It has been more than two months since the Occupy Wall Street actions began in New York. The occupation in Zuccotti Park ended after the New York City government mobilised the police for a middle of the night raid. However, the political activity that it set in motion in the United States has not stopped. Not only have occupations and pro-Occupy demonstrations and pickets taken place throughout the US in hundreds of locations, but large mobilisations and even strikes, such as that in Oakland, California, have been possible. These have usually been in defence of the “right to occupy” in the face of police attacks.
Read more…
White or blue or yellow all-the-same dress
Sewed-in name on pocket
Blue singlet, overalls
White shirt, collar and tie
Smile hiding a grimace
Alien from one’s hands
A uniform experience
A union of rejection
“Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.” “You speak of — ”said Egremont, hesitantly. “ THE RICH AND THE POOR.” Benjamin Disraeli, from Sybil, or the Two Nations (1845)
Occupy Wall Street.
The genius of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is primarily to be found in its key slogans tied up with the confrontation that it has been put forward between the “1%” and the “99%” and the assertion: “We are the 99%”. Of course, the numbers involved in the Wall Street demonstrations, and even throughout the USA – which is the heartland of the occupy actions – are nowhere near mobilizing or even genuinely representing the 99%. Polling does show that more than half of the American population is in sympathy with OWS’s anti-corporate greed message but that sentiment has not – not yet – manifested in either mobilisations or a clear electoral manifestation. Yet, the use of the word “We” is justified. In this context I think Slavoj Zizek has summed up the correct approach to the word “we” when he said that the use of the term “we” had to be seen as an act of creating “we”, the agency that can bring about change. In reality, the 99% cannot be referred to as “them” rather than “we” except as a means of escaping responsibility for being part of the agency for change.
Read MORE.
It is very possible that in late September or early October, the United Nations Security Council will vote on whether to recognise Palestine as a state and accept it as a member of the United Nations. The president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mohammed Abbas, will address the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 23. According to the PA foreign minister, Riyad al-Malki, Abbas will hand a request for that recognition to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who will pass it on to the Security Council.
READ MORE
PADA kolom “17 Agustus versus 1 Oktober” yang lalu diakhiri dengan pertanyaan: “memilih Indonesia versi 17 Agustus 1945 atau Indonesia versi 1 Oktober 1965?”. Di dalam tulisan tersebut saya berusaha berpendapat bahwa 17 Agustus adalah simbol revolusi nasional Indonesia (yang belum tuntas) dan 1 Oktober simbol kontra-revolusi 1965 yang melahirkan Orde Baru Suharto (OBS). Tetapi dengan melemparkan dua pilihan tersebut, mungkin pantas juga sedikit membahas apa itu Indonesia versi “17 Agustus”. Apalagi hal ini masalah sejarah dan masalah kontemporer yang sangat menarik, menantang dan membutuhkan banyak diskusi.
READ MORE
On September 5, the Cuban Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Libya affirming, among other things, that “the Republic of Cuba does not recognize the National Transition Council or any other provisional authority and will only give its recognition to a government legitimately constituted in that country without foreign intervention and through the free, sovereign and sole will of the sister Libyan people.” This contrasts totally with the mad rush by many other states, led by France, the UK and Qatar, to recognise the NTC. Cuba’s statement is highly critical of NATO: “On the crude pretext of protecting civilians, NATO has killed thousands of people, has ignored the constructive initiatives of the African Union and other countries and has even violated the questionable resolutions imposed by the Security Council, in particular by attacking civilian targets, by funding and supplying weapons to one side, as well as through the deployment of operative and diplomatic personnel on the ground.”
Read more
Surreal
Reality defined by the borders of cafe conviviality
Too real
Reality defined by bomb flash and hunger pain
Surreal
Blue sky winding-down mood
Surreal
Black, darkening sky, all sketched in blood red,
Tear scarred screams, exhausted eyes of hopelessness
Real
Raised fist, organised ranks, grim smile, hopeful
Real Surreal
Words with sharpened points punctuate a sleepiness
Real
Surreal
No walls between
Cartridge poppy fields drones not bees buzz above
Stranger soldiers stand atop of armoured cars
Turrets turning pointing spitting
Roadside revenge awaits to mame
Mother father boy girl radar surrounds searching for a future
Cloak swaggering corruption advised by straightened ties
Escape, escape the pings on the radar speak
A boat brings them to backs turned and the hateful frowns of the soldiers’ masters.
Silent, whizzing, spying, killing drone
Bombs dropping shock and awe, death and amputation
Cowards worship mammon, hearts of stone
Humanity defeating them will see them wither, dead, alone
It is not only walls they have built to protect the divisions of their system. They have a built a dam. A massive dam constructed from fear and systematically spread ignorance, even superstition, mumbo jumbo. The walls are to separate people and peoples, nations and classes, and classes becoming separate nations inside single countries. The dam is built to hold back consciousness. The more pressure that builds up behind the dam, the thicker the construction, the denser the fear, ignorance and superstition. The denser the fear, ignorance and superstition, the more they need a new kind of leadership, reflecting this triad of materials. But you need science and rationality (if not reason) to build such dams and walls – that is their contradiction. Our contradiction is that the damning up of consciousness on the other side of the dam means there are only trickles and puddles of criticalness and vision to build from. Except where now or in the past, the dams have had cracks allowing lakes of progressive consciousness to form. But they usually have to build then dams and walls of their own, to defend themselves, necessary but a hindrance still. The question is how to prise open more cracks, though cracks will appear anyway as the pressure builds up. But how to exacerbate them from the other side. Puddles and even trickles can become stagnant, and inland lakes too if denied new flows of fresh waters: keeping the waters stirred, and the eddies linked, that is part of the work. Never has a more huge dam been built than that now built, in this era of late capitalism: even leaks through the cracks, when they come, will be spectacular, let alone when the whole dam goes.
Recent Comments