National Guard Combat Battalion Deploying to Protect G20 (Defacto Police State)

[Sabotage]

The rage of the disposed is fracturing the country, dividing it into camps that are unmoored from the political mainstream. Movements are building on the ends of the political spectrum that have lost faith in the mechanisms of democratic change. You can’t blame them. But unless we on the left move quickly this rage will be captured by a virulent and racist right wing, one that seeks a disturbing proto-fascism.

Every day counts. Every deferral of protest hurts. We should, if we have the time and the ability, make our way to Pittsburgh for the meeting of the G-20 this week rather than do what the power elite is hoping we will do—stay home. Complacency comes at a horrible price.

“The leaders of the G-20 are meeting to try and salvage their power and money after everything that has gone wrong,” said Benedicto Martinez Orozco, co-president of the Mexican Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT), who is in Pittsburgh for the protests. “This is what this meeting is about.”

The draconian security measures put in place to silence dissent in Pittsburgh are disproportionate to any actual security concern. They are a response not to a real threat, but to the fear gripping the established centers of power. The power elite grasps, even if we do not, the massive fraud and theft being undertaken to save a criminal class on Wall Street and international speculators of the kinds who were executed in other periods of human history. They know the awful cost this plundering of state treasuries will impose on workers, who will become a permanent underclass. And they also know that once this is clear to the rest of us, rebellion will no longer be a foreign concept.

The delegates to the G-20, the gathering of the world’s wealthiest nations, will consequently be protected by a National Guard combat battalion, recently returned from Iraq. The battalion will shut down the area around the city center, man checkpoints and patrol the streets in combat gear. Pittsburgh has augmented the city’s police force of 1,000 with an additional 3,000 officers. Helicopters have begun to buzz gatherings in city parks, buses driven to Pittsburgh to provide food to protesters have been impounded, activists have been detained, and permits to camp in the city parks have been denied. Web sites belonging to resistance groups have been hacked and trashed, and many groups suspect that they have been infiltrated and that their phones and e-mail accounts are being monitored.

Larry Holmes, an organizer from New York City, stood outside a tent encampment on land owned by the Monumental Baptist Church in the city’s Hill District. He is one of the leaders of the Bail Out the People Movement. Holmes, a longtime labor activist, on Sunday led a march on the convention center by unemployed people calling for jobs. He will coordinate more protests during the week.

“It is de facto martial law,” he said, “and the real effort to subvert the work of those protesting has yet to begin. But voting only gets you so far. There are often not many choices in an election. When you build democratic movements around the war or unemployment you get a more authentic expression of democracy. It is more organic. It makes a difference. History has taught us this.”

Our global economy, like our political system, has been hijacked by a tiny oligarchy, composed mostly of wealthy white men who serve corporations. They have pledged or raised a staggering $18 trillion, looted largely from state treasuries, to prop up banks and other financial institutions that engaged in suicidal acts of speculation and ruined the world economy. They have formulated trade deals so corporations can speculate across borders with currency, food and natural resources even as, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, 1.02 billion people on the planet struggle with hunger. Globalization has obliterated the ability of many poor countries to protect food staples such as corn, rice, beans and wheat with subsidies or taxes on imported staples. The abolishment of these protections has permitted the giant mechanized farms to wipe out tens of millions of small farmers—2 million in Mexico alone—bankrupting many and driving them off their land. Those who could once feed themselves can no longer find enough food, and the wealthiest governments use institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization like pit bulls to establish economic supremacy. There is little that most governments seem able to do to fight back.

But the game is up. The utopian dreams of globalization have been exposed as a sham. Force is all the elite have left. We are living through one of civilization’s great seismic reversals. The ideology of globalization, like all utopias that are sold as inevitable and irreversible, has become a farce. The power elite, perplexed and confused, cling to the disastrous principles of globalization and its outdated language to mask the political and economic vacuum before us. The absurd idea that the marketplace alone should determine economic and political constructs caused the crisis. It led the G-20 to sacrifice other areas of human importance—from working conditions, to taxation, to child labor, to hunger, to health and pollution—on the altar of free trade. It left the world’s poor worse off and the United States with the largest deficits in human history. Globalization has become an excuse to ignore the mess. It has left a mediocre elite desperately trying to save a system that cannot be saved and, more important, trying to save itself. “Speculation,” then-President Jacques Chirac of France once warned, “is the AIDS of our economies.” We have reached the terminal stage.

“Each of Globalization’s strengths has somehow turned out to have an opposing meaning,” John Ralston Saul wrote in “The Collapse of Globalism.” “The lowering of national residency requirements for corporations has morphed into a tool for massive tax evasion. The idea of a global economic system mysteriously made local poverty seem unreal, even normal. The decline of the middle class—the very basis of democracy—seemed to be just one of those things that happen, unfortunate but inevitable. That the working class and the lower middle class, even parts of the middle class, could only survive with more than one job per person seemed to be expected punishment for not keeping up. The contrast between unprecedented bonuses for mere managers at the top and the four-job families below them seemed inevitable in a globalized world. For two decades an elite consensus insisted that unsustainable third-world debts could not be put aside in a sort of bad debt reserve without betraying Globalism’s essential principles and moral obligations, which included an unwavering respect for the sanctity of international contracts. It took the same people about two weeks to abandon sanctity and propose bad debt banks for their own far larger debts in 2009.”

The institutions that once provided alternative sources of power, including the press, government, agencies of religion, universities and labor unions, have proved morally bankrupt. They no longer provide a space for voices of moral autonomy. No one will save us now but ourselves.

“The best thing that happened to the Establishment is the election of a black president,” Holmes said. “It will contain people for a given period of time, but time is running out. Suppose something else happens? Suppose another straw breaks? What happens when there is a credit card crisis or a collapse in commercial real estate? The financial system is very, very fragile. The legs are being kicked out from underneath it.”

“Obama is in trouble,” Holmes went on. “The economic crisis is a structural crisis. The recovery is only a recovery for Wall Street. It can’t be sustained, and Obama will be blamed for it. He is doing everything Wall Street demands. But this will be a dead end. It is a prescription for disaster, not only for Obama but the Democratic Party. It is only groups like ours that provide hope. If labor unions will get off their ass and stop focusing on narrow legislation for their members, if they will go back to being social unions that embrace broad causes, we have a chance of effecting change. If this does not happen it will be a right-wing disaster.”

From: http://www.obamasquagmire.com/?p=1870

[mtlouie]

We have to travel and buy good along the way to "protest?"

Why not stay home, cut up our credit cards, remove our money from banks, buy only what we NEED from local farmers and ranchers, make our own gifts, get out of debt (even if that means filing for bankruptcy,) fuck our FICO scores, and do something that actually WORKS?

"MAKE THEM IRRELEVANT."

But it's so much less romantic to do pedestrian things.  But to each their own.

Hey, Sabotage, I LOVED that anarcho-feminist mag link you posted yesterday.  It was awesome.  There were two or three articles in there that were some pretty heavy stuff.

Oh, and I'm not dissing you on this post, btw.  I get it.  It's just that if all these kids go protest, the agent provacateurs destroy things and that shows up on teevee, (and it will,) most people won't want anything to do with it.

Small and local is the only way. 

Oh, I forgot to mention here:  STARBUCKS WENT OUT OF BUSINESS IN OUR DOWNTOWN!!  WHOO HOOO!!!

[yelohamr]

Wow. I'll be days getting this digested, even though I am familiar with everything the writer is saying. And there are a few excellent points he makes that ties much of what I knew together. The ruination of small farmers etc.  Globalization has ruined my industry, work conditions income etc in the IT industry. And if unchecked it will ruin the futures of my children.

Thanks for this awesome sobering post

[Sabotage]

yeah i am actually with you mtlouie.

we stayed here. i because of the web bots have thought this was gonna be a trap for almost a year now. that there was going to be big riots/protest in early fall 2009. since last december i've thought this. so we trusted our guts and didn't go down.

also we are working on an urban garden here that we are squatting and doing a local free grocery. it would suffer if we went. we're gonna do a rally or something locally if shit goes really south in pgh.

but anyway yeah i was just reposting this article. i thought the ring wingers would like to hear about the police state too.

[Ming]

So now all these gun toting townhall meeting folks have a place to go. 

I sure do hope they all show up - I'd like to see their heads knocked a couple of times.


Maybe if all these protestors would have come out when the first bailout was about to happen when Bush was in office, we could have swayed them.

Protesting at the G20 will do nothing - because they decide nothing. 

[hillwalker]

Force is all the elite have left.

Yeah, force is all the elite have left.

Right. Just force. Not like they have the will and power of force, , , wait a sec,

[Abhaha]

Matt posted this same article on the breaking news page today and it was on Alternet but the title was:

With Global Capitalism Exposed as a Sham, All the Global Elite Have Left Is Pure Force

[feelingweird]

RIGHT ON THE MONEY MT !!! RIGHT ON!!

do the one and ONLY thing we can do to defeat them. NOTHING. DO ABSO FUCKING LUTELY NOTHING.... They cannot contend with that.

I always whip this quote out in times like this.

When asked what it was like to live in the dying days of the Soviet Union, one man answered this way "THEY PRETENDED TO PAY US, SO WE PRETENDED TO WORK!!". Simplicity at its best.

They cannot deal with a populace that no longer believes their lies and no longer is willing to do the heavy lifting while they sit and suck all our blood dry. We were willing to put up with their parasitic nature back when we got to keep the lions share of our blood, but not anymore. They are taking more blood than we have to offer and yet they DEMAND more.

Stop feeding them by starving OURSELVES of the things we think we need.. We don't need their fucking debt and we don't need their parasite system...

ATLAS SHOULD JUST SHRUG!!

Robert

We have to travel and buy good along the way to "protest?"

Why not stay home, cut up our credit cards, remove our money from banks, buy only what we NEED from local farmers and ranchers, make our own gifts, get out of debt (even if that means filing for bankruptcy,) fuck our FICO scores, and do something that actually WORKS?

"MAKE THEM IRRELEVANT."

But it's so much less romantic to do pedestrian things.  But to each their own.

Hey, Sabotage, I LOVED that anarcho-feminist mag link you posted yesterday.  It was awesome.  There were two or three articles in there that were some pretty heavy stuff.

Oh, and I'm not dissing you on this post, btw.  I get it.  It's just that if all these kids go protest, the agent provacateurs destroy things and that shows up on teevee, (and it will,) most people won't want anything to do with it.

Small and local is the only way. 

Oh, I forgot to mention here:  STARBUCKS WENT OUT OF BUSINESS IN OUR DOWNTOWN!!  WHOO HOOO!!!

[MidWestHerbalist]

RIGHT ON THE MONEY MT !!! RIGHT ON!!

do the one and ONLY thing we can do to defeat them. NOTHING. DO ABSO FUCKING LUTELY NOTHING.... They cannot contend with that.

I always whip this quote out in times like this.

When asked what it was like to live in the dying days of the Soviet Union, one man answered this way "THEY PRETENDED TO PAY US, SO WE PRETENDED TO WORK!!". Simplicity at its best.

They cannot deal with a populace that no longer believes their lies and no longer is willing to do the heavy lifting while they sit and suck all our blood dry. We were willing to put up with their parasitic nature back when we got to keep the lions share of our blood, but not anymore. They are taking more blood than we have to offer and yet they DEMAND more.

Stop feeding them by starving OURSELVES of the things we think we need.. We don't need their fucking debt and we don't need their parasite system...

ATLAS SHOULD JUST SHRUG!!

Robert

We have to travel and buy good along the way to "protest?"

Why not stay home, cut up our credit cards, remove our money from banks, buy only what we NEED from local farmers and ranchers, make our own gifts, get out of debt (even if that means filing for bankruptcy,) fuck our FICO scores, and do something that actually WORKS?

"MAKE THEM IRRELEVANT."

But it's so much less romantic to do pedestrian things.  But to each their own.

Hey, Sabotage, I LOVED that anarcho-feminist mag link you posted yesterday.  It was awesome.  There were two or three articles in there that were some pretty heavy stuff.

Oh, and I'm not dissing you on this post, btw.  I get it.  It's just that if all these kids go protest, the agent provacateurs destroy things and that shows up on teevee, (and it will,) most people won't want anything to do with it.

Small and local is the only way. 

Oh, I forgot to mention here:  STARBUCKS WENT OUT OF BUSINESS IN OUR DOWNTOWN!!  WHOO HOOO!!!

FRIGGIN' BRAVO!

[Librarian]

i can't possibly support this enough! well said.

do the one and ONLY thing we can do to defeat them. NOTHING. DO ABSO FUCKING LUTELY NOTHING.... They cannot contend with that.

They cannot deal with a populace that no longer believes their lies and no longer is willing to do the heavy lifting while they sit and suck all our blood dry. We were willing to put up with their parasitic nature back when we got to keep the lions share of our blood, but not anymore. They are taking more blood than we have to offer and yet they DEMAND more.

Stop feeding them by starving OURSELVES of the things we think we need.. We don't need their fucking debt and we don't need their parasite system...


Robert

(as i hear yet another goddamn helicopter go over my east-end PGH home...)

[FullRefusal]

EXACTLY!!!!! FUCK THIS SYSTEM!!  I'm Very Much out of it but not all the way..Getting there. GREAT POST!

We have to travel and buy good along the way to "protest?"

Why not stay home, cut up our credit cards, remove our money from banks, buy only what we NEED from local farmers and ranchers, make our own gifts, get out of debt (even if that means filing for bankruptcy,) fuck our FICO scores, and do something that actually WORKS?

"MAKE THEM IRRELEVANT."

But it's so much less romantic to do pedestrian things.  But to each their own.

[Leonytus]

I think you guys are right when it comes to getting rid of credit cards social security cards, going bankrupt, letting go of feeding off corporations, but alas, I do not think, in the years to come, peaceful protest will win the good fight.

[hillwalker]

I think you guys are right when it comes to getting rid of credit cards social security cards, going bankrupt, letting go of feeding off corporations, but alas, I do not think, in the years to come, peaceful protest will win the good fight.

 
I pretty much agree,

but I'm also given to ponder that perhaps there is no good fight to win.

I'm quite sure that being in debt is a very bad place to be,
I am also given to consider that not being in debt doesn't really
have a distinct benefit either.

one can have full clear legal title to ones on domain under law, but the law
can be changed, will be changed when it suites TPTB.

I'm in mind of the plains folks of this land, who when it all got to be too much,
it was reported that they would go out onto the plains, drive a stake in the
ground and tie themselves off to it, and take up their arms and await their
enemy. No retreat, no surrender.

That this degree of bravery did in fact win respect from some of their enemy
doesn't really factor into what happened to the people of the plains.

In the end, TPTB can and will do anything to get their way.

Still thinking on all this. but I think opting out to one's best ability
makes more sense than a lot of other approaches.

[byelka]

Thanks for posting this, Sabotage. Again I am reminded that many on the "left" share many of the same concerns as those on the "right." I sure hope the people at this protest stuck to the issues that are really important.

I agree totally with Mtlouie about the most effective way to fight this. Stop watching TV, meet your neighbors. This Christmas, make it your goal to only buy gifts that were made by artists or artisans in your town. I have done this and have made so many friends who understand what's going on and are eager to contribute to a different way of living. Any money you earn, put it towards paying off debt and making yourself self-sufficient so one day you won't have to earn money to live. Learn a skill that contributes something to the people around you. And like Sabotage, grow a garden. If everybody did even just one of these things, there'd be an organic change in this country because people would no longer be in such thrall to a way of life that's just a shiny mirage; a puff of smoke.

Sabotage, what state do you live in? How's the garden shaping up?

[ballad]

Catch22.

Do nothing, and someone else might.