Occupy Wall St – Naomi Klein

Occupy Wall Street: the most important thing in the world now

by News Source on October 7, 2011

Link to War in Context to see the Video: http://warincontext.org/2011/10/07/occupy-wall-street-the-most-important-thing-in-the-world-now/

Naomi Klein: I was honored to be invited to speak at Occupy Wall Street on Thursday night. Since amplification is (disgracefully) banned, and everything I say will have to be repeated by hundreds of people so others can hear (a k a “the human microphone”), what I actually say at Liberty Plaza will have to be very short. With that in mind, here is the longer, uncut version of the speech.

I love you.

And I didn’t just say that so that hundreds of you would shout “I love you” back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder.

Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: “We found each other.” That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can’t be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful.

If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over.

And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it’s a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say “No. We will not pay for your crisis.”

That slogan began in Italy in 2008. It ricocheted to Greece and France and Ireland and finally it has made its way to the square mile where the crisis began.

“Why are they protesting?” ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks: “What took you so long?” “We’ve been wondering when you were going to show up.” And most of all: “Welcome.”

Many people have drawn parallels between Occupy Wall Street and the so-called anti-globalization protests that came to world attention in Seattle in 1999. That was the last time a global, youth-led, decentralized movement took direct aim at corporate power. And I am proud to have been part of what we called “the movement of movements.”

But there are important differences too. For instance, we chose summits as our targets: the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the G8. Summits are transient by their nature, they only last a week. That made us transient too. We’d appear, grab world headlines, then disappear. And in the frenzy of hyper patriotism and militarism that followed the 9/11 attacks, it was easy to sweep us away completely, at least in North America.

Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, has chosen a fixed target. And you have put no end date on your presence here. This is wise. Only when you stay put can you grow roots. This is crucial. It is a fact of the information age that too many movements spring up like beautiful flowers but quickly die off. It’s because they don’t have roots. And they don’t have long term plans for how they are going to sustain themselves. So when storms come, they get washed away.

Being horizontal and deeply democratic is wonderful. But these principles are compatible with the hard work of building structures and institutions that are sturdy enough to weather the storms ahead. I have great faith that this will happen.

Something else this movement is doing right: You have committed yourselves to non-violence. You have refused to give the media the images of broken windows and street fights it craves so desperately. And that tremendous discipline has meant that, again and again, the story has been the disgraceful and unprovoked police brutality. Which we saw more of just last night. Meanwhile, support for this movement grows and grows. More wisdom.

But the biggest difference a decade makes is that in 1999, we were taking on capitalism at the peak of a frenzied economic boom. Unemployment was low, stock portfolios were bulging. The media was drunk on easy money. Back then it was all about start-ups, not shutdowns.

We pointed out that the deregulation behind the frenzy came at a price. It was damaging to labor standards. It was damaging to environmental standards. Corporations were becoming more powerful than governments and that was damaging to our democracies. But to be honest with you, while the good times rolled, taking on an economic system based on greed was a tough sell, at least in rich countries.

Ten years later, it seems as if there aren’t any more rich countries. Just a whole lot of rich people. People who got rich looting the public wealth and exhausting natural resources around the world.

The point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. And the atmosphere cannot absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it, creating dangerous warming. The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological.

These are the facts on the ground. They are so blatant, so obvious, that it is a lot easier to connect with the public than it was in 1999, and to build the movement quickly.

We all know, or at least sense, that the world is upside down: we act as if there is no end to what is actually finite—fossil fuels and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions. And we act as if there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually bountiful—the financial resources to build the kind of society we need.

The task of our time is to turn this around: to challenge this false scarcity. To insist that we can afford to build a decent, inclusive society—while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth can take.

What climate change means is that we have to do this on a deadline. This time our movement cannot get distracted, divided, burned out or swept away by events. This time we have to succeed. And I’m not talking about regulating the banks and increasing taxes on the rich, though that’s important.

I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society. That is hard to fit into a single media-friendly demand, and it’s also hard to figure out how to do it. But it is no less urgent for being difficult.

That is what I see happening in this square. In the way you are feeding each other, keeping each other warm, sharing information freely and proving health care, meditation classes and empowerment training. My favorite sign here says, “I care about you.” In a culture that trains people to avoid each other’s gaze, to say, “Let them die,” that is a deeply radical statement.

A few final thoughts. In this great struggle, here are some things that don’t matter.

§ What we wear.

§ Whether we shake our fists or make peace signs.

§ Whether we can fit our dreams for a better world into a media soundbite.

And here are a few things that do matter.

§ Our courage.

§ Our moral compass.

§ How we treat each other.

We have picked a fight with the most powerful economic and political forces on the planet. That’s frightening. And as this movement grows from strength to strength, it will get more frightening. Always be aware that there will be a temptation to shift to smaller targets—like, say, the person sitting next to you at this meeting. After all, that is a battle that’s easier to win.

Don’t give in to the temptation. I’m not saying don’t call each other on shit. But this time, let’s treat each other as if we plan to work side by side in struggle for many, many years to come. Because the task before will demand nothing less.

Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is most important thing in the world. Because it is. It really is.

This speech also appeared in Saturday’s edition of the Occupied Wall Street Journal.

Occupy Wall Street

The corporate media are attempting to ignore and belittle the Occupy Wall St. protestors. Join other bloggers to get their messages out.

Sign Up to Broadcast the Occupation Movement with Firedoglake

http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/occupy-press?source=email&subsource=v1

What started as a small gathering on Wall Street is becoming a nationwide movement.

Unsurprisingly, the corporate media continue to ignore and deride this movement. It will take independent outlets like Firedoglake and citizen journalists like yourself to give these protests the attention they deserve.

FDL has been covering Occupy Wall Street since day one, and the Dissenter’s intrepid Kevin Gosztola has been the premier source of information for those following the protest. He’s in Washington D.C. right now and will be heading to New York to report live from Occupy Wall Street.

But the movement is spreading – across the nation and even the globe. We need more eyes and ears to capture these protests. Signup as a citizen journalist and help FDL broadcast the occupation movement.

If you’re taking part in a protest, click here to sign up as a citizen journalist with FDL. We want to share your stories photos and videos of their occupations as part of our coverage.

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The “Occupy” movement is an expression of the outrage and despair millions of Americans have felt towards our corrupt political system. People are gathering from New York to Los Angeles to voice their discontent, and their numbers are growing by the day.

Firedoglake has been one of the few sources of extensive coverage of Occupy Wall Street since the beginning, and Kevin’s work has already been featured on outlets such as Russia Today.1Salon’s Glenn Greenwald even cited Kevin’s “excellent analysis” of the movement.2

Kevin’s coverage has shamed the mainstream media for their smug condescension toward protestors. His work is exemplary of what real reporting should be. Now is your chance to join him: FDL wants to build a corps of citizen journalists to amplify the message of the Occupy movement.

In Washington and New York, Kevin will be there — talking to these activists as they call for an end to the corporate-military machine that dominates U.S. politics. But we need you to report as well and make sure these protests don’t go unnoticed.

If you’re joining an occupation, click here to sign up as a citizen journalist with FDL. We want to share your stories photos and videos of their occupations as part of our coverage.

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Pitch in $5 or more to help us broadcast these movements and overcome the mainstream media blackout.

Thanks so much. The occupation won’t end until the corporate and political classes are held to account. And with your help, neither will FDL’s coverage.

Deepest thanks,

Jane Hamsher
Founder & Publisher
Firedoglake.com

P.S. We’re trying something new — since Kevin will be reporting live, every day, from the protests in DC and New York: you can make automatic weekly donations of $3 or more to our coverage fund.

1. Left Attacks Occupy Wall Street The Alyona Show, 9/28/11.

2. What’s behind the scorn for the Wall Street Protests. Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, 9/28/11.

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Walking on the Earth

I learned something these past few weeks; it’s a lot easier to scrape paint off glass than to scrape off masking tape. Luckily I only taped one, the largest window, but cleaning it became an unexpected and tedious job. Water, lots of water, does help, but a paint scraper you’ve sharpened on a carborundum stone must be ground into the cement-like deposit.

I didn’t intend to write about the aftermath of long-overdue window painting, but it serves as a metaphor for what I did intend. These unwelcome chores can be a good exercise in mindfulness. In a way, scraping windows can be as useful a Buddhist exercise as Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Washing the dishes to wash the dishes”.

In “the Miracle of Mindfulness” he says:-
“While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes. At first glance, that might seem a little silly: why put so much stress on a simple thing? But that’s precisely the point. The fact that I’m standing there washing these bowls is a wondrous reality. I’m being completely myself, following my breath, conscious of my presence, and conscious of my thoughts and actions. There’s no way I can be tossed around mindlessly like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves.”

Yeah, I guess I blew it. I don’t remember following my breath, or being conscious of anything, except that damned glue I had to wet down and scratch away. I might have forfeited my chance of instant enlightenment. Not that enlightenment is the only goal for exploring the 2500 year old paths of Buddhism, as they have taken root in Western society. It has led to welcome developments in Psychology and Psychiatry, to effective measures for taming the mind, to new points of contact between science and religion, to the growth of a non-theistic path for the development of spiritual practice. As one who must admit to being a secular Buddhist I’d say the last is probably the one that attracts Westerners most; to make a new try for spiritual inner harmony for those who find little credibility and meaning in Western religion.

I particularly value the aphorism, “You have no control over what happens to you, but you have absolute control over how you respond to it.” We live in a secular world, growing more secular with every breakthrough in education, but it need not inevitably lead to a world without the sacred. Walking on water may or may not be accepted as a miracle, but the fact that we are walking on the Earth is the operation of an ineffable mystery.

The teachings that mind and body are indivisible and both sacred, and that the mind is the source of all our suffering seem enough to me to follow the path to conquering ones ego. Meditation can be learned as a method of conquering stress as well as a way to freedom from Earthly imprisonment. If one remembers mindfulness, the living in the present, as the way to make all our actions part of the path toward freedom from personal and culturally derived suffering—whether washing the dishes or scraping the dried masking tape off the glass—then every moment of our lives can be devoted toward living in a safer, kinder, more just world.

Today is Blog Jog Day

Welcome to Blog Jog Day! Please enjoy my site– I have some money for you to look at below. That’s always an interesting activity—and these notes are really funny. Afterwards, click over to http://riseabovereason.blogspot.com to see what the next Blog has to offer! Lost in the links? You can always go back to the main Blog Jog Day Blog at http://blogjogday.blogspot.com and find a new link to jog from. Thank you for stopping by my site!

You might also look at my other blog at http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com/ I’ve been trying out some writing in Regency style. It is also in the Blog Jog.

Chris H.

Money to Burn

I felt it was appropriate in this period of financial crisis to effer some amusing relics of past insolvency. How can you tell this typical writer hasn’t enough money to invest and looks forward to everyone joining him in the poorhouse?

Yugoslavia — 10 billion dinar, 1993

Zaire — 5 million zaires, 1992

Just notice how shifty looking some of the geezers pictured on the bills are. Would you want them in your wallet?

Turkey — 5 million lira, 1997

Brazil — 500 cruzeiros reais, 1993

Romania — 50,000 lei, 2001

And here is one that doesn’t even need a shifty face to look suspicious.

Zimbabwe — 100 trillion dollars, 2006

Now aren’t these a prize collection to take to the bank? Trouble is, you’d probably get thrown out onto the sidewalk. This is just a small selection of currencies that have failed in the past few decades.

What is my Realization from this? When you see the TV ads recently announcing that so and so company is at your local mall offering generous prices for your old and cast off jewelry you had better ROTFL and stay miles away. They are just collecting gold and silver that is going to look a lot better than these pretty pieces of paper when reality catches up to ignorance. And they will be the ones laughing all the way to the bank.

 

The Destructive Impulse in Society.

The way the actions of Anders Breivik in Norway are interpreted in different media and different societies is as instructive as the initial knee-jerk accusation of some imagined al Qaeda linkage. The denial of the right has been the strongest response. It ain’t our fault!

Whose fault it actually is can be revealed by a little investigation of the sources. The right wing immediately blamed something outside the society for the atrocity. The centrists—Toronto Star and the NY Times as good examples—focussed on anti-Moslem ideology. The Pope deplored the “senseless violence.” as if the perpetrator had no deliberate plan he acted out. The response outside of North America and its complacency—looking at Al Jazeera and Guardian, for example—was more to the point. The attacker intended to “radically change Norwegian society” through his attack on the Labour, leftist, government and the youth summer camp of that same leftist party. This was a calculated attack on progressive society by its rightist enemy.

The acts of right wingers against progressives extends beyond this. The assassination of abortion doctors; the attack on social programs by the Tea Party. The Koch brothers and their financial support of anti-social activism must be included.

The right wing religious are implicated. The Abrahamic religions lend themselves to beliefs in personal righteousness that disregard the humanity of opponents as others. The Chosen people are inevitably set against those lesser who are not chosen. Hinduism is similarly afflicted with the same dangerous illusions as the other Theistic religions.

We are beginning to see the great differences in social reactions between Norway in 2011 and the USA in 2001. Even commentators in the US are pointing it out. The first reason for the differences to note is that between the persons in charge—between Jens Stoltenberg and George W Bush. This is clearly the difference in social values and maturity between the two men…and by extension between the societies they lead or led. The reaction in Norway has been exemplary and reasoned; to protect their social values by withstanding the urge to weaken them by hysterical attempts to enhance some chimera called homeland security. It has not been an instinctive reacion for everyone, and may yet be marred by the acts of the deeply fearful who take refuge in reactionary politics.

The reaction in the US in 2001 is still degrading that society with Moslem witch-hunts, widespread phone tapping, corruption of citizens’ rights, and failed wars that cannot find an end. The Americans fell into the trap Bin Laden set for them like shills at a county fair stocking up on snake oil—tearing their own society apart in a half-assed hunt for enemies within that completely overlooked the real enemies—the Anders Breiviks born and bred in the country and twisted in their minds by ruthless right-wing ideologies.

Is it possible for the US to see the example of Norway and reverse its course of the past ten years? Is it certain that everyone wants to do that? Perhaps a slight majority who might carry the rest? There surely are many who profit in power and finances from the present situation.

It seems clear to me that any initiative must come from the citizenry rather than the political classes that skulk in their bunkers trapped into an endless conflict with the mirror images of themselves. In their fear of the dictatorship of monarchs the founders of the republic succeeded in creating a system that is vulnerable to seizing up when most in need of decisive action. The USA is reaching what the chaos theorists called a bifurcation point—from here, things could start to improve or else descend into a death spiral.

Blog Jog Day in Eleven Days

August 7th 2011

I will be participating in Blog Jog Day on August 7th—a promotion to increase visitation to blogs. You might take a look at my other one at http://thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com

Now I must sit down to write a new entry for BJD. So many things happening that I don’t know which to pick…of pick apart. You’ll have to come back to find out what I decided.

Turning Resources into Garbage.

Robert Skidelsky, the economic historian, recently wrote:-

“In 1995, I published a book called The World After Communism. Today, I wonder whether there will be a world after capitalism…

“Capitalism has always had crises, and will go on having them. Rather, it comes from the feeling that Western civilization is increasingly unsatisfying, saddled with a system of incentives that are essential for accumulating wealth, but that undermine our capacity to enjoy it. Capitalism may be close to exhausting its potential to create a better life – at least in the world’s rich countries.

By “better”, I mean better ethically, not materially. Material gains may continue, though evidence shows that they no longer make people happier. My discontent is with the quality of a civilization in which the production and consumption of unnecessary goods has become most people’s main occupation.”

I was so pleased to find I was not the only one deploring the plethora of trash characterizing our modern Western society. The “production and consumption of unnecessary goods” has been an object of my disgust for years. I hesitated to comment on it before lest I be considered no more than a foolish old man who failed to understand that prime miracle of neoliberal economics—that  huge array of choices available to the consumer. In most cases, the reason the public flocks to the ‘new’ and ‘fashionable’ is that they weren’t able to figure out the original.

Of course, Baron Skidelsky is approximately two months older than me, which could expose both of us the charge of not being ‘with it’; that horrible affliction so feared in today’s fifteen second society. But I’m quite willing to set my perception against that of anyone whose world view was learned from TV commercials. All the increases in so-called efficiency achieve is a faster transfer of the Earth’s valuable resources from previously undisturbed ground to the landfill.

Using computer communication before the Internet and Windows, required an investment in time, energy, and basic Mojo that the average citizen did not possess. I could, by sweating it, download the huge raw GPS data files I needed over the phone lines from the Government of Canada’s monitoring stations, but making the system easier to work for the average citizen saved me a lot of sweat and tears as well. But the world’s losses might have been greater than the gains. One need not understand anything about communications to send a text message by smartphone, but the amount of ‘garbage in’ and garbage out’ has been magnified immensely.

That this is not a trivial matter is discussed in a new book by the founder of Global Institute For Tomorrow, Chandran Nair, called “Consumptionomics: Asia’s Role in Reshaping Capitalism and Saving the Planet”. The world cannot continue producing huge quantities of trivial goods for an ever-growing urban population; we are past the time when we should be working to provide the necessities for the world’s poor. For Nair, capitalism’s deficiency remains its inability (or perhaps, as some might suggest, its contemporary unwillingness) to acknowledge the natural resource limitations that confront most of the developing world.

In an interview (Asia Times Online) , Chandran Nair says –
“The book has received a very strong response in Europe. I was recently speaking to a large European company in the global automotive industry and made the point that we really do not need another couple of billion cars in Asia which is the likely scenario if Asia adopts Western car ownership levels.

“This is hard for companies to hear, and even harder for them to incorporate into what they call their sustainability practices. But there is no denying the truth and I rarely find anyone arguing against these facts and the implications. The smart companies and non-deniers know and are willing to have that debate. Sadly many simply do not want to go there. Needless to say there are always the “technology will solve all the problems” group but they too, when pushed, back off.”

From my perspective, the way we use technology is not the solution, but the cause of many of our problems. In the craze for ‘new’ and ‘latest’ perfectly adequate and efficient technologies are replaced and consigned to the landfill merely because there is a new gimmick being sold to gullible ‘consumers’ by millions of dollars worth of advertising. I have witnessed this ‘progression’, more realistically regression, many times in my 72 years, but one example still relevant to today’s computer users may be sufficient.

The punched paper was replaced by the 5¼” floppy, was replaced by the 3½” floppy, was replaced by the CD.ROM, was replaced by the DVD, was replaced by the thumb drive … will be replaced by something else. All of these media/information storages worked satisfactorily, and had a place in modern computing, but the ‘out of fashion’ devices have been sent to the landfill along with millions of dollars worth of hardware that functioned with them. If you want to preserve wealth with some shares in a successful company of the future you could hardly do better than find one with expertise in gleaning valuable minerals from garbage—in a few more decades the landfill could be the only source of them.

New Directions

While this blog site was the first WordPress site I started it was immediately superseded by my other one, thewildcatsvictory.wordpress.com—now I decided to activate it.

These past few years I have been commenting more on other blogs and forums and thought an active site of my own could serve to collect some of the comments in one place as well as allow me to comment on reality myself, without piggybacking off others’ observations.

My comments elsewhere have generally been contrarian and progressive; materialist more than spiritual, although with considerable influence from Buddhist and Taoist thought as well as modern physics.

I’m not ready to post a full Realization at the moment as I’m without my own computer, which crashed last Sunday, and I’m not comfortable with this loaned laptop while I wait to find out how much of my life that had been stored on the old desktop has survived.

Just one observation to get things going. Any argument based solely on linear causality is inherently faulty, since the state of linear causality is a special case under general systems theory. If you doubt this, look at chaos theory, or read Joanna Macy’s excellent discussion in “Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory”. One cause for one effect is impossible.

Temporarily Away

Dear Readers

Have been called away to take care of my brother-in-law’s house and dog while he undergoes tests in hospital. I will attempt to prepare a new post in the “Follow the Money” series of threads over the next few days and post same when I can get on a library computer/internet connection.

Meanwhile — you might take a look at this Tomgram — http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175085/nick_turse_bush_officials_cash_in_as_more_americans_lose_out

about all the Bush administration people (who set up the Great Crash) who are making great sums of money and taking advantage of numerous offers of prestigious positions in industry and think tanks while the rest of us are stocking up on dried beans and rice.