The Iron Fist in the Velvet Glove: or Dream Now, While You Still Can.

[99th_Monkey]

Once the Iron Fist comes fully out of its Velvet Glove, all bets will be off. And since there is no telling anymore exactly when all the lights may go suddenly and completely dark, I may as well say it now, or forever hold my peace. Judging by the dense volatility going on behind the Curtain, it appears that the dreaded moment may be closer than anyone might care to imagine.

The culmination of the Manning, Assange, Snowden collective revelations has thrown our 100%-Saturation-Surveillance & Security State (you know, the guys who really ‘run things') into a hissy-fit because they were caught with their pants down, for all to see. Now literally every US citizen knows that they have been -- and are still being -- buggered by Big Brother. Now we are all “suspected terrorists”, until proven innocent by the NSA plowing through all our daily phone calls and emails. Privacy is a thing of the past, or so we are being told to “get over it”, to passively accept as “just the way it is”. Fuck that.

Unless you just fell off a turnip truck, the end of US Constitutional Democracy as we knew it probably does not come as a complete surprise. After all, we’d all been warned. Occupy Wall Street -- along with it’s brutal repression at the hands of our militarized police state -- said it loud and clear: “WE”VE ALL BEEN HAD!! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! WE THE 99% WANT OUR COUNTRY BACK!” But no, these voices were calously silenced by kettling pepper-spraying, club wielding, gun-toting militarized thugs, the same ones hired with tax dollars by the public, to supposedly “protect and serve” the public.

The deathly silence that befell our nation in the wake of the demise of OWS, still stinks in the air. The message from armed-to-the-teeth Big Brother is clear. “Trust and Obey. There is NO other way. Do it or we’ll beat you, kill you and/or imprison you!!” Now who can argue with that logic? Never mind that this amounts to a complete nullification of the US Constitution & Bill of Rights. Move along now. Nothing to see here.

Anyway I digress. I want to express my love and appreciation for the United States of America, as a citizen by birth, as a passionate Left-leaning patriot, as a life-long champion of human rights and more just (cooperative) economics. I hereby cry out for a renewed sense of what is possible, for imagination geeks & day dreamers everywhere, this is your call to actively participate in collaboratively dreaming our collective selves up to the highest. John Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’ comes to mind. Albert Einstein comes to mind. MLK Jr.’s I Have A Dream speech comes to mind. Daniel Ellsberg comes to mind, as do John & Robert Kennedy.

When it comes to dreaming up a better world, a dear friend of mine also comes to mind: Paul Levy. He recently authored a book on archetypal evil, called “Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil”. I served as one of 3 first-in-line editors on the book. Here are are a few quotes from the book:

"Our looking away (from Evil), our contraction, is itself the disease; our evasion is wetiko (Evil) in action, our distracting ourselves is wetiko’s ‘ticket to ride’. Our resulting complacency and inaction in the face of our species self-extinction is, in fact, an expression of our lack of compassion”

“Encoded within the wetiko virus is its own psychic vaccine, a potential inoculation against our own ignorance and laziness, which if not overcome, will overcome us. The wetiko bug’s existence requires us to strengthen our muscle of discernment, lest we get “taken” for all we are worth. The virus demand that we cultivate impeccability within ourselves, or we don’t stand a chance.”

What people are saying about the Wetiko book:
Sting writes: “The world would be a better place if everyone read this book”.
Thom Hartmann: “Paul Levy summons us by Wisdom’s call to community, action and our higher humanity. Truly initiatory, this book is inviting us to step through the Looking Glass and consciously participate in our own evolution. In exposing our psychic blindness, Levy is helping us to open our eyes and see”.

Paul Levy website:
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/

So dream on DU. I love you all, regardless of whether we agree or not; and if we disagree, then I forgive you for being a dumb-ass. ~99th_Monkey

[cheapdate]

1. I don't disagree that massive and indiscrimate gathering

of phone, email, and internet records is dangerous and must be stopped. But there's one minor point to which I do take exception. The failure of the Occupy movement to grow and gather strength was mostly a result of its own decisions and not because of oppressive state actions.

Occupy had a moment and an incredible opportunity which they utterly failed to capitalize on. They were deliberately determined to be a movement without any leadership. I'm not going to elaborate on all of the mistakes of Occupy, as I see them. But state oppression wasn't the cause of the movement's failure to grow and I think it's a mistake to pretend as if it was.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. As I always do when told that Occupy failed I ask you to link to the Free Clinic

run by your political cohort. Here is a link to Occupy Medical for you to look at. I look forward to your link to Moderate Centrist Medical....
http://occupymedics.wordpress.com/about/

The poor and uninsured in every town should have the fruits of failures like Occupy's 'failure'. Every week they are open to all.
Now, show me yours.

[cheapdate]

5. I realize that Occupy still exists and does admirable work in many areas.

What I mean by "the failure of the Occupy movement to grow and gather strength" has to do with the failure of Occupy to truly win enough widespread support, and more importantly - participation, from mass numbers of Americans to become a true national movement. The goal of many Occupiers was to become a genuine mass movement of the people to bring about fundamental change and a major power shift from large corporations and the status quo to the people -- the 99-percenters. By this measure they weren't successful. My proposition is that they had the opportunity and the moment and they squandered it. They mismanaged their message, they mismanaged the media, they mismanaged their own internal affairs, they failed in their outreach strategy, etc., etc. Occupy had a moment when they enjoyed substantial attention and coverage in the media. The fault for not making effective use of that opportunity rests squarely on the leadership of Occupy -- which of course is a riddle, because there was no leadership. Occupy had extraordinary opportunities to deliver a coherent and galvanizing message, but they usually made a muddle of it. Blaming it the FBI or state oppression, as the author does, is a cop-out.

Take the example of Greenpeace, which began as a small group of anti-nuclear activists in Vancouver, BC. Despite the group's small size and exceptionally limited resources, they contributed substantially to major international policy changes -- including the decision by France to end atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons and the adoption by the IWC in 1985 of an international ban on commercial whaling. The success of Greenpeace was not an accident. They understood from the beginning the importance of messaging, imagery, and media. Media planning was a crucial component of their every action. They used the media in a very deliberate and thought out way.

Greenpeace also faced strong oppressive tactics by the state. Not only Greenpeace, but the civil rights movement also experienced FBI scrutiny and official resistance far in excess of what Occupy did.

The risk of making hasty assumptions from paltry evidence is that you will often be wrong. In this case, your assumption that "moderate centrist" is an apt description of where my views on politics and society fall is utterly incorrect. You assume that because I'm critical of Occupy that you know where I stand. You clearly don't.

I'm proud of what Occupy was able to do and I'm proud of what they are doing still with initiatives like the one you cited. I was proud to finally see some people in this country stand up -- especially proud to see so many young people among them. I took my 14-year old daughter to Occupy demonstrations in Nashville and here in our hometown of Murfreesboro. She may well turn out to be an agent of change, and exposure to groups like Occupy are a good influence, in my view.

So, back to my original point, which was that I take exception to the author's claim that state oppression was a major factor in Occupy's lack of success in realizing it's greatest aspirations. I think that's false and a cop-out. I think that taking an honest and critical view of Occupy's successes and failures is important.

[HiPointDem]

11. Greenpeace's so-called 'effectiveness' ended about 1985 too. They're now a professional

fundraising organization devoted to greenwashing the status quo.

Their effectiveness ended when they stopped being radical & became 'professional'. as so with all such groups.

[cheapdate]

16. The Greenpeace in my earlier example

was the original Greenpeace Foundation that began in a quiet Vancouver neighborhood in the mid-1960s, and which dissolved in 1979. Their amazing stories of courage and conviction were a source of inspiration for thousands of people the world over. Their record of accomplishments is not seriously disputable.

I raised them as an example for the things they did well in their early years. Particularly how they deliberately used the media to their greatest advantage. For example, during their Amchitka campaign to stop U.S. nuclear testing in the Aleutians they successfully moved a large consensus of Canadian citizens and their government against the testing. They unified hundreds of thousands of citizens around the Pacific Rim in opposition, and brought great pressure upon the Canadian and US governments to abandon the remainder of the planned series of tests. Their deliberate media strategy was a major factor in all of this.

I don't share your dismissive and practically contemptuous attitude toward the various organizations around the world who carry on the Greenpeace name. People contribute however they can. Dismissing sincere and dedicated people who don't fit your idea of "radical enough" is a mistake. Coincidentally, it's also a mistake that some Occupy groups fell into, which further hurt their ability to grow into a true mass movement.

The differences between Occupy and the early Greenpeace Foundation are huge. Occupy began as a large, virtually unplanned gathering of thousands of people in cities across the United States. Greenpeace began as a very small, tightly knit group of activists, journalists, attorneys, teachers, sailors, and scientists with a fairly strong common purpose.

Greenpeace began to lose organizational and philosophical coherence as it grew in size. The complex dynamics of organizing what had now become an international group of ecological activists created stresses and disagreements that ultimately broke them apart.

I raised the example of Greenpeace as constructive criticism and not to discount the extraordinary effort and achievement of Occupy.

[Fire Walk With Me]

13. Marching with Occupy in Los Angeles, I've seen cops grab people who were looking entirely

in the opposite direction in order to spook their natural, instinctual responses into anything for which they could make an arrest.

"Don't feed the trolls" became an operative chant. I've seen people given multiple felony charges during actions, wholly ludicrous in nature...the thing is, this was occurring during the existence of the CA three strikes law: three felonies gives you automatic life in prison. Automatic life in prison for one arrest during a march. Doing court support I watched those arresting cops waltz in with smiles, gleefully happy to help prosecutors make those charges stick. I was waiting outside one courtroom as a possible witness if needed and inside, the prosecutor threatened to have an Occupier arrested on the stand. The judge prevented this witness tampering but that's the short skinny of it. One Occupier was overnight given five new charges when she refused a plea deal. Two car-loads of cops "just happened" to show up in her apartment hallway the next morning before continuance (I was there, saw it with my own eyes; a third car parked outside).

Rabid prosecutors going to any lengths; cops happy to slap false charges and try to make them stick; city hall fully in support of it/behind it. It may have been rumor but word went around for a minute that prosecutors were trying to get new charges put in place against the original 292 arrested for breaking the eviction curfew notice at city hall, after they'd been cleared of charges.

This writer for Family Guy was one of those 292 arrested during the Los Angeles city hall attack by 1,400 riot cops (that's the city's number, not an estimate).

http://myoccupylaarrest.blogspot.com/

That's quite an experience for anyone to endure. If you are a person of color, you are more likely to be screwed over by the courts and prison system.

Domestic terrorism as defined by the "patriot act" and the FBI includes the following:

Force or the threat of force (includes arrest and charges) against a civilian population for political purposes.

Domestic terrorism. Yes, people tended to stay home after that, leaving some hardened Occupiers continuing on (including the superb Occupy Fights Foreclosures who are still beating back the banks, who continue such illegalities as double-tracking).

Remember what SWAT did to Occupy Miami:

As one of those attacked by a riod cop during a peaceful march, I can tell you that these experiences are quite undesirable and unpleasant, to say the damn least. Those who worried through months upon months of bullshit legal issues were very upset as well. The same old weapons against a new movement.

Then the FBI began creating and taking political prisoners (Cleveland, Chicago No NATO) and now the FBI are "approaching" activists in the PNW as well as TransCanada showing slideshows of peaceful activists by name and record, telling local cops to treat them as terrorists. DHS and FBI spying on Occupy from day one, sharing our information with the very corporations at which we pointed...the Supreme Court now making protest illegal on their grounds, and Obama signing HR347 making it a Federal crime with up to 10 years in prison if they so choose, for protesting where secret service are at work. An anti-mic check law. An anti-protesting law (yes, I know some disagree with that but its full potential exists and only needs be applied).

It's getting pretty ugly out there.

[cheapdate]

17. It's not easy.

I don't have any good answers. I do believe that Occupy was weakened by not having a strong leader, or leaders -- not having a powerful voice with a clear message in the person of a leader. Please take this example loosely, but the civil rights movement had Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe that one of the reasons that Occupy didn't succeed in attracting large numbers of ordinary Americans -- who may have been sympathetic -- was that their message was way too muddled.

Regarding the extreme new federal laws, shit. There's no good answer except to have them repealed -- which is a daunting task.

[sabrina 1]

20. Most social movements that challenge the status quo, seem to disappear, for a while.

But they do not go away. OWS has not gone away. OWS did not have weapons to fight off the 'security, police state, brutal attacks they were subjected to. Like Gandhi, their goal is peaceful protest. To survive on the streets would have meant going against their stated commitment to peaceful protest.

The truth is they never expected to last more than two weeks at most, occupying the public square. So they far exceeded their initial goals which only shows how much the people were waiting for such a movement.

All over the world OWS and other peaceful protest movements have made a deep impression on various societies and they continue to build their movement, now moving on to different tactics.

It took the Civil Rights Movement many years to have an effect, but the once the foundations were laid, the ideas put out there, there really was no stopping them, delaying perhaps, but no stopping them. You can force people off the streets, but you cannot kill an idea. The idea is out there now, thanks to OWS and it isn't going anywhere.

[99th_Monkey]

4. "They" are who again?

I think you mean "we" don't you?

Yes, we both -- you and I at least -- missed our moment of opportunity with Occupy,
and didn't step up to make it bigger, last longer, etc.

I'm sure Occupy wasn't perfect either, and so on. That takes nothing away from the
historic fact that Occupy was literally bludgeoned out of existence by thugs with clubs & guns.

btw - There really is no "they", unless you're talking about the 1% of course. That's the
genius of The 99% meme.

[cheapdate]

6. Please see my reply to Bluenorthwest, just above.

Hopefully, it's more clear.

(on edit : wherever the word "they" is used, you may substitute "we who participated in or supported Occupy&quot

[99th_Monkey]

7. Nicely put.

I don't even disagree with you, well, at least not very much. Just to be clear,
I have no problem with "taking an honest and critical view of Occupy's successes
and failures". I think I can do that, without insinuating that the Occupy Movement
lacked tactical prowess, or whatever, fill in the blank. I think what happened was
amazing, and I also wish that it had inspired more people to "get down" with a
peaceful revolution, which would sweep through the land like a tidal wave.

I also notice that your post really didn't address my point, about that you ARE part
of The 99%, and so there isn't a "they" out their to blame.

[mick063]

9. Occupy was a huge success

The fact that you feel compelled to diminish it, more than a year after it's "demise" is proof of that.

People don't want to get arrested, beaten, and pepper sprayed. They endured it anyway.

I never camped out or marched with them, but they sparked a resonant, long lasting message that resides within me. I am the hidden supporter that you didn't see banging a drum on television. There are thousands, perhaps millions more like me. After watching the federally coordinated effort to brutalize them, my resolve grew exponentially. Perhaps it was one brutal, shameful weekend that has influenced me more than any single event in the last decade.

Occupy are my heroes and my heroes were abused. They say that the Nazi bombing of London only strengthened the resolve of the British people. Likewise, the "crackdown" has hardened me and made me more resolute than you could possibly imagine.

99% and 1% are common political terms that every politically minded person, world wide, clearly understands. The messaging worked. The Democratic Party would do well to match such a feat. When was the last time that the DNC has invented anything "new"?

For that reason alone, Occupy was a resounding success.

[cheapdate]

19. I don't intend to diminish Occupy.

I supported it strongly, spent hours at Occupy demonstrations with my daughter, etc. You're missing my point, or else I'm not making it clear.

[felix_numinous]

2. K&R!

Just wanted to thank you for this link, there is a lot there to feed my mind today Good stuff. I will likely order the book too.

[Mojorabbit]

8. Great post! nt

[99th_Monkey]

10. Thanks. nt

[Maximumnegro]

12. White people problems.

This is the same stuff that's been going on for years, it's just that the internet age allows greater transparency than before. Personally I'd like for us to focus on you know not sending women and minority rights back to the 19th century. Yeah yeah we can do both etc. Well sure seems like some would rather spend time on one and not the other or even more hilarious, tie in one with everything else:NSA/Snowden and Zimmerman, NSA/Snowden and Texas, NSA/Snowden and ObamaObamaObamaObama.

There are plenty in this country who are used to aunauthorized surveillance and invasion of privacy but have nevertheless focused on getting basic rights to be recognized. So far I am seeing a definite schism between the real voting axis of 2014 and 2016, women and minorities vs. the NSA/privacy hullabaloo. I bet one set's going to stay home and another's going to pout out. I've got my money on which is which.

[Fire Walk With Me]

14. K&R; I strongly identified with Levy's section regarding the Kabbalah's correlation on negativity!

[WillyT]

18. K & R !!!