It’s really about sensing and knowing that a system is no longer right or just or fair and no longer [being] willing to be an exploited member of that system… Occupy Wall Street is now having, and will continue to have, a profound impact on the status quo.

Alexander Penley, Occupier. Quoted in the Guardian, October 2011. 

According to police, the men were part of a larger pack of 25 people who tried to use eight-foot-long galvanised metal pipes to break the windows of the coffee shop. Terrified patrons hid under the tables, scared that glass would fall in on them… Penley, 41, was arrested and charged with assault and inciting a riot after Saturday’s incident.

Alexander Penley, smashing stuff for kicks – sorry, for “social justice.” Metro, April 2012.

Update:

As so often, the mismatch of rhetoric and behaviour is almost funny. Prior to smashing windows and hitting police officers with 8 foot long steel pipes, the Occupiers had gathered at an anarchist book fair, where leaflets and workshops promised a softer, fairer, fluffier world. (“Indigenous solidarity event with Native Resistance Network.” “Equal rights for all species.” “Children welcome!”) In this temple of warrior poets and ostentatious empathy, the “activist and educator” Cindy Milstein cooed over Occupy’s “direct democracy and cooperation”: “This compelling and quirky, beautiful and at times messy experimentation has cracked open a window on history, affording us a rare chance to grow these uprisings into the new landscape of a caring, ecological, and egalitarian society.” Occupy, says Milstein, is all about “facilitating a conversation in hopes of better strategizing toward increasingly expansive forms of freedom.” Its participants, we learn, are “non-hierarchical and anti-oppression.”

See, it’s all fluff and twinkles. It’s just that some of the twinklers like to wear masks and balaclavas – the universal symbol of friendliness and caring - while trying to shatter glass onto Starbucks customers.

Yes, it’s almost funny. But then you wonder what kind of mind doesn’t register the dissonance. And then you realise that the minds in question are probably like this one here and the minds of these caring, egalitarian people. Our purveyors of radical compassion are, it seems, much too entranced by a cartoon version of the world – and a cartoon version of themselves – to notice their own dishonesty and fundamental contradictions. Behold our betters, the titans of tomorrow.

Via Brain-Terminal.

It’s part of a series, in case you wanted to know. Via Anna.

Denver’s occupodpeople take umbrage with a Wal-Mart distribution centre and wrestle with some difficult philosophical questions. Among which, “What right do you have to do that?” and “What money have they stolen from you?” And of course the big one, “Why are you doing this?” Readers should also note the exchange around 3:40, in which a champion of the people grapples with the suggestion that he and his comrades are basically forcing their will on others. Then things go downhill.

Update, via the comments:

It’s about antagonising people and slapping them around a little bit and waking them up to reality.

So says Kalle Lasn, editor of the anti-capitalist magazine Adbusters and inspiration for Occupy Wall Street. He and his OccupodPeople are slapping us around for our own good. It’s altruism, see – because they care – and it’s the only way we’ll learn.

Mr Lasn also shares his views on Christmas, the build-up to which he hopes to disrupt with a mix of flashmobs, “rabble-rousing,” sit-ins and other yuletide obstruction:

[Christmas] has been an empty, soulless kind of ritual that very, very few people  enjoy.

He’s therefore giving us “a new way of thinking about the holidays.” He, or rather his minions, will “occupy the paradigm” and “occupy our minds.” Yes, they will save us from Christmas. With sit-ins and mobs in shops. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, here’s a video of an attempted flashmob “occupation” from earlier this year, in which protestors, some of whom were masked, invaded and eventually shut down a Boots store in Oxford Street. One protestor was arrested for suspected criminal damage, at which point other protestors tried to overpower the arresting female officer in an attempt to prevent the arrest. Despite repeated instructions to step back, a scuffle ensued, during which at least three protestors ended up with CS spray in their faces. The protestors inevitably accused the police of being “violent,” “heavy-handed” and “disproportionate.” The views of the store’s owner and customers were, sadly, unclear:  

Heather Mac Donald on the moochers of Zuccotti Park:

While the number of people who commandeered Zuccotti Park was pathetically small – several hundred a night – compared with the weight of media attention lavished upon them, their sense of entitlement to take other people’s property, whether public or private, is unfortunately widespread… The demand by student participants in the Occupy Wall Street protests that they be allowed to welsh on their student loans simply because they don’t want to pay them displays a similar sense of royal privilege over other people’s property – in this case, the assets of taxpayers who extended the loans.

As regular readers will know, seizing and demanding other people’s stuff is, among some, a very fashionable idea.

Silvia Morandotti shares a cautionary tale and some simple lessons. Among which, “Higher taxes mean bigger government, not lower deficits.” And, “Nations reach a point of no return when the number of people mooching off government exceeds the number of people producing.”

And John Sexton parses the vanity of Kalle Lasn, whose idea to “occupy” Wall Street has now become embarrassing: 

Why should [taxpayers] have to subsidise some kid’s desire to study 20th century protest movements? Answer: They shouldn’t. Lasn’s entire move is about getting someone else to pay for the society he envisions… You cannot take over private property, irritate the neighbourhood with drumming day and night, put local business out of business, allow crime and violence to flourish in a cop free zone that is unsafe for women, and then demand that the city endlessly spend millions to deal with your nonsense… People are already sick of it. And that’s why cities around the country are tossing these camps out of public spaces so they can once again be for the public, not for the tiny fraction of a percent of naïve dopes that read [his] magazine.

Whenever you read a statement by an OccupodPerson, look for the signature traits: Arrogance, vindictiveness and utter self-involvement. You may be surprised just how often they crop up.

As usual, feel free to add your own.