so we can put on a show! (Didn't want to disappoint the Monk.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTywHAFZxcU

Over the past few decades there has been an incremental loss of our civil liberties, this incremental-ism was decided on long ago by the Globalists as the method of choice for the destruction of national sovereignty and the enslavement of all of the 99%.

With Bill after Bill being passed and Executive order after Executive order being handed down, our rights have slowly eroded away, and their pace has picked up to breakneck speeds in just the past two decades.

With Bills like the Patriot Act, NDAA, SOPA, PIPA and thousands of others, with too many executive orders to count, the U.S. government and the 1% have consolidated power and set themselves up to use the military and police to enforce their global power structure.

We had been warned numerous times by those that were in the know and by our founding fathers, who they now call terrorist, that this could and would happen if allowed to go unchecked.

Now it's here, the New World Order has showed its face, and the 1% who run it are showing their teeth, the question for us and for the Occupy Movement as a whole is will we stick to the same old lines or emerge as a counter to the suppression of civil and human rights. Will the Occupy Movement stand as the defenders of freedom, or falter in their duty to themselves, the 99%, the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Deceleration of Independence, and most important their children and their children's children.

As we are proceeding and growing some plans will succeed and more folk will follow in those footsteps, some will be less so but there are a few ideas that many know already and the rest should that will enhance the movement toward where it needs to go.

You could say towards its Goals, but even before Goals, clear values are needed to measure the goals by. George Lakoff has laid out a model of two clear and competing values that I believe can be a basis for defining the sort of open society that has come to define the 99% movement. This is not a call to move there as I believe we are already there but to make the discussion more clear and precise.

From that I have found two values of action and two values of observation that I believe to be bedrock that all that the 99% wishes can be built on.

The first value of action is that there will always be some level of leadership, be they a facilitator, a visionary, even rotating or divided, but the very act of laying out an idea and others agreeing to go with a version of it, confers leadership on the planner. The leader is always by that definition the agent and envoy of the whole group, and therefore accountable to the group.

The GA has always insisted on a very short leash, making long and messy discussions fearful of having actions almost everyone would support. Increasingly working groups have had to happen as the GA does not have enough hours in a day to learn and decide immense amounts of minutia and leadership lines will of necessity become more defined.

But the concept of Leader as Agent of the group with a job like any other and a tight leash is it cannot be short needs deep thinking. This concept also needs to be transferred to Government and Corporate decision making as well, as the 99% keeping the 1% accountable is the basis of all that we are doing.

The Second value of action is the empowerment of everyone else to achieve all that they are capable of achieving. In competition only one achieves and the rest lose out, but only the achievements of that one are available to the rest of society. If everyone achieves than there is a great deal more available to the rest of society and the entire society is much wealthier for it. If society bears an expense to make this so it is well spent.

Of that description acquiring and certifying knowledge (by school or other) in a manner free and open to everyone is the most obvious example, but a bridge across a river or a GNU sponsored computer program would be also, as well as the ability to confer and influence, and thus hold accountable those whose job it is to be the organizing agents noted above. There is more of course though it seems overly simple, but most of the good and bad that happens falls on that divide.

The first Value of observation is Empathy. A concept so basic it is welded into our genes, that we can place ourselves into the lives of others and feel what it is like there. But in many it is damaged, and others work hard to cloud it. However if the need is recognized the clouds can be dispersed and with it Goals that achieve the values of action become apparent.

The second Value of observation lies in the reality that all can agree on. Not arrived easily humanity has spent a thousand years developing ways of observation and logic that has produced dividends beyond our wildest dreams, and problems also but it is only by that understanding that the processes needed can be found and magical thinking avoided.

One might think those values are shared by everyone, but they are opposed strenuously by all who would oppose the goals of Occupy and the 99% and that is the basic "Cultural Divide" in whole and detail, and so should be at the base of all demands and their unifying feature.

Warm spiritual greetings, Following a month at Zuccotti Park-Occupy Wall Street, and then two months at the Stop the Machine! encampment on Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C., I assure everyone unequivocally that this is NOT the usual suspects with a change of masks. Check out my Occupy Congress Report on the San Francisco IMC posted January 17, 2012. Am returning to Cali Saturday morning, crashing at the Compared to What jazz band's rehearsal studio in Oakland...have emailed the mgr. of J-town's Kabuki spa to get the big furo (communal hot tub) fired up! :-)

Money is the root of all evil. I am poor and because of this I got a job doing political canvassing. That is where you get PAID to collect signators for different ballot incentives, or go door to door and as you take a poll over what candidate they will vote for you tell them why the candidate you are working for is great and leave some info for them. Another thing that paid me was family first, an org that had me do phone banks helping prop 8 the California bill that defines marriage as man and women. I called up thousands of people and told them the lie (that I was told) that same sex couples would not be losing any rights and everything would be the same save for the label or name. I am OK with gays, but I was republican and part of conservative social circles and everybody was telling each other that we do not hate gays, nor mean them any ill, we were just saving the namesake. After years of this I got recruited through FB for posting comments on blogs and high traffic sites. They had a few starting idea templates but encouraged us to make it our own. We posted horrible thing like death panels and just spread rumors about how it is going to make us get insurance we will be forced to pay for and such and such. They had us to do the same for the occupy movement. I had tea party friends that (in the begging of the occupy) were joining in and I felt the same about us poor not having enough of a say in what goes on. Plus because of my history and employment I understood more then most how those who have the most money have the most speech and influence (I would not have collected signatures, made calls, nor gone door to door unless I paid). I was so used to just doing what I should, plus I really needed the paycheck at the time so I went along with it for pay even though I did not agree with it thinking "what harm does it do". We wrote letter to politicians and news media about how the encampments were unsanitary eyesores, in the office we would share clips of comedians making fun of the occupiers and go troll on occupy sites that were occupy supportive. Well soon the people that did not like the occupy movement but did not have a reason now had reasons they could use that did not make them look bad. People are influenced by branding and culture and if you are Coke, Pepsi or even a slick car company you can make people want things and even tie their very identity and community groups (churches, hunters, etc..) into a brand or political philosophy. I stopped calling myself an open minded conservative and switched over to just open minded (not a liberal, I can not swallow the whole pill of either side). In conversation I still support what I believe to people but I will try to no longer let money or the desperation of poverty, or even peer pressure to be part of the group influence the causes I support. Be extra careful the petitions you sign for it may be a gal or guy who is just getting paid to punch the clock and does not even really support the thing itself. I do not know how to fix it. It is a system that has a reward system built into it so by behavior modification it will be near impossible to reverse that money changes how we think and what we value to value laws, and systems that help the ones with money keep it (even if indirectly through peer pressure and being part of a group). I now think for myself and let others do the same.