the banality of existence with a krazy-straw of resistance." Is the Krazy Straw a symbol of consumerist enslavement? Is this a failed chant committed to writing? I'll let you decide.

"Last week was free love"

The NY Post talks about some problems at the good ol' #OWS gatherings that we didn't really see so much at the Tea Parties.

A volunteer at the park admitted concern among protesters about STDs.

“We give directions to clinics if people ask for information regarding STDs,” said the volunteer, who identified himself only as “Captain” and added that pregnancy tests are also a hot item.

“Like anything else, it happens. People ask, and we do the best we can for them.”

Volunteers at the medical tent hand out cash, usually $15 or $20, so the randy radicals can visit clinics that cater to a low-income clientele, the source said.

Experts said it’s the right thing to do.

“My advice for the protesters would be to practice safer sex. It’s a lot cheaper to buy a condom than get treated for an STD,” said Dr. Lisa Oldson, medical director of Chicago-based Analyte Health, which provides testing services for labs nationwide, including STD Test Express New York.

This reminds me of a friend of mine who is a registered independent and what I describe as a Radical Moderate, i.e., someone who thinks the conservatives and liberals are all a bunch of asses. He is smart and working on his doctorate, but he worked construction for many years with older guys who came of age in the sixties. His contention is that the vast majority of men in all the protest movements of the sixties were really just about scoring sex with as many women as possible, and that was an integral part of the energy of the movement. He said that this is evident from the way that so many of them remembered all the political upheaval that went on from the peace movement to civil rights.

So nothing has changed. I suppose this week will be Free Love Week as well, and Analyte Health will be raking in even more dough for their services.