Some visits to Zuccotti Park (the Wall Street occupation)

New York City--Me and my girlfriend paid a couple of visits to the Wall Street occupation over the last couple of weeks (on September 30th and October 7th), two days with marked contrasts for the site. September 30 was brimming with occupiers--as many as between 700 to 1,000 core individuals from New York were present (exact numbers are difficult to come by since how one defines an occupier can slippery at best), it was literally standing room only with "visitors" like myself.




It's my opinion that as this is a mostly symbolic action, "visitors" are just as worthy of being counted among the occupiers since we all share the same views about Wall Street and the bailout of the biggest American banks. We have come from all over the nation, from all walks of life and from a variety of age groups, a variety of demographics. What all of us share is that we're working class and that we're getting screwed by the economic sector and the political class. We know that working within the political process isn't going to bring about reform.




This occupation could go on record as the most photographed and recorded political event in American history to date, not even the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968.



Contrary to the contentions of early mainstream coverage, the occupiers aren't all twenty-somethings and they have a solid focus on why they're there and what their demands are: radical reform of the financial sector.

Also on that September 30 came some of the first representatives of American labor--the Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100--and we were present, recording the event...along with an NYPD surveillance pod on a crane and nearly everyone else there. The TWU has sued the City of New York for commandeering five MTA buses to arrest Wall Street occupiers crossing the Brooklyn Bridge and lost, the cops can arrest them if they refuse to allow the action. Interestingly, police on the curbside began enforcing pedestrian codes, as if on cue once the TWU showed, but I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusion. Had the cops not rioted again two nights earlier, beating and pepper-spraying occupiers once again, I wouldn't be so suspicious of their motives.

A number of plainclothes detectives were on hand as well as select NYPD who were photographing and videotaping everyone in the crowd. But many of the cops I've encountered were simply doing their jobs. An "us vs. them" mentality should be applied when brutality and extralegal behavior are present, but not as a default, my opinion.

There have also been unsubstantiated rumors that police planted among the occupiers were arresting individuals on the 5th of October--they have yet to be proven out. It's not the first of such rumors either that has been making the rounds. My own conclusion from both visits is that the core of the occupiers is well organized and know what they're doing. They're resourceful and could be ready for the long haul when the occupation itself ends and the real work of organizing begins, and a beginning is what this is. Right now, the police shenanigans at the Brooklyn Bridge and the resumption of extralegal brutality on the 5th of this month have seemingly thinned the ranks. That's if you only count them and leave out us visitors...

From September 30th:

Above: The TWU arrives on site, Sept. 30.

Above: Speeches by occupiers, not leaders. As no bullhorns are allowed by NYPD, every few words are relayed across the crowd by selected individuals, spaced-apart, so as to reach the farthest boundaries of Zuccotti Park.

All images the intellectual property of Matt Janovic and Isabel Martins. Copyright 2011.

Call for information on those pesky Libertarians...

WWW--Jaenelle Antas sated my appetite to remove these bastards once-and-for-all from any affiliation with the counterculture and the antiwar movement. I think this is very doable and I will be investing some more time in this area as I think the turds have been coming around trying (without any luck) to cause problems on this site and elsewhere. They should know that any attacks are going to be reported to law enforcement...

I've told Cindy Sheehan on her Facebook page that I thought she was making a mistake going on Alex Jones's radio program, and she was not only dismissive but made it personal. That's not a level-headed person. It helped me understand the problems that people have been talking and writing about regarding Sheehan over the last few years: the notoriety has gone to her head, and she's listening to the Sirens. The fringe-right has her ear when logic would dictate that they're part of the problem. She's fallen into the wrong side of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." She's got it all wrong--they're part of the enemy camp on the right and some of their rhetoric has seduced her, as has issues of convenience. I hate writing any of this about her.

Meanwhile, Sheehan falls deeper-and-deeper into a depressing irrelevancy, which was probably part of the plan of some of the people currently whispering in her ear. They didn't have to try too hard considering the target. Since at least the end of the American Civil War, provocateurs and spies of capital have done these kinds of things--there is plenty of precedent here. I'm all-but-certain she's been the victim of at least a few agent provocateurs.

Why mention Jones in a call for information about Libertarians? Because he's been closely-affiliated with them and is a "self-described" part of that other branch of the Lollipop Guild of little men and women on the far right, the lunatic fringe (the public has never supported their agenda in the polls or the voting booth). Listen to him and read him enough and this is patently clear. Jones has also had Naomi Klein ("Disaster Capitalism," a book whose premise and thesis I consider to be conflated--go back to Canada) and numerous others from the progressive movement/left on his program to woo them into neutralization, a trap, and simply to feed his ratings. Surely, this is a case of mutual masturbation if ever there was one. It doesn't hurt for the target to be overambitious and egotistical. Take your pick as to which one best describes Klein and Sheehan--or some permutation of both--but they're most assuredly blowing it by associating with these people.

You don't build bridges with people who are the fringe of the wrong side of history. Considering that they have nothing to offer in numbers should be a real indicator of their standing with the public. They're not going to change, and they're not especially significant. However, these people associating them are helping to change that a little by "mainstreaming" them a tad, not that the public is even remotely ready to buy their agenda that's barely different from that of the GOP. These juvenile clowns are also trying to make inroads through the "9/11 Truth (bowel) movement," truly a gaggle of fools if ever there was one, and that's not to say there isn't a cover-up (which doesn't automatically imply an "inside job," that's someone sneaking an arch-conservative agenda through the back door).

My own take? The Bush II administration was so corrupt and incompetent (and compromised thanks to direct-ties to the Saudi ruling-class) that they blew it. It's about oil, dummies. The rest has been a cover-up to protect them and unaccountable power in Saudi Arabia, just like at home. How often do the "truthers" talk about the Saudi connection, assuredly the "foreign state" found in the 26-27 redacted pages of the 9/11 Commission's report? That's not an invitation to a debate, incidentally, I don't do those unpaid, my time's worth something.

So here's the deal: I want information--any information--that's reasonably verifiable as in the case of the Antas story. I want intelligence on the Libertarian Party in any and every state in America, and even Canada. Mmm-hmm, I want the dirt, the bad-with-the-bad, but it must be reasonably verifiable and pertinent. We all have agendas, and mine is to remove their influence from the progressive movement and the counterculture once-and-for-all, an evil thing, I know.

This isn't about money on this side of the fence, this is about fixing our nation and our culture and moving on from the myth of the Wild West and the Frontier. It's time America grew-up. Unlike Jones and Nimmo, I'm not trying to sell coffee mugs, books, quasi-racist images of the president emblazoned on t-shirts, and heavily-edited DVDs of insane ranting about the Bohemian Grove and other examples of Libertarian non-sequitur babbling. I want dirt. This is about principles, and I don't pay sources.

Why the New York Times MOVEON ad was wrong: An Exegesis

MOVEON.org--I have a number of reasons to dislike Moveon--search this site, and you'll know why, as Eli Pariser is basically a creep who wants to be power-broker like Henry Kissinger or Josef Goebbels. Bluntly-put, he's a little man. Is the basic thrust of the ad wrong? Of course not, the war is a disaster and was never a worthy cause. It's equal to the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939, a war of aggression, the highest crime there is. Here's an excerpt of the text of the ad:

Cooking the books for the White House(Click here for the thinking behind the ad) General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts. In 2004, just before the election, he said there was “tangible progress“ in Iraq and that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward.” (Moveon.org)

The problem? General Petraeus is not a civilian leader--they control the military and give the ultimate orders, not the Joint Chiefs. The ad should have targeted Congress, and most especially, the White House, the president. Congress gave the president the ability to use aggression in late 2002, and the president has refused to draw-down troop deployments.

So have enough members of Congress that a redeployment is not going to happen unless there's a massive groundswell of the public calling for them to, by e-mailing them, writing them, and confronting them at their offices in the districts they claim to represent.

The onus is not on General Petraeus. Were he to disobey the orders of the president, he could be imprisoned or shot for treason. The former would be the most-likely outcome. Yes, he has the option of resigning as so many other Joint Chiefs of the high command have done. Many of them simply had the wisdom to resign or to retire before-or-during the conflict, and the general is just the one left holding the bag. If you're going to criticize General Petraeus, this is what you should be hitting him with: "Why didn't you resign rather than obey orders that are clearly illegal?" Yes, he does have the ability to challenge the legality of his orders, but we all know that that's an uphill battle he would lose with the current administration and Congress.

Merely having the public on your side is not enough, and making his the focus of the ad was poor judgement. No, the onus is not on General Petraeus--it's on all of us. WE allowed this political climate to fester and grow. WE are the oil-addicts. WE are the greedy. WE are lazy and apathetic complainers. WE have sat back silently and allowed this illegal war to happen. WE have no regard for our victims. WE aren't hitting-the-streets and engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience, effectively shutting-down this war. WE are the fatalists who have said to ourselves, "Best to keep my head down, there's nothing I can do to stop this."And WE are the culture that made this mess because WE haven't been responsible, civically-active citizens. What the Moveon ad does is let the public off-the-hook, and that's its greatest sin.

If General Petraeus did what the public and Moveon claims we all want, it would amount to a coup, and that's the last thing that's going to fix the mess that America is in right now. It would only makes things worse...much worse. In short, while most Americans appear to be on the same page about the war, we're still just the same irresponsible creeps who helped create the proper climate for this catastrophe, and we're going to pay for it eventually. We deserve to based on our irresponsibility. George W. Bush is merely a symptom of a cultural and political malaise.

Blame: YOURSELF, CONGRESS, THE MEDIA, and GEORGE W. BUSH and his administration. Nonetheless, Moveon has every right to be wrong--it's part of the First Amendment, the right to free speech. I'm exercising that right at this moment. What are you doing? You might start exercising those rights before they're gone.By taking the approach of attacking the military, Moveon has played right into the hands of the GOP, but at least it got them some more donations (a short-term fix, traded for the long-term prospects for peace). The Senate passing their stupid measure isn't going to help Congress's approval ratings much but this whole debacle will surely prolong the war. Shame.

We all have to accept our share of the responsibility for this obscene war, it's high time.

Full Text of the Moveon ad with links: http://pol.moveon.org/petraeus.html