Neither Left nor Right but Realism

So says Prof Steve Keen in addressing Occupy Sydney's last public event before the attempted suppression of dissent there. See video here. Unlike many other countries, Oz protesters were actually at the national Reserve Bank of Australia. Some of the usual suspects have suggested that the network of Central Reserve Banks is the most appropriate focus for blame, and reformation, in connection with the ongoing global crisis - now termed the "late-2000s financial crisis" by Wikipedia - yes, this Crisis keeps on growing bigger and deeper!

"[P]rotesters have joined Harvard law professor and Creative Commons board member Lawrence Lessig's call for a convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution made at a September 24–25, 2011 conference co-chaired by the Tea Party Patriots' national coordinator, in Lessig's October 5 book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It, and at the Occupy protest in Washington, DC ..." Wikipedia entry on the Occupy Movement, 23/10/11.

"Vas Littlecrow, a tea party die-hard since the movement’s early days, let the Internet noise about Occupy Wall Street wash over her, leaving her alternately annoyed and intrigued. She went on Google Plus to debate the Occupiers, “and they started saying things that clicked with me,” she said. “This was deja vu with how I got into the tea party” ..." Read more at the Washington Post article "For Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements, some Common Ground."

This is not a simplistic Left/Right issue, however much some of our leaders, with their customary divide and rule strategy, might like to make us believe it.

Amabhulu Anyama Asenzeli Iworry

"How can you claim to be a private citizen?” he fumed. “There is nothing like that. South Africa is ruled by the ANC. We all belong to the ANC, like it or not!” Comrade Mayor, South Africa 2011.

"There is something wrong that is happening in this country. That is not what we struggled for.” Archbishop Tutu, 2009.

The Archbishop's latest run-in with the ANC State, over the Dalai Lama being refused entry to South Africa, ought to have drawn quite a bit of unwanted high profile attention to that country's growing deficit in the values of freedom that the self-styled "Rainbow Nation" was once claimed to uphold.

When are those in the international community who supported the fight against Apartheid going to wake up to what's really being done in the ANC State now. As Pedro Alexis Tabensky wrote in February this year: "The poor are steadily getting angrier and they are preparing for something. They have relatively little to lose, except the hope that drives their movements, informed predominantly by desire for justice for those who are systematically dehumanized in our country today."

Toussaint Losier in a detailed piece from "Left Turn" further explains: "[O]nce elected, the ANC government failed to live up to its campaign promises, as commitments to neoliberal trade agreements and the paying-off of apartheid-era debt quickly overruled its social democratic proposals. In 1996, the ANC reiterated earlier agreements with South African capital and the International Monetary Fund by formally adopting the Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy as its economic program."

"Reflecting a neoliberal approach to development, GEAR has promoted market deregulation, fiscal discipline, wage restraints, and the privatization of government services. In place of redistributive policies, GEAR relies on foreign direct investment and integration into the world market to ‘trickle down’ benefits to the poor and working class. As a result, the government has largely relied on bank-financing and private construction firms to meet the vast housing backlog."

With the new South Africa looking like a very scary chimaera of totalitarianism and neo-liberalism, little wonder then that it also presents naturally fertile ground for the blossoming #occupy global movement.

"We will occupy Grahamstown in the name of freedom. We insist that all people have the right to organise themselves according to their own free choices. We denounce the ANC for the murder of Andries Tatane and all the others. We denounce the ANC for the repression of the Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Landless People's Movement, the Anti-Eviction Campaign and all the others. We denounce the ANC for their attempts to censor the media. We denounce the ANC for continuing to claim that the movements of the poor are a Third Force. The ANC insult us by making us live like pigs and excluding us from all decision making and then, when we rebel, they insult us again by saying that it must be a white academic that is making us rebel. The ANC is incapable of understanding that poor black people can, like all other people, think for ourselves. The ANC is incapable of understanding that they do not and have never had a monopoly on struggle. The ANC is incapable of understanding that they are the real counter-revolutionaries."

From the Unemployed People's Movement Press Statement, 13th October 2011
@ Abahlali baseMjondolo

Hiding from Reality

Three weeks ago over a thousand environmental protesters were arrested outside the White House with barely a squeak from the MSM. Last week some British (so-called) newspapers pulled news of unrest in Rome off their pages, leaving here only the Daily Mirror to report actual news, afaics. This week the corporate media blackout of the Wall Street protests in the USA continues.

Some timely reportage at #occupywallstreet, amongst others.

Paul Harris' Grauniad blog gives some background info on the Wall St protests.

HT: Erich Vieth at Dangerous Intersection.

Dangerous Instruments

Aaron Peters writes in OpenDemocracy.net:

"The suspension of 'everyday' legislation is now becoming normal. 'Exceptional' conditions are increasingly viewed as quotidian, something Giorgio Agamben explores in his book 'State of Exception'. We will increasingly see tactics designed to deal with crisis employed during ANY situation of mass public assembly – whether it be a political protest, carnival or sporting event.

As Brett Neilson writes of Agamben's thinking on the matter,

"...this figure of generalized catastrophe under a sky void of transcendental authority...(is) characterized by 'governmental violence that ignores international law externally and produces a permanent state of exception internally, while all the time pretending to uphold the law.In light of Cameron's remarks on the recent London riots and 'silly' European human rights legislation, Agamben's views on executive power replacing legislative power in contemporary ‘liberal democracies’ are especially pertinent ..." [more ...]

Over 1000 Arrests Outside White House But Media Still Silent

More than a thousand people have so far been arrested protesting the construction of the Keystone-XL Tarsands pipeline through the Ogalalla Aquifer.

Still not heard anything about this on the radio or other media here.

Why not?

President Turns a Blind Eye as Masses Arrested at White House

"... Now, here’s the thing: while it’s great to see the press corps pushing the Administration to recognize our demonstration, the fact that Carney hasn’t yet briefed the President on the protest and the pipeline is a worrying sign about how out of touch this administration is on this issue."

“Just in the last two days everyone from the president’s chief climate scientist to an 84-year-old grandmother was arrested on his front doorstep,” said environmental author Bill McKibben, who is spearheading the White House protest. “This is the largest civil disobedience action in the environmental movement in a generation, and if they really aren’t even discussing it with the president, that signals a deep disrespect for their supporters ..."

More at Tarsands Action