Occupy Wall St. (support/debate)

[THEBLACKNOVA]

OWS Anarchism in Action at Spartacus Books

Occupy Wall Street organizers and activists Marisa Holmes and Matt Presto come to Spartacus Books in Vancouver, BC for a talk on Anarchist principles and methods in Occupy.

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:


Part 4:

[JesusCrust]

Sidewalk chalk, an offense apparently punishable by tear gas and rubber bullets.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002939669
http://rt.com/usa/news/police-bullets-p ... rs-la-085/


"BREAKING-----

One person who was hit by the rubber bullets tonight on the way to a local 7/11

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

"Los Angeles was placed on a citywide tactical alert Thursday night when hundreds of people, including Occupy LA protesters, gathered near Downtown LA as part of a demonstration by the group that set up camp on City Hall lawn late last year."

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local ... 19626.html

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Recorded on Livestream - first shots fired

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/23953533
Info starts like at 10:30 markish... Interviewing people in the street...

ABC 7 tried to block the livestream around the 13 mark and fights with livestreamer.

Shot fired around 14 min mark.
---
Streams-
http://occupystream.com/

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One person reported shot in eye with rubber bullet. 11 arrests two kids harassed for chalk writing. Man who won $300,000 in Florida also reportedly arrested. He won after city arrested him for chalk writing. Also one person reporting tear gas used and people locked in the Alexander(?) hotel by police.
http://twitter.com/ktytmf12/status/2236 ... 01/photo/1


Arrest this kid he's got a weapon.
http://twitter.com/ktytmf12/status/2236 ... 92/photo/1


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*CHALK WALK + GET OUT OF JAIL

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

https://p.twimg.com/AxqQ57rCMAI_EC1.jpg:large

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https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ... 9318_n.jpg
The boy hit in the face by a rubber bullet. There's also reports of a womyn who got shot in the eye.
There were reports of a possible life threatening injury, but there hasn't been any updates about that.

.jr.



This was 100% LAPD's fault. And it turns out regular LA citizens don't like seeing police in riot gear on their streets or women being violently attacked by LAPD for no reason. Chalking is NOT a crime!!!
The funny thing is... most OLAers had left at this point. Only one OLAer was arrested this evening. All the rest were regular LA citizens.
Based on Twitter reports, it seems like OccupyLA members handed out chalk at the regular monthly 'Artwalk' event, after recent arrests at OLA for chalkupy actions. Many non-occupiers began using chalk and creating their own art, which is when riot police attacked.

An initial arrest of a woman for chalking, shown in this picture, drove the crowd (most of them non-occupiers or activists) into the streets.
Based on Twitter reports, it seems like OccupyLA members handed out chalk at the regular monthly 'Artwalk' event, after recent arrests at OLA for chalkupy actions. Many non-occupiers began using chalk and creating their own art, which is when riot police attacked.

An initial arrest of a woman for chalking, shown in this picture, drove the crowd (most of them non-occupiers or activists) into the streets.

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ... 8016_n.jpg
(Kit)

[THEBLACKNOVA]

"Occupy Unmasked" is coming to theaters

HAHA i think ill wait and just download this shit for free and laugh HAHA





HAHA I went to the "Official" web site for this film and under the "TAKE ACTION" heading the first action it asks people to do is "Buy Occupy Unmasked" HAHA

[mymarkx]

Part of my day on Twitter:


NATO BAIL FUND: HELP GET DJ OUT OF COOK COUNTY JAIL!!

Danny Johnson from Occupy Los Angeles was arrested in Chicago on May 15th during an immigrants' rights protest leading up to the NATO summit. Danny (or DJ) was grabbed on the arm from behind by a Chicago cop while protesting. He jerked his arm forward in a spontaneous response to being grabbed. He was arrested and charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, a felony, as well as a misdemeanor charge of obstructing justice. DJ spent 7 days in a Chicago jail before his preliminary hearing where the judge dropped the charges and release him, stating he would not send someone to the penitentary for an accidental bump with an officer. The state attorney, Anita Alvarez, has 160 days to appeal to a grand jury, and reinstate the charges after their dismissal. Under political pressure from Chicago's Mayor Emmanuel, this is exactly what they did. The prosecutor has to argue a case that lacks evidence, an absolute waste of taxpayers’ resources and a clear example of using trumped up charges to target more prolific activists. A warrant was issued for DJ’s arrest on 2 counts of aggravated assault on an officer, a felony. DJ turned himself into the Chicago sherriff's department, and has been at Cook County Jail since Monday, July 30th. He is being held in maximum security, where he is in his cell 18 hours, and out for 6. There is light depravation, waking at odd hours, and frequent lockdowns. DJ was denied bond at his initial hearing because he did not have a Chicago residence.

On August 7th, a second bond hearing occurred, and a residence was established with the court where DJ would stay upon his release. BAIL WAS SET AT $75,000, SO WE NEED TO RAISE $7500 total, to bond DJ out of Cook County. This is with the stipulation that DJ wear an electronic monitor ankle bracelet until his trial, and will be on house arrest. PLEASE HELP US RAISE THIS BOND, AND GET DJ OUT OF COOK COUNTY JAIL AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!

DJ was a vital participant of Occupy L.A. and was arrested during the raid of L.A.’s encampment at city hall. He then joined Occupy Walk USA in February, an outreach and activist walk to raise awareness about social and economic justice, walking from San Diego to New York. The walkers have gotten as far as Albuquerque, NM. They took a break to travel to NATO in Chicago, the National Gathering in Philadelphia, and then a 99 mile march with Guitarmy after the Occupy National Gathering, walking from Philadelphia to New York. DJ has been a high profile activist within the Occupy movement across the country, and the State Attorney's attempt to target activists with trumped up charges is indicative of a nationwide effort to suppress the movement through police harassment, brutality, and false charges.

Please help us get DJ out of Cook County Jail, and to defeat this case, by contributing to his bail fund. Ever bit helps. Let’s show our solidarity for DJ and get him out of prison as soon as possible, to defeat this case, and free him to be the activist he is meant to be, speaking truth to power once again.

https://www.wepay.com/x7jtjif/donations ... ep-dj-free

------------------------
So yeah, I'd said I wasn't going to donate to any more Occupy bail funds, but I lied.

Some Tweeps in the Bay Area have been asking if it is okay to breathe after the Chevron refinery fire. Hell no, it isn't okay, but what's the other option?

And then there was this link somebody Tweeted:



If that's what anarcho-syndicalists are about, it sure beats the hell out of walking around in circles carrying picket signs.

[THEBLACKNOVA]

OWS takes next step: Invisible Army of Defaulters: Communique #1



Transcript:

From the Debtor's Jungle:

We are the Invisible Army of Defaulters. We are your neighbors. We are your family, your friends. We are millions. We are everywhere. We are going to bring the system to its knees. We can, because we wield the one power that all the armies of the world can never defeat: The power of refusal. This power has destroyed the mightest empires. The same fate awaits the current system of mafia capitalism in America, an economic system driven by Wall Street CEOs who produce nothing, contribute nothing, who have bought our government and reduced it into a criminal enterprise whose main purpose is to support loan-sharking, gambling, extortion, and the slow reduction of American citizens into debt peons. Every dollar we take from a subprime mortgage speculator, every dollar we save from a collection agency is a tiny piece of our own lives and freedom that we can give back to our communities. To be able to take care of our children, our friends, our families is a value that no accountant can ever measure, that no government, loan administrator, or hedge fund manager can ever have the right to take away from us. We are an army of lovers who cannot be defeated. We are laying the groundwork for another world. Strike debt.

Resist. Insist. Stand together. Build. Never give up. #S17.

Taken from here: http://anarchistnews.org/content/ows-ta ... mmunique-1

[JesusCrust]

TalkingStickTV - Cindy Milstein - Anarchism and the Occupy Movement

[mymarkx]

A nice explanation of why so many Occupiers are voting for Wall Street:

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katehicks/ ... uy_in_2008

Excerpt:

"Take, for example, the gentleman I spoke to at Occupy DC last Thursday. While waving his anti-Goldman Sachs sign and proclaiming himself, "anti-Big Bank USA," yet pro-Obama, he couldn't tell me who donated the most money to Obama's presidential campaign.

Happy to oblige, I produced a list of the top donors to Obama and McCain's campaigns--and if you're an "anti-Big Bank USA" Obama supporter, you sure as heck won't like his numbers...."

But some Occupiers aren't voting. A few in Chicago burned their voter IDs in front of Obama headquarters during the DNC.

Terri Lee has been doing some excellent organizing and has a Facebook page with a large following (I don't have Facebook, so I don't have the link). Linh Dinh is another election boycott advocate who has been speaking and publishing. There are at least two others with websites, and of course a few more who advocate the right thing for all the wrong reasons.

I'll be on a radio show with Terri on Monday, October 1st, 2012. Carson's Corner on blogtalk radio: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/carsonscorner 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, 5:00 p.m. Pacific.

I'll also be giving a talk at the San Diego public library, main branch on E Street, October 25th at 4:00 p.m. Of course many people will already have mailed in their ballots by then.

My essay, "You've Got to Stop Voting," has been reposted on several websites and has more than 13,000 views on my own site--I think the previous record for an article there was about 1,500 views.

That essay along with four others is available free as "Consent to Tyranny: Voting in the USA" http://fubarandgrill.org/node/1431 and also on amazon kindle for a dollar http://www.amazon.com/Consent-Tyranny-V ... B0095OHZ9G (I never mention the amazon link without first saying where the free link is, but six people have bought it on amazon. I get 35 cents for each copy sold, so I've earned $2.10. First time I've ever been paid for my writing. Does that mean I can join the Wobblies now? I tried to join many times, but you had to be a worker, that is, have a job, trade, craft, or profession of some kind that you were paid for, and all I ever had were temporary, part-time, or irrelevant-to-my-life jobs, so I didn't qualify.)

Occupy was co-opted by Wall Street. The people who had started the movement mostly stepped away. Many kept trying to break through, but the government agents, the political party operatives, and the people registering voters "for a cause," had massive numbers and unlimited funds. They took over most Occupy communications and agendas.

It is probably too late to reach them. The operatives outnumber the Occupiers, and some who stuck around after the movement was co-opted were the most ignorant because they didn't see what was going on. There is still some sanity in a few Occupy cities but mostly among people who were active long before Occupy and will be active long after Occupy.

It took six years, but I'm no longer alone and I'm happy to see the boycott gathering steam. I don't expect a successful election boycott this year, but I'm predicting a historically low turnout, probably the first time that a Presidential election gets a lower turnout than a midterm election, not due to the election boycott movement but simply due to disillusioned voters and lackluster candidates. I've already seen one mainstream pundit predicting the same thing and trying to explain it away. But one never knows. We live in an age where things can go viral overnight, so anything is possible. Maybe it is even possible for Occupiers to stop voting for the government that's bashing their heads in. Or maybe I'm dreaming.

[punkmar77]

You and I both saw it before our eyes...and what really cracks me up is occupiers claiming anarchism through all this...

[mymarkx]

One woman recently started an Occupy Election Boycott Resources mailing list. She just put together a bunch of Occupy email addresses and started sending out the list.

I corresponded with her off-list. She wants 50-50 female/male representation in government, and doesn't seem to understand that to have 50-50 representation in government, you need to have government. I tried to explain to her that if you have direct democracy, since females are at least 50% of the population, she'd have her 50-50, but I'm not sure it sunk in. She has "scientific studies" saying that 50-50 makes things better. I'm sure it does, but only in countries that aren't basically fascist. 50% male fascists and 50% female fascists isn't going to make anything better for anyone.

But the people on the list were even dumber. There were some positive responses, but with a few exceptions, they were from Occupies outside the US. Most US Occupies wrote in to whine that they would be happy to receive list emails about anything other than an election boycott--on a list clearly entitled Election Boycott Resources. One persistent dude said that he's a revolutionary and wants to built a new type of government, but that now is not the time and that until the time is ripe (obviously never) he's going to keep voting for this government. A woman wrote in to say that we are bound by our civic duty to vote and that if people kept talking about a boycott she was going to turn us in to Google for blacklisting. Terri told the complainers that if they didn't want mail from the list, they should block it, but the complaints kept coming. Obviously the Occupy voters couldn't block unwanted emails unless the government did it for them, so I expressed my sympathy for all those people with inboxes full of ads for body part enlargers and requests for assistance from Nigerian heirs. Most did end up blocking the list, probably because the people who controlled the Occupy addresses were political party operatives but others may have had access to the accounts and might have seen information they weren't supposed to see.

I have a neighbor in my senior building who is voting for Obama. She's a MENSA member but not an Occupier. I tried to talk to her about Obama, but she said, "No, no, no--I don't want to hear it! I love my country!"

So yesterday when I saw her I said, "You know that before the Age of Enlightenment there was something called The Dark Ages, right?"

She said yes.

I said, "That was a time when people believed whatever the church told them. So if somebody said that the sun didn't revolve around the earth, they'd say, 'No, no, no--I don't want to hear it! I love my church!'"

She looked at me and said, "I see what you're saying."

I said, "There are many things that you don't want to know because if you knew the truth you might not be able to hold on to your beliefs." She changed the subject.

There are several high IQ groups that require higher IQ's than MENSA. I once was told I qualified for the highest of them and they sent me some brochures but I didn't join because one of the things they talked about was why we men are smarter than women. If they had any brains they'd know that just because men took the credit for many things invented by women, doesn't mean men are smarter, but that men were in a position in patriarchal societies to take credit for anything that women did. IQ doesn't mean much, and it is definitely no indicator of common sense.

I stopped paying COX cable for broadband internet and now I'm back on dial-up. I'm only a block away from the library, so I can reserve a computer there for an hour a day if I want to watch videos or do anything that needs broadband. There's a great free dial-up service with local access numbers in most parts of California: http://www.fastfreedialup.com/ No registration or anything--you just find a local access number, set up a dial-up connection and that's it. You do have to have a landline phone and I suppose many people no longer have those. I never used my phone anyway--kept it unplugged in a drawer unless I needed to call out, so dial-up is perfect for me. And it is much faster than it was 30 years ago.

There were some anarchists, like David Graeber, involved with starting Occupy, which it why it began by supporting direct democracy. And there are viable Occupies in countries that have an anarchist tradition. Speaking of which, there have been a lot of videos (which I've seen Tweets about but can't watch until I get to the library) about the violence in Spain right now. Most of them show cops beating protesters, but one shows a bunch of protesters beating the shit out of a cop. Another, which I'm looking forward to viewing, shows the cops beating the shit out of somebody they thought was a protester but turned out to have been an undercover cop. A bit of poetic justice there. ACAB

[xXZenyattaXx]

*Cackles* Oh Occupy..... It wasn't long ago that I defended you against all opposing voices, but now I just want to toast your demise and dance on yer grave!

It was almost a year ago that I got involved in the mess.... and Occupy gave me something to believe in, which I needed more than anything else, though now I can say to speak of only brings back painful frustrations.

...because there are a lot of fucked up things with Occupy. I can sum it all up really, with what occured a little while ago. See, Walmart was trying to move into a historical building in the community, and Occupy people naturally wanted to be a part of that. But, instead of talking with the community and asking them what they would be comfortable with/how Occupy could help, they marched right in an dropped a big "Occupy banner" and took the whole project over. The community people were very fucking pissed off about it, and Occupy burned a fuck lot of bridges - not only with them but with the Chicano park people as well (Although I don't know the details but it was a similar situation)

I don't like fucking Walmart. But a lot of people in the area are poor (and Latino) whereas most of the occupiers are old, white, wealthy-middle class, and male. So, it's easy for them to say "Shop at Whole Foods instead!", but when you're poor and/or jobless you don't have a choice. The action was done not with the spirit of understanding but with one of elitism, classism, and even imperialism.

...that, coupled with my voice being continuously marginalized in the group, made me very embarrassed to be part of OSD and lead to my not-so-quiet departure.

I say lots of shit about Occupy, but really if it weren't for it I would not be what I am.... so yeah there's that.

[mymarkx]

"...old, white, wealthy-middle class, and male."

Perfect description of Democratic Party political operative Ray Lutz, who never misses an opportunity to register voters for a cause, the cause, of course, being elitist, classist, racist, sexist, genocidal capitalist imperialism.

I got to see some old friends and make some new ones, and I found out there's a name for what I am (anarchist) when I met Mar, but I probably would have run into him at some other event sooner or later--hard to miss a tall dude with a big flag. San Diego has a lot of people calling themselves anarchists who aren't. Downside, I got my picture taken by the cops a few times and have reason to believe I'm now in the Mossad files too. Big whoop.

I'm glad I didn't see the arrogance of Occupy at the Walmart thing. Shameful. Looking forward to dancing on that grave together, Zenyatta.

[xXZenyattaXx]

I flipped Ray Lutz off once. Best feeling ever.

[mymarkx]

Thank you. You were speaking for many, including me.

Ray is still claiming that he got arrested for registering voters. That's a lie. He got arrested for setting up a table, that stupid "structure" thing that doesn't allow tents, tables, chairs, etc. That he did it to register voters was irrelevant. He could have set up a table to collect money for the Police Benevolent Fund, and he'd still have been arrested. And he could have walked around with a clipboard registering voters 24/7/365, and never been arrested.

How dumb do you have to be to vote for the state that is repressing you?

[punkmar77]

I got him alone on the trolley once and gave him a verbal diatribe that got him highly upset, needless to say he thought he was controlling the Occupy movement...

[mymarkx]

Good work, Mar!

Ray may have been temporarily upset, but I'm sure it went in one ear and out the other--that's what happens when there's no brain between the ears.

He has an education and a good vocabulary, but lacks critical reasoning. Another throwback to the Dark Ages, basing their lives on false beliefs.

The radio show I did yesterday (all 2 hours of it) is online here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/carsonscor ... in-the-usa

I'll be recording another show tomorrow (the one above was live), and as soon as I find out when it will air, I'll post a link here.

Terri Lee, the woman who arranged for us to be on these shows and co-guests with me, has been dealing masterfully with various statists, primarily Greens and Marxists, on her Election Boycott facebook page.

Somehow Terri managed to get me and Noam Chomsky into an email discussion today. He was so irrational and unreasonable that although I'm sending the correspondence to be with the collection of my personal papers (at a library of a university I've never been to), I'm asking that it be sealed until after he dies so as not to embarrass him. I'm not sure why I'm so considerate, but most people I know lost respect for him a long time ago anyway. If not for the old boy system, we wouldn't be plagued with so many white male morons.

Not punk, but I like this recent track commemorating Victor Jara by Rebel Diaz and Agent of Change: Broken Hands Play Guitars http://soundcloud.com/agentofchange/fre ... rebel-diaz

[Caps]

Terri Lee, the woman who arranged for us to be on these shows and co-guests with me, has been dealing masterfully with various statists, primarily Greens and Marxists, on her Election Boycott facebook page.

Somehow Terri managed to get me and Noam Chomsky into an email discussion today. He was so irrational and unreasonable that although I'm sending the correspondence to be with the collection of my personal papers (at a library of a university I've never been to), I'm asking that it be sealed until after he dies so as not to embarrass him. I'm not sure why I'm so considerate, but most people I know lost respect for him a long time ago anyway. If not for the old boy system, we wouldn't be plagued with so many white male morons.

Chomksy has appeared to become very set in his ways. He hasn't come up with any real analysis in years, it seems. He still has moments of worthwhile insight but it's hidden 'somewhere' amongst stuff he has been saying on decades. He has also had a sympathetic view to voting in everything I've read - though, I can't remember why. I assume this was something that the pair of you clashed on?

The other thing that annoys me is he is another one to support regimes unpopular with the US, as if 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' (Pilger does this. He was asked about it a few years ago at the London Anarchist Bookfair. His argument was along the lines of 'redressing the imbalance' - exaggerating the positives and understating the negatives because the mainstream media is guilty of the reverse (he was asked about his coverage of Venezuela in The War on Democracy)).

[mymarkx]

Yup. Chomsky's a big fan of unverifiable faith-based elections, Caps, and thinks that whatever the media says the results are, is "evidence." He won't look at anything because he's certain that he's known all the answers for at least 75 years.

I'm somewhat guilty of supporting Chavez myself. He turned Venezuela from a miserable banana republic into one of the happiest countries in the world, and I have a friend who lives in Caracas who is the happiest guy I ever met. Sure it's a government and I'm supposed to be anti-statist, but I can't seem to muster up much hostility towards happiness. In fact, if I had to state a position, I'd say that I'm pro-happiness all the way.

[punkmar77]

A little off topic but still germain to the general issues of both Chavez and Chomsky & voting in general:

As the electoral ritual granting legitimacy to the occupant of the presidential seat approaches, we want to affirm to the country’s public opinion what the anarchists’ position has been regarding the electoral carnival as instrument for control and submission of the collective. What follows is the El Libertario #67 Editorial, where we clearly state our position.

El Libertario #67, September-October 2012 – Editorial

A vote for Chavez is a vote for Diosdado Cabello [1]; a vote for Capriles is a vote for Diosdado Cabello. The truth of this sentence is verified when we compare the main parts of the programs offered by both candidates: the direction the energy industry will take. Energy is the undisputed element in the country’s developmental model since 1914 when the first oil well was dug in Venezuela. The false polarization stands naked when one notes the consensus in doubling the production of fossil fuels with the participation of transnational companies. For anarchists, however, the fundamental discussion is not about who controls the industry, whether the national or the foreign bourgeoisie, but whether this reiteration of the extraction model goes against the promotion of an alternative developmental model that would not feed the internal combustion engines of global capitalism and would not damage the environment or the indigenous and peasant communities. Whoever wins on October 7 will represent a victory for financial speculative capitalism, in tune with a world market that has faithful servants in people such as Diosdado Cabello.
[I guess. If you say so...]

A Hugo Chavez victory will only be possible thanks to a convenient opposition candidate, a representative of Venezuelan oligarchy who took part in the coup d’état of April 2002. By giving Chavez a perfect scenario for revitalizing polarization, Capriles proposes a discourse focused on the middle class and deaf tone to the popular sectors. Despite his pretense of a wide and inclusive program, it was never a secret the campaign decisions were taken by the top of the most conservative and reactionary party in the country: Primero Justicia [Justice First]. Despite the obvious unhappiness with the results of his tenure and the sustained increase in social conflicts, kept in check by the caudillo’s charismatic expectations, in this scenario Capriles did not convince the unhappy Chavistas or wide sectors of the population. With this result the future would be dominated by a strengthening of the authoritarian communal state, increased exclusion from public policy due to party reasons and the domino effect of an October victory resulting in Bolivarian hegemony over governorships and mayoralties in the following regional elections in December.

On the other hand, a Capriles victory would be possible only because of abstention on the part of unhappy Chavistas and a punishment vote by large segments of the voters and not because of the winner’s virtues. Tired of the humiliation, demagogy and the general impoverishment of the standard of living, a vote against Chavez by those who had previously put their faith in him would yield the numbers needed for a second electoral defeat of the Commander-President. This would open up a scenario of conflict and the ratification of the governorships held by the so-called “opposition” in the next round of elections. This result would strengthen the formation of a new bipartisanism among the Chavista and non-Chavista blocks, who would agree on alternating tenure and so tacitly becoming a new “Pact of PuntoFijo”. [2]

Whatever the result there are two more important consequences. The first is the justification of representative comprador democracy that appeared falling in the popular explosion of the “Caracazo” [3], a form of government that could only be fixed by a charismatic and populist figure such as Hugo Chavez. The second, of special interest to anti-authoritarians, is that these elections take place in the midst of the worst roll back in history of the autonomy of the Venezuelan social movements. As shown by the numbers from the Observatorio Venezolano de Conflictividad Social [Venezuela’s Observatory of Social Conflict] [4], turning popular initiative into electoral matter yielded what seemed most difficult: to stop the increase in the number of demonstrations staged in the country, which had been on the rise since 2004. The electoral blackmail institutionalized towards electoral channels the energy of the masses in motion, dissipating the autonomy enjoyed by some grass roots conflicts against the established powers.

The attitude consistent with Anarchism can be no other than the denunciation of the electoral farce and blackmail, refusal to participate in the comedy and channeling all our energies towards recuperating and fixing the autonomy of popular social movements. The facts of the last 13 and half years confirm it: Governmental discourse changes nothing. Structural and revolutionary changes come from each and every one of the oppressed and their collective initiatives.

Notes:
[1] Diosdado Cabello is the main representative of the “Bolibourgeoisie” which arouse during the Chavez government.

[2] See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punto_Fijo_Pact

[3] “Caracazo” is the name given the popular revolt of February 27, 1989.

[4] See www.observatoriodeconflictos.org.ve

-------------------------------------------------------------

El Libertario - ellibertario@nodo50.org - @pelibertario
http://periodicoellibertario.blogspot.com
www.nodo50.org/ellibertario (in Spanish, English & other languages)

[mymarkx]

Okay, so it doesn't take very much to be one of the happiest countries in a miserably fucked up world. A sharp reduction in poverty, particularly at the most extreme end, literacy, education, food, housing, health care, honest elections...I can see where a lot of people would settle for that. Not that we in the US could ever dream of such things.

I can agree with this part: "For anarchists, however, the fundamental discussion is not about who controls the industry, whether the national or the foreign bourgeoisie, but whether this reiteration of the extraction model goes against the promotion of an alternative developmental model that would not feed the internal combustion engines of global capitalism and would not damage the environment or the indigenous and peasant communities." Unfortunately such models do not, at least to my knowledge, exist. The only model I know of is simple living that uses less energy, and most people don't want that--I'm sitting here at a computer that required genocide to be manufactured and requires more energy to run than I can begin to imagine. Eat, Sleep, Click: A bicycle-powered internet? or "How much fracking is that cat porn worth to you?" By Jane Anne Morris http://www.earthfirstjournal.org/article.php?id=535

Without the oil industry, how could Venezuela not return to being a banana republic under the heels of the US again?

At one point, Chavez, the so-called "indigenous leader," apparently not aware of the Navajo experience in the US, came very close to signing a contract with Russia for uranium mining in Venezuela. But he was willing to listen and didn't do it, even though Venezuela could have made a lot of money.

I think that at long as there is US capitalist imperialism, I can't turn my back on a Gaddafi, an Assad, or even a Chavez who will resist it. Sure, that's politically incorrect, but when there's a big bully picking on a little guy, how do you react?

My understanding is limited and I've got a lot of learning to do, so there are going to be times that I go by my feelings and instincts rather than an informed political position. At least, like Chavez, I'm willing to listen, admit when I'm wrong, and change my mind.

I just did another 2-hour radio show. It will probably air on Friday. I don't think I did very well, but I did the best I could. Terri Lee didn't participate, so it was just me and the host, David Fletcher. And it was a reverse of this conversation--he was advocating gradualism, and reformism, and I was supporting direct democracy. Or trying to. Are all alternative radio shows two frigging hours long? I've got a bad cough, a ruptured eardrum, and I'm not sure I can do many more 2-hour shows like that, at least not until I start to feel better, if that should happen. On the other hand, having been denied opportunities to talk for so long, I can't pass one up.

[shizyninja]

I wrote a blog post on the Occupy movement and what nonviolent protest means in our society today.

I write anti-fascist material to help inform people of the world were living in. Thanks for checking it out. There's other writing posts on my wordpress.