Say, I wonder if the Occupy Wall Street May 1st stuff is going to fizzle today.
My guess is that it will, because I see one indication -- there isn't much chatter at all in my kids' Facebook and Meebos and whatnot -- the usual clueless kiddies and mindless morons in their lists who usually go to OWS events aren't yammering about going to any of these activities or even skipping school.
The Pied Pipers are out asking kids not to go to school, and grown-ups not to go to work and -- get this! -- Moms not to go shopping! No shopping!!! What kind of commie nonsense is that?!
I really think OWS is a bust now, and hitching their wagon to the classic communist holiday of May 1st, used from time immemorial for all the red and socialist demonstrations, is just a complete non-starter.
This is not a country where the majority of people want to go communist, or even socialist, despite the rantings of, oh, my former EurasiaNet colleague, Ted Rall, for example -- a cartoonist who has a manifesto linked to eurasianet.org with his radical ideas. One notion he had that if everybody could be assured that they'd keep their house and their job, they wouldn't mind waking up the next day and living under an anarchist or communist government. Sigh.
There are all kinds of pickets by OWS, and I wonder if anyone will show up. Notice that on their website now, they frankly, unabashedly, without any bullshit, call for World Revolution.
They didn't do that when they were first starting out in stealth-socialist mode as just activists and community organizers and Concerned Folk, but now they are. It's good they're playing their hand, because it helps to explain why they are a bad idea.
Sending white powder to banks is also the sort of thing that does not attract the masses. It's nasty. It self-isolates.
Here's what these anonymous fucktards wrote on the notes in the envelopes -- the powder in fact was harmless, but was just decided to scare people (remember the anthrax scares after 9/11?)
"This is a reminder that you are not in control," said a message that arrived with the envelopes. "Just in case you needed some incentive to stop working we have a little surprise for you. Think fast you have seconds."
OWS claimed no connection. Did they denounce it robustly? No. Is it exactly like their storm-troopers in Anonymous in language and concept? Oh, exactly.
No doubt some of the unions with their rent-a-crowds will turn out -- the other day I was walking past the SEIU building in Washington, DC and they had a banner out, "We are the 99%." What a lot of idiocy.
What does the poster remind me of? Toxicity. The style is a little Soviet avant-garde poster art of the 1920s, a little gothic, a little Wiccan. Sums it up, eh?
I can't believe the actions tomorrow are THAT big a deal when the...New Jersey Star-Ledger...is leading the pack on news coverage in Google search results for the terms "Occupy Wall Street May 1". Fortunately, the Times hasn't gotten giddy (yet). They probably, in their infinitely good news judgement, decided there isn't a story yet.
Here's the thing. I think that Obama and other politicians and the various leftist movements that hope to bring him back to again in the fall for a second term are actually putting a lot of daylight between themselves and OWS, because it turned so nasty, violent, lice-ridden, rigid, and unpleasant in so many places (especially Oakland).
Here's an interesting bellweather of how important OWS and WikiLeaks (Jacob Appelbaum) are to Micah Sifry's Personal Democracy Forum, which had several public panel discussions on these topics throughout the last years: not very much.
They've been dropped.
For one, PDF spends more time schmoozing with those actually in power trying to subvert them, at love-ins like "Transparency Camp" in Washington, DC. Listen to the new "line" from the former Nation cadre:
Now, at places like Transparency Camp, we're glimpsing the emergence of a new culture, one that isn't inherently out to "Fight the Man" or disassociate itself from the mainstream of society, but that is aimed at making democracy and government work better. For the fun of it, you might say that this counterculture is a "count culture." It's powered by our ability to count everything (data); our ability to publish to the web (what you say can count); and a desire to make sure that everyone counts as full members of society.
More intriguingly, look at the PDF speakers' line-up. It's striking. First, there's Rob Bluey, a guy from the Heritage Foundation perching up top the list to give the semblance of "bi-partisan" and "pluralism" -- and it almost works.
But more to the point, look at the rest of the list. Yes, there's Gramps, John Perry Barlow, who has outrageously radical views but can be a "star" on a panel. But...
o No Robert Scobles -- I guess he's yesterday's newspaper. No Jeff Jarvis, either.
o But no Jacob Appelbaum or Briggit Jonsdottir of WikiLeaks -- good!
o No Evgeny Mirozov
o No Rebecca MacKinnon
o No Tim O'Reilly
o No Zeynap Tufecki
o No Dave Winer, God no
In other words, none of the Silicon Valley cultists, opensourceniks, "Internet freedom fighter types".
Instead -- Jaron Lanier, my favourite technologist because he criticizes Silicon Valley -- is even a featured speaker! yay! It's too bad I don't have $495, and too bad that the PDF operatives reject my request for press passes.
There's another speaker not in the lefty cult --Jessica Beinecke -- A Voice of America program host introducing American culture and language to China.
Of course, with Sascha Meinrath, director of Open Technology Initiative at New America Foundation, where MacKinnon and others are, you do have that lefty "progressive" viewpoint included. But it's less focused on smashing the security state like WikiLeaks and OWS, and more focused on process-oriented "gov 2.0" open government stuff, which of course is a very baggy concept that means different things to different people, but isn't quite the hateful "Internet freedom fighter" radicalism of some of the speakers I just noted weren't on the list.
And of course a featured speaker is Todd Park, the very CTO of America itself -- can you imagine, in CTO of US, Inc? What a job! What power! (But Beth Noveck isn't on the list, former White House official serving as deputy of the office of science and technology). Park was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, which is the bastion of the prog movement, so that's that. But he represents, obviously, somebody way more "establishment" than Jacob Appelbaum or Clay Shirky (also missing). I suspect he is not, like Anil Dash (when he was working as a consultant for the White House) going to show up in a goatse t-shirt.
Chris Soghoian is on the list because he's the new star on the Internet circuit, and Soros-backed, and not tainted by the radicalism of some of the others -- yet (although he shares much of their views).
All in all, you can see what Micah is doing here: he wants his team to come to power, so no more of this WikiLeaks stuff and not even the tech obsession of Robert Scoble!
Now the concentration is on how lists can be made automatically of supporters and how they can be reached on social media so they will vote for Obama -- that's all! And not by tired old Moveon.org or even the Daily Kos. It's something to be done by "David Binetti, Co-Founder and CEO of Votizen, a web service that unites social networks and voting, as well as Co-Founder of USA.gov" -- not Arun Gupta of OWS.
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