Why Didn't Occupy Cause the Kind of Disruption in the United States (and Europe) That The Arab Spring Did in North Africa and the Middle East?

"Red Ink," a new film by Kusha Sefat, may have part of the answer.... Hint: Follow the Money...



Via Occupy.com, via Differentivity

Scott Horton Says It Better

Heather and Ivan Morison’s latest work at the first One Day Sculpture event in New Zealand was this gargantuan work filling a street in the centre of Wellington, Journée des barricades. The brief was: “to produce a new work that will occur during a discrete 24-hour period over the course of one year.” The scuplture, continuing the Morison’s vision of a world teetering on the edge of impending chaos, was erected on the night of 13th December, created out of urban debris including wrecked vehicles, and dismantled the following night.

Over at Harper's, Scott Horton went through the structural changes that have occurred in our government and its institutions since the 9/11 attacks. It's not a pretty picture.

The military has become a professional mercenary operation, quite different from the citizen-soldier model of the Founders. Mercenaries/contractors now outnumber the regular military, they handle many of the core military functions and are essentially unaccountable for their behavior. Not only is the current military model corrupt beyond measure, it's murderous and arguably a very dangerous anti-democratic and insidious institution churning away constantly in the background.

Over the years, I have suggested many times that we are on the cusp of a military coup, with St. David Petraeus groomed and ready to take over whenever it looks to The Powers That Be like our experiment in civil self-governance has run out of steam. I still don't doubt the potential for such a coup. But Horton seems to be taking it a step further. He doesn't say so explicitly, the implication of the hand-over of the nation's military to contractors and mercenaries is that the coup, if it comes, is no longer a matter of an institutional military taking over (which most people could understand at least if not agree with) but has become a matter of a shadowy parallel -- and parasitical -- mercenary military force taking over not just the military but the government itself. Even St. David Petraeus is a figurehead under that scenario.

The CIA has become a paramilitary and detention force, rather than an intelligence gathering operation. Of course, given the numberless spectacular intelligence failures of the Agency, dating from well before 9/11 and continuing up to the present, it's little wonder.

I have often advocated the abolition of the CIA for cause. It's not simply that it is useless, it is counter useful. It was seeded with Nazis, among other anti-democratic interests, from the outset, and it has never wavered from its flawed origins. The appalling things that it does, and its ongoing failures, are built in to the structure of the Agency. It cannot be reformed. It must be abolished.

The NSA has become a massive domestic surveillance bureaucracy. The good thing about it is that it puts a lot of people to work who might otherwise be on the unemployment lines, so there is that. But what they are doing, surveilling and gathering information on everyone pretty much all the time, runs deeply counter to the notions of individual privacy and freedom from domestic surveillance that supposedly guides the nation from its founding principles.

Institutionalized domestic surveillance is perhaps the key legacy from the 9/11 transformations. That and civic bankruptcy, but who's counting money when there is an existential enemy to fight?

The Justice Department has become a highly charged and highly politicized institution that doesn't protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law, it protects and defends its clients, whoever happens to be the top dogs at any given moment. The human wreckage it leaves in its wake? Collateral Damage. Oh well!

I've often called for the abolition of the Department of Justice as well, for essentially the same faults as Horton is pointing out: it is a politicized -- indeed, practically gangsterized -- hollow imitation of "justice" set up and run for the convenience and protection of those in power. It cannot be reformed; it must be regenerated from the ground up.

Horton rarely goes all the way in his assessments of this or that, and here he does his usual service by pointing out what has happened, but he doesn't indicate what it means.

I would put it this way: there was a Judicial coup on December 12, 2000, in which the Supreme Court lawlessly intervened in a presidential election dispute to put its favored candidate in the Oval Office. The rest of the government in its entirety acquiesced to this coup, with neither a struggle nor even an objection (except from the Congressional Black Caucus, and we saw how far that got.)

Within a few months of the installation of George W. Bush into the Oval Office, key institutions of the United States were (I hate to say it, conveniently) attacked through the agency of both external and internal forces, whether by premeditation or coincidence I do not know. I am speaking not only of the 9/11 attacks, but of the subsequent Anthrax Attacks as well.

These attacks were the spur and the trigger for what has amounted to a revolution from the right that transformed the government and the economy of the United States, paralyzing the one and destroying the other -- in service to... what?

I don't think anybody knows anymore. We are on a spiraling downward path that The (Deceased) Devil Osama seemed intent on making sure we got on. But to what object? Certainly it hasn't led to the termination of our imperial sway in Araby. Not yet it hasn't.

The economic collapse and the forced impoverishment of tens of millions of Americans has yet to give rise to an internal revolt -- that's actually sustained.

From what we can tell, those on top are doing better than ever, not just in the United States, but throughout the world, at the expense of the powerless masses everywhere.

A relative handful of Gods Who Walk Among Us are benefiting beyond belief at the current state of affairs, but no one else is. And seemingly, nothing can be done about it.

The list of institutional changes in the American government subsequent to the attacks mentioned may give us a clue to why no -- left -- populist movement anywhere in the world is currently successful.

While I cheered for the Egyptians and Tunisians in their efforts to free themselves from their fossil-dictatorships, events since have shown that the "revolutions" were not quite what they were cracked up to be -- and their advocates hoped they would be.
To say these revolutions are incomplete is an understatement, but what we've seen in Libya is of a different order altogether and has been clearly engineered by imperialist forces within Libya and abroad to capture the natural resources of Libya for the benefit of certain Euro-American interests. The "revolution," in other words, is from the right.

What do we do about it?

Most people, quite naturally, will yield so long as the impositions of the victors are not too onerous. But there is no limit to the exaction and extractions of the MOTUs. No limit at all.

At least there is a continuing occupation of Wall Street (actually, a park near Wall Street), and the protests over BART's killer cops -- and other authoritarian issues -- continue in San Francisco, and people are getting angrier and angrier at what they see happening all around them. Slowly, but perhaps surely, Americans will learn to take control of their fate once again.

October can't come soon enough.

Revolt or Revolution?

Most everyone calls their own movement against the Powers That Be a "Revolution," when in fact most are revolts over some real or imagined slight. Revolts go on all the time; Revolutions are pretty darned rare, and they typically occur after a successful revolt has made what are at the time thought to be fundamental changes but which turn out to be little more than superficial window dressing.

Thus, for example, the Russian February Revolution in 1917 was -- for all the drama in and outside of Petrograd -- essentially a revolt in that it forced the abdication of the Tsar but kept most of the structure of the Tsarist regime in place, didn't take Russia out of the conflict in Europe, and did nothing at all to improve the lot of the masses.

It initially had some of the style and the energy of a Revolutionary uprising, but in the end, its victors acted to maintain the status quo, with an overlay of bourgeois democracy -- which in turn was so factionalized and fractious that nothing could be done. In July, there was a coup that put an emergency neo-Autocracy in power under the very curious rule of Alexandr Kerensky. It was as if the Tsar was back.

Then in October (November, by the Western calendar) the Bolsheviks rose up in a sudden and swift move -- a coup of their own, if you will -- that took over the government from Kerensky and his ministers and immediately began The Revolution, with the intent of getting Russia out of the War and transforming Russian society top to bottom.

The October Revolution was the beginning of the actual Revolution, and that Revolution didn't end until the Yeltsin faction fired on the Soviet Congress building in Moscow (called the "White House") in 1991, thus consolidating the Yeltsin/Neo-Liberal revolt of two years before when the Soviet Union was dissolved.

The Bolshevik Revolution was in a fight for its life from day one, and there was very little respite from invasion, civil war, famine, and struggle against its constant enemies from the moment of its founding until its final collapse under fire.

There have been other successful revolts that have turned into Revolutions (our own American Revolution included), as well as some misnamed "Revolutions" -- such as the so-called "Glorious Revolution" in Britain in 1688 -- that were essentially nothing more than adjustments among the ruling classes for primacy.

The 1848 Revolution(s) in Europe were widespread revolts that might have led to Revolution, but they failed. None of the endless uprisings in Ireland against British rule were actual Revolutions. The Indian Independence Movement, on the other hand, was as genuine a Revolution as there's ever been, as not only was the British Raj ejected, but Indian society was remade top to bottom. That's what a Revolution does. That's almost its definition.

The current Arab uprisings have been characterized as Revolutions, but the upshot of Victory (when it has come at all) has been a kind of ambiguous bourgeois rule that maintains most of the characteristics of the deposed regime; in other words, who operates the Machine of Rule changes somewhat, but the Machine is the same, and the uses to which it is put -- primarily exploiting and suppressing the masses to the benefit of an elite -- is identical. In other words, the Revolution hasn't actually come at all.

The test for Arab Revolution might be in Libya, where the forty plus year rule of the Gadhafis has been broken. Gadhafi brought a true -- and unique -- Revolution to North Africa all those many years ago. The revolt against it, at least from appearances, has yet to become a Revolution; but if it becomes one, it has all the makings of yet another Neo-Liberal imperialist adventure that forces previously faulty but functioning independent and nationalist countries into the effective rule of a globalist cabal of extractive exploiters. You can call it a Revolution because it does change many aspects of society -- usually for the worse -- but it's more like colonial/imperial imposition from the top than a true Revolution (from below, let's say.)

In the United States, a successful Revolution has been under way since the advent of Ronald Reagan in the White House in 1981. Thirty years later, much of American society has been transformed, the economy is nothing at all like the pre-1981 American economy, and American politics and government have become attenuated simulacra of popular constitutional government, and is now fully captured by a corporatist-imperialist elite. In years gone by, this state of affairs would be called Fascism, but because this Revolution is not -- yet -- totalitarian, in that it doesn't appear to focus on transforming and unifying the masses in service to the state (though appearances can deceive) the transformation that's gone on in the last 30 years has been as thoroughgoing a Revolution as anything that's taken place in this country's history (acknowledging that we have been through several similar corporatist-imperialist periods in the past). It appears to be an "organic evolution" rather than a Revolution in that most change has occurred relatively incrementally (of course there are many exceptions to that rule, such as the lawless imposition of Bushevik rule in 2000), with the clear intent of consolidating the Rightist Revolution in America once the current Boomer generation dies off.

We're seeing many signs of a generational split much deeper than previous ones in that the upcoming generation has been educated with a completely different set of facts and world-view than their parents and grandparents. Younger people not only don't know very much about the past, they don't believe much of what they are told by those who were there. They have no idea what the real motivations of the uprisings in the 1960's were about; they have only the vaguest notions of what the Civil Rights Movement aimed to accomplish -- and they have almost no understanding of what conditions were really like for minorities and women prior to the Civil Rights and Women's Liberation Movements. It's not simply that they didn't experience it themselves, it is that they are not taught.

All the Revolutionary energy in this country is and has long been among the Rightists; not surprisingly, they are successful. What passes for the "Left" seeks to preserve the status quo, and they are failing miserably.

The status quo is changing; the "left" cannot maintain it. Most have no interest in developing an alternative and positive forward vision. Instead they seem satisfied to hold on to whatever tattered remnants of the past as they can, like pitiful old aristos clinging to the few sad remains of the way things used to be in hopes that the Whites will restore the Little Father one day.

Ain't gonna happen.

Additional Thoughts on Storming the Winter Palace

Galina Alexandrovna Zubchenko, Storming of the Winter Palace

As we've been hearing lately, Tripoli has fallen to the Libyan rebels, suddenly, unexpectedly, and joyous throngs filled Green -- now to be renamed "Martyr's" -- Square in the center of the city. The surviving sons of The Devil Gadhafi have been 'detained' as they say and the hunt for the Old Devil is on. Has he escaped the country? Did he commit suicide? Has he been captured by one of the rebel factions? Where is he?

Of course the stories and the scenes remind us all of the astonishing events across North Africa and in the Middle East and Arabian Peninsula. During the past year, one Arab dictator after another has been toppled by some force of People's Will that no one can quite fathom, but inspiration has been reverberating around the world.

Even the most bone stupid of Our Overlords seem to realize that not only is there something happening here, but it's spreading, and more and more it's becoming apparent that this global liberationist movement is driven by rebellion against the Haves Who Demand and Take More from those who have little. Or nothing.

Yes, of course it is a classic class struggle, involving what passes for the bourgeoisie demanding respect and justice from and for their Betters. The Aristos are being beaten back everywhere by their own retainers in many cases. And what of the struggling masses? They join in struggle against the High and the Mighty, but wisely, they take nothing for granted. A rebellion may succeed, but has a Revolution really taken place? We await developments.

And of course all of this tumult evokes the extraordinary events of November 7-8, 1917, in Petrograd, Russia. The Tsar's regime had already fallen in February, but the replacement Republic and later Provisional government was little more than an empty shell, a Potemkin government, if you will. Worse, it continued Russia's bloody and destructive involvement in WWI, fighting the Germans on the West.

During the days leading up to the October Revolution (November, by the Western calendar), the Bolsheviks had taken control of most of the ministries and communications in Petrograd which left what remained of the Provisional Government, headed by Alexander Kerensky, holed up in the Winter Palace trying to figure out what to do now.

The Winter Palace was the symbol of Russian rule, and whoever held it was by definition the Ruling Party of the Russian Empire, or Republic, or... soon to be Soviet Union.

The Bolsheviks, along with rest of the Congress of Soviets were meeting at the Smolny Institute a few miles away from the Winter Palace down the Neva River. Through strategy and oratory, they gained the upper hand over the Provisionals in a more or less democratic process and declared the Provisional Government defunct. This is a copy of the very famous proclamation issued October 25 (November 7) by the Bolsheviks:





The Storming of the Winter Palace would occur shortly, just as soon as a fleet of vehicles could rush from the Smolny to the Winter Palace Square, the vast open space in front of the Palace entered through the Red Arch and centered on the Alexander Column.



[The red building in the background is the Winter Palace (aka The Hermitage). It was painted a dusky red at the time of the Revolution. Now it is painted green and white with gold accents. Pretty!]

On the third anniversary of the Storming of the Winter Palace (November 7, 1920), there was a grand pageant, a historical re-enactment and an allegory of the Birth of the Soviet Union in Palace Square, the sight of the Storming, involving some 8,000 performers (far more than actually took part in the original struggle), some of whom had been there when the Storming took place. The pageant that went on for hours, was witnessed by some 100,000 comrades who apparently found it pleasing. So pleasing was the re-enactment considered to be that it served as the basis for Sergei Eisenstein's brilliant 1927 film, Октябрь «Десять дней, которые потрясли мир» (October, Ten Days That Shook the World), excerpts of which I have posted on this blog. Oh look, here's one now:



The funny thing about this breathless RT retelling of the events is that even though the presenter tries to correct some of the record by pointing out that only about fifty armed Bolsheviki actually did the Storming, the dramatic movie version is presented and strangely, at least according to my understanding of the sequence of events on the night of the Storming, he then seems to say that the Congress meeting at the Smolny that solidified the Bolshevik Revolution took place after the Storming when as far as I can tell from the eyewitness accounts I've read, the Congress meeting at the Smolny was still going on as the Storming got underway and continued...

And continued... and continued... (one thing about the Bolsheviks, they loved to talk!)

John Reed's account in "Ten Days That Shook the World" is really quite riveting. He was there, after all, racing back and forth between the Winter Palace and the Smolny Institute, having dinner at the Hotel France, listening to the gunfire, trudging through the cold, dark streets of Petersburg among the Revolutionaries, yet watching life go on as normal (well, as normal as those things could be in 1917 Russia) only a few blocks away.

An excerpt: [You may embiggen the pages with mouse clickage]












From: "Ten Days That Shook The World" by John Reed, 1919

And that was that. Plus ça change, eh?

Revolts can go on almost endlessly, but Revolutions seem to come upon the scene suddenly. Imperial Russia went through numberless revolts during the 19th Century and into the 20th, most of which were called Revolutions, though only the Soviet/Bolsheviks actually succeeded in Revolution as opposed to just one more revolt. Even the Neo-Liberal Counter Revolution that presided over the break-up and extinguishment of the Soviet Union was more akin to a revolt rather than a Revolution in that it wasn't trying to create something new, it was only interested in reviving what had long passed away. While there isn't a whole lot of nostalgia in the former Soviet Union for the days of the Commisars, neither is there much glee at the results of from sliding so far backwards into some warped vision of what the Autocracy might have been had the Bolsheviks not succeeded in 1917.

The stories will long be told of what happened that fateful November, just as the stories of the Revolutionary fervor happening now will never die.

The question always is, "What do you get for your Revolution?"

There is yet to be a full answer.