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[Scaraban]

Let me give you some advice that one of my old teachers gave me about writing papers, just make sure you get all of the important stuff down. Once your sure you have all the important stuff down, and it still needs to be longer just bullshit your way through it to make it longer.

And yes my teacher said that (Minus the bullshit part.), and she was one of my favorite teachers.

The term for bullshit in a literary sense, is "deadwood". Verb form "deadwooding"

[Truean]

Thank you....

Clerk unfortunately... does not know what the shit she's doing. To the extent the universities never showed her, it isn't her fault. To the extent she's ignoring my polite hints (follow cases cited in cases to find more, impose a format on your drafts, etc) it is. I've been covering for her, but that's ending soon. She also has an unsavory habit of looking down her nose at people, even and especially to their faces and as a rule when they don't deserve it....

...the more likely it is that someone will rise up in that movement who does know what they’re doing.  And that is something that deserves your fear.

It actually is sad these people aren't better organized and cohesive. Any structure has weaknesses to exploit and Wall St. is no exception. Information, PR, anti PR, targeted rotating consumer boycotts (especially those playing rival companies against one another), clogging their phone lines, email, and other services, filing a million complaints, there are a million legal ways to disconnect these things one strand at a time. Hell, half of wall st is about "expectations" of what companies will do in the future, spread a few negative ones in the right places and positive ones in the wrong places and the chaos would be nuts. The only problem is collateral damage, because insurance companies, retirement funds, and basically everything has money tied in with the bad. You'd have to have something akin to the early ward bosses to take them out without taking yourself out in the process.

[Vattic]

Slept all day Monday preparing for work last night. Every few hours something woke me up and the heat didn't help. Woke feeling exhausted and felt little better as I got to work with my nose running. All night I've had a temperature, a headache, runny nose, sneezing, coughing, and my clothes are now soaked with sweat. I didn't do as much work as usual and for some reason this makes me feel guilty having let the team down. I don't think I'll be going back tonight.

One irritating thing is that I likely caught it last week from two colleges who refuse to stay home no matter how ill they are. They are frequently the cause of others having time off.

[SalmonGod]

A blogger after my own heart.  I could not have written that any better myself, and it really speaks to my reaction to the "Occupy" thing.  It's finally worth paying attention to, because it got the attention it wanted in the first place.  And it got that attention through no real effort on it's own part, just on a requisite quota of beating up protesters no matter how non-threatening, and that in its own way gives them a point to be there.

I really don't understand this kind of criticism.  It seems mean-spirited and condescending to me.  Appealing to "smelly hippy" stereotypes, first of all, when it takes very very little looking into the types of people that are actually there to see that it's a very diverse crowd.  The diversity of this crowd is actually one of only two things I see separating it from any other protest of the last 10 years, the other being the contribution of internet virility from Anonymous.

Then making fun of them for being disorganized or not having a single demand or plan of action, which is completely worthless criticism.

On being disorganized:  This is their strength.  This has been the one thing that has kept activism going over the last decade.  Centralized power structures and decision hierarchies are defining characteristics of the powers we're fighting against, and it would be STUPID to try and contest the establishment on its own terms.  I guarantee you that if there was a chain of command and identifiable leader figures, they would have been targeted by authorities and the protests would have been shut down within the first week.

On lack of itemized demands that can be made into slogans or well-detailed plans on how to fix everything:  You're missing the point.  This criticism implies that our problems are shallow -- that they can be fixed by touching up a few misplaced details, and we only need to identify which ones and what steps to take to get them back in order.  Bullshit.  Our problem is we are completely dominated by greed, corruption, and inequality that can be traced to a handful of the population whose influence in our lives needs to be removed like a cancer before it kills us. 

This movement is about motivating people to cast off their delusions -- that voting is not a multiple choice test that fixes all our problems if we get the right answer, that the exploitation will not end if we just ask nicely, that the solution has nothing to do with anyone but ourselves.  This movement makes no demands and proposes no solutions BECAUSE IT IS NOT ADDRESSING THOSE IN POWER.  It is addressing the common people.  It's showing everyone that there are people ready and willing to stand together and get something started.

Finally, what are you doing that's so much better.  Until you can answer this question, you have two choices.  You can continue feeling hopeless and isolated and snipe from the sidelines, or you can contribute to the dialogue that is forming between people who actually share your problems, instead of rolling your eyes every day at the dialogue between our leaders who do not share or even begin to understand your problems. 

What you are witnessing now is an invitation.  You can turn it down, but it's rude of you to scorn those who only wish to work together with you to improve your situation.

[Vester]

This has been the one thing that has kept activism going over the last decade.  Centralized power structures and decision hierarchies are defining characteristics of the powers we're fighting against, and it would be STUPID to try and contest the establishment on its own terms.  I guarantee you that if there was a chain of command and identifiable leader figures, they would have been targeted by authorities and the protests would have been shut down within the first week.

I'm just going to go ahead and point out that the our own communist rebels have their own centralized power structures and decision hierarchies and have been fighting almost uninterrupted for about fifty years. A disorganized movement is just a mob that wants something. And it doesn't look like they all want the same thing, either.

On an unrelated note, am I the only person who pronounces your screen name as "Salmo Ngod"?

EDIT:

I guarantee you that if there was a chain of command and identifiable leader figures, they would have been targeted by authorities and the protests would have been shut down within the first week.

All that happens when you jail or kill a leader is that you end up pissing off the movement even more. Countless "authorities" have learned this.

Your concept of an "identifiable leader figure" seems to hinge around personality based movements, not ideology based movements. A personality based movement would shut down without its defining personality. An ideology based movement doesn't.

[KaelGotDwarves]

@Salmongod/Aqizzar:

When Fox News, who has been nurturing and funding along with the Koch Brother's the "Tea Party movement" for the last two years, goes apeshit at an actual grassroots movement - you're probably on the right path.

Also - hehehe, the Fox News footage they refused to show on air, from another camera. Poor Fox Newsman didn't see it coming when he asked they guy those loaded questions.

[SalmonGod]

I'm just going to go ahead and point out that the our own communist rebels have their own centralized power structures and decision hierarchies and have been fighting almost uninterrupted for about fifty years. A disorganized movement is just a mob that wants something. And it doesn't look like they all want the same thing, either.

I really don't mean to belittle you or anything, but I'm having a hard time deciphering this.  Partly because of the "that the our own" part and partly because I have no idea what communist rebels you're referring to.

All that happens when you jail or kill a leader is that you end up pissing off the movement even more. Countless "authorities" have learned this.

Your concept of an "identifiable leader figure" seems to hinge around personality based movements, not ideology based movements. A personality based movement would shut down without its defining personality. An ideology based movement doesn't.

I'm pretty sure this depends on the size and sophistication of the movement.  For something like a movement of religious extremism or a political ideology that millions of people are on board with (like communism), yes.

For movements that start out very small and of non-specific ideology such as the Wall St occupation, no.  If there had been a person or handful of people giving orders to everyone else, police could have simply arrested those people, and it would have been over due to the crowd's reliance on those people for direction. 

Do some research on the nature of protests over the last 15 years or so.  They've been very resilient precisely because they've given authorities no specific targets.  The Battle in Seattle is widely regarded as the last major successful protest in America (before Wall St) because it was the first of its kind to make use of decentralized organizational structures through cell phones and internet, and it caught authorities completely off guard.  The only two things that have made all protests since then so powerless are the cooperation of the mainstream media (plus targeting of alternative media) and the fact that they tend to make direct demands of powerful people who can simply ignore them.

[SalmonGod]

@Salmongod/Aqizzar:

When Fox News, who has been nurturing and funding along with the Koch Brother's the "Tea Party movement" for the last two years, goes apeshit at an actual grassroots movement - you're probably on the right path.

Found a relevant quote on this page

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Gandhi

[Lord Shonus]

The relevance of that is somewhat questionable. Both Ghandi and King, though devoted pacifists themselves, had violent revolution "backing" their peaceful protests (by which I mean that both were using peaceful methods to forestall such an uprising, not that either was using it as a threat), and the British were starting to dissolve their empire already when they pulled out of India.

[micelus]

I'm just going to go ahead and point out that the our own communist rebels have their own centralized power structures and decision hierarchies and have been fighting almost uninterrupted for about fifty years. A disorganized movement is just a mob that wants something. And it doesn't look like they all want the same thing, either.

I really don't mean to belittle you or anything, but I'm having a hard time deciphering this.  Partly because of the "that the our own" part and partly because I have no idea what communist rebels you're referring to.

I do believe she refers to the communist rebels that inhabit the Philippines. I'm not sure which exact group she means either. New People's Army?

As for being on-topic, I watched Angel Beats...although that could also fit in the happy thread.

[scriver]

New People's Army?

Transhumanist communists. My God.

[RedKing]

For my part, I'm kinda with Aqizzar on this. I didn't pay much attention to the "Occupy" thing early on, because it seemed like a cute attempt at being relevant by a bunch of 20-something hipsters. See, the Left (using the term in a loose, amorphous sense) has a recurrent problem when it comes to protest movements: they want to be so inclusive and so big-tent that they dilute any message they have down to useless fractal noise.

Back in 2002, I participated in multiple marches in DC during the run-up to the Iraq War. It was obvious what they were doing, it was obvious that it was a bad idea, and it was obvious that WMD was more or less a bullshit excuse. That's why I went. But once I got there, you saw banners and signs about everything from "Free Palestine" to labor unions to gay rights. All worthy causes, but they weren't why I was there. And they weren't why a LOT of people were there. And they were very easy for the FOX News crews and the like to jump on and use to dismiss the antiwar movement as a bunch of aimless commie pinko f*g terrorist lovers.

I heard an interview with some of the folks in NYC yesterday on NPR (a more sympathetic source, one would expect) and although they were older, they still didn't have a clear message other than "rich people piss me off". One guy kept going on about "economic justice", as if that concept were universally understood. Hell, I don't even understand what he meant by that. To be honest, it sounds like a term I'd expect out of socialist critical theory. These folks have their heart in the right place, but they need some serious help in messaging and focus.

The Right, on the other hand, often has great messaging discipline. In part because most of their "grassroots" movements are really astroturf and they have PR firms and pundits coming up with pithy soundbites for them to recycle. It's far less honest, but it's far more effective.

I've signed on with the local chapter (Occupy Raleigh) and I'm hoping to lend some help in exactly the areas I'm taking about, but I know from past experience that it'll be an uphill battle even from within. Too many people have a naive view of what it takes to run a "movement" and they resist attempts to make it slick and professional because it's not 'keeping it real'. Sorry folks. That's just how it works in the age and land of mass media. You want results, you need to get professional.

[Vester]

I'm just going to go ahead and point out that the our own communist rebels have their own centralized power structures and decision hierarchies and have been fighting almost uninterrupted for about fifty years. A disorganized movement is just a mob that wants something. And it doesn't look like they all want the same thing, either.

I really don't mean to belittle you or anything, but I'm having a hard time deciphering this.  Partly because of the "that the our own" part and partly because I have no idea what communist rebels you're referring to.

Oh, sorry, I made the mistake of assuming you knew where I was from :/

That would be the New People's Army in the Philippines, the exiled remnants of the once legitimate Communist party and the various farmers and sons of farmers who fight in its ranks. It's tried both legitimate and belligerent channels.

One guy kept going on about "economic justice", as if that concept were universally understood. Hell, I don't even understand what he meant by that. To be honest, it sounds like a term I'd expect out of socialist critical theory. These folks have their heart in the right place, but they need some serious help in messaging and focus.

He probably was referring to the disparity in wealth, and all.

[Vester]

doubleposted, whoops

[Rose]

Meanwhile my state has finally voted out the communist party.

we're still recovering.