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an organic wellspring of protest .....

an organic wellspring of protest .....

As the Occupy Movement marks two months of activism, and faces the chill of the northern winter as well as increasingly hard-line city authorities, a reassessment of its effectiveness is inevitable.

Some organisers are talking, for instance, of declaring a "Phase I Victory" and shutting down for the cooler months.

Others are discussing whether to put forward independent nominees for next year's US presidential elections and others still are wondering whether a political party might emerge out of the movement.

According to its critics, though, the Occupy Movement is incapable of even these notional strategies, simply because it is without either leadership, policies or even ideas.

These predictable broadsides uttered by the usual sorry gaggle of tsk-tsking and harrumphing commentocrats not only miss the point, but actually bolster the very concepts of the Movement.

For it is based on a physical annexation of a public space by anyone who feels they are one of the "ignored majority." It also relies and rather revels in the use of social media as a means of not only networking but also of subverting mainstream or traditional media.

While formally the trend started in New York with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, its spiritual genesis is in non-Western protest Movements in Malaysia and, of course, in the Arab Spring where anti-government Movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain, for instance, centred on gatherings at a well-known public space.

In Asia and the Middle East, particularly in the latter, having a firm policy position would likely have undermined the Movement itself. The opposition was, and is, so disparate and so multi-faceted that rallying around a single firm issue would only have the effect of dividing the mass Movement, and so effectively doing the job of the counter-revolutionary governments.

Moreover, giving the incumbent leaders policy flags to shoot down only makes their work in undermining the demonstrations all the easier.

But, in the West, we tend to expect greater clarity and focus from our political outbreaks. Those that fail to metricate themselves, to audit their policies and to spreadsheet their ideals, are likely to lose credibility with those who are fed only what the mainstream media deems appropriate.

Trouble is, when the mainstream media, still by far the major influence on public opinion we know, doesn't get what it wants, there are consequences. What it wants is neatly packaged media grabs, rational policies to focus on and, perhaps, a charismatic leader to orbit. When it doesn't get these things, some sections of the mainstream media will generally do one of two things: ignore the Movement altogether or, as is largely the case in relation to the Occupy Movement, turn against it and decry its "amateurism", its "wishy-washiness" and it "lack of direction."

Of course, no Movement should feel compelled to play this debilitating and potentially self-defeating game. The Occupy Movement stands against the kind of institutionalism that has brought us global poverty, crashing economies, unprecedented wealth gaps and destroyed environments. And, possibly worst of all, the Tea Party.

In its chaotic energy, the Occupy Movement highlights the unsustainable lack of resources available to the majority and seeks to underline the fact that numbers in a democracy still count, if only by taking over a given space.

The Movement's lack of access and poor resource base is the very point. How is it that these mostly educated and mobilised citizens are denied the space to engage satisfactorily with the state and feel compelled to hit the pavements? Why are the masses so alienated? These are the questions the Occupy Movement poses and which, so far, remain ignored.

The ignorance reflects not so much confusion as denial. The questions are too big and too hard to answer because the answer may well be that the two-party democratic, liberal capitalist state doesn't work anymore. These questions present too much of a burden on the back of the modern state as they lead to conclusions that may well place the world's predominant political institutions in the shadows of redundancy.

The single most powerful feature of the Occupy Movement is that it has not colonised the policy space but the social and cultural space. Thus is it is a rarity - a social/cultural Movement which jabs deeply into the political heart of its enemies. As such, its major achievement is that it is redefining the relationship between politics and society.

The pundits who rant and rave about its supposed lack of direction are only showing just how out of touch they are and how limited is the imagination of the elites they represent. They unwittingly highlight their own ineptitude and myopia, the very weaknesses and failures that this organic wellspring of protest seeks to expose.

James Rose is a media consultant, blogger and author. His latest novel Virus is released this month.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/occupy-has-redefined-the-relationship-between-politics-and-society-20111116-1nim4.html

from wallstreet .....

  • Over 30,000 People Rally in New York City (NYPD estimated 32,500), including organized contingents of workers, students, and other members of "the 99%"
  • Actions in at least 30 cities across the country and around the world
  • Commemoration of 2-Months Since Birth of the 99% Movement, Festival of Lights on Brooklyn Bridge
  • Blockade of all Entry-Points to NYSE; hundreds participate in nonviolence civil disobedience
  • Sense that a powerful and diverse civic movement for social justice is on the ascent

Tens of thousands took action Thursday, November 17 to demand that our political system serve all of us - not just the wealthy and powerful. The NYPD estimated tonight's crowd at 32,500 people, at the culmination of the day of action. Thousands more also mobilized in at least 30 cities across the United States. Demonstrations were also held in cities around the world.

"Our political system should serve all of us - not just the very rich and powerful. Right now Wall Street owns Washington," said participant Beka Economopoulos. "We are the 99% and we are here to reclaim our democracy."

New York led the charge in this energizing day for the emerging movement. In the wake of billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg's predawn raid of Occupy Wall Street at Liberty Square, 1:00am Tuesday morning, thousands of people throughout the five boroughs and the greater region converged to take peaceful action. Following Bloomberg's action, the slogan "You can't evict an idea whose time has come" became the new meme of the 99% movement overnight. The mobilization today proved that the movement is on the ascent and is capable of navigating obstacles.

The day started at 7am with a convergence of a few thousand people on Wall Street. All entry points to the New York Stock Exchange were blockaded. 'People's mics' broke out at barricades, with participants sharing stories of struggling in a dismal and unfair economy.

Through the course of the day, at least 200 people were arrested for peaceful assembly and nonviolent civil disobedience, included City Council Member Melissa Mark Viverito, City Council Member Jumaane Williams, Workers United International Vice President Wilfredo Larancuent, SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry, SEIU 1199 President George Gresham, CWA Vice President Chris Shelton, CWA Vice President , Fr. Luis Barrios of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization-IFCO, retired Philadelphia Police Captain Ray Lewis, and many others.

"All the cops are just workers for the one percent, and they don't even realize they're being exploited," retired Police Captain Ray Lewis said. "As soon as I'm let out of jail, I'll be right back here and they'll have to arrest me again."

57-year-old bond trader Gene Williams joked that he was "one of the bad guys" and said supportively, "The fact of the matter is, there is a schism between the rich and the poor and it's getting wider."

At 3:00pm, thousands of students converged at Union Square in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. They held a teach-in to discuss their concerns about the prospect of a lifetime of debt and economic insecurity. They held a student General Assembly and marched en masse to Foley Square.

The rally at Foley Square was electric. It was remarkably diverse in participation, across race, religion, gender, and age. As the rally concluded, thousands of participants walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, holding up lights - for a "festival of lights" to mark two months since the birth of the "99% movement". (November 17 marks two months since the start of Occupy Wall Street at Liberty Square.)

"I worked hard and played by the rules, but when budget cuts hit last year I lost my job as an EMT and now I'm about to lose my family's home," said Bronx resident Carlos Rivera. "I'm sitting down on the Brooklyn Bridge today because it's not fair that our taxpayer dollars bailed out big banks like my mortgage holder, Bank of America, but they refuse home-saving loan modifications for struggling families like mine. It's time banks and the super wealthy paid their fair share and Congress helped people get back to work."

For updates occupyamerica.ning.com  

greed is crap... failure is good...

Failure Is Good


By

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a complete turkey! It’s the supercommittee!

By next Wednesday, the so-called supercommittee, a bipartisan group of legislators, is supposed to reach an agreement on how to reduce future deficits. Barring an evil miracle — I’ll explain the evil part later — the committee will fail to meet that deadline.

If this news surprises you, you haven’t been paying attention. If it depresses you, cheer up: In this case, failure is good.

Why was the supercommittee doomed to fail? Mainly because the gulf between our two major political parties is so wide. Republicans and Democrats don’t just have different priorities; they live in different intellectual and moral universes.

In Democrat-world, up is up and down is down. Raising taxes increases revenue, and cutting spending while the economy is still depressed reduces employment. But in Republican-world, down is up. The way to increase revenue is to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and slashing government spending is a job-creation strategy. Try getting a leading Republican to admit that the Bush tax cuts increased the deficit or that sharp cuts in government spending (except on the military) would hurt the economic recovery.

Moreover, the parties have sharply different views of what constitutes economic justice.

Democrats see social insurance programs, from Social Security to food stamps, as serving the moral imperative of providing basic security to our fellow citizens and helping those in need.

Republicans have a totally different view. They may soft-pedal that view in public — in last year’s elections, they even managed to pose as defenders of Medicare — but, in private, they view the welfare state as immoral, a matter of forcing citizens at gunpoint to hand their money over to other people. By creating Social Security, declared Rick Perry in his book “Fed Up!”, F.D.R. was “violently tossing aside any respect for our founding principles.” Does anyone doubt that he was speaking for many in his party?

So the supercommittee brought together legislators who disagree completely both about how the world works and about the proper role of government. Why did anyone think this would work?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/opinion/krugman-failure-is-good.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

 

expect to be dehumanised .....

Yesterday, the New York Police Department deployed a strange new weapon against the tens of thousands of demonstrators who converged downtown for the largest protest in Occupy Wall Street's two month history: the LRAD sound cannon. NYPD officers reportedly blasted Occupy protesters with rays from the LRAD cannon while they sang the American national anthem near Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park (photos here), establishing an atmosphere of fear and intimidation that lasted throughout the evening.

Designed and manufactured by the San Diego-based LRAD Corporation, which was formerly known as the American Technology Corporation, the Long Range Acoustic Device sound weapon is the latest innovation in crowd suppression technology. It is portable and powerful, capable of transmitting a focused ray of 140 decibels of sound at a crowd of people, generating painful cranial vibrations so profound ear plugs become useless. According to LRAD promotional material, the sonic weapon "provides military personnel with a powerful, penetrating warning tone that can be followed by clear voice broadcasts in host nation languages to warn and shape the behavior of potential threats."

In June, LRAD sold $293,000 worth of its 100X and 500X sound canon systems to the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The contract was part of Israeli Army Commander Maj. Gen. Avi Mizrahi's investment in $35 million in suppression systems in anticipation of widespread unrest in the occupied West Bank that was to have been prompted by the Palestinian Authority's statehood bid at the United Nations.

The Israeli Army has refined the use of LRAD systems on the civilian population of Palestinian villages engaged in the unarmed popular struggle against Israel's illegal military occupation. Demonstrators in the village of Beit Ummar have been repeatedly assaulted by Israeli forces armed with LRAD systems, including on October 7, when the Israeli army used the LRAD to attack unarmed demonstrators protesting against the abuse and isolation of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

I first visited the Beit Ummar area in the spring of 2009, joining a group of international and Israeli activists as they protected the village's farmers from fanatical Jewish settlers from the colony of Bat Ayn, who had repeatedly assaulted them as they attempted to work their fields. As soon as I arrived I witnessed a group of Jewish children from Bat Ayn charge down a hill while chanting, "Death to Arabs!" at the farmers.

In January 2011, settlers shot a Beit Ummar resident, 17-year-old Yousef Fakhri Ikhlayl in the head, leaving him brain dead. The settlers could not carry out their deadly violence without the protection of the Israeli Army, which invariably defends them while crushing unarmed protests in Beit Ummar with disproportionate force.

Beit Ummar has carried on its unarmed popular resistance struggle against impossible odds. The village has been severed in half by a settler bypass road, Highway 60, which occupied Palestinians are forbidden from travelling on. Numerous graves in the village cemetery were desecrated in order to build the Israelis-only highway. Not only are village residents surrounded by army pillboxes and preyed on by extremist settlers, they have been transformed into experimental gerbils in the global pacification industry's laboratory of doom.

Having been tested on a defenseless, occupied population in Palestine, the LRAD made its grand debut in New York City yesterday, where local police forces targeted American citizens peacefully protesting against economic exploitation. The peculiar weapon system symbolizes the creeping Israelification of America's local police forces and the Palestinianization of all who challenge the predations of a zero tolerant 1 percent master class.

As the blogger Ayesha Kazmi recently wrote to Occupy movement participants, "So welcome to the War on Terror. Your first lesson: if your views happen to counter the established narrative, expect to be dehumanised, then treated like a terrorist."

Introducing the LRAD Sound Cannon