h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yes I said Occupy is sweeping through English consciousness like a whirlwind at present.

I'm sure you know far more than me about my culture HN. I love that imperilist way some radical types have...

You are welcome to visit me in Peckham anytime. I'll introduce you to some mates...who have been working for years in this area.

HN you can give them some advice on how to be more effective in their strategies in London.

Make sure you prep up on your irony skills before jetting into this area.

Just saying like...

(Are you a fan of French and Saunders BTW? If you are you'll love my Lord of the Rings thing on my PS).

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

- Ghandi

It's very hard to protect even a stubborn mind from an idea whose time has come.

Effers, I don't get thos whole 'real' thing you're always throwing about? The Occupy movement is 'real', the people within it are 'real'. If nothing else basic physics bears this out.

But you're content to just make assumptions based on biased media reports and not ever bothering to read the links we keep giving you, so obviously you're well placed to tell us what is and isn't 'real' about Occupy.

One of the things I find interesting about people outside of Occupy who criticise it ignorantly (there are credible criticisms of Occupy but I haven't seen too many of them here), is that they almost always fail to understand what it actually is and end up criticising it for not being their own ideal of protest. Almost as if because Occupy doesn't fit their own preconceptions about protest and change, that prevents them from seeing what Occupy is actually doing and achieving.

I thought the article on Brighton was interesting: that people have occupied the place for so long and it's taken that amount of time for the courts to issue a decision. That they're negotiating how they leave. I'm guessing that rather than them 'failing' and 'going home' they're now moving onto other actions, like other Occupiers that have left sites.

*

The thing I find annoying about Effers' posts here is they're like a stuck record. Nothing much changes and it's just boring. The gratuitous generalisations (claiming to know what everyone thinks and feels) make it even worse.

I don't feel like I can participate in this discussion because anything I post will be met with derision from Effers, which would fine if it was based on a thought about and informed opinion

It clearly isn't and it is often a personal side swipe

Last night I just thought here we go again, this has a potential to turn in another Dale Farm 'incident' and I don't want the thread to go that way.

So have pulled out of posting and am just reading with interest what HN, Maria, Shagbark and others are posting

and

Sorry for my nuggety stuck record thing here. It's probably a Peckham thing.

People in my community are suffering in reality as a stuck record..

They aren't very h2g2 really and 'internationalist'....

I find it hard to make sense of what I read here when I see the *reality* around me..

I thought people here would 'read' that. anhaga does. That's why he won't come back here.

The world is a *mosaic*.

If people on this thread would share more about their travels around the world to encounter otherness...we could maybe have more language in common.

I don't expect Australian Aboriginals or Bonni in French Guina to gain from Occupy. I find it a ridiculous arrogant imperialist thing. But at least its totally ridiculous here...in that that is has become so bound up with churchy CofE Christianity.

My friends in real life find it hilarious as a concept as it is utterly *impotent* in reality.

I'm open to being persuaded though if you can give me some hard evidence of its point

Nobody here has given any evidence as to how in *reality* it is helping people's lives.

I sometimes think on h2g2 the idea that people actually struggle to get though the day, can't afford a decent meal, don't know how to cope with their kids, don't know how to get off the bottle...is some sort of thing to only read about in books.

If this site is ever going to broaden itself to all kinds of people around the world...it will have to start being more open minded to 'otherness'.

I feel alienated here most of the time.

Nobody here has given any evidence as to how in *reality* it is helping people's lives.

I sometimes think on h2g2 the idea that people actually struggle to get though the day, can't afford a decent meal, don't know how to cope with their kids, don't know how to get off the bottle...is some sort of thing to only read about in books.

If this site is ever going to broaden itself to all kinds of people around the world...it will have to start being more open minded to 'otherness'.

I feel alienated here most of the time.

**You guys here know we are defo on the same side but *difference* should be accepted and respected. Its not just tribes in rain forest and ancient matriarchal tribes....it's here and now in the area I live in. It gets ignored on h2g2 for some reason. I don't understand that. At least I have contact with some here like anhaga who totally gets that.

When the people of Peckham struggling to get through the day, are they helping Australian Aboriginals or Bonni in French Guinea?

No?

Arrogant imperialists, the lot of them.

Or does looking to put your own house in order only count as sneering imperialism when it's linked to a movement you don't like?

This convo is going nowhere. I had thought it might be possible on this site to *really* front up about stuff.

If you want to bring that usual brand into the thread 603 I'll clear off just like anhaga advised me to.

This site is just for narrow little group of people. If you feel alienated and try to change anything a 603 will descend and it all goes back to h2g2 normal.

Unsub

Finally, I am able to post.

Criticising Effers because she doesn't share your point of view (or for her posting style) does nothing to advance your argument. If you had any evidence whatsoever of real progress being made by Occupy, you would post it.

One branch of the second largest US bank closing its doors to street customers is real progress, is it?

Unemployment in Spain, especially for the young, has increased since the advent of Occupy/Los Indignados, and I've heard reports that a further half million people may well lose their jobs in 2012.

Occupy has shown a great deal of spirit, and they've managed to entertain themselves and others, but they have done nothing (and perhaps are powerless to do anything) to rectify the situation.

I agree RE - Occupy's fairly impotent when it comes to affecting real change. But it's hardly sneering imperialism.

It's just useless trying to change the world with an apolitical movement.

As I recall, the US civil rights movement 50 years ago was apolitical
and when it started getting results the leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. were targeted for assassination.

The US Civil Rights movement took *years*. The world-wide human rights movement that is Occupy is about 4 months old. I think it is a bit too soon to write it off.

>>As I recall, the US civil rights movement 50 years ago was apolitical
and when it started getting results the leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. were targeted for assassination.

Not entirely. J Edgar Hoover maintained that King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference was a Commie front. To a large degree he was right. The CP-USA was instrumental in its foundation. They already had a long track record in practical organisation, such as desegregating neighbourhoods in Oakland.

It hardly needs saying that the violence against the civil rights movement did not start with Dr King's murder. When Angela Davis of The Black Panther Party was asked if she supported violence, she replied:

'How can you even ask that with the long history of violence against black people?'

End with a movie...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNRgiyIG0dI&feature=related

And then there's my personal civil rights hero and Dr King's close advisor:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard_Rustin

What HN said. Assuming that Occupy is useless because it hasn't yet acheived anything is just ridiculous... this isn't about revolution or anarchy or toppling capitalism it's about trying to wake people up so they will start to ACT and make the world a fairer place.

So yeah, Randomly Selected Minority Group might not benefit from it this year, or even next but if it succeeds they will benefit in the long run. 'Reality' isn't the short-sighted, blinkered view of one's immediate world.

As for struggling being something that we only read in books: I find that statement disgustingly arrogant. I am unemployed for the nth time in my life. Once again we face the reality of my being unemployed in a very poor job market in the town that has the highest rate of unemployment in the South West. The first month or so is usually okay, but the last two times I was unemployed for three months and by the end of it I could barely motivate myself to get out of bed in the morning and we were pretty much living hand to mouth. So don't you DARE tell me I don't know what it's like to struggle. THAT is reality. And you sure as hell won't find it at the bottom of a vodka bottle.

957

I know Comrade Dreadful is good at I was wondering, fancy a winter warm up?

http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/2012/01/nationwide-fuel-poverty-action-winter-warm-up-friday-january-27th-monday-january-30th/

Frs.
>>I'm open to being persuaded though if you can give me some hard evidence of its point

A tricky one. When Zhou En-Lai was asked what he thought were the main consequences of the French Revolution, he famously replied, 'It's to soon to tell.'

Can you tell us what sort of thing would count as hard evidence for or against? Although I'm not sure, personally, that it works like that.

Comparing those two movements is an insult to generations of black people.