Metal Reviews

You mean ressentiment, no? Umm it has nothing to do with envy in my book. If America wants to claim to be so fucking great, we need to recognize that shit isn't so fucking great for a lot of people. Keep your fucking luxury cars but let's work towards providing a basic standard of living for everyone else. I always imagine it different in Europe insofar as you people take care of your poor to some degree, no? We wage war on ours.

And despite that, we still have these gangs of iPad-toting champagne socialists camped out in our major cities, drinking all day and going home to their warm beds at night! Funny.

You do realise that joining the tea party will have more positive effect on an achieveable goal like ending corporate bailouts than hippying it up in front of a random university, right? You might have to grit your teeth and ignore the American revolution costumes and don't tread on me flags, but at least there's overlap in terms of ending state corporate welfare. Or, of course, you can sit and wait for the state's truncheon once the authorities have had enough of you. Lentil-weaving and poetry workshops are fun diversions and all, but will change not a single moderate mind.

No, it will change it. Into revulsion.

Very true - it's been interesting to watch unpolitical friends' reactions change over time to the occupiers in London, from 'they have a good point' to 'they're ridiculous and should go home'.

Speaking of Occupy, this is cruel but funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1mf6mrmJmk

Branding 99% protesters "hypocrites" for having smartphones and warm houses is silly, IMO- the point of the protest isn't about poverty so much as it is about the absurd separation between the mega-rich and everyone else. Not rich and poor, but mega-rich and everyone else. Normal people finally getting sick of having too much stolen from everyone. That video, I thought, was a bit ridiculous, because most of those people have very good points. For example, the "we're not necessarily anti-Capitalist" and the other woman saying "we are definitely anti-Capitalist" shows a bit of a lack of understanding of some of the economic nuances in Capitalism. I guess most of these protesters could be called Keynesian.

Oh come on, it is when they decry capitalism one minute and slurp its endeavours out of a Starbucks' cup the next. How has, say, Bill Gates, who has given over $28 billion to charity, stolen anything from anyone? You'd rather he was taxed more and gave less to charity, so governments could spend his money on wonderful things like bombing foreign people instead of improving their water supply?

Edit - Keynes was a capitalist who would laugh heartily at his name being invoked as an argument for spending out of a recession when governments didn't save during the preceding boom.

Caricaturizing the entire Occupy movement as college students is silly. Oakland is an awesome example of how that's just fucking wrong.

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/11/02/occupy_oakland_general_strike_ows_protesters_try_to_shutdown_por.html

Which resulted in this as well:


These protests are being done by more people than college students drinking lattes. It's also really fun to caricature college students as all latte drinking coffee shop Marxists. Healthcare cuts, graduate stipend cuts, scholarship cuts, faculty cuts, elimination of tenure positions (opting for adjuncts), are all ways in which the current political climate is affecting college students in ways which are glossed over by your descriptions.

Also, the movement is in no way unified. The movement brings together communists, democrats, republicans, libertarians, fiscal conservatives in ways which tea parties can't. Tea party people are much more likely to be involved in Occupy than leftists at a Tea Party rally. That's because the Tea Party does stupid shit but it speaks for how Occupy serves a purpose. Most of the movement isn't anti-capitalist to be honest. A lot of it is people who have been fucked over by the recent austerity programs. Much of what goes on in Ohio is directly related to repealing SB5, voting this Tuesday. A lot of labor and teachers getting involved because of how that bill will decimate their bargaining rights and benefits. A large part of it is the wealth inequality in the West. The top 1% control 42% of wealth. The next 19% control 51% of wealth, leaving 7% of wealth for 80% of the population. That's fucked up and our Founding Fathers spoke out against that kind of disparity. They saw how in France that gap led to a revolution, a fucking bloody one which they hoped to not fall prey to.

I think this movement is bringing in more people than you imagine. At least here in the states it is.

Homeless people and occupations: http://www.salon.com/2011/11/04/occupat ... _homeless/

Shutting a port down and stopping eg food being shipped around is really progressive. Go for the politicians who make the decisions, not the trucks delivering goods. And as for this:

"A roving group of about 100 mostly young men broke from the main group of protesters in a central plaza and roamed through downtown streets spraying graffiti, burning garbage and breaking windows."

How wonderful! How will that persuade anyone of anything? Threatening revolution, whoever you are, will serve only to make people view you as dangerous. The average man on the street will think: hey, at least the Tea Partiers don't smash the town up. If you want to end bank bailouts, target the politicians who give out the money.

Because import was the only target of the act. The very act of having widespread support from union workers shows how the movement is not localized to yuppie college kids. You want to critique them for drinking lattes and then when they exert the only power of influence they have you critique them for halting business. There were strikes throughout the 19th and 20th century and shit turned out just fine. Everything which was stalled that day was unloaded the next day. When did you become such an inane conservative that strikes appear evil?

Nobody is fucking threatening revolution except for the outliers of the movement. You need to stop listening to the media's portrayal of these events. When you get such a large number of young youthful alienated males and some of those being anarchists, some of them may break from the crowd and cause some damage. The football in your country is renowned for fans going crazy, no? American college football leads to kids going crazy and overturning shit because of a single fucking game. These kids got pissed about the fact that their parents are unemployed, their futures are already squelched while corporations have bent our country over to make millions for only a few individuals. Their vandalism almost seems rational in comparison to the vandalism which occurs in our society for all kinds of shit like hockey games and other sports events.

What you don't get about Occupy is actually the most amazing thing about it. These groups, occupation groups and even the more standard protest groups which aren't occupying, like Chicago, perform general assemblies daily. Anywhere from fifteen to hundreds of people participate in openly, radically democratic discussions to determine just what their agenda for the day, week, month, etc are. People are getting together and talking, communicating their lives to each other. That is fucking politics, entering into the public realm through speech and action expressing who one is and what one desires. It's not always pretty but it's something that we haven't had since early 19th century unions.

Well, quite, if the unions weren't involved the students probably wouldn't have been able to do something like shut a port down, would they? And yes, why should they punish businesses for something that's not their fault? Shit might turn out fine years later, but strikes hurt people and business in the short term, and being against them doesn't make me an 'inane conservative'.

As for the rest of it, the violent anarchist element is making the rest look bad. Comparing them to football hooligans doesn't make it any better - in fact, it makes it a lot worse. That is what your radical politics comes down to, hooliganism? And calling them amazing because they debate is ridiculous. If you think that stuff like this

http://www.nycga.net/2011/10/21/nycga-minutes-10212011/

is the most incredible thing happening in politics since 19th century unions, you're mad.

Strikes hurt people and business. Isn't the whole message of this movement that people are hurting due to government and financial groups fucking shit up? It's fine when they do it but not the people. I get it that strikes aren't fun but dissidence rarely can be. It's the one consistent form of agency marginalized groups can exert against businesses. We'll have to disagree on tactics. You know if Chuck was here he would dominate on defending strikes!

Ummm a small group doesn't amount to the whole movement. "making the rest look bad" to people who refuse to look beyond the superficial media framing of the situation? If that's how the movement is being written off then so be it but every form of Leftist politics ever has been cast as a bunch of radical dissidents who want to take up guns and pitchforks and turn wherever they are at into the next USSR or better yet just anarchic chaos. So big fucking surprise that the same thing is happening to Occupy. The group in no way desires to control the actions of its members because the members are all coming from different perspectives with different tactics and agendas. My radical politics comes down to some fucking participation, my friend, and hence the next bit.

It's not simply that they debate. People becoming active and voicing their opinions about current events on such an epic scale such as this is really impressive. Maybe you would prefer they just sit at home, continuing to watch TV. There have been other greater moments in politics, e.g., CRM obviously and others but they weren't sustainable groups. They had clear cut agendas and issues which they want to address. Occupy opens up the possibility of a continuous public forum which people desire and haven't had access to in a long time.

Of course the actions of a minority hurt the overall movement - look at how the Tea Party has been cast as racist, or how all bankers and politicians are seen as thieving scum. No different with anarchist groups with violent minority elements. Condemn them, or be tarred with the same brush - refusing to condemn looks like you're condoning.

And of course the only political activism that's possible these days is watching tv or starting vagrant camps. No middle ground is at all possible. Saying that Occupy wants to be continuous exposes the short-term vapidity at the heart of it currently. All these radical groups, coming together to debate everything and achieve nothing bar putting moderates off... plus, of course, legal and cleanup bills for the public purse, let alone police overtime when the state gets bored of you and sends the heavies in.

The group isn't an anarchist group. Refusing to condemn is simply the fact that the group is too diverse to represent or dismiss some particular group.

Those aren't the only two options for politics. The dichotomy is the choice between doing politics or sitting at home and having politics done to you, i.e., administration. Those are two separate things, administration and politics, and our political sphere has devolved into the former. Occupy is the first instance of politics as politics in a long time. And Occupy is more about the General Assemblies than the Occupations. Occupations occur much less than GAs coming together and holding meetings.

A continuous forum for people to discuss and air their complaints, how awful. It isn't solely radical groups. I don't think you know what actually goes on at Occupy events or it is entirely different there in the states than across the pond. Achieving nothing? It's achieving something for the people who participate in it. It is shifting the national dialogue from discussing the deficit to discussing inequality. Grrr...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... UA2rDVrmNg

I almost pity the guy. Almost.

edit: and seriously now, what's the third one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vXHxbCg ... ture=feedu

And Occupy are the heathens. Molesting young boys shouldn't be defended. This is how fucked up our society is.

Energy?

Good going for McCain anyway, hope he comes out on top.

McCain? Ron Paul, you mean surely? You can't possibly mean Herman Cain...

It is the hero worship of college (American) football and the patent refusal to understand that a man who united a University for decades also protected a child molester. These ignorant kids don't know what they were defending though, give them a pass.

What's the context to the video?