While the crisis within ruling circles mounts – the New York Times asks “Is Democracy Dead?” – anger is mounting where it really counts, among the majority. People’s aspirations for a democracy that provides more than an occasional vote is growing into an irresistible force.
The revolutionists call on us to ignore the political charades and spectacles orchestrated by our oligarchic masters around electoral politics. They tell us to dismiss the liberals who look to a political system that is dead. They expose the press as an echo chamber for the elites.
“We have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population… In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security….”
Often confused with the National Public Order Intelligence Unit and the Forward Intelligence Teams, NETCU was the public face of the police’s dealings with protests. Here we revisit how it enabled industry and police to collaborate in the suppression of protest, and show how its former officers continue to provide a service to industry.
Resistance, Wolin and Saul agreed, will begin locally, with communities organizing to form autonomous groups that practice direct democracy outside the formal power structures, including the two main political parties. These groups will have to address issues such as food security, education, local governance, economic cooperation and consumption. And they will have to sever themselves, as much as possible, from the corporate economy.
UK: Protesters cry and condemn the Met as they clear ‘Occupy Democracy’ for the visit of the President of Singapore
At eighteen minutes past six on Sunday evening, as soon as the Sun had set, police closed in to break up a group of peaceful protesters sitting together in solidarity on the lawns of Parliament Square. Beneath the helpless gaze of Nelson Mandela, one protester after another was manhandled and forcibly dragged from the neck by encircling gangs of policemen – not because their protest was deemed illegal, but because the tarpaulin they were sitting on is classified as “sleeping equipment” by the Met, and is consequently, since the 2011 Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act, banned from the gardens of Parliament Square.
Contemporary activism begins from the realization that for the first time in history, a synergy of catastrophes face us. Our physical environment is dying, our financial markets are collapsing and our culture, fed on a diet of junk thought, is atrophying — unable to muster the intellectual courage to face our predicament. While some may caution against immediate action by pointing out that societies often predict perils that never come, what is remarkable about our times is that the apocalypse has already happened.
When a sexually assaulted American citizen can be falsely arrested for assaulting a police officer, brought to trial by a corrupt prosecutor whose false case is endorsed by a corrupt judge and convicted by an insouciant jury, you know that justice is dead in America.
The death of Justice is a huge problem. The US not only has the largest percentage of its population in prison of every country in the world, the US also has the largest absolute number of prison inmates, larger even than “authoritarian” China which has a population four times larger than the US. In China, despite Washington’s endless lies about “human rights abuses,” a citizen has a far lower chance of imprisonment than does a “freedom and democracy” American.
While the mainstream, the liberals, and the squeamish all take turns spouting uninformed slander about anarchists (and the now-mythical Black Bloc), the truth remains: It requires an incredible amount of optimism to be an anarchist.
The very reason why Bill’s work lives on and still has such amazing potency is that, in a world full of ‘banality and mediocrity’, of sophistry, of casuistry and speciousness, of the kind of fakery and shallowness Brand Man and his ilk make their stock in trade, his words retain the mark of genuine authenticity. They are like water in a desert to those of us thirsting for something real in a world of fabrication and deception.
The furore over Russia’s outrageous anti-gay law and Putins offensive remarks on the subject has meant LBGT campaigners have been torn, between a stance on boycotting the Sochi Winter Olympics and supporting participation. There have been calls, too, for Olympic sponsors like McDonalds and Coca Cola (still beggars belief) to speak out about the issue (fat chance! Profit is the bottom line – Coke has even had people murdered to protect it). So what’s to be done?
