The question now is which fork in the road will Occupy take?

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Occupy's Spiritual Quest

The fork in the road ahead.

Dear occupiers, jammers, dreamers,

Three years after the May 1968 uprising that swept the world, the great French philosopher Michel Foucault observed that a key strategy of power is to “appear inaccessible to events.” Power, Foucault argued with a nod towards 1968’s failed insurrection, acts to “dispel the shock of daily occurrences, to dissolve the event … to exclude the radical break introduced by events.”

Forty years later, in light of Occupy, Foucault’s observation still strikes home. Despite achieving the impossible at unprecedented speed – sparking a global awakening, triggering a thousand people’s assemblies worldwide, and giving birth to a visceral anti-corporate, pro-democracy spiritual insurrection – Occupy is now struggling through an existential moment. Our movement has been dealt a blow: our May 1 and follow-up events have been dissolved by power; the status quo has shown itself to be far more resilient than many of us expected.

Now a passionate debate is emerging within our movement. On one side are those who cheer the death of Occupy in the hopes that it will transform into something unexpected and new. And on the other are patient organizers who counsel that all great movements take years to unfold.

[...]

The fire in the soul of Occupy burns from Oakland to Quebec, Barcelona to Chicago, Wall Street to Moscow and Frankfurt… the question now is which fork in the road will our movement take?

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

i'm less interested in the direction the movement will take than i am in how we can accelerate the collapse of the house of cards which may or may not be connected with any "movement"...

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Vets protest at NATO by throwing their medals away

i know there will be a lot of people who will condemn the vets for their actions but, no surprise, i'm not one of them... as a vietnam vet and a civilian worker in afghanistan, i have had the opportunity to see the effects of the endless war mentality of the u.s. in person... and as one who receives his health care from the va, i am all too well aware of our own domestic human wreckage caused by that same mentality... i say cheers for those vets for having the courage to speak out...

from msnbc...

Dozens of anti-war veterans tossed their medals onto a Chicago street Sunday near where NATO began its two-day summit, calling them “representations of hate,” “lies” and “cheap tokens,” and with some making emotional pleas for forgiveness from the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

With many dressed in military fatigues, they had filed through the streets in formation, chanting "N-A-T-O, NATO has got to go," and “No NATO, no war, we don't work for you no more,” leading about 2,000 protesters on a 2.5-mile march.

After “retiring” an American flag they carried through the streets and giving it to a woman whose soldier son committed suicide, they began hurtling their war service medals into the air -- a rare form of protest that was last done on a large scale by 900 Vietnam veterans in 1971.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Adbusters: The Globalization of Laughter

riotously laughing flash mobs... what's not to like...?

adbusters...

 

Hey all you believers in a new world out there,

May Day wasn’t so great was it… the numbers were low, the maxims weren’t sublime, the excitement didn’t catch on. May 12 was hefty in Europe, reigniting the snuffed Indignados, but the energy did not seem to flow over to here.

Now we’re looking at May 18 ~ 21 when protesters, possibly in Arab Spring numbers, swarm Chicago… Security experts say it will be a challenge the likes of which no American city has had to face – a leaderless, all-consuming non-violent swarm. If we can pull it off in the fierce tradition of Gandhi and MLK, the next few days could become the spark, the eruption, the new spiritual home of our Spring offensive.

On a softer, more aesthetic note, the likelihood of a global #LAUGHRIOT starting May 18 feels especially fresh and new … imagine … the globalization of laughter … millions of people around the world decide to take a few minutes off from their usual routines, get together with friends and pull off a global cascade of riotously laughing flash mobs, transforming the flow of power from the heads of the elite to the bellies of the people.

At a time when our human experiment is buckling under austerity, financial madness and eco-angst, there is something so ludicrous, bizarre, even insane about the eight most powerful people in the world trying to conduct the people’s business – to set things right – from behind closed doors and razor wire fences.

A global #LAUGHRIOT could break through the G8’s veneer of legitimacy and expose the Camp David Summit and our current capitalist model for the farce that it really is.

A global laugh-in could be the relief we’ve all been waiting for: the moment when — in a communal burst of laughter — we the people suddenly wake up to the fact that the only power our leaders have is the power we give them.

Here goes … let’s laugh like we’ve never laughed before,

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

 

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Bernardine Dohrn: NATO is a global secret cabal. It is the military arm of the global 1 percent.

bernardine dohrn on democracy now...

We’re deeply involved [with the protests against the NATO summit this coming weekend] because NATO is a global secret cabal. It is the military arm of the global 1 percent. And really, I think NATO has become background to how we hear the news: "NATO forces, NATO bombings." And when you try to find out what NATO is, you realize that it is the largest global military alliance in human history and that its key elements are that it is about permanent war, it is about dirty war, it is about nuclear war, and it is about hot wars—really four of them right now. So we don’t really know what it is. They are secretive. And when I first went to look at a NATO website to see what it was, a dove floats across the screen on the first page of the official NATO website. By the end of the NATO website, it’s helicopters, fighter planes and drones. So, we, I think, are not made safer by NATO. It is secretive. And it is opposed to peace and to our future.

So, a wide array of Chicagoans have come together in a coalition, meeting really for nine months, to stand up and ask for peace, to really say, "We don’t need NATO. We need an end to the war in Afghanistan. We need a complete end to the war in Iraq. We need to rethink what just happened in Libya and what’s going on every day in Pakistan." So there’s an array of events happening, beginning with a National Nurses Association rally, a permitted rally on Friday. I think the support of unions and workers, the support of African-American activists in the city and Latino and immigrant groups, a wide array of women’s and activist groups and Occupy and students, and, in a way, most importantly, the Iraqi and Afghan vets against the war, who will be leading the big demonstration on Sunday when NATO opens its meeting here.

[...]

[W]e think that NATO should be meeting, you know, in an underground bunker or on a remote island. The idea that NATO has been invited to Chicago to have the kind of war games that have been going on here for the last six months and now accelerated this week, so that we have restricted zones, and we have the shutdown of universities and colleges, the shutdown of businesses, the closings of the major museums here, it is being treated as really a practice military zone.

And we actually feel very strongly—I think the way Americans feel—that we want an end to these wars. These wars are hated by the American people. They don’t make us safer in any way. In fact, they jeopardize our safety. Bombing foreign countries, occupying other countries in the world does not make us safer. Killing civilians without any accountability makes people angry.

And so, our resources, this enormous amount of money and resources, and suddenly we don’t have money here for mental—community mental health clinics. We don’t have money for public libraries or for schools. We don’t have money for public transportation. But somehow we have the millions of dollars necessary, or the mayor accessed the money, to hold this event right here in the city of Chicago. So we want peace and not this wars—permanent wars abroad and military war games and national security state at home.

it's amazing that it's no problem at all to come up with the money to fund the national security state while people are being thrown out of their houses, children are going hungry and schools are being closed... our priorities are so fucked...

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Adbusters Tactical Briefing #31 - Three challenges Occupy must overcome

food for thought...

TACTICAL BRIEFING #31 – GUT CHECK
Three challenges Occupy must overcome

Hey you nimble dreamers, believers and jammer tacticians out there.

Our movement has reemerged from winter hibernation to find that this spring we are different but so too is the political and tactical situation. Occupy now faces a series of existential challenges that will define the month of May and set the tone for our long-term future.

#1 challenge: Jump over the corporate media

It took the New York Times two weeks last year to wake up to the insurrection percolating in their own backyard. This May Day, we saw an insidious attempt to ignore and discredit us right across the mainstream media. Time to jam the corpo-commercial lie machine and shift the way information flows and meaning is produced. Here is occupier Charles Young’s take on the blackout:

“I know. It’s just a coincidence. Or conspiracy theory. The .01% who rule the United States would never stoop to such stunts to knock Occupy Wall Street off the front page and surround it with mentions of terrorism… But Occupy wasn’t on the Times’ front page, online or in print, either.” Read more at Counterpunch.

#2 challenge: Block the co-optation of our movement

Last September, the old left didn’t want to touch us. Then Occupy captured the world’s imagination and now they are jumping in to channel our energy into electoral politics and symbolic actions. Founding Zuccotti Marisa Holmes warns that the co-opters are a deep threat to our movement:

“This is an election year. Everything is at stake. There will be many more attempts like The 99% Spring to come. The 1% … seek to manage social movements via foundations thru resource allocation, top-down structures, and co-opting language. In the past this strategy has proven effective at dividing, conquering, and integrating movements into respectable forms of activism, and it’s starting to take hold… We must not be pacified!” Read more in the Occupy! Gazette #4.

#3 challenge: Occupy the future

Our most difficult task of all is to describe, build and sustain the post-capitalist future we want to live in. Here is Slavoj Žižek’s stab to get your juices flowing:

“It is not enough to reject the depoliticized expert rule as the most ruthless form of ideology; one should also begin to think seriously about what to propose instead of the predominant economic organization, to imagine and experiment with alternate forms of organization, to search for the germs of the New. Communism is not just or predominantly the carnival of the mass protest when the system is brought to a halt; Communism is also, above all, a new form of organization, discipline, hard work.” Read more at the Guardian.

Hey occupiers: the old world has no future; their leaders have no solutions. Now everything from how we live to how we love and how the world is governed is up for grabs. Can we rise to the challenge? Let the tactical brainstorm begin.

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

i guess we'll see what happens, won't we... to me the key dates are the may 20-21 nato summit in chicago...

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The month of May

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The May 2012 Insurrection 

Tactical Briefing #30

Hey you dreamers, strikers and new left redeemers out there,

For thirty-one magical days beginning this Tuesday, May 1, we take the plunge and Strike! We block the Golden Gate Bridge; occupy a Manhattan-bound tunnel; seize the ports. In 115 cities, we march into banks, erect tents and refuse to leave. We disrupt financial institutions forcing thousands to preemptively close. Five thousand of us pray, dance, sleep on Wall Street and in front of the Fed and if the Bloombergs of the world bring out paramilitary police to intimidate us, we use our social media fire to call out 50,000 more occupiers.

In the week before the G8 and NATO summits, we light the spark globally. We occupy hundreds of squares in cities on every continent – from Paris to Berlin, Toronto to Athens, São Paulo to Bucharest and beyond – we up the ante with direct actions that paralyze capitalism. For a few days, maybe for a full month, we act as if we already live in a world run by people, not corporations.

Our movement goes geopolitical later in May. We swarm Chicago and confront NATO. We tell the military elites there to stop their saber rattling against Iran, halt the global arms race and get behind what the majority of the people on Earth want: a nuclear-free world starting with a nuclear-free Middle East that includes both Iran and Israel.

And then when the G8 leaders meet in Camp David, we create a global spectacle the likes of which the world has never seen before … millions of us … individually, in flash groups and en masse, we burst out laughing at the lunacy of the eight most powerful political leaders on the planet thinking they can dictate the people’s business from behind closed doors and barbed wire fences. For one day, we take over the global mindspace with a whirlwind of #LAUGHRIOT jokes. (Like: Why did the G8 chickens cross to Camp David? / Cuz they’re on the other side. haha!) We laugh our heads off on every news broadcast in the world.

May 1968 was the first wildcat general strike in history … it lasted two weeks and was a grand gesture of refusal still remembered, but then it fizzled … maybe this May we won’t?
for the wild,

Culture Jammers HQ

OccupyWallStreet.org / Tactical Briefing #26, #27, #28 and #29 / Find out what your local Occupy has planned for May 1, May 12, and the #LAUGHRIOT then join the movement in Chicago

we don't need another "fizzle"...

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Update from Adbusters following the move of the G8 to Camp David

i am a huge fan of humor as a way to address situations and issues that would otherwise be too fraught with tension and polarization to be addressed directly...

TACTICAL BRIEFING #27 – MAY 18 GLOBAL #LAUGHRIOT

In a sudden about-face, the United States has conceded a victory to Occupy and moved May’s G8 summit to Camp David, an impenetrable military base in rural Maryland. Wow! Looks like the specter of 50,000 occupiers ready to swarm with a list of demands has turned the climactic Showdown in Chicago into a humiliating G8 Backdown. Bravo! Splitting the G8 and NATO summits was a deft move… but now we’ve got a major tactical rethink on our hands.

The big question is do we follow Mao’s advice (“when the enemy retreats, we pursue”) or Sun Tzu’s (“Do not pursue an enemy who simulates flight”)? We’ve heard persuasive arguments on all sides. Some occupiers say the movement should lay chase and go for #OCCUPYCAMPDAVID against all odds … a month of tree-sits, lockdowns and nomadic encampments in the woods and nearby Thurmont. Others believe it’s best to up the ante with #OCCUPYCHICAGO: an even bigger mobilization beginning with the May Day General Strike. Still others advocate an unpredictable everywhere-at-once global insurgency of anarchic swarms throughout the month of May.

When Ben Ali first attacked then tried to hide from his people, he was toppled. When Mubarak refused to negotiate and tried to beat his people back into line, he was deposed. Now the White House and the G8 are repeating the mistakes of last year’s autocrats … first they try to scare us with tough talk of repressive anti-Occupy ordinances, crowd suppression technologies and paramilitary policing, then they make a hasty retreat to the safety of Camp David.

The world’s leaders flee from us … so what do we do? Maybe we just laugh at them?

On May 18, the day the G8 leaders meet in Camp David, why don’t we, the people of the world have a #LAUGHRIOT. Let roars of laughter rise up from towns and cities everywhere at the spectacle of the world’s leaders trying to crisis manage the economy from behind closed doors and razor wire fences.

Laughter is one of the most powerful tactical weapons of memewar … it signals supremacy and loss of fear. So let’s pull off the greatest comedy of howling flash mobs, riotous street parties and hysterical pranks the world has ever seen. May 18 could be a monumental tipping point… an ahahaha! moment when the people of the world have a collective epiphany, and from that point on start thinking differently about how the world should be governed.

Jammers, whatever we do this Spring, let’s float like butterflies and sting like bees! Let’s bend the G8 and NATO to our will with shock tactics and audacious culture jams that capture the imagination of the world. We may be far closer to a Global Spring than any of us has so far dared to imagine …

"an ahahaha! moment"... love it...!

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Adbusters: Prepping for the upcoming G8 and NATO meetings in Chicago

here's a follow-up on my post from january 26 where adbusters calls for support for the #OCCUPYCHICAGO effort to focus world attention on the failure that is capitalism during the g8 and nato meetings in chicago in may...

TACTICAL BRIEFING #26

Anarchic Swarms – The Emerging Model

[...]

The stage is set for a climactic showdown in Chicago.

The crisis of capitalism is deepening. Youth unemployment has reached 50% in Spain and Greece… 30% in Portugal and Italy… 22% in the UK… almost 20% in the US. Hundreds of millions of people around the world are waking up to the fact that their future does not compute… that their lives will be a never ending series of ecological, financial, political and personal crises… and that if we don’t rise up and start fighting for a different kind of future, we won’t have a future.

That struggle ignites again May 1.

#OCCUPYCHICAGO will be the focal point of this global spiritual insurrection… 50,000 of us will converge on the windy city and confront the G8 and NATO leaders with an ultimatum. We will set up impromptu encampments throughout the city and wage a full-spectrum memewar backed up by new tactics of anarchic swarming. Our militant in-your-face nonviolence will inspire thousands of towns, cities and campuses around the world to rise up in solidarity just like they did last October.

This is a worldwide, multi-front mutiny against the way our economic and military leaders are running the world.

[...]

Occupy has taught us all. It innovates, fractures, grows resilient and more diverse. In this spirit we celebrate the Gandhian ferocity of the Zuccottis who launched this movement with their magical assemblies and nonviolent ways … we extol the growing crop of working groups with their desire for a positive program of social and political change. And on the wild side we honor those in Oakland who have lost their fear against all odds. With this rainbow coalition, we hold our heads high and embrace the heady days of Spring.

it'll also be good practice for the upcoming republican and democratic national conventions...

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G8 & NATO in Chicago - Adbusters calls for #Occupy Chicago for the month of May

from adbusters...

Tactical Briefing #25

Hey you redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,

Against the backdrop of a global uprising that is simmering in dozens of countries and thousands of cities and towns, the G8 and NATO will hold a rare simultaneous summit in Chicago this May. The world’s military and political elites, heads of state, 7,500 officials from 80 nations, and more than 2,500 journalists will be there.

And so will we.

On May 1, 50,000 people from all over the world will flock to Chicago, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and #OCCUPYCHICAGO for a month. With a bit of luck, we’ll pull off the biggest multinational occupation of a summit meeting the world has ever seen.

And this time around we’re not going to put up with the kind of police repression that happened during the Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, 1968 … nor will we abide by any phony restrictions the City of Chicago may want to impose on our first amendment rights. We’ll go there with our heads held high and assemble for a month-long people’s summit … we’ll march and chant and sing and shout and exercise our right to tell our elected representatives what we want … the constitution will be our guide.

And when the G8 and NATO meet behind closed doors on May 19, we’ll be ready with our demands: a Robin Hood Tax … a ban on high frequency ‘flash’ trading … a binding climate change accord … a three strikes and you’re out law for corporate criminals … an all out initiative for a nuclear-free Middle East … whatever we decide in our general assemblies and in our global internet brainstorm – we the people will set the agenda for the next few years and demand our leaders carry it out.

And if they don’t listen … if they ignore us and put our demands on the back burner like they’ve done so many times before … then, with Gandhian ferocity, we’ll flashmob the streets, shut down stock exchanges, campuses, corporate headquarters and cities across the globe … we’ll make the price of doing business as usual too much to bear.

Jammers, pack your tents, muster up your courage and prepare for a big bang in Chicago this Spring. If we don’t stand up now and fight now for a different kind of future we may not have much of a future … so let’s live without dead time for a month in May and see what happens …

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

if nothing else, it would be nice to be able to give rahm the finger in person...

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Some backstory on Yemen and the latest "terrorist" incident

why does none of this come as any surprise...?

from the yemen post...

Mohammed al-Shaibah, Air Cargo Director for Yemenia Airways said to Yemen Post, "No UPS cargo plane left Yemeni lands over the land 48 hours. These accusations are false and baseless."

He added, "No UPS or DHL cargo packages heading to Chicago through Yemen took place in the last 48 hours as well."

"All packages are checked very carefully in Yemen, and there is no evidence to prove that this package came through Yemen."

from the yemen news agency...

No UPS cargo planes left Yemen to other countries in the last days and there are no direct flights from Yemen to the United Kingdom or the United States, a Yemeni official said, after allegations that British and U.S. officials had found suspicious packages on planes that originated in Yemen.

The official wondered how the media mentioned the name of Yemen reporting that an explosive device was found onboard a cargo plane that landed in London coming from Yemen.

UPS planes never land or take off in Yemen, the official made clear.

The security measures at Yemeni airports are tightened and the authorities search passengers and luggage well, the official said, adding that Yemen has recently installed modern checking systems that can detect dangerous or suspicious materials to the safety of passengers and planes.

We urge the media not to make hasty judgments about sensitive issues and the media should wait until investigations reveal the truth, the official said, as he pointed out that Yemen has launched an investigation into the allegations and planned to coordinate with the United Arab Emirates, Britain and the U.S. over the issue.

but, of course, none of this is being reported by our ever-diligent news media in the u.s...

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The City of Chicago wishes you a happy holiday season

and, whatever you do, never miss an opportunity to indulge in paranoia...

Bureau of Strategic Deployment
DEPLOYMENT OPERATIONS CENTER

INFORMATION BULLETIN

2007-INF-049
08-NOV-2007

Winter Holiday Public Awareness Bulletin

Each year, the Winter Holiday Season tends to spur larger crowds
and increased traffic throughout the City. As it pertains to shop-
ping districts, public transportation routes, and all other places of
public assembly, the increased crowds become a matter of Home-
land Security concern. During this holiday period, as a matter of
public safety, we ask that all members of the general public
heighten their awareness regarding any and all suspicious activity
that may be an indicator of a threat to public safety. It is impor-
tant to immediately report any or all of the below suspect activi-
ties.

• Physical Surveillance (note taking, binocular use, cameras, video, maps)
• Attempts to gain sensitive information regarding key facilities
• Attempts to penetrate or test physical security / response procedures
• Attempts to improperly acquire explosives, weapons, ammunition, dan-
gerous chemicals, etc.
• Suspicious or improper attempts to acquire official vehicles, uniforms,
badges or access devices
• Presence of individuals who do not appear to belong in workplaces, busi-
ness establishments, or near key facilities
• Mapping out routes, playing out scenarios, monitoring key facilities, tim-
ing traffic lights
• Stockpiling suspicious materials or abandoning potential containers for
explosives (e.g., vehicles, suitcases, etc)
• Suspicious reporting of lost or stolen identification

See Something, Say Something
CALL 911

(thanks to kevin at cryptogon...)

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