Occupy London 85

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I thought I might wander down to Occupy London and chat to them about the lessons I feel might be drawn from my life experience working for government. I particularly wanted to outline the seamless link between western government promotion of dictatorships and terrible human rights abuses abroad, the undertaking of illegal wars for resources and the sucking up of internal resources in our country for the benefit of the wealthy.

I then want to relate that to the narrowing of the space of debate for legitimate political debate or action. Whether you are against the war in Afghanistan or against the bank bailouts, you are at the very least part of a very large minority in the country, yet none of the established political parties will represent you and your viewpoint is virtually never given a media airing.

Can anyone let me know how this idea to give a talk might work in practice? I haven’t been invited and I am not sure if they have any facility for listening to guest speakers, and if so if they would have any interest in listening to me.

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85 thoughts on “Occupy London”

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  • Niall

    Craig, If nothing has been sorted out yet I’m at Occupy lsx and can talk to the people at tent city university to see when they can fit you into their schedule. (I’m sure plenty of people will want to hear you). If I can help just send an e-mail. Niall Taylor.

  • technicolour

    I think the point about Occupy London so far is that anyone is equally welcome, isn’t it?

  • Mark Golding - Children of Iraq

    Thanks Number 5 for reminding us of the live occupylsx link. As a flavour of ongoing discussions on the link a young soldier from the Iraq occupation by British troops in Basra commented on the very large number of private security firms securing the interests of corporates and bankers in Iraq. He did not mention the ‘death squads’ and it is the formation of these very squads I want to expose here as part of an American and Israeli plan of sectarian divide that was to be followed by an exposure of Iranian involvement that would have lead to a UN sanctioned occupation of Iran.
    .
    The following is an extract from a comprehensive report now widely distributed, a copy of which I received from American after an American journalist in Basra was murdered in strange circumstances a short time after a secret paper written by Defence Secretary John Reid for Tony Blair revealed that many of the 8,500 British troops in Iraq were set to be brought home within three months, with most of the rest returning six months later.
    .
    The leaked document, marked Secret: UK Eyes Only, appeared to fly in the face of Mr Blair and President Bush’s pledges that Allied forces will not quit until Iraq’s own forces are strong enough to take control of security.
    .
    The U.S. did not invade Iraq to establish “democracy” and “free Iraqis”. The U.S. invaded and destroyed Iraq in order to humiliate and divide Muslims (Arabs in particular), protect Israel’s Zionist expansion and control Iraq’s natural wealth.
    .
    So, the U.S. imposed democracy by force is fraud. ‘Democracy is like a plant; it grows from bottom up, not from top down’. The U.S. sabotage of democracy in Palestine and U.S. support for Israel’s criminal destruction of Lebanon are just two current examples of U.S. love for democracy. Also the idea that the U.S. and its allies were in Iraq to stabilise the situation is a falsehood. Destabilisation was one of the aims of U.S. foreign policy. The unprovoked war of aggression and the U.S. presence in Iraq, including the illegal building of U.S. military bases and the largest C.I.A. station in the world on Iraqi soil, are major destabilising factors. The U.S. objectives have always been to weaken Iraq, divide the people and control Iraq behind a façade of corrupt stooges, with poorly trained and poorly armed army and police.
    .

    To destroy Iraq as an independent nation, the U.S. initiated the criminal campaign of ‘De-Ba’athification’, which implied the liquidation of anyone associated with the Ba’ath Party as well as anyone with anti-Occupation nationalist views. ‘De-Ba’athification’ was simply a murderous campaign for inciting violence and destroying the Iraqi society. Together with the Israeli Mossad, some British SAS and U.S. Special Forces, the pro-Occupation militias and death squads embarked on A deliberate campaign of assassinations and ethnic cleansing.
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    Thousands of scientists, including more than 350 scientists specialized in nuclear science have been assassinated. Thousands of professors, prominent politicians, and medical doctors have been murdered in cold blood. The Ministry of Higher Education reported in 2008 that at least 210 teachers have been murdered and some 3,700 have fled Iraq to neighbouring countries. According to the UN more than 4,000 Iraqis fled to Syria and Jordan every day to avoid being killed. More than 3.7 million Iraqis have fled the country.
    .
    After 6 years I have documented proof of the fact that much of the sectarian violence in Iraq was the work of coalition agents provocateurs, attempting to cause a civil war.

  • Komodo

    http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2011/10/09/this-is-why-they-hate-you-and-want-you-to-die/
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    “The ordinary American is not a class warrior or a woe-is-me whiner coveting the rewards of others – the ordinary American simply believes that extraordinary rewards should go to those who do extraordinary things, not to paper-pushing failures at parasite banks.
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    So let me give you a hint that will save you countless hours and millions of dollars spent on consultants and the public relations morons you keep on staff: This is why they hate you. This very type of thing, while just a single example, epitomizes the piggish mentality that has set you apart from everyone else. This is why they’re marching against you and calling for boycotts and writing their politicians. And this is why your whole model and way of life is on its way to being dead. Forever.
    .
    You want to roll your eyes and make snide remarks about “dumb college kids” and “socialists”? Go ahead but you’re be missing the point. Because it is the small business owner who’s really been wronged here, not the fringe elements you mockingly dismiss. The business owner whose losses are not socialized like yours, the business owner without the government in his pocket, the business owner who is forced to play by the rules that you have paid to have written. He’s not a hippie, he’s not a Marxist…but he’s waking up, dummy.
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    You blew the second chance you got with TARP to re-enter society as a productive component of commerce. You went back to bonus-swilling, full-retard mode as though nothing ever happened and 13 million people weren’t sitting around in their post credit-bubble joblessness for three years now. Your tone-deafness and utter disconnection from the rest of the country has produced something extraordinary – You’ve managed to awaken one of the most indolent, lethargic and apathetic populaces in the history of the world. You’ve now stirred a slumbering nation of 300 million from it’s Entennman’s and Zoloft*-induced stupor. America is awake now and it’s pissed.”
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    Well put.
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    *Poisonous doughnut and toxic antidepressant. Allegedly.

  • mary

    Bravo to Gary Corseri the brilliant American writer and poet!
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    His last six paragraphs here –
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    The “Occupy” crowd is beautifully named. They want to “occupy” their space, their time, their lives. They—we—do not measure our lives’ worth in terms of the billions of dollars we have never amassed. We ask: How is money made? (“Right Livelihood,” we recall, is one of the essential aspects of Buddha’s Noble Eight-fold Path!) What good has come of the wealth? (“Lay not up worldly treasures,” the Essene Jesus advised.) What lives were improved? How? Was the planet made more liveable, more beautiful? We ask: What is the measure of a life worth living; and, yes–what is the meaning of life?
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    It’s a question as old as Plato and Aristotle, as old as the Hebrew prophets and the Sumerian cuneiform tablets. It is a much greater question than the question of happiness… because enduring happiness depends on it.
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    We have been a culture distracted by the baubles of consumption. We have been willing to kill and maim millions of people, unheroically and stupidly, while just “following orders” or “doing our jobs,” so that an insignificant 1 percent–and even much less than that—could accumulate more and more baubles and dictate more and more orders.
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    There are four great reasons why the Occupy movement will not go away, why it will grow stronger as we advance into winter and next spring: 1. It is inter-generational. 2. It is international. 3. It is technologized. 4. It is life-saving and essential.
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    Greater connections will be formed. The young will screw each other (in the best sense!) and fall in love; and the white-haired women who run with wolves and the graybeards who danced with Janis J. for peace in the 60s will re-learn the language of the young and impart the rich ore of their own experiences. And when the snow comes, and the cold appears to drive them away… they will retreat in order to regroup – and fight again come spring.
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    Because we are connected now…, and talking – all around the world. And we see each other now, and we ask: “If not us, who? If not now, when?”
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    http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/10/occupy-the-world-and-the-values-revolution/

  • Dave

    Hello Craig

    Why NOT wander down there as a human being instead of as an invited VIP with guaranteed speech-making facilities on tap ?

    frog2

  • Nextus

    Dave, it’s true that the Occupy movement has no time for pomp and authority, and everyone can have a say. Such humility is an important part of the philosophy, and it’s very welcome. However some people have more interesting messages than others. So giving advance notification of a unique angle on the crisis benefits everyone. Otherwise it would be like a Marxist version of speaker’s corner in Hyde Park, where there’s a lot being said but little to discover.

  • Mark Golding - Children of Iraq

    FOR the RECORD:
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    “We support the right of protesters outside St Paul’s, in Finsbury Square and in cities across the country to continue their occupations. Their concerns about the injustice, corruption and inequality of the system are shared by large numbers of people. It is not acceptable to use the law to suppress legitimate, peaceful and widely supported protest.”
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    Initial signatories:
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    John McDonnell MP
    Ken Loach
    Jeremy Corbyn MP
    Rev. Dr. Vladimir Nikiforov, RC Chaplain and Visiting Lecturer Royal Holloway,
    Josh Virasami, Occupy LSX,
    Mark Serwotka, PCS,
    Kate Hudson, CND,
    Lindsey German, Stop the War Coalition,
    The Society of Sacramental Socialists
    Dr Matteo Mandarini, Queen Mary Business School
    James Meadway, Senior Economist, New Economics Foundation
    Paul Mackney, Gen. Sec NATFHE / UCU 1997-2007
    Dr Peter D. Thomas, Brunel University
    Andrew Burgin, Coalition of Resistance
    Romayne Phoenix, Coalition of Resistance

  • Strategist

    I heard the organisers of Tent City University speak, and they outlined the process Nextus has described. It’s a congenial space, with everything you need to have the session you want. When I turned up, Prof. Doreen Massey had just had one hour+ to a packed and responsive audience.

    Please let us know if you get on the programme – it would be good to come down and see it.

  • Komodo

    I see George Monbiot has picked up on the City of London Corporation too. Here:
    http://www.monbiot.com/2011/10/31/wealth-destroyers/

    Sample:
    “The current Lord Mayor, Michael Bear, came to prominence within the City as chief executive of the Spitalfields development group(11), which oversaw a controversial business venture in which the Corporation had a major stake, even though the project lies outside the boundaries of its authority. This illustrates another of the Corporation’s unique features. It possesses a vast pool of cash, which it can spend as it wishes, without democratic oversight. As well as expanding its enormous property portfolio, it uses this money to lobby on behalf of the banks.

    The Lord Mayor’s role, the Corporation’s website tells us, is to “open doors at the highest levels” for business, in the course of which he “expounds the values of liberalisation”(12). Liberalisation is what bankers call deregulation: the process that caused the financial crash. The Corporation boasts that it “handle[s] issues in Parliament of specific interest to the City”, such as banking reform and financial services regulation(13). It also conducts “extensive partnership work with think tanks … vigorously promoting the views and needs of financial services.”(14) But this isn’t the half of it.”
    .
    Sure isn’t.

  • Lynn

    Hi Craig,
    I’ve been down to St Paul’s twice. They are very welcomed to anyone who would want to give a talk/lecture. If you see on the Occupy website calendar, there is often talks held throughout the day, could be in the tent university or info tent. I have yet go to a talk but general public is always invited to attend and discuss. (I heard this is what happens at a shout out during General Assembly).
    I think it is wonderful for professionals like yourself want to share your experiences. I for one often feel ignorant and hungry for knowledge, specially political ones.
    Good luck,
    Lynn

  • Lynn Loo

    oops. sorry. forgot to mention. Just go down to the info tent and speak to someone that you are interested. There is a lady by the name of Lucy (I think she is in charge of media). She may be able to help.
    Lynn

  • Lynn Loo

    missed your last reply. hope to be able to attend your talk at tent city!
    Best of luck,
    L

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