The "Occupy" Movement

[cupper]

"But it's tasty!"  yup, one large cup of ironic hold the integrity.  idiots.

One Venti non-fat no integrity irony please

 

[a_majoor]

They produce great videos for us as well:

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/10/setting-the-stage-ows-leaders-caught-on-tape-orchestrating-mob-activity-and-arrests-videos/

SETTING THE STAGE: #OWS Leaders Caught on Tape Orchestrating Mob Activity and Arrests (Videos)Posted by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, October 19, 2011, 6:18 AM
 
Setting the Stage–
Radical anti-government activist and leader of the anti-capitalist #occupy movement, Lisa Fithian, was caught in action at the Occupy Chicago protest on October 10, 2011, training Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members on how to stage their arrests for the cameras.

While you were going to work, paying your bills, taking the kids to their ballgame… The left was scheming.
This is an eye-popping video by the EAGFoundation:

Kyle Olson at Big Government has more on these staged mob activities and arrests.

And, in this video, the #OWS organizer directs protesters (at 2:40 mark), “If you don’t have a camera, we’ll get arrested later.”
Hat Tip Theodore

 

[FlyingDutchman]

One Venti non-fat no integrity irony please

Stop making me want to go to Starbucks dangnabbit. (And I do not even like coffee.)

They really want to be arrested? Oy. 

 

[57Chevy]

Occupy wall street has gone occupy everywhere.

Occupy everywhere: protests go global
by Amber Jamieson
http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/10/17/occupy-everywhere-protests-go-global/

The recent Occupy Wall Street protests sparked a global day of action on Saturday, with demonstrations in Europe, Asia and Australia seeing thousands take to the streets to protest against corporate greed and corrupt governments.

While the majority of protests were peaceful, Occupy Rome turned violent, leaving 70 people injured, three seriously. Forty of the injured were police officers.
more at link..
                                        Shared with provisions of The Copyright Act

 

[Fishbone Jones]

You missed the part about the soul employee DEMANDING high wages. ;D

Not really. I just thought that if they were slagging the capitalists for out of this world costs, they should try cover all the bases and not just a few select ones. It seems a lot of the people protesting are the makers of their own (mis)fortune. The unions are just as much at fault for driving prices as anyone else.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The New Yorker magazine on the counter OWS:

 

[kstart]

Since both the TEA Party movement and OWS are notionally against the same thing: Crony Capitalism, why have they come to opposite conclusions and taken opposite tracks? The TEA Party movement is doing the heavy lifting of getting engaged in the political process and ejecting politicians who can't or won't respond to their concerns. They are also working on a political and ultimatly social program to reduce the power of the State and divest the State of many of the tools and abilities that allow, encourage and enhance the growth of corruption and Crony Capitalism. (The Libertarianism as a social movement is part of this, as people discover they don't need the State in so many aspects of their lives as they do can do things faster, better and more cheaply by themselves and in cooperation with like minded individuals).

The OWS movement is advocating the opposite; demanding huge increases in State intervention in the economy and our lives in order to achieve some sort of "equality" and "justice", although it is mathematically impossible to give them their "living wage", cancell their debts and give them all their other freebies even if the wealth of all the "rich" (no matter how low you set the bar) was siezed and turned over to them. And of course, siezing the wealth only ensures there will be no wealth produced tomorrow...(perhaps you remember Democrats musing about seizing American IRA's and replacing them with some sort of Government annuity? The seizure of the IRA's would net $2 trillion dollars; enough to cover a single year's deficit by the Obama administration with a small amount left over.)

The real danger, besides ad hominem and strawman arguments that ignore or deflect evidence of what is being said and done by the OWS people, is the crowds will eventually develop a deep sense of frustration. They have no real arguments, but politicians seeking to gain their support will fire up the "class war" rhetoric (you know, the idea that you should "spread the wealth" or that "after a point you have made enough money"); the productive 53% or so of the population will not express sympathy or support for a movement that seeks to seize their wealth, and frustrtion will mount until there is violence. After that, who knows?

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/our-idiot-brother-the-tea-party’s-relationship-to-occupy-wall-street/?print=1

We're not in total disagreement, the differences I think relate to analysis of the problem, thereby affecting how the problems are framed in terms of solutions.  It can also be hard to articulate that without clear understanding of current economic situations, and potential near future problems.  I really believe that an honest, respectful dialogue between both parties needs to happen.  I think there's need for clarification of the facts.  Also, there's hope that a bigger crisis can be averted, which I think the G20 are trying to work on that.

Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLdcB0ln9t8&feature=related
When I "wikipedia", both Ron Paul, and Kucinich, I see histories of integrity.  Both can seem radical for their time, the issue is if status quo is heading to greater failure. 

The Occupy movement can be positively patriotic and it can empower our leaders to stand up to the crony capitalism, within country and as globally negotiated.  It can help give our leaders a strong legal mandate that can hold up against what can be a virtual economic hostage-taking (e.g. millions of homes, in some phase of forclosure, and any further global economic crisis can also tip that balance; the robbery of social security pensions [paid into via payroll taxes] is another valid concern]).  The Occupy movement on this side of the hemisphere and with the powers of our democracy, if things get pushed into greater economic crisis, the hope is for peaceful management of problems. 

I respect the work of Thomas Jefferson,et al, the Constitution (though problems later in civil war), maybe this time around, it's not about North vs. South, but Right and Left working together on stabilization, healthy democracy, should the issues not be able to be resolved via the current system.  It's having back-up systems.  In Canada, we have greater stabilization, better banking system, but still risks if we adopt failed policies.

The income disparity has been growing is in a way that's not healthy for a sustainable and healthy capitalist system.  The following is a good link which shows the economic statistics more honestly.  There's tricks to statistics, they can be manipulated to hide reality (I do have some undergrad experience in statistics).  An honest statistician, would make note of "outliers" and include a breakdown of that.  In this video the relationship is shown more honestly: it shows how stats, can be represented by average, vs. median; and more relevant to exposing the 1%, and the 0.01%, is showing the quintiles, and breaking up the top quintile, which exposes the 1%, and the 0.01%.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA1f2MefsMM



I'm not in conflict with income disparity, or the concepts of income based on merit.  I'm not "envious of the rich", and certainly not the super-rich, I don't care to be that rich, honestly.  It was even acceptable to me, like whatever, "let them eat their cake" .  Where it does become a concern, is when massive poverty is on the horizon, what can be heading to the 99%.  When one understands the encompassing economic relationships, people are bound by, and what upset can be caused when macro economic forces fail, how devasting that can be: averting massive civil unrest, particularly avoiding the situation of desperate civil unreast (leading to violence) is something I would hope could be avoided (conditions of massive unemployment, food crisis, collapse, dignified care of the elderly [not left to rot on the streets to die]).

I think some of the Republicans are really out to lunch (you can disagree, I'm just stating an opinion I feel strongly about), e.g. the Sims-economics proposed by Cain, the 9/9/9-- I don't think they are seeing what is actually there, and where that could go.  They're also might be out of reality from what the directions from the G20 could be?  Maybe not fully.

I saw a paper somewhere, differences between Tea Party and lefter-sides of Occupy, one being more isolationist, protectionist (liek going back to confederation).  I can't say what's best, but there is also a global context.  Dialogue is important.

The lefty's are aware of Karl Marx' writings (student lefties, economists, etc).  Marx is "not a method", but risks are there if things become too destablized, people desperate, last resort, nothing to lose (I hope that's avoided).  Thing is, it's not the "lefty's who are armed, a lot of faith placed in democracy and peaceful means.  What his model was, was a prediction of how capitalism could collapse.  What's happened also, is that things are hidden, because of the illusion credit debt creates.  But his predictions, loss of the "merchant class" (like the middle class), the risks imposed by radical division of wealth between Proletariate (working class, which is the 99%) and the Borgeousie (top 1%- 0.01%).  We've been villanized and not understood (though there has been a history of whackos, too abstracted from reality, confusing theory with method-- that nuttiness).  Marx in it's proper context, is simply a tool of analysis.  But the wealthy wanted their shot at accumulation, and it worked well enough for a while, income disparity not so radically divided, it worked properly, healthy local economies, etc.

There is understanding that all of it, the money system is created by agreement, panic about buying gold (seen the ads on the Alex Jones-type sites , in reality that's not certain-- and yet I know there is paranoia as well expressed by AJ re: a world currency, and I think some confusion about what New World Order is, but a rightful suspicion of the 'globalists', which can be framed as the 1% and 0.01% of the world).  CBC Meltdown, documentary-series, finance minister of France said some interesting comments, re: re-negotiation of value, looking at things differently.  I imagine there are just sets of back-up plans if the current paths don't work.  But if this is one thing they are looking at, it may not necessitate a case of 99% robbing from the 1%, or lower quintiles robbing from upper quintiles.  See, it can go beyond that. 
Foundational understanding of that relationship: How Banks Work
http://www.youtube.com/user/leearnold#p/c/E3BC3F222D31C78D/0/Byaf9GihXhY

(I like this guy, he helps make economics more accessible for lay people)

Tea Partiers and lefty-Occupiers, being somewhat undefined re: solutions, well really, it's a case of needing the best economists working collectively on the problem, and hopefully ethically done (don't need desperation, or repeats of Hitler/Stalin-- different this time around, learning from history and importance of glboal agreement to prevent world instability, desperation).  It's right to view change with some suspician, looking out for things, to hope for the fairest resolutions, even for both rich and poor, particulary in respect of the 99%.

What people are reacting to in the Occupy movement, are bits and pieces of things, but which do stem from the larger economics, macro level, global as impacting on country, IMO.  Not many have the economics background to understand the bigger picture, of the relation among things.

The biggest task for both Right and Left, is to stop hating.  Propoganda on both sides, and this "war on the minds" has been artificially created, theatrics-- I think both sides can agree to that, and and all the same it's just been about maintaining status quo, but it's competition among bankers, favoured corporations--crony capitalism (also can be called "neo-liberalism"-- not true free market capitalism) and regardless, many fund both 'sides'.  There's movements such as www.getmoneyout.com, to get rid of that influence on our politics.  Acceptable to some degree when the system was working well enough.

I show up at protests from time to time.  I'm mindful of keeping the peace (even protective of the police who are there-- I would stand between them and a crowd, I've been prepared and moved more closely to do that).  In my 'town", the RCMP have been of a better quality, reasonable, well-educated, well-trained (I've also volunteered with them, via community projects, so there's a sense of familiarity, not excessive "otherness').  I protested the Iraq war, what happened at that one though, was a local radio host decided to add more 'fuel to the flames', and create this 'counter protest', so that we were met by an "army of red"-- as if they support the troops and we do not (in a way, I struggled with a sense of shame, but reorganized myself, that this is not what this is about).  I've heard this threat of 'counter-protest' again, to try to get confrontation happening.  Iraq one was a bit freaky, because some idiot decided to burn an American flag (I walked away, I was angry about that, because that also was not what that was about either).  The "army of red" that came, were all big people, like football players, came to confront the protest, but lucky no side decided to directly provoke violence (but the threat of it was there).

I know I'm hated for the long posts, I'm introverted by nature (compelled, maybe in an OCD-like way to express honestly).  The personal story above, is just to demonstrate, that I hope that those sorts of games of division and distortion do not get replayed.  Most on the left ("anarchists"/"fake anarchists/instigators excluded) want to keep it peaceful and work hard to try to keep it that way.  I hope there is respect for democratic movement and there's some principles we are trying to protect.  There's potential for good things to come from this and while things still remain stable enough.  I'm retarded by prose habit, don't know how else to communicate multiple points, analysis, I can't help that I think a lot (even if others see it as twisted-- which I am at times, honest ).  Writing a lot doesn't mean I think I'm 'smarter'-- I'm not, just putting it out there for consideration.  It's not a panic situation, as much of it is simply beyond our personal control, it's the collective agreements that are reached and if they are successful and heading off further global economic instability (which could come to the 'main player" countries).  I don't think anything too bad will happen.  Good to have faith and not be overrun by fear.

I can come back and show statistics of the Canadian case (and write less).  We do have better stability still, better banking system, a model one, and that also makes us a stronger broker on the global scene.  I worry about the US, and elsewhere, it seems precarious still.  (Like if 3 Trillion were released of the borrowed money, the crisis that could create on inflation, food prices, etc.  I hope there are no 'hissy fits').  Might not be so gloom and doom either, it might just work out.

(When I say "we" as in Occupy-ers, I'm not really a part of the movement, just normally slightly to the left (social justice, 'care', like "leave no soldier behind"   applied universally/all), just there may be abnormal circumstances coming.  I can speak to some left-wing views, because I've been educated in that-- I don't consider myself an 'ideologue', I share some things with "libertarians" and capitalists, even 'catholics' etc.).  I don't consider myself a 'radical' either.

 

[cupper]

The unions are just as much at fault for driving prices as anyone else.

:nod: Couldn't agree more.

 

[Scott]

Mellian?

 

[Brad Sallows]

There is no point hoping for the OWS protests to be useful; they have already been hijacked by the organized extreme left as the popular front du jour.  If the protests actually got anywhere, the useful idiots (ie. front members other than the highly organized factions) would be the first victims.  Deja moo.

 

[PMedMoe]

Sorry, I just had to......

;D

Now, back to your regularly scheduled thread.

 

[cupper]

Which will lead to the inevitable Occupy The Shire, Occupy Rohan, and Occupy Gondor.

And in response the Ents will form the Tree Party Movement.

:rofl:

 

[Michael OLeary]

And in response the Ents will form the Tree Party Movement.

:rofl:

reddit/r/trees?    >

 

[FlyingDutchman]

Which will lead to the inevitable Occupy The Shire, Occupy Rohan, and Occupy Gondor.

And in response the Ents will form the Tree Party Movement.

:rofl:

Occupy Mordor?  Orcs demand more man flesh!

 

[Furniture]

Now for wrath, now for ruin, and the red dawn!

Edit: I can't make the image work... I'm not good with computers...

 

[FlyingDutchman]

Upload and attach it?

 

[a_majoor]

Cartoonists vs OWS:

http://pajamasmedia.com/lifestyle/2011/10/21/seven-images-that-will-make-the-occupiers-cry/?singlepage=true

 

[kstart]

What Wall Street Protesters have Right

http://money.ca.msn.com/investing/michael-brush/what-wall-st-protesters-have-right

Message No. 1: Growing income disparities threaten everyone
This isn't about "resenting the rich for being wealthy" or declaring "class warfare," though many observers, particularly conservatives, twist the message to discredit the protesters. . .

While the super-rich keep getting richer, "living standards for the median household have declined more or less steadily since the late 1990s," says Mark Zandi, the chief economist and a co-founder of Moody's Analytics. Here are some stats that back this up. . .

. . .In fact, much of the post-World War II period saw a rising tide lift all boats. The rich got richer and the middle class did, too. Now, that doesn't seem to be the case. The results? Many people simply stop spending — which, in America's consumer economy, hurts the rich, poor and everyone in between. . .
Students just out of college, for example, find their paycheques can't cover both student loan payments and rent, "and that was the basic promise of a good education," says Gacuca.

Message No. 2: The U.S. needs real bank reform
Three years after a financial meltdown that nearly took out the American economy, the U.S. has really done very little to change the rules governing financial institutions, to make sure a meltdown like we saw in 2008-2009 doesn't happen again.

These protesters aren't the only ones to think that the Dodd-Frank financial sector reform law will fall short — even if it's eventually implemented in full. Many analysts, even on the right, share this view. "The principal elements of Dodd-Frank turn out to be useless as a defence against a future crisis," said Peter Wallison, of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

William Isaac, a former bank regulator who was the chairman the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. from August 1981 to October 1985, agrees that bank reform efforts have fallen short. "The Dodd-Frank law would not have prevented the last crisis, did not fix what went wrong and will make it more difficult to resolve the next crisis," says Isaac, now head of financial institutions at FTI Consulting.
In fact, Dodd-Frank may be worse than no reform at all. It creates the illusion of regulation and carries the downside of the wrong government rules without locking in the right rules, says Joseph Mason, a Louisiana State University finance professor. And Mason should know about banking regulation — he used to work as an economist for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, one of the main U.S. banking regulators.

OWS gets into quite a bit of detailed analysis on banking reform. One big problem, says Gacuca, was that Washington missed an opportunity to break up the big banks while bailing them out, to prevent the "too big to fail" problem from biting us again.

"Too big to fail" means that megabanks like Citigroup (C.N) and Bank of America (BAC.N) remain so large that the government will have little choice but to bail them out again when they get into trouble the next time. Because bankers know this, they take greater risks than they should. Instead of letting banks fail or making them downsize, the U.S. bailed them out and encouraged some to merge and grow. "We made the too-big-to-fail problem even worse," agrees Kent Smetters, a professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. "We've encouraged larger banks. We should have allowed more failure."

Another complaint of OWS is that there's still too much "counterparty risk" in the financial system, one of the problems that caused the credit market meltdown. By this, OWS means that banks create and own so many derivatives that they're too exposed to each other.

Derivatives are complex financial creations, but they're basically "bets" banks and others make to balance their risks or gamble on trends in all kinds of markets. The fear here is that players won't be able to pay off if they lose.

No less an institution than the IMF sees the risk, concluding in recent research that too many derivatives have insufficient collateral backing them. IMF researchers believe outstanding derivatives may be undercollateralized by as much as $2 trillion.

One solution, says OWS, would be to have more derivatives trade through clearinghouses or exchanges, which would add transparency and reduce risk. This is an approach that many mainstream analysts, like Smetters, agree would help.

Message No. 3: Political cronyism ruins democracy
Another core complaint of OWS, says Gacuca, is that corporate contributions to U.S. political campaigns lead to crony capitalism, which is bad for democracy.

This is hardly a fringe issue. And despite being painted as a "leftist" group, OWS faults the Obama administration for being too closely aligned with Wall Street. It cites campaign contributions to Obama from banks, as well as the appointment of William Daley, who has a banking background, as White House chief of staff.

OWS also likes to cite the bank bailouts as examples of crony capitalism, another OWS position held by many on the right. Banks got help with mortgage trouble; homeowners much less so.

"We definitely share the same moral outrage at what happened," says Daniel Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "Even if the banks paid the money back, they got breathing room for their own bad financial decisions, courtesy of the taxpayer."

Bank shareholders, bondholders and executives should have been allowed to take their losses in bank reorganizations that saved the good assets in the system, say many bank reform critics on the right. Instead, "the risks were socialized and the gains were privatized," says Warren. "It's not so much that people are upset around the top one per cent getting rich. I think what angers people is the notion of crony capitalism. The hard-earned money of taxpayers was used to make a few people richer."

Is OWS so wrong in concluding that U.S. democracy is broken because economic elites in banks with political connections were bailed out, while regular folks are still hurting? Warren doesn't think so.

 

[a_majoor]

Income inequality, like so much else from the OWS, is more of a myth than anything else:

http://blog.american.com/2011/10/5-reasons-why-income-inequality-is-a-myth-and-occupy-wall-street-is-wrong/

5 reasons why income inequality is a myth — and Occupy Wall Street is wrong
By James Pethokoukis

October 18, 2011, 10:54 am 
Sorry, the story just doesn’t hold together. According to left-wing think tanks, columnist and bloggers—and, of course, the Occupy Wall Street radicals—the top 1 percent have been exploiting the 99 percent for decades. The rich have been getting richer at the expense of the middle class and poor.

Really? Just think for a second: If inequality had really exploded during the past 30 to 40 years, why did American politics simultaneously move rightward toward a greater embrace of free-market capitalism? Shouldn’t just the opposite have happened as beleaguered workers united and demanded a vastly expanded social safety net and sharply higher taxes on the rich? What happened to presidents Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry? Even Barack Obama ran for president as a market friendly, third-way technocrat.

Nope, the story doesn’t hold together because the financial facts don’t support it. And here’s why:

1. In a 2009 paper, Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon found the supposed sharp rise in American inequality to be “exaggerated both in magnitude and timing.” Here is the conundrum: Family income is supposed to rise right along with productivity. But median real household income—as reported by the Census Bureau—grew just 0.49 percent per year between 1979 and 2007 even as worker productivity grew four times faster at 1.95 percent per year. The wide gap between the two measures, if accurate, would suggest wealthy households rather than middle-class families grabbed most of the income gains from faster productivity.

But Gordon explained that this “compares apples with oranges, and then oranges with bananas.” When various statistical quirks are harmonized between the two economic measures, Gordon found middle-class income growth to be much faster and the “conceptually consistent gap between income and productivity growth is only 0.16 percent per year.” That’s barely one‐tenth of the original gap of 1.46 percent. In other words, income gains were shared fairly equally.

2. A pair of studies from 2007 and 2008 conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis supports Gordon. Researchers examined why the Census Bureau reported median household income stagnated from 1976 to 2006, growing by only 18 percent. In contrast, data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed income per person was up 80 percent. Like Gordon, they found apples-to-oranges issues such as different ways of measuring prices and household size. But in the end, they concluded that “after adjusting the Census data for these three issues, inflation-adjusted median household income for most household types is seen to have increased by 44 percent to 62 percent from 1976 to 2006.” In addition, research shows that median hourly wages (including fringe benefits) rose by 28 percent from 1975 to 2005.

3. A 2008 paper by Christian Broda and John Romalis from the University of Chicago documents how traditional measures of inequality ignore how inflation affects the rich and poor differently: “Inflation of the richest 10 percent of American households has been 6 percentage points higher than that of the poorest 10 percent over the period 1994–2005. This means that real inequality in America, if you measure it correctly, has been roughly unchanged.” And why is that? China and Wal-Mart. Lower-income families spend a larger share of income than wealthier families on goods whose prices are more directly affected by trade. Higher income folks, by contrast, spend more on services which are less subject to foreign competition.

4. A 2010 study by the University of Chicago’s Bruce Meyer and Notre Dame’s James Sullivan notes that official income inequality statistics indicate a sharp rise in inequality over the past four decades: “The ratio of the 90th to the 10th percentile of income, for example, grew by 23 percent between 1970 and 2008.” But Meyer and Sullivan point out that income statistics miss a lot, such as the value of government programs and the impact of taxes. The latter, especially, is a biggie. The researchers find that “accounting for taxes considerably reduces the rise in income inequality” over the past 45 years. In addition, “consumption inequality is less pronounced than income inequality.”

5. Set all the numbers aside for a moment. If you’ve lived through the past four decades, does it really seem like America is no better off today? It doesn’t to Jason Furman, the deputy director of Obama’s National Economic Council. Here is Furman back in 2006: “Remember when even upper-middle class families worried about staying on a long distance call for too long? When flying was an expensive luxury? When only a minority of the population had central air conditioning, dishwashers, and color televisions? When no one had DVD players, iPods, or digital cameras? And when most Americans owned a car that broke down frequently, guzzled fuel, spewed foul smelling pollution, and didn’t have any of the now virtually standard items like air conditioning or tape/CD players?”

No doubt the past few years have been terrible. But the past few decades have been pretty good—for everybody.

 

[a_majoor]

The real OWS is starting to show its face:

http://www.verumserum.com/?p=31000

Report: Occupy Oakland Devolves into “Lord of the Flies”
John on October 20, 2011 at 12:01 am

From the Oakland Tribune:

The next thing Hughes knew he was in a headlock, then he was being punched, and then he was on the ground as a large man began to choke him.

This happened as Hughes, a substitute teacher and Occupy Oakland resident, tried to keep a larger man who also lived in the camp from threatening a woman there. Finally, after another threatening incident involving the same individual, the occupiers had had enough:

About 3:30 Tuesday afternoon, a group of roughly 50 people gathered by the man’s tent and told him he had to leave. Some were speaking calmly. Others weren’t. It was then that the man pulled out a large kitchen knife and threatened the whole group…It was only when someone picked up a piece of wood and cracked him across the head that the ordeal ended.

Self-realization dawns on at least one of the occupiers:

“At some point, we have to recognize that we can’t control everything,” said Boomer Frank, a 24-year-old tent resident and ad hoc camp organizer. “I’m anti-authoritarian, but we need to acknowledge that some things are out of our control.”

If only they could apply that lesson a little more broadly, e.g. to the police, to the economy as a whole even. Appropriately, it’s the cops who patrol the camp that get it. One officer compared the scene to “Lord of the Flies.” His supervisor was even more insightful:

One Oakland police supervisor said that the participants first appeared to him as “freethinking activists” but have since devolved into something more sinister. He said it was “interesting for a group that claims to be against current civilization and rules to set up a far more oppressive society than our own.”

Very interesting indeed.

Update: One of the wags at American Glob created this Photoshop to illustrate this story:
{/quote]