Pinky: Who are all those people waving signs, Brain?
The Brain: People without jobs, Pinky.
Jeff I believe they are actually called the “Black Bloc” and they show up to pretty much every globalisation protest. Whenever you see on TV people dressed in all black with their faces covered and throwing crap at the protests, it’s them. Their reasoning is that the media is not focussing on the rational arguments behind the protests and this is the only way to get at least some of the message across. They are rather controversial and are often restrained and booed by the peacefull protestors.
I was at a FTAA protest in Quebec city a while ago. One day there were fifty thousand people marching peacfully lead by federal parlimentarian and NDP leader Alexa MacDounagh. People we honking and cheering from buildings in support as we walked by. I watched the news that night to see the coverage of the march. Suprise, there was none. The only thing they covered was, you guessed it, the Black Bloc tearing down a fence and throwing stuff.
In fact globalisation protests are some of the most peaceful around, compare them to Abortion or the Vietnam protests.
“what do you think of Critical Mass’ demonstration methods? (the slow bike demo )?”
I’m not Jeff, but I’ve seen a Critical Mass bike demonstration here in Chicago. One of my peeves was that they chose State Street to go south. For non-Chicagoans, State is a major bus route and a minor auto route, so they were disrupting CTA bus traffic more than they were disrupting auto traffic. My other peeve is that they blocked State long enough that I missed my train from Union Station. 
I’m sympathetic to their position that we need a balanced transportation system and not one founded solely on the automobile. I’m a big user of public transit, though I also own a car. But screwing up bus and foot traffic in the Loop IMHO alienates their base, not their opposition.
If they had picked the Outer Drive or one of the expressways instead, my feelings about them would have been different. 
Thanks for the info. I see a problem here: those who make the most noise are the ones who get the attention. Solution: have the media stop feeding Black Bloc’s need for attention. Probability that this will happen: nil.
In amount of lives lost, but not any other damage…
Prague got torn apart the last time, and the anti-G people were complete assholes. The City Council even provided them with places to stay, and were only looking for compensation to cover sanitation and security costs- the protestors staged a protest to the $8 a day accomodations, and tore up the city in the process. So they protested the big bad civilized world by causing millions of dollars of damage to a semi-civilized country that couldn’t afford it…great.
I just wish that these jerks would see that if they spent their time donating their efforts to any of the myriad of organizations out there, then a lot of the problems would disappear.
“Work in a 3rd world country for 2 years helping to build wells and homes? Fuck that! I just want to do my civic 3 days of protests and get everyone else to help out! Then after graduation I’m gonna get a job making the big bucks!”
Jerks.
-Tcat
Hey, you’re not in the Southern Railroad building, are you?
gobear, so you’re saying that the only really legitimate protests are the ones that don’t try to argue for an alternative, just serve as a vent for anger and frustration at injustice.
Funny, I thought that’s what the anarchists were up to today.
Actually, let me try clarifying my understanding a bit further, taking your post step by step.
First, you say:
[quote]
advocating the dismantling of the capitalist system and an embrace of some prelapsarian fantasy where goods are worth something other than what somebody will pay for them is nonsense
[quote]
So, at least so far, one solution is disagreeable to you. Then comes:
- implicitly connecting anyone who espouses such a solution with a particular type of person. The blanket dismissal I take serious issue with. Yes, there are such people in any sort of social justice movement, and perhaps some of them are leaders of groups, but that does not mean all groups within a social justice movement are composed solely of such types nor led solely by such types. I think I provide adequate enough counterexample of that.
So, finally, we come to your last statement:
Is that all that needs to be done? Just make the point of why one should be angry at the IMF and the World Bank? Well then, what happens when someone who’s stopped to listen to you says, “You’re right; I agree with you quite strongly and will join up with you. What do we do now”?
Huh? I do believe I said the exact oppositeof what you just posted–arguing for an alternative is GOOD. The demonstrators haven’t done that. “Hey, dude, let’s all smoke some sherm and get the government to feed and clothe us” is not an alternative. So far, from everything I’ve read, nothing has shown me that the demonstrators have the slightest knowledge of how global trade works.
You need a more sophisticated socio-economic platform than “Big business sux!” if you want anyone with a scintilla of intelligence to listen to you or support you.
Then you give them your carefully thought out, economically sound program. But first you have to convince them. One step at a time.
dismantling capitalism is nonsense. It certainly needs some governmental restraints, so we can avoid things like child labor, but as a system, capitalism has won the battle of ideas. Communism doesn not work, socialism does not wok, and the countries that implented those systems are today moving toward free market systems. Hell, even North Korea has started to allow small markets to spring up in Pyongyang.
Hey, I’m just going by what read from their Web sites, and frankly, their rhetoric sounds a lot more like college kids on a toot than a sound economic transformation proposed by people with experience and knowledge. Show me that the anti-everything crowd has some sane, sober people in their leadership.
Well, show me what Web sites you’ve read. I can guarantee you you probably haven’t even begun to scratch the surface, especially if you only looked at the Websites of the groups involved in today’s shenanigans.
And you certainly won’t catch me defending North Korea (or Cuba, or China, or the XSSR) as anything resembling a model of socialism or communism. So perhaps you’ll understand when I refuse to let your statements about communism not working sway me from arguing for revolutionary socialism as an alternative.
Well, since they are the people I’m bitching about, I see that we have no real differences. I already said from the gitgo that there very real inequities that need to be addressed in a discussion of global trade. dismantling communism and living in communes is not a genuine alternative. Reall, you were born too late, Olentzero.. You would have enjoyed hanging out with Proudhon or living in the Oneida commune.
I’m not going to get dragged into your No True Scotsman, er, communist, discussion. Still, I wouldn’t want you to abandon your revolutionary socialism–there are times I wouldn’t mind setting up a guillotine on Capitol Hill myself.
[/quote]
What is it with you conservatives and this “No True Scotsman” bullshit?! Did it ever fucking occur to you that there may actually be legitimate criticism involved? Honestly, you just can’t shake this tendency to lump everyone who holds the opposite viewpoint into one big pile, and attribute any and all differences to petty sectarian quibbling. It may look like that from your perspective, but all that shows to me (nor is it the only thing that does so) is a willful tendency to remain blatantly uninformed.
Maybe because it isn’t bullshit. When you say that you support communism but that regimes in China, North Korea, or the former USSR aren’t really communist, so you don’t have to deal with their excesses, you are, in fact, playing the No True Scotsman. There’s no point in discussing the flaws of socialism because you will never, ever, admit that your political philosophy has flaws; you are the His4Ever of politics.
You would make a better impression if you simply admitted that, yeah, those regimes were communist, but they adopted a totalitarian approach to implementing socialism, leading to tragedy. Your socialist paradise would contain democratic safeguards so that the rights of the people would be protected and socialist democracy preserved.
As for “you conservatives,” I’m a little right of center, but I’ve voted Democrat for my entire adult life.
Now you’re misinterpreting why I deny those regimes were communist. You’re completely blind if you think I wish to facilely glide over the horrors of Stalinism by saying that wasn’t communism. (Note I’m not saying it wasn’t “really” communism, but that it wasn’t communism at all. Period.)
There is also a vital difference between saying a philosophy is flawless and a philosophy being unquestionable. I certainly don’t assert the latter, since questioning is the only way to expose weaknesses and allow for further refinement.
Given that, I certainly don’t argue my political philosophy is flawless, either, but it’s a damn sight better than what we’ve got now.
First off, eat shit and die. Having gotten that out of the way, I’m perfectly willing to discuss any flaws of socialism you perceive, and I’m certainly willing to discuss the monstrosity of Stalinism and all its crass imperfections. But there is no direct connection between the two. Stalinism wasn’t socialism, and its flaws are not the flaws of the philosophy of socialism.
Oh please, “No officer, those were other kids.”? That ain’t a defense. I am not buying it since I’ve seen the nonsense that was pulled in Philly and it wasn’t that many in masks.
You complain that the media is fosuing on them and yet all that you do to pruge them is call them “controversial” and boo them? Restraints didn’t seem to do a damn bit of good.Don’t expect sympathy if you don’t even show token efforts to purge the ranks of troublmakers.
If you’d been reading some of the other statements in this thread, Miskatonic, by now you should have realized that there are at least three separate events going on this weekend. The MGJ is having a large protest rally and march on Saturday, and it was made explicit that this was not to include the kind of “direct action” the anarchists and Black Bloc indulged in today. Getting them out of one day’s events doesn’t mean they’ve been stopped from staging their own separate events on another day entirely.
Many groups said they would be peaceful in Philly and would not cause disruption. They lied. I have not been impressed with the track record and history of these INF protestors. The proof will be forthcoming.
Either you don’t understand what people are saying or you are actually less perceptive than the run of the mill Nutty Fundamentalist.
Why don’t we go for another tack on this, then.
What, pray tell, is an example of “real” communism? Or is it one of those things that can only exist under laboratory conditions?
It is a pretty good defense when it is other kids. I didn’t mean to give the impression that it is only that Black Bloc that is doing this sort of stuff, just explaining who they are. I was not at Philadelphia so I can’t comment, but again, in Quebec they kept showing the same clips of a couple dozen trouble-makers on TV when there were fifty thousand protesters there. Why no coverage of the other 49,975 protestors? (I am probably underestimating the number of idiots, but they were a relatively small number).
Well, easier said than done. The “ranks” are not one big organization you know. Just a bunch of groups with varying agendas that have some similarities. Most of us had no more affiliation with the Black Bloc than we did with the Raging Grannies. What do you suppose strangers should do to a group of punks with weapons that are breaking windows? Actually, I do have a solution, all the peaceful protestors should back off and let the police scoop them up without interference. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work so well as some other dumb-asses usually get worked up and decide to protect their “comrades” from “the man”.
It really ticks me off when these morons hijack a legitimate and important protest with their idiotic agendas. I don’t want to live on a commune with some filthy hairbags. I want everyone in the world to be stinking rich, with a big-screen tv and two segways in the garage.
No offense to the filthy hairbags on this board 
Geez, some people get so hung up on the fiasco of the Soviet Union and its satellite states that they can’t see anything else.
Real communism: Israeli kibbutzim, early Christian Church.
Real socialism: Most of Northern Europe. I daresay that the U.S. nowadays would seem socialist to someone from the 19th century.
UnuMondo