I'm glad it helps :)

While you replied, I was trying to edit my previous reply to basdini to add this:

I haven't set a foot at the camp for over a week now; I'm focusing my little free time on the internet workforce. I suggest (again) that you participate online if you don't have the time or will to get to the camp.

I mean, you're acting as if the movement/camp was some sort of social privilege that is owed to you, to which you could make demands, while actually it is a self-organizing new structure which needs people like you getting involved in order to advance. We are not trying to make demands because we know they will most likely not be heard. This is not a usual protest, this is a workgroup of a new kind, trying to be proactive by first defining values and engagements, then trying to come up with ideas to transform passive demands into active deeds.

I see good ideas here, but I fear that posting them on a rave forum won't change much in the system. When you criticize the movement you exclude yourself from it, but when you fear for it then you include yourself in it again.

The GAs are the only way to have most people agree on something and then do something. If you have another solution for discussing and executing your plan of actions, please tell me.

This is everybody's movement, as long as they take the time and effort to get involved in it. You yourself have the power to bring forth your ideas and defend them so that they may come into application.

I haven't set a foot at the camp for over a week now; I'm focusing my little free time on the internet workforce. I suggest (again) that you participate online if you don't have the time or will to get to the camp.

v.2-1: Dude, lay off the weed :)
My remarks were not addressed to you, rather to George and Bliss. So, indeed, "It's funny how voicing out an opinion makes people so damn susceptible".

It seems to me that you're having a very distant and shallow look at the movement and its causes. I guess it's because of the image given by the media: always very partial and missing the main points.

Nothing about the causes of the movement has been discussed by the media; the average people watching this on TV news just see "a bunch of unarticulated dirty hippies" or "a hive of utopists monopolizing the public space for no good reason".
The "occupants" staying there are not doing so illegally, and provide a momentum for the movement, a lasting visibility and encouragement for themselves and millions of others worldwide.

Why isn't this discussion on the internet? Because there's no global structure yet, and all similar discussions that have been occurring on the web for over 20 years were fragmented, all between very small groups of people, all with values and directions conflicting with others. The goal of this movement is to create such a global, distributed structure enabling such a discussion to go somewhere, for real. This means common values have to be defined and agreed upon, and then questions to be asked collectively, to which the discussion will try to provide answers.
Before applying a solution, we need to agree on this solution.
Before agreeing on a solution, we need to raise a problem.
Before raising a problem, we need to agree on common values.
Before collectively agreeing on something, we need to define a protocol.

The protocol has been defined in the first days: daily General Assemblies, with direct democracy by semi-consensus voted on propositions, using amendments when required, and committees working on different tasks (local organization, online structuration, politics/economy/society/ecology/etc., communication...).
The values are currently being defined, and first steps have already been approved.
Problems and solutions have already been discussed, but nothing will really be efficiently done before the previous steps are achieved.

This takes time, but it's the only way to democratically converge towards something almost everybody will accept and promote.
All of this requires as many people as possible, which is why the "occupation" has to stay alive as long as possible, reminding people that something new and huge is happening.

Getting your voice heard means that you take part in this democratic process. It's not about deciding to sleep at Square-Victoria or not; the movement is not just a gang of protesters sitting there and waiting to be given what they want. As mentioned in the New-York Times paper I posted above, there are no global visionaries for this messed-up system, and only patches are being applied, quickly and without considering the rest. The movement's purpose is precisely to replace this lack of global vision, by thinking collectively about what should and could be done to fix things so that most people are happy.

Awakening people means that instead of arguing with themselves in front of their TV, people should try and educate themselves about what's going on, and discuss with others about the problems and their possible solutions. Most people have no idea as to how the political and economical systems work in Quebec, in Canada, in the US, in Europe, worldwide, etc. If you think you understand enough all of these mechanisms, if you are able to pinpoint the problems accurately, then please teach me. Then we'll be able to talk about solutions.

If you know how to change it and are confident that most people will accept your ideas, then go for it, propose your plan at a General Assembly (Tuesday-Thursday 6pm, Saturday 1pm) or on the forum [ automnequebecois.com ]

If you're not happy about what you perceive of the movement through the media, just go see for yourself the reality.
If you're not happy about how the movement is turning, it's your fault for not having joined it and making your voice heard.

The occupation is just a reminder for the media that people are still organizing and trying to awaken others, gathering them for discussion.
Raising the right questions, discussing about possible answers: this is what it's all about.
Stop expecting a revolution right now, stop expecting "tangible results" within days or weeks, you'll just keep hurting yourselves.
This is much bigger, smarter and long-term.

Here's a great article about economy :

Gray Matter
Wanted: Worldly Philosophers
By ROGER E. BACKHOUSE and BRADLEY W. BATEMAN
Published: November 5, 2011
[ www.nytimes.com ]

It’s become commonplace to criticize the “Occupy” movement for failing to offer an alternative vision. But the thousands of activists in the streets of New York and London aren’t the only ones lacking perspective: economists, to whom we might expect to turn for such vision, have long since given up thinking in terms of economic systems — and we are all the worse for it.

This wasn’t always the case. Course lists from economics departments used to be filled with offerings in “comparative economic systems,” contrasting capitalism and socialism or comparing the French, Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon models of capitalism.

Such courses arose in the context of the cold war, when the battle with the Soviet Union was about showing that our system was better than theirs. But with the demise of the Soviet Union, that motivation disappeared. Globalization, so it is claimed, has created a single system of capitalism driven by international competition (ignoring the very real differences between, say, China and the United States). We now have an economics profession that hardly ever discusses its fundamental subject, “capitalism.”

Many economists say that what matters are questions like whether markets are competitive or monopolistic, or how monetary policy works. Using broad, ill-defined notions like capitalism invites ideological grandstanding and distracts from the hard technical problems.

There is a lot in that argument. Economists do much better when they tackle small, well-defined problems. As John Maynard Keynes put it, economists should become more like dentists: modest people who look at a small part of the body but remove a lot of pain.

However, there are also downsides to approaching economics as a dentist would: above all, the loss of any vision about what the economic system should look like. Even Keynes himself was driven by a powerful vision of capitalism. He believed it was the only system that could create prosperity, but it was also inherently unstable and so in need of constant reform. This vision caught the imagination of a generation that had experienced the Great Depression and World War II and helped drive policy for nearly half a century. He was, as the economist Robert Heilbroner claimed, a “worldly philosopher,” alongside such economic visionaries as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx.

In the 20th century, the main challenge to Keynes’s vision came from economists like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, who envisioned an ideal economy involving isolated individuals bargaining with one another in free markets. Government, they contended, usually messes things up. Overtaking a Keynesianism that many found inadequate to the task of tackling the stagflation of the 1970s, this vision fueled neoliberal and free-market conservative agendas of governments around the world.

THAT vision has in turn been undermined by the current crisis. It took extensive government action to prevent another Great Depression, while the enormous rewards received by bankers at the heart of the meltdown have led many to ask whether unfettered capitalism produced an equitable distribution of wealth. We clearly need a new, alternative vision of capitalism. But thanks to decades of academic training in the “dentistry” approach to economics, today’s Keynes or Friedman is nowhere to be found.

Another downside to the “dentistry” approach to economics is that important pieces of human experience can easily fall from sight. The government does not cut an abstract entity called “government spending” but numerous spending programs, from veterans’ benefits and homeland security to Medicare and Medicaid. To refuse to discuss ideas such as types of capitalism deprives us of language with which to think about these problems. It makes it easier to stop thinking about what the economic system is for and in whose interests it is working.

Perhaps the protesters occupying Wall Street are not so misguided after all. The questions they raise — how do we deal with the local costs of global downturns? Is it fair that those who suffer the most from such downturns have their safety net cut, while those who generate the volatility are bailed out by the government? — are the same ones that a big-picture economic vision should address. If economists want to help create a better world, they first have to ask, and try to answer, the hard questions that can shape a new vision of capitalism’s potential.

Roger E. Backhouse, a professor of economic history at the University of Birmingham, and Bradley W. Bateman, a professor of economics at Denison University, are the authors of “Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes.”

Trace the roots of Ataraxie back to early Bethlehem :)




I heard of Portal but never listened until now... pretty good :)
Makes me think of old Shora:



With riffing similar to The Amenta:



ALSO, FOR ALL OF YOU SWANS LOVERS: [ churchofzer.blogspot.com ]

I must counter-attack with some ATARAXIE:





Next time, Bethlehem :)

weeeeee

Rock in burqa: [ www.dailymotion.com ]

What's the point of working your ass off to get more money?
This is typically the kind of behavior encouraged by the current economical system... no human values left, only "performance", "benefit", "money", "success"... all revolving about something lurking at the core of every human being: greed.
Personally, this is the main reason I'm currently struggling to change the system: it has lots of advantages, but its major flaw is that it encourages and boosts greed in crazy proportions, instead of controlling it.
I just quit my job for another similar one with 20k$ less per year and no health insurance, the only changing thing being the working environment which will be more human. Goodbye company world, welcome back to academia.

Having enough time to live fully besides your job is very important.
Feeling good at your job and about what you do is maybe what matters most; you spend a third of your life there, another third being asleep, with only one third to split between "what you have to do" (eating, moving in bus/metro/car/bike or walking, family obligations, cleaning, etc.) and "what you are doing of your spare time" (having fun? expressing yourself? loving your family and friends? volunteering? studying? relaxing? etc.).

I realized years ago that the happiest moments of my life were when I had the least money, and yet I naturally go for jobs that pay more. Of course, there's a "future" to think about, which is why a balance has to be found between "having no money" and "working your ass off", depending on how much money you think you actually "need" to live now and in the future.

[ xepisodes.com ] :)

I want a pony!

2012

[ inhabitat.com ]

I heard they took the generators in NYC... the reason was "fire hazard". The city tried to push firemen against us in MTL but they've been helping us instead :)

ça vient de reddit/imgur si tu veux la version HD :)

NO JESUS ALLOWED

J'ai peut-être raté des événements mais je trouve que Neuromyth est loin d'être le plus tannant sur ce forum... c'est tellement évident qu'il trolle pour le fun, j'ai jamais trouvé ça bien méchant...?
C'est quoi l'histoire, Gen ?


hahahh jvais tellement me faire une pancarte avec ça et me promener avec au centre-ville :)

Worth watching until the end :)

Basdini, I'm not sure I get your point about how to reform the current voting process of Occupy Montreal: you would want a kind of election of representatives who would reach official and legal authority within the "outside world of politics"? If that's the case, it would be trying to kill fire with fire, by using a political process somehow identical to the so-called democracy in Canada and most other countries. Moreover, how do you suggest these "chosen ones" would reach this position of authority?

To clear things up, we're not using 100% consensus, but rather a minimum two-thirds to discuss a proposition, and a little more than that for it to pass if no "strong blocks" appear; somebody raising a "strong block" means they totally oppose and would leave the movement otherwise, so this leads to a deeper discussion and possibly an amendment, then a last vote is issued for checking whether most people would still pass the proposition despite the people strongly opposing or not. Many propositions have passed without a block so far, and many other have been sent to be reworked (possibly in a committee) because of too much hesitation. The only blocks I've seen so far just lead to refusal of the proposition because too many people were blocking.

Having a majority vote (i.e. half+1) "respecting the minorities' rights" is close to impossible to apply, to me, because there would always be forgotten people, and most of the time, no one can represent your rights as much as yourself.

Glass-Steagall may be nice, but since it has been over-advertised by LaRouche's people, who have harrassed and offended many people on site trying to steal the mediatic image of the Occupy movement, we're taking precautions with this. Rather, we're trying to come up with our own regulations about speculation; the difficulty being that some want a 1% tax, others want the Robin Hood (à la Tobin) tax of 0.05% (this Saturday's march will support this, which is supposed to be discussed at G20 in Cannes), while others want to forbid speculation on goods like food, clothes, etc. or even to forbid any kind of speculation.

Forbidding the bailouts has already been mentioned too. You should join the Economics and Demands committees to discuss all this. You may also directly bring it to a general assembly, but be prepared to have to rework your demand because most people would not understand or agree on some details.

C'est pas mal ça Gen, on plante des graines pi on attend :D

The gathering in itself is already an accomplishment.
Its self-organization, the way it preserves its values, freedom of speech, power to each individual, are unique wonders in History.
A new (temporary?) society is born and in 10 days (or 5 weeks in NYC) it is still building itself, growing stronger everyday.

Many people have been awakened, from the industry worker spending all of its time in front of its TV to the trader/banker, even reminding jaded former activists that there were still things to fight for and hope that the struggle has the power to change things eventually.
Disinformation and misinformation are being seen through more and more, by educating ourselves.

Many government officiers, from the municipality to the police, have begun supporting the movement.
Many people have discovered (or remembered) that peace, love, unity and respect are real values that anybody can share once they set their mind to it; and I'm not talking about carebear rainbows and raving unicorns here, of course it's easy to exaggerate and make fun of this, but even the deepest cynical jaded nihilist is still able to feel that these values have an amazing power.

Whether the movement ends up collapsing or not, directly changing the system or not, it will still remain in History as a massive international uproar, enabling a few cities (such as Montreal) to experiment a new genuinely democratic laboratory.


Having hundreds or thousands to fully agree on how to change the system is close to impossible; thus, it takes time to think smartly, together, about what to change in small steps, and how to apply these steps.
Proposals start converging.
If breaking something is easy, repairing or rebuilding it is often much more difficult.

What else do you suggest?

The facilitators are anybody willing to be; you can be the facilitator tonight if you want to, and we can decide to replace him/her whenever we feel like it.
So far, in 10 days, they have (almost) never been the same people.

I think this "almost-consensus" vote by direct participative democracy is the only legitimate and viable system.
Majority excludes too many people (up to half of them, minus one), anarchy just yields chaos (a single ill-intentioned person suffices to wreck everything), and most other forms of so-called "democracy" are either dictatorship or oligarchy/aristocracy.

qu'est-ce qu'il t'a fait ?

[ www.occupypolice.org ] :)

"The 99% know all about inequality":
[ www.thestar.com ]