Reheated (21)
For newcomers, three more items from the archives.
Made-up facts will do just as well.
A 19-year-old freshman ransacked her own room and scrawled racial slurs across its walls before curling into a foetal ball, supposedly in shock. When this “hate crime” was revealed as a hoax, Otis Smith, a regional president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, was remarkably untroubled. That the events had been staged and then lied about was, he said, “largely irrelevant.” He added, “It doesn’t matter to me whether she did it or not because of all the pressure these black students are under at these predominantly white schools. If this will highlight it, if it will bring it to the attention of the public, I have no problem with that.”
I’m Not Condoning Violence, But…
When “being heard” means being obeyed. A lesson in leftist euphemism.
Ms Allen tells us, “I was truly overwhelmed by the vast police presence… Feeling threatened in my own community is upsetting but the truth is people feel completely disempowered, and for some resorting to last night’s actions seems the only way people will listen.” Strangely, Ms Allen shows little concern for other local residents who had no choice but to listen and who may have been “upset” by the fruits of her campaign. Unless of course they found comfort in the smell of burning, the sound of windows being smashed and the territorial chant of “Whose street? Our street!” These things, presumably, are an acceptable cost – provided Ms Allen and her colleagues get what they want.
Liquidised carrots, moths and bras, and a fat, naked narcissist jumps around in talc.
Here’s Austrian artist and choreographer Doris Uhlich, whose “vigorous and critical” hour-long performance More Than Enough “takes ironic revenge on the standardisation of the body.” It’s a “bodily and textual discussion of flesh and opulence,” in which Uhlich “asks herself and her audience how the body can become a trademark and what this means.” This radical feat is achieved by reciting Baudelaire, throwing talcum powder around and making several phone calls: “I’m calling you because I’m fat…”
And by all means gorge yourselves on the updated greatest hits.
Liquidised carrots, moths and bras, and a fat, naked narcissist jumps around in talc.
I repeat: Worst. Nudity. Ever.
Thank you, European Commission. Please take more of our money.
“Thank you, European Commission. Please take more of our money.”
I think David Gillies summed it up rather well by describing the performers and their enablers as tapeworms.
Hello David. Any chance of a response to this?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/24/advertising-poison-hooked?CMP=twt_gu
Paul,
Thanks, I saw. But Mr Monbiot’s comical agonies about advertising have been noted before. His argument, such as it is, is basically the same this time round. What’s disturbing is the number of Guardian readers who apparently share his authoritarian urges.
Yes, your ‘Avert Your Eyes’ piece is one of my favourites (which I frequently share when this type of thing comes up). I’m just greedy for more…
Paul,
“I’m just greedy for more…”
Usually I’d be happy to oblige. But when you pick at the Guardianistas’ veneer of altruism and righteousness, you very often find some rather unpleasant assumptions and motives. The psychology can be quite obnoxious, even revolting. And some days you just don’t want crap on your hands. As it were.
The latest news from the St Pauls ‘happening’ is on the daily Telegraph’s website.
90% of the tents (it is revealed by thermal imaging) are empty at night. When the Telegraph attempted to confirm this, on the ground, those freedom loving radicals told them to, “Turn your camera off”, and demanded the journalists, “Show us your ID card”.
Whose streets? Our streets! And be quick with your papers too, citizen.
@ Stuck-Record
More on this here:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8847357/Telegraph-evicted-from-St-Pauls-Occupy-London-camp-as-the-mood-turns.html
And I loved this bit:-
‘One female protester said “these are our homes”, to which a male fellow activist pointed out that they were not. Another demonstrator threatened to call over police, alleging harassment’.
Yeah, smash the system man! And while we’re at it, let’s get the pigs to clear this journo out of here.
Yeah, smash the system man!
Bristol occupiers demand free toilets, running water and postal deliveries…
http://www.blottr.com/bristol/breaking-news/occupy-bristol-asks-council-facilities
“Bristol occupiers demand free toilets, running water and postal deliveries…”
I suspect the irony may have escaped our fearless revolutionary vanguard.
“Bristol occupiers demand free toilets, running water and postal deliveries…”
Those anarchists will be demanding a govt and an army and a police force to defend them soon.
Tyranny is often built upon a foundation of lies. There’s a reason why tyrants control the media and punish those who speak candidly – they want to manage people’s very perception of reality.
Which makes truth the greatest weapon of the oppressed.
Why then do those who purport to fight for the oppressed often subscribe to relativism and postmodernism, neutralizing their most valuable tool? Why do they discredit the very thing that is truly liberating?
This update from Zuccotti Park in Manhattan, is truly joyous:
Friends, mediation with the drummers has been called off. It has gone on for more than 2 weeks and it has reached a dead end. The drummers formed a working group called Pulse and agreed to 2 hrs/day at times during the mediation, and more recently that changed to 4 hrs/day. It’s my feeling that we may have a fighting chance with the community board if we could indeed limit drumming and loud instrumentation to 12-2 PM and 4-6 PM, however that isn’t what’s happening.
Last night the drumming was near continuous until 10:30 PM at night. Today it began again at 11 AM. The drummers are fighting among themselves, there is no cohesive group. There is one assemblage called Pulse that organized most of the drummers into a group and went to GA for formal recognition and with a proposal.
Unfortunately there is one individual who is NOT a drummer but who claims to speak for the drummers who has been a deeply disruptive force, attacking the drumming rep during the GA and derailing his proposal, and disrupting the community board meeting, as well as the OWS community relations meeting. She has also created strife and divisions within the POC caucus, calling many members who are not ‘on her side’ “Uncle Tom”, “the 1%”, “Barbie” “not Palestinian enough” “Wall Street politicians” “not black enough” “sell-outs”, etc. People have been documenting her disruptions, and her campaign of misinformation, and instigations. She also has a documented history online of defamatory, divisive and disruptive behavior within the LGBT (esp. transgender) communities. Her disruptions have made it hard to have constructive conversations and productive resolutions to conflicts in a variety of forums in the past several days.
At this point we have lost the support of allies in the Community Board and the state senator and city electeds who have been fighting the city to stave off our eviction, get us toilets, etc… [continues]
I am glad to say, though, that a compromise has now been worked out to limit drumming to two carefully delineated time periods during the day:
We’re in serious need of bodies here. The drumming will happen daily from 12-2 and 4-6pm, that’s OK. But that means that we need folks in these shifts:
2-4 PM: people here to make sure drumming doesn’t start
5:45–8 PM: ppl here to make sure drumming stops at 6 PM sharp and doesn’t start again
8–10 PM: ppl here to make sure drumming doesn’t start
This is an all-call. Really really need help, tonight.
If you’re reading this in New York; go and do your bit to bring down the corporate fat-cats by enforcing the mid-day drumming curfew!
Mr Eugenides,
This may amuse. Zombie visited the recently dismantled Occupy Oakland, where radical souls had been rehearsing their utopia.
“This is not a toilet.”
“This is not a toilet.”
Yes it is.
In so many ways.
The owners of Zuccotti Park should present a large bill to one Barack H. Obama for the damage his irresponsible rhetoric has caused their property.
(Actually, I understand he’s already taken care of them with some “green energy” grants to the parent company. Nothing corrupt here, move along.)
This is not a toilet.
A few hundred fuckwit ‘occupiers’ came back and picked a fight with the police.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2011/10/25/rioting-in-downtown-oakland-as-occupiers-clash-with-police/
Score so far: Police 1, fuckwits 0.
“If you’re going to come here and get our food, bedding and clothing, have books and medical supplies for no charge, they need to give back,” Digioia said. “There’s a lot of takers here and they feel entitled.”
http://patdollard.com/2011/10/ows-ironically-whines-about-homeless-not-pulling-their-weight-with-video/
Reflecting on Doris Uhlich, I get the feeling she’d be right at home on Vic Reeve’s Novelty Island
http://youtu.be/tW0uW9ZxzsY
She may even be the inspiration for Action! Image! Exchange!
http://youtu.be/pFIDvc01VK8
In spite of the strong entitlement and redistributionist tendencies of the Occupy movement, its supporters are strangely hostile to the concept of sharing their own stuff. Here’s even more grousing by members of the Zuccotti park squatters because some of their food and blankets is going to the homeless:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/grubby_lowlifes_wvw3jSZRkqIIqJcio5xJaI
It also turns out that the dwellers of leftist academia’s ivory towers make for ridiculously easy marks for criminals.
Protesters disrupt Vancouver mayoral debate
http://www.metronews.ca/vancouver/local/article/1006889–protesters-disrupt-vancouver-mayoral-debate
Occupy Vancouver protesters took the spotlight yesterday during the first major mayoral debate between Mayor Gregor Robertson and Coun. Suzanne Anton.
Some shouted down the candidates when the debate, which is run by the Board of Trade, focused on the Stanley Cup riot, street homelessness and Occupy Vancouver.
“How can you call yourself a government if you can’t even clothe and feed the people?” a woman interrupted
Did you get that? It is the job of the “government” to feed and clothe people. We’ll all look great in Mao jackets, eating boiled cabbage and drinking Victory gin.
dr cromarty
It’ll be even worse than 1984 with these authoritarian “for your own good” leeches.
There won’t be the victory gin or the smokes…
I vote the ‘Occupy (Insert Area Here)’ protests the best comedy event of 2011! What will those wacky kids come up with for next year?
In other news, Laurie Penny gets trounced by Joan Smith:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/laurie-penny-and-joan-smith-debating-the-anticapitalism-protests-2377755.html
“Now, what is this General Assembly? From where does it derive its democratic legitimacy? Who voted for it? What about all the people who don’t agree with its decisions? Are 30-something million adults supposed to turn up in St Paul’s churchyard to make their voices heard? You say people involved in the Occupy movement have been involved in politics and trade unions and got fed up with them. Well, I have a problem with that, because what system is better than representative democracy?”
Morning, Ms M.
Laurie tells us what we’ve seen over the last few weeks (and laughed at quite a lot) are the “teething problems” of a “movement that is trying to do something so profoundly new and exciting with politics.” And yet it’s all so predictable and oblivious. For all the witless utopian bluster, the protests either fizzle out due to lack of interest and general tedium, invariably leaving someone else to foot the bill and clear up the mess – the symbolism of which is hard to miss. That, or they culminate in vandalism, violence and riots. Neither conclusion invites sympathy or hopes of a better, fluffier world.
Apparently, the failure to generate a coherent, practical set of demands is entirely due to “attacks from a hostile press while surviving sub-zero temperatures in central London.” Yes, some people have been laughing at Laurie and her incredibly radical peers, which is beastly and mean. Plus it’s been a bit nippy. So, clearly, it’s nothing to do with the kind of people taking part, how they behave or what they actually say. Note too how any public scepticism is blamed on people not being “prepared to listen” to the protestors. Which is odd, given how many hours of blather and incoherent ranting have been fuelling our scepticism and laughter.
But really, must we be so unkind to poor Laurie? Must we mock her every tiny bewilderment and exercise in fantasy? It can’t be fun being doomed to be a tragicomic figure.