beyondclicktivism

While it’s cheering to see #LansleyOut trending on twitter, it’s not going to make a slight bit of difference.

Indeed if you look carefully at those now calling for Lansley to be kicked out, it’s not because of what he’s doing to the NHS – it’s because he’s not manipulating the media message well enough to keep people compliant.

A Conservative source suggests Lansley be “taken out and shot” and immediately the spin machine starts up, attacking the left as violent hypocrites for their jubilation at Tory language.  This way critics of the bill are smeared at the same time as they are distracted

Cameron has no loyalty for his fellow ministers: he’ll gladly sacrifice Lansley and while critics are celebrating a minor victory at the fall of a hated minister, the bill to open up the NHS to privatisation will pass without effective opposition.

It’s up to us to kill the bill and to work out where best to put pressure. I was glad to see Ed Miliband finally making some noise about the bill but as leader of the opposition he needs to deliver more than comment in the Sunday papers: a firm promise backing Burnham’s pledge to reverse the bill if passed could make a difference; until then, he’s just posturing.

The following are the Liberal Democrats who voted for Lansley’s reforms the first time the Health and Social Care Bill passed through the commons.

Steve Webb,
Menzies Campbell,
David Laws,
Mark Williams,
David Heath,
Stephen Lloyd,
Norman Baker,
Roger Williams,
Jo Swinson,
Don Foster,
Gordon Birtwistle,
John Thurso,
Stephen Williams,
Nick Harvey,
Norman Lamb,
Ian Swales,
Tom Brake,
Danny Alexander,
Bob Russell,
Paul Burstow,
Duncan Hames,
John Hemming,
Simon Wright,
Andrew Stunell,
Edward Davey,
Michael Moore,
Stephen Gilbert,
Simon Hughes,
Alistair Carmichael,
Tessa Munt,
David Ward,
Lorely Burt,
John Leech,
Sarah Teather,
Alan Beith,
Alan Reid,
Chris Huhne,
Jenny Willott,
Mike Crockart,
Vince Cable,
Nick Clegg

(Source: Hansard.)

You may recognise many of these names from those who voted for the Welfare Reform Bill.

These are the people who in theory are most likely to change their minds.

Clegg justifies breaking his promises to the electorate and sacrificing his values on the grounds that there isn’t a Liberal Democrat majority (which begs the question, what the hell are they doing backing the Conservatives in a coalition if doing so means they cannot stand up for their own values?). On putting pressure on the peers, he states:

Let’s be blunt: I am asking, day in, day out, Liberal Democrat peers to vote on things that they wouldn’t do in a month of Sundays if it was a Liberal Democrat government. So I don’t think people should judge the Lib Dem peers too harshly. I think they should be judged on what is finally decided. So, for instance, on the health bill, frankly I am incredibly grateful that people like Shirley Williams dug her heels in on the health bill because it’s a whole lot better than it would have been otherwise, a whole lot better. On this latest one this last week [welfare reform], I think you will find that the concern they expressed about… the transition with which, the manner with which you implement the [benefit] cap, were totally legitimate concerns.

Clegg interviewed by House Magazine.

Clegg appears to realise that he has committed too many crimes to change his mind and, like Macbeth “in blood / Stepp’d in so far”, is grimly committed to furthering the Conservative party agenda and his own eventual destruction. His fellow ministers, however, may be less happy to go down in history as the quislings who killed the Liberal Democrat party in the UK, brought shame on the democratic process and destroyed a health service built by heroes.

Those who want to lobby ministers to stop this bill might be advised to focus on these names first and also to look closely at the votes recorded in Hansard to see if any of the Conservatives who voted Aye might be convinced to change their minds. Not all Tories are free-market zealots. Many must have serious reservations about the impact of the reforms. They may not speak out in public but they won’t be so stupid as to ignore the almost unanimous opposition from the medical profession. No matter how many times Cameron lies at the despatch box claiming the opposite, health professionals overwhelmingly oppose the bill.

I’m too aware of the tactics Cameron uses to see this latest development as anything more than a distraction. There are less than three months left to save the NHS. Let’s keep our eye on the real target and not let the Conservatives sacrifice a pawn to win the game.

By Tim Hardy

“I am always ten seconds away from deleting my twitter account,” Mark Fisher announced last night at the launch for Paul Mason’s new book.

It’s a sentiment I share.

Life in the age of social media too easily becomes a kind of strained public performance with our tweets and status updates the canned laughter that stands in for real joy because we are too exhausted and disconnected to experience the life in front of us.

About 18 months ago I deleted nearly a decade’s worth of my online presence because I felt sickened by the behaviours that the existing structures of social media seem to be encouraging.

While I appreciate the transformative power of technology, I am often nostalgic for certain qualities of everyday life that we have lost due to the ubiquity of networked devices. Nor are the dangers of a creeping surveillance state lost on me.

I was an early adopter but I am not a digital native. When I am on twitter, I am aware that I am not in the moment: my attention is elsewhere. I turn to it for distraction when I should be doing other things. This is not healthy.

Even when discussion online is political, too much activity reminds me of  Zizek’s description of interpassivity:

Even in much of today’s progressive politics, the danger is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to be active and to participate. People intervene all the time, attempting to “do something,” academics participate in meaningless debates; the truly difficult thing is to step back and to withdraw from it. Those in power often prefer even a critical participation to silence – just to engage us in a dialogue, to make it sure that our ominous passivity is broken. Against such an interpassive mode in which we are active all the time to make sure that nothing will really change, the first truly critical step is to withdraw into passivity and to refuse to participate. This first step clears the ground for a true activity, for an act that will effectively change the coordinates of the constellation.

The Interpassive Subject: Lacan Turns a Prayer Wheel, Slavoj Zizek

However, six months after deleting everything, I started Beyond Clicktivism and the connected twitter account @bc_tmh in spite of all these reservations.

For all the dangers, the potential to reach large numbers of people through social media, including those who do not have the mobility or the means to meet otherwise, has a value that cannot be underestimated. Mainstream media attention still stands as the only gateway to wider audiences but the border controls are becoming more and more porous.

Even then I was unable to bring myself to create a new Facebook account. To me, it is a personal data Ponzi scheme and I have no time for walled gardens.

As Mark’s fellow panelist James reminded us, “We must not forget that Facebook is a factory. If something appears to be free it is because you are generating wealth for it. The news of the Facebook IPO just confirms how much that is worth.”

Aaron Peters is quick to point out that there are things that are free for radical, world-changing reasons: the open source software that runs a significant proportion of our technological infrastructure and projects like Wikipedia are two high-profile examples. It’s a qualification with which James would doubtless concur. Otherwise Aaron agrees about the image of social media as a factory. He is very enthusiastic about recent talk of using the Facebook IPO date as the signal for a mass deletion of accounts.

While the existing open source alternatives currently replicate the self-branding performativity I find so alienating about popular social media, at the very least they offer a way out of commercial data silos and the possibility of changes to their structures that are not motivated solely by profit.

It’s a very compelling idea. What would happen if there was a run on Facebook on the day it went public? What would it take to make this happen?

[Update: James has shared some of his thoughts on Mason's book and where we go next. I urge you to read it. ]

By Tim Hardy

There are many despicable acts for which this government will be judged but today’s decision to vote against the Lords’ amendments and condemn thousands of disabled people and their families to a future of poverty is one of the lowest yet.

You’d expect such vicious behaviour from Conservatives but the following Liberal Democrats today have proved themselves lower still:

Steve Webb,
Menzies Campbell,
David Laws,
Mark Williams,
David Heath,
Stephen Lloyd,
Jeremy Browne,
Norman Baker,
Roger Williams,
Jo Swinson,
Don Foster,
Gordon Birtwistle,
John Thurso,
Stephen Williams,
Nick Harvey,
Norman Lamb,
John Pugh,
Robert Smith,
Tom Brake,
Danny Alexander,
Malcolm Bruce,
Paul Burstow,
Duncan Hames,
Annette Brooke,
John Hemming,
Simon Wright,
Andrew Stunell,
Julian Huppert,
Edward Davey,
Stephen Gilbert,
Simon Hughes,
Lynne Featherstone,
Dan Rogerson,
Alistair Carmichael,
Tessa Munt,
David Ward,
Lorely Burt,
Alan Beith,
Martin Horwood,
Tim Farron,
Chris Huhne,
Jenny Willott,
Vince Cable,
Nick Clegg

(Source: Hansard.)

These MPs are happily enabling a minority government to carry out a devastating attack on the most vulnerable in society. They have betrayed the espoused values of their party. They have betrayed their supporters. They are even more disgusting than the free-market zealots they support.

The real enemy is the Conservative Party and the main target of our ire has to be the slick, PR man at the helm who is their greatest asset in the polls.

But we must never forget who gave him power.

By Jonathan Kent

By Fredrik Walløe

A 28-page summary from the report on Breivik’s mental state was leaked to Norwegian broadcaster TV2 some days ago. I  live-tweeted the highlights, but here’s a short report for those who missed it.

It came days after it was revealed that Breivik may have suffered sexual abuse as a child, and revealed some bizarre views.

Leaked psychiatric report on Anders Behring Breivik

(Source: TV2)

The report speculates that his delusions might have started in 2006, after his company went bankrupt and he went to live with his mother. While living there, he withdrew socially, and refused to look for a job or apply for benefits. Breivik spent an increasing amount of time in his room and didn’t wash his own clothes or cook for himself.

From 2009 onwards he began to suspect he was under surveillance.

In 2010 there was a noticeable change in his behaviour, according to his mother. It appears that his understanding of social interaction was diminished, but the details of what that means are not available at this time. What is mentioned, is that he would alternate radically in his behaviour towards his mother, from sitting too close to her on the couch, to not accepting food from her. She said he became uncomfortably intense, irritable and angry. Breivik spoke more and more about his ideology – which his mother dismissed as outlandish.

In conversation with psychiatrists Torgeir Husby and Synne Sørheim, he is described as using numbers and statistics in the place of emotional language – when assessing his ‘operation’ he measured its success in percentage terms – and appears completely emotionally detached.

Breivik says he feels no remorse, and that his actions were necessary and motivated by his love for the Norwegian people. His main lawyer, Lippestad, has told the press that he no longer expects his client to regret murdering 77 people.

When asked to evaluate his act of terrorism, Breivik remains void of empathy and focuses on how it affects his reputation and whether it might expedite the political project and assumption of power in Europe that he envisages.

The psychiatrists say he doesn’t express emotions when speaking of his family or childhood, and add that he tends to stare a bit, blinks quite often and uses few gestures. Breivik has a slightly rigid body language, which they believe is linked to his diagnosis.

Breivik uses a strange militarised language, exemplified by things like ‘low-intensity civil war’, which is linked to his believe that there is an ongoing civil war in Norway. He has also made up some words of his own and redefined others: Suicidal-Marxism is one example.

He believes he is the ideological leader of Knights Templar, which has mandate to rule Norway – in what seems to be some sort of dictatorial militarised fashion – as well as to act as judge and jury. They say he appears to perceive this responsibility – to decide who lives and dies – as real, but burdening.

In his view, a considerable part of the population are traitors, probably several hundred thousand people out of about five million. What is to happen to these ‘traitors’ is unclear, but judging from what has been written about his views, it  seems appropriate to assume that they were to be executed if found guilty of ‘treason’. The text seems to imply that those who refused to join him would be in trouble of that sort, but those plans are not stated explicitly in the part of the report that was leaked.

Breivik considers it likely that he will be made regent of Norway at some point in the future, once a coup of some sort has taken place. If he becomes regent, Breivik wishes to be known as Sigurd Korsfareren [rough translation: Sigurd The Crusader] the second.

Despite carrying out a terrorist attack against Norway and planning to execute an unknown number of other Norwegians if given the chance, Breivik considers his love overdeveloped.

Breivik believes there is ethnic cleansing going on in Norway, and lives in fear of being murdered. And he believes there’s a chance that this [presumably Europe-wide] civil war might spark WW3.

Among his more colourful plans are the reserves – or camps – for ethnic Norwegians, whose DNA is to be tested so that those with the highest racial purity can be bred.

Beyond that, he believes the royal family will be removed through a revolution in 2020, and replaced with whoever is deemed the most Norwegian person in the country. This is treated in genetic terms, and he wants to test the DNA of some dead Viking kings against the DNA of the general population. Whoever possess the DNA most similar to that of these Vikings – whose lives ended around 1000 years ago – gets to rule Norway. One assumes awkwardness would ensue if the person deemed most Norwegian was, say, a Marxist.

Breivik changes between referring to himself as ‘I’ and ‘we’ – that is to say, he speaks of himself in plural. The psychiatrists speculate that he might have experienced hallucinations, and that some of the people he claims to have met do not exist outside his mind. They cannot confirm this, and it’s hard to judge how credible that theory is based on the summary of a report.

Of 22/7, he says it was ‘brutal, but genius’. They say he is incapable of seeing themselves from other perspectives.

The report recognises that Breivik is focused and that he pulled off a highly complex operation and wrote a lengthy manifesto which required him to handle a large quantity of information. They also mention that his recollection is unnaturally good, both in terms of details and situations.

Breivik speaks of things related to himself as though they are of grand importance: his use of nicotine and candy becomes parts of some military strategy, as opposed to mere habits.

His delusions are thought to have developed gradually since 2006, but some symptoms may have presented far earlier. They point to him being warned by police for tagging as a teenager. The details that underlie this odd statement are presumably to be found in the full report. This text is based on the leaked 28-page summary of that report, which consist of 243 pages.

Breivik denies being suicidal, but states that martyrdom is desirable. The psychiatrists consider him a threat to himself and others, and conclude that he is a paranoid schizophrenic in need of treatment. Breivik disputes this conclusion, and claims that his views have been taken out of context and that the report contains factual errors on just about every page.

The majority of the information comes from the leaked report, which is available in Norwegian only at this time.

Other information comes from previous news stories and my own research on Breivik and the terrorist attack on 22/07. Links to these news stories are available upon request.

Contact details:

• For feedback about sources: sources@fredrikwalloe.com
• Other feedback or queries: contact@fredrikwalloe.com

(Cross-posted from Breivik’s delusions: breeding camps, dictatorial rule by DNA, and WW3 by Fredrik Walløe.)

By Tim Hardy

No one can negotiate without the power to compel negotiation… To attempt to operate on a good-will rather than on a power basis would be to attempt something the world has not yet experienced.
Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

We all know how meaningless the government’s listening exercises are.

Lansley held a listening exercise on the NHS – then ignored it and pushed ahead to open up our health service for privatisation as originally planned.

The coalition held a consultation on criminalising squatting – then when 90% of respondents said it was a bad idea, tore up the results and pushed the changes through – with full support from Labour – by tacking them onto another bill.

What kind of negotiations can you have when one party refuses to listen?

The coalition has no intention of honouring the contracts made with those who perform the most vital roles in our society, the public sector, but they are still scared.

The sneering millionaires in the cabinet have been dismissing strike action for months, lobbing insults from behind a carefully placed frontline of Liberal Democrat MPs, but that is just bravado.

As far as the coalition are concerned, the negotiations are a necessary pantomime to keep up a pretence of democracy. No wonder, Maude thought that strikes should be reduced to 15 minutes; to him and his colleagues, they should be a symbolic gesture, nothing more. A demonstration of the power of public sector workers terrifies them.

Even now the coalition are trying to use industrial action as an excuse to do what they were planning to do in the first place; tacitly admitting that the strikes have an effect even while their leader blusters and lies and pretends today’s actions were “a damp squib”.

The Tories would have us believe that the rich are different than you and me and for this reason should be given everything they need to further increase their wealth, from free labour to stack their shelves, through tax exemptions on their profits to massive bail outs when their risks don’t pay off.

Everything in our society that stands in the way of the profits of these few must be sacrificed: welfare, pensions, hospitals, rights, education. Two hundred years of social progress must be destroyed just to keep those that fund the Conservatives happy.

But behind the public school braying and jeering from the front benches, behind the constant reiteration of the gospel of capitalist realism by the BBC, is the nagging awareness that when workers withdraw their labour it exposes the real source of the wealth of the powerful and explodes the lie used to justify their special treatment, the lie that the super rich do not rely on anything beyond their own heroic willpower when in reality they are the biggest welfare queens around.

Behind the bullies’ swagger is fear: fear that the lies are beginning to look more and more transparent and that even the escalating, systematic abuse of power by the police to quell protest will not be enough to keep the people quiet forever.

Nobody ever wants to go on strike. But direct threats to their power are the only language the government ever understands. The coalition is never going to do anything out of the goodness of their hearts.

In an article that the Sun refused to run, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber wrote:

We know the strike will cause difficulties today, and we regret that. But it’s proved to be the only language the government understands.

I’ve been leading talks with ministers for months. But they were going nowhere. It’s only when we called a day of action that government started to move. Ministers should listen carefully today to their staff, and get stuck into trying to reach the fair negotiated settlement that unions want.

(The Article the Sun refused to run.)

As always, most of the media are totally on-message, the Sun refusing to print something so reasonable, the rest repeating government propaganda without question.

Yet even in the face of this torrent of misinformation, the majority of people back the strikes today.

They understand that the Tories only serve their own corporate paymasters and recognise that a race to the bottom harms everyone.

Today is a step, like March 26, like June 30, towards people finding their voice again and realising that we are not helpless.

Ordinary decent people have had enough. Nobody is standing up for our interests while those who bankrupted the economy are still enjoying the high life.  To negotiate takes power and while the few have the money, the many have the numbers. As long as we stand together, we cannot be defeated.

By Mike Czech

Some weeks ago, as the novelty started to wear off the Wall Street occupation, media interest was suddenly renewed by reports of mass arrests. Arrests for peaceful protest, arrests for voicing an opinion, arrests for walking on the wrong bit of street. Arrests, even, for withdrawing one’s own money from the bank. When our media reports on the occupy movement, it is often because things are going badly, rather than well, and we ourselves often find other occupations most inspirational when they are overcoming great obstacles. This has led some people to think that we must seek out obstacles in order to strengthen our protest.

Chatting at St. Paul’s and Finsbury Square, I have heard from many intelligent and sensible people the same sentiment when planning protests; “what this movement needs now is some arrests. Look at what happened with the media when they arrested people at Wall Street.”

The treatment that protesters routinely get from the police would be unbelievable to the general public who don’t see it, and so we naturally want to expose the authoritarian nature of the state’s response to us. Rosa Luxemburg said “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains,” and there are protesters among us prepared to be arrested in order to demonstrate to the wider public the limits of our freedom.

Is it worth it though?

While I respect the choice of individuals to act freely, I question the principles of any movement which prioritises media attention over personal liberty. If someone really thinks that their best possible contribution to the aims of the occupation or to protecting free speech is to offer themselves up for arrest then so be it, but it’s not something for us to expect of others.

Being unafraid of arrest may demonstrate defiance to the state and undermine its power over us, but actually getting arrested places the individual at the mercy of police and the legal system; it empowers the state to control us further. As an arrestee, you have fewer freedoms than other protesters, especially if you have bail restrictions placed upon you. Many people have been bailed away from the City of London recently, meaning that they cannot return to the St. Paul’s camp. If you consider that place a home, do not willingly allow yourself to be kept away. If you believe that the state already has too much control over your liberty, your time and your limited finances, don’t submit to give them more power for the sake of symbolic defiance. Police stations are dangerous places, people are bullied, intimidated and abused, emotionally and physically, inside them and the police are largely unaccountable for their actions. Courts are handing down politically motivated sentences for minor offences if they’re related to protest, with the hope of scaring us and discrediting our cause. We should never be put off from protesting by this, but we should get wise to their agenda and not play into their hands and strengthen their power.

This is not an attack on activists who have been arrested, nor is it a condemnation of activism that breaks the law. Sometimes when opposing intolerable laws one has no choice, sometimes the draconian restrictions in this country make lawful protest pointless. Sometimes for an action to have the desired effect, protesters have to accept the consequences, and view arrest as a calculated risk or the price of achieving something. This decision must be taken seriously, however; getting arrested due to recklessness or lack of discipline on a protest is not necessary and doesn’t advance our political aims at all.

Most importantly, an arrest affects us all. On demonstrations, activists will not think twice before “de-arresting”; physically stopping the police from snatching fellow protesters and putting themselves at great risk of injury (or arrest!). Knowing that others will take on this risk, one must weigh up whether an arrest will be as useful as it could be. Similarly, the time that friends and legal groups (like the brilliantly hard-working Green and Black Cross) spend waiting outside police stations in the early hours or attending court hearings could be put to much better use. There is no question that we will look after each other, but it’s not what we came here to do.

We have a duty to each other, and a duty to recognise that and act responsibly. The personal and political motivations to disregard the danger of arrest are obvious: to highlight the injustice of political policing and draw attention to the cause. However, an arrest transfers power from protesters to the state and there’s so much more that you can contribute. You serve the movement by not empowering the police. You serve the movement with your liberty.

By Lisa Ansell

Late last month activists occupying the grounds outside St Paul’s cathedral read that Maurice Glasman approved of their decision to focus criticism on the City of London Corporation, on the Guardian website. This came as a surprise to many. First off, the camp had made no such decision. Secondly, this leak to the press contradicted every principle on which the occupation is based.

This diverse group of occupiers have sought to democratize the square mile “state within a state” that is the City of London Corporation, but not by focusing their attention on a single issue to “campaign” for. Instead, they have created a  model of true, representative democracy – a method of decision making which demands that everyone is listened to.

This lengthy, fluid, and evolving means of building consensus determines the occupation”s aims at any given time. Within this process, there are many people formulating ideas, which then are discussed, developed, rejected or agreed by the entire group, openly. Leaking documents, spin, and triangulation have no place in this scenario.

Enter Blue Labour. This is a vision of Britain dreamed up by Maurice Glasman, a theologian and philosopher. The mantra “faith, flag, and family” underpins an intellectual fantasy exercise that gives Labour a new policy springboard, but without changing their economic approach. This emerging ideology has so far led to Labour questioning gender equality, so they can avoid addressing either their economic failures or the rolling back of the welfare state, and playing on social divides which are volatile in times of declining living standards. Blue Labour thinking is a by-product of the very same economic dogma that occupy movements universally oppose.

Glasman’s ability to respond so quickly and eloquently to a document being passed around for signatures at midnight before publication raised suspicion in the Occupy camp. It transpired that Glasman had visited the camp a week before, and subsequently followed up contact with an activist he met there. John Milbank writes that Glasman was endeavouring to persuade the occupiers to focus on the City of London.

Following Glasman’s interest in this particular issue, the occupiers reported a change in the decision-making process around the Corporation of London debate. Unlike the carefully inclusive discussion which would usually characterise debates here,  occupiers felt that night’s discussion had been “railroaded”. Many of those in working groups and general assemblies had been “reassured” that the document about the Corporation of London had been approved by journalists and “credible people” outside the camp.

The population of the occupation changes in size and anyone present is part of the decision making process if they choose to be. It just so happened that someone who worked closely with Glasman on the formulation of Blue Labour, appeared at the Sunday evening General Assembly, where the Corporation proposal was voted on. Another associate has also spoken at assemblies.

The suspicion at Occupy is that Blue Labour thinkers have actively sought to set the agenda here. Many at the camp are well versed in the short history of “astroturfing” – or simulating a grassroots movement – and attempts at co-option. In the past year, Ed Miliband”s astroturfing techniques (learned from the US Democrats) have enjoyed some success. Initiatives like Netroots and  co-ordination of the political blogosphere are two examples from his leadership campaign.

This breed of politics does not work in a changing, leaderless organisation where consensus is needed. The experience is part of a steep learning curve for the occupiers, but one activist told me “it is to be expected at this stage in the occupation, it”s one of those things”.  There is little chance of Occupy London being passed off as a grassroots Blue Labour camp any time soon.

A Labour Party member I spoke to, who had been at the Edinburgh occupation said the thing he had found most interesting had been that “It’s about people and a common goal .The interesting thing is the organization and consensus.”  His comments are something that those involved in this muddled attempt at co-option would find novel, but could learn from.

(Cross-posted from The occupation will not be astroturfed.)

By Fredrik Walløe

The Freedom Waves ships are about to come under attack from Israeli boats and a military helicopter while still in international waters. Communications with the ships was lost shortly after one boat, the Tahrir, reported that Israeli boats were closing in. An earlier report said that the ships have been ordered to go to head for Egypt or turn around.

Hassan Ghani, a Press TV correspondent who is on one of the boats,  said in an interview that communications had been jammed and Israeli boats were closing in. Activists will offer passive non-violent resistance to the boarding. Ghani said a military helicopter could be seen hovering above. Activists on the ship have described the attack as an illegal act of piracy. You can see the interview in full here.

The boats – Saoirse and the Tahrir – are headed for Gaza in an attempt to break the siege. There are parliamentarians aboard the Saoirse, which is from Ireland. And the Tahrir “carries representatives from Canada, the U.S., Australia, and Palestine“.

Israeli warships closing in

(Image src.)

Electronic Intifada reports that

The U.S. Representative on the Tahrir, Kit Kittredge, was a passenger on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, The Audacity of Hope mission in Athens in July.

A journalist from Democracy Now is on the Tahrir also. Civil society organizations in Gaza await their arrival, and look forward to the delivery of letters collected from thousands of U.S. supporters in the To Gaza With Love campaign.

This map allows you to track the location of one of the flotilla.

(Cross-posted from Freedom Waves ships attacked by Israeli forces by Fredrik Walløe.)

By Mike Czech

Something exciting is happened. A wave of loosely affiliated occupations are springing up across the Western world, drawing thousands of people to the streets of hundreds of countries in an expression of dissatisfaction with the current economic order. We are creating a network of unignorable reminders to those in charge that we demand better from them, while at the same time finding ways to relate on a direct and human level, forming closer and more meaningful bonds of communal cohesion than government can provide. Occupation is the word of the moment, and this movement of tents and banners is reshaping the way we discuss politics. We are reaching a point where the idea of occupation has taken on a mythical quality, divorced from the act itself, and the meaning is becoming distorted and confused.

The word has spread from the streets to new domains, as people heed the call to #occupyeverywhere. In the US, the website Occupy the Boardroom declares “THE 1% HAVE ADDRESSES. THE 99% HAVE MESSAGES” and provides the contact details of various “Wall Street elites” to facilitate their personal harassment at the hands of the disgruntled. Taking the struggle in another direction is a call to “Occupy Congress” in order to secure jobs for the “99%” – by signing an online petition. Perhaps most impressive is the work of studentvote.ca, encouraging people to improve poor voter turn out and “Occupy the Ballot Box”! There are very few certain commonalities between those across the world who are camped out on the streets of their cities, but perhaps the most obvious is that they have lost faith in established democratic processes and are demanding (and creating) a new way to have their voices heard. Telling them to return to Parliamentary voting, even under the trendy guise of “occupying the ballot box”, is to miss the point entirely. Furthermore, the more ubiquitously the word “occupy” is used, the more it becomes the default verb for any kind of political engagement, the more meaningless it is. Put simply; to #occupyeverywhere is to occupy nowhere.

So, what is occupation? Thethirdestate.net recently published a document of practical advice for students occupying university buildings which stressed, above all, that once inside people must initially secure the doors, rather than the space. By controlling access, occupiers have total control of how the building it used, and secure their safety within it. This exemplifies the way occupation has been used as a tactic of direct action in the past; it is the act of inhabiting and controlling a space; university buildings, workplaces, government buildings, shops or anything else (rather than just loitering in it). Sometimes this is to cause as much disruption as possible in order to create a bargaining chip when making demands. Sometimes it is simply because people believe they can put a space to better use than those who currently own and run it. When protest is inspired, as it is now, by the effects of austerity, and when those involved do not have the luxury of their own space, taking control of new areas from which to organise is essential. Whether undertaken to disrupt or to re-order, occupation is a truly radical act. Among the many iconic images to have come out of Greece in recent months, the six-story banner dropped from the roof of the Finance Ministry in Syntagma Square which proclaims to the world that it is OCCUPIED perhaps best shows the escalating power of the protesters. Similarly, the true practical value of occupation is demonstrated in Caracas as 2,500 people squat an abandoned 45 story skyscraper to alleviate the Venezuelan housing crisis. Personally, when I hear the word “occupation”, I think instantly of the 2010/11 actions of student protesters in the UK, but walking around camp, veterans of the anti-war movement have been quick to remind me that “occupation” is what the British and American military did in Iraq (or the Nazis did in France). When put into this context, an occupation must be seen as a potentially aggressive act, and certainly something which is confrontational.

So what is occupylsx? Though dogmatically peaceful and avoiding causing any damage, The occupation is a defiant and antagonistic action and we started to properly acknowledge that when we decided to stay after St. Paul”s asked us to leave. There had been a mood around the camp while we nominally had the Church”s blessing to be there that we were guests, making a protest without causing any trouble. Now we more fully recognise that the existence of an occupation is a point of conflict between the property owners and the occupiers, and that we are in a rebellious position. During the first days, I heard someone advise us not to risk our camp”s future by responding to the provocations of the “1%”; but the camp is a response, and by being here we are taking the first steps towards fighting back. We are radicals, though some are still in process of realising that. We need to continue with this, to embrace the radical nature of our presence here and our power to be disruptive.

The more we reject the interferences of outside influences, the more we resist the interference of authorities, the more we control the space as our own, the more we are an occupation.