A Series of Tubes

UCSC administration has done nothing to get rid of the occupiers at the graduate student commons.  Why is this?  There are many reasons:

First:  The previous large scale protest at UCSC, the treesit, ended more than a year after it started.  The goals of the treesitters diverged as factions within the treesit attempted to control the message and direction of the treesit.  Eventually only an extremely small group was left in charge, to the point where only one treesitter was found in the trees when the University removed them.  Waiting until the numbers thin, because they eventually do, is currently the UC strategy for dealing with this type of situation.

Second:  The occupiers are in the graduate student commons.  Claiming that building instead of an Administrative building means that the Administrators are not affected at all by their actions.  It is the perfect place to put an occupation.  Not only do they not affect the Administration, the occupation gets a portion of the student body, grad students, to oppose their actions right from the start.  What graduate student would support a protest that is currently trashing the Graduate Student Commons and has no realistic agenda?  This action will bring graduate student sympathy to the Occupiers opposition: the UCSC Administration. By prolonging the occupation the Administration will only collect more graduate student sympathy, so why intervene against this great PR tool?

Third:  This is the most important and probably the strongest reason that no police crackdown has occurred.  There are budget cuts, layoffs, furloughs, and strikes happening in the UC system.  In this struggle it is most advantageous for the Administration if the face of their opposition is not workers with Families and bills to pay.  It is way better if their opposition is a disorganized group of Anarchists and Communists.  The Administration can blame the vandalism and increased cost of a police presence for layoffs and cuts that they had already planned on making.  If the public face of Administrative opposition has frat like dance parties and is trashing a building they don’t care about, why lift a finger? Hell, the Administration should publicize the occupation and elevate its status so that Unions and workers get sidelined. When the loss of livelihood of workers is at stake, public support of the Administration will plummet. When the struggle is framed as between the Administration and the circus show that is the GSC Occupation, the public will support the Administration.  The UC Administrators are in desperate need of sympathy in a time where they are cutting Jobs.  Fighting the occupation gives them the sympathy they desire and at the same time draws attention away from actual labor issues. It is a PR gold mine for the UC that they would be stupid to stop.

Read more

Everyone at the GSC occupation should read “Awareness” (thanks Ben).  It describes perfectly the goals of the occupiers of the graduate student commons.

Having recently read the fliers of the occupiers I would suggest that if any of them are taking courses this quarter, they should sign up for a writing course.  The ideas presented bounce around and lack a coherent central theme or argument.  Occupy everything?  By existing you are occupying some space so I guess mission accomplished there.  The fliers suggest that the obvious course of action from observing a murder on BART, the North Pacific Gyre, layoffs at UCSC, and low wages for central American Immigrants is to go to a system that doesn’t use Capital (Communism) and a system that has no central governing structure (Anarchy).   So to sum up the position of the occupiers:  There are problems in the world including a murder on BART, the solution to these problems is to completely remake society based on Anarchy and Communism, and the means to this end is to lock yourself and your buddies in the Graduate Student Commons.  That argument could use a few revisions as it can be best described as the ramblings of someone that is bat shit insane.  To the undergrads participating in the occupation please take a look at the writing courses offered at UCSC:

http://reg.ucsc.edu/catalog/html/programs_courses/writCourses.html

Of particular interest to the occupiers would be one of the many rhetoric courses and perhaps the argument and practical reasoning course.

Read more

I went to get lunch near the bookstore and noticed that there was a trashcan in front of the Graduate Student Commons.  I thought “that’s odd”.  I then looked up and saw that above the door were people on the balcony of the Graduate student commons.  Reading the signs hanging from the balcony was followed by my forehead meeting my palm and then some head shaking.  I viewed the following scene (image from indymedia)

First there was tent University at UCSC.  That failed to achieve anything.  Then there was the treesit at UCSC.  The trees have been cut and construction of the building has started.  Now we have the occupation of the graduate student commons.  Obviously they don’t want the support of graduate student since this is a study area for graduate students and the location of where the graduate student alliance holds its regular meetings.

Read more

On my way to work today I listened to this piece about oil drilling in California.

There was nothing particularly interesting about the reporting until I heard who the sponsors were after the report.  It was sponsored by…Chevron.  If you go to the California Report website and scroll to the very bottom you will see a link for Chevron (one of their official sponsors).  Total conflict of interest.  For shame California Report.  For shame.

I’m going to email them and see what their response is.

Read more

So during the day I often wonder “just how much did Jesus love the animals of this world.”  Well there are blog posts, here, that can tell you the obvious fact that Jesus loved them a lot.  They unfortunately use the example of Jesus being referred to as the lamb of god as proof that he loves animals.  It is unfortunate because the lamb of god is a reference to Jesus being the perfect sacrifice, just as lambs were often sacrificed to god at that time, and you usually don’t murder the things you love.  Of course Jesus was murdered and Isaac was almost murdered so perhaps I’m wrong and murder is just Gods way of giving you a big hug.  I’ll ignore the confusing details and stick with the conclusion from the blog post:

“Did you ever notice that when a person really loves someone, they talk about them all the time?  That’s because they are thinking about them so much.  Jesus obviously loves the animals very much, because He had them on His mind so often!”

(Above image from the blog)

Now for people that read the bible literally there is a small problem of the dinosaurs.  Well if you count the generations of people named in the bible, how long they lived as stated in the bible, and count back all the way to Adam and Eve you only come to about to 4 or 6 thousand years.  Animals were created on day 5 of creation and man on day 6, so all living animals, including dinosaurs, were created one day before man.  In reality then the above illustration should be modified slightly in lieu of this additional information:

I love the pterodactyl in the background.