One of the standard behaviors of agents provocateur is constantly accusing everyone else of being an agent. Just some food for thought re: whether or not OWS is legit. I can't believe this conversation is happening here. I mean if there is any substance to that criticism feel free to bring it, because I would like to hear it. Otherwise what is the point? Are you just sad that you can't sit around bitching about conspiracies and feel like a revolutionary, because there are people actually trying to do something?
And WTF was that comment about Papademos? Yeah, things are going to get worse now. People are going to go to jail and get tortured, get sick, and die in prison. There might be concentration camps. Does that mean we should be happy with the Papandreous and Obamas of the world? What is the alternative, other than a mass uprising?
Nah, some people just think or believe that everything is orchestrated. Except maybe what they themselves do. Perhaps it is calming - or exciting - to see such omnipotence behind every happening.
We are in a bull market. Get in on the ground floor. Blue horseshoe loves OWS...
'Dismal' prospects: 1 in 2 Americans are now poor or low income 20 hours ago By Associated Press WASHINGTON - Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.
The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.
"Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too 'rich' to qualify," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.
"The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal," he said. "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years."
The Making of the American 99 Percent and the Collapse of the Middle Class Thursday 15 December 2011 by: Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich, TomDispatch/The Nation http://www.truth-out.org/making-america ... 1323968181
undead wrote:Who exactly in "TPTBe" initiated the Occupy movement?
[...]
how did the Powers That Be initiate OWS?
I didn't hear that either, and that's what I keep not hearing from people who insist that OWS is nothing more than an evil plot by perpetrated by George Soros, or, more vaguely, a plan cooked up by "Wall Street" itself for the purposes of somehow consolidating its power.
Hugh, and Lupercal: will you please just answer undead's questions, highlighted above?
What I've heard & read so far is that three years ago Soros gave Adbusters a donation, $187K or something. This means, according to one friend, that Soros "owns" OWS and the whole effort is just a sham and a hoax. One friend gets it from Webster Tarpley, who makes logical jumps from A to C and cites 'disclosure records' without specifying or linking any documents or other sources in the first place (sorry, no link handy). An even more tenuous connection to OWS figures into the plot with some Tides foundation money. I frankly didn't pursue it any further since there was really nowhere to go with it.
(Another thing they'll do is quickly add that OSW in NYC "has $500,000" as if Soros had presented the Zuccotti Park campers with an oversize check for that sum.)
When the Soros angle grows too obtuse, they switch their target to "pro-war liberals" (usually naming Michael Moore) who are 'obviously working for the System because they don't demand an end to the wars'.
None of that really adds up to me as anything close to proof, and it reflects an unreasonably all-or-nothing view: that OWS is either A) a 100% "spook run" effort that serves no public good whatever and over which ordinary citizens have absolutely no power, or (B) a completely grassroots effort, unaffected by any opposing forces as well as being 100% united in its views.
I think reality is a lot more complex, that OWS is a swirl of complicated interactions among different interests, with effects that are not always predictable.
The niche-issue objectors and the "my way or the highway" types can really wreck this popular movement (whoever "initiated" it, there is a popular movement) with their intolerance. They will never get anywhere with people, and, to me, this is mostly about educating people, raising awareness and generating a common, broad understanding of what's good for us and what's not working. The deniers and "demanders" just drain away energy and usually make everyone else look bad.
In this case claims are made that, if true, should be provable, not just a "strong hunch."
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
^ No problem. Below: two views of Adbusters, which in my opinion is simply a putative -- i.e. "official story" -- instigator, but nevertheless:
1. Tarpley's view, which more or less corresponds to mine, i.e. that Adbusters et al. are basically spook operations, which of course go much deeper and include the whole constellation of CIA media, wikileaks etc etc. Includes a PressTV interview: Tarpley on Adbusters, #Occupy GAs: "brainwashing techniques"
Well, I do hate adbusters. And it's true about the Greek indignants, too, most of them are anti-political. Anarchism generally is anti-political. Still, labor actions are happening. I guess we'll see. And I'm still waiting to hear what exactly needs to be done, if it's so pointless to have a mass uprising because spooks infiltrate it. Otherwise it's just complaining. Yes, there are spooks everywhere. I know. It's just to constantly hear about it from people who don't offer any suggestions on how to fix the problem. And don't tell me that we should all tell everyone the history of the CIA, because that isn't going to cut it. Hopefully all the normal non-anarchist people that came out (and more unions) will join labor actions and OccupyOurHomes.
So I do agree about adbusters and anarchists. It's not that I disagree with you, or Hugh, its just that if there is no relevant information or suggestion for productive action, it's just complaining, which is annoying. So, it isn't that you're "not supposed to mention it", like you say, it's more like "Please don't complain about it all the time when you have nothing productive to contribute to the conversation".
Anyway, here's one for the anarchists:
Tactics and the port shutdown
Bay Area activists Ragina Johnson, Alex Schmaus and Dana Blanchard consider some of the political discussions to arise after the West Coast Port Shutdown.
December 16, 2011
IN THE aftermath of the West Coast Port Shutdown on December 12, a debate over tactics has emerged in the Occupy movement. The discussion centers on the role of port workers and Occupy activists' relationship to them.
The December 12 actions were an important step for the Occupy movement, especially in connecting to the struggle of workers against some of the richest and most powerful corporations around. But the future of the movement depends on Occupy activists adopting strategies and tactics that treat workers on the docks--and everywhere else in the economy--as allies and potential supporters, not as opponents.
The call for a port shutdown on December 12 produced community pickets at ports up and down the West Coast, from Anchorage to San Diego--and succeeded in stopping operations, partially or entirely, in Oakland, Portland, Longview, Seattle and Vancouver. At the giant Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, activists collaborated with nonunion port truckers to disrupt operations for several hours at SSA Marine, which is half-owned by Goldman Sachs.
In Oakland, our preparations began weeks before December 12, with rank-and-file longshore workers and other unionists working with Occupy Oakland activists to build support for the shutdown, especially among workers at the port. We knew from this organizing work that the criticisms made by some union leaders and even left-wing writers and academics--that the Occupy movement was calling for industrial action without the support of workers--was false.
On December 12, we had a strong turnout despite the rain and cold--more than 500 Occupy supporters met at a nearby public transit hub for a 5 a.m. march to the port to set up community picket lines at three terminals. By the late morning, we got word that ILWU members had been sent home after the port arbitrator ruled on safety concerns. An even larger march on the port that evening caused the evening shift to be closed down as well.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) publicly disavowed the port shutdown call. But ILWU Local 10 in Oakland has a proud history of recognizing community picket lines and calling in a port arbitrator over safety concerns.
With rank-and-file ILWU members taking the lead, the December 12 action was planned in Oakland with this foremost in our minds--and with the goal of building solidarity with workers on the ports as a crucial means of strengthening the Occupy movement.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THIS APPROACH helped ensure the success of December 12 in Oakland.
Unfortunately, though, that success was jeopardized by the dangerous actions of a minority of demonstrators on the picket line.
The overwhelming majority of Occupy activists and workers worked together--as planned and democratically decided upon--to organize community pickets that were intended to make an appeal to port workers for support, but not blockade them. This was highly effective.
Nevertheless, a small minority took it upon themselves to try to impose their tactics on the rest of us. Within an hour of establishing our early-morning community pickets, a small group of activists at the Hanjin Terminal picket attempted to use their bodies to stop a semi truck from leaving the port. At least two of them sat down in front of the truck, an extremely dangerous act since the driver could not see them. Others screamed at the driver and spat on his windshield.
Naturally, photographers from the mainstream media swooped in to get their photos of the angry truck driver who "didn't support the action that day"--and not pictures of the several hundred people who were holding down an amazing picket 20 feet away. This only gave credence to the false argument spread by the media that we were trying to "impose" a shutdown on workers, rather than seek their solidarity.
The authors of this article attempted to reason with the group of activists sitting in front of the truck. We asked them to move out of the way and allow the truck to leave, explaining that organizers had agreed to allow drivers who had shown up for work to leave--as the point of our action was to build solidarity with workers at the port, not antagonize them. The port action committee had explicitly agreed on the point that the pickets were not to keep workers from leaving, but only to stop them from going in.
At one point, one of us, Ragina, positioned herself between the truck and the group in question to demand that they get out of the way. One person from this group of activists pushed Ragina against the front grill of the truck in an attempt to use her body to get the truck to stop.
Everyone eventually moved out of the way, but the fact is that the lives of several activists were put at risk during this scuffle.
Another dangerous situation occurred at the Hanjin Terminal picket line when a squad car and sheriff's bus, escorted by a line of riot police, attempted to drive through our line.
Throughout the morning, police were being moved around the port in groups in an attempt to intimate protesters. There was a diversity of people on the picket line--old and young, people holding toddlers, union and nonunion workers. Keeping the pickets organized and safe by preventing panic was important to succeeding in our goal.
Only walking picket lines are considered legally protected free speech, but some activists from the same group that blockaded the truck earlier attempted to form an immobile human barricade to stop police from driving through the line. This was another unnecessary risk, since it gave police a possible excuse to use force to break up our pickets.
The same group of picketers then attempted to provoke police who were pointing "non-lethal" assault rifles at the picket. We believe this act played into the hands of at least one provocateur, who said "the cops are going to smash us anyway, so why should we wait for that to happen."
Once again, the authors of this article found ourselves forced into a dangerous situation. We argued that the best way to stop the police was to maintain the walking picket--and that trying to provoke the police endangered not only picketers, but also the truck drivers and ILWU members who were standing by to observe the situation.
We eventually succeeded in breaking up the human barricade and held our ground with a traditional walking picket. The police backed off after about 20 or 30 minutes.
A few minutes after 10 a.m., a port arbitrator ruled that ILWU members would not be expected to cross our community picket lines. This was an important victory because it meant we had shut down the port without forcing unionized workers to lose a day's wages. Port management then has since sent a press release saying workers will not be paid unless the union takes up the issue with an independent arbitrator. This will be a fight for our allies within the ILWU to take up in the coming days.
Thousands marched to the port of Oakland that evening, but the port authority had by that time conceded defeat and didn't even call in the evening shift. Instead of pickets, a General Assembly of more than 2,500 people formed to discuss next steps.
Occupy Oakland had voted weeks ago that in the event of police repression at any of the actions along the coast, the pickets would be extended in defense of the Occupy movement. The original plan of the port action committee of Occupy Oakland was to vote on whether or not to follow through with this, based on the numbers of people who could participate. But there was never a vote.
Dozens of people from the crowd began to signal their frustration with the lack of democracy, but this was ignored. The facilitators told the crowd that anyone who could not stay for the 3 am pickets should stand up and go and those who could should sit down. Thousands of people picked up their things and left the port. Only about 100 to 150 people remained behind for a disorganized picket at 3 a.m. Fortunately, they did not face a police crackdown, which would have undermined the successes of the day.
What happened at the GA was a missed opportunity to get new people who had come out for the port action involved in a conversation about next steps for our work.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
WHY DID a minority of activists act in such an undemocratic and dangerous manner at the morning picket?
To answer this question, we have to look at the different forces involved in the Occupy movement and the December 12 port shutdown.
The December 12 action was a step forward for the movement because it was about taking action at a crucial chokepoint in the economy that affects the flow of commodities and the realization of profits for the 1 percent. The debate that emerged in Oakland was about how to take action at the point of production.
There are two levels to the debate. The first is a strategic argument about the role of workers at the port. Are they central to shutting down it down or not? Do Occupy activists need to build solidarity with port workers or can they take action independently--and against workers if necessary?
The second level is about the tactics that flow from the strategic question. Should we organize for community picket lines that allow for the greatest possible participation and solidarity with port workers? Or should we build barricades to impose a work stoppage?
An article posted on Bay of Rage, an anti-capitalist website in the Bay Area, titled "Blockading the port is only the first of many last resorts", explains the position of activists who advocated taking action "autonomously" of workers. In a section titled "Power to the vagabonds and therefore to no class," the article states:
We need to jettison our ideas about the "proper" subjects of the strike or class struggle. Though it is always preferable and sometimes necessary to gain workers' support in order to shut down a particular workplace, it is not absolutely necessary, and we must admit that ideas about who has the right to strike or blockade a particular workplace are simply extensions of the law of property.
The first point to make about this statement is that its authors are dismissing the actual demands of the port action committee for December 12. These demands were very much about workers on the docks: first, solidarity with ILWU Local 21 members in Longview, Wash., and their battle against EGT; second, solidarity with port truck drivers in their struggle to gain union rights; and third, a coordinated response by Occupy to the police raids of the camps.
These were the three points we used in talking to port workers and other union forces leading up December 12. Linking up these three struggles helped bring together allies in the labor movement with the Occupy community. We were able to connect with radical rank-and-file union members who want to see more action from their unions. By contrast, the Bay of Rage article accepts that the "real" radicals will have to operate in isolation from workers and union members--and sometimes in direct opposition to them.
As for tactics, the Bay of Rage article goes on to argue that the community pickets were unnecessary:
[W]e have been told time and again that in order to blockade the port, we need to go to each and every berth, spreading out thousands of people into several groups over a distance of a few miles. This is because, under the system that ILWU has worked out with the employers' association, only a picket line at the gates to the port itself will allow the local arbitrator to rule conditions at the port unsafe, and therefore provide the workers with legal protection against unpermitted work action.
In such a situation we are not really blockading the port. We are participating in a two-act play, a piece of legal theater, performed for the benefit of the arbitrator.
If this arbitration game is the only way we can avoid violent conflict with the port workers, then perhaps this is the way things have to be for the time being. But we find it more than depressing how little reflection there has been about this strategy, how little criticism of it, and how many people seem to reflexively accept the necessity of going through these motions.
Once again, this statement shows how little respect the writers have for working people and their capacity for action. Anyone familiar with the history of the working-class movement in the U.S. or anywhere in the world knows that picket lines are more than a "piece of legal theater." The labor movement's victories historically have involved mass support from workers, community members, the unemployed and more.
In the specific case of the ports, the role of community pickets is important in building solidarity and involving wider numbers in the struggle. Rather than imagining that we can substitute for such mobilizations through sabotage or physical barricades, we should be looking to more solidarity actions of this kind to support the labor battles that are sure to come.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ULTIMATELY, THE wrong-headed ideas expressed in the Bay of Rage article share much in common with the claims made in the mainstream media, among conservative labor leaders and even within sections of the left that the action on December 12 was organized from the outside.
This discounts the role that rank-and-file workers, who are part of Occupy Oakland, played in helping to organize the action. There were extensive discussions between Occupy activists and members of the ILWU and Teamsters, as well as with unorganized port truck drivers, both in the lead-up and immediately after the call to shut down the ports.
By reaching out to and including the voices of rank-and-filers and labor activists, we collaborated with them to build the community picket line, rather than scheming in secret about how to blockade them from going to work. As a result, we were able to weather the attacks in the weeks leading up to the action--a barrage that came not only from the 1 percent and the media, but from union leaders who repeatedly tried to stifle participation in December 12.
The port action committee had a well-organized plan in place for December 12. People in the committee organized picket teams, communications and food distribution. There were teams to plan for speakers and rallies, and to make sure signs and banners were printed and brought to the gates. Organizers were also in close communication with port workers about which terminals had ships and which did not, so we knew which gates to picket.
There was also explicit outreach to talk to self-identified anti-capitalist forces who had declared a march at the same time as the port action--to ask them to agree to the tactics decided for the day.
Ultimately, the proof of these preparations lies in the success of the event itself. Hundreds of people showed up before dawn to put up community pickets before the first shift, and even larger numbers came in the evening. No ILWU members crossed picket lines. Teamsters didn't show up that day, and hundreds of non-unionized truckers stayed away. As for truckers who were at the docks, many showed their support in various ways.
None of that could have been accomplished without the support of workers at the Port of Oakland. But unfortunately, a minority believes its adventurist tactics are more radical and politically superior.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
WHAT'S NEXT? We believe the truly radical step following December 12 will be to build on the alliance between Occupy activists and port workers. We shouldn't be satisfied with shutting down the port for a day, but must instead focus on building a working-class movement with power at the point of production--a project that must include union members, Occupy activists and other working people who are sympathetic to the new activism, but who have not yet joined it.
That's why the disorganizing effects of the General Assembly on the evening of the 12th were a disappointment. The GA could have been a space for thousands of people to collectively decide the next steps for building such an alliance.
Such organizing needs to continue--right now. In a matter of a couple weeks, EGT may try to load its first ship at the scab grain terminal in Longview. Labor and community members in solidarity with the ILWU are already planning caravans to support longshore workers in Longview with their struggle. We need to get as many people as we can to join this caravan from all the local Occupy struggles, from the Bay Area to Washington state.
The Longview struggle is just one example of how we can look ahead to the future of the Occupy movement.
The trigger budget cuts in California are devastating public-sector workers and students, especially at the community college level, and this spring will likely be a time of mass actions on campuses and in teachers unions in response to these cuts. There is already a planned occupation of the state capital on March 5, as well as regional actions on March 1 and possible student strikes throughout February.
In addition, immigrant rights activists and workers, both union and nonunion, are making big plans for a militant action on May Day that would shut down production and target the 1 percent, while linking up with struggles for amnesty and human rights.
These are just a few of the ideas that have been put forward for next steps. There will most certainly continue to be struggle on both a local and national level, and some of what it will do has not even been anticipated yet.
With working people under relentless attack, the Occupy movement has an opportunity to broaden its social base. But to reach that potential, we need to learn the lessons--both positive and negative--of what we just accomplished on December 12.
The most important lesson is that Occupy activists and union members share common interests in the struggle against the 1 percent, and the closer that alliance, the more powerful the struggle will be.
The port shutdown on December 12 also showed us that the November 2 general strike call in Oakland was no fluke--and that the Occupy movement can coordinate for picket-line action between different cities and states. This action has truly raised the bar for what is possible in the movement, if we do our work right.
Adbusters is just doing marketing. BFD. Amped status, day of rage, and others were working this too, but whatever. I guess the persistent non-violent route is phony. Maybe they should turn violent? Just what would be a 'proper' protest? Not really worth the time to go through this. What I find amazing though is the ability of Tarpley to seamlessly move from being catastrophically wrong on one theory, but forget that to hypothesize yet again some nonsense. Rewind 3-4 years ago. He was so sure Obama's followers/voters were under fascist spell, and that Obama was building an unquestioning fascist totalitarian army of citizens. To laugh. The scales have fallen. Tarpley called that catastrophically wrong. Sure there will always be attempted co-opts and infiltration in everything. Success does that. Lets all do nothing and condemn those who try.
Jeff wrote:
Chris Hedges reads from his essay about religion and the Occupy Wall Street Movement.
A Message Of Solidarity From Archbishop Desmond Tutu Posted 13 hours ago on Dec. 15, 2011, 7:37 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
Sisters and Brothers, I greet you in the Name of Our Lord and in the bonds of common friendship and struggle from my homeland of South Africa. I know of your own challenges and of this appeal to Trinity Church for the shelter of a new home and I am with you! May God bless this appeal of yours and may the good people of that noble parish heed your plea, if not for ease of access, then at least for a stay on any violence or arrests.
Yours is a voice for the world not just the neighborhood of Duarte Park. Injustice, unfairness, and the strangle hold of greed which has beset humanity in our times must be answered with a resounding, "No!" You are that answer. I write this to you not many miles away from the houses of the poor in my country. It pains me despite all the progress we have made. You see, the heartbeat of what you are asking for--that those who have too much must wake up to the cries of their brothers and sisters who have so little--beats in me and all South Africans who believe in justice.
Trinity Church is an esteemed and valued old friend of mine; from the earliest days when I was a young Deacon. Theirs was the consistent and supportive voice I heard when no one else supported me or our beloved brother Nelson Mandela. That is why it is especially painful for me to hear of the impasse you are experiencing with the parish. I appeal to them to find a way to help you. I appeal to them to embrace the higher calling of Our Lord Jesus Christ--which they live so well in all other ways--but now to do so in this instance...can we not rearrange our affairs for justice sake? Just as history watched as South Africa was reborn in promise and fairness so it is watching you now.
In closing, be assured of my thoughts and prayers, they are with you at this very hour.
Occupy Our Homes: Movement Rallies Around Disabled Teacher's Pending Foreclosure by Nelsy Rodriguez
Lesliane Bouchard's left hand trembled Thursday as a crowd gathered in her living room. While the rain poured outside, Bouchard took on the role of a teacher, like she had for years before becoming bedridden, and she reminded those in her living room about the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution.
"I'm not moving," she said to cheers from the crowd. "This is my home, I don't know how else to say it."
Despite the rain, more than 40 protesters from San Diego and Riverside counties gathered at Bouchard's Murrieta home on Mountain Pride Drive for an Occupy Our Homes protest Thursday. Many set up tents intending to spend the night on the front lawn, which had become soaked with rain by the early afternoon.
Most of those who attended did not know Bouchard personally, but they decided to stand in solidarity with her to fight the impending foreclosure of her 2,200-square-foot home."I'd rather be a little uncomfortable than see this woman go homeless," said Lake Elsinore resident Red Imes, as raindrops dripped down his face. Bouchard, 50, said she is on the brink of losing her home now that a spinal injury she suffered in a 2004 car accident has rendered her permanently disabled.
Saturday December 17th Occupy 2.0 Saturday, December 17th, noon An all day performance event at Duarte Square, 6th and Canal On Saturday, December 17th Occupy Wall Street — with support from more than 1400 faith leaders, elders of the civil rights movement, prominent artists and community members — will gather at noon in Duarte Square, downtown Manhattan, for an all day performance event. This event is part of a call to re-occupy in the wake of the coordinated attacks and subsequent evictions of occupations across the nation and around the world.
OWS has sparked a national movement that has exposed the moral bankruptcy of an economy of homeless families and vacant homes, crowded classrooms and empty schools, Wall Street bonuses and endless unemployment lines. This weekend, in a vacant lot at the heart of lower Manhattan, we will continue to occupy the nation’s imagination with art, culture, and our vibrant cry for freedom--as we call out for justice and equality for the 99% through the exercise of our first amendment rights.
Canal and 6th Ave is the site of a vacant lot owned by Trinity Real Estate, the corporate arm of Trinity on Wall Street. Over the past month, since the eviction of Liberty Square (Zuccotti Park) on November 14th, members of the Occupy Wall Street movement with interfaith leaders, elders of the civil rights movement and artists have asked Trinity on Wall Street to do the right thing, and offer sanctuary to the movement in this vacant lot. As Occupy Wall Street supporter Bishop George E. Packard cautions, “I have this great worry that this venerable parish will be on the wrong side of history...Think of it as offering hospitality to travelers from our future who bring the message of "no injustice, no more." If we really saw OWS for who they are rather than putting up roadblocks in their path we'd truly delight in their coming!” In the spirit of Advent, we urge Trinity Church to do the right thing and stand with us on December 17 as we mark the three-month anniversary of the Occupy movement and the one-year anniversary of the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, which sparked the Arab Spring and a global movement for social justice.
Speakers, live music and performances will begin at noon and continue into the night. All activities will be broadcast live on WBAI. Listeners and vistors are invited to tune in and participate in the celebration and expansion of this movement for social and economic justice. -- Lou Reed & Patti Smith scheduled to play on Saturday, December 17th – the THREE MONTH ANNIVERSARY of Occupy Wall St., the birthday of Bradley Manning, and the 1 year anniversary of the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi – the act that sparked the Arab Spring.
WBAI will broadcast the event that starts at 12 noon EDT. See D17 Re-occupy for the official event. -- More information
Why the 99 Percent are Protesting at the World Bank Today December 15, 2011 · By John Cavanagh Undemocratic provisions in treaties enable corporations to sue governments in international tribunals over environmental, health, and other measures foreign countries take to protect the public.
undead wrote:And I'm still waiting to hear what exactly needs to be done, if it's so pointless to have a mass uprising because spooks infiltrate it.
Just to address that point before getting to the others: absolutely nothing wrong with direct action, or labor actions like strikes -- real ones, or for that matter elections (ditto); the problem is that when they're co-opted and hollowed out by spooks, leaving just the illusion of legit activity, they're directed toward nefarious or let's just them capitalist objectives: destabilizing socialist governments, destroying competitive economies, decapitating inconvenient heads of stated, driving populations into poverty and wrecking their infrastructure -- see Gaddafi's Great Man-Made River for example, or what's left of it:
So the best approach I can think of toward the current batch of color revolutions, #occupy being a domestic strain, is to expose them as shams, and that's why I think this is an important conversation to have.
lupercal wrote:^ No problem. Below: two views of Adbusters, which in my opinion is simply a putative -- i.e. "official story" -- instigator, but nevertheless:
1. Tarpley's view, which more or less corresponds to mine, i.e. that Adbusters et al. are basically spook operations, which of course go much deeper and include the whole constellation of CIA media, wikileaks etc etc. Includes a PressTV interview: Tarpley on Adbusters, #Occupy GAs: "brainwashing techniques"
I read, I watched, I looked for the "spook" connection to the origins and organization of OWS, and I didn't find it.
Tarpley says "the people running these things"..."we know who they are" but doesn't actually say who they are. Tarpley says "this Adbusters comes from the Situationist International. Situationist International was cooked up by NATO and the CIA back in the 1950s and 60s"; he doesn't offer details about that, and neither does Wikipedia, but at least Wikipedia has 105 footnotes in its article on Situationist International.
I'm not saying that NATO and the CIA weren't there, but, for example, I just plain don't buy that the May 1968 strikes in France were engineered by NATO and the CIA.
And anyway, the author of the "Privatized Resistance" .pdf you linked says,
I follow by differentiating AdBusters from the 1960s Western-European Situationist political/art movement to whom they are often linked and suggest, rather, that it is more fruitful to compare AdBuster’s cultural politics with post-war American Gestural Abstraction.
I know, I know---the drip, flick 'n splash painters were getting money from the Congress for Cultural Freedom, so---OWS is still a total spook job!
To be honest I only read to page 5; the critique begins with praise for Adbusters but mostly what I gather is that the writer would just do things a little differently (if he was actually doing anything).
Next.
Hugh?
Edited for typos/format
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
Elvis wrote:To be honest I only read to page 5; the critique begins with praise for Adbusters but mostly what I gather is that the writer would just do things a little differently (if he was actually doing anything).Next.
It starts out with a critique of Adbuster's 2003 plans to ‘'‘do no less than reinvent capitalism,'’’ in their words, by launching a sneaker company. That's in the first sentence. Anyway read on my child, at least to pp. 96-97 (PDF pp. 12-13), where you'll find this:
Rather than being a rejection or problematization of the way capitalist culture limited, organized, and routinized people’s existence (and, symptomatically, their aesthetics), Gestural Abstraction was taken to celebrate the possibilities of personal and artistic freedom provided by the capitalist West under the post-war ‘‘peace’’ between docile labour and tamed capital, guaranteed by a strong welfare state underscored by Keynesian economic policies.16 Indeed, as Francis Stonor Saunders (1999) has shown, gestural abstraction came to be covertly funded and promoted (along with a variety of other ‘‘modernist’’ cultural projects) by an alliance of iconic American corporations, elites, and the CIA, primarily to ‘‘beat’’ the Soviet Union in the art-world equivalent of the nuclear arms race, where artistic achievements created in both superpowers was showcased around
(page 97)
the world as evidence of their making good on modernity’s promises. Gestural Abstraction was also consciously used to displace the rising popularity of the Latin American Socialist muralists like Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and their colleagues whose works, in contrast, were made to appear, according to the gleeful recollections of one CIA agent, ‘‘even more stylized . . . rigid and confined’’ then they ‘‘actually’’ were (260). Mexican muralism was generally dedicated to acts of public pedagogy in which large murals served (despite their glorification of the masculinized figure of an Eternal Labour) as public monuments to social struggle around which people could read a history and imagine the possibility of collective social struggle. By contrast, Gestural Abstraction was made into the embodiment of the American ‘‘national will’’ and was dubbed ‘‘free enterprise painting’’ by Nelson Rockefeller, one of its greatest patrons (258).
I'd really like this thread to remain a blow by blow on the action.
Nevermind that I find the spook origin theory somewhat personally insulting, beyond a number of other reactions I don't care to waste time stating at the moment.
Statement adopted by Bill of Rights Day People’s Assembly at the West Los Angeles Federal Building:
We the People, assembled in protest and exercising our First Amendment rights of Free Assembly and Free Speech, condemn the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act. The timing of its passage on the 220th anniversary of the adoption of the Bill of Rights and its signing into law on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party is tantamount to a declaration of war against the very principles of Freedom and Rule of Law.
The law contains provisions that mandate that the military hold any person anywhere accused of being a terrorist or aiding terrorists, including Americans on American soil, in indefinite detention until the end of the Global War on Terror and the end of hostilities. Since under the new law the determination that an individual is a terrorist suspect is entirely arbitrary and without recourse to juridical appeal, by definition it therefore attempts to obliterate the fundamental Constitutional protections of Habeas Corpus and Due Process. NDAA institutes a regime in which the Rule of Law is replaced by the arbitrary Rule of Men. In the absence of Rules, by definition, we are left only with Rulers. The Corporatist regime has indicated its willingness to use the usurped power of the State against We the People in order to perpetuate its rule of theft, plunder, crime, ruin and war.
Our Constitutional Rights are inalienable. We do not recognize the legitimacy of the Indefinite Detention provisions of this Act. Having declared itself outside the Constitution and the Rule of Law, the Corporatist regime is itself illegitimate and any and all actions taken by it going forward are inherently null and void.
All levels and divisions of the Corporatist Elite have participated in this crime. In particular, we condemn the total information blackout perpetrated by the mainstream, big news media that saw fit to deny the American people a broad debate over this Act and its implications.
In addition, the bill provides for severe sanctions against the petroleum industry and financial system of Iran, which we can only surmise are precursors to war. We regard the Indefinite Detention provisions of NDAA as a preparation for the strong opposition that will inevitably arise from the American people to such a war.
We the People will not be cowed into submission. We will stand tall and strong for the repeal of this heinous Act, the total reversal of all police state measures, the revocation of the Rule of Men and the restoration of the Rule of Law. Congress, the President and all military and government officials connected with the drafting and passage of this Act, having blatantly violated their oaths of office to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution", should resign immediately. We the People will work tirelessly to find and exercise all peaceful, legal means and measures to redress this grievance and hold those responsible to account.
We the People of Los Angeles Assembled at the West Los Angeles Federal Building December 15, 2011
Warning....Warning...[as if you'd notice]....WARNING!
RI has mostly failed to realize the level of sophistication of social control by military-intel exploiting decades of social science-as-COUNTERINSURGENCY.
This includes using ventilation, asymmetrical polarization, stereotype-reinforcement, subliminal futility-conditioning, etc.
If the PTBe were going to occlude the exposure of the occupation of the US by the Pentagon....what would be the strategy? Right.
CIA runs mainstream media since WWII:
news rooms, movies/TV, publishing
...
Disney is CIA for kidz!
