Occupy Wall Street

this thread has lately been alternately entertaining in watching eddie unwittingly dismantle his own position, and an example of how narcissism paulbot style operates, exactly as bodkin said, so that the actual topic at hand disappears behind paulbot canned speeches about their imaginary 1930s america.

what the occupation is doing is an ongoing demonstration that social-historical creation is possible despite the tight hold the top-down media apparatus continues to have on the imaginations of many folk. it is a demonstration of the fact that this creativity necessarily lay outside the existing apparatus. that's what causes so much "comprehension trouble"

it's pretty obvious that a transform in contemporary capitalism oriented around social-democratic principles--things like dismantling the national-security state by doing things like---o i dunno---actually ending this idiotic "war on terror"----which was, btw, declared functionally over earlier in the week with respect to the bogeyman al=quaeda, an announcement that was quickly followed by another that made of this "war" a replacement cold war narrative for endless, pointless war footing that legitimates the continued of money on the conservative welfare state---instituting something like a full-employment orientation in its place, nationalizing health care on a coherent model, transforming how the university system works, ditching stupidity like "no child left behind" and actually trying to make coherent the us public education system---which would require the political destruction of the right's anti-teachers' union politics dressed up as some bankrupt program concerning "choice"---there's lots that could be done simply by shifting away from the emphasis on the conservative welfare state and working to make a livable, equitable united states.

 

Exhibit b: note the attempt to further sidetrack by pretending he is being victimized for not being a liberal.

 

The topic hasn't disappeared, nor has the active discussion and participation of several members. And no, this discussion is not a one way street consisting of me giving speeches. It's been a point for point exchange. Sorry you missed it.

 

o i didn't miss it, eddie dear. i thought it funny.

but note that, again, you prefer to frame the discussion in ways that refers to your limited frame of reference and your limitations in manipulating that frame of reference at the expense of a discussion of alternatives, where they might come from and what they might look like.

 

I know what I believe and I know what's true. If you don't see me cow kowtowing to someone else's set of principles, that's probably why.
--- merged: Nov 25, 2011 6:17 PM ---

That's a heck of conclusion to come to in light of my countless posts about shrinking the government and many of its bureaucracies. But I guess we all have our own interpretation of things.

 

eddie, dear, i don't know what planet you're on. what's clear is that amongst the inhabitants of that world, not knowing basic facts about actually existing capitalism and adopting a stupid interpretive framework that appears to legitimate not knowing basic facts can be construed as an act of intellectual independence. in the actually existing world, an inability to process information is typically construed as a problem, an indication of weakness, a pre-condition for servility.

 

I'm just saying, we're in a thread ostensibly talking about OWS and we've spent how many pages arguing about a completely tangential subject with the main point of contention being whether forcing american companies to hire only americans amounts to market intervention. Come on.


If I were going to purposefully fuck with someone else's conversation, I'd definitely do it by interjecting ridiculous and easily refutable assertions because 1) their easy refutation would encourage participation as folks, smelling blood, would pile on, 2) my continued obstinance in light of the refutations of my position would likely piss people off (or inspire haughty incredulity, or whatever) and in their inflamed state they'd pay less attention to how far we've strayed from the topic at hand. Again, i'm not saying Eddie is paid, just that it seems to me like he's got to be fucking around here.

 

For me, he lost the benefit of the doubt 4 pages ago.

 

there's a rather more advanced version of the occupation happening now on tahrir square.

this is a good interview with one of the folk who runs jadaliyya about the events of the past week:

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/3263/making-sense-of-developments-in-egypt-and-syria_a

what we're watching is a very quick radicalization of the situation driven in significant measure by responses to the quite amazing brutality of the police goons, including not only the use of tear gas that produces symptoms closer to nerve gas than anything else (go u.s.a., selling this shit to them)--it's possible that this tear gas is simply old enough to have become toxic--it's also possible that the u.s. of a. is selling more toxic tear gas. there's a petition happening to try to stop CTS from continuing to sell this shit:

http://www.change.org/petitions/don...tear-gas-to-the-egyptian-army-tahrir-madeinus

but also assaults, including sexual assaults on women, and a process of military kangaroo courts that have already jailed thousands of people in a ham-fisted attempt to emprison the revolution.

because plutocracies, particularly those shaped by the conservative welfare state approach to freedom (you know, militarized police force, endless war, restrictions on civil liberties in the name of protecting them, repression of dissent) don't like leaving power, scaf has not only tried to shape a new constitution in ways that would place them beyond any legal control, but they've also appointed a stooge as a new prime minister who was already prime minister for 3 years under mubarak.

because the fiction still exists that equates elections and political freedom, even when there are no meaningful choices presented and even when, as is the case in egypt, there's been nothing like the infrastructure set up to allow voting to happen without problems (diebold anyone?), scaf is also trying to force elections to happen next week, despite the demands from people in tahrir---by the tens of thousands---that they not happen, that they be delayed. because elections inside a corrupt system are NOT an indication of freedom---they're a ritual geared around legitimating that system. period. this is an american problem as well---it's merely unfolding in a more advanced, radical manner in cairo as i write this.

so there's a lot to think about with respect to what the ows could become that's going on in cairo in particular right now.

 

roachboy I've been kind of following the Tahrir Square business via the twitter. Pretty distressing stuff. Kind of surreal to experience it via twitter - where it's intermixed with various celebrities, both of the internet and real-world variety, commenting and making jokes about random, vapid-by-nature-of-the-juxtaposition things.

No doubt Egypt has its own Eddies: People who will automatically sign off on the abuses carried out by the authorities against protestors because s/he doesn't agree with the protestor's goals. "Did you get sexually assaulted for expressing your political opinion? Probably should have stayed away from the rally. You know how those things tend to get out of hand."

It's also interesting to see Western leaders tiptoe around the abuses of US authorities while decrying the abuses of the Egyptian authorities.

 

it's been a pretty violent week. the us has finally decided, again, that the writings on the wall for their boys in scaf:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/25/white-house-pressures-egypt-military

it's pretty transparent, what the us is doing. i'm amazed that the us is supporting the elections as schedued, however. you'd think it more sane to pressure scaf to stand down & delay the elections for a couple months. get scaf out of the constitutional process, establish some kind of legitimate civilian power.

and yeah, there was a small demo of eddies organized to show support for scaf---but the 100,000 on tahrir aren't having it.

the occupation as a style of movement can have very considerable impact--it's gradually enabling opposition to the entire american plutocratic syste to acquire focus. egypt shows that repression is a very bad idea. one major difference is that, despite the obvious problems it has, the american media apparatus continues to be confused with a serious infotainment relay system. fox aside, of course. they continue to act as though the existing order is legitimate, despite its paralysis. if that starts to erode---and it should---things will change quick-like. at the same time, diffuse power is more difficult to dislodge than centralized because problems can be isolated at various levels of control.

but the movement is shifting over toward large-scale economic actions---- so toward more radical possibilities.

 

Libertarians are not anti-government. We're not anarchists. We just believe in smaller, less intrusive government with a scope of power limited to protecting the Constitution of the United States.

 

I find it sad when a thread takes a life of its own, people will talk about how certain people have sidetracked the OP.... when they themselves are sidetracking the OP and in no way are discussing anything relative to the OP nor are they even following the track of the thread. They just sit to complain.

Threads involve people's thoughts and opinions and sometimes thoughts and opinions ARE NOT always linear to some people." If you think A then you must be against X absolutely because there is no way you can disagree with A and support any part of B". Thinking that way, no matter where a thread goes from the OP you will always believe someone stating an opinion or feeling that to that person may seem contradictory to an earlier post is changing the subject.

Threads have their own lives and it isn't the OP that always keeps a thread interesting but what the thread grows into that keeps the interest alive.

/end threadjack.

 

this column from naomi wolf clarifies some things about the assault the occuption.

on the stupidity that there's no agreement as to basic goals:

and the column tries to connect this with a centrally co-ordinated, federal-level assault on the occupation movement via dhs (enter that shithead peter king):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy

 

Excellent article!

Why isn't this stuff being reported in the USA as clearly, and especially on TV?

Where is the free press?