Why I Wear The Poppy

"England shirt poppy thing: what diff whether these joyless overpaid spit-roasting thickoes wear a mark of Remembrance or not?" - Occupy protester

I am one of those spit-roasting thickoes (sic) who wear a poppy every year and have since I was a child. I grew up in a military family and learned about things like honour and duty and service. My father was a big, gruff man who had seen and been scarred by terrible things in war and it coloured how he saw life. But it also gave him a tender respect for what he had in his life and I have never known anyone more committed to his family.

My father died too young and has been dead now for well over thirty years. I wear a poppy in memory of him.

When he died, a long-time friend of his, another retired military veteran came from out of town to my father’s funeral. He was a short, square-built man with a severe, close cropped hair cut and a body as hard as winter stone. He had eleven bullet wounds in his right leg from a machine gun and most of one foot gone from a grenade. I had known him since I was a child. He was tough. He was hard and he sat in my kitchen into the night alternately telling me stories about himself and my father and brushing away tears.

My life is full of memories of those men and countless others I grew up around.

I remember sitting on a Saturday morning and watching the retiring of the Black Watch from active service in the late 60’s after unification of the armed forces. The Black Watch are a proud regiment with a long and distinguished history, To a man, they stood silently in formation on parade in their dress kilt uniforms as they were reviewed for a last time. As the reviewers walked the ranks, the cameras caught the tears rolling down the faces of many of these tough men who had served in war and as peace-keepers in war torn countries. I looked over at my father and saw tears rolling down his face.

They cried for the lack of respect shown by too many.  They cried for lost comrades each had known in their lives. They cried because they survived when others didn’t and they cried because despite the bond they felt to each other, no one despised more the need for soldiers than they did.

I was in my teens before I learned my father's war history. He and I sat out on the steps of our house one night enjoying the warm summer darkness and he slowly began to talk to me about his experiences. He saw war twice, once in Europe in WWII and again in Korea in the 50’s. He told me things he had seen that I had never heard before and much later in my life would realize had tormented and shaped him. He was barely eighteen when he went to Europe for the war. He was in his forties when we talked that night,

I wear my poppy for my father and for all the men I knew growing up who served with him. Almost all of them are dead now but I wear my poppy to remember them.

I don’t worry about fools like the one quoted above.  His comment, like he and his self-indulgent movement, will be quickly forgotten.  They will accomplish nothing of lasting value, unlike those we honour today who died so that they could be free to protest. We have never forgotten those men and women. Their names will be read out in ceremonies and churches; in towns and cities across the country and in countries around the world. Their graves in Canada, the United States, France, Holland and other countries they freed from tyranny will continue to be tended and cared for by nations that will not forget the sacrifice made so that they could be free. The men and women we remember today will not be forgotten because what they did for us will never be forgotten.

The current protest movement yells Solidarity but true solidarity comes from service to a cause greater than your own life, service provided with courage and honour. It comes from service and with real sacrifice. Today we remember the men and women who died living those words. They served and we will not forget.

I don’t wear my poppy with pride, I wear it in humility. I am humbled by so many who offered their lives and died in the hope that we would never have to make the same sacrifice.

I wear the poppy to honour them and what they died to give us.

© 2011 Maggie's Bear
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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

My Conversation With Occupy

What follows is a verbatim conversation I had last night with a member of the Occupy protest. The conversation was held on Twitter which meant we were both restricted to 140 characters per message and often had multiple tweets in between our own. This led to the conversation being somewhat disjointed which was further exacerbated by the fact that others in Occupy jumped into the conversation at different points and that changed the tone of the conversation.

It is presented here unedited with the exception that I have removed the Occupy profile IDs out of respect for their privacy. I have also removed hashtags and other IDs.

Occupy: Are any other protests having trouble with groups trying to piggyback their own agendas?

Bear: All of them it’s been the problem the rest of us have with your movement.

Occupy: I appreciate your as usual helpful advice but I need actual info from people on the ground :)

Bear: Many of us have been trying to tell Occupy groups about this for weeks. It's causing violence and lost support for you.

                                                                         »

Bear: I've been following tweets all day from many Occupy groups complaining of the same thing. It wasn't sarcasm. It's the problem

Bear: The camps were your single biggest problem. Most of us agree the issues. It was the disrespect for us and our laws we hated.

Occupy: They achieved the goal of giving us media coverage and giving us a network, as I said 2.0 coming soon.

Bear:  I've been following tweets all day from many Occupy groups complaining of the same thing. It wasn't sarcasm. It's the problem

Occupy: Yes I know, we anticipated this, I underestimated the size of the problem... 

Bear: In their rush for supporters, the entire movement did. You can't gain credibility if you can't police yourselves

Occupy: this is the trouble with a leaderless movement, the more aggressive voices come to the fore, I believe leaders are needed..

Bear: Your're right. You also have to come to realize that many within the movement have agendas separate from your own (cont')

Occupy: That is exactly what I am talking about....

Bear: I find it despicable for a group to take advantage of a tax act they protest to raise $500,000 while begging for supplies.

Occupy: You find a lot of things despicable in all honesty Mr. Grump bear.

Bear: I also abhor stupidity and I find too much of it around us now. No thought, just mindless action. I agree with much of what

Occupy: We need more than right on peace camps and empty cliches...#occupy2.0 bigger and better

Bear I am hearing from people like you but why wasn't this thought of before all this disruption and mayhem?

Occupy:  I'm sorry what disruption and mayhem have you experienced?

Bear: In my city, there have been physical and sexual assaults, used hypodermics left laying around and theft at the Occupy camp.

Bear:  In Toronto and Vancouver, innocent bank employees and customers were intimidated by Occupy protesters who jammed into bank.

Bear: In Vancouver, illegal drugs permitted in Occupy camp led to the death of a young woman,.need I go on? I have lots of examples

Occupy: Oh and I know it’s a cliché but ya can't make an omelette without breaking eggs

Bear Isn't that the very thing you're protesting? A democracy that is making mistakes but trying?

12 hours ago 

Occupy I notice you are a very negative person, never words of support, always focusing on the dark side...why is this?

Bear: You guys always paint criticism towards you as negative but never look at your criticism as negativity. Why is that?

Occupy: We are a young group of strangers trying to change the world, we never said we were perfect or it would be easy.

Occupy: I don't paint it, all you have done is criticize us, not constructive criticism either take your last post, 'you guys'? Who r 'we'

Bear: I have often said that I know that there are sincere people in Occupy but you become known by the company you keep.

Occupy: who is culpable for the crimes committed by the financial institutions? These are the problems not a couple of crimes in a camp

Bear: I think it is absurd to trivialize any crime. If you break one law, no law can be upheld. It isn't a pick and choose thing.

Occupy: I don't understand what point you are trying to get at? We can argue semantics all night, I have more important things to do

Occupy: Well perhaps you should consider who and what is the bigger danger to you and yours

Bear: There is no justification for breaking the law for the greater good. Either you respect the law or you don't.

Occupy: I don't respect a law that doesn't respect me or my fellow people


Bear: If you don't respect the law, you have no right to expect to be treated with respect.

Occupy: yep, everything is black and white and simple and clean isn't it? stop wasting my time 

Bear: No it isn't. Democracy is complex but to hear Occupy tell it, it's all the fault of the 1% and that justifies any action,

Occupy:  Occupy has no one manifesto. We are just trying to learn to ride the bike, but lots of people want to see us fall off.

Occupy: And so speaks the voice of understanding. You can have a revolution as long as u dnt b naughty

Bear:  So speaks the voice of one who doesn't agree with you and who has the same right to freedom of speech you demand.

Three things came out of this conversation for me. The first is that it is increasingly clear that Occupy is sensing that it has gone as far as it can go without proper organization and leadership. In some quarters it is already conceding that the camps will close soon for this year and they are hoping to return in 2012 with an updated version of Occupy some refer to as Occupy 2.0.

The second thing that is clear to me is that Occupy is aware that it doesn’t have the support it claims to have. It puts a brave face on things but it knows that the majority of people in the so-called 99% are increasingly fed up with the ongoing occupation of their public parks and the disruption of their cities by marches, rallies and vandalism. While it was not a part of this conversation, this awareness is further supported by a significant number of tweets yesterday from various Occupy group reminding supporters to be calm and non-violent.

Finally, it is clear to me that many in Occupy are very insecure about their opinions and their beliefs. They cling to the original idea that it is the 1% who are to blame for everything but increasingly know that is too simplistic. They are defensive and while demanding the right to freely voice their opinions are quick to label anyone who might criticize them as negative or wrong. It is not sufficient for people to remain neutral. If you do not agree with Occupy then you are the enemy. It isn’t so much malicious as insecurity. Too many of them see themselves as victims and so see any criticism of their protest as more victimization.

Any organization without the courage of its convictions, without definite purpose and objectives and which is leaderless will fail. It will fail because it has no sense of direction and no group can get where it wants to go without knowing where that is.

Occupy started in frustration. It is still frustrated but increasingly, although it is reluctant to admit it, that frustration is with itself.

© 2011 Maggie's Bear
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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

The Greater Threat To Our Democracy

I hate hyperbole and extreme language. I consider them the second last resort of those who have the weakest arguments. (The last resort is always personal attacks rather than sticking to debating the issue). Sometimes, however, there is no other language that will suffice. The simple fact is that our system of laws and government is under attack but not from without, it is being undermined by the very people who have been elected and appointed to protect and enforce it. Consider these recent examples:

1.  The premier of Ontario refuses to protect the citizens of Caledonia, Ontario when private property is aggressively “occupied” by a band of native protesters. Even worse, the premier and the Ontario Provincial Police refuse to enforce a court order to remove the native protesters. They further refuse to protect citizens who were assaulted or who had their homes vandalized.

2.       In Ottawa, the mayor refuses to take action against the Occupy protest claiming it is the responsibility of the National Capital Commission because the protesters are on federal property.  He does, however, authorize more than $40,000 in expenses to pick up garbage. The NCC supplies the protesters with portable toilets at taxpayer expense. The city police refuse to make arrests for illegal drug use claiming it is the responsibility of the RCMP who are silent and nowhere to be found. Used hypodermics litter the property.

3.       A year ago in Toronto, a Chinese Canadian, who owned and operated a grocery, was arrested and charged with kidnapping after he chased and apprehended a thief who had stolen from his store a second time that same day. The crown struck a deal with the thief to testify against the grocer. Fortunately, the courts displayed more common sense than the prosecutor and the police and the charges were thrown out of court.

4.       The premiers of Ontario and Quebec are balking at paying for the implementation of the federal government’s new crime bill which is in direct violation of the Canadian Constitution. The Constitution mandates the federal government the authority to legislate criminal law and the provinces to implement it.

5.       The Liberal Party of Canada walks out of parliament and refuses to vote on legislation introduced to confirm the appointment of the new Auditor General elevating voter apathy to a new high and bring political grandstanding to a new low.

6.       In Calgary, the comedy of hypocrisy continues as the mayor refuses to enforce city bylaws against Occupy Calgary in order to respect their right to protest but authorizes impoundment of counter-protesters truck.

7.       In Vancouver, the mayor refused to act to enforce fire, bylaws against camping and health and safety regulations until after a young woman died from a drug overdose.

8.       In Newfoundland, the new premier is elected and promptly announces she and her cabinet are at work but the legislature will not be called until spring.

9.       The federal government unilaterally announces it will close the Wheat Board to protect prairie grain farmers despite the overwhelming protest against the move by those same farmers.

The list goes on and on but it is clear that we are governed by those who have no respect for the laws they legislate or are sworn to uphold.

Every day in this country, our laws and our system of government are eroded by politicians who refuse to act unless they think it is safe. We are governed by those who are more opportunistic than leaders and the cynicism is appalling.

It is said that a democracy gets the government it deserves by the choices it makes but increasingly, there is no real choice for the electorate. Politicians from all parties exhibit the same disrespect for its citizens and its own laws which undermine the very foundations on which this country is built. It doesn’t matter if they are small major or minor laws; the unwillingness of politicians to do the right thing simply makes them mediocre managers.

It is a disgrace to our constitution. It is a shameful lack of respect for their individual offices and it deprives the electorate of the very thing it elects them to do. In that way, it is our political leaders who are the single biggest threat to the one thing we hold most dear…..our democracy.

It’s small wonder fewer and fewer people vote in elections. Our politicians continue to prove that it is almost pointless.

© 2011 Maggie's Bear
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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

The Lack Of Political Leadership In Canada Is Appalling

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." –Peter Drucker

A few years ago, a young woman named Jane Creba was caught in the crossfire of a shootout between rival gangs in downtown Toronto on Christmas Eve.  She was an innocent bystander doing some last minute Christmas shopping at the Eaton Centre when the shooting erupted.

Understandably, public reaction was both horror and outrage. The government was pressured to do something and then Prime Minister Paul Martin did. Despite the fact that the shooting was gang related and involved illegal weapons; despite the fact that illegal weapons were pouring into the country through any one of the 30% of Canada’s border crossings that were unattended between midnight and six x in the morning. Mr. Martin’s response was to enact the Gun Registry, an unnecessary and pointless piece of legislation that targeted farmers and hunters.

This is typical of what passes for political leadership today.

In Ottawa, legislation is being passed to ban smoking in pubic parks. Meanwhile the same city government that is enforcing this bylaw stands idly by while illegal drug use, physical assaults and rape occur in the Occupy encampment at Confederation Park. The mayor is quick to point out that the park is federal land and passes the buck to the National Capital Commission who remains silent. The Ottawa Police Force does nothing about the crime in the park and focuses instead on cracking down on distracted drivers. The RCMP which patrols federal property is missing in action.

This would be the same mayor who after proposing the naming of the city’s new archive building after former mayor Charlotte Winton, ran for cover when a Jewish group accused her of being anti-Semitic.  Not only did he lack the courage to defend his choice, Mayor Jim Watson lacked the intellect to look up former Mayor Winton’s record. If he had, he would have discovered that not only was she not anti-Semitic, she was named Woman of the Year by the B’nai B’rith in the 60’s.

In Calgary, the mayor sends another warning to the Occupy Calgary movement. Having ignored the first warning without repercussion, it is difficult to believe that anyone believes this second warning is of any use.

In Vancouver, police were caught completely off guard by a riot following a hockey game and the mayor and council of the city ignore the health and safety of its citizens as the current Occupy encampment attracts rats, illegal drug use and violation of city ordinances.

It is the same in cities across Canada and in the United States.

The Premier of Ontario stands silently with a deer in the headlights stare while aboriginal radicals not only occupy private property in Caledonia in defiance of a court order but assault local citizens. The Ontario Provincial Police refuses to enforce the court order.

The list is virtually endless but the point is made. The lack of political leadership in Canada is appalling. These people claimed they were leaders when they ran for office and would defend our laws and our communities. They postured and preened but they have not kept their word. Any idiot can pretend to be a leader when things are smooth. True leadership is how you act when it gets challenging.

Almost to a person, our mayors and premiers have demonstrated a lack of leadership that is not only appalling, it borders on cowardice.

Government is very good at cracking down on and harassing tax payers who for the most part are law abiding citizens. Where the political leadership fails in this country is in its complete unwillingness to get tough on criminals, drug users, protesters and gangs. It takes courage and determination to make our communities safe. Our political leaders have shown they have neither.

I’m tired of the empty promises of mayors and premiers and prime ministers who talk tough but who lack the courage of their convictions. I’m tired to the political gamesmanship and the political correctness that is allowed to interfere with upholding the law.

And I am tired of watching our communities be over run by those who have no respect for them or for the people living in them.

It is a political leadership that has abrogated its responsibilities as leaders, quick for a photo op to take credit for something but which hides at the first sign of difficulty. It would include law enforcement that refuses to enforce court orders or who turn a blind eye to real crime and instead focus on traffic violations. It would include Municipal Health & Safety Officers who are quick to enforce smoking bans but who remain silent on the health and safety issues in Occupy camps. 

We don't have leaders in this country we have mediocre managers masquerading as leaders. We don't need politicians attempting to manage situations, we need real leadership and we need it now more than ever because we aren’t getting it from the people pretending to lead us now.

© 2011 Maggie's Bear
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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

The Weekly Stupidity Awards: 04/11/2011

Time flies when you’re having fun doesn’t it? It seems like only a week ago we were compiling the Weekly Stupidity Awards and here we are again. Being a small organization comprised of my dog Jasper and I, we don’t have a lot of resources to travel the world in search of the stupid things that stupid people do but fortunately we don’t have to. Stupidity is all around us and even Jasper is starting to scratch his head at the abundance of it.

We came close to including Kim Kardashian’s pending divorce after only 72 days of being married but decided it wasn’t so much stupid as just somewhat precious. We also took a pass on the paternity issue now swirling around Justin Beiber. We’ll wait for the tests establishing whether or not he’s actually in puberty before commenting.

So, after hours of discussion, a couple of glasses of wine and a Milk Bone biscuit for Jasper, here’s this week’s awards for outstanding achievement in just being stupid. Congratulations to all of our winners.

Gold Award:  Man Calls 911 To Complain About Being Short-changed In Drug Deal

 It takes a special kind of stupid to commit a felony and then call for help from the police when it goes sour. Police in North Charleston arrested Dexter White after he called to report that he had paid his pusher $60 for crack but only got $20 worth of drugs. White complained that his dealer was refusing to give him back his $40 in change. While he may be stupid, White did have the presence of  mind to smoke the crack before calling the police.

 Silver Award:  Suicide Delayed Until After Playboy Publishes Lindsay Lohan Pictoral

In Calgary Canada, Jeffrey Knutson was pretty much set to end it all and head off to the next life until learning that Lindsay Lohan was going to appear in Playboy.”I had the pills on the table”, he said. “I was literally doing the final edits on my suicide note.” Apparently what stopped him from taking the leap was the news about Lohan showing up in his RSS feed while was looking up synonyms in an online Thesaurus for his suicide note. He may not be all that bright but he gets full marks for trying to be literate.

Knutson, a business analyst, had decided to end it all last Sunday after his fourth failed Internet date last month but it isn’t the first time he’s contemplated moving on. The last time he came close to committing suicide, he had to postpone it for the American Idol finals.

It gives you some understanding of why his Internet dates might not be working out for him, doesn’t it?

Bronze Award:  Man Makes Urine Deposit At ATM

After being told that he couldn’t purchase a money order at an RBC branch in Palm Coast, a man apparently urinated in a bank tube at the bank’s ATM. Another customer arrived sometime later and the urine spilled onto her and into her car. Sheriff’s deputies have indicated that the man became upset and complained about poor customer service after being told he couldn’t purchase the money order. The police are continuing their investigation.

I have issues with poor bank service but I’ve never considered depositing bodily fluids as an means to make my point. I have decided, however, to be more careful when making a withdrawal.

Honourable Mention:  A Warning Precaution To Would Be Drug Dealers.

If you forget to lock your cell phone you might get locked up.

Police in Hall County, Ga. Arrested an 18-year-old who "pocket-dialed" 911 while discussing a drug deal.It started when a 911 dispatcher received a call in which she heard several people discussing a pending drug deal. The police triangulated the cell phone signal and sent a deputy to the a local area restaurant. Upon arrival, the deputy was interviewing employees when the 911 dispatcher heard the deputy’s voice over the phone line. He quickly found and apprehended Daniel Moore after informing him that he had been on the phone with 911 for several minutes.

Honourable Mention:  Definition Of Human Rights Expanded

In Ottawa Canada, the occupy protest took on a new level of stupidity this week when protesters demanded free hydro and water services to their encampment. The demand was made in a media interview in which the protesters claimed electricity and water are human rights and it is illegal to deny them to anyone.  It makes you scratch your head that some day, these are the people who will be running the country. We’re we that stupid at that age? God! I hope not.

I'm keeping an eye on this because if the Occupy Ottawa group are successful, I'll be changing my name to Occupy and demanding free electricity and water service to my home.

And that’s it for another week. Have no fear, though, Jasper and I will continue to scour the world as we share some refreshment together to bring you more outstanding achievement by stupid people doing stupid things.

Hey…these Milk Bone things are quite good.

© 2011 Maggie's Bear
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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Customer Service That Makes Your Head Explode

A few hours ago, I was working at my computer which entails being online and suddenly, I had no internet connection. My first thought was that the modem needed to be rebooted so I did that but still couldn’t connect. Then I tried disconnecting the modem from the computer, turning everything off, reconnecting everything and turning all back on. Still nothing.

Finally, I was forced to call my provider, something I dread for many reasons.

It starts as soon as the provider answers the phone. “Welcome to…….” and goes downhill from there. A pleasant, somewhat mechanical, recorded female voice asks me to indicate my language of choice. Then the voice proceeds to give me a variety of initial options. Once I have determined my option and it is always the last one the voice mentions, I press a number on the touchtone key pad of my phone. This brings up an entirely new set of options and after about five minutes of this, I am finally told that I’m being connected to a customer service technician only to immediately hear this. 

“All of our customer service technicians are currently helping other customers. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.”

To make my time waiting for them to provide me with service, my provider plays a random selection of elevator music that would be an embarrassment even for Muzak. Every sixty seconds (I timed it because I had nothing else to do while I waited) a voice would interrupt the music to remind me to “Please stay on the line to maintain your calling priority.” The use of the word priority in this circumstance is pretty much an oxymoron.

Fifteen minutes later, I was finally connected to a real person and while I was rapidly losing my sense of humour (as difficult as you might find that to believe), I calmed down because I was finally connected with someone who was going to solve my problem and make all my wishes come true.

Wrong!

Her name was Moyna  and she was half way around the world in Mumbai. Personally, I don’t care where my provider puts its customer service call centre even though their head office is about twenty minutes from where I live. If they want to set up their service centre some ten thousand miles from here, no problem. Just fix my bloody connection.

It became evident immediately after Moyna and I had exchanged initial pleasantries that we had an accent problem. I could barely understand her English because of her soft voice and thick accent and she didn’t understand mine all that well either (no doubt because I was muttering a lot under my breath). It reduced us to repeating every thing two and three times and to spelling out almost every command that  Moyna  had me enter into the modem software on my computer.

Moyna was unbearably patient while she told me to do various things. The tone and inflection of her voice never changed and increasingly sounded more and more like the recorded voice that had first walked me through the initial phone menu. Nonetheless we persevered and after  Moyna  and I spelled out the latest data entry back and forth, I eventually would get it entered only to have the modem fail to respond.  Every now and then, she would politely excuse herself for a couple of minutes on the pretext that she had to check on something. Personally I think she was going for a cigarette but I can’t be sure. She would switch on the elevator music and disappear for a bit.

When she returned,  Moyna would thank me for waiting and then we would begin an entirely new set of procedures which involved even more spelling and brought even more frustration to us both. Neither of us were particularly good spellers as it turns out.

I began to believe that  Moyna  kept disappearing and leaving me with the music as her way of coping with her frustration. It caused me to think that after dealing with so many of us, she probably believes most North Americans are idiots and was cursing her life for having to deal with us night after night, or in her case, day after day.

For my part, I had already taken  Moyna  off my Christmas card list.

After many absences and many failed attempts,  Moyna  excused herself one last time. She was gone for quite a bit and I began to think either she was considering terminating our relationship or had simply gone for lunch. But she came back and announced with some satisfaction that she had tracked down the problem.

The provider’s network was down in my area, for which she apparently felt personally responsible and  apologised, but they had people working on it, she reassured me, and they hoped to have service restored shortly.

I can’t even begin to express how I felt at that moment. Telling me that the service was down after a twenty-five minute wait to speak to a human being and forty minutes of back and forth with  Moyna  was like telling me that that the reason the television wasn’t working after waiting all day for the repairman to show up was due to a power failure in the neighbourhood.

It's unbelievable!

The state of customer service today
is enough to make your head explode!

I had been on the phone for an hour including almost forty minutes with my pal  Moyna  and she only thought to check to make sure that there was no interruption of service after exhausting her technical expertise.

How can a service department not know about service disruptions in advance? We live in the age of instant information. Everything is connected. Surely to God, when she typed my account number into her computer, there should have been some kind of flag that service was disrupted in that area or at the very least an email sent around to the techs advising them of where service was down. Remember, this is an Internet provider, not a shoe manufacturer. Shouldn't they be the most capable of knowing when their service is in trouble?

I wasted an hour and my provider wasted an hour and whatever the associated cost was of that call and  Moyna’s time for nothing. But that is the state of things today. For all the automations, for the billions of dollars spent on technology and employees, there is no real service anymore and I’ve finally figured out why. Nobody is paid to think so nobody does.

Still, after another hour, the crack field team back here in the homeland got the network back up and running and I was back online. I logged on, wrote my column and was in the middle of saving it when…..the network went off line again.

I didn’t bother calling  Moyna . I was sure she had her hands full and too busy to talk to me right away. Besides, I was so frustrated, all I really wanted to do was go out and occupy something.

© 2011 Maggie's Bear
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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Crime On Increase In Occupy Encampments

"The safety of the people shall be the highest law." -Cicero

"The shallow consider liberty a release from all law,
from every constraint. " –Walt Whitman

Occupy is rapidly learning that there is more to freedom than tents and protest marches. Once you start organizing little communities, you become responsible for the safety of the people within those communities and it appears that Occupy is not doing a very good job of that.

Occupy camps are experiencing real crime and they’re not only ineffective at dealing with it, the organizers are reluctant to involve the police lest it reflect badly on their movement. It increasingly appears that when it talks about sacrifice for the greater good, Occupy means that those within its ranks who are the victims of crimes must remain silent so that the Occupy reputation won’t be damaged.

What crimes are happening? Rape, sexual assault, physical assault, theft and drug related crimes are all occurring in Occupy encampments in Canada, the US and in Europe.

In Glasgow, a young woman was raped. In Dublin, drug-related crimes are a serious problem while in places like Cleveland, New York, Fort Worth, Denver and even in staid Ottawa Canada, sexual and physical assaults have been reported….but not to the police.

It begs the question, what exactly is the value of a movement that falls back on the dishonest and cynical tactics of those it claims to be protesting? Is this what Occupy thinks of as a new world order, a better way of life? I wonder if the 14 year old girl who was molested in an Occupy camp thinks this is what she signed on for.

Every day now, I am reading more and more comments, tweets, posts and petitions demanding that city officials end this pointless and now dangerous occupation of public (and in some cases) private property. Whatever its original intent, it is clear now that Occupy has outlived its usefulness. It has nothing to contribute to making the world a better place and now it appears it has nothing to contribute to making the world a safer place. It is not only unable; it is unwilling to protect its own members.

Occupy and its dwindling number of supporters are quick to cry “Shame” at the police for enforcing the law. I think it’s long past time for Occupy to take a hard look at itself and then pack up its tents and leave in the shame it has earned.

From the beginning, Occupy protesters have painted themselves as victims of a broken system. It now appears that some within the protest really are victims of Occupy's broken system and it is a system that refuses to do anything about it or to protect its own members. It's time for supporters of this hypocritical and failed protest to reconsider what it is they're supporting.


Occupy is not a victim of society, it is a self-indulgent mob that is victimizing its own membership. 

Below are links from various media in Europe and North America with more information on this topic.

Daily Mail - England:   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055464/Occupy-Wall-Street-protester-sexually-assaulted-tent-demonstrators-handle-internally.html

Blog - United States:   http://bit.ly/taK7lx

Yahoo News:              http://yhoo.it/u44IHR

Sun Media - Canada:  http://blogs.canoe.ca/lilleyspad/general/sexual-assault-at-occupy-ottawa-in-the-protesters-own-words/

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