Occupy Radio spoke with Ben Manski, former campaign manager for Jill Stein and founder of the Liberty Tree Foundation and Tangerine Bolen of Revolution Truth. Both Ben and Tangerine represent sites on the internet that are focused on cultivating gressroots movements. Ben talks about his experiences on the streets at WTO, and the FTAA protest in Miami in ’03. Tangerine tells us about the work of RevolutionTruth, as well as her experience being one of the co-plaintiffs on Hedges -v- Obama.

Also, Jerry, of Air Occupy, supplies his “Two Minute Teach-In.” This week, the topic is foreclosures.

Be sure to check out the rest of Occupy Radio and Occupy the Media.

An Australian and a Californian discuss WikiLeaks and related topics for your infotainment.

Tangerine Bolen joins us once again to discuss where the STOP NDAA case has come from and where it is going.

“Memory believes before knowing remembers.” — William Faulkner

(Photo: Vermario via Flickr)

In an era of corporate-state colonization of both landscape and mental real estate, when the face of one’s true oppressors is, more often than not, hidden from view, thus inflicting feelings of anxiety borne of powerlessness over the criteria of one’s life and the course of one’s fate, often, to retain a sense of control, people will tend to displace their anger and shame. Firearms provide the illusion of being able to locate and bead down on a given target. (How often does a person without wealth, power, and influence have any contact with — or even a glimpse of — the financial and political elite whose decisions dictate the, day by day, criteria of one’s existence?)

Beginning in childhood, carrying the noxious notions of the adult world, the viral seeds of mental enslavement to shame and the concomitant attempt to protect ego-integrity through psychological displacement are spread child to child.

All too often, internalized shame robs a child of his innate identity before it has a chance to jell. This is one, among multiple social factors, by which the collective mindset of capitalist/consumer state forcefully usurps an individual’s mind and holds it in torment.

Therefore, it is imperative for an individual, marooned in the shame-haunted miasma of the capitalist/consumer paradigm, to reclaim his/her own name. Even if the process entails (as it as played out in my own story) a descent into the underworld of memory and a confrontation with the ghosts therein.

A personal encounter with the raging ghosts of memory: Late autumn. 1965. Atlanta, Georgia.

At my back, as I stepped from the yellow school bus, and hurried in the direction of the small, two story apartment building, a seething cacophony of taunts and insults seemed to buffet me forward. Marc Leftcoff had sneered that the apartment complex where my family dwelled was, “The Projects” — that he proclaimed to be “a roach nest for losers, unemployed rednecks and divorced hussies — only a place white niggers would live.”

(And no, I didn’t grow-up in a Quentin Tarantino movie. People, even children, spoke like that in those days.)

Months earlier, on my first day of school — after our family had moved from Birmingham to Atlanta, where my sister’s and my new school district included white, laboring class families (often shattered and reconfigured by divorce and second and third marriages) and neighborhoods of affluent, upper middle class Jewish families — I was debriefed by Josh Corbin.

“So,” he clicked, his tongue producing a percussive, supercilious sound by creating a vacuum at the top of his mouth. “Are you upper-class, upper-middle class (like we are) just plain middle class, lower-middle class, or poor (he emitted that clicking sound at the word, poor). You look poor. What is that you have on — Kmart Specials (click). My clothes come from Saks in New York. My Mother and I buy them there when we visit our relatives in New York City, three or four times a year.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. But, I detected, through the mind-diminishing haze of my naivety, a discernible menace in his tone.

“You should really have your parents buy you some presentable clothes…What’s the matter, can’t they afford to buy you anything decent?”

I scanned his outfit. A little alligator seemed to be smirking at me from his shirt. Why did this kid have shiny dimes glinting from the surface of his oxblood loafers? (“Why insert pennies when you can afford dimes,” Corbin was inclined to boast?)

And what was the meaning of that clicking sound that he kept making with his mouth?

Later, I apprehended the sound pertained to the fact that I, and my family, had been labeled, “White Trash.”

Of course, I was ignorant of the social implications of the term, but, nevertheless, an image formed in my mind: My family had been dismissed as tossed-away refuse, reeking like garbage in the Georgia sun…weightless as windblown litter. Inconsequential: our existence…only a foul odor, fleetingly detected, and deserving, when noticed at all, of the contempt of society’s betters.

My heart felt as though it had been ripped into tatters in a windstorm of shame. It seemed as though all I knew about myself had been negated.

This is how shame works on a person. Internalized shame seems to commandeer a person’s DNA and replicate itself into the cellular structure of his being.

In the thrall of internalized shame, one is gripped by the compulsion to hide his face from the world. One’s own thoughts and feeling seem a foul pestilence from which to flee. Thus, a person will come to believe that the only way to absolve oneself of one’s inherent reek (Marc Leftcoff claimed he had seen my father shirtless and announced to our classmates that he “stunk like a rutting nigger”) was to become someone else…to have a family blessed with money and nice things…to have a smug alligator gazing upon life from Saks Fifth Avenue-procured shirts, and have dimes glinting unto creation from the tops of one’s polished loafers. This is one, among multiple means, that the capitalist/consumer state forcefully usurps one’s mind and holds it in torment.

After school, buffeted by these sessions of shaming, I would take refuge in the wooded areas near my home. There, sheltered among the pines, popular trees, and ancient oaks of the Georgia Piedmont, I would seek solace in books and my own wild imaginings.

I recall writing a story in my loose leaf notebook involving a lonely, bullied boy, who, shaken by shame and humiliation, played hooky from school.

Hiding out in a section of woods near his school, he was bitten, while exploring a deep ravine, by a venomous copperhead snake camouflaged by a carpet of pines straw. The incident was witnessed by a grizzled hermit/wizard who dwelled in a secret cave in the woods. The boy is revived by an elixir of anti-venom of the wizard’s devising that had the unattended side effect of bestowing the boy with the ability to bring inanimate objects to life…which, the boy, much to the distress and consternation of the old wizard, utilizes to transform the Izod alligators adorning his school yard tormentor’s clothing into agents of vengeance that devour the offending parties.

Anger dwells as deep as the pain leveled by being shamed and humiliated. From road rage, to internet trolling, to the compulsion to humiliate women in certain forms of porn, to right-wing radio ranters, to violent video games, to gun-sown episodes of mass murder — the shame-besieged psyche of the American male, in vain, attempts to mitigate a psychologically devastating sense of powerlessness.

The actual progenitors of his torment reside in the ghostly domain of personal memory as well as are veiled from view by a class-stratified economic system that serves as an analog of childhood humiliation.

But such prodigious amounts of pain do not remain buried. In the current day U.S., there are multiple factors that bar access to collective memory: the heap of fragmented images constituting the mass media multi-scape and its attendant 24 hour news cycle; suburban atomization and urban alienation; a cultural refusal to confront the true nature of the nation’s history, other than through hagiography, because to face our past would serve to bring us to a rude awakening regarding where we stand at present.

Cue: Existential dread. We are approaching the endgame of (global) capitalism; the system is headed straight to the landfill (its own creation) of history (that is, if global, late stage capitalism doesn’t bury the human species first by means of ecocide). Therefore, it is imperative, as we move towards the future, that we straddle the past, as we become attuned to the lamentation of the ghosts of memory, personal and collective.

Otherwise, the unhinged among us, psychically bearing the things we bury, literalize our denial, even by acts of murdering the living (even school children) in a futile attempt to kill the raging ghosts of memory deferred.

There has been a deadly legacy wrought by social structures that inflict shame and thus sows seeds of inarticulate rage. By the malefic vehicle of these tormented individuals, who are lashing out like a wounded animal, we can apprehend much about the death-besotted trajectory of U.S. culture.

Deep emotional scars can warp libido; thus, in our age of corporate state hyper-authoritarianism, obsessive materialism, and neo-puritan pathology, all too many people have become terrified of their own passion, from sweat plangent lust to incandescent enthusiasm, right down to even accepting the shadows and perfumes borne of an inner life, and have withdrawn into forms of self-exile, such as addiction, alienation, depression, compulsive materialism, and narcissistic striving.

We are convinced we know our own mind…that the decisions we make are based on logic and the wisdom gathered from experience. We believe our night-borne dreams and seemingly random, daylight imaginings are furtive shadows, inconsequential to the choices we make moment by moment as we navigate the linear timescape of our days.

Yet, what if you were visited by a rude angel who revealed to you how your mind had been usurped — the moments of your day harnessed for agendas not your own; your life had been waylaid by interlopers (e.g., Madison Avenue, family legacies, social pressures) who you do not remember granting entrance into your mind?

What kind of a tale of horror is this, you would demand? How did it come to this? Angel, you would cry out, what kind of a cruel joke is this? Why me?

And the angel would simply flash you eternity’s impersonal grin and tell you it is not personal. You have done the very human thing of gathering thoughts and beliefs like a bower bird gathers shiny objects. You have mistaken the bauble-stippled nest of found material for the honey-hive of your soul.

In contrast, passion arrives as a surging flood; the caress of silver moonlight on dark water; a golden fire blazing through one’s blood. But its purpose does not end there i.e., in a fleeting incandescence of the soul. The energies of a fast moving wildfire must be transmuted into the persistence inherent to a stalwart heart — the maintenance of an interior hearth.

Those who evince passion will suffer. Worse, those who demur will suffer confinement in a cold, protective lock-up of their own construction. The union of passion and suffering, with much patience and persistence, transforms winged passion into a deep-dwelling compassion. Luminous angels are drawn earthward to weep.

Life beckons, but all too many ignore the call or defer adherence until it is too late…Too often people confuse a sense of purpose with an obsession for seeking safety; they long for purity, and fear the sublime awkwardness that allows you to lose your balance and fall into your essential self.

By embodying the latter, you have entered a realm that exist beyond success and failure, because when you venture into the heart of creation, you venture deep into your own being. The more passion you evince in life the deeper you inhabit your own humanity.

The only failure in life comes to be when you dismiss destiny’s invitation to dance.

The death-besotted, collective psyche of the late capitalist state reveals the consequences of a culture-wide refusal to heed the call.

C.G. Jung – “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

“All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.” – James Baldwin

As we draw near to the Winter Solstice and the days shorten, one’s thoughts are drawn inward.

Bright lights, fragrant spices and sprigs of evergreen are appropriated to induce one back into the eros of life. Otherwise, daylight-bereft, in the half-light between the land of the living and the domain of the shades of memory, one can become stranded in impersonal despair or toxic nostalgia.

Cultures, throughout human history, have believed the realms of the living and the realms of spirits are drawn near to each other during Fall and Early Winter. Modern humankind dismisses the notion, yet, within, we feel unease. Enter: the manic compensations of the consumer state—the compulsion to avoid reflection by constant motion and contrived bedazzlement —the proffering of kitsch rather than the bestowing of meaning.

Personally, I would not be the least bit offended by manger scenes in public spaces, if equal space would be allotted to other religious sects. For example, let’s say… naked, dancing, cavorting pagans enacting rituals involving the Winter Solstice.

I’m not troubled by the mythology of others. It would be propitious to our soul-starved, public space-bereft culture to possess vivid agoras offering eros and a glimpse of salvation. I would be inclined to engaged in more frequent shopping outings if such a social milieu was extant.

Somehow, shuffling around the mall, chewing on an over-sized Cinnabon, does not serve as a balm to my soul.

Enmeshed, as we are, in the meta-storyline of a nearly all-encompassing media hologram, whether spun by the mainstream media or when slogging through a psychologically miasmic swamp of FaceBook postings, tweets and text messages, it is become increasingly difficult to listen to silence… to allow one’s innate nature to rise from one’s vital center to the fore of one’s being.

Therefore, the criteria of the imagination becomes concretized. For example, in the insular, cracked brain cosmology of febrile, media fantasies, there exists something called a War on Christmas, fought, with Weapons of Mass Destruction supplied by Syria on the chimerical landscape of a Financial Cliff—a struggle being waged, exclusively, in the minds of those who believe in a phantasmal “Invisible Hand of the Free Market”—but who deny the decades of scrupulously gathered data and rigorously proofed evidence of global Climate Change.

To subject oneself to the dim, collective imaginings of the current day political and media culture is to navigate through realms of hackneyed fantasy—to make one’s way through storylines that are not only estranged from the daily exigencies of everyday life of the citizenry that they are tasked to serve, but are wholly removed from the rhythms and resonances of life on earth itself.

Throughout the ages, groups of elitists—generally self-serving—have dictated the criteria of the lives of the multitudes. One of the most potent means of maintaining power is to create the stories that dwell within the individual, as palpably present as any living thing, and often as deleterious as a parasite.

This is why it is imperative for an individual to create and tell his/her unique tale. History bears witness to the results of humankind’s collective refusal: a howling hellscape of war and economic exploitation.

Any nitwit can seek happiness, and, generally, does. But it requires a cultivated courage of the heart to create comedy and beauty out of the material of constant sorrow.

Do not shrink from the task of dwelling in the truth of your unique being and living your way into the attendant tales spun by your awakened heart. There exists no neutral ground in the realm of soul-making. To demure from your calling—to cede your own power to the forces of unreasonable power—is the stuff of tragedy.

If the dead in their graves could speak as a chorus, they would admonish the living: Resist. Create. Let no other living thing define how you live out your days.

First start with an honest awareness of the world that exists around you, and the factors that create the criteria that you exist in, day by day. Then, in ways large and small, work to subvert the present order. Engage in an activism of your choice i.e., political, artistic, and social. That should keep you busy for a while.

In reality, the “Financial Cliff” is the abyss that yawns before the human soul regarding late capitalism in general. To proceed forward, speed unchecked and common sense unheeded, into the present paradigm, the human race careens, closer and closer, toward the abyss engendered by perpetual war, exploitation, and ecocide.

Withal, there are austerity cuts that would prove propitious. For example, to cut off the parasites of the One Percent from the means to continue the carnage resultant from the crime spree known as so-called free market capitalism.

If there was such a thing as a Google Map of the soul, and if you were to perform a search for the term “free market,” its location would be revealed to be an array of shoddy structures, an architecture of nada e.g., payday loan outlets, jack shacks, Wall Street firms, meth labs and crack houses, K Street Lobby operations, pawn shops, Chick-Fil-A, Papa John’s Pizza and Cracker Barrel establishments… tottering on the precipice of a howling chasm… with a Climate Change-strengthened hurricane approaching.

We can use drastic austerity measures in the area of Greenhouse gases, media consolidation, Pentagon budgets, CEO salaries and bonuses, deforestation, overfishing of the world’s oceans, junk food production and the concomitant expansion of the hindquarters of American consumers.

Otherwise, nature introduces eon’s old austerity measures. Recently, Sandy dropped by the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions for a little meet-and-greet. The conversation, between humankind and catastrophic natural phenomenon, tends to be a bit one-sided. Accordingly, Sandy delivered a simple message: Continue on your present path and your trip’s itinerary will involve a very short excursion in the present direction and then a long, uncomfortable journey downward.

A few years back, my wife and I were driving through south Texas, through a sprawling section of Big Agra cattle ranches, livestock holding pens and massive slaughter houses—mechanized killing zones, that bore the quaint name, “cattle country.” In reality, the area of was an archipelago of misery, cruelty and death.

The reek of curdled blood, dung, urine, and mortal terror was as thick as the seething clouds of proliferate black flies scudding the air of the area; their impact-exploded carcasses stippled our car windshield in a hideous, greasy smear of insectile exoskeletons and entrails.

Have you heard this old joke? What is the last thing an insect sees when it collides with a windshield?

Its asshole.

Regarding Climate Chaos, we, as a culture, have placed our own heads, collectively, in a rectal blindfold of self-deception.

The mass production and consumption of animal flesh is the largest single factor in the creation of the rise of atmospheric greenhouse gasses responsible for climate chaos such as super-storm Sandy.

As I listen to climate change deniers, I feel like my brain is passing through some sort of parallel dimension comprised of interlinking rectal cavities. In short, the destruction of the ecosystem, and the degraded and declining criteria of our lives is the fate we have sown for ourselves, because, as a people, we continue to allow our lives to be ruled by the caprice of an infestation of fly-brained, elitist, rectal sphincters on two legs.

The Soul of the World’s tears are endless. And that is a fortunate thing. Because if the weeping ever ceased—the rage of all things wounded would rise.

There are times, when I become one with my wounded heart, my soul snarls like an injured animal. The origin and key to the lexicon of my fury is as follows:

Though I live and breathe, I was beaten to death as a child… devoured in the all-encompassing flames of my father’s napalm rage. At dinner, flickering on the screen of our portable, black and white television, I glimpsed the jungles of Southeast Asia being immolated by the U.S. military. My father would shout at the set, “People—they are so fucking stupid! So fucking stupid! And, boy, if you don’t shape up and get good grades, so you can hide out in college, they will send you to those jungles of death. Hear me, boy?

“You told me you signed up for the AirBorne when you were seventeen, Dad. Were your grades that bad?”

“I’ll knock that smart mouth of yours into next week, boy.”

“Be sure to get my ears too… So that, next week, they will be able to hear an answer to my question.”

“I warned you, smart ass.” And the blows rained down of me.

Periodically, I have had dreams wherein I came upon two blonde children, brother and sister, who I was informed by an unseen narrator, died in a fire in 1965. In the dreams, I seek to comfort them… to bestow a healing balm on their pain and confusion. On our last encounter, my wife and I embraced them, and our beings melded together, as the four of us dissolved into the arms of eternity… seemingly, the devouring flames of personal happenstance had been transformed into a warming hearth of a universal and deathless love.

“So all things hobble together for the only possible.” —Samuel Beckett, from his novel, Murphy

It is impossible to go it alone. Wounded, awkward, gripped by fears of our feebleness… all who live are all maimed and hobbled in some way.

Yet our incompleteness saves us from the fate of sterile perfection, from a heart-negating completeness.

Because of my incomplete nature, I need your collaboration. Because of my unsure gait, I need your assistance, so I do not fall.

Providence has made me ugly so that I can endure being constantly wounded by beauty.

I stumble over my thick tongue and you help me to the farther shore of my sentence.

More and more, I find that I need to rest and take refuge within your song of bitter grace.

If my heart had not been shattered into ten thousand shards, you would not have stopped to gather me, arranged me anew, and stood me, voiceless in awe, before a chorus whose song was so piercing I felt as though, for a fleeting moment, I might become privy to a furtive memory borne of ever-present eternity.

Fortunately, you sealed my ears in beeswax and spared me the terrible beauty of the perfect music of the grave.

You love me as I falter… plangent with banality, reeking of lost promise… yet daring enough to risk the enduring grace of ungainly devotion.

Do not ask why a person paints, writes poems, makes music, dances, or protests. You might as well make inquiries to the cells of your skin as to why they, every moment of every day, are engaged in the process of regeneration.

Apropos, there is no call to go out in search of oneself, because what we do… is who we are.

Republished with permission of the author, Phil Rockstroh

16 December 2012 by Lawrence Davidson

Part I – Gun Violence Epidemic Continues

Well here we go again. Late in the evening of July 20th “a masked gunman entered a Colorado movie theater playing the new Batman movie and “opened fire…killing at least 12 people and wounding 50.” [To this we can now add the December 14th massacre of 20 young children and 6 adults by twenty year-old gunman in Newtown Conn.] The gunman was not a large anthropomorphized bat but rather a young white male, and he “was armed with a rifle, a shotgun and two handguns” all of which he had legally obtained.

This is nothing new in the Land Of The Free. Among the more notable victims of the nation’s love affair with deadly weapons have been Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan and, of course, John Lennon. Then there are the recent (and periodically on-going) mass murders among the population at large: the Colombine High School shootings, the Beltway sniper incidents, the Virginia Tech massacre, and the 2011 Tucson killings. To this can be added the daily shootings that occur in every city in the country. Taking the representative year 2007, there were 31,224 deaths from gunshots with 17,352 of them (56%) being suicides. The numbers have, generally, been going up.

Part II – The Gun Advocates’ Excuses

Those who stand against tightening up the nation’s presently useless gun laws have a variety of arguments most of which are in good part delusional. Thus:

1. EXCUSE NUMBER ONE – Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
   1. It is certainly true that while sitting on a shelf, locked in a draw, or carried in a holster, guns are inert pieces of machinery and, ultimately, it takes a finger to pull the trigger. Yet this fact is actually irrelevant. It’s irrelevant because guns are not manufactured to stay on shelves, in draws or holsters. That inert status has nothing to do with why they exist. So, we can go on and ask,
   2. Why are guns manufactured? Why do they exist? Primitive firearms were invented in China sometime in the 12th century. They were invented to be used in warfare, that is to kill and injure other people. As the technology spread Westward, first into the Arab lands and then to Europe, it was improved, but the raison d’etre (its reason for being), to kill and injure others. stayed the same. The only thing that has changed over time is that in certain lands, particularly the U.S., a monopoly on the possession of such weapons ceased to be held by the state and guns diffused into the population as a whole.In the United States, this process of diffusion was allowed based on a peculiar interpretation of Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. That amendment says that the right of the citizens to bear arms shall not be infringed. But that statement forms a dependent clause in a sentence that links the right to bear arms to the maintenance of “a well regulated militia.” Apart from the National Guard, the modern U.S. does not maintain militias. And, most of the membership of the National Rifle Association (NRA), along with the other gun-toting tough guys walking the streets of (particularly) the mid and southern U.S., don’t even belong to National Guard.
   3. The hard truth is that guns were originally invented, and still today are primarily made, to shoot people. Their other uses: in hunting, to shoot holes in paper targets, to blast clay projectiles out of the air for fun, are strictly secondary to their primary purpose.
   4. So the argument that guns don’t kill people is a-historical and something of a red herring. Guns are essentially our partners, intimate accessories if you will, in what is most often criminal activity, facilitating the efficiency of acts of homicide, assault and suicide. At the rate we pursue these activities, we just couldn’t maintain the modern level of mayhem without them.
2. EXCUSE NUMBER TWO – Guns are most often used for self-defense.
   1. If you go on the web, you can find surveys that allege the use of guns for self-defense numbering in the millions of episodes per year. However, these surveys are often carried out by biased organizations and are methodologically flawed. They have therefore been demonstrated to be unreliable.
   2. More reliable studies, conducted by unbiased sources have shown, among other things, that: very few criminals are shot by law-abiding citizens; most criminals are shot either by the police, or by other criminals; and firearms reported to have been used in self-defense are, most of the time, used against members of a family or erstwhile friends during arguments.Along the same lines, the statement concerning the Colorado theater massacre issued by Luke O’Dell, a spokesman for the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners association, reflected the misconception that the answer to gun violence is more guns: “Potentially, if there had been a law-abiding citizen who had been able to carry [a gun] in the theater [in Colorado], it’s possible that the death toll would have been less.” One might more plausibly argue that if the shooter had not been able to procure a rifle, a shotgun and two handguns “to carry” into the theater, the death toll would have been zero.

Part III – The Problem of Lobby Power

It seems not to matter how many times these massacres take place. Nothing is likely to change. Here is what an article entitled “Still Little Interest In U.S. Gun Control” in the Philadelphia Inquirer of 22 July 2012 had to say, “Despite periodic mass shootings…the political calculus seems locked down. Most Republicans adamantly oppose tighter gun controls, and most Democrats would prefer to focus on other issues.” Why so? The reason has to do with a very flawed aspect of our political system. Ours is a system that allows a relatively small number of citizens (in this case gun zealots) to form a special interest, or lobby group, that raises and distributes great amounts of money nationwide and, in some parts of the country, exercises strong voting influence. These lobbies can hold crazy ideas that demonstrably harm society and make us look like an insane nation to the rest of the world, but that doesn’t matter either. The politicians will positively respond anyway to get money and electoral support. In this sense, we live in a land devoid of “national interest.” There is only the interest of lobby groups and the politicians controlled by them.

Nor is this situation unique to the problem of the nation’s gun laws and the power of the NRA. If we look at foreign policy, we see that similar lobbies skew policy with disastrous results. The Zionist lobby has the entire U.S. government head over heels in support of the basically racist state of Israel. And, this position does demonstrable harm to our standing throughout the Middle East and Muslim world. It’s crazy, but it has been going on for at least 65 years. The Cuban lobby of anti-Castro fanatics has intimidated Washington to blockade, sanction and otherwise isolate Cuba even though the rest of the world is content to trade and have normal relations with the island nation. Our politicians say they take this stand because the Cuban government is a communist dictatorship. So what? Do we have normal relations with China? Do we trade with Vietnam? They are obviously being less than truthful. They take the stand because they are bought and bullied by a bunch of well organized, well funded, fanatics. The whole thing is crazy and has been going on since 1960.

Part IV – Conclusion

There is simply something wrong with our political system. Too few people can command too much power in the name of relatively small minority groups. We need campaign finance reform and much more transparency when it comes to the operations of special interests. We need shorter electoral periods and limits on how much it can cost to run for any office. We need honest and open regional and national debates on both domestic and foreign policies that affect large numbers of our citizens (whether those citizens know it or not).

And, last but not least, we need a rational rethinking of what the word “freedom” means.

– Does “freedom” mean that just about anyone is free to carry weapons that potentially put the rest of us in danger? Free to carry weapons that are most often going to be used to shoot off the carrier’s foot, or shoot someone he or she imagines is acting abnormally, or shoot a family member in a heated argument, or, in a fit of depression, to blow one’s own brains out? Does it mean that people are free to carry weapons that they may decide to use in an act of mass murder?

– Does “freedom” mean that if you have a lot of money you can use it to corrupt the nation’s politicians so that they distort the positions and policies of government to such a degree that they cease to have any connection to common sense definitions of community or national interest?

The answer is yes. That, in good part, is actually what freedom means in the U.S. And these stupid definitions of “freedom” are slowly but surely undermining the body politic. There are no super heroes out there to save us: no Superman, no Batman, no Catwoman, and the like. There is just us. And if we don’t find a way to, in essence, work our way free of the pseudo “freedoms” that are ruining our political system, no one else will. Things will simply get worse.

On December 6, 2012, RevolutionTruth hosted a live panel discussion with David Remes and Andy Worthington to discuss the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, the U.S. Government’s current position on indefinite detention, and their work examining and dealing with the effects it has had on the detainees that reside there.

After ten years, multiple scandals, and worldwide condemnation of its practices, the highly controversial Guantanamo Bay Detention Center (GTMO) remains open for business. GTMO arose in the last decade to become a global symbol of a new kind of war: one where kidnapping, torture and indefinite detention – even of completely innocent citizens – was justified, as long as it was being carried out by the United States Government, in the name of defeating “terrorism”.

Join our host Tangerine Bolen and co-host Pamela Sue Taylor for an inside look at one of the world’s most notorious prisons. We’ll be joined by GTMO experts David Remes, a human rights attorney who has engaged in extensive pro bono defense of GTMO prisoners, and independent journalist Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files: Stories of 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison. We will examine a real-life example of the impact of indefinite detention on innocent citizens, discuss the changing landscape of the rule of law, and assess the dangers of the NDAA, in the wake of the GTMO legacy.

Learn More

Here are some useful resources to learn more about the highly controversial Guantanamo Bay Detention Center (GTMO).

• Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (Cuba)
• WikiLeaks Reveals ‘Systematized Human Rights Abuses’ at US Detention Facilities
• Latif Autopsy Report Calls Gitmo Death a Suicide: Questions Remain
• Investigators Said to Question How Detainee Died of Overdose
• David Remes on a Human Rights Agenda for the Obama Second Term
• The Guantanamo Files
• Guantanamo Ten Years Later
• Lawyer for Gitmo detainees: ‘Less hope now than ever’
• Sabin Willett and David Remes on Adnan Latif

Advocacy Groups

• The Guantanamo Public Memory Project
• ACLU – Close Guantanamo
• Close Guantanamo

Pamela Geller and her billboard message

PART I – The Savage vs. the Civilized

Back on 1 August 2012 I posted a piece entitled History on a Billboard. It reported on the placement, in the northern suburbs of New York City, of informational billboards with maps of Palestine showing the steady growth of Israeli confiscated territory and the corresponding shrinkage of territory available to the indigenous Palestinians. It also told the observer that “4.7 million Palestinians are classified by the UN as Refugees.” Although Zionists labelled the billboard as “anti-Semitic,” it was nothing of the kind. It was wholly informational, and completely accurate.

As it turns out that informational effort is now part of a growing number of ads, signs and messages which collectively make up what I call the “billboard wars.” From San Francisco to Washington D.C. and New York City, both Zionists and pro-Palestinian groups have launched competing billboard efforts. This is going on mostly in publicly owned spaces because Zionist pressure often results in private billboard companies refusing to display pro-Palestinian messages. Now, depending on how you want to read the message of the latest Zionist effort, the billboard wars battleground has widened beyond the issue of Palestine to encompass a worldwide clash between the “civilized” and the “savage.” It is to be noted that this was the sort of language used by imperial colonizers, including the U.S. in its conquest of the American Indians, to compare themselves to the indigenous populations they oppressed.

Here is what has happened. There is a Zionist group calling itself “American Freedom Defense Initiative” (AFDI) led by the infamous American Islamophobe Pamela Geller. This organization has produced a sign that reads,

“In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

Geller and AFDI aimed at placing this message on buses, subways, and in other public venues but initially had difficulty because most transportation agencies saw it as discriminatory and provocative. However, AFDI went to court and a federal judge found that their sign was an act of “free speech” protected by the First Amendment. Therefore, in late September, those people of New York City who ride the buses and subways found Pamela Gelller’s message in their faces. Most, of course, will pay it little mind. Yet, we should not ignore it. It is part of a propaganda effort with potentially damaging consequences.

Part II – Analyzing the Message

First – The AFDI and Geller juxtapose Israel on the one side and Jihadists on the other. My experience with over a thousand college students since 9/11 is that, for Americans, the term Jihadists means Al-Qaeda operatives. Most Americans do not associate this term with Palestinians. And, believe it or not, while those associated with Al Qaeda have badmouthed Israel, they have yet to make war on that country. So, what are these Zionists talking about? Well, they are probably trying to broaden out the definition of a Jihadist to include not only Palestinians, but the entire Muslim world. That would be consistent with their Islamaphobe worldview. In addition, they are saying that Israel represents “the civilized man” who has declared war on the same enemy that has made war on the United States. By asking Americans to “support Israel” they are reinforcing the notion that the U.S. and Israel are allies.

Second – Is the AFDI correct in telling us that Israel is the “civilized man?” Only in their own ahistorical fantasy. If you care to live in a world driven by the facts then Israel is rendered “the savage.” There is a lot of evidence for this.

1. On 10 October 2012 the Harvard researcher Sara Roy gave a devastating critique of what Israel, backed up by the United States, has done in the Gaza Strip. Gaza, with its population approaching two million Palestinians, is now the most densely populated place on earth. It is also the world’s most crowded open air prison. The Israeli blockade, illegal under international law, has slowly but surely destroyed the water supply, the sewage systems, the economic structure as a whole. The Israelis will tell you that Hamas, which governs Gaza, wants to destroy Israel. But that is only wishful thinking on the part of Hamas for they haven’t the ability to destroy anything. Israel, on the other hand, wishes to destroy the Palestinian people and they do have that capacity. In Gaza, as well as the West Bank, they are slowly doing so. This is genocide in slow motion.
2. Sara Roy is an extremely knowledgable American Jewish academic, but there are plenty of other sources, some of them Israeli, that will back up and expand on her critique. Here are a few of them:

• B’tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights
• Rabbis For Human Rights
• Palestine Center for Human Rights
• Jewish Voices for Peace

Looking at the websites of these organizations reveals a litany of on-going barbaric policies and actions perpetrated upon mostly unarmed Palestinians who have nothing at all to do with Jihadists. Indeed, to act as Israel does in this regard is to qualify a good number of its citizens (though not all) as savages. So to be true to the facts AFDI’s sign should really read as follows,

“In any war between savage one (Israel) and savage two (Al Qaeda), AFDI urges Americans to support savage number one. This is so even though Israel is not fighting Jihadists but rather genocidally destroying Palestinians.”

That would be historically accurate, although it would put the situation in a distinctly different light than does Ms Geller’s propaganda.

The end of the billboard wars is not yet in sight. AFDI’s message is aimed at an American audience and thus can also be read as an attempt to promote Islamophobia just before a presidential election.

To counter the racist aspect of this message, the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has placed sixteen foot signs in the metro stations of Washington D.C. that are designed to “promote mutual understanding and challenge hate.” Their signs quote from the Quran: “show forgiveness, speak for justice and avoid the ignorant.”

Part III — Conclusion

The unfortunate thing is that, in these sort of confrontations, Geller and her ilk have the odds on their side. This is because all the peace seekers are ultimately at the mercy of the violent and hateful extremists on both sides. However, in the U.S. the media will only tell you about the Jihadists. Therefore, all it takes is one Al-Qaeda attack on an American target to send the CAIR message into oblivion. On the other hand the Israeli government and its settler allies can act out the Zionist version of ethnic cleansing daily and the American public will rarely, if ever, hear about it.

The truth is there are fewer civilized men and women than we like to believe. The ones in power, regardless of the nationstate, only rarely behave in civilized ways. The bulk of the citizens either give support to or are indifferent toward their leader’s actions. The small remainder, who are indeed candidates for the category of civilized people, are left to struggle against a strong and consistent counter-current. This is nowhere more true than in the state of Israel.

Such then, for all of us, is the heart of darkness.

Lawrence Davidson
Professor of History
West Chester University
West Chester, PA 19383-2133

Seven plaintiffs, backed by multiple civil liberties and human rights groups, filed suit against President Obama, Leon Panetta, and 6 members of Congress over the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) last March. The lawsuit, spearheaded by plaintiffs Chris Hedges and Tangerine Bolen, is one of the only things standing in between innocent citizens everywhere and the threat of indefinite detention by the US military under Section 1021 of the NDAA. Journalists, lawyers and activists around the world have expressed profound concern and criticism over a provision that effectively suspends due process of the law and threatens to destroy First Amendment rights.

We WON round one of our lawsuit in May, after Obama-appointed Judge Katherine Forrest ruled entirely in our favor and granted a temporary restraining order against this provision. She did so after the US government refused to provide assurances (when asked 5 times) that plaintiffs and others would not be subjected to indefinite detention for exercising First Amendment rights.

Video is available on our YouTube channel or watch below.

For more information about the NDAA and our lawsuit, visit StopNDAA.org

In the United States, we watched, in awe and solidarity from our televisions, the
revolutions and waves of global discontent that spread across the world. While observing such
historical moments, we subconsciously asked ourselves, “When will it come to the belly of the
beast?” That was quickly answered on September 17th, 2011, when a few thousand people took
to the streets of the Financial District of New York City and occupied Zuccotti Park, next to Wall
Street, which was no coincidence. The martyrdom of the Tunisians, the democratic processes of
the Spanish “Indignados” and the power of the Egyptian people inspired the American public to
occupy a park in the heart of the New York City Financial District, where greed and injustice
reign over all. The 17th was marked as a historic day that gave birth to a new mass movement,
called “Occupy,” that spread to over 1,000 cities in the U.S. in response to the economic and
social injustices we, the “99%,” face in the context of rising home foreclosures, ravaging
income inequality, the erosion of the middle class, institutional racism, and the constant
destruction of our civil liberties caused by the “1%” and those in power.

This newborn generation of “occupiers” saw 700 people arrested on the Brooklyn
Bridge, a general strike in Oakland, growing solidarity between different sectors and issues
inside the “99%,” peaceful students violently pepper-sprayed, and an Iraq war veteran almost
killed by the Oakland Police Department. The bold direct action of this movement changed the
mainstream political discourse from the deficit to unemployment and inequality; created major
losses for the banks responsible for the economic crisis of 2008; shifted social consciousness;
and changed the political culture of our country forever. Such success was due to the forgetful
sense that allowed us to ignore the possibility of failure and take the risks and militant steps
that emancipated the Zuccotti Park occupation from isolation to a critical mass that posed a
threat to the state and the current system. Once we realized the possible we began to push
aside the obstacles that prevented us from justice, with great success.

Not only can we, the “99%,” testify towards our success, but the actions of the
elite “1%” represent and demonstrate our achievements as well. On March 5th, 2012, President
Barack Obama announced that the White House has moved the G8 summit planned for
Chicago, to the isolated and impenetrable Camp David in Maryland. A large bankers Association
spent more than $800,000 to launch a smear campaign against Occupy in order to discredit its
public image. Authorities all over the nation have spent an immense amount of resources to
squash the Occupy encampments; the most infamous was the November 17th eviction of
Zuccotti Park in New York City. Congress has passed the HR-347 Bill that makes it illegal to
protest at locations of “national significance.” Evidently, those in power have responded to the
voices and power of the “99%” with brutality and repression, out of great fear that we can
create systematic change.

Thus, through direct action, scale, inclusivity, and diversity, this movement has emerged
as the driving force of change for the next year in a country plagued by the concentration of
wealth and power. We must use this momentum to develop a strategy and vision that builds
power to effectively confront and replace Capitalism.

We must envision a democratic and participatory society, in which the “99%” have a
way of meaningful participation in the decision-making structures that ultimately affect them; a
just and participatory economy with social ownership of the means of production; redefined
and eliminated sexual and gender-based relations and hierarchies; a culture that puts people
before property and profit; and a sustainable ecology. In order to achieve such goals we need
to build effective strategies that create counter-power to Capitalism, hetero-patriarchy, sexism,
racism, and that state. It is built through the creation of institutions that sustain these values
while achieving the real needs of people in the present because symbolism can only last so
long. It is this transformation and process that we must focus on in order to begin to live the
revolution we want to see.

The movement has gained the attention of the world. We are in the spotlight and must
take advantage of the moment and develop the transformation this movement must take on. It
is the time to shift from protesting injustices to defending the world we wish to create. Another
world is possible.

Still, there are drawbacks to being “locally normal.” For one thing, the more “normal” you are the less independent (at least in socio-political terms) a thinker you are. The strange thing is that the “locally normal” would not agree that thinking outside the community box is a legitimate act of independence. Such a stance would appear, from inside the box, as not being independent so much as being antisocial and perhaps unpatriotic. And, such behavior is going to make “normal” folks suspicious and fearful. That is the genetic impulse again. Stay with the group and you stay safe. Safe from what? Safe from people on the outside, of course. If you are really looking for a “locally normal” definition of independence it is going to be an economic one: having a good job, paying your own bills, and not living with their parents.
　

Part II – Refuseniks – The “Locally Abnormal”
　
It is against this background that we might consider the plight of Israel’s refuseniks. These are Israeli Jewish citizens who are “locally abnormal” either because they refuse to serve beyond the 1967 borders (that is they refuse to go into the Palestinian Occupied Territories) or refuse induction into the Israeli military altogether. There are only between one and two thousand individuals in this group–a figure small enough to make them rare.
　
While there is evidence of some sympathy for the refuseniks on the far left side of the Israeli political spectrum, nothing but condemnation can be found in other quarters. Almost all Israeli politicians have labeled the refuseniks “dangerous” and some have described their behavior as treasonous and “helping the enemy.” The Israeli courts, of course, have declared that refusal to serve in the military (by all but the Ultra Orthodox) for any reason other than conscientious objection is illegal. Interestingly, one of the reasons used by the Israeli high court to condemn the actions of those who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories is that such behavior “weakens the ties that bind us as a nation.” Thus Refuseniks are so “locally abnormal” that they usually get thrown into jail.
　
Nonetheless, the refuseniks continue to pop up, albeit at slow intervals. The most recent one is Noam Gur (the first refusenik in 2012). She is an 18 year old Israeli Jew who has just announced that she will refuse mandatory military service. In an open letter she announced that “I refuse to join an army that has, since it was established, been engaged in dominating another nation, in plundering and terrorizing a civilian population that is under its control.”
　
Ms Gur is not sure how she came by these (for Israel) “abnormal” sentiments. At the age of 15 she started trying to make sense of the Nakba of 1948. This led her to join the small number of other “abnormal” Israeli Jews taking part in Palestinian led protests in the West Bank, thus “seeing what was going on with my own eyes.” By 16 she knew that she could not “take part in these [Israeli] crimes [against Palestinians]” and that meant she could not go into the army. She has gotten plenty of negative feedback from “locally normal” Israelis securely situated within their community box, yet Ms Nur does not find this response intimidating. “I am following what I believe in,” she says, “I don’t really care what other people might have to say about it.”

Though she has little faith that Israeli society can change from within, she still urges her peers to “look into what they are doing.” As it stands now, “most 18 year olds” bound for military service “don’t really know what they’re going into. They don’t really know what is going on in the [West Bank and Gaza Strip]. They only…see Palestinians for the first time…once they are soldiers.” The vast majority of “normal” military age Israelis refuse to look before they leap into the army.
　
What Gur is describing is a closed Israeli society. Much like the U.S., it doesn’t matter if there is freedom of the press and speech because education and personal interaction reinforces a broad set of perceptual norms which, over time, literally come to dictate the parameters of thought. These parameters define “normality” within the nation’s local space. If, for whatever reason you find yourself outside of the box, you’re a social mistake.
　

Part III – Reversing the Perceptual Frame
　
Is it possible to defy the socially constructed definition of “local normality” that exists in Israel, or any other state for that matter, and declare on the basis of good evidence criteria for a “universal civilized normality”? Perhaps one way to do this is to play that old religious card and “appeal to a higher power.” But in this case we do not have to look to the heavens or some divine source. All we have to do is draw our criteria of behavior from sources such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
　
Here are some criteria for “universal civilized normality” taken from the UDHR:
　
1. A society’s citizens are normal and civilized when they do not support their government’s practice of “torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” (UDHR, Article 5)
　
2. A society’s citizens are normal and civilized when they do not support their government’s practice of “arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.” (UDHR Article 9)
　
3. A society’s citizens are normal and civilized when they accord all elements of their population “the right to freedom of movement and residence…. (UDHR Article 13)
　
4. A society’s citizens are normal and civilized when they accord all “men and women of full age,” residing within their country “the right to marry and found a family” “without any “limitation due to race, nationality or religion.” (UDHR Artical 16)
　
5. A society’s citizens are normal and civilized when they do not support the “arbitrarily taking of [another resident’s] property.” (UDHR Artical 17)
　
6. A society’s citizens are normal and civilized when they demand that all residents have “the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being….including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age…”. (UDHR Article 25).
　
　
Part IV – Conclusion
　
Considering this sampling of criteria for “normal, civilized behavior,” where would we rank the citizens and supporters of the Israeli state? Well, a recent poll of Israeli high school students found that fully half of them “opposed equal rights for Arabs.” Another video poll revealed that “racism is rampant among Israeli youth.” As it turns out, many Israelis do support the state’s use of torture, arbitrary arrest, restriction of movement, the arbitrary confiscation of property, placing barriers in the way of marriage, and the purposeful maintenance of less than adequate standards of living for the Palestinians under their jurisdiction. Thus, one must conclude that there is a wide gap between what we might consider to be “universal standards for civilized normality” and those standards of “local normality” in place in Israel. Therefore, it turns out that Noam Gur and other Israeli Jews like her must actually defy the majority in order to preserve “civilized normality”
　
Maybe it is a thousand years of stress culminating in the Holocaust that turned today’s Jewish Zionists into such obsessively insecure people that they cannot accurately judge their own national interests. Maybe it is a variant on “the battered child syndrome” that has led the Israelis to batter the Palestinians and then, when they resist, call them anti-Semites. Maybe the problem is that they have allowed religious fanatics and political bigots to run their country (hardly a problem unique to Israel). Whatever is going on in the heart of the “Holy Land” it certainly has not produced a majority of “normal and civilized” people. But it has allowed for a small minority of them. And with this minority lies whatever hope there might be for a “normal and civilized” future for Israel.
　
　
ldavidson@wcupa.edu
www.tothepointanalyses.com
www.twitter.com/pointanalyses

Lawrence Davidson
Professor of History
West Chester University
West Chester, PA 19383-2133

How a society perceives its past can alter the direction that a society is going in either a good or bad way. When a people does not know, or ignores the brutal reality of their nations’ actions, or doesn’t know their true motives, they are more likely to keep on supporting the same things that lead to those ignored or unknown actions. When our government punishes whistleblowers, they are trying to have the last say in writing our history. What are a people with a false notion of history or a condensed, edited, and glossed over history?

How should we remember the most recent U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, or older invasions like Vietnam? Whistleblowers are crucial in spreading truth and allowing us a clearer picture of current events. Daniel Ellsberg, while working for the Rand Corporation in 1967, was working on a Top Secret McNamara study of the strategies for the war in Vietnam. This study later became known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969 Ellsberg photocopied 7000 pages of the study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then a few years later he gave it to the New York Times. Ellsberg helped to shed light on human rights abuses and showed that the war in Vietnam was nothing like what was being reported in the media. Ellsbergs’ acts led to the conviction of several White House officials and were a major part of what led to the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon. Ellsberg played a crucial role in changing the framework of the discussion of the Vietnam War.

War and Empire as Daniel Ellsberg has shown, are lacking in substance behind the vague or hollow patriotic phrases that they say in their well-written speeches. Phrases like “war on terror” mean nothing and everything at the same time, for it means whatever the people in power want it to mean. The same can be said for the usage of the word “terrorist”. The invasion of Afghanistan was claimed by the Bush administration to have taken place because the Taliban government couldn’t find Osama Bin Laden to hand him over even though it took the U.S. 10 years to find Bin Laden. As the war in Afghanistan started, the Bush Administration and legal team headed by John Yoo was preparing a legal argument to now permit indefinite detention and torture of non-American prisoners of war.

On the former U.S. colony of Cuba a military base remains known as Camp X-Ray or Guantanamo Bay. The most notorious and well known torture facility on the Island of Cuba is by all accounts a secretive place with a series of human experiments on stress levels and how much a human can physically take before dying. The American Psychological Association has publicly condoned this and been assisting to take notes and study the affects. Brandon Neely, like most Americans probably didn’t know the details of U.S. involvement in Cuba in the early 1900’s and how it resulted in the U.S. naval base that still exists there. Brandon, like most Americans believed the rhetoric and had good intentions. He was stationed as a guard at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and had an up close experience with the realities of empire. His time at Guantanamo Bay revealed to him and later as he spoke out, to the world, that Guantanamo Bay was not a place of bringing terrorists to justice. Brandon Neely spoke out about what he observed during his time working at Guantanamo bay.

Michael Prysner joined the Army at the age of 17, His story is one that is familiar to many American families. Michael said that it was the lack of options after high school beyond menial jobs that was major reason for him turning to the Army. The Army had plans for Michael; he was sent to Iraq and took part in prisoner interrogations, house raids and ground surveillance. Prysner says that while in Iraq he realized that our reasons for war were to be the oppressor. His experiences in Iraq showed him first hand the cold realities of war and empire.

On July 12, 2007 in Iraq a group of soldiers which included Ethan Mccord, named Bravo Company 2-16 was being protected by a group of apache helicopters. The events that preceded this are now part of the famous Collateral Murder video released in 2010 by WikiLeaks. Ethan walked upon a crime scene that his own military was a part of. Ethan has now become a growing list of U.S. veterans that speak of horrific events, including the U.S. military targeting civilians. Once again, Ethan was part of a large group of Americans who were lied to and used to implement an unjust invasion and occupation. Without men like Ethan and many others, the people at home would only get the pre-approved message of war manipulated by the media. Telling people that what they have seen or heard from the media is a lie, is not always easy and now it is becoming more dangerous to do so under the current U.S. administration.

The powerful do not like people challenging the comfortable myths of the establishment. Under the Obama Administration we have seen 6 charges against whistleblowers under the espionage act, which is more than all past presidents combined. The use of the espionage act to limit whistleblowers is nothing new considering that the espionage act was mainly used to scare and threaten civil rights groups, labor unions, and leftist political groups. There have been more attacks on free speech; exposing corruption and lies within our government has always been attacked and demonized. Right now with a world wide economic collapse, wars, interventions, regime change, war with Iran – are all threats that become multiplied and we need whistleblowers now more than ever. Although these are just a few examples of whistleblowers, there are many more, and their stories are important for us all to hear.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have cost the United States the lives of nearly 8000 soldiers, cost over four trillion dollars, caused countless cases of severe Post Traumantic Stress Disorder in military personnel, and killed thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and hundreds of thousands of citizens in Iraq. The rationale for going to war with Iraq was misleading at best, and false and highly manipulative at worst. The path this nation took in the war on terror after 9/11 is one that has fundamentally reshaped this nation – leaving citizens with a government that is increasingly secretive, unaccountable to the people, and prone to trading long-cherished liberties for a questionable sense of national security.

In the midst of two wars that have cost us so much, there are occasionally people who step forward to bring the public hard truths. Military whistle-blowers brave condemnation from all corners; servicemen and women who openly challenge the state-framed narrative of war face a harsh reality – the deep and widespread unwillingness to truly question what is happening, and the subsequent costs of telling the truth.

Video is available on our YouTube channel or watch it below.

For more information about the panelists, visit the RevolutionTruth Panels page for this panel.

Places for whistleblowers to go to for protection or to report.

All of these links provide detailing on laws for whistleblowers, legal guidance in whistle blowing, articles, podcasts and radio shows. The people that run these sites, write the articles and do the radio shows and podcasts are either attorneys for whistleblowers or whistleblowers themselves.

• whistleblowerlaws.com
• whistleblowersblog.org
• whistleblowerlawyerblog.com
• boilingfrogspost.com
• sherronwatkins.com
• wemeantwell.com
• whistleblower.org

I think the recent RevolutionTruth panel discussion on the Chris Hedges Black Bloc article took many unintended turns and twists but, guided by serendipity, it ended up being very illuminating on a number of counts even if it juked from its initial topic on Black Bloc. I will save actual comments on the tactics of violence and Black Bloc for another post and deal with what I see as the real value that came out of the recent panel discussion on the backlash to the Chris Hedges article.

What intrigued me and what distinguished this panel from the last panel with Michael Moore, Hedges, Flowers, Zeese, Bolen et all was because it exposed issues of protocol regarding the internal rules of engagement on just how occupy arrives at finding its core message and how that message is to be carried to outlying power structures. In other words, protocols still seem to be in the fluid process of finding a common footing. This was more about internal power distribution and by what means and through what voice this power is to be conveyed to the status quo. Should the guidelines for putting successful panels together be kind of like the fine art of choosing the right guests for an easy mix dinner party? I don’t think so, unless you’re just looking for polite, congenial conversation. But if getting to core issues is the idea then to expect an easy go of it in a mixed debate is short sighted to begin with. It seems natural that any discussion on the tactics of violence should inherently involve some form of aggressive exchange, and the panel delivered on this count- rightly so. Black Bloc is a strategy of tactics that does include some aspect of violence. The Cari, Georgia , Hedges, Flowers , Lucas, Bolen mix was a microcosm of similar tussling dynamics that happens across the board at GA’s throughout the country. Here’s the question: Who speaks for occupy, and what are the forms this speech should take?

The personal chemistry was perfect in drawing this internal power struggle out and I think the choice of panelists was superb to this end. Credits due here to whoever decided on the panelists. Is the platform for discussion and the adoption of agendas to be based along lines of pure democracy, anarchy, traditional models, or is some other combined form developing through the occupy process itself? This is not easy stuff we are working with here and the business we are about is serious business and if the deeper passions are not stirred then our convictions would be found at shallower depths. So things did get a little tense but the atmosphere was riveting and telling precisely because anyone who has been to GA’s or been in on long fbook threads about Occupy knows that this tense dynamic plays out all the time.

What does this all have to do with getting our agendas out there? Everything-in short. It has to do with power, influence and the protocols of engagement that arise out of group dynamics. All these elements are all still in a relatively fluid state in this nascent movement. We are up against massive external power inertias and yet we have internal power and control issues ourselves and we have to deal with how power is to be distributed amongst ourselves if it is ever to be redirected to affect any real change outside the movement. I can’t imagine Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner having discussions on the house floor about whether or not the pronoun “I” or “ we” is appropriate to getting things done, but maybe it should be and maybe some of the fundamental problems in the established system have to do with these fine points of semantics.

Whoever developed the sign language dialect that has caught on across the country at GA’s instinctually understands the value of equalizing the inequities of personality in group dynamics, and how some can come quickly to dominate in groups while others are relegated to the background “spoken to” crowd. Well occupy is nothing if it does not represent the people’s voice en masse who are fed up with being spoken to by self- serving, flannel mouthed politicians. Perhaps this is why the phenomena of “ mic checking” got started. But can we all mic check our agendas at the halls of congress and expect that things will change if the chorus refrains are raised a few more decibels? The fingers up twizzle and the other signs could not be utilized in this online panel discussion but maybe there could be a way this could be done in the future to get around the issue of just who is perceived as the “expert” or the “authority” in the panel and who gets allotted the most time. In the end it seemed that Georgia was given more time than anyone and she was probably the most difficult to understand. Kudos to Tangerine for her patience on this.

Were both Cari and Georgia suggesting that the very notion of authority seeking is intrinsically flawed and has contributed to the very problems we are up against in the first place, and that occupy should stay away from ascribing authority figures within its own ranks? Is this subject itself worthy of a panel discussion? Cari and Georgia raise very cogent points as perhaps too much authority and trust have been placed in all branches of government and look where that has gotten us?

Chris Hedges knows his stuff and articulates it well and for what he talks about he surely is an authority. But has too much authority perhaps been granted him on this Occupy because he speaks and writes so well on foreign movements and the oppressive tactics of dark regimes? Is he an authority on the best strategy that this Occupy takes? How much does he really know about Black Bloc and does he know that some of the random acts of vandalism come at the hands of a designed Black Bloc strategy? This is a crucial point and this is where Cari and Georgia called their lines out even if Hedges himself never has claimed authority.

Does his rich, worldly experience necessarily outfit him with an advantaged expertise on the particular characteristics of this intrinsically American occupy?. Are Cari and Georgia authorities on past authority models and how the flaws of past models may have led to where we are now? These all are very valid points to look at. Chris seems to be most comfortable and has been mostly cast in Occupy forums where he has more or less held forth as the interlocutor of Occupy’s role in the face of the oppressive power structures.

He does not seem to be well suited to scrappy mix ups with heightened emotion as part of the mix. This open format rigged with cross opinions may not be his forte. Sadly, though, the movement will lose depth if he declines future online panel invitations. It’s too bad that his boxing experience with the project ruffians post Harvard Divinity school could not help him in these close quarter online emotional scraps. After all, the scrap can be held at safe distance-even coasts apart. Cari seems certainly well suited to this forum because her debating currency is emotion combined with intellect and so is Margaret Flowers for different reasons – because she redirects rather than confronts direct charges.

Tangerine, as moderator probably has the hardest role in such scraps because she is supposed to be neutral and no one can be neutral on these matters. She is so well suited to the task, however, and was the brunt of the lowest blows at the very end by Georgia and Cari who seemed to vent all the anger they had for Hedges, Lucas and Zeese onto Tangerine. That was clearly the most out of line part of the whole panel and it was too bad that it happened at the very end and was directed at the person who was trying the hardest to remain neutral. It all had to do with Georgia and Cari not accepting the standard protocols of how panels are usually conducted and what the role of the moderator is and how the notion of authority is to be delegated. These are valid things to look at if only because they are well part of the underlying occupy internal struggle.

Although for the most part I personally agree with Hedges stance on the dangers Black Bloc poses to the heart of the non-violent vocabulary Occupy must pursue as a discrete strategy, I also can accommodate the right of impassioned refutation on the part of Cari and Georgia. They may understand the nuances of the Black Bloc through a perspective that Chris or I have not considered and that is what Cari was trying to say I think about educating on this one tactic before judging the entire thing as negative. One thing we learned is that one does not tell Hedges he needs more education. I think we all have to be able to take open faced criticism, though, and realize that the best Queensbury rules of debate engagement will not always be observed during panel discussions and in other formats. Through these mix ups, though, we learn about the underlying neuronal make up of these crucial issues. How would the next panel go if the identical people came back? I think it would go much better and more of the stuff of tactics and strategy would be covered.

Hedges is no politician and that is what is so welcoming about him. Is he a leader? Definitely his intellect and his writings have well presaged the actual formation of occupy. But will occupy ever come to terms with drafting set policies and specific agendas if not actual leaders to articulate these agendas? Well, that remains to be seen as Occupy evolves. With Hedges, there is no mincing of words, styling or spin in his delivery. It is straight off his cerebrum, uncut and packaged directly, and in this he both inspires and provokes. I think if people entering into discussions realize there are going to be these issues of power and influence dynamics at the outset, that participants can be more sensitive to their own emotional trip levers and can therefore be self-regulating to watch for personal over reaction. Margaret Flowers and Lucas seemed to be the best equipped for this. Amazing at his age that Lucas seems such a natural. But, I say let the games go on and that these emotive displays are all part of the evolution of the movement and are in themselves defining parts of the whole.

And I think that the Occupy zeitgeist early on came to some consensus on how not to delegate authority but is finding it difficult to find its collective voice through other means. Can 1 million of us mic check the capitol from the reflecting pool? And just who is the first chanter, the prime interlocutor and how much power does h/she have? We are actively dealing with these things now and I think the panel exposed this struggle unwittingly. It was an expose` on the underlying power and influence dynamics as they are distributed through the group liberally or condensed through individual personalities. Are traditional power structures hindered by individual personalities arranged in strict hierarchies? And is there a reaction to this in this new occupy?

These new modes have developed and they may well speak for the direct democracy or even anarchic strains in occupy, but can they be a hindrance by other measures. Can this very divisive dynamic threaten all that is best about Occupy? That seems the most important question to come out of the panel debate to me. What is it about emerging leadership figures, perceived or real, like Hedges, Zeese or Flowers, Cari or Georgia that threatens this established zeitgeist that stresses group consensus and liberal power distribution above all else?

The issue of strategy and tactics is critical to the movement, but it seems that long before any cohesion can unify its aims, a general clearing of forms and behaviors regarding the rules of inter movement engagement must worked out. How do we talk to each other? And how do we frame our differences of sex, age, race, political background, pre-set biases, fundamental philosophies, protocols of conduct, idea generation and adoption of agendas. These are crucial components of how we come to some discrete consensus on where we are going.

Over the past couple of weeks, the internet has exploded with responses to Chris Hedges’ article “The Cancer in Occupy.” I’m going to sidestep the issue of what was wrong or right with Hedges’ article or the many responses to it, and focus on the deeper subject of the debate it spawned: the debate about tactics.

This debate is a heated one, and I’ve seen a lot of folks talking at cross-purposes and getting frustrated (myself included.) I think one reason for this is that people are trying to discuss several different questions at once, and conflating the answers to one with the answers to another. In this note I’m trying to pull these different questions apart and discuss some factors may assist us in seeking answers to these questions – partially for my own understanding, and partially because I have not read anyone else attempting to do this and I’m hoping to add some depth and nuance to the debate. I am not seeking to provide THE ANSWER. In fact, I believe that the more we get away from the idea that there is AN ANSWER to these questions – the more we are willing to Occupy the area of murky complexity and uncertainty in between – the better off we will be, and the more we will be living into the kinds of values that will improve the world.

What Is Violence and When Is It Justified?

This is one subject that folks seem particularly eager to nail down. Is property destruction violence? “Yes,” some people insist. “No – it never is,” others say, and demand to move on. Someone pulls out the dictionary, a particularly useless document when it comes to taking action in the world.

Let’s get real. To those who say that property destruction is never violent: ask someone who has been abused by having something of value destroyed whether or not it was a violent experience. The use of physical force against an object often carries the implication that force may subsequently be used against the person’s body; it can also carry the implication of uncontrollable rage, a force that harms humans if they happen to get in the way.

And to those who say that property destruction is inherently violent: if someone quietly disables construction equipment that will soon be used to cut down an old-growth forest, would you call that violence? (I’m going to go ahead and assume the answer is no here.)

Whether property destruction is violent depends on the power, energy, and intent fueling it. This is not a yes or no question. We do ourselves and the movement a disservice when we try to close the book on this subject by pretending otherwise.

Another gray area is the question of acting in self-defense, or defense of others, when confronted with violence oneself. On one end of the spectrum, there are situations of life-or-death, or with the potential for grave injury, in which the vast majority of us would agree that violent self- or other-defense is justified. Beyond those particular scenarios, the waters become muddier. When does “defense” cross the line into escalation, or even vengeance? Many horrible acts have been committed throughout history using the justification of self-defense (up to and including genocides.) Tread carefully here, comrades.

Navigating the Diversity of Tactics

There are three questions I’ve noticed emerging in the debates I’ve witnessed about how we decide on tactics. Before we endorse or engage in a particular tactic, I think the answer to all three questions should be “yes.” (Of course, it’s not as simple as all that – finding the “yes” answer involves a process of communication, learning, and deep introspection.)

1. Is it understandable?

This is one question that I think a lot of the writing out there has been trying to address. Someone suggests that we shouldn’t chant “fuck the police” or indiscriminately destroy property; another person launches into an explanation of why it makes sense that folks who have been oppressed and abused by police and the state would want to express their anger in that way. This is true, and important. We should not condemn anyone for reacting in a very human way to oppression and abuse. However, a reaction being understandable does not follow that it is useful, productive, or right.

2. Is it strategic?

A strategic action serves a specific goal as well as taking into account its impact on our long-term goals. It considers the potential impact on allies and communities associated with the movement, including public opinion in all its diversity and heterogeneity. It considers the possibility of retaliation (violent or otherwise), including against those who may not be consenting to involvement in the action. It considers our cultural and temporal context. Strategy is where we look outside of ourselves, beyond the present moment, outside of our feelings and our personal experience.

3. It is right/ethical/moral?

This is the sticky one, of course – where we will find out whether and how our values diverge in significant ways. Our deeply held philosophies, spiritual beliefs, and moral-ethical codes will likely clash at certain points. However, in our mutual investigation of this question, I believe there is a deeper question around which we can coalesce: that of of whether, and at what point, our movement will become like what we are fighting in the first place.

This question is not merely theoretical. It has happened to many, many movements in the past: in the event of their success, formerly idealistic revolutionaries become the enforcing arms of bloody, repressive regimes. This possibility is one that we must keep in mind and continually guard against. We cannot afford to put it off until we have achieved success.

How do we do it? One way is by evolving the vision of what we want to become: of how we, as a movement, as a community, and as individuals, want to be different from those who advocate and uphold the current system. Not just in values and beliefs – even capitalist beliefs can look good with the right spin on them – but in our actions.

Many of us say we value redemption and transformative justice over vengeance and punishment. What does that look like, in practice? How does this affect the actions we take in our relationships with the police and with the 1%?

What kind of people do we want to be? What does that look like on the street? How does that change depending on the scenario? At what point does power become the only difference between us and those who oppress us? How can we avoid reaching that point?

The Part About How It Feels Good

Comrades, let’s admit something to ourselves and each other: part of the reason we want to engage in militant tactics is because doing so feels good. Most of us long-term activists have experienced the adrenaline rush or high that comes from experiencing an intense confrontation with the police, or from successfully evading them and engaging in a strong direct action. Acting out our rage and rebellion feels good. Doing so in concert with others makes us feel powerful, and that feels even better. We’re human. We’re animals. It’s in our blood.

I have had fellow activists confess experiencing this high to me in sheepishness or even shame, but there is no shame in this feeling. It can be an important part of what motivates us to keep taking to the streets, to have courage and keep taking powerful public action even under the threat of abuse and violence. It can forge deep emotional bonds between us and our comrades.

On the other hand, the desire for this feeling can lead us to throw strategy out the window and take on confrontation merely for the rush. It can lead us to commit acts that are harmful, damaging to each other and ourselves, acts that alienate us from each other and the community, instead of bringing us together. And its greatest potential to do this comes when we deny that this feeling is part of our motivation.

Whatever you do, don’t discount this feeling. It has toppled oppressive regimes. It has caused unnecessary war and millions of deaths. It has led people to commit genocide. It has led people to rise up and fight for their freedom. It can always, always go either way, and it can turn on a dime from one to the other.

We will have our best chance to harness this feeling and use it for good if we acknowledge and if we talk about it. If we don’t, all bets are off.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Solidarity

As I have followed this debate, I have seen many calls for us to be “in solidarity” with each other. People saying that we are on the same side, fighting for the same cause, so we shouldn’t argue with each other about the different tactics we choose – i.e., the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Frankly, this feels like a cop-out. It also doesn’t feel like a call for solidarity: it feels like a call for loyalty.

I don’t put much stock in loyalty. I have seen loyalty destroy the integrity of communities and individuals. It has fueled business as usual throughout human history: citizens are loyal to their nation, so they unquestioningly support its actions; they are loyal to their friends, so they don’t speak up when they witness a friend doing something morally wrong; they are loyal to an ideological system, so they refuse to question whether aspects of that system do not serve the greater good. Every day, people who know better allow others to commit atrocities in the name of loyalty.

Solidarity is different. Solidarity requires an acknowledgment of our interdependence, that our actions affect one another deeply, that we are by our very nature beholden to and responsible for one another.

Solidarity means lovingly holding each other accountable to our shared values. It means having the courage to ask each other hard questions, and the fortitude to withstand being asked those questions ourselves. It means supporting each person’s autonomy, and yet also calling people to account for behavior that harms other individuals or the community. This is not “policing”: it is what we should expect from those who love us. True solidarity, community, and love mean caring enough about a person to want them to be their best self, and willingness to help them achieve that.

I don’t want to be part of a mutual admiration society in which people validate my poor choices – be they well-intentioned or not – in the name of “solidarity.” There is nothing new, visionary, courageous, or revolutionary about that. I want to be part of a truly revolutionary movement, one where my I am challenged to be my best possible self, so that I can serve our vision of creating our best possible society.

Comrades, I invite you all to compassionately, thoughtfully challenge me, teach me, push me, raise my consciousness, constructively criticize me, and encourage me to be my best – as many of you have already begun to do in a powerful way.

And I promise that, in solidarity, I will do the same for you.

Just listened to this in full……….

I sit in a small unimportant corner of the world looking and learning about Occupy. I am small and unimportant. I am suffering from what has been caused by corrupt politics and the economic system. I’d like to think I’m a regular citizen who knows change is needed. I see Occupy and know instinctively that it is right. That’s why I love the concept of the 99% – I have no political affiliation to politics. I just want a better world for my kids. I’m not seriously educated; I have no writing awards as anyone who reads my stuff will testify.

I know none of the panelists personally. I have had the pleasure of conversing with Tangerine on Facebook but I think this is the second time only I have ever heard her voice.

Can I give you my view on how this went?

I have one general question especially relating to the last 15 minutes: Did the shouters listen to Tangerine’s introduction? “To treat each other with respect and civility”?

As an observer here it is folks, cards on the table time…

Whilst a few loud and outspoken in the 99% argue pointless minutia and semantics, the 1% are laughing and enjoying the dissention and upheaval. I bet the 1% just LOVE the fact that obviously intelligent people not even agree that violence is not an option. They are delighted there are approaches like that of Cari and Georgia getting air time. Please note I’m not saying “people like” I’m saying “approaches”. Not for one split second do I doubt their concern, love, passion and desire for change. I do however question the way they engage in debate and comport themselves.

To RevolutionTruth, don’t despair about how this went. This is exactly the thing the group needed. How this discussion went IS how Occupy WILL go. Trust me. This was a wake-up call and something WE can all fix if we all agree the last 15 minutes of this was ugly and not in anyone’s best interests – Well, actually, it was in the interests of the 1%.

To attitudes like that of Cari & Georgia I would say this is not a game. There is a lot riding on this.

Listening to the discussion, I’m not impressed with big words or egocentric beliefs nor am I impressed with some of this cloak and dagger Anonymous or Black Bloc stuff or the minutia of what anarchy or authority is. I said it before but I’ll say it again I find it deeply ironic that black bloc anarchists or movement members who want to change the world have “hurt feelings” at being criticized or freaking out when someone says “we” or “I”. Utterly utterly utterly ridiculous.

Georgia and Cari I don’t you at all but just so you know – I stopped listening to you only because of one thing: Your shouting and your interruptions. I’m sure you had great things to say but your approach ruined it for me. If you think it was a “fiasco” Georgia it was and you and Cari who made it so.

The very nature of unaccountable masked mystery men on the streets puts a huge percentage of regular politically moderate folk off. That’s a stone cold fact.

Know one thing though Black Bloc. The government is not scared of cloaked, masked boys with sticks. However, the powers that be are terrified by regular folk taking action by marching.

There is a greater good here that it would seem Black Bloc et al either don’t care about or know about.

None of us have the luxury of the self-indulgence I see going on in Black Bloc. The only thing they have achieved so far in my view is entrenched debate and splintering Occupy. How very anarchic!

Sadly, for me looks like paranoia and self-interest is more of a threat to Occupy than government right now. Aggression, failure to respect others, volume and paranoia have been the downfall of almost every group like this I have researched.

The RevolutionTruth group has a good set of rules for engagement. You really gave the shouters every chance there was. I respect that. But personally would have cut them off much earlier. If grown up debate is beyond the ability of some then the higher ground is quite simply unobtainable.

Occupy is at a pivotal point. It needs to lay some things down. As an unimportant average nobody I’d recommend starting with nonviolence.

I don’t like seeing two things on a civilized street. Geared-up cops in riot suits and masked groups. I have seen too much of it, on the streets of Ireland, at G8 summits, etc.

I cited Chris for using the word “Cancer” in his piece prior to this panel. I was wrong. After listening to this little chat and with reference to the “cancer” Hedges was talking about, I think perhaps it can be re-diagnosed from cancer to acute turrets syndrome!

Occupy is not Black Bloc obviously. They had a chance to shine in this discussion and utterly failed. Time to move on from them but continue the debate.

The people who mentioned “lack of strategy” and “direction” “weakening due to violence” nailed it. Black Bloc Cari et al just nailed themselves. Taking criticism personally…her questions, her demeanor and attitude was for me sad. “Do you self-criticize your authority?”…what the heck does that mean?
And to tell people to “educate themselves”? Come on! How rude. Poor Lucas he had so much to say and that loud lady just would not let him every time. Cari have never met you don’t know you and can only judge you on your words……you need to drop your ego, listen and learn the art of conversation and debate. At the very least – have a point that’s yours! I would even go so far as to say you were “violent” in your ending statements.

When the topic of agreeing on nonviolence was raised for her to then derail question that citing a “Dichotomy of power” and “who defines violence”? What the heck was she on about? And then tells people to “educate themselves”?

Here is the deal, I want to take my kids to an Occupy rally but I can’t if I think they will be hurt by protestors OR cops. Why can’t people understand and respect that?

Shouting and violence has been tried before. It will not work in a group that requires the cooperation of 99% of our world. There is no identity beyond the 99% that’s all. The change, justice, truth, fairness and democracy we all say we want will not be found in violence or aggression. I’m turning my back on violence as an option as of today and especially after hearing this discussion. I will not support it one bit. Not one single broken window, not one single expletive yelled at a cop. You do not have my support if you condone this. I pray Occupy will do the same thing in saying we the 99% will not support violence either from the cops or internal parasitic boys in masks. Hedges is right, if violence kicks off then call off the march.

Georgia, Cari, I had a statement prepared for you but my pledge made above to non-violence prevents me from saying any more. Suffice to say you let yourselves down. Badly.

Can I make an appeal though? Chris Hedges, Sir, I’m a busy guy too, I have my job, my volunteer work and my family life to juggle. I didn’t even really have time to listen to this whole recording but I need to learn what’s going on and I can’t trust the media. It’s not easy but….please don’t pull out of these online debates. Please. Don’t let ridiculous people do that to you. I love hearing you speak. And when you said that you are pulling out trust me sir you had no impact on the Cari’s and Georgia’s of the world , you broke Tangerine’s heart just a little though. I have never met her but I heard it in her voice. Please don’t disengage with her.

Occupy, please learn from this. Don’t let your last 10 days be like the last 10 minutes of this discussion. Continue the debate.

Join Eoin and others at out RevolutionTruth Community Group at Facebook.

Chris Hedges’ most recent Truthdig column was a searing condemnation of Black Bloc as part of the Occupy movement. This article comes at a time when Occupy is suffering from coordinated and vicious attacks from the outside, weariness, winter (in the Western hemisphere), and rifts on the inside, and a seeming disconnect between the larger public and the movement itself. The responses to Hedges’ article have been quite polarized. Some resonated with his obvious frustration and concern; others found the piece to be an offensive conflation of tactics and groups and a misguided attack on anarchists. The piece generated intense debate around the world, opening up discussions that are delving into the heart of the nature of Occupy and the profoundly diverse perspectives embodied in this movement.

Video is available on our YouTube channel or watch it below.

For more information about the panelists, visit the RevolutionTruth Panels page for this panel.

We also had a chance to reflect on some of the deeper themes that inspired the subject of this panel in the first place: the “diversity of tactics” debates that have sprung up globally, the idea of “leaderlessness”, authority, strategy, cohesiveness, the nature and goals of the Occupy movement, and, critically, its diversity of people. RevolutionTruth is a small international organization dedicated to exploring paradigm shifts on a global scale. In the face of increasing assaults on civil liberties in the US and abroad, and as we witness the deep corruption inherent in global systems and spheres of power, we are committed to increasing access to the information, connections and strategies needed to engender genuine transformation in our world. We are an organization committed to the restoration of the rule of law, and to legitimate democratic governance. While our team has a broad range of opinions on the subject, as an organization we are committed to the pursuit of nonviolent change.

The majority of panelists, as well as our entire team, found this Occupy Beyond Divisions panel discussion deeply problematic, and symbolic of some of the most challenging problems arising out of the Occupy movement. For one thing, we are not necessarily all leaders. RevolutionTruth strongly encourages self-empowerment, and in fact, has built an intentional online community which encourages the empowerment of our members through a robust and respectful space for discussion. However, we are also intent on challenging fallacies and misrepresentation where we see them. Leadership requires deep self-discipline, respect for others’ viewpoints, the desire to unite rather than divide, and intense sacrifice and constant compromise, among many other things. It is dangerous to think that everyone is a “leader” while simultaneously, through an “anything goes” stance, absolving ourselves of the responsibility and maturity required to lead in our perilous times. We are grateful that so many people do embody these kinds of qualities, and we resonate with the instinctive imperative arising out of Occupy that encourages all of us to embody them as best we can.

Moreover, as an organization, we do not endorse nor oppose any one kind of democracy. We seek to understand the various democracies that have arisen throughout history, and to analyze current context and events while assessing which parts of governance systems work, and which do not. We seek to understand exaggerated dichotomies, and to bridge unnecessary or unpleasant divides that hinder our learning. This is because, at the heart of the work we do, we are a group of people from around the world who, like most people who have been attracted to Occupy, believe we all need and deserve better. It is up to each of us, to all of us, to change not just our systems, but how we treat each other – if we expect to change our world.

Much was learned from the Occupy Beyond Divisions panel and we’re excited to continue our series featuring panelists who address some of the most important issues of our times. We’ll always do our best to provide a professional, respectful, and thoughtful space to do so.

It is almost an established institution where I live, the Black Bloc. And just like in Chris Hedge’s recent article on “The Cancer of Occupy”, since at least the 1970s, the Black Bloc is generally demonised and described as “anarchic”. Maybe because their autonomous character makes it hard for us to associate them with a clearly defined political conviction, maybe because the black flag is a current symbol for anarchy, maybe because the majority of our population simply doesn’t know what Anarchy truly constitutes, or maybe because the colour black is embedded in our psyche as a symbol for the vile and evil? I don’t really know! But what I know is that the liberals, as well as the Greens, as well as the anti-nuclear-, anti-globalisation- and anti-capitalism movements, as well as any right- or leftwing movement, radical or not, ALL may have a Black Bloc forming during their demonstrations, whereas riots are by no means part of their agenda.

A clear separation needs to be made between autonomous groups with leftist-libertarian-anarchic tendencies, and actual anarchists. And also, far more important than that, a very clear distinction has to be made between protesters deliberately provoking violence, and those simply showing courage and their readiness to fight if need be.

And yet, over the last decades a direct association between the Black Bloc groupings and violence has settled in our brains. Expressions like “anarchy” and “leftist” have degenerated into something very similar to curse words, and that notion is being spread, even promoted, by the mainstream media, and eventually adopted by your little guy on Main Street.

But far worse than that, when an accomplished man like Chris Hedges resorts to gross oversimplifications like “With or without police infiltration the Black Bloc is serving the interests of the 1 percent. These anarchists represent no one but themselves” one must assume, that this kind of distortion is being ruminated within our intellectual circles also. And in my opinion this is a dramatic situation, because when our role models, our sources of inspiration, start pinning blunt violence on terms like “anarchist” and “Black Bloc”, a terrible diversion is created, leading away from the real underlying problem.

Enforcing your will on others using “petty vandalism”, “repellent cynicism” or senseless violence is not the mark of anarchy and not the mark of right- or left-wing politics either….. It is the mark of fascism. And fascism propagates through ALL political and philosophical approaches.

When Hedges says “The corporate state […] can use the Black Bloc’s confrontational tactics and destruction of property to justify draconian forms of control […]”  I believe he is completely missing the point of what is really going on in our society. Because the corporate state cannot use it, it just does so … and we accept it!

What I mean with that is, that whenever an establishment finds excuses for the way it acts, the population accepts such excuses , without any type of resistance , without much further scrutiny , no matter how far-fetched, oversimplified or over generalised they may be.

If 20 individuals, out of 5000 peaceful protesters, run berserk, the media twists that into a demonstration having “failed”, as well as the cause for the demonstration being a “possibly” criminal one. The state just comfortably needs to pick that up, and then re-serve it to the public as an excuse for why they suppress yet another opposing political direction using ludicrous methods. And the public seems to be willing to accept that kind of false logic. We absent-mindedly pick up the accusation and echo it by pointing fingers. And when we let ourselves down to that, to explicitly point fingers at an “anarchic Black Bloc”, or any other type of grouping, we confirm that the removal of such a grouping would cure the problem and save the movement …  which consequently implies that their mere existence is in fact ABLE to destroy a movement, and that separating them from us would justify our motives and underline our right to exist.

But the problem we suffer from is nothing that could be summed up by a term like “Black Bloc”. It might be described much better by a term one of the community members in RevolutionTruth introduced, a natural organic phenomenon.

The problem is a handful of violent, fascist criminals, nothing less, but nothing more either. And this is a problem that we CANNOT extirpate from our movements, because in 5000 years of traditional human society the notion of violence and fascism has never yet been extirpated from human nature.

Hedge’s is right of course in saying that violence breaking out during OWS demonstrations alienates the mainstream; violence just has that effect. But when we give in to his kind of argumentation, that kind of a supposedly healing separation, and accept it as true value, we submit ourselves to taking on a Sisyphean challenge, and we hang ourselves in a paradox.  And that may just exactly be what a government would like to see amongst the supporters of an opposing cause.

Because we will ultimately arrive at a point in time, at which a Black Bloc as well as occasional violence are still present. We would have to admit at that point, based on nothing but their presence, that our group failed to proceed peacefully, if we stay true to the logic which Hedges decided to apply and describe in his article.  Consequently, we would be forced to hand over to our respective authorities the tools needed to slander our movements.  And from that point of view it is ultimately us ourselves who destroy our respective causes, by publicly accepting a direct association between us and random criminals, and also by accepting the methods our authorities chose to apply against rioting protesters.

Hedges mentioned in his article that “Police pumped tear gas, flash-bang grenades and ‘less lethal’ rounds into the crowds. Once protesters were in jail they were denied crucial medications, kept in overcrowded cells and pushed around”, and he reflects about that situation as if such inhumane treatment would be the Black Bloc’s fault, as if the display of vandalism by one group would justify, maybe even require an authority to respond in the same, inhumane manner. And he repeated that in his interview on Russia Today last week.

But NO, absolutely not! Such thinking would constitute the end of any form of justice and governance there is. Our authorities act according to laws, they have to abide by strict sets of rules. If they dismiss those rules, for whatever reason, in response to whatever kind of crime, then they turn into the thugs they are supposed to fight. And the proper, logical conclusion to that is not the annihilation of Black Bloc related crime or any other source of turmoil hitting OWS. The logical conclusion is that such officers need to be fired to ensure that our legal framework will be upheld. Nothing else!

From what I understood Hedges and Jensen describe the influence of Black Bloc movements as being a major driving force which may discredit our cause and split our communities. But if we take a close look at our communities, we can see that they are splitting already, and a black militia has nothing to do with it.  And in my opinion the cause for that  is one, which  Hedges himself managed to wonderfully put in words in a way I never could have, but, respectfully,  with false reference: “The Black Bloc movement bears the rigidity and dogmatism of all absolutism sects. Its adherents alone possess the truth. They alone understand. They alone arrogate the right, because they are enlightened and we are not, to dismiss and ignore competing points of view as infantile and irrelevant. They hear only their own voices. They heed only their own thoughts. They believe only their own clichés. And this makes them not only deeply intolerant but stupid.”

I would like to demand that all of us read the above sentence again and replace “The Black Bloc movement”, “it” and “they” with “we”, “us” and “our”.

Our own communities are filled with members who think they are enlightened, that they alone understand. And we dismiss and ignore competing points of views, amongst “us”, in our own ranks!

Only a few weeks ago one of the leaders of the RevolutionTruth community uttered some harsh criticism on the very organisation for which the community had come to live. And no one asked questions to that, no one scrutinised the arguments given, and no one criticised the other half of the conflict, meaning the organisation. Instead, comparisons were drawn, painting the leader of the organisation as the martyr of all martyrs. And far be it from me to deny a man his well-deserved title, but this ultimately ridiculed the sacrifices of the leaders of our group.  A “higher authority” was almost mechanically interpreted into the organisation, and as a result of that evaluation all possibly differing points of view were dismissed and hived off from the greater community, willingly and actively. Such comparisons lead to a polarisation, which always ends up in division amongst us supporters.

And this is just an example of some internal quarrels within Rev.Truth. The occupy movement has no optional authority to turn to. It has to deal with human aggregates, who believe that members of the 1% have no right even to just have an opinion about the movement. Some members of the 1% accuse the 99% of being too uneducated to represent their own demands. Some groupings believe that only followers of socialist principles may claim to be part of the 99%. While some bring up racial issues, claiming that the whole movement would be nothing but yet another reflection of our society’s hypocrisy, since it came to live only now that enough “white supremacists” are also suffering from poverty, and not as a result of the black community drowning in our under classes, which has been a problem for many decades. And now, on top of all that, a new bad seed is introduced by our own intellectual elite: An anonymous, dark, threatening black militia. And yet another part of the bulk might splinter off of our common cause.

This is all following a pattern which we create, we submit ourselves to, and which allows any opposition to easily tear us apart at all times.

We all turn towards one common cause initially. We get heard and we become uncomfortable for the powers that be. But although we grow and grow stronger, all it takes is some entity reminding us of our very specific, very refined ideological standards to shatter our unity within the blink of an eye. And as if that were not enough, us supporters ourselves start to promote separatism. We will start flocking towards tiny splinter groups which represent our ideals as accurately as possible. Smaller and smaller communities form. We start valuing our own ideals higher than the ideals of our fellow supporters. We start dismissing each other’s efforts, belittling each other’s sacrifices. We fall out. In the end we’re all done apart.

And then, when we have all been driven into our respective corners … locked up from all outside influences, submerged in pointing fingers …  when we all have become lazy enough to stop refining our stances and positions, to stop asking questions … and when we waste our days patting each other’s backs in our battle weary state, it becomes SO VERY EASY to create a superficial, fake enemy like a Black Bloc to point fingers at, and thereby crack our last bit of communal cohesion, that it chills me to the bone.

In my opinion THAT is the cancer, not only of occupy, but of all social activism I ever dared to engage in …  not an insignificant, occasionally uprising  bunch of thugs.

The Black Bloc groupings have asserted themselves and offered their support to many good causes since their emergence. I myself have attended several demonstrations, which accommodated hundreds of Black Bloc activists marching peacefully with us. Their followers have shown tremendous amounts of courage when standing up against the unscrupulous counter-measures police forces resorted to against anti-globalisation protesters at many G8 summits. And when yet another building falls into the hands of pro-occupy squatters these days, one can be sure to find a significant amount of autonomists amongst them, persistently holding their grounds, so that the more fearful among us can go home without bruises and with a clear conscience.

When now and then some Black Bloc demonstrators fall out of line and indulge in senseless acts of violence they need to be dealt with – that is beyond debate.  But the group has made its sacrifices and lent its efforts to us. Its members deserve the same respect as any other group supporting Occupy. And if we decide to exclude them from our communities, we mutilate our common cause, and we sin against ourselves.

References:

Assembly, Move-In. (2012) A Statement from Occupy Oakland’s Move-In Assembly.Occupy Oakland, [blog] February 6th, Available at: http://occupyoakland.org/2012/02/a-statement-from-occupy-oaklands-move-in-assembly/

Hedges, C. (2012) ‘Black Bloc’ Could Kill OWS. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzVPxYEM_ew

Hedges, C. (2012) The Cancer in Occupy.Truth Dig, [blog] February 6th, Available at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/the_cancer_of_occupy_20120206/

Kilkenny, A. (2012) Harlem Gives Occupy Tense Reception. In These Times: Uprising, [blog] January 20th, Available at: http://inthesetimes.com/uprising/entry/12594/harlem_gives_occupy_tense_reception/#.TxmZDz3-ha8.facebook

Morris, D. (2012) Anarchism Is Not What You Think It Is — And There’s a Whole Lot We Can Learn from It. AlterNet, [blog] February 13, Available at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/154126/anarchism_is_not_what_you_think_it_is_–_and_there%27s_a_whole_lot_we_can_learn_from_it

]]> http://blogs.revolutiontruth.org/2012/02/15/black-sheep-are-also-part-of-the-herd/feed/ 6 http://blogs.revolutiontruth.org/2012/02/15/are-we-our-institutions-reform-revolution-and-transformation-thoughts-on-the-nature-of-occupy/ http://blogs.revolutiontruth.org/2012/02/15/are-we-our-institutions-reform-revolution-and-transformation-thoughts-on-the-nature-of-occupy/#respond Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:31:17 +0000 http://blogs.revolutiontruth.org/?p=666 The following article was written by Josh Mitchell, the newest member of the RevolutionTruth team.  Josh is  an avid reader of politics and history and he seeks to change the world for the better by examining and asking the hard questions that we all need to be asking.

Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and then it turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name” – William Morris

Looking back on the history of social movements, a clear picture emerges: not all of the movements calling for dramatic change end up creating drastically different structures and institutions than the ones they’ve attempted to leave behind. So how does one measure the success of social movements and the structures they create? Is there a way to calculate whether a movement will simply provide a variation of the already existing modes of thought and societal construct?  Political philosophers have dealt with this issue for some time. We should not only be discussing reform versus revolution, but also how to determine what “revolution” and “reform” mean. How would we even define a revolutionary change as opposed to reform?  Alain Badiou says “A truth is solely constituted by rupturing with the order which supports it, never as an affect of that order.”  Badiou called this rupture the “event”. Large protest movements of the past not only resulted in minor reforms rather than  radical change in the overall social structure, but in many cases the reforms that came about led to strengthening and keeping the social structure in tact.  Recent and current social movements share words such as “freedom”,  “democracy” and “individualism”, and the beliefs and ideas we hold about these concepts help make up the basic ideological construct of society.  In light of Badiou’s claim that “truth” entails a rupture from a previous order, it is imperative to question all the facets of our current ideological framework undergirding modern society.  It is these ideas that we really should be examining; we should be attempting to pierce beyond the comfortable dogmas and beyond reflexive complacency of modern social movements when it comes to radical thought.

Right now for good or ill the Occupy movement is adapting many of the old liberal ideological political positions, and so instead of questioning the whole social construct, they are simply adapting a more radical liberal approach than before.  Instead of thoroughly examining and questioning the current social structure the Occupy movement must not make the mistake of becoming simply more radical democrats or a radical wing of the democrats.  If Badiou is correct, the Occupy movement needs to rupture from the whole liberal-conservative construct altogether.  One cannot know for certain whether one’s ideas or programs are enough of a rupture from the status-quo but what is important is to think and study at this juncture in today’s society.   So what is to be done today?  Today the most important thing shouldn’t be simply marching with slogans and sound bites.  Today more than ever we need a mass of people who know how to see and can see through the faulty logic in the whole liberal-conservative construct.  To do this requires studying, reading, examining, asking questions and asking others around you in your community. The issues need to be discussed differently. One can’t fully grasp the thing they are up against if they cannot climb outside of their own constructs to examine it from above; for, immersed in our ideologies; we may not even the right questions to ask.  The point of learning as it pertains to the Occupy movement, is to not only find the right answers but more importantly to be able ask the right questions.  If we don’t fully know what questions to ask then we risk minor reforms that deny us a rupture from the existing social reality we so wish to change.   We shouldn’t settle for the old standard notions of things such as “freedom”.  Right now we need to be asking the more fundamental questions such as, “what is freedom in a postmodern, globalized and profoundly interconnected world?”  We need to fully grasp what freedom means in today’s society and how we will most likely have to change our definitions of freedom.   It is questions like these that can help bring us to deeper, more fundamental truths

Right now the world is erupting in protests for various reasons but it is mainly the economic fall-out that has led to higher prices, fewer jobs and a general change for the worse for most people.  History shows that whenever there is an abrupt change in the economic system many cultures tend to cling to what they are familiar with and, rather than rupture from current constructs, instead sometimes radicalize the familiar: we have seen Conservatives engage in this in the tea party movement.

To ready the ground for a rupture from the past means to place all social beliefs on the table for question no matter how sacrosanct they at first appear.   We need to ask “what is democracy”,  “what is freedom”,  “what is capitalism” – and what does, and does not work, about our systems?  These three constructs form a fundamental foundation that underlies an ideology that has permeated much of the globe (at least in Western cultures). So I will briefly go through some of the major beliefs that make up our current ideological framework.  What can we say, in brief, about each of these constructs?

Democracy: We are told that democracy is synonymous with “freedom”. We are told that democracy means the people have a say in who rules them.  But history has showed us that a democracy is not a guarantor of a free society.  Democracies have always been based on wars of conquest at some time or another.  Democracies have existed side by side with slave ownership and the oppression of various classes and groups within “democratic” societies.  Democracies in and of themselves have never been synonymous with freedom.

Freedom: freedom is often a very vague term but conservatives and liberals use it alike with the same unquestioning devotion.   This leads to another barrier in creating new concepts and new definitions.  We are inundated with trite phrases and cliché’s.  The glibness with which the word “freedom” is bandied about in election cycles should be enough to push us to begin to question ourselves and what it is we mean. Freedom in the US today is essentially equated with the freedom to enjoy  hyper-individualism, to triumphantly claim the individual along with his desires to be the ultimate expression of what it means to be “free.” freedom.  Even the idea of individualism, which is relatively very new in human history, has not made human beings more “free”. Notions of freedom rooted in “individualism” have actually made humans more vulnerable to control and manipulation.  We  have terms like “free choice” or “free market” that are just as vague.   When one looks at the philosophical notion of “choice” and how “free” it is claimed to be, one realizes that a “free choice” isn’t exactly as it may seem. This puts into question the whole notion of democracy in that it is based on people choosing people to lead.

Capitalism: Capitalism, as a concept, is undergoing scrutiny on a mass scale. It is painfully obvious that capitalism does not to lead to “freedom” and many rightfully question whether or not capitalism is compatible with democracy.  Looking at capitalism logically, its claims do not necessarily match reality.  Let us look at what is termed “competition” for example:  We are told that capitalism produces competition then the reality is that competition reduces the amount of people participating in the competition.  The obvious question is, if capitalism is about competition and competition is about reducing the amount of competitors then even in describing capitalism shows it to be a walking contradiction.  Not to mention the many  economic disasters that have resulted in billions of people living in poverty and millions dead from wars, which many see to be  a result of capitalist expansion.

Earlier I mentioned “individualism” and “free choice”.  Our current social and economic ideological structure is based on the belief that individuals all acting out of self-interest will somehow create equilibrium of sorts.  Modern day capitalism is about promoting individuals to purchase products and satisfy their desires that commercials convince them they need.  At best an economic system based on the structure of individualism will lead to many ups and downs and never stabilize or achieve any kind of equilibrium.  This should not only lead us to question the validity of capitalism but also the validity of the current notion of “individualism”.

All of the ideas that together make up our ideological construct in modern society are more intertwined when one delves deeper into what underlies those constructs.  It is ideas like these that make up our current ideological framework, and these need to be questioned. Likewise it is important to realize that liberalism and conservatism aren’t two opposing poles but should be viewed topologically as a whole, as two aspects of the same social structure.  Occupy and Arab Spring may be giving us a chance to fundamentally question and change our constructs. In the West, we must not go back to two broken sides of the same coin.  The deep problems we face demand more of us.

The Occupy Movement grew out of people’s frustrations of seeing the government time and again respond to the interests of the corporations, and the military industrial complex rather than the needs of the people.  While corporations get tax breaks for sending jobs overseas more and more Americans face unemployment. With no new job to be found they cannot pay their bills or mortgage and they lose their home and the equity in it and go bankrupt.  Also without jobs people have no medical insurance, and when a medical catastrophe comes they are often stranded without adequate or timely care.  While big banks were bailed out the banks have accelerated foreclosures putting more people out of their homes. At the same time they have given excessive bonuses to their executives.  Adjustable mortgages could have all been changed to 6% 30 year standard mortgages and this alone would have helped many people.  Many students have accumulated thousands of dollars in student loans and some have as much as one hundred and fifty thousand owed and yet when they seek employment they cannot find a job. The laws now exclude student loans from bankruptcy forgivance so these students are in a bind.  Many have joined the Occupy Movement to help create a healthier model for society.  It is fair to say most would be pleased to see the government be more responsive to their needs. They decided to protest against Wall Street and the large banks as Occupiers and they hit a nerve capturing the American imagination. The politicians first thought the cold winter would kill the movement and when the Occupiers proved they could withstand the mild global warming winter the politicians attempted to use police repression with tear gas, batons, pepper spray, evictions, destruction of Occupiers property, and arrests with unusually high bail requirements; all in an effort to kill the movement. In New York thousands of library books were thrown in a garbage truck for “transport” and while some books were recovered many were too damaged to save.

While the mainstream media often ignores the Occupy Movement citizen journalists using new electronic media have been able to show the American people the unjustified aggressive repression coming from the police and those like the mayors and the federal executive branches.  A national police association coordinated a conference call consultation with a group of mayors.  Homeland Security and fusion centers may have been used also as they are an integral part of having a police state.

Many people who have been social activists for a long time working for peace, social justice, minority rights, animal rights, and the environment have joined the Occupy Movement and seek to advance their views within it.  Not everyone sees everything the same, however in a Democratic society humans are expected to have differences and to discuss them and find common aspects of their worldview and find agreement on future actions.

The consensus process used by Quakers and anarchists is used extensively in Occupy General Assemblies or GA’s.  If there is a disagreement then discussion continues or is tabled to find revisions to a proposal to gain consensus.  This is a much slower process than having an up or down vote however in the end there is more unity to the final result.  The human microphone, wherein those hearing a group of words followed by a pause, then repeat them loudly for more distant participants to hear them, is used as are hand signals such as the twinkle fingers in the up position to visually show support and twinkle fingers in the down position to show disapproval.  Many other hand signals are used.  I am still learning them.   I should mention the block showing ones arms crossed that signifies extreme disagreement and the threat to leave if the proposal under consideration is approved.

Occupiers want to see a more caring society that is responsive to individual needs and concerns.  Most want the wars and empires ended and want to see ecological sustainability given priority over environmentally harmful ways.  We want to see native rights honored and concern for nature and Mother Earth given priority.  We are against the Keystone XL Pipeline as is Greenpeace and 350.org.  On October 8th, 2011 I participated in a protest against this proposed expansion of tar sands extraction in Canada.

We want suppression of peace activists ended.  Last year several of my Minnesota peace activist friends had their homes invaded and their computers seized by the FBI and they have been called to testify in a Grand Jury.  All have refused to testify so far and the case is in limbo.   We want to see whistle blowers protected and not prosecuted.  We support Bradley Manning who is accused of leaking government secrets.  If he is indeed the person who released “Collateral Murder” that shows United States military in a helicopter killing innocent civilians on an Iraqi street then he was exposing a crime and his actions were honorable.

Just as Daniel Ellsberg helped stop the Vietnam War with his release of the Pentagon papers Bradley Manning has helped slow or stop the aggressive and thus illegal war on Iraq. To uncover and reveal crimes is not a crime.  Similarly most Occupy people support WikiLeaks and Julian Assange as he also is acting to uncover wrongdoing and make the government more transparent.  Julian is really a media person who accepts government secrets of wrong doing anonymously to provide a pathway for whistle blowers to release information. He should be afforded the protections of any other media such as the New York Times.

The American people have to be well informed if they are to make intelligent decisions and even Obama spoke in favor of transparency in his campaign, however while he has been in office his Justice Department has prosecuted more whistle blowers than all other administrations combined.   We  along with the ACLU are against the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which in this year’s version includes an expansion of the War on Terror from the Middle East area to include the whole planet, including the internal territory of the United States.  It overturns the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act that has been understood to limit use of United States military within the borders of the country.  Effective March 3, 2012 the military will be authorized to arrest and hold any American for life without recourse to the Courts on suspicion of material aid to any State Department designated “terrorist organization” or associated group.   When this law is combined with the recent Supreme Court case Holder vs Humanitarian Law Project,  any American who even provides non violent conflict resolution information to a State Department designated terrorist organization can be prosecuted as a terrorist.  This law violates the constitutionally guaranteed right of due process and the right of freedom of speech and it denies a person habeas corpus. Habeas corpus is a foundation element of our legal system and is writ of ancient law and provides a right to demand that the government produce the living body in Court and argue why it is reasonable to imprison the person.  “It is a writ of ancient origin, and is now regarded as the greatest and most important remedy known to the law.”

While I was at Freedom Plaza Michael Moore came through and I got to chat with him and listen as he answered questions of some videographers. He said a survey shows seventy per cent of the American people now support Occupy and this is only after a period of months. He pointed out that other social movements have taken years to gain this level of support. He said we have won it is just a matter of how it unfolds now.

Commentators are: Justin Jackson (Co-Host), Pamela Taylor (Co-Host), Christopher Sisk (RevolutionTruth), and Edward Dyer (Vietnam War Veteran).

Video will be available soon is now available on our YouTube channel or watch it below.

WITH SPECIAL GUEST TANGERINE BOLEN, THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF REVOLUTION TRUTH.

An Australian and a Californian discuss Wikileaks for your infotainment.

This week we looked at the cable #03HAGUE2298 which was a survey conducted by the ambassador in The Netherlands, where the USG endeavoured to determine where anti-American groups may be, prior to the war in Iraq. We’re interested in finding more cables with this survey, to see how these answers were answered in other countries, and they can be found with the description Response to Security Environment Profile Questionnaire – SEPQ.

But first, we discussed current related events with Ms. Bolen, and the upcoming panel that RevolutionTruth is hosting on October 26th at 9am PST (US Pacific Time). So tell us – after listening to this, how will you be voting? Or will you be voting? Let us know at www.meaninglesswords.org

We only just realised that this was never posted here at the time, so here it is!

via Meaningless Words

That body was of the Reuters photographer their fellow soldier had gunned down earlier.

PAMELA: Right, so I’m Pamela Taylor from RevolutionTruth, and I’m here in Occupy Cairns, well, in Cairns, occupying Cairns, with Geoff Holland, their main coordinator. [Turns to Geoff] Why do you occupy?

GEOFF: Because we want to be, first of all, in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, and in solidarity with the protests in Greece, which we sympathise with. Also in Spain, and across North Africa.  We see many similarities between all of these demonstrations. Very similar issues and related issues.  Issues which we have here in Cairns. So, even our local issues are tied into these global issues.

PAMELA: So what is happening here in Cairns?

GEOFF: Right, so here in Cairns we haven’t been as daring as other cities, in that we haven’t set up a tent, an encampment, but we do meet regularly in City Place. We meet every Sunday from 12pm to 3pm, and we discuss issues. Also, we have working groups, so we report back on what the working groups have done [that week].  These working groups relate to local issues and global issues. So, we have one for example on banking, which is a global issue. We have others on protecting mangrove forests that are in danger of being destroyed ever since JP Morgan Chase bank took over our airport here in Cairns, and also to save City Place itself. You know, it’s a very symbolic as well as a very tangible issue for us. As we know, about 80% or more of Occupy camps around the world take place in the City Place or City Square, and as we see it, a small group of elite people have decided to open it up to traffic, ie destroy City Place as a meeting place, as a cultural space, and as a heritage space, and as a democratic space.  And this is very symbolic to us as there hasn’t been proper community engagement [in this decision]. And that elite, making decisions on behalf of the community, and giving [the opportunity for] a tokenistic community engagement is one of the big issues that faces us here in Cairns, and I’m sure faces communities all over Australia and all around the world.

PAMELA: Is there anything else that you want to add about the working groups? Is it still rolling Steven?                 [cameraman]

GEOFF: Ok, yeah, so some other issues are- Another initiative we have with one of the working groups is organising around setting up a marquee in City Place, potentially everyday, but it’s a question of having enough people to staff the marquee.  So for the moment we’re just doing Fridays. We hope that that will grow with time. And this marquee will have all sorts of information about issues here. We find that on a whole, people in Cairns and Far North Queensland are not very well informed about global issues, and partly this could be because we have two newspapers in Cairns, and they’re both owned by News Limited.  For example, the whole issue of City Place – they don’t cover it. We had a big demonstration in City Place; We had inner-city business people holding up a big banner, and one of the editors from the Cairns Post came along, but he said that he wasn’t able to do a story on it because they didn’t happen to have a cameraman that day.  I mean, this is a pathetic excuse. We know that they are in favour of opening City Place up to traffic. So we can’t rely on the Cairns Post or the Cairns Sun to cover issues. They cover issues selectively, which is their right, but it’s up to us to develop other media avenues to get the word out, and the marquee is one way of getting the word out to people, of educating the community on the issues.  So that’s one initiative.

We have another initiative called Movies that Matter. Every Thursday evening we screen movies that relate to social issues and environmental issues, at City Place, and it’s free.  We’re currently negotiating with the City Council at the moment to use the equipment that’s already there. But in the meantime, we’ve made a wheelchair with the projector, with our own battery for the electricity that’s required, and our own inverter, and a screen so we’re completely independent. So that’s [just] some of the initiatives we’ve started with.

PAMELA: And this interview was conducted with a $99 phone.

HOPEFULLY THIS BLOG POST WILL BE CONTINUED WITH SIMILAR INTERVIEWS WITH THE CAIRNS POST AND CAIRNS CITY COUNCIL IN ORDER TO GIVE THEM THE OPPORTUNITY TO RESPOND TO THE CONCERNS RAISED HERE.

The occupancy camps have served a direct purpose. That purpose was to heighten awareness about the growing income disparities not only at home, but as well as around the globe due to the white collar criminal standard that has been set within the financial institutions, politics, and corporate agendas. These gross acts have been perpetrated in order to achieve profit before people, and power and influence over domestic and foreign policy. Society at large has been bamboozled by the media’s bombardment of corporate trickery. At home and abroad, society has become polarized by stagnant partisan politics and fooled by the propaganda machine’s ability to dispense a payload of direct stupefaction over the masses, compounded with Machiavellian efforts of persuasion by the power of fear tactics which stifle the intellect through proponents of slant and spin, with intent of creating an ethos of apathy and a demonization of other cultures. For too long our liberties and our democracy have been purchased by those with the resources to do so.

This movement has been created in order to set the record straight within our current system. It has exposed the 1% for it’s perpetuated use of foul practices and absurd growing discrepancies within the realm of socioeconomics, paired with its destructive environmental impact globally.

There comes a time within a movement when expressions of discontent must concede to political action. We have reached that junction. Now, it is more important then ever to embrace the power of the Unions. The Blue Collar masses of hard working Americans will surge this momentum into an organized political structure that will ultimately harvest a systemic paradigm shift. The power of influence created by the Unions is immense. It must be harnessed to galvanize public support in pursuit to gain a respectable public relation within the majority of the 99%. We must win the hearts and minds with community outreach efforts, and a positive publicity within the news and social media outlets. We have gained the support of the Unions. Big Labor has flexed its muscle in New York and in L.A. They have expressed what their definition of solidarity means to them by the sacrifice of being subject to arrest in addendum with the influx of bodies during our National Day of Action on November 15th.

This support is international as well. Sharon Burrow of the International Trade Unions Confederation recently said;

“From New York to London and Toronto to Frankfurt, in hundreds of cities in dozens of countries, the movement has grown and continues to develop strength. Even as tents are taken down and people moved, nobody can stop what has been started. Big banks have pulled the plug on the real economy, and some of the biggest companies are only too ready to profit from the economic crisis. Like T-Mobile USA, whose employees live in fear of company intimidation simply because they want union representation. The Occupy movement all over the world is a public demonstration of support for the dignity of work and the need to promote social justice. We stand with the movement to defend the right to peaceful assembly without interference, and against the massive and growing inequality created by Wall Street and its global financial allies. We proudly add our voices to speak out against pervasive inequality.”

This movement is far from dead. It is strong, and has been emboldened by the power of the proletariat. The list of Big Labor joining the cause continues to grow as I write this piece, and it will continue to grow as long as the power of truth defeats the tyranny of apathy. We must stand together in acts of solidarity. We must continue to occupy with class. We must continue our acts of civil disobedience. We must strive to achieve political persuasion and win back our democracy, not through means of money, but through the means of voice and action. When we occupy, we send a message that reverberates within the history of all class struggles – the message of unity and dissent from the blight of greed that has destroyed the fabric of our democracy. We must push this message to the lawmakers by the will of the people. We must march on our State Capitals in a national act of solidarity, then we must march onto the Nation’s Capital. We must occupy those we have elected to represent ourselves in this democracy. It is within our rights to revolutionize the equation that has brought us to this point. Otherwise, we lose our identity as individuals, and submit to their oppression. I would rather die then become enveloped in a corporate culture of slavery and debt. I would rather die then submit to those who see me as a marketing opportunity. My identity lies within my rebellion.

“What is a Rebel? A man who says no.” – Albert Camus

When you defect from the original message of revolution by creating a disruptive counter story, you lose the high ground, that which the cause has so righteously established, in the battle for positive publicity. By doing so, you give the corporate media the power of spin and slant, as well as the convenient truth of the crimes that have plagued the camps – and there is no slant within that account.

Initially the story revolved around sociopolitical disconnect, economic disparities, and three wars, Corporate personhood, relentless environmental damage, reckless spending and quantitative easing – the list of reasons for discontent is a mile long. However, the story quickly spun itself into a flea circus, and I use the term flea in a literal sense. The camps have become a haven for vagabonds and gutter punks. Although there are campers who’s conduct is admirable and consistent with the message of change, their actions are eclipsed by rampant drug use, vandalism, weapon mishaps, and the unsanitary conditions of the camp.

The camps have served its purpose as the first stage of the movement. It raised awareness of our cause and produced a rallying call for change in the system and solidarity of the proletariat. Now, when the damage that the camps have committed is minimal, we must configure a timeline of marches and protests on Washington D.C. and bring our case to the lawmakers. It is time to move forward into phase two: Establish a doctrine of action on D.C., and protest the allocations of credit card/ loan debt accrued by American Citizens; To cripple the system that Wall Street feeds upon.

We are in a critical stage where direction, structure, and pragmatism are needed. A figurehead and committee must be forged from each city where the occupy movement is taking place in order to allow this movement to evolve into an organized structural force.  We have the tools through social networking to do so. From there, a focus strategy group will constitute a list of demands that will derive a declaration of civil dissidence from the current order established in our political system, along with a list of proposals and amendments that in which already exist in a primitive form. We need a systemic change in Washington if we want equality and justice for all.

Time is both our friend and foe. Although evolution is a slow and tedious process, we need to take swift action and organize a response to counter the portrait that the propaganda machine has painted. Damage control and good public relations will enable the cause and help restore the movement’s image and message. If we allow the media to pick through the debris without checks and balances, it will spiral out of our control, and before long it will be lost.

Occupy Portland

Denialism is the ruin of progress. You are in denial if you didn’t think that the media wasn’t going to feed on the foul conditions spawned from the camps. Regardless of your position on the media, they are the outlet and informant for the vast majority of the 99%. That majority teeters on the issues and the message of the occupancy, and what they perceive is what they see on FOX or what they read in the papers. Public relations is the cornerstone of this movement. Only a small percentage of the 99% occupy these camps and protests, and it is in that minute percentile’s best interest that our action, conduct, and direction is perceived as righteous and worthwhile. Perception is the determining factor that will help galvanize the majority of the 99%, for perception IS reality in mainstream media. Although the dispersal of both camps in Portland were peaceful and uplifting for the most part, some even went as far by deeming it as triumphant, the perception remains that the portrayal of the camps have already been tainted by half parts truth, and half parts propaganda.