It seems that climate advocate Bill McKibben has jumped the shark. As evident on the 350.org website, it is no longer about climate in any way shape or form, of course, based on past behavior, it probably never was. Just have a look at some of the recent pronouncements from the 350.org website:
and from two days ago…
Listen to what McKibben and some of his fellow protestors have to say:
But even our own Willis Eschenbach thinks the XL pipeline issue is ridiculous, because there is really only one question: Where will the oil be burned?
I think this image sums up this farce pretty well:
I wonder what corporate airline Bill McKibben uses to jet around the world to speak of the evils of CO2 and corporations?
The only thing missing from the picture (though it is likely in there somewhere) is Apple Corporation, purveyor of (in my opinion, highly overpriced) computers which have an almost fanatical following in some circles.Now before you launch into an automatic Mac-vs-PC war, please read why I’m pointing this out.
Apple is company number one (according to Bloomberg) in growth and revenue, and #1 in tech (according to NYT) but the same people who complain about Wall Street, think nothing of getting fleeced by Apple for a computer you can buy for about a third of the price elsewhere.
While everyone is free to choose what computer works best for them, I find that lack of labeling of Apple as a “greedy corporation” very ironic, particularly in light of the worker abuse, child labor problems and environmental problems left in the wake of the manufacturing of Apple’s products in China. It is doubly ironic that some of the loudest and most acidic voices about climate and greed, are Apple product users, and raise not a peep about such problems. Apple gets a pass, probably because the Goreacle endorses the company and sits on its board.
But that’s a side issue, especially when one of the most intelligent and reasonable persons I know, WUWT author Willis Eschenbach, is a Mac user. I only point out Apple Corporation in this context because the occupy protesters and climate activists don’t see the very profitable and ethically/ecologically questionable Apple Corporation as being in the same class of evil corporations they protest for the very same reasons.
The real issue with “occupy” is the lack of rational thought and direction by this “movement”. Even the MSM and some university newspapers are noticing this. For example, watch this video from “occupyAtlanta”. They are actually proud of making a civil rights leader leave.
And in case you were wondering about the political angle, be sure to recite the Marxist chant:
The mindless droning has spread to Seattle:
They may as well be chanting Imhotep Imhotep! Imhotep!!
There’s a name for people like this: useful idiots.
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hunter says:
October 9, 2011 at 3:01 pm
The idea that ‘big corporate money’ is ruining politics in the US is an amazing claim from groups supported by Soros and unions…..
_______________________________________________________________
It does not matter whether a politician is a democrat or a republican, what matters is WHO donated massive amounts of money to their campaign. Heck Maurice Strong, Canadian, Senior Advisor to China and father of Global Warming donated mega bucks to both the Democrats and Republicans. It was BUSH who interceded and got him into Kyoto!
Another example is Dwayne Orville Andreas CEO of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). He contributed MILLIONS to both the democrats and republicans. He was linked to illegal campaign fund raising in the Watergate scandal. He used multiple donors from ADM to get around the campaign funding laws. He is alleged to be very well known for his donations among politicians but not the public.
Here is a third example.
Ann Veneman served on the board of directors for Calgene Inc. that was bought out by Monsanto. She joined the USDA and worked on GATT which later became WTO. She left the USDA and went to work for the law firm and lobby group Patton, Boggs & Blow. (Then later went back to the USDA)
“Patton Boggs began as an international law firm concentrating in global business and trade in 1962…We were among the first law firms to recognize that all three branches of government could serve as forums in which to achieve client goals, enabling us to emerge as the nation’s leading public policy law firm, and we have developed our extensive business law capabilities into the firm’s largest practice area.” http://www.pattonboggs.com/about/overview/ [I think that is pretty explicit as to the goals and Veneman was an instrument of meeting those goals]
Veneman was also Members Emeritus of “IPC or the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council or International Policy Council, for short.
The IPC was created in 1987 explicitly to drive home the GATT agriculture rules of WTO at Uruguay talks. The IPC demands removal of ‘high tariff’ barriers in developing countries, remaining silent on the massive government subsidy to agribusiness in the USA…. In effect the IPC is run by US-based agribusiness giants including Cargill, Monsanto, Bunge, ADM, the very interests which benefit from the rules they drafted for WTO trade.” http://www.publiceyeonscience.ch/images/the_wto_and_the_politics_of_gmo.doc
Anyone who thinks we and not the large international corporations and central banks are running the world has not done their homework.
Why has not anyone rejected their premise? “We are the 50% who pay 97% of the taxes.” How many of us are in the streets protesting? probably not many, too busy working I guess.
Sean Hill says:
“The beef is with companies who work the system to their favor through lobbying efforts, government subsidies and handouts, manipulation of the legal (especially patent) system. I can’t speak for the “Occupy” movement, but these are the types of companies where my anti-corporatist rancor is directed. It is important to remember that our corporatist culture is not capitalism.”
I agree with that. Except for the last sentence, and I don’t like the word “capitalism”. It’s a Karl Marx word that tries to demonize the free market. When someone builds a company, employs people, and produces a product that people want, money naturally flows to that person. Capital is the result of the free market. It is not a cause.
And the “99%” number of the Occupy mob is so bogus. There are almost no truly poor people in America. Despite propaganda to the contrary, almost everyone has enough to eat [those with the lowest incomes tend to be the most obese], almost everyone has a place to live, and everyone is entitled to medical care.
Truly poor people have distended bellies and arms like broomsticks. Today’s “poor” are generally that way due to bad choices: drug abuse, unmarried pregnancies, preference for welfare over work, etc. And there is tremendous churning within the population cohorts. Those in the bottom 20% tend to rise out of that cohort over time… and plenty of people in higher cohorts end up dropping into lower ones.
In a free market there will always be income disparities. People are not created with equal abilities, drive, intelligence or ambition. These “99%” mob gatherings are simply coveting the financial results of others’ drive and discipline. The top 1% of the population pays most of the country’s tax receipts. So how much more is their “fair share”? The entire bottom half of the population pays no federal taxes. What should their “fair share” be? And name one ‘poor’ person who ever created a job for someone.
The most despicable thing about Obama is his fanning of the class warfare flames. He might reap the whirlwind. Or worse, the rest of us might. [BTW, I am not a rich guy. Retired, on a fixed income.]
I love the photo with all the consumer products highlighted. I wonder how many of the occupiers could go one week (one day) without the benefits of “Big Oil’s” petroleum products. Even the very street they’re standing on is made from asphalt. I’m sure they all didn’t walk to get there, meaning they had to expend fossil fuels to travel. Plastics, pharmaceuticals, synthetic materials, energy and on and on. It’s almost impossible to take fossil fuels out of our daily lives. I give Ed Begley and Bill Nye some credit for at least trying to walk the green walk by trying to live it in their daily lives. There’s one word that rings truer than most for the occupiers — hypocrites.
“The thing is, the government has a role to play in keeping the media fair and open.”
Expecting big government to ‘keep the media fair and open’ is like expecting a Great White Shark to go vegan. Big government loves big media because it’s easy to control, and actively prevents fair and open media. Government, for example, sells radio frequencies and prevents anyone else from broadcasting on those frequencies. Government has also been trying to impose controls on the Internet ever since they discovered it, precisely because it is ‘fair and open’.
“As long as there is a source of power, people will find ways to exploit it and twist it to their needs.”
So we appear to agree. But your solution is to make that ‘source of power’ more powerful, whereas mine is to make it less powerful.
Big government and big business are symbiotic organisms: big business ensures that taxes are collected from their employees with a minimum of fuss and big government then hands much of that tax money back to big business. You can’t fix that by making government even bigger, or hoping that it will do things that clearly aren’t in its best interest.
I saw all I needed to see when I watched the John Lewis video. The mindless repetition of whatever the cult leader said was chilling. It was like watching Jim Jones indoctrinating his followers in the virtues of drinking Kool-Aid.
Torgeir Hansson says:
October 9, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Elections must be funded with public money
Voila, everyone gets to run for office! Or mabe we’ll let the Obamacare Execs decide who gets to run, because they know the cost/benefit “worth” rates for each person in the U.S..
@MarkG
No, my solution is to strengthen and enforce rules that have been in place and make licensing more accessible. We have had media ownership rules in place for decades which have only been relaxed, several times, in the last fifteen years or so. Before the relaxing of these rules, the number of corporations which owned a majority of media outlets was 20+. Since the relaxing, we’re down to six.
My point about lobbying being around since the early days of this country was that the government had little power then, yet it was still targeted. It is largely through the influence of powerful lobbying efforts that the power of the government has grown.
Really, neither of our solutions solve anything, right? The powers of government have grown through lobbying efforts, and the media protections that were in place have been eroded by lobbying efforts. The only real, long-tern solution is getting people interested and involved in the world around them, and to fight decisions that are against their best interests.
TomRude says:
October 9, 2011 at 5:28 pm
The Seattle video is simply frightening: these people repeating after the microphone holder… Is it Kindergarten of what?
It’s a capacity almost necessary to defining a Progressive humanoid “mob”, although the less naive and much better behaved Parrots might also be induced to perform the same feat. And if that was a large paper mache’ dummy one of them beheaded, they’ve got two more very important skills sets covered right there as well.
Having spoken to a member of the younger generation earlier today it appears that all of the AGW panic and scaremongering ,ay be dying out as it doesn;t appear to be as fashionable or trendy as it once was.
They are misdirected.
It should not be “Occupy Wall Street”.
It should be “Occupy K Street”
They are mistaken in blaming the private sector. For all of Wall Street’s past sins and present, Wall Street creates jobs.
They should be focusing their energy at the Federal Government, which with private sector arrogance (but with the money of “the 99%”) that has grown so big it is its own nation in and of itself, to an oligarchy of publicy-funded fat cats.
And they should turn on their union fuelers in this case as the unions are nothing but rackets which go into the deep pockets of those at the top, again, mostly taxpayer funded money in the process (over HALF of the union population are public sector employees!).
The unions are HYPOCRITES. On the one hand they say they stick up for the common man. But on the other they’ll take your money by force.
At least Wall Street is honest about the profit motive.
So this whole movement “Occupy Wall Street” is misdirected.
Upper echelon public sector employees (including the climate elitists like Hansen) are the Nouveau Riche. They make sometimes more than TWICE their private sector counterparts, and this is not just the case for federal, but also municipal.
They are amassing great amounts of wealth at the expense of the taxpayer, and they make up more than half of the union population.
Will somebody tell me why taxpayer funded cushy jobs more than twice the national average, needs unions?
Hey Occupiers! You are not only barking up the wrong tree….you are in the wrong forest altogether!
Wanna get me on board??
Occupy K Street.
Occupy M Street.
Occupy City Hall
Then we’re talking.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
rbateman says:
October 9, 2011 at 1:49 pm
“People are getting wise to the game.”
___
Sadly, no. The occupy wall-street crowd on the left and the tea-party on the right will both be played by the well-monied groups for their own “higher” purpose…i.e.control of Washington. Each side simply has their own way of spinning it to best meet that goal.
When I listen to those mental patients of “Occupy Atlanta”, I am reminded of the following scene from Star Trek TNG;
The same monotonous voices all speaking in unison. You will be assimilated.
I’ve been to a number of protests and seen other protests on YouTube, but the mindless chanting is unique. However, it appears in the Atlanta Group AND in the Seattle Group. This makes me wonder if this is NOT just some spontaneous unplanned protests, BUT a carefully planned series of events across the US. There is one hint of the source:
Instead of Useful Idiots these guys qualify as Marching Morons. They don’t grasp that it is the collusion between the Corpratists (I can’t bring myself to call them Capitalists) and the government. Their solution is more government which caused the problems in the first place. Who do they think caused this mess and who did Obama and Bush pick to fix it? Could it be the same people? Maybe the ones who bailed out the executives that ran the banks and then gave themselves bonuses?
green is the new red
I’m guessing a large number of the posters on this thread are perfectly happy with how things have gone – some have managed to buy up foreclosed properties, had good returns from investments in third world countries where people are forced or coerced into working for far less than the equivalent job in North America… but it’s all fair, for if the corporations hadn’t sent the jobs off shore then these same folks wouldn’t have the good things given to them by their new prosperity!? And the same corporations already knew that if they or none of their corporate buddy companies were no longer giving jobs in North America, then eventually there’d be no-one at home to buy their off shore products – but hey, the Asian market would be there to replace it… wouldn’t it?
I guess it would seem more authentic to the majority of posters who feel that the occupations are a joke if the protesters showed up naked, used smoke signals to communicate…
When the US or Canada goes to war somewhere, the soldiers are met with opposition from people native to the lands being invaded, who have guns and other weapons – some of which were made in the US or perhaps Canada. I’m guessing the majority of posters feel that the rebels in those countries are just fake, for they’re using the same weapons, purchased from the countries that they’re fighting against…??
What will it take before you wake up? Do you have to feel the wrath of the corporate and banking elite? You’re either one of them, or eventually you’ll be asked to leave their party. If there’s no other way, I’m thinking it may be a good thing for some event or personal issue to make it so that you miss just enough mortgage payments to threaten your ownership of your home – nothing too serious, just something that will cause you to lose your home and savings, maintain good enough health. I don’t wish this on you because I hate you, or even dislike you. You’re my peers, you’re my relatives, you just happen to have been brainwashed into an unsustainable paradigm that is unhealthy for the majority of the other people on the planet. I dearly hope you wake up, realize how utterly LUCKY you’ve been, and stand with those who would like to fix what’s broken. The protesters may not have refined their goals at this time, but they at least realize that there are very big problems that need to be addressed. They’re working it out. If you choose to ignore problems, as you’ve become accustomed to doing, you will eventually pay – that is, unless the protesters are successful. If they are, then you will most likely benefit as well.
Time to grow up, there’s more to life than money and a job. If you disagree, you’re a sad human.
As soon as my subsidy check comes in from Exxon, I’m going down and occupy the unemployment office.
@JPeden – The reason they are repeating the words of one person is due to the banning and criminalisation of megaphones. It does look sort of dumb though.
McKibben’s just a paid fifth columnist for Goldman Sachs’ execs. In the top corner offices don’t care a hoot what they say about them down in the streets, but if they can get their stooge McKibben to hijack the movement and somehow swing carbon trading then they will make lots of money brokering phoney paper all over again just like with subprime loans.
R. Gates says:
October 9, 2011 at 6:27 pm
rbateman says:
October 9, 2011 at 1:49 pm
“People are getting wise to the game.”
___
Sadly, no. The occupy wall-street crowd on the left and the tea-party on the right will both be played by the well-monied groups for their own “higher” purpose…i.e.control of Washington. Each side simply has their own way of spinning it to best meet that goal.
=====================
Uh no. Rather…Happily, yes.
The sad part is that people with simplistic arguments full of holes like you continue to run their mouth, as opposed to wising up, and listening, to those wiser than you, like Bateman.
And by the way, people ARE getting wise to the game. It is as Bateman said:
“People are angry, R. Gates, just plain ordinary people who have been abandoned by thier leaders. The streets are no different than the blogs, with trolls aplenty out to misdirect and steal the movements.”
I concur 100%.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
savethesharks says:
“It should not be “Occupy Wall Street”. It should be “Occupy K Street”… Occupy M Street. Occupy City Hall”
Exactly right. Doubled and squared.
And DTarris, certainly you must realize that this is no spontaneous movement like the Tea Party [and IANATP’r]. This is a rent-a-mob organized to take the spotlight off of Obama’s wrecking of the economy through his deliberately ruinous spending [which was what sparked the Tea Party grass roots movement in the first place]. There isn’t much at all to show for all that profligate, irresponsible spending of $Trillions, and now we have to pay it all back.
The rent-a-mob has no interest in trying to “fix what’s broken.” Coveting the property of others is their motivation. Their orchestrated diversion is intended to blame anyone but Obama – always blaming others being Obama’s stock in trade.
DTarris says:
October 9, 2011 at 6:39 pm
Time to grow up, there’s more to life than money and a job. If you disagree, you’re a sad human.
===============================================
DTarris, you’re misunderstanding what you’re seeing here. I’m 100% for reforming the banking system so that they’d remain solvent. For instance, they should no longer be forced to make loans to people they know have no chance to make the payments. We should no longer be financially responsible for the student loan guarantees.
There should have never been bailouts and we should move to ensure there never will be again. Before you condemn and board up Wall Street, you need to understand that the American people under their current condition require it to be of good health. Is that wrong? Yes, but you need to fix those problems first, before you destroy everybody’s retirement plans. (the majority of the American workers are vested in their 401K) I’ve got no belief there’ll be much for me when I leave the work force, but we have millions of American workers that have nothing else but their 401K and are nearing retirement. (Baby boomers) These miscreants are biting the hands that are literally feeding them and have literally raised them.
As to taking up with known fraudsters such as 350.org or marxist organizations such as moveon.org or the brainchild of this silliness, George Soros……….. I’ll pass. Thistles and dead trees don’t render good fruit.
R. Gates says:
October 9, 2011 at 6:27 pm
rbateman says:
October 9, 2011 at 1:49 pm
“People are getting wise to the game.”
___
Sadly, no. The occupy wall-street crowd on the left and the tea-party on the right will both be played by the well-monied groups for their own “higher” purpose…i.e.control of Washington. Each side simply has their own way of spinning it to best meet that goal.
_________________
For once we agree on something.
>> This makes me wonder if this is NOT just some spontaneous unplanned protests, BUT a carefully planned series of events across the US.
Of course it’s not spontaneous. Our President’s background was a “community organizer”. It’s not surprising what techniques he is using to get re-elected.