A-Infos (en) What to do... A new direction for the radical press, from circlealpha.com

["Ikon O'Clastik" <ikon_o-clastik@eudoramail.com>]

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What to do, what to do...
by Lynx
> from http://circlealpha.com

        Okay, so some fundamentalist god-freaks flew a couple planes into
two of the biggest idols dedicated to amerika's Corporate religion, and
now all the fundamentalist god-freaks who worship at the altar of
american imperialism are screaming for blood.  Now how fun is that?
Bush gives a long-winded speech full of words he can barely pronounce,
let alone understand, and his ratings go through the roof without actually
doing anything of significance.  To anybody who wasn't already clear on
the concept before: he's a politician.  This means that his job is to
convince you and I that he cares about the "american people" and has
our best interests at heart, while meanwhile tightening the chains of wage
slavery.  He's doing pretty well at it too, he may personally be dumber
than your average mollusk, but the people who pull his strings are pretty
darn clever.  Seriously, look at the situation: within hours of the bombing,
the FBI has suddenly been allowed to install devices on all the major
internet service providers that keep track of what websites everyone is
visiting, how frequently they visit them, what the content of those sites is,
what billboards they post too, what they post, whom they email, and what
they email.  In other words - total, automated, digital surveillance.
They've been trying to do that for years.  Now they've done it, and there's
probably no way to get around it.  Within days they had taken advantage
of the massive "rally 'round the flag" to push through Fast-track which
gives the president virtualy unlimited power in negotiation of trade deals
and pushed through a second bill which gave him virtualy unlimited
power to wage war.  For those of you who are deficient in history let me
spell this out very clearly: we now officially live in a dictatorship.
Seriously.  You can forget about checks and balances because
Congress just gave up their two biggest powers and shows no interest in
getting them back.  Bush, not one to miss a chance for a good war game,
has already ordered thousands of americans into the region.  Those
troops will be told that they're fighting to protect our freedom, and the oil
companies will laugh all the way to the bank.

        At this point the standard leftist/anti-authoritarian tactic would be to
launch into a critique of Bush's connections to big oil, of the fact that the
reason the US trained and armed Bin Laden and set him up in
Afghanistan in the first place was to protect the US's oil interests in the
region, of the fact that Bin Laden's big brother was a partner in George
W. Bush's oil firm that went bankrupt in 1990.  (No, I'm not kidding.)   I
could write a long-winded self-righteous article on all those things and
point to all of the myriad of ways every single american citizen who isn't in
the streets protesting global capitalism is a party to multiple genocides.

        You've never read this particular column before, but you've read it a
dozen times before.  Since the Sept. 11 "attack on america" we've all
been inaudated with the same stale bullshit over and over again.  The
right wingers all have their script, the commies have theirs, so do the
liberal, greens, and assorted religious pacifists.  They're all writing the
same articles they've been writing over and over again for the last 20+
years.  Every once in a while someone puts a unique spin on it, but the
content remains largely unchanged.  We have become predictable,
complacent, boring.  I could write that standardized article for you.  It'd
feel good to vent for a few minutes and - as long as all the rhetoric was
done properly - it'd probably get reposted on anti-war lists all over the net.

        But that's not what I'm going to do.  Everyone with their eyes open
knows what is happenning.  Preaching to the Choir in our own
specialized rhetoric-drenched dialect won't do anyone any good.  Instead
of re-reading the list of the US's crimes agaisnt humanity, we need to deal
directly with the situation at hand, specificaly with the absolute void of any
clear plan that's been disseminated to the public on how the Govt. is
going to "solve" this particular problem.  That void is a huge window of
opportunity, just waiting to get introduced to an Anarchist brick.  We need
to focus our literature on going forward.  We need to figure out a
workable set of demands and an alternate plan for how to deal with the
terrorist attack that the majority of Jerry Springer USA will understand
and even support, and we need to make it clear why an anarchist
revolution is the best way to implement that plan.
        Here's my idea: we set up a propossed plan of action that is
structured enough and clearly enough laid out (without rhetoric) that the
average person can understand it and will support it.  We construct this
plan in such a fashion that it could be implemented by the US govt. as an
alternative to the "war" they are currently launching, but it could also be
(much more effectively) carried out by the social mechanisms of the
Anarchist society we are trying to create.  We then take this 'proposed
plan of action' and publicize it everywhere possible; at anti-war rallies, at
labor union meetings, in the "letters to the editors" page of our local
corporate newspapers, (and of course the alternative press), -
everywhere that Joe America is likely to run into it.  That way, we avoid
the (accurate) criticisms that we have no clear alternative plan of action
to  put in the place of the one we are critiquing.  We are also presented
with a clear opportunity to explain how exactly the society that we are
working for  would deal with things like this, and how it would in fact be
much better at dealing with things like this than our current system.
        To that end, I've put together the following flyer that contains an
alternate plan meeting the requirements of the strategy listed above.
Feel free to duplicate and distribute this flyer, and - if you want to- you
can even go in and improve it or tailor it to your specific vision.  (As long
as you don't change the spirit of the proposal and sign your own name to
any modified version.)

>>>
A Proposal for an alternate strategy in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks.
By Lynx
http://circlealpha.com

First things first.  Lets look at what we know about the situation:

a) We know that it is our involvment in the Middle East and support of
people like Bin Laden that created the situation we now find ourselves in.
b) Bin Laden has sworn to continue his holy war until the US gets its
imperialist troops out of the region, and especially out of Mecca - the holy
city of Islam.
c) We know that the US is indeed responsible for committing massive
atrocities (that clearly qualify as "Crimes Against Humanity" under
international law) against the people of the "Middle East."
d) The USA is in the Middle East in the first place because of the oil.
e) We also know that the primary reason why we need oil is to power
america's cars.

Therefore - the best way to defuse the situation is to get out of the Middle
East.  Seriously, just pull out completely.  Stop giving missiles to Israel to
lob at Palestinian children; stop the genocidal sanctions against Iraq; stop
the support of brutal Saudi dictatorship; stop killing thousands of people
every year to keep the oil flowing.  The only possible long-term resolution
is to plain and simply STOP attacking.  Until that happens, there will
always be terrorists trying to fight back by the only means left to them,
and that's an inescapable fact.

The main problem, of course, with this solution is point 'e' - we need their
oil to power our cars.  America's transportation infrastructure is built
around the car.  It was designed that way on purpose because, in old
style 'standing army' warfare, you need to move large numbers of troops
around very quickly and highways are one of the most efficient ways to
do that.  In modern warfare, however, that no longer applies since your
enemy is just as likely to be a Tim McVeigh in his pickup truck or a single
person with a suitcase nuke as a whole army.  Sticking to the old-style
Cold War era transportation infrastructure is pure stupidity in the face of
its complete ineffectivness, especially when coupled with the global
environmental devastation that it is causing.  Ironically enough, a switch
to large-scale public transit would actually decrease the risk of terrorism
since psychos like McVeigh can't drive up with a truck full of fertilizer if
there are no trucks because everyone takes streetcars and trains
wherever they go.

One of the main reasons why the switch to public transit isn't already
happening on a large scale - despite ballot initiatives and polls showing
that most people in densely populated urban areas want it - is that the
Federal government currently underwrites the vast majority of the cost of
building and maintaining freeways nationwide, but it leaves the bulk of the
costs associated with mass transit to local and state governments.
Because of this unbalanced subsidy, the price of building freeways is
artificially lowered to the point where building and maintaining effective
mass transit becomes impractical.  This situation could be easily
remedied by reversing the subsidy structure to support mass transit
instead of freeways and cars.

Aside from the obvious environmental benefits, mass transit - when
employed effectively - is actually as fast or even faster than cars,
exponentially more land-efficient, cheaper to maintain, and creates
hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US (in construction, in factories
making trains and rails, in sustainable energy enterprises that could
supply the power needed for such a system, and in the operation of the
system itself).  Perhaps most importantly in terms of this article, a
wholesale switch to mass transit would nullify our dependance on foreign
oil and remove the motivation for the government to support psychopaths
or launch missiles at civilians.  By reducing our dependence on our most
vulnerable import we greatly strengthen the integrity of US  and save
billions of dollars annually on endless wars in countries where we have
no business being in the first place.  The reduction in expenditures on
foreign wars would allow us to pay for any higher short-term costs
associated with the rebuilding program and still cut taxes (52% of your
tax dollars go for wars past, present or planned), stimulating the
economy.  This effect would be further compounded by the creation of
jobs that such a large scale national rebuilding would require.  The
cumulative effect of these two factors should be more than adequete to
pull the economy out of its current recession.

The global effects of such a major shift in US policy cannot be
underestimated either.  Bin Ladens' fortune comes from oil, as do the
fortunes of all the regional puppet dictators that populate the region.  By
altering our economy in such a way as to cut these people off from their
access to capital, we nullify their ability to attack us.  Removing ourselves
from their countries and holy places would also greatly reduce their
reason to attack us in the first place.  The adoption of sustainable
alteratives by energy suppliers would most likely culminate in the
complete collapse of the puppet dictatorships that fund terrorism.  If
international aid, education, and assistance were given to those
indigenous groups that support legitimate democracy we could destroy
the power of the despots and crackpots alike far more effectively than
any military operation ever could.

So, we shore up our nations independence, eliminate some of the most
brutal industries on earth, nullify the terrorist threat, take decisive action
to reduce carbon emissions and stop global warming, pull our economy
out of recession, and save hundreds - possibly thousands - of lives.

Not something we're likely to see Oil-Man Bush do anytime soon, but
then that's how the cookie crumbles when you live in a corporate-fascist
empire.

>>>

        I'm sure some of you will object to the somewhat isolationist tone
adopted in places, others will object to any type of "national policy" or
implication that the government is even capable 'solving' these problems,
still others will object to a proposal that allows for the existence of any
kind of "technology" at all.  to the third group, I'm not a primitivist and I
don't realy want to debate the issue at the moment so I'm not going too.
To the other two, let me simply say
a) Anarchist networks, anarchosyndicalist federations,
anarchocommunist collectives, etc. all require coordination between
different autonomous groups.  This, in the technical parlance of the world
we live in, translates to national policy.  No, I'm not advocating
centalization, presidents, or any of that shit.  Rather, I am providing a
framework within which we can directly compare their system to our and
directly and logicaly prove the superiority of ours.  By Framing the
questions in terms of "national policy,"  I have purposely left it vague
enough that it could be interpreted to mean anything from the US federal
government to a revolutionary Junta to a spokescouncil to a bottom-up
structure based on regional delegates which requires a popular vote in
order to have its actions carried out.  By suggesting a single course of
action that would meet the needs our society is currently facing, and then
analyzing how that course of action would be carried out in any given
theoretical model, we do ourselves and our Idea a great service.  b) to
those that object to phrasing that may seem "isolationist" in places,
remember who the target audience is.  I could say "stop US imperialism
in the so-called 'Middle East'" or I could say "stop our dependance on
foreign oil and creat Jobs."  They both add up to the same thing in
practical terms when actualy carried out with honest intent, but your
average resident of the US has been conditioned to respond to one a hell
of a lot more than the other.  We have to use the tools that work.  If that
means coopting the enemys rhetoric at times then that's what we need to
do The bastards do it to us often enough...
        Other criticisms will include my use of terms like "legitimate
democracy" and "pulling our economy out of recession."  Remember, the
only kind of "Democracy" that is in fact democratic is a direct democracy,
and the only way to implement direct democracy on a large scale is
within an anarchist framework - since anarchism is the only political
model based on economic democracy.  We would be foolish not to point
this out as frequently as possible since it is tantamount to heresy in this
country to say one is against "democracy."  By seizing the term and
redefining it we put the capitalists on the defensive.  As to wanting to "pull
our economy out of a recession,"  again, think about our target audience.
You and I may secretly rejoice everytime the stock market drops, but
your average american sees that as an indication of a possible
impending layoff.  When handing out this kind of material, be sure to point
out that in a democratic (anarchist) economic system you don't have
recessions since the economy is circular instead of linear, and that even
in times of scarcity everyone is taken care of.  Again, we point out the
best possible course of action under the current system, and then
highlight that systems limitations and flaws.

        Let me be clear here, I am calling for  'revolution' in how we write our
materials which are intended for public distribution, a revolution within our
movement as to how we think about ourselves in relation to the rest of the
world and how we present ourselves because of it.  Instead of constantly
taking the opposition role to whatever s going on with a "tear it all down"
mentality, we need to be actively promoting what we want to build and
comparing that goal to our current reality in concrete ways that are
relevant to the concrete reality in which we live.
        If we can begin to adopt this type of information distribution on a
larger scale instead of just rehashing the same old "dissident" rhetoric
that has long since been drained of meaning, we can reach a much wider
audience and help push our movement onto the center spot on the world
stage, and push the capitalists into history's compost pile - where they
belong.





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