The Occupy mouvement - A militant's point of view

Hello,

I have been involved with the Québec séparatiste mouvement for most of my
life. I started as a pre-adolescent marching with my mother against english
canada. In my years I have been to meetings, "talked to" by the RCMP
many times and even consider my learning english as a tool to use against
my enemy. I am a militant that lives for one purpose and that is for the
cause of Québec. But that is on pause because there are much big problèmes that need to be fixed right now.

So I am saying I am not a militant against "Wall st." but I have fought the
"system" on a very regular basis. The goals are different but the fighting is
the same.


In principe I support the Occupy mouvement. Something needs to be done
and the world needs to "wake up."

But the mouvement is without leaders and without cohearance. It is just a
lot of angry people at this time and that is why this mouvement is easily
being ignored. Sadly when there is no leaders to say "We want xxx" and
"We want it from this person/group" by "This date" and "This is what we will
do if we do not get it"

There leaves only one other way to ignite the flames and that is with threat of violence or actual acts of violence. Personally I want a peaceful
revolution because I want to see cavemen stop being cavemen and evolve.
(Not likely but I have hope)

The problem is this mouvement is still primarily Internet based and this is
why none of the elites are even remotely worried. The Internet is part of
the "Media-Information-Complex". Without a doubt it's a tool that can be
used in the same way you pass a note. But it must be made clear that the
Media-Information-Complex can be compared to

George Orwell's "Ministry of Truth."

It falls into several areas where we are being screwed by Internet.

1. Revolutionary messages are censored.

Example : Anyone has ever watched how often Yahoo news has those
convienant technical problems or how any pro-government/Wall st.
comments are thumbs up and anything intelligent gets thumbs downs.
Similar can be said of youtube.

1. Facebook Shadow accounts.

Ask anyone that's working towards a cause that bucks the current system.
Reports come in claming that anywhere from 25% to 33% of Facebook
accounts are fake.
These facts are based on how security firms like HB GARY will offer their
Internet marketing services to various interest groups. Promising to promote
an agenda through mockery and ridicule to false information diffusion.

1. Twitter alarms.

Law Enforcement and other goverment security agencies use Twitter the
same way a fireman uses a fire alarm. Again security firms like HB Gary have
designed software that monitors literally thousands of Twitter feeds.
Allowing law enforcement to deploy quickly and efficiently to an area of
interest.

1. Twitter-Facebook matching and identification.

Again security firms like HB Gary have created software that analyses
Twitter feeds and looks for probable matches in Facebook users.

The list of these sort of things is LONG. The end result is
"Don't Trust The Internet."

People have to start to organize into small cells. The revolutionary cell
approach is what the government fears the most. Because they can not
control it because they do not know what is being discussed or planned.

And in these cells the idea is not to dicusss how to destroy things but to
educate each other on who is doing what and why. This allows you to
choose your targets very carefully and it also helps to discouver the
weakness of an enemy. But most importanly this collection of information
allows you to teach others the truth. Because in all of human history
the public tends to side with the person they believe is telling the truth.
(no matter how ugly that truth might be)

 

I think by its nature the Occupy movement is in itself a bunch of cells. Each city is essentially autonomous, linked together by cooperation and a common cause. Outside of that though each city is basically on its own.(Minus perhaps OWS itself which has received donations from afar) I think calling the Occupy movement leaderless is a misnomer, and for most places has been from the start. Yes there is no de jure leader, but anyone who's been to a committee meeting, an occupy site, a GA, ect knows there are in fact de facto leaders. People who were already active in their city's activism movements to begin with who helped organize it in their city, who do the PR, go in between all the different groups, ect. I mean we might be technically leaderless but I can go down to the site right now and pick out the leaders. Outside of that very top, i.e. the people in charge of coordinating the overall effort, or the camp site itself specifically, you have the committees which house people more active in the movement, who are in charge of finance, media, supplies, action, whatever their committee might be, basically the next step down the leadership chain since they create direction for their area as well as put forward proposals to the general assembly. Then at the bottom you have the GA, which basically has a check on the power of the committees by the fact most GAs use a 90% consensus to pass anything.(Though I hear some are using a 100%, which I don't understand how that's working at all for them, I don't think there's a single proposal that not at least one or two people didn't oppose)

 

At occupylsx we have the 100% model in effect... Basically, if there is a block to consensus from just one person, we go back to either debate or education... However, there are rare times when a block is over-ridden... I say rare, because I haven't as yet, seen one... Usually, if there is only one person blocking, it is found that they misunderstood the proposal or were badly informed... Once all the facts and considerations are made clear, we get a 100% consensus...

Having spent the last 12 days or so at St Paul's, I am really impressed by this new kind of democratic process which includes all who wish to partake... It is Anarchy at it's finest! occupy the world!!!

 

And be transparent to the communists too. But they don't listen. What else? Maummar Gadhaffi will have to be replaced with a new green movement.

 

Does anybody know of a good FAQ page online that explains the difference between those two things in detail?

 

You're right. The internet has the very real potential to undermine and placate this movement. Groups like Anonymous are very aware of this - and I think this group serves as the real teeth of this movement. They scare the shit out of the elites - and justifiably so. Peaceful protest, does not mean polite protest. Any actions that expose and increase awareness of injustices and hypocrisy and embarrass the perpetrators of these crimes do more good than any destructive action.

Having said that - the Occupy movement should remain peaceful - it should retain and preserve that moral high ground. Eventually, the violence and intimidations will become impossible for the "asleep" to ignore. I don't doubt that agents of the elite will eventually and mistakenly cause the death of a peaceful protester or protesters and then the revolution will begin in earnest. These kinds of abuses must be documented on film and they must be distributed on an unprecedented level throughout the world via the internet - so that any "media" omission, spin or censorship is rendered impotent and would only highlight the hypocrisy of the "free" press. The entire movement needs to be documented on film 24/7 so that no amount of censorship could ever undermine it.

The movement must police itself and expose shills and instigators - without imploding out paranoia. The notion of peaceful protest must be the single common denominator among the protestors - it's the only way to effectively identify those who would undermine it. The elites would like nothing better than to have these protests nipped in their infancy by a bloody riot. Occupy is about numbers - those numbers have to swell beyond control - then change will be inevitable. We need to bring people into these areas by the bus loads. We need to show the elites what 99% really looks like.

Finally, the movement needs to stop regarding the police as "them". The movement needs to embrace the police (not private security guards) and remind them at every opportunity that this protest is for them as well. Cops are every bit as much a victim as the rest of us and they need to be reminded of that constantly - that should be a mantra. Yes there are asshole cops, and there will be asshole protesters. Every effort should be made to wake law enforcement up to their own subjugation.

 

Yes, I think it's both. Short of pulling the plug on the internet (And at this point I don't think that's entirely possible - the genie is definitely out the bottle) information will be distributed on the internet - so will misinformation and propaganda. So far it remains "the only truly free (I would add "mass") medium left. Information will find a way. What's equally important in my mind is the spreading of the ability to think critically - which I think has diminished in the U.S. for quite sometime, but that I think is starting to make a comeback. I'm still concerned with the false sense of anonymity that the internet provides - one only has to look at Egyptian revolution to see how Facebook aided in the behind the scenes thuggery inflicted upon protest organizers.

The old rhetoric is quickly becoming irrelevant in the face of blatant abuses of power and open corruption (I think about Rick Perry essentially admitting accepting bribes by being insulted by the low ball estimate Bachmann accused him of taking). The main streaming of this corruption is what scares the hell out of me. Because I've seen apathy today where bloody revolution would have resulted in the past.

 

In a very bizarre way all of them 2012 prophecies appear to be taking shape.

We will see what happens.

 

I've been invited to a few here where I live and haven't gone yet...But think I will start to attend just to see what it's all about :0)

I'm up for a little scaring the shit out of the elite with just being a presence on the streets...

 

Who's to say that the elite aren't the ones making it take place?

I have a strange feeling that they like to make up stories, tell them, and then make them happen so that you believe them...Then allow for them to control "The Situation" which puts them right back in power when they feel they are losing it...

Anyways...They do have a tendency to do that...

 

But you see the Internet is not necessary. We can live without it and we
have in the very recent past. It is also not necessary for this mouvement
to take hold or grow.

There have been many revolutions in the past before Internet.
Much bigger and more organized than this one.

Besides it was already said that there has been corruption and tricks played
that just 20 years ago would have caused riots and blood flowing on the
streets.

You can say the world governments did not fully understand the social
impact of Internet when they gave it to us. But my experience has shown
to me that these people are not stupid. They do not give us anything they
can not use against us and certainly not something they can not control.


I can note that you are very hopeful about this mouvement and I hope that
for the sake of the planet that Occupy Mouvement is going to cause the
change we need.

But I have visted the Montréal group and I am going to wait and see what happens. Above all I'm a pragmatist.

 

The government really didn't "give" us the internet though. It was something that had existed for quite a while as a simple and great tool for institutions, be they universities or military to share information across the country in a quick way. Then personal computers began to become a thing, and people started thinking about connecting all these new computers. The internet was a strange place back in the day, basically like the wild west in virtual form. Governments have tried to control it to various degrees, be it straight up national firewalls that block near everything, or things most people can agree on like trying to stop child porn. But they're all elusive, too many ways to scramble information on the internet exist, from people in Arab spring nations getting around their nations's giant firewalls, to people in western nations still buying drugs, weapons, organizing fight clubs, hacking into everything(specifically Wilileaks which was one a deep web site, and still has mirrors on the deep web that have the full unredacted documents, and Anonymous) and of course, the ungodly amounts of child porn, that still float freely on the deep web through things like TOR and such.

The power that they took from the people will inevitably return to the people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WibmcsEGLKo

 

I am not going to argue with you.

I am just going to say that gouvernement are not the inept entities they
want you to believe they are. It is much often said that in politics there is
no such thing as a surprise.

My advice for everyone is that just as you should not put all of the eggs
in a single basket. No one should put all of their faith in just the Internet.

Afterall, no one would want to suddenly find out that all of this was just a
big gouvernement manipulation. Remembering they have already done worst in
the past.

 

The internet, is the lever that we are going to move the world with.

I hear a lot of talk... What I don't see is a lot of recognition of a few simple facts...

There has never been anything like this in the world.

This is not some special interest group with a secret agenda trying to take over. You can tell those type of groups, because even the majority of people who support their platform, point out the don't support their methods...

There are people across the world that are rising and standing in solidarity.

The idea that ANYTHING like this has happened in the history of the world, is just part of a dis-information campaign.

As each Occupy movement starts, it is not an isolated movement where after 6 minutes people will get bored and wander away. They support each other from before the occupations actually start. They encourage, educate and give direct feedback from the only peers these groups have.

Without the internet... these types of things would have popped up here and there, stuck around for a day or two and then disappeared. Because of the internet, they are growing and spreading like wildfire...

Without the internet, each one would have got hit by a snow storm and given up and went home, feeling cold, alone and isolated and nothing would have been accomplished. In fact, it may not even have made it to the first snow fall, it may have only lasted until the first beatings and abuses in NY...

Can some of the tools we use in thise be used against us? Why yes... yes they can...

JUST LIKE ANY OTHER TOOL.

Shall we toss everything technological above a stick into the ocean?

There are very few tools that I would toss into the ocean... and none of them are tech related.

 

I've seen a few others with the same attitude.

For some, it is jealousy over tying their hopes to a group or movement that has now been eclipsed.

For others, it is just plain ol paranoia...

For some, I would assume... It's a job.