Occupying Wall Street – There Clearly Is No Plan

Nobody with a heart can deny the universally insidious, corrosive, parasitic, and indeed cannibalistic nature of Wall Street. I believe it is actually the second biggest threat to Civilization – after Global Warming – to which it has handily contributed. But relying on a sparse, face-painting mob of earth muffins to lead the charge is inviting disdain. Wall Street has only been silenced once before – and that was by Government as a result of Wall Street Crash and associated Depression, a charge led by an erstwhile establishment figure, FDR, who quite literally invited its hatred. You can’t destroy a hydra like Wall Street without a concerted, government inspired dose of reverse-engineered Machiavellianism.

Throughout history, the incoherent mob has achieved precious little, despite its penchant for placards, slogans, brick-tossing, flat-screen stealing and noise. It can be a tool of change in the hands of the strong, and focused, as Gandhi + MLK to an extent showed – in combination with a concurrent push by Government in line with awareness and will to act on a historical watershed, or a clear and profound injustice like post-slavery psuedo-legislation in the Slave States or women’s suffrage – but it lacks the brainpower to be the instigator.

Without the right positioning and appeal to the wider majority of fence-sitters, this kind of “boots on the ground” activism can be, and often is, counter-productive. In a case like this, the first blow must be a good one. Because, in the facile, media-swilling, superficial echo-chamber world we live in now, your first shot defines you. The Wall Street Occupation has moral outrage on its side, and should have the support of most Americans. The fact that it doesn’t suggests that it hasn’t exploited even a fraction of the political tools at its disposal.

Finally, I believe that political activism has a new and more powerful friend than the mob. The hacker.  If you’re going to take on Wall Street, don’t shoot your wad with something that the champagne-swillers on the balcony can smirk at from above. Hack the computers they sit at. Hack their bank accounts. Hack their trading models. Hack the exchanges. Bring the system to a standstill the right way. If someone from IT had shown up behind the smug traders on that balcony and said, “guys, you’d better come and see this”, they’d snort those bubbles faster than you can say “You’re fucked, mate”.

We need to take a lesson from Wikileaks. Because when Wall Street leaks, it leaks money. And that’s something that the rich really hate.

Egypt – Anger at Israel. Anger at the Army.

The Egyptian Army does not want to renew hostilities, hot or cold, with Israel. It’s too busy making money for that. But a disgruntled mob, frustrated that the removal of Mubarak may turn out to be nothing more than a symbolic moment, and a rearranging of chairs are venting their anger on the standard enemy that, ironically, Mubarak himself fomented for years (despite the peace treaty).

The horrible truth is that despite the excesses of the Mubarak regime, it helped Egypt make great leaps economically, and provided a certain – realpolitik – stability in the region. Pluralism seems an awfully long way from the Egyptian wavelength right now.

This could be the beginning of the clash between the Army establishment and the popular uprising that is beginning to seem inevitable.

Score One For The President. Your Move GOP Scumbags.

Obama was forceful enough tonight to make it clear that the GOP has to make a choice. Putting aside the details of the plan – which could have been more focused – If the GOP in Congress block the Obama jobs plan, Obama will do his best to tar them with ownership of the crisis. If they don’t, they’re handing the President a victory, and an election boost next year. What they’ll probably do is to employ a version of their standard “accept with unacceptable conditions”. That could muddy the waters just enough to parry Obama’s otherwise quality political move.

There’s one other problem here. The President is going head to head with a GOP House majority that revels in its lack of national popularity, whereas the President requires national popularity to be reelected. It’s an unfair fight in that respect, because the GOP’s Presidential candidates escape with little if any collateral damage.