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Occupation: Dreamland
Posted by Chris on 08/09/07 (Films)
Perhaps i’m a day late and a dollar short on this one, but i just watched a documentary called Occupation: Dreamland last night and thought it was pretty heavy. The whole time in was on i was thinking “well, what would i do if my city was being occupied by some foreign force? What would i do if they if they were smashing down my door in the middle of the night, terrifying the people i love, rifling through my stuff, taking whatever and whoever they want?”
I’m not confident that i could just ride it out and hope for the best. Not at all.
16 fragments of dialogue thus far ...
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Comment by Tony on August 9th, 2007 at 8:56 am:
Think I’m gonna order a copy of this. These films you recommend, such as “An Unreasonable Man” and this, where do you hear about them? I find it hard to keep on the ball with documentaries that get released, they only stay on the arthouse cinemas(if they even get on) in my city for about a week, I can’t help think I’m missing shit loads of good stuff. Is there a website you can recommend or anything? Or do you just spot them in the “documentary” section of DVD shops? I’d imagine this film has been and gone off cinemas. More recommendations please, for the sleepers amongst us.
Comment by Jon UK on August 10th, 2007 at 7:37 am:
”I’m not confident that i could just ride it out and hope for the best. Not at all.”
Exactly.
Comment by Brett on August 11th, 2007 at 4:43 pm:
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com
Needs to be viewed by everyone, forwarded to all friends and family, and have a blog entry of its own created.
Comment by stephen on August 12th, 2007 at 2:19 am:
zeitgeist was pretty good until the 9/11 stuff. i love listening to the racist mania some of these shits come up with. “do you think people IN A CAVE…” could do that? the message is: arabs are not smart enough to pull off 9/11, therefore it must have been sinister members of The Master Race™ that did it. give me a break. the asshole spewing that putrid verbal diahrrea, alex jones, is a certified nut. i have seen articles posted on his loon websites about how harry potter is part of a “globalist” conspiracy to destroy christianity. give me a break. he’s also an anti-mexican racist, posting slop like, “boohoo, white people aren’t the majority in major cities anymore!” who cares?
another great message from this is that we are supposed to be so concerned about these 3000 people who were killed. yea, those attacks were awful. but take a look at iraq, and a countless number of countries that these screws have destroyed with not just warfare, but their culturally destructive economic policies as well. as chomsky points out when he is asked about it, who cares about 9/11? we don’t know for sure the precise details of what happened. what we do know is that they are using those events as an excuse to commit even greater crimes. the more people theorize about 9/11 and “gloablism”, the more these clowns will run off with your money, and the more people they’ll kill. just listen to the presidential “debates”. giuliani is going to be the next president (probably through massive fraud), and it’s going to get worse. but no doubt fat mike and the gang will get us really pumped up to vote for hillary clinton.
Comment by Sebas on August 13th, 2007 at 1:08 am:
“Vote” tihihi, such a funny word. “Vote”. Pronounce it slowly, let the sillable roll over your thick under lip. “Vote”…
The more I say say “Vote” the less meaning it has for me.
“Vote”… hihihi.
Comment by Anthony on August 13th, 2007 at 2:45 pm:
Brett is right. Zeitgeist is a mind blowing documentary. I hope everyone gets a chance to see it. Thanks for posting the link.
Comment by gerty on August 13th, 2007 at 7:24 pm:
holy! I just shit all over my balls. Zeitgeist is good! maybe only 97.6% accurate maybe just entertaining whatever it is it gave me a high, and if only 3% of it is true, I forgive myself for shitting on my balls and urge others to do the same.
Comment by gerty on August 13th, 2007 at 7:24 pm:
thank you brett
Comment by Yaniv on August 14th, 2007 at 6:49 pm:
Both documentaries caught my interest, and I’m definitely going to check them out. Has anyone seen the five-episode documentary “A Century of the Self”? It’s a fascinating film that chronicles how the public relations industry has used the ideas of Freud to appeal to the individuality of the consumer and thus defeat the non-conformist and potential subversive. Definitely worth watching.
Comment by Yaniv on August 14th, 2007 at 6:50 pm:
Okay? I have no idea why suddenly the g7 logo appeared along with my post. Strange.
Comment by asshole on August 15th, 2007 at 1:43 am:
Do I get a G7 logo? Come on, work dam you…
Comment by asshole on August 15th, 2007 at 1:45 am:
YES! I HAVE THE POWER!
*in canadian accent* “Fuck you, you stupid half-head! Woo hoo down with capitalism! FUCKING NOFX!!!”
Yeah, I think I’m going to fit in real well.
Comment by saoirse on August 15th, 2007 at 7:33 am:
Pffft. Disable special characters in usernames, will ya?! I’ma get my gaelic buddies and march on Albert St!
This is actually a really interesting question and something I think about a lot. I find it hard to discuss it with people because they tend to either be flippant and almost seem to relish the idea of resisting, or their minds are firmly made up and its like talking to a wall. I think its something activists/left thinkers/whatever have to consider carefully, but for those of us who are western and relatively privileged, it can be hard to appreciate the magnitude of the matter.
When I think about it, its not so much the presence of an occupying force [which, while not impossible, doesn't seem very likely to occur in Canada or US etc] as a clash with the instruments of our own states or the reactionary elements therein. I’m not reconciled with violence, I don’t relish the idea, in fact it scares the holy hell out of me, but the longer and harder I look at the issue, the more it seems inevitable. If you follow the relentless pursuit of capitalism to its logical conclusion, you meet violence. If you examine direct action in opposition to its own logical conclusion, it seems to me that its either fight or flight.
When you begin to seriously consider living your life as an opponent of whatever dictatorial force in your society, the risks and the questions and the fear can be totally overwhelming but the die seem to have been cast before you even picked up that clever tshirt ten years ago.
There have been a few instances in my thusfar short … er… stint as an activist that have brought me face to face with some danger or potential danger, and every time I’ve really struggled with how to respond. Considering any sort of potentially dangerous action, from an anti-fascist event to armed defense, opens up a billion other questions about ethics, method, organisation which make my head swim even to think about.
People here have been organising and fighting each other and the state for decades, often to no avail, to the detriment of their society, fighting methodologically and ethically unsound battles and frequently finding themselves marked, dead or in jail. To accept that, one day, you may be forced to defend your successes or your vulnerable communities, or some such thing, is a far cry from the day to organisational risks that being an activist entails - both can be fucking scary but, as I said, appear to be unavoidable if you’re serious about challenging this system.
When I think about the resistance in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Palestine [or the Warsaw Ghetto, or South Africa, and on and on] I stumble in to an ethical grey area that makes me want to drink bleach and sing Bright Eyes. Even though I’ve long since lost the conviction that soldiers are “workers in uniform”, and I most certainly believe that people suffering under an occupation have the right to resist, I just can’t see things as black and white as this dude: http://lovinrevoluti...e_to_empire.htm#boom
Bah. I don’t know. Having not seen this documentary I could be misinterpreting what Chris was saying but it sounds similar and I think dialogue on such issues is sorely lacking on the left.
Comment by C-Wipe on August 15th, 2007 at 10:48 am:
just for clarification, i do not in a zillion years relish the idea of becoming engaged in armed conflict. i was just conducting a personal thought experiment where i imagined people kicking down the door of my house in the middle of the night and terrifying my niece and humiliating and arresting my dad. what would my honest impulse be to a situation like that? probably not dissimilar to that of people anywhere on earth who’ve been subjected to rights abuses without legal recourse, i would think.
but yeah, i also get a sense that some people (usually people at a safe distance from real danger) tend to relish or romanticize the idea of armed struggle. they have their own chapter in chris hedges “war is a force..”, of course.
Comment by saoirse on August 15th, 2007 at 12:10 pm:
For what its worth, I certainly didn’t write that with you in mind (moreso the gangsta revolutionary types I’ve encountered over the years). In my experience it tends to be the more macho and dogmatic kinda dudes.
Incidentally, as for your hypothetical, I get the impression that the vast majority of us would react in a similar way (my 5″ pacifist mother included) and in my mind, would be justified in doing so. Personally, I doubt I’d make time for an “ethical pause” in such a situation and that kind of scares me. What is a measured response? What is gratuitous? When does something stop being self-defense and become aggression, and when, if ever, is that justified? How many rhetorical questions is too many?
Like I said, it makes my head swim and it feels like something people never talk about.
Comment by vincenzo on August 22nd, 2007 at 5:04 pm:
not occupation but….look a those Under cover agents trying to start a riot, but they didn’t fool anyone. Look at the way they intentionally get arrested, after failing to get the protesters to start a riot.
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=St1-WTc1kow