Job Discussion Forums

[teacheratlarge]

johnslat posted

[Sashadroogie]

Too many assumptions going on there as usual, Gaijina...sorry, Teacheratlarge. My government, you say? And as for removing dictators being tricky - it's all the trickier when you've helped keep them there for years because it suited you.

Call it what you will, but 'invasion' is what the whole world thinks of it as - including your traditional allies. But that's OK. You can just vilify them too, a la the 'cowardly French' meme currently present in so many Hollywood propaganda vehicles...

[geaaronson]

[johnslat]

Dear teacheratlarge,

"But as I have stated, they don't represent the 99% IMO."

You are, of course, entitled to your opinion - as the Occupy protestors are to theirs.

I would point out, however, that my elected representatives, even the ones I have voted for, in the House of Representatives don't always represent MY opinions.

"Perhaps better would be "I have seen hardly any reports of the Occupy movement having no message, but rather many reports of them having messages that were not clearly stated or that they were asking for solutions which seemed not very realistic."

I'm quite content with that version (although I would make the subjects of the gerunds possessive - i.e. " . . . the Occupy movement's having no message . . . " and " . . . reports of their having messages . . .", but perhaps I'm being too picky .)


" . . . why this have not been clearly articulated previously (one obvious drawback of not having leaders?) I couldn't tell you."

I believe you meant to write "these" rather than "this." Have you been following the Occupy movement closely? These goals have been mentioned as primary ones since the inception of the movement. The fact that you haven't seen them "clearly articulated" before may be because you haven't been keeping up with the statements made by protestors and reported more by the "non-mainstream" press (i.e. Truthout and Reader Supported News) than by the more popular media outlets. This was especially the case early on, but more recently, even the "mainstream media" has jumped on the bandwagon. In fact, Time magazine just named its "Person of the Year:
"Time magazine has named "The Protester" as its Person of the Year for 2011, citing a worldwide outburst of people-power from Tunisia to Moscow to Wall Street."


http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/12/time-magazine-names-the-protester-as-its-person-of-the-year/1

Regards,
John

[geaaronson]

[teacheratlarge]

sashadroogie posted

[teacheratlarge]

Johnslat,

I don't seem to have the amount of free time to spend on the Internet, but no I haven't forgotten your broader question about what should be done in the current economic climate.

I disagree with a recent article (perhaps from The Economist, I'm sorry I didn't keep it) that was comparing capitalism with free market principles. I haven't seen completely free markets operating anywhere in truth, except as theoretical examples in business texbooks. I see the whole occupy movement as advocating a 'throwing out the baby and the bathwater' analogy rather than working with what you have.

Yes, US political representatives do show the US government to be more of a representational democracy, but since I didn't elect the Occupy movement to represent me, they don't represent me. I think their numbers are smaller than you think (actually how would you measure the size of it?). As to Time magazine, yes and they put the PC as the person of the year on their cover too, are you going to vote it into office ?

Remember what people are protesting about varies from place to place. Some aspects are the same; i.e. economic, sharing the wealth, government corruption, but the details of the stories are very different.

There are always going to be people clamoring for change, and that is what makes the world a good place I think. Basically they have the freedom to crow about it, but do remember some people may choose to ignore them. Something like, the more life changes, the more it stays the same.

geaaronson posted

[Sashadroogie]

Gaijina...sorry, ahem... Teacheratlarge, Blair was indeed the PM of the UK for a long time, but that has no bearing on the assumptions going on in your statements. Not all English speakers from outside of the US are British.

Plenty of dirty laundry hanging up all over the world, but not quite as much moralising. Very few thinkers in what is loosely described as the West really believe the clap-trap their governments spew about 'freedom' and 'spreading democracy'. Perhaps the recently deceased Christopher Hitchens did, but how many others do? Speaking of the UK, the majority of people would not say that they supported the invasion, and resented British troop deployment there. It was in Britain that the term 'Bush's poodle' was first used, after all, to criticise the actions of his government. There were bigger demonstrations in London protesting the invasion than what we see now in Wall St. Not too many people in Britain or elsewhere suffer from the absurd and childish delusion that adventurist cowboy antics were going to be anything but an unmitigated disaster in the Middle East, a region most people think they understand, but don't. Invasion remains the standard term in use. Even by your allies, as mentioned before.

Occupation is another term which is in surprisingly common use in the media to describe what is happening in Iraq, and not just in Al Jazeera reports. So I find it amusing that the Occupy Wall St. should have chosen this particular word for their movement. It seems almost a reflex to 'declare war' on social problems e.g. drugs, or use military language even for educational programmes (No child left behind), so perhaps it is natural that even American protest movements should adopt this type of metaphor. Occupy it! That will solve all the problems. Hmmm. We'll see...

As for not noticing the anti-French rhetoric in American films...well you can't have been watching any Hollywood action flicks for the last few years then, or watching popular sit-coms. It is everywhere. Try Googling it.

[johnslat]

Dear teacheratlarge,

May I ask from what sources you are getting your impressions of the Occupy movement?

I ask because I cannot see how you could arrive at this conclusion:

"I see the whole occupy movement as advocating a 'throwing out the baby and the bathwater' analogy rather than working with what you have."

The Occupy movement wants to "keep the baby" while throwing out the (dirty) bathwater.
Everyone I have talked to in the movement and (almost) everything I have read speaks about reform. And for many/most, the fundamental problem is the corruption of Congress; this is where reform has to take place.
Here's a good article about one way that could be achieved.


http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/11/has-a-harvard-professor-mapped-out-the-next-step-for-occupy-wall-street/247561/

Not exactly throwing out the baby with the bathwater, is it?

I don't see the point of this statement:

"As to Time magazine, yes and they put the PC as the person of the year on their cover too, are you going to vote it into office ?"

I used the cover as an example of how now EVEN the mainstream media is starting to "cover" the Occupy movement. But the mainstream media is STILL not doing a very good job of it, and here's a good example of what I mean:

"TIME magazine has used a photo of Sarah Mason, a 25-year-old Occupy L.A. activist, photographed by LA Weekly's Ted Soqui as she stood in a line, arms linked, during a November 17 protest at Bank of America Plaza, for it's cover. The TIME image - created by Shepard Fairey, the L.A. artist also known for his Obama "Hope" poster is a sanitized version of the original photograph. The 99% insignia on the bandana masking Mason's face has been removed."

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/276-74/8985-focus-times-qperson-of-the-yearq-cover-the-photo-you-didnt-see

If you're relying on the mainstream media for your impressions, well, you're getting about a good idea of the Occupy movement as most Americans get of, say, the Middle East, from those sources.

So, where ARE you getting your impressions from?

Regards,
John

[johnslat]

Regarding the "Occupy movement":

"I think the heart of their message is, "This Is Not Okay. The way the world is, the fact that the rich and powerful don't have to play by the same rules, that the little people get stepped on, ignored, die in poverty. This Is Not Okay."
And in drawing attention to that fact, they've achieved higher approval ratings than any organized political movement around. Now polls show that more than three-fourths of us agree, and are now willing to say so out loud without the ridiculous words "class warfare" immediately being hurled at us. Theirs is a message that goes back to the Hebrew prophets, and that comes out of the mouth of Jesus: When the rich behave without justice and the poor suffer, This Is Not Okay."

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/What-Really-Mattered-2011-Greg-Garrett-01-03-2012.html/?LLM=j

[Captain_Fil]

Even Bill Maher denounces the Occupy Movement...

http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/04/maher-to-leftover-occupy-movement-douchebags-get-a-job/

[johnslat]

Sweet sufferin succotash - the guy's a comedian. He'd put down his mother for a laugh.

"Similar to Afghanistan, when you occupy anything for too long, people do get pissed off. And as I watch them on the news now, I find myself almost agreeing with Newt Gingrich. Like, you know what? Get a job. Only because the people who originally started, I think they went home, and now it's just these anarchist stragglers. And this is the problem when your movement involves sleeping over in the park. You wind up attracting the people who were sleeping over in the park anyway.

And I think that's where we're at now with the Occupy movement. They did a great job of bringing the issue of income inequality to the fore. But now it's just a bunch of douche bags who think throwing a chair through the Starbucks window is gonna bring on the revolution."

_____________________________________________________________

This isn't particularly accurate. As accounts of the movement's origins make clear, the original organizers of the protest were much more politically radical than the subsequent masses that flooded into the streets. And summing up their present activities as throwing chairs into Starbucks windows is misleading at best.

But Maher's comments are nevertheless of interest, if only because his perceptions and commentary on the protest movement are a sign of changing cultural attitudes about its current standing.

_____________________________________________________________

I agree completely with this comment:

" I do agree that he's overall a liberal, but he has never shown any particular loyalty to liberalism as a whole. A phrase like "Even Bill Maher says" implicitly suggests that where he stands on issues is indicative of larger trends among liberals. That is, frankly, stupid to anyone who's familiar with his shtick. He has a few causes he seems to genuinely care about (drugs, censorship), but other than that there is very little ideological coherence to his views, and he seems to enjoy swinging right on a whim, just to preserve his status as an iconoclast.

The examples are abundant. He supported Bob Dole for president in 1996. If it were '96, would we say that "Even Bill Maher supports Dole" to suggest that Clinton is somehow an irrelevant leftie who "even" liberals are abandoning? He backed Bush's Social Security reforms in 2005. Does that mean the mainstream liberal position for preserving SS in its current form was doomed? The fate of Bush's bill doesn't suggest it. He supports racial profiling in airports. I could go on.

Frankly, the whole "Even so-and-so says" game is silly no matter who it's describing, but it's especially ridiculous when you're taking a frickin' comedian who enjoys saying things to provoke even his fans and who has never been a reliable indicator of liberal thought in general."

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/02/even-bill-maher-has-turned-on-occupy-wall-street/252690/

[AGoodStory]

[teacheratlarge]

I noticed a recent article where the occupy movement group seems to be doing something more worthwhile than occupying parks with makeshift latrines.

http://business.financialpost.com/2012/04/09/occupy-groups-take-on-foreclosures/

I always knew that they had a higher purpose. Fighting the banks at their own game directly is a much better use of their time and energy IMO.