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Is Occupy Wall Street going to represent a major turning point in U.S. history? Over the past several years, many people have been warning that we would see mass economic riots in the United States if the economy continued to get worse. Well, the economic riots are now here and America will never be the same.
The Occupy Wall Street protests are starting their third week and now similar protests have sprung up in major cities all over the United States. An increasing number of Americans have totally lost faith in the system and are looking for an outlet for their frustrations. Occupy Wall Street is a spark that has started a fire, but most Americans do not understand where all of this is going. In the years ahead, millions more Americans will lose their jobs, millions more Americans will lose their homes to foreclosure and millions more Americans will find themselves drowning in debt. As the economy continues to decline, millions upon millions of Americans will become even more frustrated. In particular, young Americans are really starting to become angry about the economy and our deeply corrupt financial system. Eventually we are going to see an explosion of anger and frustration on the streets of America that is going to be absolutely unprecedented. Occupy Wall Street is just the beginning. If most Americans could see what is coming next, it would chill them to their cores.
Growing up, most of us were taught that if we wanted to change things in America, we could do it at the ballot box. Well, today large numbers of Americans are realizing that both major political parties have been bought and paid for. They are realizing that things never seem to change no matter who we vote into office. They are realizing that signing petitions or sending letters to our "representatives" does not accomplish anything.
As the frustration of average Americans has grown, it has given rise to new political movements.
So far, the Tea Party movement has been the most prominent, and it has been dominated mostly by Republicans.
Now, Occupy Wall Street is becoming a national movement, and it is being dominated mostly by radical leftists and socialists.
Both movements have attempted to appeal to the growing core of libertarians in this country, and to a certain extent both movements have had some success.
But what all of this represents is a fundamental shift in the way that Americans view political change.
Americans no longer trust that politicians will listen to them. All of the recent polls show that satisfaction with the government is at an all-time low. People are deeply frustrated and large numbers of them simply do not believe that the traditional ways of bringing about change work anymore.
America is broken, and it is getting really hard to deny it.
In America today, it takes massive amounts of money to get elected, and most of our politicians end up deeply aligned with those that have huge amounts of money to donate to political campaigns.
Most Americans today feel like they have no voice. Many also feel like they do not have a legitimate choice at the ballot box.
So what happens when millions of Americans are deeply, deeply angry about the economy and the direction this country is headed, but they also believe that the political system is so broken that voting won't do any good?
Well, we are starting to see what happens.
Today, people are marching non-violently in the streets.
Tomorrow, unfortunately, things are likely to get much crazier. Violence is not the solution to any of our problems, but sadly that is the direction we are headed as a nation. Those that are angry and frustrated tend to lash out in wild and unpredictable ways. We saw that during the London riots recently.
It would be great if a couple of "quick fixes" could be implemented and all of our economic problems would go away. But the reality of the situation is that the problems that we are facing are far more complicated than that. The truth is that the United States is in the midst of a long-term economic decline which is getting progressively worse, and this country has become deeply, deeply divided.
There is not much hope on the horizon and time is rapidly running out for our economy.
So will the Occupy Wall Street protests bring about change?
Well, there are a couple of things that are very unusual about the Occupy Wall Street protests.
One of the unique things about the Occupy Wall Street protests is that they are focused on money and economics. In the past, most mass protests in America have been about war or civil rights, but the Occupy Wall Street movement is very much focused on the economic pain that ordinary Americans are feeling.
It is also very unusual for liberals to be conducting mass protests while a liberal is sitting in the White House.
So if this is what is happening now, what is going to happen once a Republican gets elected?
That is a very sobering thing to think about.
At first, a lot of people thought that the Occupy Wall Street protests would quickly fade away.
But they haven't.
Instead, they have grown and they have spread to more cities.
For example, the other day 3,000 people protested in front of Bank of America's offices in downtown Boston.
Similar protests are now being held in San Francisco, in Chicago, in Los Angeles, in Seattle, and in Denver.
But of course New York is still the epicenter of the movement, and what happened on the Brooklyn Bridge the other day made headlines all over the globe.
Police arrested more than 700 people under very suspicious circumstances. The arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge appear to have been a staged event by the police. If you doubt this, just read this eyewitness account.
As you can see from this video, the police led the protesters on to the bridge and then stopped and formed a line in the middle of the bridge. When protesters attempted to turn around and leave in the other direction, they found that there were police behind them. Surrounded and with no way out, most of the protesters just waited to be cuffed and hauled off by police.
So was it the goal of the police to make the protesters look bad by making it look like they were blockading the Brooklyn Bridge?
Did someone that wanted to provide fuel for these protests organize this "media event" so that large numbers of Americans would sympathize with the protesters and would want to rally to their cause?
Something about that whole Brooklyn Bridge episode just feels really "staged".
In any event, it appears likely that the Occupy Wall Street movement is not going anywhere any time soon.
So exactly what do they want?
Well, the following list of complaints was taken from the "official" organizing website of Occupy Wall Street....
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE ON BLACKLISTED NEWS HERE
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.
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