Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

What are OWS demands?

Saw this on a blog today.

A constitutional ammendment requiring all memebers of congress to wear jumpsuits with patches of financial backers sewn on ...like NASCAR drivers.

[marvenger]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

I just don't think its correct to say that the french revolutionary fervour and subsequent nationalism of the everyman created the most violent degraded conditions in Europe. The European feudal lords, kings, and religious elite were already very good at it pre the revolution, and in Frances case its involment in the 30 years war was to try to manipulate its way (the state) into a more powerful position in the european setting along with the other players like the Hapsburgs etc, and the lives of French civilans in their beseiged cities in this war were of little relevance to these powerful entities compared to the strategy of their power game.

How is mercenary armies laying waste to crops and causing widespread famine - just to change the dynamics of power games of the powerful players hopefully more in ones favour - better than what happened in the napolean wars.

[reggie]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

What are OWS demands?

This continues to be my question.

[c1ue]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

How is mercenary armies laying waste to crops and causing widespread famine - just to change the dynamics of power games of the powerful players hopefully more in ones favour - better than what happened in the napolean wars.

I didn't say the 30 years war was better.

I said it was largely because Germany was the stomping grounds for most of Europe's mercenary armies, under one (or at different times, both) religious guise. The proximate cause there was the Reformation and the subsequent Counter Reformation, which in turn was used by various rulers as excuses to start conflicts.

Napoleon in contrast spread the concept of citizen armies everywhere and thus upped the ante for war, and then spread wars everywhere.

Certainly it seems that citizen armies would have happened sooner or later, but this doesn't detract from the fact that he was responsible.

Germany has been a battleground even in Roman times.

[astonas]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Napoleon in contrast spread the concept of citizen armies everywhere and thus upped the ante for war, and then spread wars everywhere.

Certainly it seems that citizen armies would have happened sooner or later, but this doesn't detract from the fact that he was responsible.

My understanding of history is that widespread use of the citizen-army considerably pre-dates Napoleon. The Germanic tribes that acted over time to drive the fall of the western Roman Empire all followed this model, as did Greece (up to Alexander's short burst), and the Eastern kingdoms of Egypt and Persia. The main difference was that Napoleon's battles occurred in an era that remains well-documented, while even the Roman side's later history is in large part lost to us, let alone its opponents.

If anything, it was my understanding that Rome was exceptional in its exclusive reliance on a professional army.

Germany has been a battleground even in Roman times.

Again, my understanding is that this was to no small degree because they had a citizen army. Hence the need for effective integration (through divided resettlement) of conquered peoples within Rome, which, when it failed to be sufficiently divided, brought about the end of the Western Roman Empire from within.

I am reminded of a statement about Iraq that Thomas Friedman liked to use when expressing caution about invading:

"Was Iraq the way Iraq was [a dictatorship] because Saddam was the way Saddam was, or was Saddam the way Saddam was because Iraq was the way Iraq was ... incapable of self-rule and only governable by an iron fist?"

History books always are written by the winners, and like to point to leaders as driving forward, and leading change actively. I sometimes wonder if these "leaders" aren't really just being dragged along by the tide of history, then as much as now.

It's only when someone is trying to escape blame for a misbegotten war that we hear "we had no choice but to intervene." After a victory, all talk is about the brilliant vision that created a "better" world. In reality, I suspect that the difference in initial motivation is much smaller than that gap.

[bart]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

For what its worth:

[jiimbergin]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Thanks Bart. I think Gingrich seems to have the best handle on it.

[reggie]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Should I get the Popcorn started for the big WWF-style faceoff between the OWS & TeaParty Movements? Is that where this is headed?

Maybe I should join them with a sign that says:

Just Stop Believing

the Simulacra

[bart]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Some other thoughts:








From Anonymous:
















;-)

[snakela]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Thats a pretty accurate list, Bart. Esp. #34. I googled "puss in boots" for my kid and you wouldn't beleive what got returned!

[bart]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Thats a pretty accurate list, Bart. Esp. #34. I googled "puss in boots" for my kid and you wouldn't believe what got returned!

Yep - Anon's can be quite "special" (and "illustrative" *cough, cough* ;-), and are in my opinion quite similar in their 'radical' nature to the original '60s hippie types.

And for another cheap thrill - "From Dictatorship to Democracy" by Gene Sharp:
http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf

[oddlots]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

Couple of useful article IMO:

"By labelling the Occupy movement "anti-capitalist", those who do not want reforms have been able to avoid the real debate. This has to stop. It is time we use the Occupy movement as the catalyst for a serious debate on alternative institutional arrangements that will make British (or for that matter, any other) capitalism better for the majority of people."

- includes, to my mind, an excellent summary of the variants of "capitalism" that are somehow collapsed into a single phenomenon, making the debate of anti- / pro- contentless
- for my money, the way forward is exemplified by Steve Keen's approach which is to recognise and curb reckless private or public credit growth masquerading as wealth creation (or something like that)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...y-pigeonholing

I'm reading Graeber's Debt: the first 5000 years. It's very carefully argued and so a sloooooow read, but it's an impressive attempt to untangle the morality of debt underelying so much of what ails us at the moment. I thought the following commentary was worthwhile:

"Almost every time I'm interviewed by a mainstream journalist about OWS, I get some variation of the same lecture:

"How are you going to get anywhere if you refuse to create a leadership structure or make a practical list of demands? And what's with all this anarchist nonsense – the consensus, the sparkly fingers … ? You're never going to be able to reach regular, mainstream Americans with this sort of thing!"

It is hard to imagine worse advice. After all, since 2007, just about every previous attempt to kick off a nationwide movement against Wall Street took exactly the course such people would have recommended – and failed miserably. It is only when a small group of anarchists in New York decided to adopt the opposite approach – refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the existing political authorities by making demands of them; refusing to accept the legitimacy of the existing legal order by occupying a public space without asking for permission, refusing to elect leaders that could then be bribed or co-opted; declaring, however non-violently, that the entire system was corrupt and they rejected it; being willing to stand firm against the state's inevitable violent response – that hundreds of thousands of Americans from Portland to Tuscaloosa began rallying in support, and a majority declared their sympathies."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...gift-democracy

[Sutter Cane]

Further Paradigm Shifting?

Remember the news item that started this thread? Here's a follow-up (posted from Wonkette and not a "real" news source, for teh lulz and because they summarize the whole story in one run-on sentence):

Evil ‘Homeless Costume Party’ Eviction Firm Closing, For Being Evil


Whoops! It is apparently Not Okay as of “since Occupy Wall Street started” for the sadistic owner of a foreclosure mill to openly mock the struggling families it makes truckloads of money throwing out of their homes by forcing its employees to costume themselves as homeless people for Halloween, so Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac decided to “evict” the law firm of Steven J. Baum from its referral list, for not having the decency of every other government-supported jillion-dollar corrupt business to just have their laffs at the poor in private. Without all these referrals, the firm is being forced to close down.

From the Buffalo News:

This month, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage- finance companies operating under U.S. conservatorship, dropped Steven J. Baum PC from their lists of law firms eligible to handle foreclosures. Servicers including Bank of America Corp. and Ally Financial Inc. also stopped using the firm, which last month agreed to pay the U.S. $2 million and change its practices to resolve a probe of faulty foreclosure filings.

“Disrupting the livelihoods of so many dedicated and hardworking people is extremely painful, but the loss of so much business left us no choice but to file these notices,” Steven J. Baum, who owns the firm, said in the statement.

[oddlots]

Re: Further Paradigm Shifting?

We have to make do with homespun irony. Feels good.

[mesyn191]

Re: Occupy Movement: First Fruit - Paradigm Shift

and are in my opinion quite similar in their 'radical' nature to the original '60s hippie types.

They more closely resemble the Yippies and not the hippies if you want to use comparisons from that era to make it easier for others to understand them.