[Don't get out as much as I used to!] I heard this chant for the first time in New York while watching the videos of the conga line snaking through the crowd at Zuccotti/Liberty Park before the police went on their riotous rampage on Saturday night.
The video above shows what may be the first time it was used in New York, on Wall Street, on December 13, 2011. It's great. A report from Chapel Hill from last November:
When the police crossed the street towards the building, about fifty of us gathered in front of it, chanting “A—Anti—Anticapitalista!” The officers hesitated—what was this strange incantation?—and withdrew. That chant cast an enchantment, magically protecting the occupation.
Sure seemed like it! And note well, the New Yorkers are far more enthusiastic when using this chant than are their European comrades.
Starting about 3:38 in the video above, NYPD ScooterCops use the head of a man [said to be one of the OWS street medics] they are detaining as a battering ram to break a window in the door of what appears to be an apartment house [Teh google says the address: 55 E 10th St, is the Brittany Residence Hall of NYU] along the route of an OWS [splinter] march from Zuccotti/Liberty Park to Washington Square [my bad] Union Square on March 17, 2012.
There was a report that another man was grabbed from among the marchers and his head was smashed into a window along the route, breaking it, but I have not found confirmation (it may have been this incident, though the report I saw referred to it as a separate incident.) There were other reports of people being slammed into walls.
Throughout the day, NYPD had been employing their "snatch and grab" tactic of arbitrarily targeting members of the crowd for arrest. They've been doing this for months, but on Sunday, it was employed more extensively than it has been for some time.
More and more video and testimony of what went on is being posted and is showing up on searches. What happened Sunday in New York City in connection with OWS was, in all respects, a police riot.
Will even one self-proclaimed "nonviolence advocate" rend even part of their garment over it?
[NOTE: Yesterday's post was intended to be about the continuing propaganda regarding the saga and struggle of the soldier in custody for the latest Afghanistan Massacre. But the events in New York took precedence. I spent most of the day going through written reports and videos of what was going on. As for yesterday's intended post, a digest:
The soldier in custody is being tried and acquitted in the media based on a continual feed of "information" about him and the difficulties he's faced -- basically building a defense case in public -- that is almost all coming directly from the Pentagon. Fascinating, isn't it? Though he is being held for murder most foul, those holding him are at pains to defend him because of his multiple deployments and his wounds and in yesterday's propaganda, because he and his family have been facing severe financial difficulties as well. In other words, the facts that might lead to justice are of no interest at all; the dead and wounded aren't even mentionable any more. This situation oddly mirrors -- or maybe not so oddly, come to think about it -- the lack of any concept of rational justice when it comes to matters involving the financial and economic destruction wrought by our Overclass. To the extent their victims exist at all (we're all their victims in one way or another) it is only as objects and foils to their depredations; the idea of "justice" under the circumstances is a cruel joke.]
Alcuin in comments links to a 2004 essay by David Graeber called "Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology" that I cannot recommend highly enough. It's almost 10 years old now, but it is in nearly every way apropos to right now -- on top of which, it is an utter delight to read. Sometimes academics -- and Graeber himself -- come off a ponderous blow-hards (I should talk!) but in this case, Graeber explores his topic with a light and vigorous approach that really makes it almost magical.
In the broadest sense, "Fragments" is Anarchist apologetics which some people will reject out of hand. I tend not to be a political dogmatist, nor am I all that wedded to a particular political ideology (though my leftist bent is clear enough, but that comes from something deeper, not strictly speaking politics.)
Until the Occupy Movement got under way, I had never given much thought to anarchism or anarchist theory. Like most Americans, indeed like most people around the world, I had been conditioned to disregard anarchists and anarchism as a serious political philosophy because anarchists blew up the Los Angeles Times building in 1910, an anarchist shot William McKinley in 1900 and so forth. Furthermore, like most Americans and others around the world, I had been conditioned to believe certain "facts" about anarchism, such as the "fact" that it was a theory of political chaos, the "fact" that without a state, there could be no civilization, and the "fact" that anarchism could ultimately be reduced to Social Darwinism run amok. So. Like most everyone else, I dismissed anarchism and those who professed to be anarchists as essentially irrelevant to serious political consideration. When it came to notions of "Revolution," anarchists were simply out of the picture altogether. They might trigger destruction, but they had no capability of construction, let alone re-construction after destruction.
Occupy has changed my thinking, maybe not as much as some would like, but it's a substantial change from my previous perspective. I have not got any piercings or tattoos, nor is my attire all black; I'm not much into primitivism, though I have long had a strong regard for individualism and some forms of tribalism, and throughout my life, I have tried to live lightly on the land. I don't much care for the hair-trigger temper that seems to infuse some anarchists as they go about their daily lives (though I admit to having something of a temper myself '-D ). And I'm not particularly fond of endless -- circular -- debates over inconsequentials that somehow seem to loom as insurmountable during practically every discussion that involves anarchists.
For years, though, I've had an kind of arm-length association with anarchists in real life and online, and I've often suggested that if they wanted to form a New Society of Voluntary Association -- or what have you -- go ahead and do it; there is plenty of opportunity to do so in this country. In fact, these efforts at building New Societies are fundamental aspects of the American experience; they're built in to the national consciousness -- so go, do, prosper!
The point being The Demonstration. Show us how it works. Well? Where's The Demonstration? We're waiting. Show us! Nothing happens... Back to the circular argument that seems to require the destruction of the present system before any New Society can emerge.
Well, Graeber seems to reject that notion in "Fragments." In fact, he seems to be saying, based to a great extent on his field experience in Madagascar, that the (anarchist) New Society can emerge spontaneously within the rotting shell of the old, and that it can persist side-by-side with more rigid and structured political frameworks without necessarily causing more than a minor disturbance. In other words, accommodation and replacement are both possible outcomes; the proof is all around us. He saw it in operation in Madagascar when he was doing anthropological field research. Obviously, what he saw made a profound impression on him and continues to inform his thinking and writing to this day.
When "Teh Revolution" comes, it doesn't have to be -- probably won't be -- anything like we expect a Revolution to be, and it certainly doesn't require a violent framework to take place or to succeed. Successful Revolution -- of which there have been a few - is more a matter of social affinities, alignments and timing, not necessarily force of arms or even uprisings. It just... IS.
Well. What a concept.
And here we are, in the midst of what is arguably the first Global People's Revolution, one that has been spontaneously generated at the root level -- if not actually at the soil level in which the roots reside (but I won't expand on that thought too much here). The spontaneity of Occupy is one of its iconic features; it just arrives and "is," it isn't directed or emplaced, it just... "is." Without an obvious structure or even necessarily a declared purpose, let alone stated goals and objectives, it just... "is".
Graeber wrote "Fragments" long before the appearance of Occupy, of course, but not before some of its precursors, such as the anti-globalization movement, the Zapatistas, the Situationists and the Insurrectionists, and so forth. Occupy did not come out of nothing after all; this ground has been prepped, plowed and planted for quite some time. Direct precursors are the North African uprisings, the European uprisings that interconnected with them, and in the United States, the uprising in Wisconsin.
Two strategic factors of Occupy help to clarify what's happening, what the Revolution This Time looks like: 1) de-legitimizing present authority; 2) demonstrating how a Better Future can, does, and will work.
This is not taking place on a theoretical plane, it is going on day by day in somewhat fanciful but ultimately practical ways in the real world -- in sequence, alternately and simultaneously.
These entwined strategic factors seem to be taken directly from Gene Sharp's manuals for revolution, manuals which actually propose something very different is necessary for a successful revolution than what Occupy has been doing for the last few months.
A problem I have had with Sharp's theories and recipes for Revolution is that they don't work anymore. We've seen the results of following Sharp's revolutionary models in the catastrophic and blood-soaked situations in Libya and Syria, Bahrain and the Yemen, among many other places where rebels have studied Sharp and adopted his program. A deeper criticism of Sharp is that the Revolution he proposes is not a People's Revolution at all, it's a marketing campaign on behalf of Neo-Liberalism and all that goes with it.
In other words, what you get from a Sharp-style Revolution may not be anything like what you signed up for, and it could well turn out to be worse for the People than what you were rebelling against.
I've often said that no one should engage in Revolution mindlessly or take a Revolutionary path without considering the consequences as fully as possible. But human nature often doesn't provide for that kind of in depth consideration of actions especially under the circumstances we face today.
What happens instead is that most people hold back from a Revolutionary course by force of conditioning and habit, while the few who can do so take the risk to see what can be accomplished, if anything, on a rebel path. Most often, they are simply crushed like a bug. But if the situation is ripe for change, or if alternatives and change are somehow integral to the current social framework and situation, something else, something unexpected, may take place.
I think that's where we are in this country. The concepts of change and alternatives to established institutions and power centers are built in to our conception of a national identity. Questioning/challenging authority while developing and demonstrating alternative models of social, political, and economic organization has been going on in America since before there was an "America."
The simultaneous de-legitimizing of present authority while demonstrating alternatives to it are the key factors of Occupy, and Graeber's "Fragments" helps to show how this approach to Revolution is both more radical and perhaps more natural than we may think.
This interview with Graeber expands somewhat on his thoughts on the nature of things....
I've seen a number of video versions of what happened to Cecily McMillen when she had an epileptic seizure after being arrested and placed on a transit bus. But this one is easily the most disgusting and horrifying of any I've seen so far.
It's not so much the gross indifference of the police to the plight of their prisoner nor is it the outrage of the witnesses, it is that they do these things deliberately with a great deal of malice aforethought, for the strategic purpose of intimidating witnesses and suppressing dissent.
They want to be seen behaving in just as thuggish a manner as you see here.
They want you to see it in order to scare the crap out of you.
Let's start with the UC Davis "Pepper Spray Report." The judge hearing the matter in Oakland was expected to rule yesterday that the report could be released intact, but instead he decided to split the baby, ruling that the parts of the report (especially "Section 6" in which officers are named and their actions criticized) could be withheld until a final ruling, whenever that comes.
Both "sides" hailed the decision as a propaganda victory, but the public gets nothing out of the deal, as the judge also ordered that the attorneys for both "sides" decide among themselves what could and could not be released and when. Under those conditions, the Report can be sequestered indefinitely, which -- if I may be so bold as to opine on the matter -- is the point.
Over the years, the University of California has done a number of reports on police brutality against students and faculty on campuses and it's always the same: the reports are withheld until "emotions die down," and when they are released, interest has moved to some other issue, the reports are considered "fully" by UCPD and administrators, and little or nothing changes. The next time the students and their faculty allies get uppity, they get the holy shit beat out of them, and the cycle repeats. World without end. Amen.
Nevertheless, every report is hailed as a propaganda victory by both "sides". Clue: there are not "two sides," there's only one, and the primary interest of that side is to ensure that the troubled campus waters are not further roiled by the release of the report.
And so it is again. -------------------------------- The Afghanistan Massacre Wurlitzer continues with its concerto about the poor soldier who is accused (and now named) in the incident. Sympathy for him and understanding of his plight -- as a fourth deployment vet who didn't want to go, who has two lovely young children and who lives in a modern white house in the pine forests of Washington, etc., etc. -- is being whipped up at every turn. No other soldiers are even hinted at being involved, and the existence of Afghan reports of what happened and who did it are simply ignored. Not only do the Afghans have no voice in this matter, with the exception of Hamid Karzai, they no longer exist at all -- if they ever did. The murder spree has become a complete abstraction in the American media, with Pentagon spokespeople insisting that it will be "thoroughly investigated" while at the same time feeding the media endless streams of sympathetic tidbits about the one accused soldier, who -- from appearances -- has already been cleared of wrong-doing. "Bad things happen in war. Too bad, so sad."
------------------------ And then there's this one, which kind of stuns me:
Some of us recall that in January, one of my favorite radio shows, "This American Life," presented a radio version of a dramatization of horrible labor conditions in Chinese plants that make Apple products, especially IPads and such. That show has been pulled from the archives, it seems, because it was not entirely accurate. In fact, it was a radio play, a one-man dramatic exploration of what was going on in Chinese plants that build Apple products. That's how it was presented.
Anyone who listens to "This American Life" should know that they are not getting literal truth or "journalism." They are getting what are usually very personal interpretations of events and feelings and all the rest of it. Each segment is a little drama that focuses on... something important to the segment's creator. It's story-telling, often at a very high level of creativity and accomplishment.
But the story about the labor horrors in Apple's Chinese production plants was apparently going "too far."
I'm stunned.
It's nonsense on stilts, but Ira Glass is going to spend the entire show this weekend "explaining" how they could have gotten it so wrong. What a crock. But then maybe Apple has "persuaded" them. They have ways, after all.
FURTHERMORE: Having now listened to this week's episode, I am infuriated with Ira Glass and "This American Life." I do not believe his oh so pious prattling about the untruthfulness of Michael Daisey. For Ira to say several times that if he sees and hears someone say something from the stage he assumes it to be "factual" -- unless it is plainly labeled as "fiction" -- is simply unbelievable. Surely he is not that naive. It's fairly obvious to me that TAL got a demand letter from Apple Legal and they did what they had to do, but I have a hard time believing that they had to smear Michael Daisey in the process. To then follow up their smear job with what amounts to a hagiography of Apple and its manufacturing practices from NYT writer Charles Duhigg just makes it all the more sickening. I wouldn't really like to see other episodes of "This American Life" subjected to the kind of scrutiny this episode got -- because it would simply destroy the program. I think Ira knows that, too.
What happened here shows just how powerful certain corporate interests are in this country, and how obvious their exercise of power can be. ----------------------------------
Finally, an editorial regarding the Limbaugh Matter and the banned Doonsbury strip. What a frightful, confused mess. First they complain that Limbaugh did a bad thing by calling Sandra Fluke those two words. But equally bad, in their eyes, are the efforts of activists to get his show off the air. No, no, no! The radio stations that air his show should be convinced to air opposing view points, and if they don't do it, then the activists should go to Congress and lobby -- for however many years it takes -- to require that opposing viewpoints be aired!
On the other hand, activists are wrong to complain that Doonsbury is being "censored" when some papers won't run the current strip, because, as we know, only Government can "censor" (what complete crap) and what private businesses do is their own affair. If they decide not to run a particular story or comic strip story line, it's not "censorship" (yes it is!) it's just business.
I've been involved in something called "Occupy Strategy National Dialogue" through InterOccupy for over a month now -- practically a whole era in Occupy Time -- that started as a national Occupy dialogue on the issue of "nonviolence vs diversity of tactics" that was triggered by Chris Hedges infamous polemic: "Black Bloc: The Cancer on Occupy."
I'm not going to rehash all that, partly because it is deeply hurtful to many people who have dedicated much more than I have to the Movement/Revolution, but also because it's an irresolvable and basically false issue. Nonviolence IS part of the diversity of tactics that are used throughout Occupy, so the notion that there is any "versus" at all is stupid. The question, to the extent there is one, is whether a nonviolent strategy a la Gandhi and King (or my man, Cesar Chavez) is the right one for Occupy. That question is still open. Many Occupy activists are certain that it is not just the right one, it is the only one that has a chance of success. I -- and many others -- are not so sure. In fact, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the Gandhi/King nonviolent strategy is bound to fail, and those who advocate it as the "only way" forward are wittingly or unwittingly trying to ensure that failure is the only option.
I categorize most of them as the same people or the same sorts of people who from the outset have been trying to corral Occupy into a standard format of some kind, preferably a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a 501(c)(4) political wing. This is what people are used to and comfortable with; I'm used to it and comfortable with it, having worked in that environment on one side of it or the other all my adult life. It is the means by which and through which "the people" in groups -- that is to say the organizational boards and staffs -- interact with government agencies and officials.
It's an OK model if the system is working, but the system isn't working in our country at this time, nor has the system functioned on behalf of the People more than haltingly and occasionally for many years. I argue that we are well past the point where we can replicate the efforts of the past and expect reasonably similar results. It's not going to work. Our Rulers are way, way ahead of us on that plane.
If they can easily thwart and subvert the NPO/advocacy group model -- and they can and do -- they can easily do the same to the nonviolent resistance strategies of Gandhi and King (and Chavez), which they have been doing for many a long year, though it doesn't dawn on many people that the reason why their NPOs and advocacy groups don't seem to be getting any where but have bogged down in permanent wheel spinning mode is because the Overclass has been strategizing the thwartage and subversion of these efforts for decades. They know how to do it.
Gandhian/King-like nonviolent efforts don't work any more. I realize that I've been flogging the UC Berkeley/Davis issue for quite a while, and if it's become boring, oh well! But the thing is that UC and other students have been using the Gandhi/King nonviolent resistance tactics for decades, and here we are. Those tactics have not "worked" for positive change at the University since about 1969, and the People's Park imbroglio. Nevertheless, they keep getting done, as was the case at Cal on November 9, and at Davis on November 18 last year.
And in both cases, the students and their faculty allies wound up on the losing end of the stick -- at Berkeley, the literal end of the nightstick, at Davis, the figurative "stick" of pepper spray, though they won the moral high ground.
But there's more to it than that. The students and their faculty allies at both Cal and Davis (and elsewhere in the system, these are the two closest UC campuses to me, but there have been tiny revolutions throughout the entire higher education system in California for years and years) gave up their moral advantage almost as soon as they had won the high ground. I witnessed this happening at Davis especially and my jaw dropped to the ground.
Almost immediately after the Chancellor's Walk of Shame at Davis, she called a "town hall" with students and administrators to discuss the matter. There was a subsequent one between her administration and the Davis faculty. At both of them, the moral victors in the struggle gave up their advantage almost too willingly, and wound up expressing their gratitude toward and trust in the administrators who had been fucking them over and fucking them up for years. Initially, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was a brilliant move on the part of the oppressors. I'm not sure the oppressed understand what happened to this day -- as we await release of the sanitized and long-delayed report on the pepper spray incident.
This is not how you do nonviolent resistance, people! Not if you want to... win. But then it occurred to me, maybe that's not what they want... I'll get to that anon.
The way these things used to be done, once you gain a moral victory, you consolidate it immediately and press your demands/interests even harder; you do not back down. But that's what happened at the UC get-togethers. [Added thought: The victors backed away from their victory.] And I've seen it happen in other Occupy contexts as well.
The more I talked to people about it and paid attention to what was going, the more I realized that many people actually do think that's how a nonviolent resistance campaign is supposed to go. If you "win" in a confrontation such as that at Cal and at Davis, you're supposed to "yield," or at least re-evaluate, and not press your advantage -- because apparently they believe that's what King and Gandhi would have done so as to show good will toward the oppressors. But good will is a separate issue. Ideally, it's something you are showing all the time -- while simultaneously pressing your advantage. But they didn't do that. They gave up.
That was an example (to me at any rate) of how very easy it is for the Overclass to subvert and thwart old-fashioned kinds of nonviolent resistance; they have been strategizing how to do this for decades, and they've go it down. The People are almost powerless against it.
Now in the strategy sessions I've been attending through InterOccupy, the Gene Sharp strategy of nonviolent revolutionary "change" is being heavily promoted as the right one for Occupy to adopt, and I question it.
The Gene Sharp strategy is found in "From Dictatorship to Democracy" which is an exploration of how to do a nonviolent revolution such as we saw in Eastern Europe, the Philippines, China, and parts of Latin America in the 80's and 90's. That model has been adapted and adopted in Arab states and Iran, with varying -- in many cases, tragic -- results.
Having had some time to evaluate the results of the Arab Spring and the ongoing revolts against various entrenched powers in the Arab world and Iran, we'd do well to understand the Gene Sharp model doesn't work any more, either.
The Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions -- which were patterned on Gene Sharp's revolutionary model -- were so exciting, but the let down after "victory" has been severe; the result is nothing like what the People had in mind, and in Egypt, especially, there is a feeling that they may have to do it all over again.
The results in Bahrain, the Yemen, Libya and Syria are simply appalling. Gawd Awful horrors that just don't stop. In Iran, the Green Revolution was rather quickly subverted and shut down -- with relatively little bloodshed but with much repression. Gene Sharp's model was adopted in those places as well, and the result was monstrous destruction and bloodshed, civil war, and/or worse repression. Wait. That's not how this model is supposed to work. Only that's how it works now because the Arab and Iranian Overclasses have learned how to thwart the masses when they rise. It's messy but they manage somehow to do it.
Meanwhile, in the United States the nonviolent course that Sharp lays out has never been tried, but the idea that it would work here or in Europe or in any more-or-less "civil democracy" society (no matter how managed the "democracy" might be) has no evidence to support it. It doesn't mean that it can't, it means there's no evidence to show that it does -- primarily, I would say, because in a "civil democracy," it is always theoretically possible to achieve significant social and political change through legal channels and elections. It may not be practically possible, but in theory it is.
So using the Sharp template in "civil democracies" doesn't strike me as particularly useful, and the horrifying results in parts of the Arab world and Iran should be a caution. The fact that it isn't being used as a template in Europe or much of anywhere else should be recognized as well.
Occupy provides its own strategic template, as balky and faulty as it is, an from my way of looking at it, this is the one the Movement needs to stick with. It's not going to be easy, in part because there are so many efforts to undermine and subvert it from every direction, internally and externally.
Occupations are themselves (sometimes) strategic. The actions of Occupy have a surprisingly strategic resonance -- they are mostly intended to shake the foundations of a rotting "civil democracy" system. As I've put it in other posts, the overall strategy is to accomplish fundamental systemic change by de-legitimizing the authority of current establishments, and by demonstrating alternatives to current establishments and institutions and showing how they can and do work.
Some of those involved with Occupy are getting into a long-term frame of mind, on the premise that this struggle will have to go on for many years, and once again they are pressing to institutionalize Occupy and standardize and regularize it.
Back in October of last year, Malcolm Harris had some tactical/strategic advice for Occupy Wall Street, some of which might have been heard in the interim, I don't know. But he was looking at the encampment at Liberty/Zuccotti Park from the perspective of effectiveness, and he, I think, got that part wrong. No, the encampment wasn't accomplishing what he thought it should, but then what does? It's hard to say. These were his parting thoughts, though, and we're still hearing echoes...
- The GA/consensus model doesn’t exactly encourage creativity and is particularly susceptible to police co-optation. In one of the most heavily policed places in the world, where the NYPD is bragging about its ability to shoot down planes, we should assume they have a Che t-shirt and a Chrome messenger bag in a prop room somewhere. If anyone can lead the group, that means anyone can lead the group. A switch to a model based on smaller bands of people (5-10) who know and trust each other and have found common ground and operate in (naturally) overlapping ways would have the dual benefits of enabling creative rather than agreeable actions and reducing the risk of police infiltration, without forfeiting the benefits of a large group. The technical term for these crews is “affinity groups,” but I prefer “friends.”
- If the population of the park can grow past its boundaries and start threatening the normal functioning of Wall Street, then it could open up space for smaller groups to operate without too much police attention and change the balance of power in the park. I heard unconfirmed reports that Radiohead is planning a concert at the occupation this week, which if true could make it uncontrollable and attract more folks to a relatively uninhabited part of the city. I’m disinclined to believe the rumors, but you never know, and it’s not like they can’t afford to bail themselves out of jail. Maybe they could be cajoled over Twitter to show up and play a few acoustic songs. Either way, it doesn’t make sense to me to try and protect the occupation from this kind of influx of people, even if that would make it untenable in its current form.
- This is a marathon, not a sprint or a hamster wheel. The next year is going to be explosive: the two Parties will spend a billion each reminding Americans how terrible everything is, and hoping they can get away with blaming each other for a permanent unemployment crisis. The social ills that brought people out aren’t getting better any time soon. Occupy Wall Street is part of a sequence, not the sequence itself, and we should be thinking about its role in a revolutionary campaign of a longer but bound duration.
- If corporations are people, what would it mean to wrap our hands around one’s neck and choke it to death?
These are admittedly preliminary thoughts, and I want to discuss what to do with other folks, but I don’t want to address an assembly, and not just for security reasons. When I’ve found people and groups of people at the occupation who are ready to move beyond its current bounds, it’s on the edges of the large circles. Maybe it’s time the whole thing got edgier. That is, sharper.
--------------------------
FURTHERMORE: (I see I inadvertently truncated the post because I was futilely trying to multitask.)
The problem with trying to overthink and overstrategize the Occupy Movement, or with trying to apply a pre-existing template to it at this point, is that Occupy is itself its own strategy and provides its own template. Activists instinctively respond to or recoil from it. Those who want it to be something different, more like Gene Sharp's recipe for nonviolent revolution, for example, actually want a different movement than this one. The way I look at it, that's OK, but Occupy isn't the vehicle for that kind of movement. Occupy is doing something else, pioneering in many ways, and if it's not your preferred form of activism, then Occupy is probably not where you should be.
The fact that there is no Gene Sharp style revolutionary movement (not even Occupy) in the United States is telling us something. The fact that Occupy is doing as well as it is, despite more and more violent repression, is also telling us something.
Harris's criticisms came very early, and we're still hearing the same ones as well as many others that were voiced even before there was an Occupy Wall Street. From a serious strategic and tactical standpoint, Occupy shouldn't be working at all. But strangely it does. Its very looseness and ad hoc-ness, its seemingly incomprehensible (or in some cases, nonexistent!) strategic planning, even its stark failures and its odd obsessions with process, as well as the constant carping and complaining about it(!), all seem to have some sort of value to the Movement.
I have no idea how this works -- except that it is organic and evolutionary and it is working.
Note: I was going to use the Moody's "Go Now" for this post, but then I found this video by Tigertown, and I fell in love with it. Just an unreconstructed hippie at heart, I guess. (Furthermore, "Tigertown" is the current appellation of the section of the coastal California city I lived in when I was just a wee tot... so the name of the band is evocative to me.)
This comes courtesy of the AP -- well, "courtesy of" since the AP tends to lack even human decency much of the time -- but I heard the framing yesterday on NPR:
Apparently Hamid Karzai gave a speech after the blowsy and stupid sounding Leon Panetta left Afghanistan in which he politely suggested that foreign troops should get out of the rural areas of Afghanistan forthwith and return to their bases. According to The Best Available Minds, however:
The demands from the Natives that NATO troops should pull out of villages and return to their bases "represent new setbacks to America's strategy for ending the 10-year-old war."
Besides which, he didn't really mean it.
Note how cleverly worded the assertion is. The demand from the Afghan goverment (such as it is) mirrors and parallels what happened in Iraq as the Imperial Forces were being removed: the troops were withdrawn from daily interaction with the IDs (Iraqi Devils) and confined to their enormous and growing bases, with only occasional joint operations conducted from time to time to ensure the Natives understood who was boss and who was still in charge. But in this case, the demand that the foreign troops get out of rural areas and leave policing them to the Afghan authorities (such as they are) -- which makes perfectly rational sense -- is met with the assertion that doing so will jeopardize the "strategy" for ending the war. Really? The implication being that Karzai is trying to prolong the war. Well, isn't that a turn about?
Furthermore, once again Karzai demanded an end to night raids -- which Panetta, at his blowsiest and stupidest, defended as necessary to "defeat al Qaida."
(Note on Panetta. He really does not seem to be up to this. Maybe he should think about returning to his think tank on the Pacific.)
Teri49 in comments links to an Afghan news source that says that after investigation and interviews with survivors and witnesses, an Afghan parliamentary probe has determined that the killing spree was conducted by two separate squads, totaling as many as twenty American soldiers. No matter how much the military lies about such things and tries to cover up the facts, it will not be possible to keep the true story from coming out eventually. As a rule, most of those who follow these matters know well enough that oppressed peoples (ie: the victims) tend to tell the truth as best they know it, whereas the perpetrators do not.
So. We'll see. But the notion that getting the foreign troops out of the rural areas and ending the night raids will somehow interfere with "ending the war" is laughable. It's as if the military is bound and determined to de-legitimize itself come hell or high water.
By now, it should be clear that the Authorities have been busy during the Occupy semi-hiatus over the winter. Oh yes. Oh. My. Yes.
The other day, the Oakland City Attorney sued one of the local Occupy activistsfor vandalism for acts he is alleged to have committed in Oakland on the night of General Strike Day, November 2. Cesar is one of the gentlest and most generous people I know. He says that on that night, he was not committing vandalism in Oakland at all. He was trying to protect himself from police munitions fire by "liberating" a piece of plywood covering a window to use as a shield. Cesar was arrested that night for vandalism and failure to disperse, but he has not been charged criminally. The video evidence the city says they will produce more than likely is ambiguous about what actually happened, but it's obvious the City of Oakland is using this case as a weapon to keep "outside agitators" out of Oakland. Message: if people from elsewhere show up in Oakland and something happens, the outsiders will be charged for damages. Sort of like the Hotel Tax, I guess.
Not content with merely charging outsiders for damages, the Alameda County District Attorney has filed criminal charges against a number of UC Berkeley students and one professor for their participation in the iconic protest demonstrations at Sproul Hall on November 9, 2011. It's worse than the Daily Cal reported above. Nancy O'Malley -- the now notorious Alameda County DA -- has charged a total of ten students who participated in the protest at Sproul Hall, some of them charged after the UCPD gained access to their records at the University medical center where they went for treatment of the injuries sustained when they were beaten by police. Only two or three of those charged by the DA were arrested that day. One of them was Celeste Langan who is seen dressed in purple, at the extreme left of the video at the beginning, "resisting" arrest.
Cute. Her arraignment is scheduled for tomorrow, I believe. Should be quite a show.
These are links to raw footage of some of what was going on that day at UC Berkeley. http://youtu.be/NSat-nRefXY (Langan is seen in this video, the second person thrown to the ground and trussed up by police at about 3:40; at the end of this video, she is shown being hoisted up and starts to be led away)
http://youtu.be/cEcqsLyX-vI (In this video, which shows nonsequential events, Langan appears at about 2:17 being led away. The determination of the students in the face of what was seen at that time to be outrageous police violence is impressive.)
http://youtu.be/SN7WOsvepUg (This video is sort of the Highlight Reel; early on a female likely Cal student is heard repeating "You're hurting him!" while a protester is being beaten nearby. She is then heard saying to someone "That's how we train them to fucking stop us. We pay for them to fucking hurt us." Which is absolutely true. The UC police and the Alameda County Deputies were actually training not far from this very site a month or so before -- I've read it was with Israeli trainers -- to conduct this kind of action. Celeste Langan is shown in complete shock being led away in flexicuffs at about 3:20.)
The picture used in the article about Israelification of Occupy suppression is of course of the UC Davis pepper spray incident that happened a week after the Cal police riot. After numerous delays, an official report on the incident was supposed to be released on March 6, but the UC Davis police officers union sued to prevent it and got a TRO which is currently in effect. They claim that release of the report will compromise the rights of officers who might be named therein. This matter is also supposed to be heard in court tomorrow.
The NYPD is notorious for spying on various suspect groups including Muslims and Occupy Wall Street, but now, according to In These Times, they've gone further than usual by arresting people for "thought crimes" or "pre-crimes." This practice was more-or-less institutionalized during the RNC convention in St. Paul in 2008 prior to which and during which dozens of arrests were made and property was seized of people who were suspected of making preparations to protest. There is apparently a grand jury empaneled in Chicago that has been trying to develop terrorism charges against some of those who were arrested in Minneapolis and St. Paul four years ago, but many of those subpoenaed have refused to cooperate.
This is a compilation video of some of what was going on in Minneapolis/St. Paul prior to and during the Republican convention.
Notice anything? The exact tactics have been used and are being used against Occupy. At the time, in 2008, what was going on in Minneapolis/St. Paul was seen as way over the top. The rallies and marches and protests during the convention were peaceful, even routine in the context, yet the police were on some kind of hair-trigger/steroid alert against the protesters constantly -- even before the convention, and they have stayed that way afterwards -- and they behaved with what was at that time shocking brutality and over kill. People were being kettled and arrested en masse -- whether or not they had anything to do with protesting -- hundreds were held for days, they were not allowed any sort of contact with the outside, nor did were they allowed medical attention for injuries or other conditions; people were arrested for doing nothing at all, but merely because they had been identified as "potential" protesters. Flash bangs and tear gas were liberally employed against nonviolent protests. Police brutality was commonplace. It was a war zone in which only one side -- the police -- was fighting. The protests were nonviolent. The police, however, employed what were at that time considered extreme levels of violence against them.
And it's going on in much the same way against Occupy.
What gives?
The political conventions are what's called National Special Security Events, during which, essentially, the Constitution is suspended. During National Special Security Events, a form of martial law can be and often is imposed; violent and otherwise unethical or illegal means are typically used to suppress protest. While I've written about National Special Security Events and the nature of policing during them, I'm not at all sure that many Americans actually understand what is going on.
More likely, they see the suppression and assume it is due to something the protesters have done, which is simply not the case. The suppression tactics and the "threat display" aspects of officials are policy during these events. The policy doesn't change based on what the protesters do or don't do. The policy is to suppress, to prevent, and to tightly control the public -- no matter what they do.
Since the October 25 assault on Occupy Oakland, it's looked more and more like the Occupy Movement has been categorized as something that requires NSSE-type suppression. The clue came much earlier, however, when fully armored up riot squads were deployed night after night against a handful of local protesters who were peacefully engaged in civil disobedience. Night after night after night, dozens of riot cops (sometimes up to 70 or 80), squad cars, paddy wagons and so forth were dispatched to round up ten or two or, on one occasion, one protester sitting on the sidewalk refusing to "disperse" at plaza "closing time." It was an absurd goon show that became a joke. But not a funny one. Eventually, even the police recognized how foolish they looked in their little riot get-ups and their ridiculously over produced arrest-theater, and scaled back their overkill, and when the hundreds of thousands of dollars it was costing was released, they stopped doing it altogether. The DA refused to prosecute, and in the end, all the charges against demonstrators were dropped, although there has been an attempt to assess "fees" against those who were arrested multiple times (typically around $300).
As someone pointed out, had the police used their discretion and not engaged in this nonsense to begin with, there wouldn't have been any costs to the city at all. Duh. But no. Civil disobedience must be suppressed. Violently in too many cases.
But even when there isn't police violence during Occupy suppression actions, the official intent is to intimidate and disable. For example:
Objectively, this is just insane. The official fear level about the Occupy movement -- and apparently any other civil disobedience -- has reached a fever pitch. The fact that people are so pissed off and no longer fear saying so seems to have hit a raw nerve among the ruling classes and their enforcers.
Bones are thrown to the masses from time to time, but it doesn't stop the protest and actions. Suppression doesn't stop it; in fact, action seems to be on an increasing curve as more and more activists pick up on the Occupy movement's strategies.
This is not going away, despite the institutionalization of the Police State -- which looks to be full-time and permanent now. The ruling class and its bought and paid for government and enforcers are in a pre-panic state. They do not know how to suppress it, and they don't know how to fully control it. But they don't want to actually listen the voices of the People and do the right thing, either. They still don't think they have to. After all, they have NDAA and HR 347.
I've said many, many times that the period we're in is not the End of Empire, it is the much closer to the beginning of a Neo-Imperialist Era. It was inevitable given the Neo-Con and Neo-Lib triumph over the Boogey-Man of "Socialism."
Now we're hearing lots and lots of chatter in the system about an accelerated withdrawal from the Afghanistan clusterfuck, thanks in large measure to the Latest Massacre, and there is an almost overwhelming inevitability factor to all the Pull Out Now! yakkity-yak. This is more propaganda, make no mistake. The Busheviks didn't pioneer the tactic, but they certainly made their own, and it worked for them through their whole dismal reign. The Obamanauts are no slouches when it comes to using "inevitability" tactics, either (they did it to Hillary masterfully, for example.)
There is considerable push back on the Pull Out Now! faction, however. Today's Propaganda installment from the WaPo seems to be saying what I suggested in a comment yesterday: since the Natives aren't too restless over this little "accident," it will all blow over, no harm, no foul. The Occupation and Plunder will continue unchanged. Killing and plundering the Natives is all in a day's Imperial Work. Burning of Holy Writ, however, is a capital offense according to Native standards, and in the future, our Warriors will want to watch that shit.
What we are probably witnessing is the outward appearance of an internal squabble between gung-ho Warriors in the Pentagon and Pragmatists in the White House. The Warriors never seem to want to leave the Battle Space (which has metastasized to include Everywhere Around the World) within which to kill and destroy at pleasure. The Warriors seem to have no other mentality at all. On the other hand, the Pragmatists say, 1) it's too costly to keep troops on the ground overseas in large numbers; 2) it's not necessary to do so in order to maintain hegemony; 3) the Warriors fuck up too much to ensure the efficient exploitation of colonial outposts.
On an elemental emotional level, it's likely that what drove this Massacre -- among so many massacres -- was vengeance, pure, stark, blood soaked revenge. The Natives took it upon their foolish selves to protest the "accidental" burning of the Korans; some of the more uppity of them took it upon themselves to kill a number of American troops and officers in (apparent) retaliation for this "accident." Several dozen of the riotous Afghans were shot during protests, but the troop and officer killings were not avenged -- the way any such action by colonial populations must be. It is the way Empires work and have worked from the first. Imperial Overlords cannot allow the Natives to recognize that they do have considerable power over their captors and exploiters. Any sign of Native threat to Imperial power must be put down swiftly and brutally, and any deadly act of Native resistance must be avenged, with blood and fire. This did not look like the act of a madman gone berserk. It had all the earmarks of a punitive raid.
Back in the day, Imperial forces were generally up front about what was going on, why they were punishing resistance, and the necessity of "Teaching those Wogs a Lesson." It didn't matter a whit if innocents were slaughtered in their beds. Better it should be so. That's how Empire is done. There are so many Natives and so few Imperial forces. The only way to keep the Wogs in their Place is to come down on them with immense cruelty and suffering every time they get out of line. It's the only way. Do it enough, and the Wogs learn their Place and stay in it.
I remember during the earlier years of the Iraq Occupation, horrible things were happening to innocent Iraqis all the time. There were numerous incidents of Iraqis being shot to pieces at checkpoints for not being sufficiently ...something. It was never really clear why all these hundreds of Iraqis were being shot at checkpoints -- except that the troops at the checkpoints were scared of them, and they could shoot them with impunity as long as they said they were "scared." The military justification was that the Wogs needed to learn to follow commands at these checkpoints, and if enough of them were killed for not doing so, they'd get the idea.
Something that happened all too often was that military convoys would charge through traffic jams (which were frequent because of all the checkpoints) by literally crashing into and driving over occupied vehicles caught in the jam, killing and injuring who knows how many people inside the vehicles. Iraqis were horrified at this consistent behavior of their occupiers -- the Turks and the British were never this cruel. Of course, the indifference of the Imperial American Occupiers was routine.
Sometimes when a convoy encountered traffic, they'd just start shooting. They've done it in Afghanistan as well. No doubt thousands of innocents have been killed through these actions.
But that's how Empires work. There is no interest in or concern for the well being of the subject peoples. At all.
In our latest forays, there is hardly any recognition that they are "people" -- they're barely considered to be objects.
Withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan is likely to occur sooner rather than later, simply because it's not worth the aggravation to keep them there. Killing and exploitation can be done by remote control and through surrogates these days.
It will not be a withdrawal like the one from Vietnam. Afghanistan will not be abandoned, any more than Iraq has been abandoned. No, it will be operated as a colonial outpost from the blast-wall-surrounded "diplomatic" facilities in Kabul, much as the British did after they "withdrew" from Afghanistan back in the day, and the killing and exploitation will continue with somewhat less annoyance from and by the Warriors.
Some of the push back on the Pull Out Now! meme is Pentagon Panic. The relevance of a massive Imperial military force is under siege.
We live in interesting times, but it is not the End of Empire.
It took them a while to get the Wurlitzer cranked up, but boy is it going full blast now.
Yikes.
I opened the morning newswipe to see two stories on the front page, the first from the WaPo having to do with the brain injury of the alleged "lone gunman" in the Afghan Massacre Affair, the second (and smaller) from the NYT having to do with the fact that some gibbering Native "person" wants Americans to leave Afghanistan for some reason. Oh, something to do with an American killing his whole family and burning the corpses. Or something. What. Ever.
Very, very far into the second story, this Native "person" is reported to claim (along with a number of Afghan witnesses) that the massacre was conducted by more than one soldier, but of course the Times is quick to follow up with an anonymous diplomatic denial, followed by the statement that what witnesses report as more soldiers involved in the killing and helicopter cover while they went wilding, was actually a helicopter sent to ferry out the five wounded Afghanis. You have to probe a bit in the other story, but the additional soldiers witnesses saw are implied -- not stated -- to have been members of a "search party" dispatched from the base to find the "lone gunman."
Despite the fact that the story of the slaughtered Afghan family and the survivors is truncated and filled with statements from unnamed American officials, the fact that it appeared at all -- and right next to a story about the sad state of veteran's health care, almost as if to excuse the actions of this "lone gunman" is a sort of progress, I guess. Typically, the stories about the victims don't come out until long after sympathy for their attackers and brutalizers is established. In this case, sympathy for the victims and at least one of the attackers is established all but simultaneously. And once again, the upshot is that Americans must leave that failed colonial outpost, the sooner the better, and they had better start concentrating on the serious damage that has been inflicted on soldiers and Americans in general because of that seemingly endless and futile conflict.
Somebody posted on another site that this was "the My Lai Moment" of the Afghanistan campaign. What may not be realized is that Americans didn't know about My Lai in (almost) real time. The American public didn't find out about the massacre (which happened in March of 1968) until November of 1969. While My Lai was a monstrous atrocity, the Indochinese War went on as if it hadn't happened. The initial reports that were released in 1968 were simply lies -- something about all these Viet Cong getting killed in a fierce firefight. The lies from the generals and the officers in Vietnam were so constant the press called their daily briefings "The Five O'Clock Follies." Colin Powell was assigned to make sure the official story was cleansed of any question about who got killed at My Lai and how.
By the time Americans found out about My Lai toward the end of 1969, the ground war was winding down, troops were being withdrawn and "Vietnamization" was fully in play. The air war continued, of course, and intensified, but for all intents and purposes, the US was preparing to leave.
Also, ultimately, 26 soldiers faced criminal charges in the case of My Lai, though only Lt. Calley was convicted. He served three and a half years under house arrest. His defense? "Just following orders."
It looks like only the one brain damaged soldier will face charges, and if he has an even half way decent counsel, he won't even go to trial.
I could be wrong, but something tells me a deal is in the works with the Taliban to put and end to this thing once and for all, and reparations are being assembled as we speak.
The story of the soldier was accompanied in my paper by the picture of Leon Panetta looking blowsy and stupid.
