There is a movement afoot. It's a rapidly-spreading resistance movement against an international criminal oligarchy that's hell-bent on subjugating and exploiting the citizens of the Western world through the use and manipulation of a corrupt financial system specifically designed to transfer wealth and power from the populace (99%) to the plutocracy.
In the United States the movement started with the "Occupy Wall Street" protest on September 17th, and it is now spreading nationwide (OccupyTheNation).
The people behind this movement are good, decent, compassionate, empathetic, sane, intelligent, and freedom-loving people who believe in justice and equality for all. But the forces aligned against true freedom and democracy, motivated by an almost sadistic lust for wealth and power, are not going to release their filthy grip on our collective necks easily. It's going to take a mighty struggle. It's likely to be a historic struggle, where the people will win at the end, but the price will be high.
Expect the following...
Propaganda and misinformation: There will be an increased level of propaganda and misinformation designed to discredit the movement in the eyes of the general public. Much of it will be done through the mainstream media, which is basically the propaganda arm of the plutocrats.
Surveillance and collusion: Think of Google, Yahoo, Twitter, YouTube, Verizon, At&T, Facebook, ISPs, as basically a huge surveillance system feeding vast amounts of information to the national security apparatus. A lot of this information is being collected by extremely sophisticated private companies. This will eventually be used to identify leaders of the movement. Governments will eventually ask these companies to suppress certain information ("Government orders YouTube to censor protest videos").
Shock doctrine: It is very likely that there will be a massive financial markets collapse. In the final analysis, all this means is that the plutocrats will be using their full control of the financial system as an "electrical prod" to shock the population. When this happens, it is likely that confusion and fear will spread, and, in the midst of the chaos, the plutocrats will try to disrupt the protest movement. Be prepared for this. Use the incredible organizing experience being developed right now to think about contingencies in case the markets/economies collapse. Think about communes, food collectives, local sustainability.
Shock troops: The plutocrats' useful idiots are the extremist gun-nuts within the NRA, the Seven Mountain Dominionist religious nutjobs, and right-wing extremists. Like in Lord of the Rings, these factions have been built up like "Orcs" and could eventually be deployed against the decent, freedom-loving patriots of the resistance movement. It is very important that no acts of intimidation, harassment, threats, or actual violence against any member of the resistance movement be tolerated. Please watch the BBC documentary below (especially minute 8 through 15) to learn why.
The police state: Everything else failing, it is very likely that the reason constitutional protections were systematically gutted during the last 10+ years (using 9/11 as a pretext), will become apparent. Spurious charges will be brought against leaders of the movement; draconian laws imposing curfews and restrictions on freedom of assembly will likely be enacted (or made up out of thin air). Thousands of protesters could find themselves detained in one of the hundreds of for-profit private detention camps around the country.
Hopefully none of these things will happen, but the organizers and leaders of the resistance movement need to think about the possibility of these things happening, and come up with contingencies. Don't be blindsided.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning.
They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.
- Frederick Douglass
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