May The 1% Prevail!!

          I have never been happy with the 99% - 1% cry of the occupy movement, I don't think it is that clean a break. The vast majority of the 99% don't really want the 99% to take control of everything, they just want a better say in the running of the stinking system in an attempt to make it "fairer", to guarantee a little cake on the table instead of the perpetual stale bread. Inside that 99% however, there is another 1%, perhaps a little more than that, who have higher hopes and dreams than a benevolent capitalism. They don't see taking over the institutions of a rotten system as any answer at all, to them society has to be refashioned, reshaped to fit the dreams of the just. They will have no truck with the pomp and ceremony of past power and will bury tradition that binds us to inequality. Their tomorrow has no grand plan, it is a continuous metamorphosis that perpetually shapes itself to all our needs. Ask them what their tomorrow will look like and they will reply, "I don't know, it all depends on who walks with me." The important thing is that it is all those involved in our society, that determine the shape of our society with justice and freedom at its heart.

Said in another way: 

"------We know what the real causes of the suffering we endure: the sect of power, the cult of money, but also the obedience that they demand and obtain. These causes are perpetuated in the daily lives of human beings by the actions, gestures, relationships that interweave within a society in which we feel that we are strangers everywhere. And these causes – that have to be refused, deserted, demolished – have found shelter in your movement. We have never felt at home in 99% of our modern life, spent lining up to beg for crumbs, and yet you insist on defending 99% of the problem. We will take our possibilities elsewhere. Through the hopes, dreams and actions that have earned your condemnation. You, you still continue you passage through the ocean of universal indignation. You raise your sails passing the ropes to bureaucrats and police. You share space and air with the scum who have made life on this planet so unlivable. You head straight towards a new tomorrow with the hold still full of yesterday’s shit. We won’t climb onto your ship, in case we would never get off of it. We will stay on our rafts which you so despise, because they are so small and light.
But watch out. A vessel that travels with our enemies on board is an opportunity to fine to miss. Do you laugh? Do you have no fear of us because we don’t have the strength board you? You’ve misunderstood us. We don’t want your gold, we don’t at all want to conquer you, We want to make you sink with all your death cargo. To succeed at this, there is no need for a majestic fleet, one fire-ship is enough. Small and light."

Read the full article from Tabula Rasa HERE:

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LOOKING BACK AT THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT.

     Though it had a greater impact in America than here and no matter the outcome, I personally see the Occupy Movement as a great success. It took more people along that road of making the private public, politicised lots of people and created new networks of communication. It also altered the way lots of people view this society that we live in, opening their eyes to the inequalities and injustices, none of that can be bad. 

This from The Bureau of Public Secrets: 

Looking Back on Occupy

1. Your assessment of the Occupy movement was very positive. What is the overall perception you have of this movement today? What is left of Occupy?

       There is not much left of the Occupy movement as such — almost all the encampments were destroyed in November or December 2011 and virtually no new ones have emerged. On the other hand, the movement was in no way “defeated.” With few exceptions, the people arrested were quickly released and totally exonerated. The elimination of the encampments simply had the effect of forcing the participants onto other, more diverse terrains of struggle. Countless people all over the country continue to meet regularly, to network with each other and to carry out all sorts of actions — picketing banks, disrupting corporate board meetings, blocking home foreclosures, protesting environmental policies (Monsanto, Tar Sands Pipeline, fracking, etc.), in addition to more specifically “occupy” type actions such as attempting to take over and reopen schools and libraries that have been closed and abandoned, or “Homes Not Jails” attempted takeovers of vacant housing to provide dwellings for homeless people. One of the most interesting and well planned of these latter types of actions, “Occupy the Farm,” took place just a few blocks from my home last April, when ecological activists took over a large plot of vacant urban land and turned it into a community garden, planting more than ten thousand seedlings in the space of a few days. The gardener-occupiers were driven out after three weeks, but the agitation continues and has resulted in a temporary victory against a planned commercial development. [November note: Since the completion of this interview the immense disaster relief work of Occupy Sandy is yet another very important and exemplary development.]

      The Occupy movement already had the implicit goal of “reclaiming the commons” — occupying public squares or parks played on this theme, since regardless of quibbles about permits it was obvious that such spaces belong to the public and are, or at least originally were, intended for public use. But these more recent actions have the merit of challenging the fetish of private property in a more direct manner. That fetish has always been extremely strong in the United States, and the police responses to its transgression have always been more immediate and brutal. But I like to hope that these types of actions will eventually weaken the fetish, just as happened in the days of the Civil Rights movement. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, when black people first started restaurant sit-ins, one often heard this argument: “That restaurant belongs to the owner, he has the right to do whatever he wants with it, including deciding who he wants to serve.” But as more and more people kept peacefully sitting in and calmly accepting arrest, the general public was gradually brought around to the idea that there was a “higher law” than property rights — that other rights also had to be respected, such as the right to be treated fairly as a human being. I think this may eventually happen with these post-Occupy invasions of various types of property, as people see the absurdity of there being millions of vacant buildings while there are millions of people living in the streets. Even now many people sympathize with the idea of defending a family against foreclosure, despite the fact that a bank technically owns the home, because there is increasing awareness that the banks have often acted illegally. The notion of reopening abandoned schools, etc., is even more exemplary in that it hints at the notion of a society based on cooperation and generosity rather than on how much money can be made from something.

         The two drawbacks of these types of action are that they are risky and that they thus tend to be the work of a small minority (mostly young and mostly male). Occupying public spaces is much more likely to attract the sympathy, the support, and ultimately the participation of multitudes of ordinary people (including parents, children, elderly, disabled). But for those who want to push the limits and don’t mind the risks, taking over vacant buildings and opening them up to public uses is much more challenging and inspiring than breaking windows.

Read the full article HERE:

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THEY'RE LOOKING FOR ANARCHIST MATERIALS??

         As the people's anger gets organised, so does that state in its attempt to stifle that anger and destroy any organising by the people. It is happening in Italy, Greece, UK, Spain, US, Canada and in most countries across the globe. As the people's anger grows expect the state repression to grow.

Room after police visit.

This from Kasama:

         Early morning, July 10, SWAT police forced their way into the Seattle apartment of organizers from the Occupy movement. The sleeping residents scrambled to put on clothes as they were confronted with automatic weapons.

The neighbor Natalio Perez heard the attack from downstairs: “Suddenly we heard the bang of their grenade, and the crashing as police entered the apartment. The crashing and stomping continued for a long time as they tore the place apart.”

        After the raid, the residents pored over the papers handed them by a detective. One explained: “This warrant says that they were specifically looking for ‘anarchist materials’ — which lays out the political police state nature of this right there. In addition they were looking for specific pieces of clothing supposedly connected with a May First incident.

When the police finally left, they did not arrest anyone. This action targets well known activists from Occupy Seattle and the Red Spark Collective (part of the national Kasama network).
         This apartment has been a hub for organizing the Everything 4 Everyone festival in August – to bring together West Coast forces for a cultural and political event building on the year of Occupy.

       The raid is a heavy-handed threat delivered by armed police aimed at intimidating specific people – but also suppressing the work to continue the Occupy movement in Seattle, and create E4E as a space for radical gathering.

The E4E site will update this with more as we receive it, including hopefully statement from those involved. http://www.everythingforeveryone.org/

Contact: Liam Wright, Red Spark Collective, redsparkcollective@gmail.com

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SACRED PRIVATE PROPERT.

       The Occupy Movement hasn't gain much ground here in the UK but has moved forward with much greater momentum in the US. For this reason, in the US there is a much wider discussion about private property, creating conflict within the Occupy Movement. This is no bad thing and it is a discussion that I would love to see take centre stage in any protest movement here or anywhere else.

The following is an extract from an interesting article on American Leftist:

Occupy and Inviolability of Private Property

         A couple of months ago, I discussed one of the most difficult challenges facing Occupy, the willingness of middle class progressives to rationalize the abuses of the police because they place a greater priority upon the preservation of social order by law enforcement. Such progressives want to square the political circle by seeking a transformation of American society without conflict. They are most perfectly represented by Chris Hedges, a man who seems to find the verbal abuse of the police at protests more disturbing than police assaults and finds himself incapable of deciding whether protesters should throw tear gas canisters back at the cops who fired them.

But what is it that these progressives believe requires the protection of the police, even at the cost of the violent suppression of Occupy protesters? Upon reflection, the answer is obvious: private property and the hierarchical social relations inscribed by it. Of course, Occupy participants are not all anarchists or communists, far from it, but they have adopted direct action tactics that have frightened progressives with the ghost of expropriation. Initially, occupiers set up encampments in public spaces as a means of highlighting enormous income inequality and corruption. They sought to prefigure an alternative, much more egalitarian, social order that stood in marked contrast to the existing one. If we were living back in the 1960s or 1970s, the government would have responded with a program of increased public assistance, a program that would have drained away support for Occupy by providing housing, jobs, student aid and medical care, but that would have threatened to reverse the neoliberal process of the marketization of all aspects of our lives, and, hence, was never seriously considered.

Instead, with the federal government guiding them behind the scenes, cities, starting with Oakland in October of last year, cleared out the encampments with force. There was an initial broad based criticism of these police attacks, but, as it became apparent that Occupy had evolved into a loose coalition of anti-authoritarians, people of color, the homeless and other marginalized people, such criticism dissipated. Meanwhile, particularly on the West Coast, occupiers organized more confrontational actions in response, such as the November 2nd general strike in Oakland, the December 12th port shutdown, the January 20th Occupy Wall Street West protests and the attempted seizure of the Kaiser Auditorium on January 28th. The failure of Occupy to extract any meaningful political response to the distress of millions of impoverished Americans and the interrelated corruption of the financial and political systems was pushing its participants towards more and more radical approaches. Within occupations, this resulted in increasingly acrimonious personal conflicts, as most publicly displayed in Oakland, while the progressives that should have been allies became hostile.

         Continue READING:

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CORPORATE FASCISM, THE END OF DEMOCRACY.

        Greece, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Romania, and the Occupy Movement in America, across the developed world people are on the streets protesting. All this has nothing to do with national governments, it is a world wide corporate assault on the public purse. The national governments are just carrying out the dictates of the corporate financial Mafia. Here in the UK there are those who see the privatisation of public services, including our health service, as a Tory Party affair, yet across the world the same thing is happening irrespective of the political persuasion of the government. In Romania the riots there are against the austerity cuts and the attempt to privatise their already rather flimsy National Health Service. Social Democrat, Liberal, Socialist, Conservative, or whatever, they all have the same agenda, cut public spending and privatise everything that can make money for the billionaire corporate class. Call it what you will, but it is corporate fascism in full frontal attack on the conditions of the ordinary people. Voting for this party or that party, is like choosing which end of the egg to crack first, the big end or the little end. You end up with the same thing on your plate.

         This system of corporate fascism can't be modified, repaired, or reformed, it can't be turned into a benevolent beast that will see to the well being of the people. It is an elitist system where control stays firmly in the hands of the super wealthy, the millionaire/billionaire parasites that sit nameless, in rooms in marble halls shuffling their billions around the globe destroying economies and countries in the pursuit of ever increasing wealth. In this system, wealth means power, and it is rigged to make sure you and I don't get our hands on the wealth or the power.

       If we want a better world for ourselves, our kids and our grand kids, then we have to destroy this profit sucking, parasite controlled monster. We can't look to the people who stand to gain from this financial sewage system we live under, why should they want to give up privilege, power and unbelievable wealth for our benefit? Forget the ballot box, forget the party political system, these are the toys you are give to play with while the big boys rip you off. The system can never work in your favour, it has to be a new way of thinking, grass roots, people power, community organisations, direct action, occupations, are the only road to real change, we have to take control of our society if we want to change it to benefit all our people.

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OCCUPY MOVEMENT = AL QAEDA!!!!

     

     This government, like all other governments spends billions on surveillance of "terrorist organisations", but what is a terrorist organisation and who decides? The following short extract from BTYahoo News, throws up lots of questions, though in some people's minds, it clears things up.

City of London Police have sparked controversy by producing a brief in which the Occupy London movement is listed under domestic terrorism/extremism threats to City businesses.

The document was given to protesters at their “Bank of Ideas” base on Sun Street – a former site of financial corporation UBS. City police have stepped up an effort to quell the movement since they occupied the building on 18 November, with the document stating: “It is likely that activists aspire to identify other locations to occupy, especially those they identify with capitalism.
“Intelligence suggests that urban explorers are holding a discussion at the Sun Street squat. This may lead to an increase in urban exploration activity at abandoned or high profile sites in the capital.” The Occupy movement is listed alongside threats posed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), Al Qaeda and Belarussian terrorists.

CONTINUE READING---.

 

         Well at least this statement makes it clear that the role of the police is not to keep the peace and law and order. To all those who laboured under this illusion it is now there in black and white on the printed paper, issued by the police themselves, their aim is to protect capitalism. Now it seems to be out in the open that you are a terrorist/extremist if you are a threat to City business. It would appear that in the eyes of this regime that we live under, peaceful protest by the citizens equates to extremism and terrorism. I thought we were told that it was the courts that would decide who was right or wrong in these matters, not the police chief. Is it the government or the police that decides who is on the list alongside Al Qaeda and FARC, or are these list made up by group of unelected secret service bosses? Or more likely a group of corporate advisers who will do everything in their power to eliminate any criticism to their greed feast.

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SITUATIONISTS AND THE OCCUPY MOVEMENTS.

     

        A extract from an interesting article from the Bureau of Public Secrets, on the Occupy movement.

  

       "One of the most notable characteristics of the “Occupy” movement is that it is just what it claims to be: leaderless and antihierarchical. Certain people have of course played significant roles in laying the groundwork for Occupy Wall Street and the other occupations, and others may have ended up playing significant roles in dealing with various tasks in committees or in coming up with ideas that are good enough to be adopted by the assemblies. But as far as I can tell, none of these people have claimed that such slightly disproportionate contributions mean that they should have any greater say than anyone else. Certain famous people have rallied to the movement and some of them have been invited to speak to the assemblies, but they have generally been quite aware that the participants are in charge and that nobody is telling them what to do.

     This puts the media in an awkward and unaccustomed position. They are used to relating with leaders. Since they have not been able to find any, they are forced to look a little deeper, to investigate for themselves and see if they can discover who or what may be behind all this. Since the initial concept and publicity for Occupy Wall Street came from the Canadian group and magazine Adbusters, the following passage from an interview with Adbusters editor and co-founder Kalle Lasn (Salon.com, October 4) has been widely noticed: ---"

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE.

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OCCUPY THE STREETS, AND THEN---??

         With the two technocratic unelected governements in Europe, Greece and Italy, trying to push through more draconian "austerity" cuts, only on the working class of course, we are seeing the Western developed countries rising in anger. There is massive resistance in New York and other cities across America, while in Athens  there is running battles with the police and in Italy, likewise, there has been large demonstrations. This is not a few radical leftwingers being troublesome, but a general uprising of ordinary people who are at last beginning to see through the illusion that is woven with the smoke and mirrors of the politicians and the media. The attack on the ordinary people has not peaked yet, there is more to come as the financial mafia do everything in their power to hold onto and increase their wealth and power.
        The ordinary people of Spain, and the UK are facing more cuts to their living standards and the "markets" are starting to put pressure on France to contribute more to the financial parasites coffers. What ever is hapenning in Greece is coming our way, and the only real answer as far as the ordinary people of the world are concerned, is to destroy this exploitive system run by the IMF (International Mankind Fuckers) and the finanicial mafia.

Live from New York:

From Athens:

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EXPLOITATION -- SHE GOT IT RIGHT.

          It is strange that the Western mainstream media made very little, if any mention, of the Occupy Wall St movement. That is until the eviction in Wall St., then, lo and behold, there it was on my TV  midday news. Now it was just an argument between some protesters and the city authorities. To have reported on the occupation before the evictions would have meant discussing why they were there. That is not what the media want to do, they don't want to show ordinary people being organised and conducting themselves in a democratic and dignified way, putting forward coherent and valid arguments against the present system. Much better to show them in conflict with the police. So as the evictions move across the American continent we can expect to see more cover in the mainstream media. However what we should take from this is that it is a national movement, across the whole country, and not as they would have us believe, a bunch of young hippies. Not only is it happening in America but it is also happening in Europe, and with the "austerity cuts" set to bite harder in Greece and Italy, almost immediately, and then to other countries, we should hope to see that the ordinary people across America and the whole of Europe will take the occupy movement to its natural and logical conclusion and occupy everything.

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WISDOM FROM THE STREET.

           An economic lesson from the street, no need for a university degree, listen to the voice from the street. It is cheaper, clearer and more accurate. When will we wake up and destroy this game of fraud and corruption, that shackles us to a permanent fear of deprivation, in a world of plenty?

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THE MAILING REVOLUTION!!

        Perhaps you agree with the Occupy Movement but because of circumstances you can't take part in the actual occupation. Well there are ways of doing your bit to let the wanker bankers know that you are aware of their corruption and greed and you support the occupy movement. You can also cost them money and time. Just follow the instructions in this video and you are part of the movement, but like the man says, try to get out there on the streets, that's where our power can be seen.

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OCCUPIERS, THE STATE DOESN'T LIKE YOU!!

           Occupiers, the state doesn't like you, I suppose that is a compliment. As time goes on they will rack up the brutality against you, already there have been brutal repression in Oakland and now Denver. They will tolerate you and try to discredit you, but if there is a hint that you are a growing threat to their power, they will move in against you with all the force they deem necessary. Don't allow your movement to stagnate, think of new strategies to draw in more people, to broaden your attack on the system that is responsible for all that stinks in our society.

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FIRST STEP, OCCUPY, SECOND - GENERAL STRIKE?

        A communication from "Bureau of Public Secrets" on the events following the brutal treatment of the occupiers in Oakland Calafornia. As the article says, all the occupiers should now be looking at how to take their campaign to the next level. You don't want to become a toiurist attraction in the centre of the cities around the world. A peaceful encampment might make a point but can be tolerated as long as big business can carry on as usual.

Dear Bay Area Friends,

        As most of you probably know, the police raid and destruction of the Occupy Oakland encampments last Tuesday, followed by the notorious police violence against protesters later the same day, provoked such an immense expression of outrage from thousands of people in the Bay Area and around the world that the Oakland city government was thrown completely on the defensive. The next day police were scarcely to be seen. The fence surrounding Frank Ogawa Plaza was still in place, but the occupiers calmly took it down and began reoccupying the same spot. That evening, by a vote of 1484 to 46 (with 77 abstentions), the general assembly decided to call for a General Strike in Oakland on Wednesday, November 2. You can see their declaration and other information at www.occupyoakland.org.

SOLIDARITY.

          The fact that they reoccupied the encampment less than 48 hours after it had been demolished is astonishing enough. But that they immediately shifted to the offensive with such a marvelously audacious venture leaves me almost speechless with admiration. I hope that their appeal meets with
correspondingly large-minded and supportive responses by people in Oakland and elsewhere in the Bay Area. Occupiers in many other cities have already been venturing outside their encampments for various types of demonstrations (e.g. the marches to banks and CEO residences in New York City), but this general-strike appeal is upping the ante and moving toward a new level of active engagement with people in the whole community. Occupy Oakland people have been fanning out into the city, speaking with workers and small businesses, with teachers and students, with religious groups and all sorts of other community organizations, in order to enlist support for the strike. At this point I don't think anyone really knows what the response will actually be, but there are a number of promising indications. In addition to support from nurses' and teachers' associations and a number of other unions (see www.occupyoakland.org/strike/), the Longshoremen's Union is collaborating with Occupy Oakland to bring about a shutdown of the Port of Oakland in solidarity with striking workers elsewhere on the West Coast.

Read the full article HERE.

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STATE VIOLENCE.

         I make no excuse for showing this video which is on the same police brutality as the last post. I sincerely believe that we must show how prevalent police brutality is in the so called "free democratic" West. This type of violence is not limited to any one country, the state will always come down as hard as it thinks it can get away with, whenever it feels in any way threatened. Mass protests against the system will always be seen as a threat to its power, especially if it is a growing protest. As the protests grow, expect more brutal repression. The will of the people is not wanted here in the West. We only play lip service to it in Middle Eastern countries, with the odd NATO support if the have oil.

 

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WHERE IS NATO WHEN YOU NEED THEM?

         The police wade in to clear over 1,000 peaceful protesters of the Occupy Oakland movement in Calafornia. The scenes make a mockery of the freedom loving democracy that the US is always trying bomb onto other countries. Watching these scenes I was wondering how long would it be before NATO moved in to protect civilians from brutal reprisals handed out by the state apparatus. NATO, where are you when we need you? More on this brutal act of repression HERE.

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