Yeah, everyone gets pretty predictable when you've know them awhile, Don. ;-) That's why so many people can't stand some of their close relatives. We have all become very predictable to each other on this forum.

Anyway, I am very much in favour of the OWS movement. I have far more faith in it that Akenaton does, mainly because I remember what Gandhi did in India and what (most of) the Warsaw Pact did in the late 80s. They accomplished a revolution without major violence (except in Rumania).

That revolution did not attain all its hoped-for objectives. The people in general were not mature enough to grasp the vision of social transformation that Gorbachev was offering them, and they opted instead for parochial fractionalism and division. In some places it was taken over by corrupt politicians (such as Boris Yeltsin, for one) and criminal oligarchies. But at least it proved that you CAN bring a mighty system down without killing hundreds of thousands or even millions of people in a civil war.