OCCUPY WALL STREET

[persiphone]

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

I couldn't agree with this more. It's not just lesser instances. What the Germans did was on a whole different scale. They committed mass murder and were the most blatantly racist and oppressive regime in modern history.

What is going on today in the US is a crime; our "democracy" is a sham; our civil liberties are threatened and our freedoms are infringed upon. But we are not in danger of being rounded up into camps and being executed for our political beliefs. If it comes to a day where we are in danger of that, then I will say this is like the Nazis.

instead we have for profit prisons *shudder* and that horrid guantanamo, where your rights and all moral reason go right out the window.

edited to add....you don't need to be foreign and/or of middle eastern descent to be sent to guantanamo, incidentally.

[Diavolo]

Persiphone, I didn't say that genocide isn't happening in other countries. It is. Arguably we just deposed two ruthless dictators that were doing exactly that. But that's not the subject here. The subject is occupy wall street and the references are not appropriate to what the police are doing.

Are the police breaking the law? Yes. Will there be repercussions from it? Probably. But they aren't rounding up OWS protesters in the US and putting them in death camps. And outrage still remains at the brutality. When that stops we have a problem.

[persiphone]

Originally Posted by Diavolo

Persiphone, I didn't say that genocide isn't happening in other countries. It is. Arguably we just deposed two ruthless dictators that were doing exactly that. But that's not the subject here. The subject is occupy wall street and the references are not appropriate to what the police are doing.

Are the police breaking the law? Yes. Will there be repercussions from it? Probably. But they aren't rounding up OWS protesters in the US and putting them in death camps. And outrage still remains at the brutality. When that stops we have a problem.

i didn't say you didn't. my point is simply that genocide is not unique to the holocaust and i'd also like to point out that the infrastructure is certainly in place here by means of for profit prisons and the existence of guantanomo as well as the existence of The Patriot Act. all i'm saying is that while i'm not sure if something along the lines of the holocuast is possible here, i'm definitely NOT saying that something along those lines is NOT possible either. it may not happen identically, but i'm not willing to say that something similar could NOT happen. and i think that it's something that people should be aware of. we clearly don't have the rights we thought we had even in the aftermath of things like for profit prisons, guatanomo, and The Patriot Act and that's apparent by the seemingly endless supply of videos of police brutality on protesters across America. it's just something to think about. i don't think there should be heirarchies of importance on genocides that occur on this planet. because they are all important and all horrific. i don't see one as being less than the other unless you're talking strictly in terms of body count.

[persiphone]

this has given me a lot to think about. i think that we are confusing terms across the board. by very definition, "genocide" is probably not possible in America. because genocide is, according to Dictionary.com , "the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group." i think OWS, as a group, can't be boxed into any one of those wholly because all of those groups are included and represented in the movement in all of those individual descriptor's varieties. so what IS the term?

[Corkey]

Originally Posted by persiphone

this has given me a lot to think about. i think that we are confusing terms across the board. by very definition, "genocide" is probably not possible in America. because genocide is, according to Dictionary.com , "the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group." i think OWS, as a group, can't be boxed into any one of those wholly because all of those groups are included and represented in the movement in all of those individual descriptor's varieties. so what IS the term?

Talk to a race of people it's happing to as we speak. Native Americans of all Nations.

[persiphone]

Originally Posted by Corkey

Talk to a race of people it's happing to as we speak. Native Americans of all Nations.

no, i know. and i debated with myself about including that lil tidbit of info and what we did to the Native Americans after arriving here. the numbers are pretty shocking. you won't read about that in our history books, either.

what i'm saying is, that the OWS movement contains all races, all political parties, all nationalities, and most cultures. so then how can we say that genocide is possible by the very definition of genocide because for it to be labeled as such, one specific group out of the above mentioned would have to be targeted. or.....are we saying that OWS is it's own political entity, much like a democrat or a republican? because i thought that the movement was much more fluid than that. so, "technically", it couldn't be labeled as on the road to genocide. is it as equally perilous? i think it's possible, yes. could it be as devastating as the holocaust? gawd i hope not. i wouldn't want to lose any more family, chosen or blood related.

[Corkey]

The human race is on the road to self destruction, we can debate all day long who that includes, but its safe to say we as a Nation are the ones responsible for out own woos, we've done it to our selves by not voting and by being complacent.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by persiphone

no, i know. and i debated with myself about including that lil tidbit of info and what we did to the Native Americans after arriving here. the numbers are pretty shocking. you won't read about that in our history books, either.

what i'm saying is, that the OWS movement contains all races, all political parties, all nationalities, and most cultures. so then how can we say that genocide is possible by the very definition of genocide because for it to be labeled as such, one specific group out of the above mentioned would have to be targeted. or.....are we saying that OWS is it's own political entity, much like a democrat or a republican? because i thought that the movement was much more fluid than that. so, "technically", it couldn't be labeled as on the road to genocide. is it as equally perilous? i think it's possible, yes. could it be as devastating as the holocaust? gawd i hope not. i wouldn't want to lose any more family, chosen or blood related.

I think maybe Nazi/Gestapo references don't translate well. I've been tossing this around in my head trying to put my finger on it. Nazi Germany is synonymous with genocide. I don't see genocide as an issue for the U.S. At least not in that a particular group would be targeted, other than dissenters. If the elimination of dissenting voices can be called a kind of genocide then perhaps we could worry about it.

I think what we are heading toward are police forces more like the Tonton Macoutes, the Haitian paramilitary force created by François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier, rather than the Gestapo. That we are looking at evolving paramilitary police forces around the country cannot be denied. That they seek to silence us and make protesting extremely costly is also without doubt. As things worsen and as more people feel the need to point that out, we may see our newly evolving police state turn deadly. The more clearly those who control the paramilitary police understand how easily it is to to shut us down, the more they get away with, the more violence goes unanswered by our elected officials or by anyone at all really, the closer we come to living in fear of our very own Tonton Macoutes.