Posts by DCBCauchi
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Re: Bomber's 'simplistic' bombastic message. It's all very well coming up with a complex analysis, but ask any competent craftsperson: for practical solutions to real problems, simple and effective is best. Don't overcomplicate things, or you weaken them.
E.g. I reckon the one single aim of the occupy movement should be to open up all the prisons. Start by freeing people. You don't need to disband the police. Trained professionals who can impartially resolve disputes are handy to have around. But people should be free.
However, the occupy movement doesn't even need one single aim. It's much better off with none. Common cause.
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to Sue,
My theory - national learnt well from the bush cheney years. have the smiling dude in charge (key) and the deputy behind the scenes (english) making the big calls.
My impression is that Key genuinely thinks that the best part of the PM's job is cutting ribbons, awarding prizes, and hosting barbies. It's what he really enjoys. The policy wonks worry about the policy. He just gives it a quick once over before sign-off. Makes sure it's not going to ruin him.
I don't think Brownlee's a policy wonk either. He likes parties too. He cheerfully went along to Tame Iti's art opening 'Meet the prick'. That's funny.
None of them are bad people. No-one is really.
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That 'We are the 99%' thing is an obvious rip from Gillian Wearing.
For more on Occupy Wall Street's influences from art:
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Hard News: The price is that they get to…, in reply to Islander,
I’ve never belonged to FB or any other social net…my problem initially was lack of copyright protection but then I thought – copyright on *everything* posted? No way!
I would very much like to have a discussion about copyright with you. There are many aspects to explore, most of which I think we disagree on. May I email you?
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How to build a fire:
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I'm not sure that Google is much better. Did you know that, if two different people on two different computers search for the same terms on Google at the same time, they will get quite different results? Results that have been 'personalised' for them by a computer algorithm.
The war between Google and Facebook has broken the internet. It is no longer a useful tool. (Or, rather, it is seriously harder to use it as a tool.) It's too busy trying to second-guess you. (I have a mad theory that the internet became self-aware in the 80s, and everything since is a consequence.)
I highly recommend the film 'We live in public'. We are being interrogated by the CIA while someone fucked up on drugs fires automatic weapons in the background.
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Hard News: Who owns the news?, in reply to chris,
Our gaze stolen by a dying fire’s embers, waylaying our task of collecting fresh kindling from the dilating blackness.
Is it being distracted by others' flames, stopping us from kindling our own, or more looking at how they built their fire, to inform our search for kindling?
Or both?
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I'm not familiar with the term 'German street sheets' (sheets in German you hand out on the street?). Are they related to this kind of thing at all?
http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/Der_blutige_Ernst/4/index.htm
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Hard News: Who owns the news?, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Print will never die!
Islander beat me to it.
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Hard News: Who owns the news?, in reply to Hilary Stace,
A print run of 50,000! That will be a valuable archival record in the future.
The 'Occupied Wall Street Journal' looks to be a brilliant thing. I'd love a copy. Going by the photo and quotes, it seems to have been carefully well crafted by sensible people who know what they're doing.
There is a lot to be said for printed polemic, whether in pictures or words.
In Europe in the late 15th/early 16th centuries (particularly in what is now the Netherlands and Germany), there was a bit of a stoush between the established powers and various freedom movements of the usual religio-political apocalyptic kind.
There are amazing propaganda pamphlets from this time, from both sides, vilifying each other of course. Mostly using pictures. Each side usually portrayed the unacceptable sexual activities they wanted you to think the other side got up to. The content and form of each side's pamphlets were remarkably similar. Make of that what you will.
I read somewhere that these freedom movements were able to grow and spread so quickly and widely and powerfully (before they were finally crushed) because of their early adoption of the opportunities created by the new printing press technology.
Sympathetic printers would let the freedom fighters use the offcuts of paper from other printing jobs, which is why the pamphlet is the size and shape it is (or is the right term leaflet?). They were pictures partly because their audience was illiterate but mostly because a single picture is worth much more than 10,000 words.
I can't remember where or when I read this (though that last bit is my editorialising!). Does it ring any bells for anyone else?
It seems to me that, with a laptop and internet connection, you don't really need a sympathetic printer any more. But they still help.
I like how the Occupy Wall St people seem to be using 19th century tactics of pushing radical newspapers on people in combination with some 21st century tactics. Quick, mobile, adaptive, practical, apparently not peddling received off-the-shelf solutions (yet at least). Good on 'em.