Buddhism Without Laughter is Like Revolution Without Dancing

So. 

Did my first "Practice Interview" yesterday with one of the Dharma teachers for this practice period. I told him he was the reason I was there because I'd listened to a podcast of a Dharma talk he did about a year and a half ago. The topic was the Diamond Sutra -- which I'd been googling for information -- and his talk had been enlightening partly for what wasn't said rather than what was directly stated. It wasn't a particularly organized talk, it was more spontaneous and was just what I needed at that moment. 

When I got an email about this practice period, I said to myself, "All right, why not? It's time." So here I am.

I told him the brief version of my many years of practice, how I came to the practice, where I was in the practice, and some of what I was gaining and hoped to gain from this practice period. We talked about Kerouac and Dharma Bums and I said that it was probably time for me to have a teacher and join an active sangha. He saw that it was probably so.

I asked how his mother was doing. It seemed to startle him. When the practice period began he said he'd just come back from Los Angeles where he'd been with his mother through surgery, and I'd thought about him and his mother from that point on. Even when you are detached in the Buddhist sense, the loss or well being of your mother and those closest to you is going to be felt. Compassion and concern and respect are called for from those who are aware.

He thanked me and said she was doing well, and I told him I was glad for that, and we moved on. 

He suggested I read the Platform Sutra if I hadn't already. Best, he thought, if I came to it fresh without advance conceptions or knowledge. If I hadn't read it before its effect would be greater.

So I'm reading it now, and it's fascinating. I didn't read it before. No. But I'd heard the story, it's often used as a metaphor. And much of the Dharma teaching is very familiar. For the most part, it is the Zen practice I've been engaged in for so many, many years. There are some gems, real gems that'd I'd missed, and I was delighted to find them in the Sutra.

He suggested I arrange for interviews with other Dharma teachers during the practice period as well, which I've done with one other so far. Slots fill quickly. 

We chatted some more and he said he'd like to take it up with me some more at another time, and I was agreeable, and after our time was up for this interview we bowed said goodbye for now. 

What was striking to me was that we laughed, genuinely, at our foibles among other things, and to me that is a core and necessary feature of Buddhism. For without laughter, what's the point, eh?

Without dancing, why bother with Revolution?

Once Again, the Revolution Stalls

Months after the start of this rebellion -- triggered by the murder-by-police of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May -- the spirit of the movement for change seems to have been put on pause as people start to come to grips with both the reality of the situation and what a revolutionary future might mean. The field is left open for the triumph -- once again -- of fascist authoritarianism. 

Extremely modest reform efforts have been put forth here and there, the idea being to curb the enthusiasm of the rabble for defunding or otherwise interfering with the institution (and profit center) of modern policing. A ban on chokeholds should be enough to quiet the masses, right? Well, except for the fact that that isn't how George Floyd was killed, and such holds are already banned in most places, it's great. It's symbolic but great.

The defund the police movement is so far failing almost everywhere, not because it's the wrong thing to do but because it is not understood much beyond its advocates, and where some efforts to redirect police funding toward social services have been attempted, the police unions (primarily) have fought bitterly and as so often happens have sabotaged such efforts. 

It's a stalemate in which the forces of maintaining "order" at all costs (that is, dominance by the police) run roughshod over practically everything else, and the rise of pro-police vigilantism -- such as in Kenosha, Portland and elsewhere -- complicates efforts to build something better on the ruins of the present. 

Previous efforts have faced just such a stalemate and just such reaction. Revolution stalls out every time. 

I've said in other fora that it's partly because there's no Marx, no Kropotkin, for our era, and none of the high and mighty would be nobles and oligarchs who rule us and own the government and the police have the slightest interest in serving the People. We, the People, rabble that we are, exist to serve them. Period. 

And they are terrified of what might happen to them if the rabble not only gets the guillotine but figures out how to use it. Preventing revolution then becomes a primary objective -- while exploiting and looting the rubes when not consigning them to "disappear."

For its part, it appears that Black Lives Matter as an organization heavily funded by certain oligarchic interests has largely turned away from the more radical proposals and demands which gave energy to the early protests. They haven't entirely turned against the anarchist activists (aka: "Antifa" the Dreaded) who act up and act as a vanguard in many cities around the country, but they disagree with the tactics employed and dismiss the largely white youth who throw themselves on the line night after night. What are they accomplishing on behalf of the larger movement?

Not enough, apparently. 

I think we're beyond the point at which a "movement" of any type is sufficient to deal with the existential problems we face. It's no longer about movements, politics, or traditions. For many millions, it's about survival. 

The systems and institutions people have relied on during times of trouble are breaking down. Lack of income means that hunger and homelessness are becoming the fate of many more people every day. The failures of government are partially responsible for making matters worse rather than better, but there's a failure of vision as well. 

What kind of world do we want? And what will it take to get there?

Be Like Water

Been following some of the hundreds and thousands of daily/nightly/constant protests around the world with a focus on Portland, Oregon. I want to see whether any of this is going to amount to anything good. So far, I can't say.

What I can say from what I've been seeing on the various livestreams is that there are far too many police, and most of them are doing nothing useful at all. Their primary task in Portland and many other places is protection of their fortresses. That's it. Nothing else. Night after night, day after day, the police assemble in multitudes while the public assembles their on their own account, and then they do battle in the streets. Or not. All to protect and defend the police and (in)justice offices, courts, jails, headquarters, fortresses.

They march. They run. They pant. They brutalize. They run. They halt and catch their breaths. They run and brutalize. They tumble and fall over people running away from them. They halt. They pant. They yell. They thwack people who don't run fast enough. They confiscate bicycles, umbrellas, back packs, water. They pop the tires of the Snack Van, over and over and over again. They run. They pant. They yell.

This is Portland, but it's also hundreds of cities and countries around the world. Minsk. Paris. Beirut. Bolivia. Thailand. Hong Kong. Chicago. Baltimore. Washington, DC. Seattle. Los Angeles. On and on.

The protest movement is like water. Everywhere. Nowhere. All at once. Intermittent.

The issues: Dignity. Justice. Community. Peace. The issues: corruption, injustice, racism, no-future. Increasing suffering. Hunger. Homelessness. Debt. Illness and death.

And most police do nothing useful at all. They are emblems, symbols of a useless, death-dealing ruling class, united against the people they fear and despise.

Rebel Rebel

The "Trump-Traitor!" meme is now embedded in the firmament. After their tete-a-tete in Helsinki, Trump and Putin have become the New Not-Normal destroyers of worlds (riffing off the Oppenheimer Bhagavad Gita quote.)

OK. So now what? When you strike at the King, you must... There can be no backing down or away from the next step or...

We've been in the strangest pickle for the longest time. Trump was not supposed to ascend the throne, but the truth is that nothing was done that might have been done to stop it. All along the way from the campaign to now, Trump and his cronies have been mostly enabled rather than thwarted (despite the catcalls and lies). The #Resistance is focused on electoral triumph in the fall and periodic street demonstrations about this or that, but not about interfering or intervening in the course of events transpiring under the current regime. 

Our Betters, the High and the Mighty, the Oligarchy, in and out of government is doing essentially nothing about the regime's chaotic wrecking crew. In many ways they enable it. There is no discernible  effort from any quarter to be done with this nonsense, even if the cry today is one of Treason! Most Foul! They may cluck their tongues from time to time but that's about it, while everything short of The Revolution roils the media and the masses. 

As I've said more than once, Trump is entertainment. Whatever damage he's doing in office -- and there's plenty of it starting with beclowning the office of president itself--is considered either repairable or necessary destruction. Creative, right?

But what happens when he ceases to be an entertainment and become a clear and present danger?

Look away? Say it can't happen, institutions are strong enough? I don't know. Constant crisis is not a sustainable path. And we may have reached the limit of crisis. Where to now?

Doing the Wrong Thing

Doing the wrong thing seems to be the way of our governing class, and that includes Trump. That he continues to be lauded and supported at all is interesting, "clarifying" you might say, because it shows up his prime supporters for who they are: nihilists, racists, reactionaries and would-be revolutionaries if they only had some courage. But they don't. They're cowards looking to lord it over someone, somehow, preferably by divine right.  IE: delegation by the God Emperor.

That's what they are supporting him for. They are hoping that he will assume the Purple and finally Rule once and for all as he should, from the Throne, brooking no opposition, giving no quarter to his enemies, enforcing obedience with whatever violence the situation requires.

Doing the wrong thing, indeed.

Except that's what his supporters and defenders want.

Enough of the business of politics. Enough with listening to the losers. Enough with mollycoddling the snowflakes. Enough with the Clintonites.

Time to put a final nail in the coffin of the Democrat (sic) Party.

Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!

They revel in every wrong move from On High.

Withdrawing from the Paris Accords (which apparently is a symbolic thing, but I'll get to that eventually) thrilled them. Of course it's been pointed out that the United States is now the only nation on earth that doesn't support the aims and goals of the Accords to deal with climate change as a common cause among peoples and nations. The two other nations that have not agreed to the Accords, Nicaragua and Syria, have their reasons -- Nicaragua because they didn't go far enough and Syria because the Assad regime was not allowed to represent the nation at the negotiations and thus no one was empowered to agree to the Accords for Syria.

The reason for Trump's withdrawal: Selfish, pissy, "nyah, nyah" to the rest of the world. That's about all. And that's what thrills his supporters and defenders. "Sticking it" to whomever is their prime objective. Sticking it, essentially, to anyone and everyone who disputes or disagrees  with their chosen Ultra-Alpha.

Many have claimed that Trump intends to destroy the ruling neoLibCon paradigm, freeing us and the world from its horrors. No, I think not, and I have argued that instead, Trump intends to consolidate it and impose it far more thoroughly and harshly than it has been heretofore (the example of Greece under the neoLibCon thumb is instructive). We see every indication of it in his budgets, statements, and actions, but his supposedly "progressive" supporters especially let them pass as if they were angel's wings, nothing to be alarmed at. Nothing at all.

It's more of doing the wrong thing. Sometimes in hopes that eventually the Right Thing will emerge and whatever horrors arise in the interim --oh well. Christian Martyrs, you know. Can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Eggs are losers. Too bad so sad.

In addition to doing away with politics, they seem to want to do away with the bulk of human population, disposing of practically everyone who is... well, let's be honest.. not white enough.

"Overpopulation" is a constant theme with them. The answer is disposal. They celebrate climate change because it will eliminate a shit ton of brown people. Whoo-hoo!

So of course Trump's withdrawal from Paris would be seen in a positive light.

The problem is that our less radical neoLibCon rulers are intent on doing the wrong thing too. Only less short term destructively. It's amazing.

There is really no one at all among the elites of governing, business, or finance who sees doing the right thing for the masses and the rabble as important or necessary. No one.

We cannot rely on them to do what should be and needs to be done.

There is only one way to solve a governing crisis of this magnitude. The upcoming elections in Britain may give a clue, but I suspect the results will be disappointing given the recent attacks in London and Manchester. We'll see.

At some point, the People, the Masses, the Rabble have to put the fear in the governing classes, particularly those in the Trump camp, but not solely them. So far, the Rabble has not been able to do it, not consistently and effectively at any rate, and it is partially because the Rabble are divided, almost atomized, and do not see a common interest with one another --unless of course it is to "stick it" to some other element of the Lower Orders.

There is no agreement about what Doing the Right Thing entails.

And so it goes.

The devolution will continue.

The Class That Stands Together

There may be a glimmering among the Rabble that not only is Trump no populist, he's a fairly accurate representation of his class. The class of billionaire oligarch/gangsters who set out to rule the world some decades ago and have nearly achieved ultimate victory.

It isn't talked about in class terms, not in the US at any rate, and that's too bad. These people rule us, they own the government, and they are bad news. They seek to steal everything they can from the masses, and provide just enough in return to keep the Rabble fighting over the scraps. Dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest, yadda yadda.

You may note that for the most part the Overclass is silent about Trump -- or enthusiastically and actively supporting him. Almost none actively -- and openly -- oppose him and his rule. Instead, it's left to a shadowy "deep state" to hamstring and undermine him, neutering his worst impulses from time to time, but otherwise leave him be.

Why not? He provides endless entertainment that can be marketed to the Rabble, and as long as what he does or wants to do is confined to what the Overclass deems meet, what's to worry, right?

Trump was effectively neutered as President by the end of February. Apart from his twit-storms, he really hasn't been able to do anything on his own since. To say he's figurehead is being charitable. Government is delegated to his family and cronies and he can go golf. This is essentially how enterprises of the sort he's familiar with operate. The Jefe doesn't actually do much. He doesn't have to. He has people for that.

Interestingly, he's failed with the congress, he's been slapped down by the courts, the military seems to ignore him (and treats with his son-in-law instead, knowing where the "real power" behind the throne is), and the media makes mock of him day in and day out.

According to the polls, his popularity, never great, has collapsed. He is a king without a country.

However, and we should be clear about this, the Trump regime is being allowed to set precedent. A precedent that says that direct oligarchic rule is OK by The Powers That Be. The Rubes are too stupid to say otherwise.

In other words, what comes After Trump won't be much different. Style wise it may be less tawdry, but substance? Pretty much the same.

The US is now over the notion that someone who knows what they're doing should be in charge. As long as the class of the Rulers is Ruling Class, Overclass, Oligarch-gangster, it's OK. Whatever.

The Rabble is to be barred forever more from the levers of power. Even the professionals and experts are to be barred from the halls of the Mighty until they are vetted for loyalty first and foremost.

What will be will be.

I long ago pointed out that if the Revolution ever comes to the US, it will come from the Right. And so it is. We're in the midst of it.

Ultimately, Trump himself is not the issue. It is the class he represents, the class that's seized power and intends to rule directly for ... eternity?

The Left, such as it is, appears to have given up on the US some time ago. The Left has been almost entirely absent from politics in the US since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and even before that, it was weak and ineffective.

So Democrats have been cast as "The Left" -- but they're nothing of the sort. They are little more than the somewhat less brutal rightist party. For a time, Libertarians tried to claim the "Left" mantle, but it didn't work. Their key concept -- "I demand the liberty to impose my authority on you, without government interference" -- is hardly a Leftist notion.

If there can be no Revolution from the Left, the question will be how to survive the shitstorm brought to us by the Oligarch-gangster class. Combined with climate change and everything else, it should be clear by now the Rabble is in for a world of hurt, unrelenting and increasingly cruel.

What a whirled...

Coups, Revolutions, Civil Wars, and All the Rest

Yeah right. Whatever.

I'm getting sick of the threats from the Trump loyalists and defenders that if he is denied the presidency by legal or other means, there will almost certainly be a civil war. Revolution. Chaos. Yadda, yadda.

What crap.

Of course I've long made clear my preference that Trump not be allowed to ascend to the presidency, and I favor almost any legal or at least "acceptable" means to prevent it. There are plenty of mechanisms available, and a number of them appear to be in play at the moment.

I don't favor Hillary back in the White House, either. That, to me, would be a grotesque perversion and misperception of the will of the voters. The majority chose neither one, and that's the key to my understanding of what's to be done.

Trump defenders, of course, feel threatened and paranoid by the efforts under way to thwart the announced election outcome. You start listening to them and you realize they feel threatened and paranoid about most everything, particularly about losing their superior status.

Which they hope to reclaim through the agency of their Promised Redeemer, D J Trump.

Oh dear.

Now my Predict-0-Meter hasn't worked properly for a very long time, so anything I say about what might happen is to be taken with a barrel of salt, but still, the outlines of what could come have been sketched for many years.

Civil war and/or Revolution do not apply to the resolution of the disputed presidential (s)election.

Instead, what is likely to occur, should by some slight chance Mr. Trump be denied his ascension to the throne, is the installation of an "interim government" of military officers and technocrats.

They'd be called "Caretakers". Bless their hearts. Some high-ranking and broadly respected general would be the face of the interim government, but he would not necessarily rule. More likely the same Deep State/Shadow Government that's been in charge for decades would continue uninterrupted. The General would be there as a calming authority figure, much as Obama has been since his advent as Redeemer.

It's likely that the expressed plan would be to re-do the presidential election -- or maybe all elections -- in a year or so, but it wouldn't be surprising if elections never again take place (legitimately) above the local level.

Neither Mr. Trump nor Mrs. Clinton would be able to run for any office.

Candidates would be selected by committee. There would be no primaries. Their qualifications would include loyalty and obedience and the ability to keep a lid on revolt and resistance.

The likelihood of revolution or civil war is much less under such a coup and transfer of power, but the possibility isn't eliminated.

We'll see, won't we?

The Essentials of Disruption/Destruction

I've said I'm not much interested in the presidential campaign this year largely because the two main candidates are.... simply appalling. That's not to say that one or the other doesn't have some positive qualities, that's not the point. The point is that both of them represent ideals of the State and society that are loathsome. They are both ideologically neoLibCon. They are both exploiters and oppressors. Neither has a shred of faith in or genuine interest in the well-being of the masses.

Hillary is the avatar of the perpetuation of the status quo, and under other circumstances, that might be enough to get her back into the White House all by itself. After all, we've been propagandized for years that "everything's fine," the world is a better place, the economy is steaming along nicely, everyone who wants a job can find one, and now we are learning that incomes for the Lesser People are rising for the first time since 2007!!!! Yay!!!!!

Whut? Think about it. Household incomes are rising for the first time since 2007... what does that imply? Obvious, isn't it? Household incomes have been declining or flat since 2007. Ah, now that makes sense, because that's clearly the case. Actually, statistically, the median household income has been in decline since 1997. There may -- or may not -- have been a slight uptick in 2015 over 2014, but the overall trend is downward, and that hasn't changed.

Think. When was Obama elected on a promise to halt/reverse the Great (for the Rabble, the Endless) Recession? Ah. 2008. And guess what? He hasn't done it. At least not for the Rabble, not even close. The High and the Mighty, however, have made out like the bandits they are.

For many of them, there never was any Recession at all.

And Obama made sure that situation was institutionalized.

Hillary represents the continuation of, indeed the intensification of, the policies that make it so.

Thus, of course, the majority of the Highest of the Mighty support her candidacy over that of one of their own class, Donald Trump.

At least they have until recently.

Now after Hillary's Unfortunate Incident at the 9/11 Memorial, they seem to be hedging their bets. Trump may not be The One -- yet -- but if Herself craps out, who they gonna turn to? And after all, Trump has long been One of the Tribe and he seems to be picking up steam among the Ignorant Rabble, soooooo.... why not?

After all, he is a Disruptor/Destructor. And that's important to the success and well-being of his class.  Part of their culture is the disruption and destruction of rivals below them. Trump is a master at that. He showed it on his TV show for years and years, and he is certainly adept at it in life. Not only does he disrupt and destroy, he often gets his victims to like it. Now that is a highly desirable skill among the rich and powerful. In fact, it is a necessary one given the ideological foundations of the modern political economy.

Obama has that skill too, though he's far more subtle about it than The Donald. He's been soothing the savage beast of the Rabble throughout his entire reign at the top, and he's better at it than any politician I know of.

Hillary simply does not have that skill, though her husband does, though that can't overcome some of his other qualities that we need not get into here.

Hillary inspires resistance, not so much because she's The Devil Incarnate (as she's been characterized by a large segment of the Internets) but because she tends to scold rather than uplift, tends to negatively characterize her opponents, tends to be less than inspirational in large gatherings, tends to be so wedded to preserving and extending the status quo, she's all but unable to recognize that the status quo hasn't worked for the majority for a generation or more.

She can see discreet elements of failure, but not the whole, basically because she's wedded to the whole picture, a picture which from below is horrendous.

She doesn't seem to see that, nor can she grasp it.

On the other hand, Trump sees it clearly -- because he's profiting from it -- and seeks to exploit the Rabble to the maximum degree he can, first by being elected, and then who knows what will follow?

No one.  No one can be sure, and that is a big part of his appeal. This was also part of Reagan's appeal. There were lots of dog whistles for those who were attuned, and there was his (suddenly forgotten and ignored by the media) governorship of California that clued some people into what his governance as President would become, but it was an era of hailing the hero, in contrast to the "failed" status quo represented by Carter, and in the public eye, a celebrity is almost always Heroic, no?

But nobody could be sure what Reagan would do, anymore than they could be sure what  Trump will do in the White House.

Hillary, like Carter, they already knew all about -- too much about. And they could anticipate policies that would do little or nothing on their behalf, or would actually make things worse for the many while ensuring that things would get better and better for the few.

Trump on the other hand can play the Rubes like a room full of marks much like the hucksters who sell real estate courses do. They dazzle the Rabble with the promise of getting rich! rich! rich!. But when it comes to it, the only one who really gets rich! is the course promoter. Gee, who'd a thunk?

Trump is pure show business, pure con-man. But that's what it takes anymore. Obama is more cerebral, but he's just as much a con-man, as too many people found out after he was elected. The con was that he held out such promise to the Rabble, but he delivered mostly  to the High and the Mighty whom he served.

Trump is a different kind of con-man; he serves no one but himself. No one. The concept of "public service" is anathema to him -- something he makes clear if you cut through his gobbledygook. He's in this for himself alone, period. End of discussion.

OK. So why does that appeal to anyone else? Well, why are gangsters often held in high esteem? Because, at least for those on their side, they hold out a promise of well-being, even prosperity, so long as you don't cross them. In other words, if you're on their side, you'll be OK -- until you aren't.

Gangster rule works, at least it can, but it is also disruptive and destructive of the Established Order.

Gangster rule is a rival and a threat to the Establishment. And the Establishment has to make deals with the Gangsters or be uprooted and destroyed by them. "Deals" are what Trump promises. "Deals".

Hillary offers essentially nothing new at all. She started her campaign with the implied slogan: "No you can't," and she really hasn't budged an inch since then. It's still a "No you can't" campaign, and it's hard to see any resonance among the People. She offers the Rabble nothing but a long-hard slog to gain marginal improvements -- eventually. "Stronger together," indeed, but to what object, when ultimately her message is that "nothing can be done," and "there is no alternative." (h/t Baroness Thatcher, may she burn in Hell.)

Further, Hillary posits that she knows best, and the rest of y'all need to go along with it. It's for your own good after all.

Sigh.

Trump promises to upend and overturn all that, sweep t all away, and in the end rule as a dictator, strongman, gangster. This is the ideal of his class after all. Whether this is the time for that, I can't say, but I was shocked to the bone in 1980 when Reagan won against arguably one of the nation's best presidents -- one who was, however, incapable of controlling the pile on of negative forces that undermined his authority and ability. Reagan just swept all that aside. This is what Trump promises to do as well.

If the status quo doesn't work for the majority -- and arguably it doesn't -- then a quasi or literal revolution is required.

But as I've long maintained, if the Revolution is to come, it will come from the Right.

I didn't think it would be quite as openly gangsterish, but that's what it looks like is in the offing.

Oh boy.

It's Not Over Till It's Over

As the Bundy Bunch dwindles in Oregon (are there any still at the Wildlife Refuge? I haven't checked this morning....) their "cause" continues.

It would be bizarre if it weren't so commonplace.

Everyone has the right to their own interpretation of the Constitution, I suppose, but we don't have the authority to act on our special belief regarding what the Constitution says and means. The Bundy Bunch has been acting out a fantasy of their political and religious beliefs, and they have been claiming authority they don't have to force government to abide by their claims. The Bundy Bunch would engage in armed insurrection if government did not meet their demands, demands which they insisted were Constitutionally based.

The problem is fundamental. Individuals have no authority to assert the Constitution -- or the Bible or the Book of Mormon -- in opposition to the government and to compel the government to abide by their assertions.

Apparently the Bundy Bunch never got that message, or if they did, they never understood it.

I listened to their arguments about Federal ownership of land, and they were just silly. And yet they repeated a passage from the Constitution over and over again, regardless. This matter has been adjudicated and legislated quite thoroughly, and they have not a legal or Constitutional leg to stand on. There is no question whatsoever that the Federal government can own and control land outside the District of Columbia. There is no legal requirement that such land must be turned over to the states for disposition. It's absurd to claim otherwise.

These people believe in this absurdity in part because their God tells them to. Yes, it is tied in with their Mormon beliefs -- beliefs which have frequently been in direct conflict with the government of the states and the United States, and occasionally, this conflict has led to bloodshed. Some Mormons continue to insist on their authority over (secular) government. They are theocrats, as are many other religious believers in this country and around the world.

I wouldn't call them terrorists. That's going too far. They use some terrorist tactics, but they haven't actually engaged in violent actions -- not yet anyway. Their threats have so far proved hollow. But then, this appears to be a long-term project. They're not done yet.

Part of the problem is the Constitution itself. Because it seems to authorize its own overthrow. This apparent authorization was a big part of the rationale for the unpleasantness between 1861 and 1865.

The resolution to that conflict actually didn't resolve all that much, though. The conflict continued, and many thousands died, lynched and otherwise murdered in the ongoing pursuit of power.

What the Bundy Bunch did can become a trigger for armed revolt/revolution, and we shouldn't fool ourselves into believing otherwise. As I've long said, if there is another armed revolution in this country, it will come from the Right, and an attempt at that rightist (and religious) revolution has just been made in Oregon. It won't be the last one.

Nope. This sort of thing will keep happening.

It ain't over till

On Violence -- a Mother's Day Perspective (on the Baltimore Uprising and Other Matters)

By now, everyone's seen this video of a mother beating up her teenage son during the initial phases of the Baltimore Uprising (#BaltimoreUprising):



She's been hailed a heroine by many for her violent attack on her son. She's said she didn't want him to wind up like Freddie Gray  -- dead -- and he's expressed contrition for his actions that day in the midst of the Uprising.

I was watching a livestream during this phase of the confrontations between police and the crowd of teenagers by Mondawmin Mall, but I didn't see this incident. There was so much going on in any case, that I probably would have missed it even if the livestreamer had captured it. He was a little way down the road, behind the iron fence, and was concentrating on the people running from or confronting the police at the time. He was also holding his phone in portrait mode, so the view was very narrow.

What I also didn't see was this was ground level video of some of the confrontation between the high school students who were essentially trapped once the police yanked them off the buses that would take them home and confined them tho the Mondawmin area:

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While flipping through news sources after the Freddie Gray funeral -- which I saw parts of on livestream as well -- I briefly saw an overhead view of police in confrontation with a crowd, but I didn't know what was going on until later, and when I saw a more complete video of the incident, it appeared that 1) police were throwing rocks at demonstrators (they were); 2) demonstrators were pelting the police line with rocks and forcing them back (they were).

Context, however, was totally lacking, and the rest of the coverage I saw of the "riots" focused on the vandalism, arson and looting that took place, not on the confrontations between police and rioters that took place in the afternoon following the end of the school day at Frederick Douglass High School adjacent to Mondawmin Mall.

Ever since, almost all the coverage -- including the BET gab-fests in the post below (sorry for the auto-start; I've tried to make it go away, and it won't, so I'll replace the embed video with a link to the page...) -- focus on "violence" as 1) property damage; 2) the acts of the police which lead to the deaths of so many, day in and day out; 3) sometimes -- but rarely -- the "violence inherent in the system" (h/t Monty Python) of capitalist exploitation.

The incident we witness from ground level in the raw video above is almost never mentioned in reports and analysis of the "riots" these days and if video of it is shown, it is the overhead shots, generally without comment, or if there is comment, it will focus on the injuries police sustained in the confrontation, not on what the incident actually showed about the Uprising.

I think it is too shocking to the sensibilities of the Powers That Be, for what happened was this:

The police either made up or freaked out over a social media post that suggested the students at Frederick Douglass were going to live out "The Purge" idea of "a day without law" following the funeral of Freddie Gray. The students got out of school at their regular time (3:00p -- sounds late to me, but that's what the most reliable reports say) and went to the Mall transportation hub to take the subway or catch a bus to go home. They were met with hundreds of riot police who forced them to get off the buses and closed the metro station. Some went to the Mall, but many dispersed through the neighborhood only to be further confronted by aggressive riot police.

And the students fought back. They were being harassed, taunted and violently confronted by ranks of riot police for no other reason but that the police could do so. The students responded with rocks and bottles thrown at the police line, and for the next hour or two, the students and police contended for territory in the Mondawmin neighborhoods. For the most part, the police retreated, and except for a few tear gas and smoke grenades, they did not fire on the students.

Looking back on some of the videos from the scene now, especially the raw video from ground level embedded above, I get the distinct impression that what happened was almost like a "live fire" training exercise for police to see how a crowd would react to an arbitrary police action in an urban area and to find out whether or not it could be controlled by the presence of riot police alone. That's what it looked like to me. It didn't go well.

The students and the residents participating in the resistance lost their fear of police that day in Baltimore, and that's critical for understanding what happened later. The looting and vandalism and arson happened later, and though the focus has been on those relatively random and relatively  isolated actions, there were targeted actions that were much more important (IMHO).

Dozens of police vehicles were trashed or burned, for example. As police vehicles sped through the Penn North area, they were pelted with rocks, bottles, paint and other objects. Some were parked along the streets and were attacked and burned by the crowds. This was targeted rage against police, not the kind of "mob violence" and looting that was being focused on by the media. The people were no longer afraid, and they vented their anger on the appropriate targets. The police. The police, for their part, largely withdrew until they obtained the protection of the National Guard the following day.

This needs to be clear: the people of Baltimore (at least in that area) rose up and said "No more." They literally forced the police out until such time as they returned with the protection of troops.

That was the most important aspect of the first day of the Baltimore Uprising, and it is barely recognized by most observers. It's been sent down the Memory Hole, but much of the evidence is still retrievable through videos like the one above.

There were other incidents, such as confrontations between drunken white baseball fans and largely but not exclusively black protesters outside Camden Yards -- which ultimately resulted in the cancellation of games and the absurd sight of a game played in an empty stadium.

These confrontations involved a lot of physical interaction and fighting between the drunken white folks and the angry black (and brown and white) protesters that led to a lot of mayhem outside Orioles Park. Some of it is seen in this video -- it's quite long, and I'm not embedding it. The Camden Yards footage is around 15 minutes in.

Again, it's clear the demonstrators had lost their fear, not only of police but of drunken white folks, too. This is important.

What I've seen while reviewing some of the video captures of the Baltimore "riots" reminds me a lot of incidents in the West Bank during which unarmed Palestinians confront heavily armed Israeli police and troops, and many of the urban disturbances in Ukraine during the prelude to and aftermath of the overthrow of Yanukovych. There are many other examples one could cite -- uprisings in Greece and other parts of the European "periphery", for example -- that follow a distinctive pattern, essentially a vocabulary, of incitement and repression, over and over and over again, sometimes leading to overthrows or revolution, but often leading nowhere at all -- except to more of the same. In other words, the struggle between arbitrary authority and resisting populations becomes routinized, almost institutionalized, but with little or no discernible effect or outcome.

Despite numerous protests against police violence around the country in the past year or so in city after city, the Baltimore Uprising is the first time I'm aware of that civilians responded to police provocation and violence with targeted violence of their own, albeit there have been some incidents of targeted vandalism of police facilities in other cities (Albuquerque among others) during the protests against violent policing and murder.

The results in Baltimore were predictable: the curfew and National Guard presence specifically designed to protect the police and civic institutions, not so much to protect  the citizens or their property. Given some of the confrontations during the curfew, it would almost be funny, except for the fact that people are still being treated violently and outrageously by police all over the country, and far, far too many are being killed day in and day out.

However, I think we are seeing a distinctive change in the way civilians respond to police provocation and violence.

The Baltimore Uprising represents something new in the ongoing struggle against violent policing.

It can lead to positive change or it can lead to disaster, or it can lead nowhere at all.

It all depends, methinks, on calculations made behind the scenes by the PTB. How much mayhem are they willing to endure and engage in in order to perpetuate systematized injustice? What is the benefit to them for doing so?

And how much more injustice are the people willing to endure?

I've suggested that we are past the "tipping point" with regard to police violence. The previous situation is not sustainable, but simply because we've gone past the tipping point, it doesn't mean the resolution will necessarily be positive.

The economy went over a cliff after all. The dire and destructive results are all around us. Simply because a crisis reaches a climax is no guarantee of positive outcomes.

In fact, what happens is that populations tend to adjust to the new reality, no matter how bad it is. The tipping point of violent policing may have been passed, and already dire situation may get worse.  We don't know, and we can't necessarily direct the outcome.

Hailing the mom who beat up her son in Baltimore that day, though, may be the harbinger of what is to come.

Just saying...

Not Quite Ready

Saw some of the Shut It Down actions in New York via JamesFromTheInternet's livestream last night, and I was impressed by the size of the crowds -- estimated at 15,000 or more --  by the time I had to head to bed. This is good.

However.

The decision to hold off on Shutting Shit Down until after the workday ended for many/most New Yorkers is somewhat puzzling. The police themselves shut down the Brooklyn Bridge and other sites to prevent the protesters from doing so. And the police have adopted tactics that split the crowds of marchers and protesters into numerous rather easily controlled elements which they then lead either in circles or into dead ends, causing a kind of "natural dispersal."

NYPD is skilled at these tactics. They used them against Occupy as well. They work to dissipate the energy of crowds of protesters and limit the effectiveness of actions. So far, it appears that demonstrators in New York have not found successful countermeasures, though it's obvious that they are aware of the tactics used against them.

Meanwhile I was catching up on some of the actions in St. Louis and watched an archived video shot by Rebelutionary_Z at Webster University in Webster Groves. A contingent of students gathered and marched on campus (one I'm somewhat familiar with, though obviously it's changed in the last 30 years), police and campus security in the lead. This happened at St. Louis University one time too. All of a sudden the march stopped and confusion reigned. Something had happened. There were outbreaks of anger, police lines were formed to prevent resumption and progress of the march, and there was considerable tussling in the crowd as they attempted to find out/figure out what was going on.

Eventually, the cause of the disruption became known. Someone had been arrested at the back of the march. It was one of the banner-carriers, a banner that reads "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" -- a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. This banner has been used in a number of actions and demonstrations in the St. Louis area.

According to reports from witnesses, the arrest had been a "snatch and grab" -- another anti-protester tactic widely used by police these days, and often seen during G-20s and other Big Gatherings of the Mighty, as well as during Occupy's hey-day in the public eye. "Snatch and grabs" are a form of kidnapping in which putative leaders are targeted by police and removed suddenly, often dramatically dragged away by a phalanx of police. Other times, random protesters are similarly targeted and dragged away. Almost always, the only pretext for the arrest of these individuals is that they are strategically placed where the effect of their kidnapping/detention will have the greatest impact on the crowds. This is a link to a video of a similar kind of police action in San Francisco during the #Ferguson protests in which a man who vocally challenged an officer is suddenly grabbed and thrown down, arrested basically for mouthing off. It is a nasty and ought to be an illegal tactic, as charges against snatch and grab victims are rarely pursued. The point is to disrupt and discourage the protesters, and it often works.

It worked in Webster Groves in that the march on campus immediately stopped and the participants then spent twenty or thirty minutes wondering what was going on and/or arguing with police. Eventually, the police said that the man who had been arrested would be released on no bond, provided that the crowd abandoned the march and dispersed. They did so.

Whether the man was ever released, I don't know, but I read this morning about another incident that demonstrates the level of contempt police have for those who are engaged in protest against police violence, and the lengths they are prepared to go to stifle dissent.

Yesterday, a member of the Ferguson Commission who attended a meeting with the President at the White House on Tuesday was arrested by St. Louis Metropolitan Police and charged with assault for his participation in an action at St. Louis City Hall. This was clearly a targeted arrest aimed at intimidating the young man, Rasheen Aldridge, Jr. He's been very vocal about the issue of police abuse in St. Louis, and has participated in numerous demonstrations since the killing of Mike Brown in August. He's also received a lot of press and media coverage, especially after he was appointed to the Ferguson Commission.

His arrest comes on the heels of the failure of the St. Louis County Grand Jury to indict Darren Wilson for killing Mike Brown and the failure of the Staten Island Grand Jury to indict Daniel Pantaleo for killing Eric Garner in July. It's worth noting (again) that the man who recorded the video of Eric Garner's take-down and arrest, Ramsey Orta, the man who provided the video proof that Pantaleo used an unauthorized chokehold in the take-down, leading directly to Garner's death, was indicted by another Staten Island Grand Jury on unrelated weapons charges, and his wife was arrested shortly thereafter. 

The issue here is the tactic of "making life miserable" for troublemakers. It's a tactic widely by police and Authority in general to silence dissent.

These are not random incidents or coincidences, these are dissent suppressing tactics on full display.

Even the appointment of commissions and meetings at the White House are strategic elements in a cynical campaign by Power to curb and disrupt dissent, protest, and uprisings of all kinds.

They work.

These tactics can be countered, and the disruption of protests and other actions can be thwarted, but it doesn't appear that the organizers of some of the current protests and actions are attempting to do so. I don't know whether it's a strategic choice to let events unfold as they will, or it is a lack of preparedness to counter the kinds of disruptions the police are engaging in.

My sense is that we are still in the "precursor" stage of a potential rebellion and revolution. Activists and Americans in general are not quite ready...

It could be decades before they are "ready." We won't know the day, the how, or the why until it comes.

The Revolution Continues... ?

While I've been otherwise engaged, events in St. Louis have taken on quite a broad-based character leading to protests and demonstrations and violent police reactions in the city and surrounding areas.

I've watched a bit of Rebelutionar_Z's livestream recordings from the Shaw demonstrations and the sit-down at the Quik Trip, and it's inspiring. People are taunting the police, and the police are reacting with their usual intimidation and violent tactics, and as we saw in Oakland during the Occupy protests, the upshot is that authority loses legitimacy.

The QT action overnight demonstrates how the process works.

The video below is long, but it's easy to scroll through. At about 33 minutes in, the po-po's tank arrives to threaten the demonstrators, and from that point, things get intense. At about 50 minutes in, the videographer is pepper-sprayed in the face -- again, he says it's the second time in three days that he's been sprayed -- and several in the crowd are sprayed as well. Listen for calls of "Medic!" The police follow crowd clearing protocol without resorting to tear gas, but there are reports of "snatch-and-grabs" and violent arrests. These are typically intended to frighten members of crowds into leaving. They usually work reasonably well. But in this case, the crowd refuses to be intimidated after the confrontation, they walk away.



Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

The police tactics are routine by now, but in this case there's a quality of absurdity made manifest by the police outnumbering the protesters at some points, with the appearance of the tank and the police challenge of camera people. The police claim to be threatened by people with cameras. Indeed.  They are violently arresting sit-down, nonviolent protesters. They hide behind shields, but not everyone in the police line has a shield. One of their vehicles has to be jumpstarted in the street. It's just ridiculous.

"Who do you serve? Who do you protect?"

Obviously, it's not The People.

More videos here.

Others on scene include Tim and Luke. Bella Eiko is in town.

Some mainstream coverage has been occurring as well.

Thousands of people are participating in demonstrations, a fair contingent of youthful anarchists as well as a large group of local and national activists.

The tipping point isn't here yet, but it's coming.

The New Normal: This Is The Way The World Works... Now

The Ukrainian Thing seems to have stalled for the moment, as the mighty troops sent to smoke out the terrorists holding those public buildings in the Eastern Sector have an annoying tendency to run away or get caught by the refusniks. It would be funny if this were some fictional place in Mittel Europe pre-WWII, and the Marx Brothers made a movie about it.

Oh wait.

But it's the real thing. Insofar as these things are ever "real" -- in the sense that ordinary people and/or the high and the mighty can ever know fully what is really going on and the consequences thereof... it's real enough. People are being shot and killed and kidnapped and manhandled and otherwise being put through the wringer -- one that looks very much like gangland behavior under chaotic, ruthless, and lawless conditions. Everybody has their stick, their bat, their AK-47, their new camo uniform, their balaklava...

At least there are some productive uses for all the old tires in Ukrainia. Wouldn't want them to go to waste.

Meanwhile, the posturing by the principals goes on and on and on and on, in a kind of dance or minuet, something we haven't seen in quite this way since the run up to the tragedies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Because the principals are behaving now very much the way they did then -- though they say that they have taken military adventuring off the table and they are clearly trying to fight an old-fashioned proxy war through their surrogates on the ground in Ukrainia -- people everywhere are nervous as heck. No doubt the survivalists are stockpiling even more goods for the ultimate End of Times they sincerely believe is so soon to come.

This is all dangerous as heck, given the fact that the Superpowers are involved, the nuclear armed states, the Global Terror States of times gone by, when only they, the USA and the Soviet Union, had nukes and were brandishing and rattling them at one another...

So it is once again... except... for something. Something has changed.

Oh, that's right. One of the Superpowers, the other one, the Soviet Union, no longer exists. And its successor, the Russian Federation ("Russia") is a pale shadow of its former incarnation. A picked apart pale shadow of what it once was at that, ringed with hostile and in some cases competitive independent states aligned with, often hosting the military of, the vaunted "West" -- led by the USofA. So... what's this all about?

I've pointed out several times now what I think is going on, really going on, and though I haven't gotten much into why (the Global Great Game interests me less than its consequences to the ordinary people on the ground), I have little doubt that what's happening is the result of a Game-play that went wrong. It's "real" in that real people are being made to suffer for the forced and unforced errors of their Betters (as always, no?) and it's "real" in that the capture by the EU of the EU's Eastern Partnership nations (Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia) is a fundamental policy objective.

Regardless of what happened in Kiev, in other words, the EU, NATO and the US would have been pursuing policy goals to capture ever more territory and peoples from the orbit of the Russian Federation. It's apparently hard-wired into the EU's self-conception as technically assisted by the US.

Russia, for its part, has not been able to resist, and really hasn't resisted until now. Even now, the Russian resistance is more guerrilla-esque than military. What happened in Vilnius last November -- and its consequences in Kiev -- seems to have taken the Kremlin by as much surprise as it did in Brussels, Berlin, London and Washington.

Yanukovych was apparently expected by all parties to sign the Integration Agreement he was presented with at the Vilnius Conference of the EU's Eastern Partnership on November 29, 2013, and he refused. They say that he saw the actual terms of the agreement for the first time at that meeting, on the last day of the meeting, and he balked. Those terms -- which I seem to have misplaced the link to for the moment -- were devastating to the Ukrainian people, forcing them ever further into poverty, and they basically turned over the very fragile sovereignty of Ukraine to unelected technocrats and strategic wonks at the IMF, the European Central Bank, and NATO. Under the terms Yanukovych was presented, Ukraine would effectively become a colonial possession of the EU and NATO.

He was expected by all concerned -- including the Kremlin, apparently -- to sign away what limited patrimony Ukraine had in order to receive an economic package from the EU/IMF that would primarily benefit Ukraine's Russian creditors. Shockingly, he said no.

Nyet.

Oh.

Almost immediately protests and demonstrations formed in the Maidan Square in Kiev, somewhat patterned on the Color Revolution/Occupy model (with some interesting and important differences), and Yanukovych's government was subjected to typical subversion and destabilization tactics that have long been employed by "Color Revolutionists" in Eastern Europe and around the world. Occupy never used those tactics, which may be a clue to why Occupy never overthrew any government. It wasn't trying to. That wasn't its purpose. But overthrow and replacement of governments was very much a part of the main objective of Color Revolutions, including the "Orange Revolution" that had occurred in Kiev in the winter of 2004-2005.

Yanukovych had messed with his masters in Brussels, Berlin, London, Washington -- and Moscow, apparently -- and he had to go, one way or another.

And so it would be. The Maidan Model included a level of violence that had not been seen in these Color Revolutions previously, a truly shocking level of violence culminating in shadowy and unknown snipers firing on the crowds assembled at the square. Prior to that still mysterious event, however, the police had been routinely firebombed with Molotov cocktails, and armed and violent gangs of fascists and Nazis (yeah, the real thing) had patrolled the perimeters and enforced "discipline" on the crowd and they periodically stormed and took over government buildings in the center of Kiev and in other towns in Western Ukraine.

Much of what is being done in the East now is based quite closely on the Maidan Model, albeit with the absence of the large crowds of demonstrators that were typical of the Maidan protests. The difference has to do, I'm sure, with the fact that the crowds in Kiev were fired on by those snipers... the same could easily happen to large crowds elsewhere. It has happened in other cases.

Snipering the crowds of protestors was typical of the 2013 post-coup Cairo Model of dispersing demonstrators; they were shot at, and many were killed or wounded, by snipers strategically emplaced around the pro-Morsi demonstrations. So it would be in Kiev as well. This tactic tends to limit the number of demonstrators who will turn out... it also has an effect on who and what demonstrators will support.

The coup-regime in Kiev, as it's called, has agreed to the terms that the EU/IMF/NATO et al tried to impose on the Yanukovych government, with the proviso, apparently, that the funding not go to Russian creditors, only to EU creditors. Interesting.

When Yanukovych balked in Vilnius, Russia -- specifically Putin -- was blamed, though it's not at all clear that Putin engineered the last-minute refusal by Yanukovych to sign on the dotted line. Russia had offered a different deal to Ukraine, but its terms were only slightly less onerous and exploitative. The issue seemed to be one of a tug-of-war between the EU and RF for Ukraine's future. The people were not to be consulted. They were simply to be led. In whichever direction the leadership and elites (in this part of the world, read: "Oligarchs") wanted to go.

Apparently, Yanukovych wanted to blaze his own path, and thought he could do it best under Russian aegis.

Well, that didn't work out.

In other words, Yanukovych's refusal triggered a cascade of unanticipated events that no only led to his overthrow and ouster and the installation of an EU/NATO approved coup-regime in Kiev, but to the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, and the stalemate now in place on Ukraine's eastern borders, which stalemate could lead to some kind of nuclear exchange between the EU/US/NATO -- out of sheer incompetence if not strategy.

I say these were not anticipated events, in part because most of it looks to be ad hoc, even the Maidan protests that were clearly rather carefully organized and remarkably well presented via professional public relations efforts. The preparations for the Maidan protests had clearly been made in advance and were carried out as efficiently as possible, but there were so many uncoordinated aspects of it that didn't fit the pre-conceived and arranged pattern of these sorts of things. The enormous stage and the demagoguery  that was conducted from it seemed to me to be one of those ad hoc rather than pre-planned arrangements. Even the snipering that climaxed the demonstrations seemed to be ad hoc rather than pre-planned. The use of Nazis and fascists as shock troops may well have come about spontaneously.

In other words, while the demonstrations and assemblies seemed pretty well planned in advance (if, for example, the Yanukovych government refused some aspect of the EU integration agreements) the fact that he refused the whole thing was the surprise, and the response became much more spontaneous, vigorous -- and violent -- than was anticipated.

I've pointed out that the ground was laid long before the uprising by the hundreds of "educational" and "democracy" NGOs that had been operating in Ukraine for decades before the Maidan protests. Many of them were dedicated to EU "integration" -- and that has been the focus of the Kiev coup-regime ever since they seized power in February.

The coup-regime was allowed to seize power, however. They didn't have the means or authority to seize it on their own. Yanukovych's flight from Kiev seems to have been arranged by the Kremlin, a flight which enabled the almost immediate installation of a pre-selected group of financiers, technocrats and Nazi-bullies to rule. But it couldn't have happened if Yanukovych hadn't fled. That he did so under a Russian wing indicates to me that the Kremlin was OK with his overthrow, and indeed may have been behind it. (He was, after all, a bumbler at best.)

What the Kremlin is not OK with is the EU/NATO/US take over of Ukraine without recognition of Russian national interest. The fact that the Kiev coup-regime and its backers deny there is a legitimate Russian interest in Ukraine is the key flashpoint which can -- especially through the incompetence of the elites involved -- lead directly to severely unpleasant consequences, such as an unfortunate nuclear exchange.

The partition and dismemberment of the Russian Federation is one of those long term projects of the ruling class in the West that won't soon be accomplished and won't soon go away. Russia is to be eliminated as a major global influence and power according to long-standing neo-conservative principles. Once that's accomplished, then China.

These are insane principles, but they're now the New Normal.

It's the way the world works.

Victoria Nuland Explains All About The Ukrainian Situation to the Stakeholders: Chevron and Exxon Mobil

Back in December:



These people are insane.

Not All Revolutions Are Worthy of Our Support

The Maidan in Kiev, Jan 2014, before the explosion

And (so-called) progressives and leftists are fools to support the ones under way or recently manifested. Some of these uprisings and revolts are rightist, reactionary, counter-revolutionary, corporatist, globalist, and deeply contrary to the People's interests and well-being.

This sequence of reactionary, rightist, crypto-Fascist uprisings seemed to get going in Cairo last year when tens of thousands, and then reputedly millions, turned out in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Egypt to denounce and demand the end of the elected Morsi regime. When Morsi refused an ultimatum from the military, the military removed him, by main force, and when Morsi supporters gathered in the squares of Egyptian cities to protest this clear violation of the democratic process, the military mounted snipers on rooftops to shoot into the crowds of protestors -- something that Morsi didn't do in the face of the protests against him and his rule.

When the snipers weren't able to adequately control the protests against the military coup in Egypt-- a "coup" by any other name, since the "world community" (ie: the United States government) refused to call it a coup -- the golpistas sent in the infantry and armored transport (otherwise known as tanks) and massacred hundreds and then thousands of Morsi supporters, massacred as many as it took to kill the protests against the coup, but the protests wouldn't die. Thousands, then tens of thousands of survivors of the massacres were arrested, disappeared, many were tortured, and still the protests would not die.

Institutional Failure and the Rise of the Rebel

I've been pondering the situations in Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, Bosnia, and so many other places where neo-Fascist uprisings are underway with the full support, let it be said, of the EU and the US Government and its dozens of "democracy" NGOs, as well as the no doubt abundant collaboration of our amazing and ever-so-patriotic black ops and security apparats. Not to forget our ever-eager propaganda media spreading lies and half-truths in order to shape American opinion in favor of these neo-Fascist led crises.

Why is this happening now, I wonder, and why is it so easy to bamboozle the masses to accept this bullshit as the genuine rise of the People? Why is it so easy for the propaganda media to evade the whole issue of the violence inherent in all of these revolts and pretend they are all "peaceful" and "innocent" and that they are being brutally attacked by corrupt, tyrannical governments? Never mind that these governments were, by and large, elected and are not behaving tyrannically in any relative or rational sense at all.

I saw Zbigniew Brzezinski on Charlie Rose last night night before last [this post has been in the hopper for a while, and will continue being edited...] prattling like the bitter old man he is about the Ukrainian Thing and going off into fantasies of Russia as Putin "wants it to be." His imagination is obsessed with Russia and "containing the Soviet Union," for in Putin he sees a reincarnation of Stalin and  the reassembled and reestablished Soviet Union, something that the Free World must prevent or destroy at all costs. The Ukrainian Thing has nothing to do with Ukraine, in other words. It's all about preventing the rise of the New Stalin and his perfidious reestablishment of the Soviet Union and its Empire of yore.

The man is mad. The man is out of his frigging mind. He's old and he's bitter and his hatred for Russia and the Russian people knows no bounds. He won't rest until the Russian state is no longer even a remnant of its Imperial and Soviet extent. He won't rest until it is gone altogether, shattered into a thousand pieces, in ruins and destitute. He is our Cato the Elder, I guess, screaming out: "Russia delenda est!!!" every chance he gets.

The horrible thing is that our remnant governmental institutions and much of the corporate sector that owns them believes this shit even more fundamentally than Brzezinski himself does. He's almost mild and sane compared to them. This is one reason why we have been inundated with such relentless and bloodthirsty propaganda about the the troubles in Ukraine -- but have heard and read so little about the almost identical uprisings elsewhere.

It is yet another instance of institutional failure on a massive scale and yet another instance of how the vacuum is filled with madness, brutality -- and wherever possible, with rebellion.

The insane fantasy that Russia under Putin is somehow seeking to re-create and re-assemble the Soviet Union, and Putin himself is trying to become The New Stalin has been driving much of American foreign policy in the region for as long as Putin has been on the political scene in Russia. Anyone who's not the drunk but compliant Yeltsin, in other words, is seen as a threat to be contained and/or overthrown, the sooner the better. The Global Hegemon will not be content with anything less than submission, abject, full and willing.

Our government has never gotten beyond its fantasies of the Soviet Union, and many of our institutions are similarly locked in combat with something that truly never was -- the great and powerful monster they think it was and believe it still is.

And that's why Ukraine is being torn apart by the EU and US. Rent as fully asunder as, oh, say Yugoslavia was, or as the Soviet Union itself was under Yeltsin, back in the day. Our failed institutions, locked in the past, are still fighting the subversive and hot wars they dreamed about winning during the Cold War.

This can be nothing but insanity.

As insane as the behavior of these failed institutions is, it doesn't mean that the rebellions themselves entirely lack legitimacy. As I've said in other posts, people under oppression have a right and duty to rise up against their oppressors. That should be a given.

The question is, do these rebels represent the genuinely oppressed? And what, ultimately, do they want?

In Venezuela, the fact that the people rising up are not oppressed is starkly obvious. The rebels are almost entirely composed of los ricos or their wannabes. They are often blonde, well-dressed, well-coiffed, well-housed, and well-educated. They are the upper crust of Venezuelan society, and they want their power back. They resent being ruled by the Lower Orders, people they consider to be "salvajes"  and "animales" -- people only fit to be ruled, not to rule over los caballeros themselves. The very idea of it, ptui!

These class and race divisions giving rise to rebellion in Venezuela are very stark and obvious as they have been throughout the Bolivarian Revolutionary period under Chavez and Maduro, and as they have been throughout Venezuela's history since it was settled by German immigrants under Spanish rule. Of course they want their power back. They believe it is their right. Democracy? Piffle!

The anti-Bolivarian propaganda in this country has been strenuous and relentless since the establishment of the Bolivarian Revolution in the late '90s. When there was a coup against Chavez in 2002, American media, led by the New York Times, exploded with joy and rapture. Unfortunately for the celebrators, the coup only lasted a couple of days, and Chavez regained his presidential palace to continue on the path he'd set -- toward ever more democracy and social justice, something populations in Latin America had long yearned for, yearnings long thwarted by institutions established to prevent the rise of the People. Ever. Institutions that were enabled by the Spanish, by the governments that won their independence from Spain, and not much later by the United States government which took charge of the Hemisphere as its own private backyard empire.

The Bolivarian Revolution reversed the power structure of Venezuela, putting the long oppressed majority in charge and curtailing the power of los ricos to rule over them. A rather mild version of social and economic justice was instituted. The rich were not deprived of their wealth -- at least not entirely -- only their power over the state, power which was reserved to The People as a whole.

The uprisings of the rich against that state of affairs have been ongoing for close to two decades, and they have often turned bloody. The state, under Chavez and Maduro, has been remarkably tolerant of the mischief made by the rebels, essentially declaring an amnesty for the rebels time and again, in an apparent effort to include them in the Revolution. The burden the rebels are attempting to throw off does not appear to be that of genuine oppression, for it is difficult to find any significant effort to oppress the rich in Venezuela or to confiscate their wealth, or to silence their voices, or to interfere significantly with their ways of life. The burden the rich in Venezuela seek to throw off is a psychological one, the burden of their own sense of powerlessness -- though they are not truly powerless in the Bolivarian system at all, not any more so than anyone else is truly powerless.

One of the remarkable features of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela is the widespread use of direct democratic councils through which Venezuelans of all classes are empowered, and by which the country has been able to progress in the interests of all the people, not just a few.

And it is that very empowerment of the whole people as well as the extensive provision of basic housing, healthcare, education, and justice for all that the rebels seek to eliminate and destroy. When they talk about Maduro's "exit" they're talking about overthrowing the entire Bolivarian system and remaking Venezuela into a version of what it used to be, putting the closed sign on the institution of People's democracy and ending such frivolous nonsense as social and economic justice once and for all.
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Now that the Ukrainian uprising has apparently succeeded in driving out Yanukovych and ending his rule (though it's not entirely certain), rebels in Caracas are no doubt encouraged. If they can only turn the military and police away from Maduro's government, they're home free, yes?

How might they do that?

Money talks, as we've been seeing in almost every corner of the globe, every aspect of life.

The rule of money, the failure of institutions, and the rise of rebels are all tied together. This year may well turn into one for the books.

[Events have intervened to cut short this post, though I'm sure it's quite long enough!]

[Potentially] Alarming Developments in Kiev, Bangkok, Caracas, Sarajevo. Cairo Set the Standard...

Morning Screen Grab from Kiev

Generally speaking, people have a right -- and duty -- to rise up in the face of tyranny and oppression. It's not easy, and it can be very risky for those who engage in it, but by and large, large scale social progress is made by means of protests and uprisings of the oppressed all over the world and in all eras.

Generally speaking, the progress that has been made through the means of protests and uprisings has been more or less liberating to those who have previously been oppressed, and that liberation has generally led to more liberation from tyranny and oppression. Thus, most uprisings of the sort we have witnessed for decades now, since the beginning of the fragmentation of the Soviet Union in the '80s, have led to more and more liberated societies and nations.

But the liberation from tyrannical regimes, be they Communist or otherwise, often comes at a huge price to the erstwhile liberated masses, a price that's paid in institutional failure, economic collapse, desperate living conditions, and destruction of social cohesion. The notion that what is lost is somehow "creative" -- thus the term, "creative destruction" so popular among the economic, social and political hit men (and women, I'm looking at you, Legarde) and mercenaries roaming the globe -- simply ignores or even celebrates the suffering left in the wake of so many Color Revolutions and the like over the years.

"Ukraine is burning" ran a breathless headline by one of my favorite authors over at dKos, jpmassar, one of the usually brightest and most keyed in to matters of uprising, revolt, and revolution they have over there. Well, I'd been watching the livestream from Kiev for a good portion of the day already, a livestream that I noted was labeled: Євромайдан -- революция,(ie: "Euromaidan -- Revolution"),  in the upper right corner, something most Americans might miss because they can't read the Cyrillic alphabet, and the corner label would just appear to be some gibberish in a foreign language. Probably (ick) Russian and therefore, given the way media and politics work in the world, slanted to favor the (ick) Russian point of view about (the foreign and unfamiliar) Ukraine.

Uh, no. In fact, the video feed was coming from a rather slick media operation run by the rebels who were burning their barricades in a spectacle in Independence Square in Kiev. As I watched the livestream, it was clear this wasn't just a slick media operation, the visuals were being consciously designed for maximum propaganda impact, not unlike Soviet filmmaking back in the day. It was really very well done, I have to say, but at the same time, it was highly deceptive and manipulative.

First of all, the images made it seem as if the city was on fire -- it's not -- and that the uprising was... general. It's not. These sorts of things don't generally involve a large percentage of the whole population, but they can involve a large proportion of a certain segment of that population (which is apparently what was going on in Cairo and Egypt too just prior to the al Sisi coup which overthrew the Morsi government and led to a brutal and bloody crack-down on Muslim Brotherhood resistance to the coup. But I'll get to that in due time...) The theory is that if a large enough segment of a single population sector or multiple sectors can be convinced to participate in demonstrations and protests and rebellion, then the Revolution is not only nigh, it has already come -- and quite likely whatever results from it will be something like victory for the rebels.

Revolution does not require and will hardly ever involve the whole population in any case. Most people will rationally choose to stay out of the way.

The images last night from Kiev also made it seem that there was some kind of "heroic" action taking place. Debris was being continually fed into the bonfires burning ("gloriously") in Maidan Square, luridly illuminating the scene. Police and firefighters were occasionally seen milling around the margins of what seemed to be a large -- but indistinct -- crowd. Now and then, there would be close ups of the fires and some silhouettes of the crowd passing back and forth in front of the blaze. From time to time, fireworks would be ignited and Molotov cocktails would fly through the air. There was no sound most of the time, but occasionally, there would be heard the pop-pop-pop of gunfire or fireworks, and from time to time, one could hear what sounded like many voices raised in song (was it the Ukrainian national anthem? It was.) Flags were flying, but what was on them was indistinguishable in the dark and the smoke. Some seemed tattered, battle worn, others more or less pristine.

The images from from at least three cameras, and probably more, were being intricately and expertly interwoven, so as to show close-ups, medium and long shots in turn, and at one point, a camera was focused on the silhouette of a young person climbing the outside of a building near the square. A lurid orange glow came from inside the building, and soon enough it would be apparent that the building was on fire. What was the silhouetted figure doing, though? I couldn't tell, and I didn't watch that scene long enough to find out, but in daytime views this morning, it appears he may have been heroically hanging a heroic Revolutionary banner on the outside of the burning trade union building -- or maybe he was just showing off, who knows? It made for some dramatic imagery, however.
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Since the murderous rampages of Al Sisi's forces in Cairo in response to protests against the military coup there, I haven't been much inclined to watch the Global Revolution streams or closely follow the various uprisings that have been or are taking place, whether in Venezuela or Thailand, Ukraine or Bosnia  or much of anywhere else, because it seems to me that they are all rightist rebellions for the purpose of installing rightist regimes which will serve the interests of international finance. It's sickening.

This is not at all what the Occupy Movement was and is about, but every one of these uprisings is using Occupy tactics (along with a little ultra-violence) to gain and have its way. It has reached the point where even otherwise rightist supporters are wary and somewhat puzzled at what is going on.

It's fairly obvious to me. By utilizing the successful tactics of the Arab Spring and the later Occupy Movement to gain the attention and widespread sympathy of media and oppressed peoples around the world, factions of the oppressor class are seeking to mobilize media and world opinion on their behalf to undermine and overthrow governments which dare to take more interest in the people than in the oppressors.

This is obviously what's been going on in Caracas, so obvious it's breathtaking in its chutzpah. But in Thailand, Bosnia, and Turkey it's not been so obvious at all, as it seems the rebels have valid complaints and they are not trying to impose rightist rule -- and the oppression of the lower orders that goes with it -- at least not on the surface. Scratch a bit below the surface, however, and you will find many of the same dynamics, of a minority class based revolt, generally of the relatively well off, backed by a rising plutocratic class, trying to force ("inject") their interests into the popular consciousness enough to be able to overthrow the duly constituted and elected government and replace it with their own unelected one.

They use the tactics of Occupy, Arab Spring, and the Color Revolutions of Gene Sharp -- because they work, or they can work. But their intentions are to impose, to rule, to plunder, and to oppress.

Kiev is not actually burning, but it could erupt in flames at any time. The fires in the square last night were for show, and the show is one of a rightist, populist character, one we're seeing more and more of around the world.

And I have no doubt our metastasizing surveillance and security state apparat is deeply involved in every one of these uprisings. But will that story ever be told in the chest thumping, fist pumping, but largely content-free New Media ventures of Omidyar or any other billionaire? I doubt it.

Even the once iconoclastic Mark Ames and Yasha Levine now of Pando appear to be neutered and are mostly silent about the global rightist coups.

Yes, it's alarming.

Kiev Is Burning

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They tell me this is yet another Color Revolution in Kiev, Ukraine, like that in Bangkok, one in which a militant and rising middle class demands that the more or less populist -- though oppressive -- government aligned with the 'lesser people' be gone and neo-liberal "democratic" government and economic policies be instituted.

When Gene Sharp's manual for Color Revolutions was being promoted heavily at Occupy events, I read it, tried to understand Sharp's philosophy about these things, and looked deeper into their results, and I said, "Whoa! Wait. Is this what you want? Is this what you really want from Occupy or any other revolutionary movement?"

Few knew what I was saying, or why, because very few understood the nature and purpose of Color Revolutions, nor did it ever occur to most of them that there were particular -- and highly exploitative -- economic interests behind every one of them, interests that were perfectly delighted to use whatever discontents they could find among the People to get what they wanted out of them, at whatever cost to the People it took.

Those who did understand what I was asking wanted nothing more than to shut me and anyone else who questioned the semi-divinity of Gene Sharp up.

Where I saw the Sharp methods and revolutionary practices had value was in their systems and organization -- which any movement can adopt and utilize, even anarchist ones. The problem is that any movement can adopt them, and that includes counter-revolutionary and reactionary ones. Sharp's directives and directions for carrying out a Color Revolution, and the Revolution itself, are not required to be "leftish" or carried out on behalf of the People (though they are always "in the name of the People.")  Yet that's a marketing slogan. It doesn't have to be -- and typically isn't -- real at all. It's marketing. Bernays on steroids.

In fact, the whole "Color Revolution" schtick is marketing. That's what Sharp was selling. How to organize and market your uprising so it will be successful in the marketplace, how to sell it. Not, by any means, how to achieve the revolutionary ends most beneficial to the greatest number of People. Apart from some yammering about "freedom" and "democracy" the ends are never discussed in Sharp's extensive work. I even dared to ask why that was so. If you don't know why you're having an uprising -- apart from some vague concepts of "Freedom" (for whom, from what?) and "Democracy" (In what way?), then why are you having it?

So I glance every now and then at what's been going on in Kiev and Bangkok, and ponder the disasters in the aftermath the Arab Spring, the general failure of the populist movements in Spain and Greece (among other places), and I see a common pattern. We can go all the way back to the Philippines insurrection against Marcos, or the numerous "Color Revolutions" in Eastern Europe and the eventual destruction of the Soviet Union and any hint of popular resistance to the looming economic and political catastrophe Soviet citizens were being forced to endure,  and see a common thread: these "populist" uprisings were all -- every one of the them -- conducted on behalf of a nascent 'new' oligarchy which wanted to replace the sclerotic 'old' one, using the discontents of a rising but blocked middle class and the often suppressed longings of the poor to gain the leverage necessary to overthrow the Old Order and institute a New one -- a new one that is as bad as, or even worse than, what it replaces. Every. Single. One.

And it is always all about the marketing in Sharp's vision.

Of course, it's supposed to be nonviolent, with nonviolence used as a weapon against internal opposition and against the Old Order, but on the margins, these successful "revolutions" -- or reactionary movements, which is what I came to believe they were -- were remarkably not non-violent at all. The "peaceful revolutionaries" always -- ALWAYS -- held the threat of violence over the state or oligarchy they wished to replace, while simultaneously claiming otherwise, and they sought ways to precipitate or initiate violent repression by the police and authorities so as to gain sympathy for their cause. This is not non-violence; it's an embrace of violence. In Kiev -- and in many other sites where this sort of double-tracking goes on -- there is a lot of violence initiated by the state to be sure, but there is also sabotage and violence initiated by the reactionary-revolutionaries, whether it is burning down symbols of the regime (as happened over and over again in Cairo, for example) to actually burning members of the police force with Molotov cocktails (Kiev, Athens, etc.) .

By comparison to almost any revolutionary movement in history, Occupy was almost preternaturally non-violent. Yet it was met with extraordinary levels of state violence that was widely approved by the general population in large part because they were convinced that Occupations were dirty and disgusting hotbeds for disease, rape and murder.

That, too, was marketing -- by the authorities -- to ensure that Occupy could not become a successful Revolution against the oligarchy that rules the world with rod and staff. Many of the same tactics that were used in the United States (and elsewhere) against Occupy and similar demonstrations are being used against protesters in Kiev and Bangkok, whereas in Cairo, the authorities just shoot into crowds, killing and maiming many thousands so far -- with no apparent end to the mayhem in sight.

But what is it for?

Some loud and energized Ukrainians would would rather be under the thumb of EU Bankers, Neo-Liberals and Technocrats than be aligned with (ick) Russia? Oh Kay, then. Let's have a Revolution!

They say that this year will mark another in a series of years of rage and rebellion around the world. We shall see, shan't we?


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UPDATE: This video has been making the rounds. It shows a phalanx of police in Kiev confronting a large and enthusiastic crowd, members of which are hurling rocks, bottles, paving stones, smoke bombs, and Molotov cocktails at the police who are arrayed behind barricades and shields. Someone in the crowd is driving a front-loader repeatedly into the police line and appears to break through at one point but retreats. The version that is going around stops as the front-loader retreats, but there is another one that shows the action from the ground level, and that's the second one posted here.





You'll note that members of the crowd are attempting to stop the driver of the front-loader and try to speak/reason with the more militant members of the crowd. Others have pointed out that if anything like this demonstration were to happen in the United States, the front-loader driver would be taken out by a police sniper, and the crowd would be gassed and bludgeoned and shot by the police who would promptly arrest any survivors.

Though we're given to believe that the uprising in Kiev has wide popular support, some observers and commenters in this country and elsewhere have noted that much if not all of the violence has been instigated by what amount to Neo-Fascists whose determination is not at all in the interests of the Ukrainian people. In addition, the Ukraine apparently has a broadly divided population, with Eastern populations widely supporting closer ties with Russia (many ethnic Russians live in the Eastern areas) while Western populations widely support closer ties with Europe.

Eventually, this may lead to the break up of the Ukraine -- which wouldn't be the first former Soviet sphere republic to split apart or even engage in civil war.