Re: <nettime> Portland Occupation's tactical innovation

[Newmedia@aol.com]

JH:
 
> Best to walk away, scatter, make a new life elsewhere, 
> and let the police fall flat on their faces as they push 
> their phalanx around the urban centers, alone.
 
Of course!  This is what is already happening.  All but for the  few who 
haven't made it to the 21st century yet.
 
C'mon people . . . the *environment* has changed from "class  warfare" in 
the age of telegraph and mimeographed broadsheets -- we have lived  in the 
DIGITAL era for 20+ years.
 
Sorry but describing the present situation as "neo-monarchist" is  just 
stupid.  Not only does the US have nothing that resembles any kind of  
*monarchy* but it doesn't even have a half-way coherent capitalist *elite* --  what 
we have is exactly what McLuhan "predicted" would be the result of  
*mass-media* when he wrote his first book in the late 1940's, (originally  titled) 
"Guide to CHAOS."
 
Let's bury the "left-wing" *conspiracy theories* right here and now.   NO 
ONE is in CONTROL!!  (Hasn't anyone bothered to read Kevin Kelly or  Zbigniew 
Brzezinski?)
 
Going up against the police only confirms that they have a *tactical*  job 
to do -- in no way does it illustrate that their is an *integrated* STRATEGY 
 behind them, because there simply isn't.
 
OCCUPY your own *life*!!
 
The ONE-PERCENT is a statistical account of wealth distribution -- NOT a  
useful description of *power* distribution.  
 
Every one of these 1%'ers is totally on their own.  Yes, I know quite  a 
few of them -- I was a Wall Street investment banker, you will recall.
 
They have no political party (when Barack Obama is actually working for the 
 Pentagon, as everyone in DC knows). they have no effective institutions 
and  they don't even have a sense of "class" solidarity.  As the financial  
mechanisms of Congressional elections make clear, it's every man/woman for  
themselves, bought by narrow-interest lobbyists.
 
The last time the WEST had a semblance of a coherent elite was after WW  
II.  The "Rockefellers" emerged as the winners and they rapidly put their  
stamp on the *world* in institutional form.  
 
They ran the Marshall Plan and, therefore, Germany.  They so  completely 
dominated Japan that they were able to *design* a  completely artificial 
society.  They ran the most powerful foundations  -- Rockefeller/Ford/Carnegie -- 
and they financed a global *cultural* COLD WAR  (against the Stalinist 
Soviet Union) that dominated  poitics/culture/art/labor/etc. around the world.
 
They ran the United Nations, the IMF/World Bank, the CIA, the CFR, the  
Bilderbergers, the Salzburg Seminar, WFMH, etc.  They launched entire  new 
fields of social control -- like Social Psychology, Communications  Science, 
Cybernetics and General Systems.  They bankrolled the RAND  Corporation and the 
Center for the Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences.   They fabricated 
"synthetic" religions and were even able to force the  "re-alignment" of Rome 
called Vatican II.
 
They put a President in the White House in 1976 -- Jimmy Carter  -- 
dominated foreign policy with the Trilateral Commission  and helped install an 
anti-Stalinist Pope -- John Paul  II.
 
Now that was POWER!!
 
No more.  Following the Vietnam War, all this came unraveled.   They have 
no *effective* power in China.  Or, in Brazil, Russian, India or  South 
Africa.  The BRICS are all industrializing, so they  will drive global growth for 
the next 50 years.
 
All the "Rockefellers" are left with is a thoroughly POST-INDUSTRIAL  
USA/Europe/Japan where the "elite" goes bundling off to DAVOS to make their  
one-on-one deals and in which "networked" protestors pretend they are still  
engaging in "class-warfare."
 
Get a LIFE!!  (Because that's what 10's of MILLIONS have already  decided 
to do!!)
 
Be selective, be an ASSET to the collective . . . (Soul II Soul: 
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sjCcg123Y8_ 
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sjCcg123Y8) )
 
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
 

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