(no subject)

[foolsguinea]

So apparently the day after I did my "Which Side Are You On?" post, Billy Bragg did another ad hoc rewrite:

Meh.

But still it's time to keep that question in mind.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/11/an-open-letter-to-the-winter-patriot.html

If the army is called out against us (and certainly the police are), there is a need to choose between the people and the command structure.

Oh, and this comment by a Paul Tioxon is brilliant:

If the wealthiest, the 1%, fall all over themselves to get elected into the terrible, awful, tax and spend government instead of taking their valuable time to make more money with the profits they have piled up for themselves, it is because the mechanism of state is the engine of capitalism as well as its sword and shield. The Koch brothers aren’t spending directly on candidates and astro turf groups on a local level because of the ineffectiveness of controlling the elected offices across the land from congressional districts, to governors mansions. Grover Norquist has not tirelessly and relentlessly lobbied politician after politician from offices high and low to sign a pledge to not raise taxes while in office and then hold a knife to their throats if they do not comply by primarying them and replacing them with more cooperative candidates.

If the goal of OWS and the Occupy Movement is not to take power, than what is it they are doing? While they inspire, motivate, and bring forth clarification of our politics from the level of talk show bullshit and readers digest patriotism, they also transmit the urgent need for a democratic change of the status quo. And that is to replace the people in office and then replace the policies of state and use the bureaucratic structure to defend the people operating out in the community as they build their lives, rebuild their broken dreams, and have a better life than the one they are faced with now.

The Occupy Movement is the lobbying effort of the people who can’t afford the rent on K Street. Who can’t afford the Gucci loafers, the high powered PR, the sumptuous restaurant meetings to wine and dine the officials who can make or break legislation. The Occupy Movement is the TV channel that the people can’t afford to preach the 700 gospel of conformity because no one donates money like bible cult members do to hear the same story retold for 2000 years, I guess they keep forgetting the ending. The Occupy movement is all the things that could not be done because the money making machine labels you as a failed artist, a loser that needs a bath, or some other tired, lame attack that crowded out the authentic discussions about what is needed by the public and replaced it with gay marriages, abortion and Obama bashing, right, left, middle of the road talentless Jay Leno observations about personalities instead of the policies in place that persist after each administration passes on into its presidential library and pyramid complex.

...If you want the rule of law, you need the mechanism of justice, the courts, the attorneys general, the oversight committees to operate to root out corruption, prosecute the law breakers, and put them in jail. If you want stable markets that contribute to the social order by producing prosperity for all of the people and not just the ones with the most net worth, you need to control the regulatory bodies. It all goes back to democratic participation in a democratically controlled republic. We do not have to fight to install that, it is already there, we do need to show up in great enough numbers to put candidates in place that will get our message and do what we say.