What is unfolding amongst the Arab peoples is naturally a mixed package. Insurgency is part of this package as is opportunism. Where there is revolution, there is always counter-revolution too.Clearly the Empire is influenced by the principle which states, "never let a crisis go to waste".
The global banks and corporations are running circles around the nation state, including the United States. They have no regard for due process, Congress, or the will of the people.Along with trade and all other economic activities, governance has surreptitiously become globalized and concentrated in the hands of the 1% from all over the capitalist world. Still, these new governing bodies believe that it is in their interest to maintain the fictions of democratically and independently governed nations.
As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.
In San Francisco, a few dozen people in tony and touristy Union Square used signs to spread an anti-consumerism message. One, 9-year-old Jacob Hamilton, held a sign that read, "What is in your bag that's more important than my education?"I doubt that the San Francisco Bay Area is representative of the US as a whole, but we can dream, can't we?
In a news release last Tuesday, CoMeD [Coalition for Mercury-free Drugs] exposed a cover-up by authorities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and vaccine researchers who deliberately omitted critical data from a 2003 article on mercury and autism that was carried out in Denmark.
Before Copenhagen we were told the world would stop at nothing to get an equitable, fair agreement. Then, we were told, a deal could be done in a week. After Copenhagen, it was so important for the future of humanity that we could expect a deal within the year. That then morphed to two or three years, and now ministers and senior diplomats are playing down expectations even further by suggesting it may take another four years of talks to come up with a plan that could, possibly, come into effect in 2020.
The more the police have attacked and killed protesters, the stronger the urge to resist. Thousands have poured into Tahrir since Sunday as the death toll increased. Many people interviewed by the Weekly say they decided to join the protests after seeing graphic film footage of corpses piled by the side of the square and others being dragged by policemen and left on heaps of garbage.Journalists and women are treated worse in Egypt by their police forces than here in the US:
Protests in this predominantly Shi`i region evolved after Sunday's shooting. Thousands swarmed the streets calling for the "Death to Al Sa`ud" (i.e., death to the Saudi royal family).Even people in armed-to-the-teeth Saudi Arabia are fighting back against their US satrap. No amount of repression can keep people down indefinitely. Ruling classes that exist only through the use of force have much to fear. Human beings are very adaptable, but there are limits, and these limits are being tested in many parts of the world today. People throughout history have expressed this basic component of human nature in various ways:
Give me liberty, or give me death!
Patrick Henry - March 23, 1775, at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia (Virginia Convention)
There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.
Mario Savio - December 2, 1964, University of California, Berkeley, California.
And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Martin Luther King - April 3, 1968, Mason Temple, Memphis, Tennessee.
The idea of revolutionary change is generally terrifying to most people, at least to people who have an adequate income, shelter, food, clothing, and family and simply want to enjoy the pleasures of life. Under current conditions, however, a large majority of people are threatened with the loss of their livelihoods, lands, homes, pensions, health, and living standards. Their very survival demands a radical change in our financial system.The privatization of our money is not the only thing that needs to be radically changed by being socialized to serve the public interest. Our whole economy needs to be radically changed. Our economies must be socialized to serve the public interest. People all over the world are reaching their limits of tolerance of private interests controlling public interests. They are facing down the brutality of the enforcers of private interests--the heavily armed police and armies who commit all kinds of crimes against humanity.
Every American president sets the stage for the next one, in order to continue the work in progress that has been set for him by the global corporate elite. Mr. Obama has been a faithful serf to his money masters, and he played his cards carefully and correctly, therefore, he will deserve a second term.
...by combining the financial firepower of their corporate clients with the seeming legitimacy of privatization-minded school-reform think tanks and foundations ...policies designed to boost the bottom lines of education-technology companies are cast as mere attempts to improve education through technological enhancements, prompting little public debate or opposition.And, so far there is very little research that justifies online education. In any case, any and all educational techniques must never be controlled by the ruling class. To be sure, they indirectly control education now, but this project would put education directly under their control and directly link education to private profits.
...It’s big business, and getting bigger....
...Frank Miller has done Occupy Wall Street a service by reminding us that our allegedly democratic political system, which increases inequality and decreases class mobility, which is mostly interested in keeping the disenfranchised where they are, requires a mindless, propagandistic (or "cryptofascist") storytelling medium to distract its citizenry.I've often been aghast at the apparent popularity of this Hollywood trash. Fortunately, the 99 percent are beginning to wake up.
...the example of the fracking of shale gas retells the story of deregulation which has been so characteristic for the U.S.’s and the world’s financial sector in the era of neo-liberalism. In both cases, the profit interests of corporation and of a narrow section of company executives have been put wide above the welfare of the world’s population.
We need alternative institutions that fight, and fighting institutions that express an alternative. And we need them all to have real, long-lasting effects.
We need institutions truly capable of meeting peoples’ needs – we need health clinics and social workers, democratic schools and worker cooperatives, neighborhood assemblies and reclaimed homes. We need them on a large scale, and we need to defend them from the attacks of the status quo. We need to take space not symbolically, but for keeps.
You’ve been sleeping on the streets for two months pleading peacefully for a new spirit in economics. And just as your camps are raided, your eyes pepper sprayed and your head’s knocked in, another group of people are preparing to camp-out.Do you think this other group will be harassed by police? After all, under capitalism shopping trumps free speech and freedom of assembly.
At Occupy Washington, DC, we recognize that putting our time, energy and resources into elections will not produce the change we want to see. What we need to do right now is build a dynamic movement supported by independent media that stands in stark contrast to both corporate-bought-and-paid-for parties.