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Author Topic: Occupy Wall Street  (Read 37754 times)

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Rico

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #80 on: October 25, 2011, 03:38:23 PM »

You seem to be predicating these awkward statements on the twin ideas of "The OWS Movement has a lot of current media coverage" and "There is no central OWS group."

Have you considered the possibility that there actually is a central OWS group, and you don't know about it because it hasn't gotten a lot of media coverage?
Continuing this, I'm still up in the air over whether it's intentional malice or just that journalism has been a huge steaming pile of shit for years now, but quite a lot of the media coverage of OWS has gone out of its way to emphasize homeless and student involvement and not, y'know, the regular people who actually have salient points and know what's going on.

Example: There's been a gathering in Seattle for a while now, and the other week it got to a pretty huge Saturday peak. I was down there with a dozen or so co-workers, and the bulk of the crowd of thousands looked pretty respectable. The main article about it in the Seattle Times featured prominently an interview with a homeless drifter from California who was noted to be drinking beer throughout the interview and whose quote was, "This movement is great because it has so many people like me."
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Ziiro

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #81 on: October 25, 2011, 03:44:36 PM »

The Portland had a note to "dress like a normal person, and not like you're from fucking Portland."
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Kashan

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #82 on: October 25, 2011, 03:46:53 PM »

I don't have to look it up because as the person having this experience I can tell you that there has never been a tea party event that has attracted this much attention the way this has for as long.

I would offer the possibility that your experience is either unusual, or you've forgotten how much coverage the tea party got during the height of coverage about them.
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Rico

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #83 on: October 25, 2011, 03:47:01 PM »

And Rico's point.  Which is that this shit did not happen to the Tea Party.
Mine was actually more that compared to the Tea Party OWS has gotten shit-all attention. Even this thread is pretty short compared to how long activities have actually been going on. The only plausible scenario I can possibly construct for how he feels it's shoved in his face the whole time is a Facebook full of 200 liberal friends all cross-posting the same shit but OWS has gotten relatively no media attention and, well, if he had 200 conservative FB friends it'd be exactly the same as the Tea Party (but with actual media attention).
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Royal☭

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #84 on: October 25, 2011, 04:07:02 PM »

I'll just add to this debate with the most cherished of all forms of communication, a graph from the OWS Wiki page on publicity:

Quote
Comparison count of news stories on Tea Party movement and Occupy Wall Street protests



The Tea Party doesn't seem like a big deal these days because the first rally started on Tax Day in 2009. And that's before you consider that news stations were covering the movement long before those first protests even took place.

The Tea Party was in my face during the 2009-2010 political seasons. After the election of 2010, when the Tea Party got elected and more people started to realize how horrifying they actually are, that's when attention began to die down. Since then the Tea Party has fallen considerably in favor (now ranking below my own classification, Socialist Atheist Blood-Sacrificer), but they still get plenty of lip service in the press.


To answer the question about central organization, OWS doesn't really have any. Which is part of the problem of the protests. They seem to be setting up an anarchist collective in Zuccotti park, but don't seem to have any end-game or demands to be met. OWS considers demands to be "Something a terrorist would do", which is stupid.

Mongrel

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #85 on: October 25, 2011, 04:18:00 PM »

I'm getting the Retarded Anarchist vibe from a lot of these OWS protests. The ones in Toronto have been a comical failure because of that sort of thing.

I don't mean "Anarchists" in the sense of "Guys who like to dress in black and heard there's some word that starts with A that means they get to smash stuff" but genuine clueless young idiots hellbent on not having a leader or any kind of organization no matter what it costs them.
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TA

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #86 on: October 25, 2011, 04:29:06 PM »

I'll just add to this debate with the most cherished of all forms of communication, a graph from the OWS Wiki page on publicity:

Quote
Comparison count of news stories on Tea Party movement and Occupy Wall Street protests

And for the actual graph:
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Do you understand how terrifying the words “vibrating strap on” are for an asexual? That’s like saying “the holocaust” to a Jew.

Royal☭

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #87 on: October 25, 2011, 04:34:15 PM »

Nah, Anarchists haven't been the Urban guerrilla, smash the state figures they used to be. (At least, everywhere except Greece) Nowadays they're of the variety of "You want Universal Healthcare? We don't need the state. Let's just round up all the doctors we can who are willing to work for chickens". This is evidence in how some of the OWS protesters are fascinated by the barter system.

Mongrel

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #88 on: October 25, 2011, 04:54:02 PM »

That's why I specifically added the "Retarded" epithet.
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Mongrel

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #89 on: October 25, 2011, 04:55:46 PM »

Honestly, the longer this goes on, the greater my fears for the (mid-to-long-term) outcome.

Every day that passes the problems confronting Western society - and the world in general - are growing more intractable and complex and the solutions proposed are becoming ever more insane, simplistic, and flat-out moronic.
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Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #90 on: October 25, 2011, 06:32:44 PM »

First off (so you can decide to deflect the post based off one line)

Wow, projecting, too.

saying how you're too nice a guy to word things harshly or you would be wording things harshly just makes you a passive-aggressive dick, not not a dick.

How'bout this, then: go fuck yourself.

I do believe there was a legitimate contrast between my post and Rico's.  Disagree?  Seems to me that proves my point: no goddamn sense pulling punches.

But on to the actual point.

Oh good, only took you five posts.

Tea party is a group. OWS is an event.

Tea Party holds rallies.

Big fucking hundreds-of-thousands-strong rallies.

Big fucking hundreds-of-thousands-strong rallies which, to the best of my knowledge, have not actually involved anyone being maced in the face by law enforcement.

Again, you can feel free to correct me on that; I realize you've written fewer than five posts since the first time I suggested you do so.

I can not avoid information about OWS, it is thrown in my face at every twist and turn.

We have no fewer than three currently-active threads involving Tea Party influence in American politics on this board.

I don't have to look it up because as the person having this experience I can tell you that there has never been a tea party event that has attracted this much attention the way this has for as long.

Er, the 2010 election?

The continued nonsense of "candidates" like Bachmann, Perry, Cain -- hell, Christie and Trump?

I don't even know where you got the shit about the difference between them being armed or not.

Did you...did you read the fucking post you were responding to in the first damn place?

Because if you didn't, that would explain the rather severe misunderstanding you seem to have with what the hell everybody else but you is talking about.
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Classic

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #91 on: October 25, 2011, 07:54:21 PM »

HE UP-ENDED IT!
HE UP-ENDED THAT SHIT!

Anyway, has a trusted source called bullshit on any Tea Party spin? Or has disillusionment with the party's pet crazies actually made them less visible [spoiler](and evidently forgotten)[/spoiler].
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Brentai

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #92 on: October 25, 2011, 07:56:05 PM »

I think they've mostly decided to wisely keep their mouths shut about it, except for the occasional "Whatever you're angry about, it's definitely Obama's fault" (which is true up to a point).
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Smiler

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #93 on: October 25, 2011, 08:20:30 PM »

Occupy Oakland has officially been called a riot, and they are gassing the fuck out of protesters right now.
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Brentai

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #94 on: October 25, 2011, 08:22:18 PM »

Sounds more like an Oakland Raid if you ask me.
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Mongrel

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #95 on: October 25, 2011, 08:57:23 PM »

Sounds more like an Oakland Raid if you ask me.

Are you saying it's time for FUHBAWL?
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Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #96 on: October 26, 2011, 07:40:17 AM »

Continuing this, I'm still up in the air over whether it's intentional malice or just that journalism has been a huge steaming pile of shit for years now, but quite a lot of the media coverage of OWS has gone out of its way to emphasize homeless and student involvement and not, y'know, the regular people who actually have salient points and know what's going on.

Little from Column A, little from Column B.

I think it was Franken who said that the media's bias is neither toward the liberal nor to the conservative side but to the profit side.  As I've mentioned in other threads, their continued breathless coverage of Palin/Trump/Bachmann/Perry/Christie/Cain isn't due to any particular loyalty to the Tea Party, it's because nobody's going to get excited by media coverage that says "Look, guys, it's obviously gonna be Romney; let's just ignore the rest of these clowns."

And there WAS some early belittling of the Tea Party, and focus on the guys carrying Obama-with-a-bone-in-his-nose signs, but it died off in a hurry, and for the most part any coverage that DID acknowledge the lunatic fringe balanced them with more reasonable/moderate/coherent folks.  (MSNBC may be an exception, but MSNBC is MSNBC.  And hell, they've got Joe Scarborough, so I imagine at least he didn't spend all morning making "teabagger" jokes.)

The double-standard IS an odd one.  Yes, liberal street performers are kinda goofy, but not any goofier than the Tea Party's Revolutionary War Cosplay Brigade.

I think there ARE people in the media who really buy that "liberal media bias" nonsense and overcompensate for it (see Oliver Willis's recent post on Jill Abramson's comments about trying to bring "balance" to the New York Times, where "balance" is defined as "uncritically parroting lies about Iraqi WMD's to help George Bush drag us into an unnecessary war"), so it's entirely possible that concerns over accusations of bias led newscasters to resist their natural urge to focus on the craziest people in the Tea Party.

That and the OWS protesters are explicitly opposed to the hegemony of the networks' owners and sponsors, which wasn't really the Tea Party's focus.  So that probably doesn't help.

I'll just add to this debate with the most cherished of all forms of communication, a graph from the OWS Wiki page on publicity:

Quote
Comparison count of news stories on Tea Party movement and Occupy Wall Street protests

Feels right but I'd like to know the original source.

(Meantime, more charts, these on income inequality.  Via Mark Evanier.)

The Tea Party doesn't seem like a big deal these days because the first rally started on Tax Day in 2009. And that's before you consider that news stations were covering the movement long before those first protests even took place.

The Tea Party was in my face during the 2009-2010 political seasons. After the election of 2010, when the Tea Party got elected and more people started to realize how horrifying they actually are, that's when attention began to die down. Since then the Tea Party has fallen considerably in favor (now ranking below my own classification, Socialist Atheist Blood-Sacrificer), but they still get plenty of lip service in the press.

Tough call.  I would argue that there's a televised Tea Party rally every week at this point; they're called the Republican Debates.  Though if you want to make the argument that the general population doesn't give a crap about any of that stuff and it's just the media jamming a horse-race down our throats, it'd be hard to argue with that interpretation.

To answer the question about central organization, OWS doesn't really have any. Which is part of the problem of the protests. They seem to be setting up an anarchist collective in Zuccotti park, but don't seem to have any end-game or demands to be met. OWS considers demands to be "Something a terrorist would do", which is stupid.

I don't think the Tea Party has any coherent philosophy beyond "Cut taxes", though.  It's not that they're a one-issue group -- it's that they're (politically) a diverse group, and cutting taxes is about the only thing they all agree on.

And even then, I'm betting quite a lot of them could be convinced to raise corporate taxes by a couple percent.

That said, the Tea Party has establishment backing and OWS doesn't.  I'd argue that's a double-edged sword.  Honestly I don't WANT the Democratic Establishment to glom onto OWS; I want OWS to make the Democratic Establishment fucking nervous.

But a coherent set of requests is kinda necessary.  I mentioned the Tea Party only agreeing on "Cut taxes"; here we're looking at a movement that mostly seems built around "Raise taxes (on the wealthy)" (and maybe also "My college is too expensive").  I'm still a big proponent of "End corporate personhood", and that Taibbi list I posted a couple pages back is a good one too.

I'm also confident that, per my discussion with Rico above, there are plenty of coherent people with specific, reasonable requests at these rallies, and the media keep interviewing the ones dressed like chickens.

Nowadays they're of the variety of "You want Universal Healthcare? We don't need the state. Let's just round up all the doctors we can who are willing to work for chickens". This is evidence in how some of the OWS protesters are fascinated by the barter system.

Bartering is great for local, small-scale stuff.  But yes, implementing it on a scale any bigger than the local community is ludicrous.

That said, it's instructive to look at how our financial system works and where all this shit came from.  Looking at archaic payment systems like bartering (and the origin of interest as "Take care of my livestock while I'm on a voyage and you can keep any offspring they birth in the meantime") helps to illustrate just how many layers of abstraction we've gone through to get to a financial system based less on cows' babies and more on bulls' shit.

We've gone from objects of actual, tangible value to pieces of paper representing value to ones and zeroes representing that paper to a system where people manipulate those ones and zeroes in an elaborate casino where they shift all the risk onto the public.  I'm not suggesting anything drastic like going back to the gold standard (I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the gold standard but neither do I think it would do us a bit of good to go back on it), but acknowledging that at this point Wall Street investors are pretty much making shit up is a good place to start when you want to talk about reform.
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Mongrel

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #97 on: October 26, 2011, 07:49:15 AM »

Quote
lies about Iraqi WMD's to help George Bush drag us into an unnecessary war


For a brief second, I read this as "George Bush in drag lies unnecessarily to go to war"
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Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #98 on: October 26, 2011, 08:59:02 AM »

It IS a lovely mental image.

More from CBS on last night's clash.

I'm sympathetic to the people in the neighborhood who are complaining -- "Don't piss in the street or keep me up all night" is a pretty reasonable request.  By all means, arrest people where necessary -- hell, some of them WANT to be arrested -- but I haven't seen anything that really suggests the use of tear gas was justified.  I have no trouble believing there were people throwing rocks and bottles, but I think they could have been dealt with without attacking the entire crowd.
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Smiler

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #99 on: October 26, 2011, 09:10:27 AM »

That top comment.

Quote
MLK led "peaceful assemblies" to protest lack of government compliance with its own law. He sought a redress of grievances pursuant to laws described under the 13th and 14th Amendments.

OWS is not a "peaceful" assembly. It is organized to be a movement of "civil disobedience" to disrupt commerce and attract support for what is not clearly explained.
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