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Occupy’s liberation from liberalism

May 10th, 2012 No comments
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By David Graeber

Mayday OWS Protest in NYC 2012 //flickr image  by  The Eyes Of New York

Occupy is shedding its liberal accretions and rapidly turning into something with much deeper roots, creating alliances that promise to transform the very notion of revolutionary politics in America. when OWS re-emerged in the spring, the abandonment of the liberals, the drying-up of the money, have become an almost miraculous blessing.

The US press seems to have decided that the Occupy movement is no longer a story. Pretty much no matter what we do…”

In New York, on May Day, something between 50,000 and 100,000 people marched through the streets – we don’t know the exact numbers because most papers didn’t report the event at all, and therefore, didn’t bother to make estimates. In California, there were blockades and walkouts. In Seattle, one band of protestors relived the famous Black Bloc actions of November 1999, smashing many of the same corporate windows — and even that didn’t make national news! Read more…
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Washington Targets OWS

May 7th, 2012 No comments
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by Stephen Lendman

Last October, Obama told ABC News

“The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side, and that we want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded.”

“And that people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers that those folks aren’t rewarded.”

His key words were: “we are on their side.” Read more…

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Occupy Wall Street’s Act II

May 6th, 2012 No comments
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by Stephen Lendman
 

Grassroots activism takes time to grow. Broad-based participation is vital. Issues must be clearly defined. Leadership is needed. Major obstacles must be overcome.  Avoiding being co-opted, diverted, divided, and/or subverted are key. So is staying the course because major struggles aren’t won short-term. Achieving social justice is the mother of them all, especially in today’s environment.

What began last September waned during winter cold. Perhaps May Day protests began Act II. Only the fullness of time will tell. Read more…

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Inside Story Americas: Is the Occupy movement being hijacked? (VIDEO)

April 19th, 2012 Comments off
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By Al-Jazeera English

After a quiet winter and with a rival group 99% Spring emerging, we ask how is the Occupy movement developing. Inside Story Americas, discusses with guests: Nathan Schneider, Karunga Gashusha and Mike King.

THE SPECTER OF A POPULAR AWAKENING catching fire amid a hitherto deeply indoctrinated population has clearly begun to worry influential sectors of the American ruling class.  A number of “solutions” must have been discussed, at least in the precincts where such things are quietly discussed by the “brain trust” of the plutocracy—usually prostituted academics, p.r. hacks, and naturally prominent members of the “official” party system which in America, as almost any intelligent person knows, amounts to a monopoly. Realizing that a resolute confrontation could inflame the rebels  even further, the ruling orders have tried so far a variety of tactics, from suggestions of all-out repression to faux sympathy to co-optation.
WATCH VIDEO BELOW

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OpEds: Adrienne Pine on nonviolence in the imperial context

March 31st, 2012 Comments off
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Resisting the Cult of Non-Violence

ORIGINALLY AT QUOTHA.NET / Suggested by J. Timperio


People who enshrine Gandhi’s tactics forget the entire context of struggle and the fact that British Raj, brutal as it was in repressing the natives, was a far cry from the sadistic ferocity of a Pinochet, the Argentinian junta or the Salvadoran oligarchy and its death squads. Nonviolence as the solution to grave social problems in all places and climes is a myth, especially when the change connotes a deep change in class  relations.Eds.

Check out this letter from comrades in Cairo. What a relief to see Egyptians speaking out in English against the ICNC spin, as one after another “leader” of the Egyptian revolution is trotted out to represent Nonviolent Egyptian Youth in “solidarity” with Occupy Wall Street protesters, with their neutered Gandhis and MLKs (no anti-imperialism/anti-capitalism here) and “turn-the-other-cheek” blather. Regardless of who is actually behind this letter (it is signed “Comrades from Cairo”), it speaks some very important truths about what happened in Egypt. Here’s a quote:

We faced such direct and indirect violence, and continue to face it. Those who said that the Egyptian revolution was peaceful did not see the horrors that police visited upon us, nor did they see the resistance and even force that revolutionaries used against the police to defend their tentative occupations and spaces: by the government’s own admission; 99 police stations were put to the torch, thousands of police cars were destroyed, and all of the ruling party’s offices around Egypt were burned down. Barricades were erected, officers were beaten back and pelted with rocks even as they fired tear gas and live ammunition on us. But at the end of the day on the 28th of January they retreated, and we had won our cities. Read more…

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The War of the Flea. (2) Together we have a lot of power.

March 27th, 2012 Comments off
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A thousand flea-bites are worse than one bite of a tiger. A continuous stream of bites will bring anyone in an unbearable situation.

The method is to pressure the 1%, not to kill them. A dead 1% can not take decisions and will be replaced by someone else. Then we have again to start the process of increasing pressure. When the pressure becomes excruciating he will try to escape by taking decisions that benefit the 99% and not in the first place the 1%. Read more…
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OpEds: Tabloid Liberaloids

March 19th, 2012 Comments off
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Tabloid Liberaloids

 

By Diane Gee, Senior Contributing Editor, TGP
Founding Editor, The Wild Wild Left

The onslaught of information is like a tidal wave that just keeps rolling in; seemingly endless. It’s hard to balance between having a “starfish” moment and being misdirected by false “cause du jours.”

“The Left will implode,” cry those who have to feel like they are doing some actual good, “if we attack those trying to make a difference!”  They seem to feel that expanding our “consciousness” about the plight of children in areas like War-torn Uganda is worth repeating lies told by agencies like Kony 2012.  Kony is no longer even IN that country. He was certainly the lesser of the two evils in that country when he was there, by a thousandfold to the killings and child soldiers of its President.

The right-wing think tanks know the Left’s Achilles heel. It’s human rights and the abatement of suffering.  With tears in our eyes, a lump in our throats, and heart beating wildly, we will champion a cause; give our 5 or 10 dollars.  We will text, retweet, facebook share and viralize instantly whatever comes our way.  We will unquestioningly support it, even under evidence that it is a disinformation campaign, funded by those right-wing think tanks in order to get US boots on the ground.  We will say, “Well, it might be about the oil there, but still?  Think of the babies!”

I understand the starfish moments.  I try and live that way.  But in the REAL way.  I do fundraisers for ACTUAL people.  I’ve had dozens live with me short-term until they get on their feet.  I take dinner to people in a bad way, or have them over for some. I let kids with troubled parents practically live here.  

So, what of the larger causes, both real and imagined?

Diane Gee :: Tabloid Liberaloids
To tell the truth, they exhaust me.  

While I will sign nearly every petition that comes my way; there are few I find worth bearing repeating.  I no longer give money to any of them… I have none to give, for one.  Mostly, I think that we have spent the better part of 40 years since the last attempt at liberalizing this country throwing our energies at treating the symptoms, and ignoring the causes.

“Vote for better Democrats!”  Yeah, NAFTA and NDAA that shit, mmmk?

“Save the wolves!”  No one loves wolves more than I do; yet until we get serious about real Governmental controls on keeping balanced ecosystems at large, throwing money at the EDF will do little for the wolves.

“Free Mumia!  Free Peltier!”  I have long advocated freedom for these Political Prisoners, yet after all these years, we have made no headway into the world-wide systemic incarceration and assassination of people who stand up to the Elite Classes running the World.

“Apple uses slave labor in China!  Nike is worse!”  Well, I manage to live life with neither product; and I never set foot in Walmart. They all still not only survive, but thrive on their exploitation.  Not a goddamned thing we have done has made the smallest dent in the Predatory Capitalist system that encourages these atrocities.

“Rush called a college girl a SLUT!”  Well, yeah, he’s a douche, and I’ve been called worse.  Sticks and stones may break my bones, and hey, fuck you Rush. If Rush made a sound in the forest and none of us repeated it, he’s just one bear shitting in the woods.  I’m a real woman, and I don’t need protection, nor to wring my hands over a word spoken by an irrelevant old man.  This is divide and conquer stuff.  I’m really more worried about being able to live indoors and eat and mundania like that. Dig?

None of these causes, nor any of the others will get a dime from me, and very little in the way of support.  I have not the energy to waste on strapping bandaids on the fingertips of a body human with a gaping chest wound.

So, here I am at a crossroads.  

I am becoming less involved in the tabloid liberaloid world of eternal suffering and wailing and have only one focus.

The SOURCE of the infection upon humanity and the root of all evil.  The reason for strife and poverty in African Nations.  The cause of exploitative labor in Asian Nations.  The source of the insane wars of aggression against indigenous peoples by Israel.  The factors that created the economic collapse of the Western Nations.  The baseline of the widespread global warming and massive pollution’s devastation upon this globe we occupy.

Each and every one of these ills can be traced back to the unfettered, constantly proliferating GREED that is CAPITALISM.

There can be no “kinder, gentler” Capitalism.  Someone always does without for someone to have more.  In a finite planet it’s a zero sum. You cannot regulate away the very nature of the beast.  Profit itself (as a result of capital invested in other people’s human labor, not one’s own) is exploitation.  

Capitalism is based on inequality; capitalism relegates our very worth to increments of our TIME, our LABOR, and calculates our worth based on the least of the human traits… GREED.

Without COOPERATION as the basis of human organization, rather than COMPETITION, this society is done, if not this entire PLANET.

Capitalism is killing our nest to the point everything on this planet may die. In fact it is dying.

There is only one war to me, and that is the Class War.

Even “Occupy” with its non-sectarian, non-political voice rising against the 1% will be an abject failure if it does not move towards a Socialist Workers-Rights movement.

This is becoming a manifesto, though not my intent in sitting at the keyboard this morning.

I’m sorry – EVERYTHING ELSE HAS BEEN TRIED AND HAS FAILED.

Incrementalism doesn’t empty our prisons, fill bellies, stop wars, and make seeds again fertile.  

Regulation does not stop abuses, nor allow people free migration across this green and blue marble, that is quickly turning brown and grey with our poisons.  

Politicians of the system will never oppose the hand that feeds them.

Until EVERY life is valued as our own?  Until you address the ROOT of the problem, you are playing a dangerous game of whack-a-mole while the stopwatch runs to zero on the World.

You are fighting the wrong battles.

This is why I fight.

This is the only fight worth fighting.

I will save you.  You save the next one.  We all save us all, or it’s over.

Viva la revolucion!

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Diane Gee also moderates the discussion on Facebook’s premier political spot, Links for the Wildly Left.

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The police state—thanks, Eric—flexes its muscles

March 17th, 2012 Comments off
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Occupy Miami raided by SWAT teams (VIDEO)
(While the DOJ chief sleeps)

(AFP Photo / Joe Raedle)

Dozens of cops equipped with shotguns and assault rifles stormed a Miami, Florida apartment building on Tuesday, drawing weapons at peaceful protesters and children with the local Occupy Wall Street campaign that were lawfully residing inside.

Members of Occupy Miami moved into an Overtown safehouse last month after their previous encampment outside of the city’s Government Center was shut down by authorities earlier this year. Now for the second time in only six weeks, cops donned in SWAT-team style gear and brandishing weapons swarmed the residence of several occupiers again, allegedly acting on reports that the residents inside were stockpiling weapons to use in an upcoming demonstration. Read more…

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