This is Hilarious. When the going gets tough, the occupiers get going! Wild eyed climate svengali Bill McKibben claims the “atmosphere is occupied”, and that’s why we have global warming.
Only one problem, when the atmosphere gets too cold, people bail from the tents and head home. The Infrared camera video footage shot by the Telegraph reveals a lot of tents are missing bodies at night.
What a bunch of wimps! Why, in the 60’s their parents protested in waist deep snow, carrying signs, and the protest march was uphill both ways!
Or maybe they brought in some polar bears to help them “experience and be one with nature” more fully and that’s why people are missing?
Here’s the story from the Telegraph:
Only one in 10 St Paul’s protesters stay overnight
Just one in 10 of the tents at the Occupy London Stock Exchange camp which has closed St Paul’s Cathedral are occupied at night, it can be revealed.
The camp forced St Paul’s to close for the first time since the Blitz and is costing local businesses thousands of pounds a day.
But most of the protesters are heading home to sleep in their own beds at night.
Infra red images taken by a police helicopter during the early hours show that only around 20 of the 200 tents on the encampment actually have people staying in them.
The Daily Telegraph has shot its own video of the St Paul’s camp using thermal imaging equipment which appears to confirm these claims.
…
On Monday the revelation was described as a “charade” and pressure was growing on the church and other authorities to evict the camp.
“It is like a phantom camp – a big charade,” said Matthew Richardson, a Corporation of London councillor, who is calling for action to be taken.
“It just shows that most of the people don’t have the courage of their convictions and are here just to make trouble and leaving your tent here overnight is a good way to do that.”
Full story and the video here
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Maybe, just maybe, many of these protestors, like me, are lucky enough to still have families to look after even though we have no jobs to support our families.
OK, somebody help me out here. What do the protesters actually want?
They have a website. (http://occupylondon.org.uk/) I went there, and couldn’t find anything. There’s a page that gives a list of facts to do with the financial collapse of the banks, and the subsequent austerity measures. But… what exactly do they want?
I found this page, where a protester is interviewed:
http://www.londonlovesbusiness.com/commentanalysis/occupy-london-stock-exchange-qa-with-protestor/769.article
“What are you protesting about?
It is about people claiming back power and the right to discuss economic and political matters, whereas before they felt a bit disenfranchised. Of course, feeding into that as well is the fact that the financial crash happened in 2008. The ramifications in some ways are only really beginning to be felt now in terms of spending cuts.
Does the movement have any specific demands?
The way these occupations work, and have worked even with what was happening in the Middle East at the turn of the year, is that people organise into committees or general assemblies, which is the main decision making organ of the occupation.
This is what is happening in New York. Every night they have a General Assembly. And if any specific demands are to be emerge out of Occupy London those will be agreed by a General Assembly – so it would be a bit previous of me to give any.”
So… they want the right to discuss economics and politics. I’m pretty sure they have that right already. But, apparently any other specific demands will emerge during the protest. So, the protest starts with no genuine demands at all. They just hope that they can make some up while they’re there.
I have to say, I find the whole thing utterly pathetic. I think some people just like protesting. Nuclear weapons, bypasses, climate change, banks… same people, different banners. Do they actually care what the banners say? Does anything ever get achieved? Or is it all just a chance for a bunch of people to feel righteous, by complaining about what other people are doing?
I do not remember where I read it, it was a long time ago, but it went something like this:
If all the wealth and money in the world were to be collected and equally redistributed among all people on this planet, by day two, there would already be those who would have spent all their money foolishly. Within a month there would be rich people and poor people and within a year the situation would have returned more or less to the time before the equal redistribution of wealth.
The ‘occupy Wall Street’ movement is just a bunch of the that group of people who, no matter how much help they get, their default situation is always ‘poor’, simply due to their attitude to life.
Go get a life and leave the hard workers working for your upkeep. If you destroy the rich, you would all die of hunger.
Very, as in pathetic.
If people seriously think that socialism or capitalism is the root of societies renovation/destruction, then that qualifies as pathetic as well.
The people running the show are neither; show as in “world”
While the front men/women may well be denigrated or castigated as socialists or capitalists, the show is run by people above such descriptions.
Never mind elections, they are there no matter which colour the front men are.
Look at the degree of infiltration of the global catastrophe party by such organisations as wwf and greenpeace.
And while everyones favourite bogey-organisation, the ipcc, is getting shot-at, everyone forgets that the ipcc was established by politicians to provide them with some reason to enact policies that people would otherwise find execrable. End the ipcc and some other organisation and reason will appear. Maybe an eye should be cast over the shoulder to look for it appearing ?
So, carry-on with the argument. At the end you will realise that it was pointless, but another argument will have started by then and people will flock to that.
Meanwhile, the real bogey-men are still there…buried in the fabric of government and society.
Welcome to global control.
Coming to your part of the world soon.
“Did you sleep at City Plaza or did you go home to a nice warm bed? Inquiring minds want to know. BTW I have an IR camera, so I’ll be doing spot checks thanks to your kind encouragement” – Anthony
**************************************************************************************************************
You just posted that you are so overwhelmed with reviewing and publishing, that you will barely have time to post here for a few weeks………but you have time to prowl around people’s tents at night and film what their doing, if anything, inside them with your IR camera? I hope none of them plan on having sex in their tents, with your camera rolling.
Several contributors here have commented how unscientific, lame, partisan, and inaccurate this snooping people’s tents with IR camera’s is. These protesters have a legitimate grievance, no matter what you think of their politics. Why is this so important to you? Even republicans, having read the poll numbers showing most people agree broadly with the protesters views on Wall Street, have started agreeing with th protestors about the problems of vast economic inequality. Eric Cantor and prominent republicans have back tracked and now claim they “understand” the motivations of the protestors.
Brian I am a raging liberal when it comes to love and bedrooms (if the two of “you” want to get married, or the “three” of you want to get married and you are all adult humans, then you should be able to get married). I am a raging liberal when it comes to employment (if you can do the job, you get the same pay even if you are from Mars). Socially, the guvm’nt needs to stay off my land, and out of my womb, my bedroom, my spiritual life, and my desire to marry, or not, whoever the hell I want to.
On the other hand, the day Bush jumpstarted the bailout nonsense was a serious blow to fiscal conservatism. Obama took that ball and is STILL running with it. The day Bush decided to invade Iraq with no clear plan was a serious blow to fiscal conservatism. Each day Obama comes up with yet another plan or regulation that adds to the already fatted calf of government payrolls is a serious blow to fiscal conservatism.
I can clearly and honestly say that this site cannot be described as exclusively a “Republican” mouth piece.
Our team analyzed the raw image data*) and discovered a serious problem with the night thermal imaging of the Occupy London tent city. The primary infrared camera was set to a default and did not pick up “colder” objects. Here is what we’ve obtained when we synchronized with a second set of images taken by a coupled camera set to maximum sensitivity (the colors are shifted and do not represent the same temperatures):
Compare the original image with our Dual Camera Image Overlay.
Some objects are so well insulated that they could not have been detected by the primary thermal camera despite their internal temperature. The enhanced image data provides an alternative explanation for the low count of St. Paul occupiers during cold nights. They may not have left for a warm bed as suggested in Anthony’s post.
—–
*) Our raw data was obtained under a confidentiality agreement and we are not allowed to distribute it. Also, why should we make the data available to anyone whose aim is to try and find something wrong with it?
I’ve studied climate science in depth and found much evidence which contradicts the AGW theory and little to support it. (reported here: http://www.outersite.org). I’ve also been an avid follower of WUWT for the last two and a half years. However, I remain mystified why people assume that man-made climate change is a left/right debate. To me it is an issue of truth versus corrupt politics, media and public institutions. The major corrupting force, responsible for many of the problems we face, is the global debt based monetary system of which many in the financial services industry are ignorant, let alone the broader public at large.
Consider the way in which climate science has been corrupted and it is not a huge logical leap to recognise that many aspects of political debate are similarly afflicted. This is not the place to conduct a debate on our debt based monetary system but it:
finances the military industrial complex (against which Eisenhower warned); perpetual war is a prerequisite for its development – the putative post cold war dividend would have been very inconvenient;
corrupts politics, media and public institutions (think IPCC and environmental NGOs) as they help to enslave the 99% with their lies;
underpins an economic system which relies on extracting ever more resources from the planet at an exponential rate which is unsustainable;
is likely to collapse as we are now in a debt spiral from which there is no escape.
If you are looking for the rationale behind these statements, there are some links at http://www.outersite.org.
The Occupy Wall Street movement and its global cousins, including London, are a manifestation of anger and recognition that our financial system is failing the 99%. Banking interests are the target of their ire. As in climate debate, there is much misinformation in the mainstream media on the occupation at St Paul’s, not helped by the prominent anti-capitalist banner. There are many at St Paul’s (and now Finsbury Square) who are neither anti-capitalist nor pro CAGW. They know that banking interests are well served by the huge sums invested by governments in the climate change industry and that far from a free market capitalist system, we live in an oligarchic, centrally planned kleptocracy.
It you want to know more about what’s happening in these occupations, try visiting and talking to the people themselves, because you ain’t getting the truth from the mainstream media. Now where have I hear that before?
Curiousgeorge, I was talking about the perception of the patrons of Wal Mart, not the actual patrons of Wal Mart. If you don’t think the media and their competitors try to portray Wal Mart as redneck, you haven’t been paying attention.
Alexander and iDandy. I was without insurance for a while when I was young, but did manage to get hospitilization coverage, this was 20+ years ago, it was expensive, but gave me peace of mind. I’m sure it’s alot more now. But my goal was to get a job with good inusrance and I did. I refused to have children until that day too. Smoking is a choice, I smoked for 30 years and loved every damn Camel I smoked, but when mortality starts creepig over the horizon and you still have others depending on you, sometimes you have to give up things you love to do. And boy oh boy did I like to smoke, although I didn’t smoke a lot for the last 10 years or so, maybe a pack a week. Being overweight is tough because some people are just prone to be over weight regardless of what they do or eat.
And health insurance is like car insurance because you are not always the sole arbiter of your own healh, just like you are at the mercy of other drivers when you are on the road. Smoking may give you lung cancer but so might a worksite you were at 30 years ago. You might not want to be forced to have health insurance, but you may also get some horrible disease, say tebeculosis, not get treatment because you don’t or can’t afford, and spread it to dozens of other people.
Heatlh insurance is so expensive for many reasons. Over reliance on preventitive care and diagnostics to avoid malpractice suits, rampant fraud in billing, and covering the millions of poor and elderly, and simply much better… and much more expensive treatments and tools. Insurance works better with more people in the pool.
Alexander, thanks for clearing up the Wal Mart employment misconception. Wal Marts in Pennsylvania are not unionized and I would imagine do not have to offer contracts.
Clive Menzies says:
October 27, 2011 at 8:47 am
“However, I remain mystified why people assume that man-made climate change is a left/right debate.”
Environmentalists/Greens are the ones that cry the loudest for an end to fossil fuels; and at least in my country, the according party has been on the left since early after its founding (they were mixed in the beginning, then threw all non-leftists out).
So I have evidence. I could point to the careers of several Green top dogs – they started in communist groups in the 70ies. Joschka Fischer was a stone-throwing protester.
“Pamela Gray says:
October 27, 2011 at 6:47 am
Brian I am a raging liberal when it comes to love and bedrooms (if the two of “you” want to get married, or the “three” of you want to get married and you are all adult humans, then you should be able to get married). I am a raging liberal when it comes to employment (if you can do the job, you get the same pay even if you are from Mars). Socially, the guvm’nt needs to stay off my land, and out of my womb, my bedroom, my spiritual life, and my desire to marry, or not, whoever the hell I want to.
On the other hand, the day Bush jumpstarted the bailout nonsense was a serious blow to fiscal conservatism. Obama took that ball and is STILL running with it. The day Bush decided to invade Iraq with no clear plan was a serious blow to fiscal conservatism. Each day Obama comes up with yet another plan or regulation that adds to the already fatted calf of government payrolls is a serious blow to fiscal conservatism.
I can clearly and honestly say that this site cannot be described as exclusively a “Republican” mouth piece.”
Pamela… I’ve already explained this. When you start pulling stunts and doing the kind of non sense as seen with this thread, I start to question if you’re to be trusted. I know it’s his site, but it seems to be at it’s best in regards to The Global Warming debate. Just my opinion.
These problems go back before Bush and Obama… They go back to Ronald Reagan.
http://
If you have Netflix or whatever, rent and watch this film Inside Job.
_Jim says:
October 26, 2011 at 5:27 pm
Gail Combs says on October 26, 2011 at 5:09 pm
…
If you have not read it Facts about the “Industrial Revolution” by Ludwig von Mises, September 1993 is an eye opening look at the industrial revolution from the point of view of an economist. It is certainly not the view we get in school.
THE SAME Mises who wrote * the below on the subject of opportunity or oppression, the “Free labor” children:
It is a distortion of facts to say that the factories carried off the housewives from the nurseries and the kitchen and the children from their play. These women had nothing to cook with and to feed their children. These children were destitute and starving. Their only refuge was the factory. It saved them, in the strict sense of the term, from death by starvation.
Which ‘side’ are you arguing on today?
__________________________________________
It is actually fairly easy. I argue FOR property rights, capitalism, honest and fair contracts. I have zero problem with a company making a profit as long as it does not involve using government/corporate collusion or other unethical methods.
As far as Mises goes, on that period he is correct the factories saved people from starvation. Just as they did when the same happened thanks to the Green Revolution in the USA There was a heck of a lot of nasty stuff going on during both time periods. Neither the governments, the banks, the Aristocracy or the factory owners were “Lily White”
You missed the rest of what Mises said by the way.
“In the first decades of the Industrial Revolution the standard of living of the factory workers was shockingly bad when compared with contemporary conditions of the upper classes and with the present conditions of the industrial masses. Hours of work were long, the sanitary conditions in the workshops deplorable. The individual’s capacity to work was used up rapidly. But the fact remains that for the surplus population which the enclosure movement had reduced to dire wretchedness and for which there was literally no room left in the frame of the prevailing system of production, work in the factories was salvation.” http://www.fff.org/freedom/0993e.asp
The Enclosure Movement
THEN
“…Even among the revisionists then, the birth of a productive, commercially viable agricultural sector required the destruction of the traditional rural social structure.
….the consolidation of the intermingled fields, the creation of one farm out of several small holdings, and the loss of access to common wastes and pastures resulted in a reduction in the number of people with direct access to the land. Many of these dispossessed people emigrated from Scotland to foreign lands, or found work in urban centres. Thus, we find that of the 202 parishes in the northeast of Scotland 110 report depopulation between 1755 and the 1790s. Essentially, this phase of enclosure is institutional in nature. In this respect, the enclosure experience of England and Scotland may be similar….” http://www.ehs.org.uk/ehs/conference2004/assets/douglas.doc
“….It has been said that the Clearances are now far enough away from us to be decently forgotten. But the hills are still empty. In all of Britain, only among them can one find real solitude, and if their history is known there is no satisfaction to be got from the experience. ….
Generally, law and justice, religion and humanity, were either totally disregarded, or what was worse, in many cases converted into and applied as instruments of oppression.
Every conceivable means, short of the musket and the sword, were used to drive the natives from the land they loved, and to force them to exchange their crofts and homes — brought originally into cultivation and built by themselves, or by their forefathers — “ http://www.electricscotland.com/history/hclearances.htm
The Enclosure Movement
NOW
“…Billionaires and Mega-Corporations Behind Immense Land Grab in Africa
20+ African countries are selling or leasing land for intensive agriculture on a shocking scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era….” http://www.alternet.org/story/145970/billionaires_and_mega-corporations_behind_immense_land_grab_in_africa
Oakland Institute Report: http://media.oaklandinstitute.org/massive-land-grabs-africa-us-hedge-funds-and-universities-0
World Bank Report Confirms ‘Land Grab’ Fears: http://www.stwr.org/land-energy-water/rising-global-interest-in-farmland-can-it-yield-sustainable-and-equitable-benefits.html
United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism Report:
“…Africa is already experiencing social and environmental upheaval from land grabs motivated by a large-scale rush for biofuel crop production, even as the science shows that the CO2 reductions from biofuels are highly questionable, and the social and environmental consequences, negative. The African continent has also seen disastrous impacts from large-scale plantations of exotic tree species that particularly affect local water resources….”
http://www.africanbiodiversity.org/system/files/PDFs/CDM%20Report_Feb2011_lowres.pdf
http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=47599“>FAO Paper On Land Grab Is “Wishy-Washy”
As Mises made very clear the Enclosures during the 1700’s were brutal, cruel and deadly. That is absolutely no excuse for intelligent humans to allow the wealthy to repeat the exercise on third world peasants.
History repeats if we do not bother studying it and Mises gives a glimpse into a history we are now in the process of repeating.
DirkH, I don’t doubt that but the green movement has also been captured by corporate interests to promote the CAGW agenda. WWF is backed by the Rockafeller foundation, among others and has been instrumental in promoting alarmist claims. Furthermore business and establishment interests (Goldman’s etc) are heavily invested in the climate change industry.
These “occupiers” have no coherent explanation for what they want – except for their demand that they want money taken from “the rich.” Here’s an analogy of what would happen if they got their way:
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men [the poorest] would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man [the richest] would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers”, he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20”. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his “fair share?”
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing [100% savings].
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 [33%savings].
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 [28%savings].
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 [25% savings].
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 [22% savings].
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 [16% savings].
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. “I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got $10!” “Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!” “That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!” “Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!” The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
It looks as though the Occupy protesters are learning life lessons the hard way. They’ve had their property stolen, are getting into fights, and in one location kitchen staff shrugged. (The kitchen producers went on strike because there were so many freeloaders, as in the famous novel Atlas Shrugged.)
What is the antidote? Evaluate each person instead of assuming that claimed support for your beliefs means good character, or worse assuming that everyone is the same (a foundation of collectivism). Reject people who do not behave reasonably. Have a system to settle disputes and restrain the violent. Require individual payment for food (which does not preclude charity individual-to-individual).
Oh, never mind – that’s the social system we largely have here, the one so bad the protesters want to tear it down instead of improving it. Obviously they have not been paying attention.
For those interested in facts rather than the knee jerk bashing of something you don’t like, you may be interested in this:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread768193/pg1
Basically, a lot of tents are opaque to infra red, if you watch the video, you can see people disappearing as they walk behind tents, or partially appearing as they leave a tent…