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Why Occupy:The Unofficial Pictorial Guide

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Q: Why are all these jerks protesting?

A: Because were in really big trouble.

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Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

Te corporations are doing great...

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... as or those our courts dene as natural persons...

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Te real trickle down results...

to look a little bit like some

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ng

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geys

er

shootingwea

lthto

thesky

Source: Bureau o Labor Statistics,Department o Labor

... are starting

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... so when pundits on V talk about redistribution o wealth --is this they mean?

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On the ip side ooo Big to Fail isoo Small to Succeed

Source: Political Calculations

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Some o the biggest Job Creators are, in act, todays leading job exporters

What Alan Greenspan once boastedabout as greater worker insecurity hasgone o the deep end.

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Round the Bend

Source: CWA

Our inrastructure has allen behind almost every other industrialized country.

And yet, the actories capable o making us lead the world in industry again are still disappearing one-by-one, somewhere ar over the horizon.

We have no modern rail system and, once the worlds bastion o revolution-

ary high-technology, courtesy o the American taxpayer, weve just settled

into the worlds 28th place in internet connect i o n s p e e d s .

Attending to these problems could not only restore our place in the world

as a leaders in innovation, but also put many o our builders and innovators

back to work.

Instead, we are continuing to export jobs while industry and inrastructure

continue their decline.

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I Hear a Train a Comin

We dont have the worlds highest violent crime rates...

... and violent crime has been on a steep decline ...

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... so how, with less than 5% o the worlds population,

do we have almost a quarter o the worlds prison population?oday, about one out o every hundred

American adults is incarcerated. Tree are under

correctional supervision--and its climbing.

Many are imprisoned or non-violent oenses,like drug possession. Even i there isnt a moralissue, this is costing the taxpayer money, whilepoliticians talk about cutting Social Security andMedicare -- not to mention jobs lost to a grow-ing private, or-prot prison labor industry.

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Last Night I Had the Strangest DreamTere is a product unaected by the setbacks, that we produce in great quantity: dreams.

Some o the more costly, volatile and ckle o these dreams, according to the Pew Economic Policy Group, recently costthe taxpayer at least $11,000 per household (with Federal Reserve lending to nance in excess o $1.2 trillion according toBloomberg News), trailblazing the way or the worlds spiral into what is now called the Global Financial Crisis.

Source:Table B-91. Corporate Profts by Industry,19592007, EconomicReport othe President, 2008.

Source: Economic ReportothePresident:2007

Report Spreadsheet Tables, Tables B-1 and B-91.

Te prelude to this meltdown was a pandemic o marginally-legal proessional misconduct, where our major nancialinstitutions enjoyed a high-stakes game o hot-potato with toxic mortgages, sometimes even betting against their ownclients. Te Senates 635-page LevinCoburn Report on the matter made it clear that the crisis was made possible by de-regulation, which removed the necessary checks and balances to ensure market responsibility. Te regulation has not beenrestored and, in act, some o those most gravely responsible immediately went to work or the new White House adminis-tration -- people who Bloomberg news columnist Jonathan Weil suggested should be getting subpoenas as material wit-

nesses [...] not places in Obamas inner circle. Many expressed anger and disappointment when those thought to be mostresponsible or the crisis did not come to occupy a jail cell, alongside the already staggering prison population.

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Why Not Just Shut Up and Vote?

Corporate power is now locked rmly to state power in what some political scientists call theiron triangle. Condence in government has reached historically record lows with Congressscurrent 9% approval rating. Many large companies are parasitically dependent on the government

which, in a number o serious ways, has decided to put the needs o those companies rst.

Public polls over the last several decades re-veal that major policies o both political par-ties are requently, i not usually, at odds withwhat the majority o Americans wants.

Our electoral politics are beginning to resem-ble mindless televized entertainment, i nota rightening circus. Te issues that concernpeople most are rarely even mentioned.

Voting is very important, but the larger prob-lem could be that the public interest is now

treated like a ringe special interest. And thechoices we are given eel more and more likea twisted game o would you rather than aserious election.

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Please Stand ByA handul o enormous conglomerates control almost every mass medium in the United States,except the internet. Te courts have ruled unambiguously that these corporations have no responsi-bility to uphold a public trust, in exchange or the protected and exclusive privilege o broadcastingon public airwaves, and are entitled to political speech at their discretion. Media corporations nowhave protected rights to distort and even lie, with no public recourse.

Corporate political speech, however, is not at all guaranteed to speak or public concerns. Commer-cial television was born out o public relations -- which is another name Edward Bernays, the eldsounding ather, (in his own words) made up or propaganda when World War I Germany madethat word unpopular. Te content is the advertising, the ller is the stu in between like news andentertainment -- and, unortunately, the viewers are the product being sold.

Newspapers are disappearing. Te internet has major credibility issues and is still aedgling medium.

Tese are signicant challenges to democracy, and major obstacles in the way othose who want to stay inormed, especially i the corporations responsible ail touphold the most vital moral virtues o truthul, relevant journalism.

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Slide Down Your Shorts Please

Our healthcare system is very broken. It is the most expensive in the developed world, with someo the worst outcomes. It is also the only or-prot system among OECD members. Te ew parts oour healthcare that are public, like Medicare, are administratively ar cheaper and more ecient.

o quote a RWJF report:

Comparing the most impor-tant actors in WHO data,like cancer mortality, car-

diovascular mortality, num-ber o doctors and nursesand available hospital beds,we only lead in obesityand private expenditure onhealth.

While U.S. lie expectancy is at orbelow the average in comparisonwith that o other developedcountries, ndings rom researchthat has adjusted mortality to

account or deaths not related tohealth care (so-called amenablemortality) show the UnitedStatesto be among the worst performers

Sources:

RWJF - http://www.rwj.org/les/research/qualityquickstrikeaug2009.pdWHO - http://www.who.int/whosis/whostat/2009/en/index.html

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Our dysunctional healthcare system,according to a comprehensive studyby Te American Journal o Medicine,accounts or over 60% o US bankrupt-cies. About 80% o the people ling orbankruptcy were insured.

Source: AMJMED -http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(09)00404-5/abstract

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Little Wheel Spin and Spin

Tese are conservative estimates, without accounting or positive eedbacks, which could accelerate this process.

I that last scenario comes to pass, all mentioned here will cease to matter, because we wont have a country lef to worry about.

... maybe not even a species.

Whatever you may have heard, there is a global ecological disaster looming. About 98% o climate scientists agree with thetenets o Anthropogenic (human-caused) Climate Change. Its no more a hoax or a conspiracy than evolution. What is lefuncertain is the outcome. MI and Hadley Centre have predicted a 5.1C (9.1F) and 3-7C (5.4-12.6F) o warming by2100 respectively, on our current emissions path. On November 9th, 2011 the International Energy Agency, the most trust-

ed source or global energy projections and analysis, released its annual World Energy Outlook report. Te report warnedthat on planned policies, rising ossil energy use will lead to irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change.

We cannot aford to delay urther action to tackle climate change i the long-term target olimiting the global average temperature increase to 2C, as analysed in the 450 Scenario, isto be achieved at reasonable cost. In the New Policies Scenario, the world is on a trajectorythat results in a level o emissions consistent with a long-term average temperature increaseo more than 3.5C. Without these new policies, we are on an even more dangerous track,for a temperature increase of 6C or more.

Te only remaining signatory country not to have ratied the Kyoto protocol is also the worlds richest and most powerul one -- our United States.

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[Pundit Kevin OLeary repeats the talkingpoint about the protests being just a ew guys,guitars, no one knows what theyre protesting...very weak]

HOS: What is the sense you have o what this

movmement would like to see happen?

Chris Hedges: Tey know precisely what theywant, they want to reverse the corporate coupthats taken place in the United States andrendered the citizenry impotent, and they wontstop until that happens. Frankly i we dontbreak the back o corporations were all nishedanyways since theyre rapidly trashing the eco-system on which the human species depends or

lie. Tis is literally a ght or lie, its that graveits that serious. Corporations, unettered capi-talism as Karl Marx understood, is a revolution-ary orce. It commodies everything; humanbeings, the natural world, which it exploits orprot until exhaustion or collapse. Te bottomline is that we dont have much time lef. Wereon the cusp o perhaps another major bankingcrisis in Europe, deaults in Greece, ollowed bySpain, Portugal. Teres been no restrictions, noregulations o Wall Street, theyve looted the US

treasury, theyve played all the games that theywere playing beore and were all about to payor it all over again.

Kevin OLeary: Listen, dont take this the wrongway, but you sound like a lef wing nutbar. iyou want to shut down every corporation andevery bank, where are you going to get a job?Wheres the economy going to go?

CH: Corporations dont produce anything and

KO: Oh really!?

CH: No. Financial corporations on Wall Street

KO: Are you driving a car to the protest?

CH: Tey are speculators. Im talking about thenancial institutions like Goldman Sachs. Teydont manuacture, they dont make anything - theygamble, they use money, and they believe alsely thatmoney is real as we dismantle our manuacturingbase and send jobs over the border to Mexico andnally into the embrace o China.

[...]

CH: I dont usually go on shows where people de-scend to character assassination, i you want to dis-cuss issues, thats ne, but this sounds like Fox News,and I dont go on Fox News. I mean, either youdiscuss the issues, and look, you have had eloquentwriters, people like John Ralston Saul in Canada,who have laid this out with incredible lucidity, andto somehow attack this critique by calling someonea nutcase, engages in the kind o trash talk that has

polluted the corporate airwaves.

KO: Excuse me, lets debate the issues then.

CH: Well you were the one who started it.

KO: I didnt call you a nutcase, I called you a nutbar.

CH: You said [I] sounded like a lef wing nutcase.

KO: Yes--bar.

CH: Well, thats an insult.

KO: (interrupts) Hey, are you lef wing leaning atleast? Would you say?

CH: No, I would say...

KO: (interrupts) Youre a centrist?

CH: Can I nish?

KO: Please.

CH: I would say that those who are protesting the

rise o the corporate state are the true conservativesbecause theyre calling or the restoration o the ruleo law. Te radicals have seized power and they havetrashed all regulations and legal impediments to areconguration o American society into a orm oneoeudalism.

[...]

HOS: (upbeat) Well thanks so much or joiningus...

CH: Well, it will be the last time.

-- CBCs Lang & OLeary Exchange 10/9/2011

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Q: What do we do about all this?

A: (see next page)

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