You Feel Lucky Punk?

Lo and behold! It’s been a few months since dropping a note here, and what do we see?

The Euro zone is more or less falling apart. Somehow bullying Greece into social collapse didn’t quite solve all of the problems in Europe.

The Canadian housing market may or may not be about to collapse (and with Vancouver house prices starting around a cool million bucks, hey who’s surprised? Even Chinese millionaires have some limits.)

And the US economy?  That one’s still up in the air too.

Yup – looks like the End is Nigh.

On the up side, people are rioting in the streets in Europe, in Britain, in Canada… and to a degree even Joe Sixpack is starting to wake up and smell the coffee.  He may not be able to articulate why the current capitalist system gone mad is not functioning, and he may have grumbled about those dirty hippies in the Occupy camps, but he also now can spout off about the 1%, and feel aggrieved that he’s in the 99%

From such tiny acorns a mighty oak may grow.

Unless the government gets there first with Agent Orange.

Waiting For The Shoe To Drop

Greece continues to slide into chaos. Most other Eurozone countries are shaking in their boots. In Canada Stephen Harper is readying Greek style 10% cuts to government spending, and continues to sell the country to China.  And the US? Well, the country that gave us the crash of 2008 wallows about, still unwilling and unable to do anything substantive to rescue the groups that are suffering most.

My predictions for 2012?

1) Massive cuts to services, wages, and jobs will continue in Europe, followed by increased violence and protest. Unlike in North America, the Europeans will not back down or fade away.  As a result you’ll start seeing politicians backtracking.

2) In Canada we’ll continue to see social programs gutted, especially pensions and services for seniors.  By year end a lot of Baby Boomers will start to understand that they have been sold a bill of goods for several decades, and the RRSPs, savings plans, and even corporate pension plans will not be enough to support them in anything but poverty.

The short term solution being touted is to make 70 the new 65, but how far can you delay retirement before creating other problems, or before employers tire of carrying elderly employees?  Sixty-five was a not a random number – a lot of people can’t really work beyond that age.

3) We’ll see a continued rise in Anonymous, Wikileaks, and Occupy type actions (Vikileaks being a harbinger of what’s coming).  In direct response we’ll see the Conservatives ram through their domestic spying bill, and formalize the survielance of Canadians in a way that they wouldn’t dare do a few years ago.

You think that post-911 state control was bad? Wait until politicians start seeing their dirty little secrets aired like so much fetid laundry.

4) Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! Yeah, right.  Canada will continue to export jobs and plants to the US or further afield, and the wage for average folks will continue to slide – or plummet.

And all the while, the CBC and the Globe and Mail will sing about how healthy Canada is, and how we’re prospering, and how selling the entire country to the Chinese is just peachy keen!

5) Oh yeah – the Americans will revert to their time honoured tactic when the economy is in the dumps – they’ll start another war somewhere! Bomb, bomb, bomb, Bomb, bomb  Iran!

Occupy Vancouver ~ The End is Near

I wandered down to Occupy Vancouver, and have to say that it was a good feeling.  The village that’s been collecting around the Vancouver Art Gallery is an inspiring, positive, and hopeful place.

It’s a shame it has to end, and that it will likely do so in an ugly fashion.

In a nutshell:

• Vancouver is in the middle of Mayoral elections, with the incumbent Bike Lane Loving Juiceman running against the Evil Nasty Right Wing Ideologue Suzanne Anton.
• Some polls suggest that Anton is closing the gap.
• She’s doing this by running an Evil Nasty Negative Fear-mongering campaign – the kind of campaign that gets Evil Right Wing Ideologues elected time after time.
• Occupy Vancouver is a lovely gift for her. She can stand up and demand that Mayor Juiceman Do Something.  She can suggest (indirectly thus far) that she would have already had the Vancouver cops in there to bust heads and shut down the Occupation.
• Mayor Juiceman now has two options:

a) Do nothing about Occupy Vancouver.  At which point Anton and the media will paint him as a weak kneed wimp that Can’t Take Charge.  That may be enough to kill him at the polls.

b) Send in the cops to shut down Occupy Vancouver (Realistically the only way to do it). At which point there will be some kind of street battle that Anton and the media will declare was A Riot.  A Riot caused by the Mayor and his lack of leadership skills etc. That too may be enough to kill him at the polls.

My guess is that if Anton keeps climbing in the polls we’ll see Gregor Robertson choose Option B in the last ditch hope that out-toughing Anton will save his hide.

In any event, he’s going to lose the election.

Occupy Wall Street ~ Or else what?

As we speak a hardy group of individuals have decided that enough is enough, and with cries of anger have managed the unimaginable: they have pitched pup tents on the lawn outside if the Vancouver Art Gallery!

Wow, I’m sure that Jimmy Pattison and Warren Buffett are on the phone right now saying “Oh my God! What shall we do!”

Here’s a clue: if the police and army aren’t actively smashing heads and hauling you off in chains, then you aren’t threatening anyone.

The Occupy Vancouver crew actually went so far as to meet the Vancouver Police, and with the Downtown Business Association when they were organizing the event.  They have set up camp in an generally sanctioned location for protests – one that usually doesn’t actually inconvenience anyone – and seem to be acting in a polite and law abiding manner.  Certainly no-one is pounding tent stakes into the lawn.

Let’s be blunt. As long as the various Occupy groups stay within approved boundaries of geography and behavior, they’ll likely be left more or less alone.  Heck, even Canada’s Finance minister, a right wing reactionary if ever there was one, spoke approvingly of them.

Or, to be equally blunt, the 99% that are behind these actions pose no threat whatsoever to the 1% that own and control our governments and corporations.

OWS can certainly claim the moral high ground, but the people with real power and money feel no need to join them there, and will happily carry on polluting, destroying, corrupting, and robbing the rest of us.

Remember the sixties and seventies, and the peace marches in Vancouver that approached 100,000 people? Canada is still building arms, and sending young men and women to fight in foreign wars – usually at the behest of the Americans.

Remember the seventies and eighties, and the growing environmental movement? Companies like BP are still polluting, and Canada’s role in the tar sands continues to be an international embarrassment.

Remember the fight for women’s rights and equality? Guess who’s still making 69%?

What the greedheads have figured out is that they can a) choose to ignore any and all protests, or b) put their money into barefaced misleading advertising campaigns, or if really embarrassed can c) express their deep and abiding concern for the cause of the day, then return to a).

Non-violence has a lovely ring to it, and those not in power are always quick to embrace it.  The problem is that the power brokers don’t and ultimately you’ll wind up on the receiving end of truncheon or a tank.

Besides, let’s not forget that while Martin Luther King Jr was preaching non-violence there were also groups like the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground who were taking a decidedly more direct approach to change.  Can you honestly say that fear of that kind of radical violent movement didn’t play a big role in the changes that came out of the Civil Rights Movement?  Can you believe that major riots in cities across the US didn’t scare the bezeejuz out of the political leaders?

If you’re genuinely hoping to bring and end to the exploitation that comes from Capitalism, you’ll need to bring the entire Empire to its knees.

You will not do that with protest signs, or encampments, or Twitter feeds.

You do it the same way that many of the Middle East protests did it: by making it abundantly clear that if change doesn’t happen – now – then you’ll rise up and make things change.

As one person described such things to me, it’s not enough to complain, or even to threaten.  You also need to be able to say “Or else we will do this.” You need to be able to look your oppressor in the eye and say “Make these changes, or there will be consequences, big ones.”

So far no-one in the Occupy movement has done that.  Camping out at the Gallery is cute, but will do nothing to change anything.

Can You Afford to be Nice?

Some of the offshoots of Occupy Wall Street are getting strange.  In Vancouver the organizers actually invited the Vancouver Police and the Downtown Business Association to planning meetings, and now they’re getting right snippy because people are suggesting these were bad ideas.

In Toronto a great amount of time was spent trying to obtain a consensus on whether or not to use consensus or voting to make decisions.  Really.

While this group spent a day arguing about process, and arcane tangential issues surrounding process, the Corporate types bulldozed a dozen forests, poisoned fifty rivers, and consolidated their control of three more governments.

Which leaves us even further removed from the world that we would like to live in.

As the Empire crumbles we’ll see the greedheads and corporate bosses move even faster to consolidate their power and trample resistance.  They’re not going to seek consensus, or ask permission, or worry about hurting anyone’s feelings.

When the crunch comes down a lot of people will be faced with some stark choices: do you try to be a nice, left-leaning, compassionate consensus seeker, or do you take the most direct, offensive, and powerful course of action.

When you’re sitting in a church basement fighting theoretical battles it’s easy to be high-minded. When it comes down to feeding your kids, protecting your home, or even saving your job, you sometimes need to embrace pragmatism.

When all of these Occupy types are holding Assemblies, and protesting on the proper side of the police barricades, and marshaling the parade along predetermined routes, the bosses are laughing.  Obedient people, no matter how large the crowd, pose no threat.

It’s when you stop obeying their rules that they’ll get mean.

Listen – Do You Want To Hear a Secret?

Back in the bad old days of the Soviet Union, ideas could be spread by way of samizdat.  Because no-one had copiers or mimeograph machines, and before the ubiquity of personal computers, there was only one practical way to spread ideas: on paper.

Because there was no easy way to copy books or essays, you would write or type a complete copy of a book, then pass it on to someone else. They in turn would make another copy and pass that on.

Vladimir Bukovsky defined samizdat as follows:

“(…) I myself create it,
edit it,
censor it,
publish it,
distribute it, and …
get imprisoned for it. (…)”

We live in a much different age.  My telephone is also a computer.  I publish my own ideas on the ‘net, and share things that I find as widely as possible using various tools like Twitter and Google+.

As we saw recently in the Middle East, news and ideas can travel fast, and whatever barriers are put in place can be worked around with little or no effort.

The worrisome thing about all of this ease of communication is that it also opens one up to surveillance, by governments, corporations, and others of their ilk.  Surveillance in a detail, and at a level that the Soviet KGB could never have imagined.

Leaving aside Facebook, Google, and similar data collection businesses, just take some time to think hard about how many parts of your government are watching you right now, or would be if you started to do things that worry them.

Start your education here.

If the Empire is about to collapse, and with it the economy (or perhaps in the other order), there will surely be a period when repression of ideas and individuals will spike.  Orwell’s “bootheel stamping in the face of humanity” will, for a period, become the norm as crumbling powers strive to maintain order.

Why this matters is that as the economic system breaks down, and as scarce resources start to be reserved for the wealthy and powerful, those of us at the bottom of the ladder will need to become increasingly crafty in securing and sharing the things that we need on a day to day basis.

Government and corporations won’t bother watching out for you, so you’ll need to do it yourself.  Part of that will involve sharing information with the people in your circle.

Some of that information you’ll want to keep within a fairly small group so as not to overwhelm limited resources.

Some of that information you’ll want to keep out of the sight of the Authorities when you find that you need to bend or break rules or regulations.

Now is the time to start looking at option and tools that will let you and your nieghbours work together, whether to share food and supplies, or to rebuild some kind of governmental structure to replace the one that’s collapsing.

Now’s the time to start developing the kind of small scale, local infrastructure that can support unregulated communication, whether via the ‘net, low power FM radio, or by learning how to make paper and ink.

 

Just How Badly ARE We being Screwed by the Obscenely Rich?

All right – do you want to know exactly how badly things have changed in the last thirty years? Do you want a graphic illustration of why you can’t expect the folks in Washington or Ottawa to ever do anything that will help you?

Our friends at the New York Times have published an infographic that should scare the pants off of you. Click the thumbnail to see it full size.

If you’re an actual working person you’ll not be surprised. Most people that I know have pretty much figured out that things have been swinging way too far in favour of the mega-rich.

Of course, absurd inequities like this usually signal the end of one cycle and the beginning of another.  At least we should feel safe in knowing that it can’t get too much worse.

Brace yourself, it’s going to be rocky ride!