by Belle Starr, Outlawyer
The smug was getting thick and bigotry became a way of life. Too bad, the children of wrath want to argue more than work. This smugness was choking with its one upping others with how long someone has been an activist or progressive or gay or their age or some other trifle. This time the usual suspects are “Us” as POGO, a comic character, mused long ago : “We have met the enemy and it is Us!”.
Is it more important to decide if Occupy is Vegan or to do research into the corruption of the enemy’s organs of control : politics, power and propaganda? The name calling and ad hominum remarks, personal attacks and outright disrespect is truly breath-taking. OSF (Occupy San Francisco) can’t seem to consence on nonviolence while AC-BH (Action Council-Bernal Heights) takes money from non-profits and labor unions to orient forces against the enemies of their benefactors and BAU (Occupy Bay Area United) digresses into personal gustatory orientations and I am baffled at the inability to deal with single block or web CENSORSHIP rather than open forum discussions (including the shunning and ostracism, of a transsexual for not being gay) BY THE MINORITY and the inability to process out disruptive drunks, “provocateurs” or to deal with police repression.
At the risk of getting punished as a return on good works I will outline, class, at least three important places of occupy therapeutics. Political Corruption. Economic Corruption. Global Corruption. They all rely upon deceit, self-dealing, nepotism and might. They all rely upon propaganda and jingoistic names and phrases. Cute (but cute isn’t always enough!).
Political corruption begins with hypocrisy and propaganda. Deceit is certainly hypocritical. Cronyism and nepotism is out of control allowing politicians to “stack the deck” or at least “mark the cards”. It is rare when someone is appointed for competency instead of political favor which is self-serving.
The self-dealing is hidden by the appearance of democracy, the propaganda, but chance doesn’t have a chance when the dice are loaded. There is a slick practice of “spot bills” which are nothing more than forms for bills with blanks to be “filled in later” like who gets the contract and what laws are they exempt from and where the money is coming from. After passing lower committee’s this “spot” gets in line for vote and at the last possible moment the blanks are filled in. No one read the bill much anyway so it passes. OOPS! The contractor is a company that the politicos knew they were going to write in so way before anyone even knows they can inside trade before there is even a company many times. They can hip their friends to the opportunity as well. Add in exemption from environmental laws and pinch the public to foot the bill for bond sales to finance the scheme where they get rich and the public is bonded to debt.
Next in line is economic corruption, Chicago-style Friedmanism. Dependent upon military-police enforcement of draconian policies taking advantage of crises (even manufacturing crises) couched in pleasing semantical language such as “Free Market” theory. Problem : free market for whom (or what)? Why, for the multinational corporations! Cheap labor is made cheaper by cutting wages! Fear is increased by cutting all “socialist” policies of public programs which spirals a country into economic slavery to the IMF, and others, in order to “bail out” the “too big to fail” aspects of an economy and, gee whiz, selling state resources to foreign multinationals. Back this up with a dictatorship or enforce a dictatorial genesis by making worker’s countries to adhere to the contractural adhesion agreement forced on them in a time of crisis to sell national resources and bear debt up to (or over) 100% of Gross Domestic Product of the affected country – look at Pinochet’s Chile, Walesa’s Poland, Russia, China, South Africa. All chained to debt (pay what your oppressors borrowed) in order to not collapse. The tyranny of a bad debt and a worse idea. Sound at all familiar yet?
Of course all this is backed by force and fear of a snitch society.
Global corruption is multi-jurisdictional, transnational and replete with cute acronyms, progressive names and a web of subsidiaries who are irresponsible because they don’t have to be responsible to anyone except the more powerful. Soon their private armies and resources of every indebted country will make these “people” the rulers of the world. For awhile. It is up to Occupy to get it together and get a life – a new life of purpose to destroy the corruptions of our economic (central bank and national debt overseers – the banksters), political (jiggered voting machines and process for self-enrichment through cronyism and inside info) and global devastation through corporate identities (schizoid and psychotic) propped up with slavery and misery.
Occupy must adopt globally that we are nonviolent. This does not mean we are not oppositional. It does not mean that some may react vigorously to acts of oppression. It does not mean we will shirk at our blood being spilled but that we will not start with spilling the blood of others. It does mean we are an ocean, an unstoppable ocean of humanity seeking a better world. We are creative and intelligent and we have a mission. I look forward to the day when we put flowers in the gun barrels while dancing in the streets and putting graffiti/art on the walls. A global “Occupy Human Be-In”.
Guess for this Warrior for Peace it’s back to the trenches of actions that stimulate cultural curiosity and angst for the loss of constitutional freedoms – the foundations of the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
