I seem to recall in one of the early stages, one of the West Coast occupations (might have been Sacramento…?) where they were being given citations every night, some occupiers started wearing their collection of citations as badges of honor…

The macroeconomy of the Roman Empire was based upon plunder and tribute from conquering ever more lands and subjects.

Once the empire stopped expanding its borders, the easy streams of plunder dried up, and the whole thing began a slow death-spiral.

I see some parallels with the globalist money lords, in that their macroeconomy is based upon extracting plunder and tribute from countries and entire regions. Just follow the debt and currency crises around the world the last few decades… Latin America, Southeast Asia, Russia, now Europe… once they have plundered all they can the money lords just move on to the next victim.

The US is being lined up on the chopping block as the next victim to be reduced to serfdom.

New Paltz Village Board supports Occupy movement

Union members rally with Occupy Poughkeepsie group

Coming soon to a country near you.

At least we might be able to read all about ourselves being detained and shot on the Internet, since SOPA seems dead in the House for now, although the Reid in the Senate supposedly wants to bring PROTECT IP (the Senate version) up for vote first thing in January.

“Here’s Wired’s take on what went down:

The House Judiciary Committee considering whether to send the Stop Online Piracy Act to the House floor abruptly adjourned Friday with no new vote date set – a surprise given that the bill looked certain to pass out of committee today.”

http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/sopa_win/

The only way to get the politicians to take notice is to take your votes away from them.

However, the issue then becomes, will enough people be willing to let Obama fall and install the GOP back into the Presidency, even as a tactical measure, for the strategic goal of essentially reducing the Democratic Party to a hollow shell and leaving the field open in the future for a truly new major party?

Part of me thinks that some of this energy needs to be spent trying to get 3rd-party candidates into the Congress… a few dozen in the House could exert some leverage over the 2 major parties. If the Justice Party does well enough that it can stay in existence past 2012, the 2014 Congressional elections could be quite an opportunity…

That said…

OWS is not a political movement, it is essentially a resistance movement, and although I think it may INSPIRE political movements, OWS itself should stay on the front lines and let others following behind secure the territory it advances into. This will allow any inspired political movements to present themselves as “less radical than OWS” and make more headway into the population at large.

I have seen some thoughts about FDL that some type of alliance or combination ticket between the Justice Party and the Green Party should be worked out.

The main reason I have seen given for this idea being that the Green Party already has ballot lines secured for about 40 states, which could potentially be assigned to Justice Party candidates.

OccupyTulsa Occupy Tulsa
Still occupying city hall. Come see us. We’re gonna be here all night. #an0n #ows #OTOK #occupytogether #occupysf
3 minutes ago

Just a reminder that not only is December 17 the 3-month anniversary of OWS, but is also the

1-year anniversary of Mohamed Bouazizi setting himself on fire and sparking the Arab Spring.

It is a lesson that even people who have nothing, even having been stripped of their dignity as human beings, still have the power to trigger change.

Occupiers move into New Paltz park

Occupy Hudson Valley seems to have successfully set up a replacement encampment since Poughkeepsie was evicted.

Ya ever notice that as soon as IVN dropped out of sight, another malcontent appeared?

Just sayin’…

“NYU Students to Turn Academic Lens on Occupy Wall Street”

“One is an elective titled “Why Occupy Wall Street? The History and Politics of Debt and Finance”"

Saturday December 17 will mark the 1-year anniversary of Mohamed Bouazizi setting himself on fire and sparking the Arab Spring.

I would hope that we would all remember the lesson, that the actions of one person can make a difference in the world.

PS: also I think I might have figured how to embed hyperlink so hopefully it worked :)

“Occupy Kingston stalwarts brave cold outside Ulster County Office Building”

http://midhudsonnews.com/News/2011/December/09/OccKing-09Dec11.html

Interesting that it is mostly senior citizens there, and even though they are only having one vigil/rally a week, they are still out there showing support and trying to raise awareness.

http://www.occupyhudsonvalley.org/

OccupyPK lasted long enough to start coordinating what I gather might be a sort of “cell-system” with small local groups based in different towns and colleges in the region.

Aside from planning another physical occupation, they plan on maintaining a regular schedule of “conference calls” using Mumble https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mumble_%28software%29

Very early in the movement when concerns about future co-option attempts first surfaced, I posted my favorite quote from the movie “Watchmen”:

“I’m not locked in here with all of you; all of you are locked in here WITH ME.”
-Rorschach

It is all a matter of perspective.

To be clearer, I agree, OWS go on the offensive and try to co-opt the would-be co-opters.

I was trying to listen to their video covering the Saturday “Hudson Valley Regional General Assembly” but the crackling in my cheap speakers was driving me nuts, so I dismantled them to see if broken wire or anything inside, but found nothing and was too lazy to put them back together.

New (and hopefully BETTER) speakers should be here in a day or two.