Rushkoff is not a fan of the Tea Party, which he sees as perfectly suited to the era of soundbites and cable news and general stupidity. The Occupiers, however, were a font of wisdom in these troubled times. “The impatient rush to judgment of the Tea Party movement is only as unnerving as the perpetually patient deliberation of its counterpart present shock movement, Occupy Wall Street,” Rushkoff writes.

“Unlike a traditional protest, which identifies the enemy and fights for a particular solution, Occupy Wall Street just sits there talking with itself, debating its own worth, recognizing its internal inconsistencies, and then continuing on as if this were some sort of new normal,” Rushkoff nods. Too bad the lamestream media just can’t grasp what these super serial folks are up to: “But for journalists or politicians to pretend they have no idea what the movement wants is disingenuous and really just another form of present shock.”

Just so we’re clear, the Occupiers sat around in their hobo camps and talked about their movement’s “worth” and their feelings and such, yet journalists should be mocked for “pretending” that they have no idea what the Occupiers actually wanted to achieve as they dithered and dallied in their rat-infested, presidential-assassin-wannabe-hosting rape camps.

Seems legit.

My favorite quote from Rushkoff on the Occupy Wall Street Movement has to be this one, however: “But it is also a painstakingly slow, almost interminably boring process, in which the problem of how to deal with noise from bongo drummers ends up getting equal time with how to address student debt.”

Being equally interested in addressing a legitimate goal and addressing how to handle a-holes causing a racket is not the sign of a serious movement. Rather, it is the sign of a masturbatory movement, one more interested in its own wankings and bleatings than accomplishments. Now, Rushkoff might argue that that’s the point, that in our post-narrative society bourgeois concerns like “goals” or “accomplishments” mean little. I would argue that when you have a gathering of people who like to sit around and talk and accomplish nothing and rank their grievances, you no longer have a “movement.” You have an open mic night or a college teach-in or a Brooklyn co-op meeting.

None of these things are gonna change the world. And neither will the Occupiers.

The 2013 World Social Forum (WSF) will take place in Tunis, Tunisia, from March 26 to March 30. The Forum is an annual gathering of radical, leftist, and revolutionary groups.

More than 4,300 organizations are listed as attendees on the conference’s website, 71 of which hail from the United States.

Representatives of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which represents more than 11 million unionized workers in the United States and abroad, will attend through the union’s Solidarity Center.

Union officials will brush shoulders with officials from radical organizations such as Code Pink and the Occupy movement, earning a rebuke from critics.

The antiwar radicals of Code Pink were last seen congratulating Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) on his 13-hour talking filibuster of CIA director John Brennan.

“If this reflects [the AFL-CIO’s] understanding of how the world’s economy works, then it’s no wonder they’re losing members,” said Fred Wszolek, a spokesman for the Workforce Fairness Institute.

Wszolek said he thought many of the union’s rank-and-file members “would actually be insulted” by the political tenor of the event, particularly in regards to Israel.

The union is “wasting a huge amount of their members money” attending the conference, Wszolek added.

The WSF has a host of events lined up on the alleged evils of Israel. Many tout the “boycott, divest, sanctions” (BDS) movement, while others focus on the nation’s supposed “war crimes.”

The National Lawyers Guild of the United States will participate in a “people’s tribunal,” where attendees will “try” Israel for its alleged “on-going ethnic cleansing and military repression of the Palestinian people.”

Left-wing activist group Public Citizen will also attend.

Free market capitalism will also be a popular topic at the WSF, with events on capitalism’s “inevitable demise,” hope for an anti-capitalist “transformation” of the global economy, and open hostility to “the obsession of [economic] growth.”

Public Citizen, Code Pink, and the AFL-CIO did not return requests for comment.

The WSF’s website says it was created to devise ideas “to solve the problems of exclusion and social inequality that the process of capitalist globalization with its racist, sexist and environmentally destructive dimensions is creating internationally and within countries.”

The Forum features a number of groups that brand themselves as part of the Occupy movement, the loose affiliation of anti-capitalist protesters who camped out in public spaces for months in 2011 and 2012.

The AFL-CIO, Public Citizen, Code Pink, and the National Lawyers Guild all allied themselves with the Occupy movement, which came under fire for a litany of crimes that took place at encampments nationwide.

“The Occupy movement may have, for the most part, disappeared from our streets, but the extremism they promote is deeply ingrained not only in those who took up their cause, but also in the groups with which they affiliate,” said market researcher Anne Sorock.

Sorock’s company, the Frontier Lab, conducted extensive research on the Occupy movement and its participants.

Sorock said the WSF “signals both the connections between this radical movement and groups with great influence over our republic, such as the AFL-CIO, as well as the growing boldness of their anti-American rhetoric.”

Less hot-button topics will also receive some attention at the WSF.

One event on the evils of meat eating will explore “speciesism/carnism,” and aims to demonstrate that “all forms of oppression are interconnected,” including “oppression” of livestock and household pets.

Requests for comment made through the WSF’s website were not returned. The website states that no individual or group may speak on behalf of the conference as a whole.

On the first anniversary of the birth of the local chapter of the nationwide protest movement that spread last fall before quickly receding, the few remaining members of Occupy D.C. took to the streets.

“Nobody should ever count Occupy out. It’s a temper tantrum,” Todd Fine, an Occupy D.C. member, said. “It’s necessarily reactive. Eventually the other shoe will drop. When that happens, people will remember this. What Occupy did was show the world that people can fight back.”

Marching down K Street, the District’s traditional lobbying corridor, Occupy activists occasionally blocked intersections and stopped at various targets of their ire along the way, such as British Petroleum, Monsanto, PEPCO, and the Chamber of Commerce.

“This is not the birthday of an occupation; it is the anniversary of an awakening,” the official Occupy D.C. Twitter account proclaimed.

But whatever had been awakened appeared to be in danger of falling asleep once more. By the time the march ended in McPherson Square, the location of the original Occupy camp in D.C., the numbers had dwindled to around 30.

The activists sat under the statue of Civil War general James McPherson and reflected on the group’s salad days, when dozens of tents and hundreds of bodies filled the park, and donations flowed in from around the country.

When police forcibly evicted Occupy from the park in February, they left behind nothing but mud. The grass has returned, fenced off from the public now, along with flowerbeds. The renewed sense of life is in stark contrast to the desolation the occupiers left in their wake.

What is left of Occupy D.C. has split into several working groups that focus on specific projects, such as housing or media, said Occupy D.C. member John Zangas.

“We don’t want to come back to this park and create a spectacle like we did before,” Occupy D.C. member Zangas said. “That was an embarrassment toward the end.”

Zangas said the activists have learned much from the trial-and-error of their early days.

Fine said pointing to Occupy’s free-falling membership numbers are “part of an attempt to marginalize” the movement, and that judging Occupy by such a standard ignored its “spiritual” aspect.

Behind Fine, an Occupier announced to the crowd that lunch was late and would be arriving in an hour.

While the “mood on some picket lines Monday … was not as strident as days past” and parents are growing “increasingly frustrated,” socialist factions of the union blasted union president Karen Lewis for failing to disclose the full deal to members. A socialist leaflet distributed on Sunday accusing her of issuing a “package” summary of the deal to sell it to ignorant members.

The socialist statement accused the union leadership of conceding too much to the school system, allowing, for example, evaluations that “victimize teachers.”

Other union members faced a negotiating reality that does not match the massive expectations that the union initially set. Teachers entered negotiations last fall seeking a 30 percent raise over two years, but they are now facing an offer of a three percent raise for next year and two percent each year after that.

As negotiations continued over the past year, the union, joining with the Occupy movement, embraced more aggressive tactics, staging “protests, rallies and school sit-ins to call attention to inequities in the public school system,” the Tribune reported.

The Democrat and Chronicle reports:

The protestors, including activist Emily Good, were members of Occupy Rochester, according to a news release from the Rochester Police Department. About 150 people were blocking both lanes of traffic in the intersection when the arrests were made. Those arrested were charged with disorderly conduct.

Saturday’s kerfuffle was not Occupy Rochester’s first run-in with the law—32 protestors were arrested last October for illegal camping.

The Dark Knight Rises takes place in Gotham eight years later. Organized crime has been smashed thanks to the “Dent Act.” The streets are safe. And Batman’s alter ego, Bruce Wayne, has become a recluse content to hold fundraisers (at which he never appears) and reside in his mansion (from which he never leaves).

Wayne is snapped out of his complacency by cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), who makes off with a string of pearls—and, more mysteriously, Wayne’s fingerprints. The prints are necessary to pull off the first part of villain Bane’s (Tom Hardy) monstrous plan.

We meet Bane in the film’s opening minutes as he commandeers a CIA airplane in midair—not by taking control of the cockpit, but by grabbing the plane with a larger aircraft and towing it into the cargo hold. All at 30,000 feet.

Bane’s plan recalls Batman’s sky-high capture of Hong Kong moneyman Lau via “Skyhook” in The Dark Knight. If anything, it’s more audacious: Instead of picking up a man from a skyscraper in a moving aircraft, Bane picks up an entire airplane.

This echo and amplification of the previous film shows that Bane is not just a bruiser who can deliver (and take) a beating. Trained by the League of Shadows—the assassin ring run by Ra’s Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) that was intent on destroying Gotham City in Batman Begins—Bane also has brains to complement his brawn.

He knows who the Batman is, knows how to break him, and wants to see the Caped Crusader and his beloved city suffer.

And suffer it does. Without spoiling too much, Bane and his crew aim to finish what Ra’s Al Ghul started years before. His plan involves isolating Gotham, robbing its citizens of their dignity, and turning the population against itself—all in the name of equality.

Bane is the ultimate Occupier: His goal is to “return control of the city to the people,” freeing “the oppressed” from prison while stripping the haves of their property and privilege. Director Christopher Nolan’s depiction of Bane’s reign of terror is delightfully reactionary: As the masses run amok, criminals are freed, and honest citizens are thrown out onto the streets, even those who felt that wealthy Gothamites were profiting unfairly come to realize the woeful and unjust consequences of Bane’s redistributive scheme.

“This was someone’s home,” Selina Kyle says to a young accomplice as she looks at a smashed picture frame, just one more piece of detritus strewn about a desecrated living room. “Now it’s everyone’s home!” her companion gleefully proclaims.

The film’s defense of private property and profit is subtle. In another scene, we’re informed that the Wayne Foundation has stopped funding boys’ homes across the city. Is it because Wayne is a callous member of the One Percent?

Nope. It’s because the Wayne Foundation is funded by profits from Wayne Enterprises. And the business’ lack of profit—brought about by a financially disastrous green energy project—means there is no cash for the Foundation. Which means there’s no money for the boys’ homes.

Nolan’s Batman triptych is not merely a tale of good versus evil, in which the hero triumphs over the villain. It’s also about the salvation of a city—a whole society, even.

Gotham is redeemed not by the purging fire of an Al Ghul, Joker, or Bane, but by the self-sacrifice and dedication of a rough man who understands that defending the liberal order and the freedom of those who live within it may on occasion require working outside of that order. The good and righteous may condemn that man in a fit of moral posturing, but they are more than willing to depend on him in a time of crisis.

In other words, the ends may sometimes justify the means—even as the just must publicly disavow those means as unlawful.

The Dark Knight Rises is by no means perfect. At 165 minutes long, it pulls the neat trick of feeling both a little flabby and a little rushed. A few characters—such as the Wayne Enterprises board member who brings Bane to Gotham and hopes to strip the company from its heir—amount to little more than fonts of exposition to move the plot along. Bruce Wayne’s relationship with Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) gets nowhere near the screen time it requires for the emotional payoff Nolan seeks at the picture’s climax.

Also missing is that special quality that keeps audiences coming back to the screen time and again. In The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger—whose performance as the Joker was so relentlessly transfixing that it scored him a posthumous Oscar—filled that role. Hardy, as good as he is, simply isn’t as magnetic.

But these are quibbles. The performances are all top-notch, if not quite Oscar-worthy; a special nod goes to Michael Caine, whose turn as Alfred has provided the entire trilogy with a consistent emotional and ethical center. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who plays a young cop and protégé of Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon) and Hathaway inject new life into the series with their charismatic performances.

The cinematography is nothing short of astounding, and the action sequences are more coherently shot and edited than those in The Dark Knight. If possible, hurry to an IMAX (not a Lie-max) to experience the film in its true glory. And Hans Zimmer’s score—like his scores for The Dark Knight and Inception—immerses the audience in Bane and Batman’s world, and even provides clues to the onscreen action.

The Dark Knight Rises might not reach quite the heights of its predecessor, but it is a worthy, epic conclusion to a stunning trilogy that has raised the bar for an entire genre.

(Reprinted with permission from SonnyBunch.com)

A man known for his involvement in the Occupy Charlotte movement was arrested Sunday and charged with resisting an officer, carrying a concealed gun and misdemeanor possession of marijuana and paraphernalia.

Gifford Cordova, 33, of Lake Wylie, was released from jail the same day. …

Cordova was among those who expressed disappointment in December after four men, including two Occupy Charlotte members, burned U.S. flags at the Charlotte tent site. The four were charged with careless use of a fire. Cordova said their actions reflected poorly on the movement.

Police officials in Charlotte are working with Democrats to crack down on protest movements in the run up to President Barack Obama’s reelection kickoff. The DNC wants to avoid the violence that marred the 1968 Democratic convention and hurt the party’s image nationwide.

Cordova has participated in Occupy protests in at least three cities, according to the Charlotte Observer.

Several paragraphs down, we learn more about these protestors:

Romney highlighted his record of education as governor of Massachusetts, when the state’s schools were among the best in the nation in some areas. …

Outside, meanwhile, some brick row houses across from the school were boarded up. Police had cordoned off a full city block to protect Romney and his entourage. Residents, some of them organized by Obama’s campaign, stood on their porches and gathered at a sidewalk corner to shout angrily at Romney. Some held signs saying, “We are the 99%.” One man’s placard trumpeted an often-referenced Romney gaffe: “I am not concerned about the very poor.”

Obama, meanwhile, attended a number of campaign events on Thursday, including one at a wind turbine manufacturing plant in Iowa, where he urged Congress to continue to subsidize an industry notorious for decapitating endangered birds like the bald eagle.

Actor and 1 percent member Jason Alexander investigates the 99 percent, in a new video filmed for the parody site Funny or Die.