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PK loving SUBBAN posted:I'm reading a pretty good book about this right now, People Get Ready by John Nichols. It argues that the automation is coming and that elites are going to run roughshod over the rest of unless we get organized. Does this book offer any suggestions about how to effectively combat this trend or is it just 300 pages of 'we're all hosed and here's why'. I need some good news about where our country and planet is headed, it's getting to the point where I can't even laugh at how hosed it all seems anymore.
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 20:51 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 13:43 |
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lol helsing are there really trots trying to do Trot Entryism in the ndp e: and yeah, occupy was a big meandering mess, but it still strikes me as really important b/c i would have never figured in a million years that a leftist and nominally 'radical' movement would kind of spontaneously form- and persist!- outside of establishment politics. it's valuable as an example and as a case study for future movements- why it happened, what didnt work, what worked, and why it fizzled out Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Apr 6, 2016 |
# ? Apr 6, 2016 20:52 |
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Ambrose Burnside posted:lol helsing are there really trots trying to do Trot Entryism in the ndp At least two separate groups! The Socialist Caucus, and Fightback.
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 20:59 |
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Kafka Esq. posted:I think that the First Nations organizers got a great deal of momentum out of it. As for the original thesis of getting money out of politics, well, the current focus on campaign fundraising is probably due to a greater awareness from Occupy as a whole. I think most of the people there were glad of the synthesis from a protracted confrontation with various other left groups. Like I said, most of what I see now as remnant are the youth and homeless groups, and First Nations advocacy. They are a lot stronger and louder. Two other U of T students ended up working in the Citizen Lab at Munk doing anti-censorship work. I guess I can understand its benefit as a sort of social advocacy incubator, bringing people together to form new more focused advocacy groups. As an interested observer with no connection to any kind of social change movement, it seemed spectacularly ineffective at doing anything but presenting protestors, and the protest movement itself, as anything but wingnuts disconnected from reality. From the laughable organizational structure, to people protesting American laws in a Canada, the lack of coherent narrative, and the smattering of actual tinfoil hats hijacking the discourse, it didn't present well.
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 21:23 |
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infernal machines posted:I guess I can understand its benefit as a sort of social advocacy incubator, bringing people together to form new more focused advocacy groups. Yes, the reaction to a poster of a ballerina on a bull was not focus grouped or designed to meet anyone's approval in particular. Also, that one city's activist vacation didn't change the nation. Thank you for making this insight again. It was an event, not a movement. As an event, I consider it very successful.
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 22:36 |
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I'm sorry for upsetting you. I was just stating my personal reaction.
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 22:39 |
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I wish someone at the NDP vetted their leadership so that they wouldn't take on a Thatcherite.
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 22:41 |
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PK loving SUBBAN posted:I'm reading a pretty good book about this right now, People Get Ready by John Nichols. It argues that the automation is coming and that elites are going to run roughshod over the rest of unless we get organized. This looks really interesting and I'll probably check it out... on kindle... off of Amazon... ... God drat it. EvilJoven posted:Does this book offer any suggestions about how to effectively combat this trend or is it just 300 pages of 'we're all hosed and here's why'. Honestly I am feeling slightly more upbeat about future prospects than I was in a couple years. $15 minimum wage has become a mainstream idea in only a couple years, the rhetoric of OWS has penetrated so deeply that even conservatives now use the 1% terminology, the members of nominally progressive left wing parties are becoming more restive and militant. Voters accross Canada have pretty firmly rejected government austerity, even if they aren't entirely clear on what htey want instead. The situation is really bad but compared to where we were even five years ago I do see some progress. In many cases I'm starting to find that my criticism of political ideas is "that doesn't go far enough" or "that doesn't address the real problem" whereas only a couple years ago it felt like quite often the only refrain was "good god that will make things much worse". The fact is that the 2008 crash revealed just how ideologically bankrupt and organizationally fractured the remnant of the left had become. To a large degree people have been forced to start over from scratch, trying to puff the tiniest embers of radicalism into an actual roaring blaze again. If you look back at the history of how issues like government provided affordable housing, healthcare, social insurance and the like were implemented, it took decades of movement building, political battles, protests, riots, strikes, etc., and even then it also required the right alignment of circumstances. It might not be decades until some of the current organizing and agitation truly bears fruit, but at least people are mobilizing. There's an old Gramsci phrase that I think is appropriate here, advocating "optimism of the will and pessimism of the intellect", i.e. you need to strike that balance between openly recognizing how bad the situation is (and it's bad, we may not be able toa fford to wait decades when environmental collapse and the danger of a drift into authoritarianism are barking at the door), but you also need to have some reserve of inner confidence that change is achievable, otherwise you're going to drive yourself crazy. If being a left winger just leaves you constantly miserable you won't be of much use and you'll end up feeling like poo poo all the time for no good reason. infernal machines posted:I guess I can understand its benefit as a sort of social advocacy incubator, bringing people together to form new more focused advocacy groups. I think this is a mistake people slip into quite often where they think that the purpose of any public political action of demonstration is to win the hearts and minds of as many random citizens as possible. It ends up conflating public relations with movement building, which is quite dangerous. Occupy Toronto was a bit of a clusterfuck and in the short term it probably even alienated some people (in particular I would say it revealed how the atmosphere of 'consensus' was really enabling to inappropriate creeps. Some degree of hierarchy is necessary if you want to have a serious and accountable system for dealing with things like sexual harassment, never mind how you run meetings or manage a budget). However, it provided a space for developing relationships and organizational ties that have since paid off for some people or groups. I think its dangerous to slip into this trap of thinking that all that matters is how respectable or how dignified you appear in public. Sometimes you've just got to endure the inevitable public ridicule of doing something as inherently silly as trying to improve our awful world. You're going to rub shoulders with crack pots and a bunch of strangers are inevitably going to write you off. That's really unavoidable if you're trying to create some kind of lasting movement. So I'd say in retrospect that OWS and its offshoots like Occupy Toronto did bear some fruit. The whole thing was silly and premature and didn't lead anywhere on its own but it helped demonstrate that raw public appetite for radical politics and for those who were already organized enough to capitalize on it it seems like Occupy Toronto was a really great work to accelerate the growth and development of individual groups, projects, movements, etc. I think it also helped shift the overall public discourse to the left, something I was a bit dismissive of at the time but which in retrospect I think turned out to be pretty valuable.
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 23:09 |
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Helsing posted:I think that western separatists or hardcore anti-immigrant white nationalists are to the Conservatives what Trotskyists are for the NDP: a small but passionate minority who the establishment really doesn't want anywhere near the media. Back when Manning was getting the Reform party started some of his first big battles were over preventing any talk of explicit racism or western seperatism from defining the movement and its goals. Also if you read books like '"Rescuing Canada's Right" (which sort of lays out a blue print for setting up places like the Manning Centre and otherwise mobilizing a conservative movement that could win power and trnasform the country) then one of the things you'll notice is conservative intellectuals chastising conservatives and telling them to stop openly admitting that they hate Canada -- and I'm not being euphemistic, that book literally has passages where the authors had to tell their audience that it'd be hard to win a national election if they couldn't cut that poo poo out. John Ibbitson's biography of Stephen Harper touches on a lot of this (because he places Harper at the centre of the policy development of the Reform Party), and is worth checking out if you're interested reading more about it.
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 23:17 |
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Helsing posted:I think this is a mistake people slip into quite often where they think that the purpose of any public political action of demonstration is to win the hearts and minds of as many random citizens as possible. It ends up conflating public relations with movement building, which is quite dangerous. Thanks, as I said, initially I couldn't really see how it had helped because I was unaware of the relationships that had been forged during the protest and the depth of interest in social change it had gauged, but I can understand its value better now.
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 23:35 |
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https://twitter.com/CFRAOttawa/status/717817969666080768 Behold, the taxi industry's death
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 23:35 |
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apatheticman posted:https://twitter.com/CFRAOttawa/status/717817969666080768 https://twitter.com/BlueLineTaxiOtt/status/717840123317108738 Behold, journalism's death (I mean, who knows, we'll see tomorrow)
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 23:49 |
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The taxis are angry at buses now?
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 23:50 |
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infernal machines posted:I'm sorry for upsetting you. I was just stating my personal reaction. That's fair, your reaction was pretty typical of people who were on the sidelines for the whole thing.
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 23:59 |
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Majuju posted:https://twitter.com/BlueLineTaxiOtt/status/717840123317108738 I'll never trust twitter again
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 00:55 |
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I wouldn't be surprised if cabbies did it independent of management's knowledge. Ottawa cabbies are the worst.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 01:26 |
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I've always sort of liked my MLA, but gently caress this http://www.andrewweavermla.ca/2016/04/04/labellinggmos/ NDP getting on the MANDITORY GMO LABELS bandwagon. The link goes to a long "fair and balanced" report on the pros and cons but of course anyone can write something that makes any issue sound like some "maybe the truth is in the middle" bullshit. "Well on one side we have science, but that science is funded by CORPORATIONS. What about our right to know what we're eating?!" gently caress you NDP.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 03:18 |
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That guy's a Green.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 03:20 |
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Pinterest Mom posted:That guy's a Green. Oak Bay Gordon head, jesus I can't keep my MLA's straight. I even read the whole page and never clued in "this is the oak bay green MLA, not yours". Embarrassing! (I'm really really bad with names!) This is 100% par for the course for the greens, nothing surprising there. Wouldn't surprise me though if the NDP got in on this though after enough focus groups showed it was popular with their voters. \/ Well this is embarrassing for both of us then Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Apr 7, 2016 |
# ? Apr 7, 2016 03:30 |
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He's my MLA
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 03:33 |
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Bod http://www.insidehalton.com/news-story/6443334-milton-s-former-federal-liberal-candidate-files-17-5m-libel-lawsuit/ The local fb group moderator is being sued for probably spreading rumours about a lpc candidate that beat out the other more popular candidate locally who is also admin of said fb group.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 03:52 |
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Everyone who supports mandatory GMO labelling should be relentlessly and publicly ridiculed. Also possibly beaten with a large stick, if necessary. Edit: This post contains substances known by the State of California to cause cancer
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 04:36 |
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brucio posted:I wouldn't be surprised if cabbies did it independent of management's knowledge. Ottawa cabbies are the worst. My guess is it got found out ahead of the plans and now they're in damage control mode. Deny, deny, deny.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 05:01 |
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Pinterest Mom posted:He's my MLA Are you one of the lucky few who has a Green MLA and a Green MP?
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 05:04 |
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Leofish posted:My guess is it got found out ahead of the plans and now they're in damage control mode. Deny, deny, deny. My guess is gently caress the taxi industry in Canada and everyone involved in it in their syphylitic rear end in a top hat. Now they've pissed me off to the point I just want them to wither and die out of pure spite.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 05:16 |
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http://www.660news.com/2016/04/06/ex-ahs-ceo-claims-ndp-interference-in-resignation-letter-aupe-and-nenshi-respond/ Something is rotten in the kingdom of the AHS. I'm inclined to disbelieve everyone involved, so I don't know what any of this means, but I find Nenshi's response needlessly antagonist even if it's factually correct. This is the sort of thing I am talking about when I criticise his demeanour.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 05:33 |
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PT6A posted:http://www.660news.com/2016/04/06/ex-ahs-ceo-claims-ndp-interference-in-resignation-letter-aupe-and-nenshi-respond/ sounds like he was perfectly levelheaded, reasonable, and clear in his response - and that's just considering his tone which you seem to have a problem with. Personally I'm not seeing it - you seem awfully biased towards disliking anything he does just because.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 05:44 |
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flakeloaf posted:In other questionable mayor news, Jim Watson has reiterated his staunch disapproval for safe injection sites, because it's the availability of rehab that serves as the only barrier to these people getting clean The biggest problem with safe injection sites in Ottawa is the places they would need to go to be of use to anyone with an addiction problem are controlled by either the NCC or various embassies.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 05:45 |
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JawKnee posted:sounds like he was perfectly levelheaded, reasonable, and clear in his response - and that's just considering his tone which you seem to have a problem with. Personally I'm not seeing it - you seem awfully biased towards disliking anything he does just because. Do you really think it's appropriate to say "good luck to the people of South Australia [where she's been hired, evidently]?" I don't think that sort of mean spirited sarcasm has a place in our public discourse. I mean, either go balls to the wall and say what you really think or just shut up. I'd have so much more respect if he just said, "good, she was useless. Hopefully she doesn't let the door smack her rear end on the way out," instead of his customary passive-aggressive douchery. Edit: it's the same reason I respect CI: he has the common decency to tell me to go gently caress myself right to my face, rather than wringing his hands and whining about how I disagree with him so I clearly need therapy and such. PT6A fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Apr 7, 2016 |
# ? Apr 7, 2016 06:20 |
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Chicken posted:Are you one of the lucky few who has a Green MLA and a Green MP? #blessed
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 06:29 |
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/essex-woman-uses-google-translate-to-deliver-goods-to-refugees-1.3522589quote:Essex woman uses Google Translate to deliver goods to refugees quote:i on u:
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 13:00 |
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quote:Good Thursday morning to you.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 13:24 |
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The only way Pallister would show up at pride would be with a protest sign and a bullhorn cocked and loaded with hate.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 13:31 |
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Another cutting edge progressive move from the OLP.quote:Ontario’s opposition parties are ratcheting up the pressure on the governing Liberals over the cash-for-access uproar, calling for a public inquiry and complaining to the Integrity Commissioner over a secret fundraiser last year.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 14:28 |
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Baronjutter posted:I've always sort of liked my MLA, but gently caress this I don't see the disadvantage to labeling them. I don't think the stuff will cause me harm but I don't much like the practice, so I'll buy non-GMO when convenient. More info = good? Especially if this is information plenty of consumers want, regardless of their motives.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 15:45 |
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Everything you've eaten your entire life is GMO.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 15:57 |
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jm20 posted:Everything you've eaten your entire life is GMO. Not maple syrup or venison.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 15:59 |
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Ikantski posted:Not maple syrup or venison. No rurals itt ok??????????????? I'm sending you a care package of Roxul R24
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 16:05 |
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Count Roland posted:I don't see the disadvantage to labeling them. I don't think the stuff will cause me harm but I don't much like the practice, so I'll buy non-GMO when convenient. More info = good? Especially if this is information plenty of consumers want, regardless of their motives. Why don't you like the practice? I'm not going to turn this into an argument, but I am curious because I'm not sure what reason there could be if you don't think it's harmful to you because that's the main argument against it by opponents.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 16:08 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 13:43 |
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Dreylad posted:http://ipolitics.ca/2016/04/06/new-democrats-need-to-stop-blaming-mulcair-for-2015/ You know, between the entrenched insiders saying nothing is wrong and everything is fine, and the young people with energy and motivation saying that a lot of things are wrong and the party needs an actual vision and drive, after a third-place showing I'm inclined to side with the latter. quote:In an era of massive popular movements energizing progressives across Europe and North America, it’s time for the NDP to boldly and unapologetically stake our ground as the party of the left.
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# ? Apr 7, 2016 16:09 |