Happy Halloween

via Reddit

"Anyone who expressed difficulty seeing or understanding what motivates these protests revealed many things about themselves. None is flattering. The only thing that’s surprising is that these protests didn’t happen sooner and that they’re not more widespread and intense. I think it’s become increasingly clear that that is likely to change, and soon. Like the Arab Spring, the rapid growth of these protests should be a permanent antidote against defeatism. It’s unclear what these protests will accomplish — that still depends on how many people join them and what they cause it to be — but, already, they prove that the possibility always exists for subverting even the most seemingly invulnerable power factions. That hasn’t happened yet, but the possibility that these protests are only in their incipient stages is one of the more exciting and positive political developments in some time. It’s been clear for quite awhile that unrest and disruptions — and the fear which they alone can put in the hearts and minds of those responsible for widespread ills — are absolute prerequisites for meaningful reform (our fundamentally corrupted electoral process certainly can’t and won’t accomplish that). These protests at least reflect the possibility, the template, for that to happen. And anyone expressing confusion about why these protests are erupting is almost certainly someone" invested in keeping things exactly the way they are.

- Glenn Greenwald

To Serve and Protect, I'm Sure

More "Occupy" Things

This is so much bullshit:

Amy Kremer, chairwoman of the Tea Party Express, says the Wall Street demonstrators “don’t even know why they’re out there protesting on Wall Street.”
“I don’t think it’s the left’s answer to the tea party movement, and there are a lot of people there that don’t support Barack Obama,” Kremer told POLITICO. “I think they’re just unhappy people that don’t know really what they want.”
Kremer insisted that the protesters have “completely unrealistic” goals and lack a unified message, and that the absence of clear objectives make it difficult to take the demonstrators seriously.

“You know, it’s really kind of bizarre. These kids are out there and have on these T-shirts that say ‘F capitalism.’ It’s really ironic that they’re out there and communicating through their gadgets that were created through competition and free enterprise and capitalism,” she said.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65410.html#ixzz1a9CbvC6R

First, there is a very typical source of confusion at the get-go. This is the Left standing up, not liberals or Democrats. There is some crossover, but this is related to the Democratic Party only insofar (and I would argue less) than the Tea Party is/was related to the Republican Party, a connection they themselves uniformly reject. So it's strange to hear their spokesperson claim they're not like the Tea Party because they don't support a leader of one of the "teams" they should ostensibly be supporting.

Secondly, I keep reading over and over and over that the protesters "lack a clear message," "aren't unified," and "don't know what they want." This is a totally nonsensical way to dismiss this movement categorically (as with the emphasis on the large numbers of young people among the protesters, as if we didn't just witness young people driving massive social and political change in the Middle East). Did the Tea Party have a clear message when they were at this stage in their development? Do they now? Furthermore, the message seems to be pretty clear. We are hearing the long-dormant voice of the Left reassert itself in this country right now. It is incredibly exciting, though no one should really be surprised at this point.

As to the opinion that demands like "the wealthy shouldn't get to make all the decisions in a democracy," "corporations shouldn't have the same legal status as people," and "the banks that ruined our economy and left a massive number of us unemployed as a result shouldn't be rewarded for those actions, but rather held accountable" are "completely unrealistic," if that is true things are darker than even I see them.

And smart phones have nothing to do with this.

Occupy Wall Street

http://socialistworker.org/2011/10/04/see-you-october-5

http://socialistworker.org/2011/10/03/heat-on-wall-street

http://nplusonemag.com/notes-from-an-occupation

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/10/first-we-take-manhattan.html

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/30/labor-unions-begin-voting-to-support-occupy-wall-street/

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12029/labor_movement_rolls_into_wall_street_occupation/

http://lbo-news.com/2011/09/30/shaking-a-fist-at-the-nypd/

http://lbo-news.com/2011/09/29/the-occupy-wall-street-non-agenda/

http://jacobinmag.com/blog/?p=1663

Everything at http://kasamaproject.org/

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/04.htm#v25zz99h-333

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/02/1022031/-JP-Morgan-buys-NYPD-for-$46-million

etc.

Whoa!

It is so weird to see media people doing their jobs, but this guy does it very well in this video!