[-empyre-] Demand Nothing, Occupy Everything? California is burning ....

Sun Nov 22 15:50:40 EST 2009

Thank you to everyone for the comments and news on the strikes on the UC
campuses.
For the last several years, besides attending live events here in Milwaukee,
I've found that increasingly effective is the online sharing and signing of
petitions; many of these work, or, beginning by spreading slowly through
time, have  created  and do create generative updated versions of the
petitions and gain ever more force as more and more people see that they are
actually effective and begin signing themselves.

I think since Reagan’s first term and almost first action as
president—smashing the air controllers’ union—unions have become not just
physically badly damaged in the USA, but the word itself has been distorted
thro8ugh nonstop propaganda and become now a “dirty” word  and concept for a
great many persons.  The back and forth supporting movement of smashing
unions physically and economically—by physically I mean subversion by firing
union workers and hiring much cheaper and less trained non union
workers—this movement is supported at the same time by the attack on the
language which makes unions appealing and strong sounding and converting the
word into something smacking of both the ridiculous and the defeatist,
something anachronistic and “a failure.”  “Everyone knows they don’t
work-=-just look how they are disappearing!”  The words are supported by the
actions and ice vers.

I mentioned ridicule—one of the most effective tactics that Regan introduced
was ridicule and cerataintn tones of voice which are like patronizing stabs
in the back masked by a nice paternalist flashing Hollywood teeth.  Since
Reagan began this trend, ridicule has increasingly been used to drive out of
“being with it” just about any “lefty” term you can think of.

Another factor has been that since 9/11 I’ve noticed that academics as well
as many others in different jobs and work sectors—are afraid to sing
petitions because it might affect their jobs.  One might be easily gotten
rid of by a petition being used to show that Professor or student so –and-so
is a “Jihad sympathizer” or “critical of Israel” or critical of the US
policies aboard whether they be torture, rendition flights, drone bombings,
support of Apartheid, and so forth.

Now that the economic crises has made jobs even more precious, one may see
even more of a drop off of certain sectors being willing to risk anything by
singing a petition which can be pulled out and used as “evidence” at any
time.

The flipside of the viral techniques has been demontsrated by the Israeli
State’s policy announced first last November and then stated more firmly and
with greater scope in February of this year by then Foreign Minister tip
Livni.  This policy is what Minister Livni called “an assault” on Facebook
my space you tube, the blogosphere –an assault on any sites which seem to be
“critical of Israel” or remotely sympathetic to the Palestinian people’s
cause.  The idea is to wipe out such sites, or, to censor their statements,
videos, and fotos and replace them with heavily pro-Israeli images, slogans,
propaganda, posters and altered maps.

This is viral “striking’ in the “assault” sense of the term for sure—and
conducted by a State with the fourth largest military in the world to back
it up if need be.  The flip side of this tactic is to also cut off the
electricity of the “other side’ so that they cannot conduct any sort of
retaliatory campaign of their own.

Increasing an anti-viral tactic has been just this—to turn off, cut off,
bomb out, the electricity grids of large areas, and in this “deleted zone”
undertake step two of the “extinguishing of light” which is the mass
slaughter of civilians when they are “blacked out” from the gaze of the
world.

Rwanda was the first such example undertaken—before the massacres, the area
designated for them was stripped of any communication with the outside
world. All electronic contacts were severed, al telephone grids, electric
grids etc were chopped apart and then in the deleted zones, the human beings
were chopped down and deleted from existence on the ground.  This tactic has
been used to varying degrees in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Lebanon and
Palestine, specifically Gaza, most recently to a greater extent than ever
during the several years now siege by the assaults on the ground and
electronically via deletion in January of this year.

In the USA, this tact has been and is being used against the American
Indians on the great majority of extremely poor rezervations.  The living
conditions and medical care of the American Indians is now tied with Haiti
as the worst in the Western hemisphere.

One effective tactic in this new form of eugenics/genocide is the lack of
health care not only as care but as information—the excuse that is given for
the total lack of information received by the Indians is that they live
often n areas too remote for the Bureaucrats in charge locally to drag their
asses into the car to drive to and physically distribute information and
care to the Indians residing in these “remote areas.”  This laziness
/deliberate action is buttressed now by the excuse of saying that al of this
informtion is now being made available to the Indians  of this and/or that
rez is on line, at sites speficllay set up the bureaucrats for the Indians’
use.

The catch is that hardly any of the Indians in these areas have access to
compuetrs at all.

Since they don’t have computers and can’t receive al this wonderful info,
the fault of course is the Indians, for they’re not having computers.
Sincemany
areas don

‘t have electricity either, it seems al a very pointless situation, and is
just left to stay that way.

Again the disconnection of non-viral deletion from existence is ineffective
tool in the ongoing disappearance of that mythical being, the “Vanishing
American Indian,” just as it in the Vanishing Palestinian, the vanishing
Iraqi, and the vanishing Rwandans situations.

One can foresee that if things “get out of hand” by the use of viral tactics
in strikes and demos al that need be done is simply to cutoff the
electricity to hose areas, and delete them from “electronic action.”

I agree with –in writing that petitions and grassroots actions , grass roots
transmissions of information, of papers to be signed, of speeches to be
heard, is (potentially)  far more effective than the viral tactics which are
spread out of over a bewildering array of web sites and electronic notice
boards.  Although I have seen and participated in electronic action,
petitioning sharing of articles and fotos, at the same time there’s the
sense that it is not as inspiring as direct action undertaken with others
with whom one is in direct physical “touch.”  The viral is an excellent
tool, but it can’t be the only one—for it is just as easy, if not more so,
to disrupt than physical disruptions of organized actions.  If the two were
used together it would make for much greater effectiveness, as well as being
more difficult to disrupt and dis-organize.

this excerpt from al onger piece is re language as it becomes more and more
bureacratized in the form of rebrandings and words which as in Orwell's 1984
are nurtured  as the person stop thinking rationally by accepting that 2 +
2=5, war= peace

 or that our great leap forward in electing a Black President is "cnaage"
rather than rebrandings, slight advances which make it possible to whole
heartedly endorse and fund an Aparteid State

again, many thanks to all for the fascainting and informative respsones
throughout this discusson-
david-bc

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Christiane Robbins <cpr at mindspring.com>wrote:

> Hi Marco, Micha, everyone
>
>
> The irony implicit in your statement re: this situation begs for further
> explication + analysis:
>
> It is only in this country that three decades of brainwashing have
> led to the obliteration of historic memory (the cancellation of May1st
> being the most notable example), and to the perception that going on
>
> strike is somehow out of fashion.
>
>
> And ... to add to the circulating narratives and links -
>
> I found it curious that the Chronicle for HE published this -
>
>
> http://chronicle.com/blogPost/California-Is-Burning/8915/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
>
>
> Chris
>
> On Nov 19, 2009, at 8:34 AM, Marco Deseriis wrote:
>
> Hi Micha,
>
> yes, thank you for sharing those precious links.
>
> At UCSD, very few students, faculty and staff that I've talked to knew
>
> about or support the strike do. Myself and a handful of other faculty,
>
> staff and students are striking, but is the very idea of a strike not
>
> viral but more based in monolothic constituencies and factory models
>
> of labor?
>
> No, I just think that after 3-4 decades of resting on dreams of unabated
> growth Americans (and Californians in particular) need to be re-educated
> and reawakened as to what it means to lose one's job, as to what it
> means to fight for it, and what it means to risk of losing your job for
> defending it. So thank you for taking on this rather humongous task ;-)
>
> To me it is not a matter of virality but of culture. People in Latin
> America, Asia, Europe and all over the world keep going on strike for
> defending their jobs, demanding higher wages, security on the workplace,
> etc. It is only in this country that three decades of brainwashing have
> led to the obliteration of historic memory (the cancellation of May1st
> being the most notable example), and to the perception that going on
> strike is somehow out of fashion.
>
> In actual fact, there exists a growing global movement to defend public
> education, and to build an entirely different model of knowledge
> sharing. You are probably familiar with this site:
>
> http://www.edu-factory.org
>
> which reports the news of 15 arrests at UCLA:
>
>
> http://www.edu-factory.org/edu15/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=240:students-arrested-at-ucla&catid=34:struggles&Itemid=53
>
> and whose picture eloquently show the response of public authorities to
> this growing mobilization.
>
> Perhaps the spreading occupations are more viral? I wonder
>
> about this as I start going on strike tomorrow and join actions at
>
> UCSD...
>
>
>
> Well, it is not up to me to say that strikes and occupations are just
> two sides of the same coin.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
>
>
>
> C h r i s t i a n e   R o b b i n s
> **
>
> *- J E T Z T Z E I T  ** S T U D I O S -*
> *
> *
> *... the space between zero and one  ...*
> *Walter Benjamin*
> **
>
> LOS ANGELES    I    SAN FRANCISCO
>
>
> *" The present age prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to
> the original, fancy to reality, *
> *the appearance to the essence *
> *for in these days*
> * illusion** only** **is sacred, truth profane."*
> Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-1872
> *
> *
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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