On the Refusal to Stop Being Distracted

For some it's football; for some it's Facebook and Twitter; for me I suppose it's nostalgia and learning something about my ancestry.

These are distractions from The Other Things we're told are Very Important and To Be Feared. Media outlets compete with one another to generate the highest level of fear among the Rabble they can, and apparently one of the focuses of Fear, Fear, Fear is the Russian Thing (whatever it may be) and Putin-the-Devil.

Oh my goodness. I am all atremble.

I can't even count the number of years ago it became apparent to me that Our Dauntless/Faultless Media engages in Deliberate Fear Campaigns over anything at all (including Foreign Devils) on a regular basis, the point of which is to get the Rabble all hopped up about something and buying things -- including repeat doses of media propaganda -- to salve their Fear. You go back in media history, and fearmongering over just about anything at all has been a constant throughout that history. So has propaganda on behalf of government and propaganda against the ruling party in favor of the other party. Conspiracy theories have been rampant in the mainstream and the fringe media. As bad as it is now, it's been worse in the past.

All the agitation against it has done nothing to change it. We must come to the recognition, then, that Our Media, for all its good points and for all its ills, has never been the paragon we are expecting it to be. The media's function, for the most part, is to distract the Rabble from what's important.

What's important is the way government and finance capital collude to rob and exploit the people and suppress dissent and revolt in order to continue robbing, exploiting and destroying for profit.

What's important is that elections in the US -- as well as many foreign lands -- are farces. The pageants result in outcomes that the Rabble must accept on faith alone because there is no way on earth to verify the vote. It is what we're told it is, with no way at all to review and confirm that the tallies actually record the vote as cast by those who  are permitted to cast votes.

What's important is that the pace of climate change appears to be accelerating and our rulers have made no preparations for the well-being of the Rabble -- and don't appear to care what happens to them anyway.

What's important is that our warriors continue to expand their reach and continue precipitating calamity and chaos without end.

What's important is that our rulers rule contemptuously and contrary to the interests and will of the People, and they believe there is nothing the People can or will do that they need pay attention to.

What's important is that 2016 was the turning point whether anybody likes it or not, and it's now or never. Change for the better will come -- or it's not coming, and we may as well lie down and die.

If we are to be saved, it will be up to us to do it; no Savior is on the horizon.

I've said that "non-cooperation" is the key to changing things. Don't go along with the Fear, don't go along with what we're told to do, don't go along with what we're told is true.

Starting with the election outcome.

As I've said many times, the vote and the outcome cannot be verified. We have to take it on faith alone. I for one refuse. Everyone should. Refusing to accept the outcome, denying its legitimacy is the first step to undermining the legitimacy of the whole enterprise our rulers have been engaged in. Denying the legitimacy of the election delegitimizes not just the presidency but the congress, courts, state houses and even local governments. The whole rotten apparatus of rule starts to crumble.

The people don't have to engage in violent uprisings -- though I expect that will happen in some areas under some circumstances. There may be no way to prevent it. On the other hand, simply refusing to be distracted from what's important and sustaining that refusal can have powerful effects far beyond what's immediately apparent.

This year things will change for many millions of Americans and people around the world. We can't stop it, but we can affect what changes and how that change occurs.

We can-- and must -- make a difference.



What To Do Now

Gee Dan. Miss ya Dude. Hope the party Up There never ends... (Dan Hicks, 1941-2016, "I Scare Myself")

As the protests continue to grow and spread, this election debacle is getting uglier and uglier, as could have been predicted when Trump unleashed the violent id of his many cult followers, and those opposed to his elevation to the Presidency take up the cudgel.

I think all the garment rending and teeth gnashing over the "violence" in the streets is just silly, because there is never -- ever -- any whining or even notice taken of the Official Violence used against protest in this country if someone breaks a window, overturns a news rack, or sets a dumpster fire (in other words, the usual vandalism and disruption that accompanies urban unrest called a "riot.") Woe betide anyone who gets in the way of traffic. OMG! nothing worse than inconveniencing a commuter! Nothing! It's absurd. But that's how the game is played in this country.

You inconvenience anyone, break a window, start a trash fire, or damn your eyes, fail to obey a police order, and you are guilty! guilty! guilty! and deserve whatever horrible fate Authority has in store for you. You Monster, you!

The Usual Suspects are contributing to the usual mayhem in the usual places and those on the sidelines are having their usual vapors over it. Gah.

In the meantime, Hillary's popular vote lead grows and grows. I saw one estimate yesterday that it will probably top out at about 1.5 million more than Trump, and I'd say that's a good estimate except that over 5 million votes are yet to be counted in California alone. As California went massively for Clinton over Trump, her popular vote margin could reach spectacular numbers never seen before.

The petitions to overturn the usual Electoral College rubber stamping have garnered many millions of signatures -- 3 or maybe 4 million between them by now and probably more by the time the EC meets on December 19.

Things are moving fast and it is scary because there is going to be a reaction from the Trump brownshirts and militias, guaranteed.

And there has been a little bit -- just a little bit -- of probing of the curious results from those key states that provided just enough votes to flip the outcome to Trump. Just enough.

He he he.

Of course there are plenty of rationalizations for it. The media was ready with their answers -- white women, hidden rural voters, failure of the vaunted Hillary Ground Game, blah blah blah, the day after the election. They knew, they knew for certain what had happened, and it didn't occur to even one of them that the results might have been jiggered and vote suppression might have been more effective than previously believed. No, it was all on white women, rural voters that had never been seen before and Hillary's failure to get out the vote, not even considering that the margins are so small in these key states -- and only these states -- that it would take no effort at all to flip the results. As if it's never happened before....

Of course as I flog this notion around the intertubes it's shot down right quick. CT! CT! CT! But come on, it's all but obvious.

As Trump falls ever farther behind in the popular vote -- were those results flipped to Clinton somehow? -- and the streets fill with angry, fearful protests (just get over the anarchist allies who are breaking windows and starting dumpster fires) something will have to be done.

The question is what.

So far, most of the protesters appear to be young and white, and they are allied with their brothers and sisters who happen not to be white or properly oriented and gendered and who are terrified by the unleashing of a racist, violent  alt-Right authoritarian cum fascist sector of the population under a quasi-Fascist Caudillo who wasn't even chosen by the People of the United States, but is only elevated to the Presidency by an antiquated and deeply anti-democratic provision of our troublesome constitution.

Them's the facts.

Installing Trump in the Presidency (King-Emperor? God?) actually doesn't have to happen under the antiquated and troublesome Constitution, but it probably will. The EC is actually free to choose anyone, but they won't.

The wind Trump has sown will reap a whirlwind such as we haven't seen since the nation split apart in 1860. How that will be resolved, I don't know. There is already some talk of secession by California -- which might be joined by Oregon and Washington. I doubt it will happen, but conceivably it could. That leaves Colorado and New Mexico to consider their own secession. Then there are the Northeastern states that will have to consider their own distancing from the Capital, perhaps secession, perhaps autonomy or some other arrangement.

The brownshirts and militias, for their part, would probably be just as happy to see these Librul Backwaters go, and go quickly.

But the alternative, to quickly show that the vote was jiggered in just those states it needed to be for a Trump EC victory -- bugger the popular vote elsewhere -- is my preferred course. Prevent his elevation, and while it may trigger a violent reaction from his brownshirts and militias, they would probably be put down or accommodated (the likely course) sufficiently to calm their fevered disappointment (Awww. Poor babies.)

Accommodation would include greater autonomy for those parts of the country where their kind are dominant. That could be arranged in many ways, the problem being protection for those who would suffer under their rule. (Viz: North Carolina where the Bathroom Crisis was raised to an extreme level by an out of control R state government that will not back down, No way, no how.)

The only resolution I can think of, and maybe I'm just not thinking creatively about it, is to move the likely victims of the Brownshirts to other areas of the country where they'd be welcome. I know, I know, that's like the Partition of India and Pakistan, but what else are you going to do when the other side will not yield even an inch and every effort to make peace is met with greater levels of hostility and hatred? What do you do? I say get the people who will be harmed out of harm's way.

Is there another solution?

And then the question is who would be President if the elevation of Trump is invalidated? Hillary? Not necessarily. The problem is simple enough. Neither candidate got a majority of the popular vote, at least not so far. Hillary might wind up with a majority if all the votes yet to be counted are heavily in her favor but except in California, I doubt that will happen. So. With neither candidate having a majority in the popular vote, the actual choice would have to be some sort of neutral candidate (as if there were such) to serve in an interim capacity until there could be new elections -- say in a year or 18 months.

OMG. Really? Well, ya know, the problem has been building for many years -- at least since the lawless intervention and usurpation of 2000 -- and it has so destabilized the electoral process that something drastic is necessary. My solution is a way to address it in a way that at least gives a nod to the problem as well as the preservation of at least some semblance of a democratic process.

In my view, the critical factor is to prevent Trump from ascending to the Presidency. First. The rest can follow, but first order of business is to make sure he does not become President.

What about the Congress? What a mess there, too..

The continued Republican dominance in both houses is an existential threat to  many Americans if Trump is President. Another Republican might or might not be such a threat. The risk is great, however, no matter who is installed in the Presidency -- even a Democrat or an Independent -- because the Republican Congress, feeling its oats, is eager to slash and burn, caring not a whit who they harm in the process. Wisdom and compassion they have none. They are champing at the bit to prove it, too.

What do you do?

The Republican House is a product of gerrymandering instituted in Republican controlled states after the Democratic electoral collapse of 2010. To my way of looking at it, that collapse was deliberate. An controlled implosion, shall we say, in order to enable a Republican revival after their collapse in 2008. Our parties can and do work together to ensure a certain "balance" if you like. That balance is always-- always-- in favor of the right, and in favor of the preservation of power elites.

Always.

Trump has sort of disrupted this long maintained balance, but it looks like he's been trying to wrap his mind around it and be an accommodating figure. You can never tell with him, though, and worse, the balance is shattered and a full-on rightist (indeed, fascist in all but name) and deeply cruel regime would be the result were he to be installed, even under tight wrap.

The Senate's continued R majority is not due to gerrymandering, but it is due -- in part -- to deliberate sabotage of their own candidates by Democratic Pooh-Bahs. Look at Finegold in Wisconsin for a nearly perfect example. There are others. Murphy in Florida is another. Because Hillary was expected to win the Presidency, the calculation was that an R congress -- with or without a D majority in the Senate was OK. Therefore, fully supporting Dem Senate or House candidates, or even mounting candidates who could win as opposed to place-hold, wasn't necessary. I am sick to death of Democratic Party cleverness in these matters. They know how to win elections, but they often deliberately don't. And they are almost as bad at voter suppression as their Friends on the other side.

I really hate this aspect of the Democratic Party, and I'm with a lot of others who want to see the whole system blown to smitereens.

It's a big part of why we're in this crisis now. Damn their eyes!!

But what do you do until the system rights itself? (as if it will. Ha!)

I think the best course is to let the Rs be what they want to be, but have some mechanism-- again -- to prevent the harm they wish to impose on the most vulnerable. That means, first of all, Trump cannot be President. He relishes harming the vulnerable. But if not him, who?

The choice may come down to Hillary for various reasons, but I'd rather it not.

So who?

I don't know. But there has to be a brake on the extremes Congress wishes to impose. The courts are incapable of being that brake, and a President Trump would make sure that's true for all time to come. I'm not kidding. That's what they are eager to do. And there would be no way to stop them were they allowed that kind of power.

It would not only be the End of the Republic, it might well be the end of any pretense of a Republic.

Our Rulers, I think, know what dangers this situation represents. Whether they are convinced it's time to overthrow any pretense of a Republic, I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if they really are that craven. I'm sure they understand that the current situation is unsustainable whether or not Trump is installed in the Presidency. It just can't go on like this.

Consequently, I imagine there's a lot of scrambling going on among the High and the Mighty to find a resolution and compromise before December 19. They may not succeed, but then again they might.

But something has to be done.

That's for certain.

Obama Has No Agency

I see this over and over again in the chorus of denunciations of Hillary Clinton.

She and she alone is responsible for every foreign policy disaster and every act of war committed by Our Rulers, if not since Time Began, at least since she was elected to the Senate.

The President has no agency whatever; he is merely a bystander of the raging warmongering and disastrous foreign policy decisions of La Clintoon.

This would be silly of course -- were it not for the fact that Darth Cheney was authoritatively asserted to be the deus ex machina of all the warmongering and foreign policy disasters of the Bush 2 Regime. Ergo, it's only natural that La Clintooooon is the originator of all the foreign (and no doubt domestic) policy catastrophes of the Obama Regime.

The idea is that Presidents are merely the tools of others whose nefarious and bloody schemes they give the nod to but have no input into. They don't even have to give the nod to these schemes, they just have to stay out of the way.

In this manner, The Hag is blamed directly for Iraq, Libya, Syria, Honduras, etc., while no mention is made of Presidents Obama or Bush or the various other departments and agencies in the Executive Branch or Congress and their involvement - if any - in these disastrous and bloody efforts. Hm.

In fact, the implication is that neither Obama nor Bush 2 (nor apparently Darth) had anything to do with them. It was solely Mrs. Clintoon who brought them on. And if The Hag is elected to the Presidency, all bets are off; there is a very high probability that she will start a nuclear war with
Russia. God save us all.

Such absolute power The Hag has been wielding since Time Began. Gee. Who knew?

This is a partial transcript of a speech delivered by Mr. Trump on Hallowe'en which illustrates the point:

Hillary led us to disaster in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya. ... Hillary and our failed Washington establishment have spent $6 trillion on wars in the Middle East, and now it’s worse than it’s ever been before. 

Had Obama and others gone to the beach, Obama could have gone to the golf course, we would have been in much better shape. 

We shouldn’t have gone into the war, and she thinks I’m a hawk. Oh, Donald Trump.
...
Imagine if some of the money had been spent, $6 trillion in the Middle East, on building new schools and roads and bridges right here in Michigan. 

Now Hillary, trapped in her Washington bubble, that’s blind to the lessons, wants to start a shooting war in Syria in conflict with a nuclear armed Russia that could drag us into a World War III. 

Okay, folks. She – I’ll tell you what. She will get us into World War III. She will get us into World War III. I will tell you that. She’s incompetent. She will get us into World War III. 

The arrogant political class never learns. They keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. They keep telling the same lies. They keep producing the same failed results.

It appeared at b's place, "Moon of Alabama," one of the leading objectively pro-Trump sites on the ostensibly "progressive" InterTubes.

I generally like b's analysis of the Syria conflict and the other conflicts which the United States Empire is tangled up in, but he fails badly when he -- and others -- blame them all on Hillary and denies (or almost denies) any agency to the President and the Foreign Policy Establishment and War Department shops which come up them and implement them. Hillary has never had the powers imputed to her. No president or cabinet member does.

If she were President, she would not have the kind of absolute power that is imputed to the Presidency -- power imputed only if she or Trump occupies the Big Chair, not when Bush 2 or Obama is in the office.

I realize this is political rhetoric, not a genuine understanding of how the government works, but still, it's jarring.

The rhetoric says that Hillary -- the Hag -- is directly and solely responsible for every war and every foreign policy disaster in recent history, and she will start World War III on top of it if she is allowed to ascend to the Throne. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, it is asserted, has been an active opponent of every war and every foreign policy disaster in recent history and will prevent World War III from his perch in the White House once he ascends to the Throne.

This is because he's just a businessman, and she's a warmongering neoCon hawk politician and grifter, don't you see?

Well, no. That's not quite how it is and has been. Nor are the assumptions of who will start and who will prevent the ultimate annihilation particularly accurate.

The President's powers and authorities are considerable, but they are also constrained by Congress, the Constitution, precedent, and custom. The Bush 2 Regime broke a lot of the historic constraints on Presidential power and authority, beginning with its lawless installation by the Supreme Court. That lawless act enabled much of the lawlessness to come. The lawless legacy of the Bush 2 Regime still reverberates, and the Obama Administration has utilized aspects of Bush 2's lawless legacy in its own pursuit of national/imperial goals.

Not all constraints on Presidential  powers and authorities were lifted with the installation of the Bush 2 Regime, but it's truly shocking how much was transformed by Bush and his appointees including Darth Cheney.

Nevertheless, with some exceptions, none of them had independent authority. Not the President, not Darth, not Rummy or Condi or any of the rest of them. They were all linked together and they had to operate as a team, with the connivance of Congress and a compliant media, or the whole thing would have fallen apart. Bush 2 was the coach, the man in charge, and he was the one who set and enforced policy -- on the advice and counsel of his team, but also on his own directive.

This is how Presidencies operate, even when they go rogue as Bush 2's Regime did. They have to. For the President, despite all, is not an autocrat.

Came Obama and he was rather quickly disabused of independent notions of what he could and couldn't do in office. The constraints on him were interestingly much greater than those on Bush 2, who seemed to be able to do whatever he wanted at home and abroad. The situations were different of course, but more than that, the Bush 2 Regime was intimately tied into existing permanent power structures within government. These were the players and the practices that were baked into government from long before. Cheney, for example, had been part of the governing clique -- whether he was in or out of office -- for decades; so too Rummy. Colin. Not so much Condi or some of the others, but Bush himself was the son of a President who understood how the machinations of power within government worked and knew who to call on to get things done the way he wanted them done. In other words, the Bush 2 Regime came into office as Members of the Club of Rule/

Obama had no such advantages. Good heavens, no. He was a neophyte newcomer -- and a Negro for gawd's sake. He had to be -- and was -- put in his place right quick. He had few or no allies in the permanent government, and he found out that his freedom of action was strictly constrained, not only by his youth and inexperience, but by opposition in both parties to pretty much anything he wanted to do. Biden could run some interference with the Senate, but Biden fell under many of the same constraints Obama did, as he was never a full member of the Club.

So that brings us to The Hag and her position as Secretary of State. According to the current myth, She had unlimited and total power to do as She wanted in Her position, and Obama had none. According to the myth, She was operating Her foreign policy independently of the White House and Obama didn't even know what she was doing. Or something like that.

She, as Big Dog's Woman, had all Power -- just as Big Dog did -- from the moment she entered the Senate if not before. Why, She might even have been the True Power behind Big Dog's Throne. Imagine it.

This is nonsense. She could not operate independently any more than Colin or Condi could when they were Secretaries of State, nor can Kerry do so now. They are the creatures of the White House, and they follow the policy decisions made in the Oval Office. Even Maddy Albright had to do that when she served Clintoon I.

They have input into those decisions, of course, but they don't make those decisions independently.

She -- the Hag -- did not start or lead the wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria or any other place, nor could She have done so as a Senator or Secretary of State. And as President, She cannot start World War III independently.

Much as one likes to believe She can and will, that's not how these things happen, if they happen.

There is a whole series of agreements that have to be reached within the administration and the permanent government (aka The Deep State) before a -- say -- nuclear war can begin, particularly if it is a war of aggression which it would almost have to be given Russian reluctance to engage in mutual annihilation.

In addition, the public has to be convinced that nuclear annihilation is the preferable course of action, because reasons.

The anti-Russian/Putin propaganda campaign is in full swing, of course. It appears to be designed to induce Regime Change on the model of so many others since the destabilization and collapse of the Soviet Union, but it's not entirely clear what's going on. There are elements of pure ridiculousness and pretend in it that make little or no sense. Trump's contrariness over it doesn't mean he doesn't go along with it. He may simply have a different -- and more personally profitable -- view of how to exploit it. Exploit it, believe me, he will, whether or not he ascends to the White House.

What he says on the campaign trail about not going to war with Russia is essentially meaningless -- as he is well-known for re-negotiating deals after closing the sale to get out of whatever it was he promised to make the sale. That's his way, and it's the way of his class. Nothing these people say is confirmed until they actually do something, and what they do is exploit every weakness they can find for personal gain and profit. If that means lying to the rubes, so what?

In government, though, you have to play the game more subtly. You can say anything you want on the campaign, but in office you have to follow certain rather strict rules or... you're out or at least you will be tied up in knots. Examples there are many. Some quite recently, too.

In other words, Presidents have to get along with, and likely go along with the permanent government and their own administration. The President's ability to start or stop something is therefore limited.

But it does not mean Presidents have no agency at all. Far from it.

Yet Obama is asserted to have no agency in his own Presidency. Clintoon controlled it and still does, The Hag, and were she President, I guess she would control the whole wide world from her perch in the Oval Office.

Amazing.

But there you are. That's what happens in hotly contested elections in which a Clinton is a candidate (it happened during the Clinton I Regime, too. And we know what a rollercoaster/game show that was.)

I would say that as a general matter, Presidents are not as directly powerful as they are made out to be. They are not monarchs nor are they autocrats, though the Presidency itself is modeled on heads of state and government of historic Britain and Rome.

Compared to many other heads of government, Presidents have both too much power and too little. Their constraints have mostly to do with their advisers, cabinets and the inertia of the permanent government (Deep State). Congressional constraints are limited, but they can operate either for or against Presidential prerogative. A prime minister, on the other hand, operates in conjunction with his or her party and the party's majority in parliament. Their party is always part of the permanent government, so the constraints put upon the prime minister  by the permanent government are somewhat less than those put on a president from either party (parties function a little differently in a parliamentary system.)

A prime minister will generally have a less rocky road in office, but there are exceptions. On the other hand, there are some things a prime minister won't do that a president might.

They say a president has a completely free hand in foreign policy and war powers, with no constraints at all. It certainly looked that way in the Bush 2 Regime, but what they did required an amazing amount of coordination and cooperation between branches of government and TPTB up and down the line. Were it not for the media's complicity and lies, much of what the Bush 2 Regime did, including the disastrous war of aggression on Iraq would not have been possible.

I wonder whether the permanent government and the neoLibCon Overclass have learned any sort of lesson from that debacle or if they are capable of Lessons Learned. If they have learned, it might be the wrong lessons.

The idea that The Hag has had ultimate power since her Senate days is of course ridiculous. But what she would do in office is a valid concern as it ought to be with any President. I doubt she would instigate a nuclear Armageddon with Russia, partly because of the conditioning she and almost everybody else of her generation (my generation as it were) got regarding the permanence of nuclear annihilation and the results of instant incineration. The United States has never gone mano a mano against a nuclear armed power partly because of that conditioning.

Cold War brinkmanship was another thing altogether, and aspects of it have been revived to assert American hegemony over rivals. For how many years was the US Government threatening war against Iran, for example? Note how it was resolved. That was brinkmanship in action. Much the same procedure is taking place with regard to Russia, with interesting results. Both sides are operating cautiously, though the rhetoric out of DC is hot. Not so much out of Moscow, though. That's how the game is played, and it was played much the same way during the Cold War. And as was the case during much of the Cold War, there are constant backchannel communications between the Kremlin and DC -- partly in order to keep things from going nuclear.

Hillary actually made a comment during one of the debates which clued me into what is probably going on: she said that a No Fly Zone over Syria would only occur as a negotiated agreement between the US, Syria and Russia, it would not be imposed unilaterally. Its purpose would be to provide a safe-haven to civilians attempting to escape  the conflict zone.

It makes sense, and it is likely that just that sort of negotiations are going on right now. The rhetoric is warmongering, but that is not necessarily what the discussions are about. The Russians and Syrians have temporarily halted air attacks on East Aleppo, for example, as a means of fostering dialog and allowing the escape of civilians who wish to leave. It's a difficult process because of the nature of the conflict and the many disparate parties involved, but it appears to be taking place nonetheless.

It will not lead to WWIII under the circumstances.

And yet the fear being whipped up is all about the impending nuclear exchange between Superpowers.

And everyone knows that's what The Hag intends to do once she's in the Big Chair.

That's not how these things work.

The President has agency, but it's not that of an autocrat.

Obama is in charge of the current regime, just as Bush 2 was in charge of the previous one, but their authority is and was not absolute. At some point, it would be nice if Americans understood how their government actually works.

Oh well....

Why?

This is a video of an encounter with someone who appears to be Officer Tensing of the University of Cincinnati police department a little over a year ago when he had been on the job for just about a month:



What the actual fuck?

Why is he doing this? What does he think he will accomplish? Where does an officer's need to feed his ego and authority come from?

Ray Tensing is the officer who killed Sam Dubose in an incident very similar to this one. Ray Tensing is charged with murder but is out on bail because his father, a Cincinnati fireman, came up with the $100,000 surety on his son's million dollar bail. Tensing was fired from the UC police department but demands his job back.

 WCPO would like you to believe he was always polite...

The Crisis of Legitimacy -- Updated

Protests over police violence and lack of accountability have roiled the country since the repeated failures of prosecutors and grand juries to indict police officers for the murders and summary executions that they commit. The protests and demonstration in solidarity with #Ferguson and Michael Brown and Eric Garner are spreading abroad as well. The movement that has arisen since the issue of police violence and lack of official accountability became the paramount social issue of the year looks to be growing as demonstrations continue to disrupt the routines of the comfortable and authority seems unable to cope -- except with more violence against nonviolent civil disobedience and hunkering down to protect their fortresses. How striking it has been to witness the police giving free rein to vandals, arsonists, and looters in Ferguson and elsewhere while vigorously attacking and dispersing crowds of nonviolent protesters or simply forming protective cordons around police stations.

Governments all over the United States and much of the world are facing a crisis of legitimacy, as more and more of them unleash violence and murder on their own people and refuse to conduct their operations in the People's interests.

Most clearly and immediately, that refusal is manifest in the continuing refusal to hold police accountable for their murder and execution of unarmed citizens. But there is so much more: the refusal of the Justice Department to prosecute the horrifying crimes against humanity committed by agents of the US Government; the refusal to address the issue of disparate and racist "justice" in this country; the refusal to hold bankers and financial fund managers criminally liable for imploding the US and global economies, forcing millions upon millions of Americans into poverty; the constant brutalization of the innocent; the lawlessness at nearly every level and branch of government; the endless warring against phantom enemies, some of which are the direct creations of our own spooks; the everpresent and pervasive domestic spying... the list goes on and on.

The Crisis of Legitimacy is the product of all these things and more.

The Crisis of Legitimacy is the result of years and years of failed institutions, failed policies, and the absence of the rule of law.

It has come to a head with the current wave of #ShutItDown and #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations.

Everywhere we turn, the Powers That Be and their agents react to the demands of the People with violence and contempt. The protests only grow. The inconveniences only grow. There will be continued disruption until and unless the concept of "justice" -- real justice, not the pretend version that practiced today -- is restored.

At the same time, Authority is being de-legitimized. Police are routinely taunted and defied. Elected officials -- when they aren't hiding behind their barricades -- are rudely dismissed as corrupt and incompetent. The school administrators cannot keep students in class. Teachers join in the demonstrations.

And still, those in power insist that there's nothing they will do or can do to correct the legal, social, and economic injustices that they have fostered and that the People are now calling to account. There is nothing they can do but to crackdown even harder on dissent.

As they do, their legitimacy evaporates. The "mandate of heaven" -- the right to rule -- is withdrawn.

That's what's happening now.

Solidarity!
-----------------------------------------
UPDATE: The Tipping Point, it has come:

Today on the Capitol steps, congressional staff reminded us that #BlackLivesMatter. Proud to lend my support. pic.twitter.com/J5uuJgXNKj
— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) December 11, 2014

It is now virtually impossible for police and DAs to continue absolving killer cops from culpability and accountability.

It will nevertheless continue until and unless the financial costs of doing so become too onerous...

Solidarity!

Wow. Inspiring

The events in St. Louis overnight have been inspiring and moving as all get out. Rebelutionary_Z has been on the front lines, and I've been catching up with some of his archived video.

The first one I looked at was a march to and rally at St. Louis University. Thousands were there. They held their arms high in solidarity for four minutes of silence in the memory of Vonderrit Myers and Mike Brown -- and how many others who have been killed by police? Today's total looks like 1613 since May 1, 2013; at least 860 killed by police since January 1 of this year.

It was inspired for the march organizers to take over the plaza at St. Louis University for the rally, despite the objections of campus security. "Out of the dorms, into the streets!"



Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

Next I watched the confrontation between the police -- who were beating their sticks on the pavement -- and the marchers on the way to the University. We've seen this scene so often not only during the confrontations in Ferguson and St. Louis but around the world it seems. The police, by killing so many, and by acting such fools delegitimize their authority. They just can't help themselves, I guess...



Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

And so it goes.

Today's actions are dubbed "Moral Monday," something that's been ongoing in North Carolina for some time.

It's an idea whose time has come.

Solidarty.

Permission Granted...

The recent trial, conviction, and sentencing of Cecily McMillan in New York is emblematic of something that has been going on in this country for a very long time but which has reached a kind of tragic climax.

Permission has been granted to "authority" -- no matter who -- to attack those without acknowledged power and authority at will with nearly complete impunity.

As I say, this has been going on for a very long time, but almost always with a proviso: police and those with power could do pretty much what they wanted to certain categories of people without power (young, brown and black men in particular, but by no means just them), but they couldn't go beyond those categories without facing consequences. A DA, judge or jury might not throw the book at them for assault, battery, murder, mayhem or what have you when they beat up or killed a mouthy white woman or a high-powered white business executive (as examples), but they might face "discipline," and that could amount to a sternly worded rebuke from higher up all the way to firing or even (very rarely) jail time.

For the most part, police know what they can get away with, and in New York, especially during the Occupy Wall Street period, they knew they could get away with just about anything short of gunplay, when it came to suppression of the movement. No, NYPD was not allowed to shoot down Occupy demonstrators in the streets and parks when they went marching or occupying encampments. Also, the NYPD rarely (or never?) appeared in standard issue Robocop/riot gear when confronting Occupy demonstrators. They mostly wore their regular uniforms. Some of the police infiltrators, of course, wore civilian clothes, trying to blend in with the motley crowds, but infiltrators were often easy to spot because they were so roided up and aggressive. Hello?

When it came to suppression of Occupy NYPD were often outrageous, brutal, deliberately cruel, and yet so very, very delicate. Touch a cop, and quite often demonstrators would wind up beaten bloody and trussed up like Thanksgiving turkeys before being hauled off in the wagon for whatever "processing" was thought necessary.

Cecily McMillan got caught up in that matrix on St. Patrick's Day, 2012, when she went down to Zuccotti Park/Liberty Square to meet some friends to go out for the evening. Well, yes, it was St. Patrick's Day, and there were celebratory festivities down at the Square for the six month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. A large and boisterous crowd had gathered at the park (soon to be outnumbered by police), and many were having a good time canoodling and reminiscing over past triumphs and failures. It was a party.

A decision was made to clear the park for its ritual "cleansing," and notice was given. Of course it was ignored, as was often the case during the Occupy Wall Street hey-day. Officers were then delegated to start removing people one by one, and they were authorized to arrest people who resisted.

Cecily says she was approached from behind by a strange man who did not identify himself who told her she had to leave. She ignored him. He was insistent. Rather than debate the matter, she decided to leave on her own volition, and as she was doing so, the unidentified stranger who was walking behind her grabbed her right breast and squeezed it hard. She reacted, she said, instinctively, by elbowing the man, who then tackled her and beat her and trussed her up with zip-ties. He was a cop. She had no idea.

Injured, apparently with a cracked rib and many bruises, she was hauled off to a holding area by a bus, where others who had been arrested were awaiting transport for "processing." She tried to escape the holding area, though she was still in zip-ties. She was re-captured and thrown down to the ground hard. She was in a great deal of pain and barely conscious by this point. After a while, arrestees started calling for medics -- they thought she had a broken rib and was in extreme distress. Their calls were ignored.

Soon, she was grabbed from the group and roughly hauled to the bus where she began to have a seizure. Then she was apparently thrown off the bus, falling hard on the street, and left in a seizure condition in the street for some minutes before being carried to the sidewalk -- so as to clear a path for traffic. She was left without any kind of medical attention for what I understand was sixteen minutes, while police hovered about chatting. EMTs in the crowd offered to help. They were ignored. People hurled invective at the police for their disinterest and neglect. Cops saw their main job as crowd control and taking those who had been arrested to jail.

Eventually, the fire department medics arrived and began treating Cecily. As far as I could tell, watching on livestream and later videos, she wasn't having a seizure as such, she was hyperventilating due to the injury to her rib, and the rough treatment and neglect she'd suffered had badly aggravated her condition.

After some time with the fire department medics, she was transported to the hospital where her numerous injuries were assessed and treated. She was released. Quite a while later, she was charged with assault on a police officer, a great surprise to her.

Thus her trial, conviction, and sentencing as the "last Occupy protester" to face judgement in the courts.

That's the story as I understand it, and in the retelling, it doesn't seem all that bad, given some of the other horrors that went on during the Occupy Wall Street suppression, and it is hardly worth mentioning given the numerous police shootings of innocent black and brown men in New York during that period as well as before and afterwards.

So what if a well-off young white woman is roughed up by the police? Who cares? Black and brown women face much worse on a daily basis in New York and all over the country. Maybe it's a good thing that this uppity white bitch gets a taste of what black and brown women go through all the time.... she's actually lucky, runs this line of reasoning, because if she weren't white and well off, she'd face much worse treatment than she did.

That's true enough. Making a cause celebre out of Cecily McMillan seems perhaps a bit unwise when so many black and brown men and women face far worse all the time, and nobody (well, hardly anybody) bats an eye.

If Cecily were black or brown, who would care what happened to her? She could be brutalized, raped, disappeared, chopped up for cat food, and hardly anybody would ever notice. That's the way it is in this country, that's the way it's long been for women of color.

So why should we care about Cecily above all? Or care about at all?

The only real reason to care about what happens to Cecily is if such concern is tied in with growing concerns about an out-of-control policing and injustice system that grinds down and grinds up thousands in New York and millions around the country, operating unjustly day in and day out, targeting the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill, the young, the black and the brown. This is a monstrous system that destroys families and whole communities routinely, kills the innocent with impunity, declares entire categories of people to be... less than human.

It's insane.

The only reason to care about what happens Cecily is if caring about her opens eyes to what's been happening to so many, many others unjustly accused, imprisoned or killed by "authority" run amok.

She represents the consequences of this highly unjust system, that's all.

It's an unjust system of authority that has once again been granted permission to behave with impunity toward whomever it chooses.


Some of the jurors -- nine out of the twelve who convicted Cecily -- seemed to wake up to what they had done and implored the judge to grant leniency. Observers have said he did, by sentencing her to 90 days rather than the more typical 180 days. Maybe so, but that doesn't change the fact that the system he and they serves is unjust at its core, is arbitrary, and it targets the young, the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill, and the black and brown for special interest and treatment.

We're told that Cecily has made her personal crisis within this unjust matrix into an opportunity to do good on behalf of those who face a much worse situation than she does.

For that, we can be grateful.

The Verizon Domestic/Foreign Surveillance Thing

1) The story in the Guardian reads more like Ackerman than Greenwald, so it wouldn't surprise me if  Ackerman re-wrote (rather than simply edited) Greenwald's initial piece in order to make it journalistically concise and coherent.

2) This is obviously the biggest story of the day and quite a coup for the Guardian. That so many of us were already well-aware of the existence of massive domestic surveillance (it goes well beyond the confines of this particular Order, after all) just goes to show that no matter how allegedly "secret" all this stuff is, it's also common knowledge. It is one of those "secrets" that's meant to be known widely in any case.

3) Getting hold of an actual FISA court order is rather unusual. Given the nearly paranoiac stance of the White House toward leaks that it doesn't control, this incident will no doubt have extended and lasting repercussions, repercussions that cannot yet be predicted fully.

4) Many are already claiming this is only the tip of the iceberg, that in fact all phone calls and emails are being hoovered up and stored for future reference and possible use, and this has been going on for many years. Make of it what you will. What makes this breathless revelation different is that it is based on the actual order from the FISA Court.

5) The court order makes government possession of these data perfectly legal. All the telecoms routinely keep this information as a matter of course in doing their business. It may not be desirable for the government to have these data, but once the court orders it, there is no illegality on the part of the government in possessing this information. Indeed, the government can and does purchase all kinds of supposedly private data from other entities all the time. By these means, the government can find out just about anything about anyone just about any time it wants to. There is no legal impediment to the government's doing this.

6) I've seen quite a few defenses of corporate surveillance of individuals and groups -- as opposed to government surveillance -- on the theory that you, the individual or group under corporate surveillance, can withdraw your permission to be surveilled and decamp. Once you have done so, the corporation has no recourse and can neither apprehend nor jail you for your refusal. This is absurd to the nth degree. Anyone who truly believes that somehow corporate surveillance is benign or that individuals/groups can avoid it (by "refusing permission") is an idiot. And anyone who believes that government is not the tool of corporate interests is beyond redemption. Anyone who believes there is only a "voluntary" association between the individual/group and corporate interests or that government and corporate interests do not overlap and coincide more and more fully simply does not live in the real world.

7) The only thing that appears to be new in this story is that it is based on an actual FISA court order, not on anonymous statements from "those familiar with the FISA courts." The surveillance certainly isn't new. For days recently we were treated to the incessant whining of the media over FBI surveillance of reporters. This was the Worst Thing Evah! When people like me pointed out that everyone was under similar surveillance, and it was pretty galling that media claimed some kind of exemption while apparently caring not at all about all the rest of those being surveilled, we were met with collective yawns and pish-tushes. Now that the story has broken in the Guardian that everyone (Well, all Verizon customers in a certain jurisdiction)  are being surveilled, suddenly it's Important, the Worst Thing Evah! Utterly without irony. It only goes to show how easily some audiences can be manipulated by the right triggers...

8) It appears that much of DC is now running around screaming because The Sekrit Is OUT!!! Oh noes! Except for Little Lindsey, who proclaims on C-Span that he's fine with it. Carry on.

What a day.

Tents Are Still the Most Terrifying Objects to Authority

Video of police riot in Istanbul over the placement of Tents in the Park. Authority goes berserk.



Much more about what's been going on in Istanbul and much of the rest of Turkey here.

On résiste à l'invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l'invasion des idées -- Victor Hugo

So Why Do People Vote Against Their Own Best Interests?

I would argue that from their perspective they've done no such thing.

Their perspective may be wrong to be sure. But they don't know that at the time. Most often, they can't know it.

It's a matter of social and cultural conditioning, of propaganda, of deep seated fears, of threats and imprecations, of promised rewards and of an inner need to do what is right for oneself and one's posterity. All normal stimuli and responses under the circumstances.

And yet responding normally is somehow wrong? Since the result of the action can't be known in advance, it's hard to see where it is wrong for a People to vote in the way they think is appropriate under their circumstances at the time -- and hope for the best.

As we see in Greece, the issues are not clear cut in the eyes of the People; they continue to evince tepid support for a standard model rightist solution to their existential crisis, but they are trending more and more to the Left, with strong showings by the Left coalition and the even-further Left, ie: the Communists.

The odd-man-out is the Socialist Party (ΠΑΣΟΚ) which can't seem to win for losing. But then, selling out tends to have that effect.

Meanwhile in France the Socialists gained a clear majority in the National Assembly and so Hollande has a mandate going forward. Into what is the question. France and Germany appear to be on a collision course with regard to the proper treatment of the Periphery. But then, are they? Really? Frau Merkel seems quite capable of steamrolling and stonewalling to get her way until the very last minute -- or as they say the last dog dies. She seems to be modeling herself after Baroness Thatcher in her dealings with the fringes of Europe, and she's getting away with it. On the other hand, Hollande is a blank slate; the Socialist platform may be one thing and his perspective something else. Since Socialists and Social Democrats all over Europe have been more than willing to sell their People out for the promise of reward under the New World Order or what have you, I wouldn't put much faith in the Elysee Palace's ability to sway Berlin from its current path of domination, exploitation and ruin for all who don't pay appropriate tribute.

The economic policies out of Berlin and Brussels are insane on their merits, but they're typical of the predominate neo-liberal economics out of all the highest institutions in the world these days. Banksters rule with an iron fist, and they will fuck up whole nations that don't go along with them pronto and fully.

Frau Merkel, Mme Legarde and Signore Draghi all pull the wagon for the Banksters. Legarde and Draghi ARE Banksters; Merkel's service unto them and unto the Berlin Banksters in defiance of common sense and decency (let alone basic macro economics) is -- or would be -- inexplicable, but for the fact that she says the German Volk are behind her (as her party loses election after election in the German States.)

And we may at some point to ask how exactly it came to be that the Banksters were allowed to overwhelm common sense and a decent regard for mankind in their pursuit of obscene profits based on... nothing. What happened to enable this triumph of greed, parsimony and stupidity?

And what, exactly, are the People to do under the circumstances?

In Europe, it appears that the People have recognized that they are essentially unable to affect the policy decisions of their governments, no matter who they elect. So, if I'm reading the situation correctly, when they seem to be "voting against their own interests" by voting unenthusiastically for a more rightist government, they may not actually be voting against their own interests at all. They may instead be acknowledging that they aren't going to get anywhere with any of the parties or their alternatives: the situation will stay the same or worsen no matter what party is in charge of the government because the government itself is a captured entity which the People cannot affect significantly from the inside.

The only real effect will come from the outside.

I may be projecting a great deal here, following my own twisted insights about these things, but maybe not. It may well be that people who seem to be voting against their own interests are dupes and fools; but it is quite as possible that they are making a strategic decision.

Watch what happens in Egypt as their Revolution is systematically undermined through legal and electoral shenanigans. Somehow, two weeks of agitation and occupation hasn't quite turned into the New Day the Revolutionaries thought it would. And after what the Egyptians have been going thorough since their "success" in overthrowing the Regime (oh yeah?) ,  the Arab Spring may not have been all it was cracked up to be.  A year later, it's looking to get even grimmer. And in Egypt, please note, the electoral process and candidate selection is as hamstrung as that of Iraq.

There is no way for the public interest and popular will to be appropriately acknowledged and expressed through these convoluted and highly managed electoral systems. While it is obvious in the case of the New Arab electoral situation -- elections are actually freer and produce a more representative outcome in Iran -- the shock of it is stronger because of the innocence and naivete of the electorate.

In sophisticated Europe, there is much less expectation that government will actually reflect the People's Will.

And here? Quien sabe? I think people are realizing -- if they hadn't already recognized it --  that elections are not the way toward significant policy changes. It simply won't happen -- because it can't.

How it will fall out, I don't know. We are in a Revolutionary Era, one unlike any I can point to in history because of its nearly universal aspect at the popular level, the nearly complete divorce between Peoples and their governments, and the extraordinarily widespread efforts of individuals and groups to engineer change from the ground up, without deference or reference to the ruling elites.

This is something different than Revolutions of the past.

There is a long way yet to go, but I suspect when the final act plays out, it will be quick. We'll see.

On the Incidents in New York and at Union Square Yesterday

I've been dealing with other things most of the day, so I haven't checked on the continuing Crisis of Authority in New York since fairly early this morning. Some of what I post now may therefore be out of date.

But...

There was a huge rally at Union Square in New York City yesterday called "The Million Hoodie March" in honor of Trayvon Martin who was killed last week in Sanford, Florida -- for walking while black.

Unfortunately, this is still (partially) the United States of America where such demonstrations are necessary. I say "partially", because we've come a long way from where we were when I was his age, but progress on race issues has come at a tremendous cost. That cost has been the criminalization of entire cohorts of young men of color, and the assumption by public guardians -- whether they be the man who shot Trayvon Martin or established police forces -- that if a male is black or brown and within a certain age group he is likely a criminal, and that shooting or imprisoning him is of little or no social consequence.

What is the meaning of "equality" in such a context?

At any rate, there were thousands gathered at Union Square to honor the memory of Trayvon and hear from his mother, and to consider how widespread the condition of oppression is in this country. And how vulnerable young black men, especially, but not just them, are to arbitrary impositions of authority than can and do turn deadly too often.

After the rally, the people took to the streets, marching in solidarity to a destination that wasn't entirely clear... well, that's how these things go. From what I saw, there was a spontaneous decision to march to Washington Square and then return to Union Square. From what I can recall of my times in New York, that seemed quite reasonable given that the locations aren't that far from one another. Their symbolic nature is what seemed most important at the time and now.

So, off they went, accompanied by police who were flummoxed by the size of the crowd, its energy, its determination, and its spontaneity. Their attempts to control the march and confine the marchers to the sidewalks failed. And that, in case anyone was wondering, is the essence of the Crisis of Authority in New York.

It is not that no one pays any attention to the NYPD -- they are, after all, a violent group of gangsters and thugs -- but their authority is being eroded every day in almost too many ways to count. What happened yesterday was instructive.

Mass media -- and even New Media (talkin' 'bout you, Tim Pool) -- was at pains to diminish the size of the crowd that assembled and marched. From what I could see of Tim's coverage -- which was mostly very good, though the 4G service he uses for livestreaming was spotty at best -- the crowd filled the open space in Union Square completely and was spilling out onto the streets round about. My estimate of the crowd size, based on what I could see of it from Tim's video vantage point on what appeared to be a light post, was around ten thousand. Tim was saying... "hundreds." Sometimes "thousands." Sometimes "huge crowd." He seemed to settle on "about 2,000" after talking to numerous other people who estimated crowd size.

This is the open space in Union Square as imaged by Google:

It is quite large. It was packed solid:


And that's only about half the crowd, from Union Square E to just west of the statue of George Washington. The crowd continued at that density all the way to Broadway, and as you can see from the picture above, they spilled onto and actually were standing across 14th Street. It was a huge crowd, that was reported in some cases as "dozens". I kid you not.




When the march began, they headed west on 14th Street, decided eventually to go to Washington Square and then return to Union Square, a circuit of a little over two miles I would guess. The crowd, however, was so large, it split into three and thus the marches didn't seem quite so spectacular. All along the route, the police were futilely trying to wrangle and manage the marchers, who insisted on taking to the streets no matter how many times they were told to get back on the sidewalks or were herded by scooter cops.

When they returned to Union Square, the crowd had diminished in size somewhat, but it was still impressive. The failure of the police to wrangle them successfully was symbolized by the fact that barricades set up by the police were overturned:



As more and more police assembled, the crowd defied them with chants of "Whose streets? Our streets!"

Finally, around midnight, hundreds and hundreds of NYPD officers -- estimates were up to 500, the most on one operation since the eviction from Zuccotti/Liberty Park on November 15 -- were assembled at Union Square to control what by that time was no more than a couple of hundred demonstrators, and the sight was absurd. Which, by this time, even the police seemed to recognize. The smallish crowd did some spontaneous actions, including marching around the park -- accompanied by police who couldn't keep up when they ran, and then dispersed.

The police were left there, all dolled up with nothing to do.

This was a nearly textbook example of how authority is delegitimized. One of the things that demonstrators in New York especially, but throughout the Occupy Movement internationally as well, have made clear is that they are not afraid of the police. The demonstrators will comply when it suits them, they will defy when it suits them. They are setting the ground rules of confrontations, and that is partly what is causing discomfort among more traditionally oriented activists. The rules, as they understand them, are set by authority, not the other way around.

The practice of delegitimazation doesn't always work, and the methods are not always comprehended by those involved, but as the "American Spring" gets fully underway, we're likely to see more and more of these tactics employed.

-----------------------------
FURTHERMORE: I didn't know they'd gone to Wall Street and desecrated the Bull: (Oh. My! Not only that, they de-arrested one of their comrades who had mounted the Bull. Things fall apart...)

On De-Legitimizing and Building Within the Hollow Shell

[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....