"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Nov 11, 2011

Business

This is how business sees opposition. This is how business is done:

"In his forum called 'Designing a Media Relations Strategy To Overcome Concerns Surrounding Hydraulic Fracturing,'  Range Resources communications director Matt Pitzarella explains how to 'overcome stakeholder concerns' surrounding fracking.

'We have several former psy ops folks that work for us at Range because they’re very comfortable in dealing with localized issues and local governments,' Pitzarella said. 'Really all they do is spend most of their time helping folks develop local ordinances and things like that. But very much having that understanding of psy ops in the Army and in the Middle East has applied very helpfully here for us in Pennsylvania.'

It was during Anadarko Petroleum's manager of external affairs, Matt Carmichael's, session on 'Understanding How Unconventional Oil & Gas Operators are Developing a Comprehensive Media Relations Strategy to Engage Stakeholders and Educate the Public' that he suggested his colleagues:

'Download the U.S. Army-slash-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual, because we are dealing with an insurgency,' Carmichael said. 'There’s a lot of good lessons in there and coming from a military background, I found the insight in that extremely remarkable.'

To be clear on exactly what Carmichael meant when he said they're 'dealing with an insurgency' we obtained a copy of the FM 3-24 — the final edition of the 2006 Counterinsurgency manual provided to psy ops soldiers. We substituted the word government with corporation.

' ... insurgency has been a common approach used by the weak to combat the strong. At the beginning of a conflict, insurgents have the strategic initiative ... the insurgents generally initiate the war. They may strive to disguise their intentions, and the potential counter-insurgent will be at a great disadvantage until [corporate] leaders recognize that an insurgency exists and are able to determine its makeup and characteristics to facilitate a coordinated reaction. 

While the [corporation] prepares to respond, the insurgent is gaining strength and creating increasing disruptions throughout the state. The existing [corporation] normally has an initial advantage in resources, but that edge is counterbalanced by the requirement to maintain order. The insurgent succeeds by sowing chaos and disorder anywhere; the [corporation] fails unless it maintains order everywhere.'..."

The treatment of captive populations as either adherents (consumers) or potential guerrillas is not limited to the "bad" corporations. Banks, newspapers, defense contractors and oil companies may have hired the first ex-military experts in disinformation, population control and psychological warfare, but they won't be the last. A permanent military devoted to endless warfare produces experts who generally leave service sometime before they die.

Doing business, even small business, requires mystification. Business is unfair. Always. Doing business means separating a person from the product of her labor, to her repeated disadvantage. Grocery chains, gas stations, restaurants, amusement companies, counseling practices, engineering firms - they all develop media relations departments once they pass a critical mass of wealth, market presence and accumulation.

Once a business is capable of moving the market, it reinforces this capability.

It begins to understand consumers -  or, patients and clients -  as potential traitors. As persons in need of loyalty and brand reinforcement.

This is, not incidentally, how the corporate press sees the rest of us as well. If you do not respond to their product as would a loyal consumer, you are treated as an insurgent, or potentially so. The larger portion of news output depends upon the treatment of the listener, viewer or reader as a person who might otherwise be hostile should the narrative fail

You, who are probably a producer of commodities or commoditized services, must act like a commodity yourself. As an item on shelf, dependable in its branding. That is the how the producers of news segments, ad campaigns and state propaganda understand you, us, the whole lot of competing captive populations. We are energy and wealth producing possessions with enough of a smattering of will to potentially resist, or to seek new conditions.

Considerable treasure and loot is budgeted towards getting us to "internalize" a consumptive form of obedience, to better prevent resistance which works.

You've learned about how Gandhi was a great man, no doubt. How his non-violence was like a kind of solar magic which enervated a nation. How India emerged from his spectral man-womb, perfectly formed from pure and noble protest, from the holy reception of British violence. That Gandhi gets taught in school. Gandhi the child fondler, the racist, the man who ordered his wife's death by refusing her medicine, the guy who nearly starved himself to death to stop Congress Party from giving rights to the Untouchables - he doesn't make it into the hagiographies, the history books, the school texts or the PBS retrospectives. The Real Gandhi makes Permissible Gandhi look like, um, propaganda*.

And like most of us who were fed this pig's swill of educational and moral self-betrayal, you might not even be aware of the thousands and tens of thousands of Indians who sabotaged train tracks, burned out British and local police stations, assassinated officers and engaged in what is now commonly referred to as hateful, evil, immoral "terrorism." They probably even vandalized park benches, broke windows and burned out collaborating businesses.

The real Gandhi, and the historical India are continuously elided, in favor of the non-violent Saint and his loyal millions of lightworking do-gooders.

"Gandhi-ji" good, actually hurting those with all the power and guns, bad. Bosses with smiles on their faces because the rube proles are waving placards and playing with poppets, good. Banks empty of customers because the lobby, designed to look like the interior of a temple, is on fire, bad.

Kind of like: Martin good, Malcolm bad.

Or: Obama cool and articulate, McKinney nappy haired craaaay-zee.

This "internalization" of self-defeating, action-limiting beliefs operates from within and without. Those people who fancy their selves as members of a resistance, but who have incorporated the over-class's obeisances, mental obstructions, consensus mentality and rule making hierarchies into their memories operate from within a movement, constantly (if most likely, unconsciously) reinforcing the imposition of the masters' rules and restrictions on conduct, reinforcing those pressures which are routinely applied from without. Those within a resistance, especially those most prone to propertarian convictions, will often attempt to assume ownership over the messaging, "optics" and moral fiber of that resistance, movement or protest. They will insist on decorum. They will demand a respect (a fetish, actually, but who's nitpicking?) for property and its sacral functions, its usefulness, its value. It is important to them that the correct owners of the resistance be established. That it have the right brand. They are branded by the corporate and educational cultures which generally tend to produce them, and their pursuit of brand awareness, brand placement and brand protection reflects these facts.

They do the work of the ruling class, of course.

They are not alone in performing this task.

Huffington, Yahoo, MSNBC, CNN, the networks and FOX have run daily pieces on the precipitous state of Iran's "nuclear ambitions" for the last week or so. We are being prepped for the possibility of one more expansion of the endless war to keep global, Western capitalism - managed from London, New York, Washington, Berlin, Paris and Rome - afloat atop a rising tide of manufactured Emergency and storyboarded crisis.

Emergency is the answer to insurgency. Crisis is the reaction to criticism.

This is now business as usual. Same as it ever was.


h/t Xymphora


* - because Permissible Gandhi is fucking propaganda. Seriously, this fuck was a child fondling defender of forced chastity, female servitude, racial superiority and the hatefulgodsbedamned caste system. Also, it's no hard task to draw a line of causation from Gandhi to Nehru to Gandhi to nuclear India.

41 comments:

Soma said...

Sharp as usual; right on.

the pied cow blog said...

I agree. I don't even like framing the debate in terms of "violence" and "non-violence" because framing the debate that way injects a normative judgment into the debate that plays into the hands of the powerful.

I hardly think that Indian saboteurs of railroad tracks were out merely to commit acts of "violence;" rather, they were out to stop the British.

My observation is that the loudest detractors of violence tend to be the ones whose interests are most closely aligned with the preservation of the status quo.

Justin said...

Violence is so loosely defined that one can commit violence just by acting, I've seen pictures of people smashing windows with the caption saying that some protestors are turning to violence. I have seen pictures of cops beating protestors with no mention of violence, or pinning the violence on the protestors.

Violence is a synonym for the wrong kind of action, any action. The wrong kind of action is action which rejects the legitimacy of authority.

The first part of your post about the corporate and military merge made me quesy in spite of myself, the line is not blurred, it simply does not exist. I believe the nation states are going to hollow out to their core functions of military and police, deployed and acting at the behest of corporate interests. That is our future.

Coldtype said...

I'd always found it curious that Gandhi's first foray into protest action as a young lawyer was in response to the mistreatment of Indians in South Africa yet the plight of the black majority was conspicuously absent from his concerns.

Jack Crow said...

Coldtype,

You may find this a useful resource, for discovering how Gandhi actually felt about "kaffirs":

Gandhi and Blacks

Thanks, soma.

Pied, Justin -

That's just it: when discussing the violence of which they don't approve, it's always denuded of all context. It's just hanging there in a vacuum of moral superiority, as Violence. It has no material, historical, physical components. It's Bad, and therefore verboten.

Jack Crow said...

Cold,

You might also find this, er, instructive:

Mahatma, eh?

Coldtype said...

Thanks for that link Jack.

Rocky Rococo said...

The question for our Holy Men, the Apostles of the Pure White Driven Snow of Peaceful Non-Violence, (emphasis on the White) is this: Do they agree that linking arms in defiance of police orders not to do so is a violent act? That seems to be the new liberal standard established in such learned institutions of liberal progressivism as the University of California.

Oh, and one other question for our betters, besides haranguing those of us not of as pure a Light as they for the gross inferiority of our beings, what have they actually DONE to advance the resistance, in Occupy or anything else? (I don't consider finger-wagging lectures at those of us trying to do something to be doing ANYTHING.)

Lisa Simeone said...

Very thought-provoking, Jack. Fyi, from a coalition of activists from all over the spectrum: “An Open Letter to the Occupy Movement: Why We Need Agreements” by the Alliance of Community Trainers. Excerpts:

. . . While we’ve participated in many actions organized with a diversity of tactics, we do not believe that framework is workable for the Occupy Movement. Setting aside questions of morality or definitions of ‘violence’ and ‘nonviolence’ – for no two people define ‘violence’ in the same way – we ask the question:

What framework can we organize in that will build on our strengths, allow us to grow, embrace a wide diversity of participants, and make a powerful impact on the world?

. . . The framework that might best serve the Occupy movement is one of strategic nonviolent direct action. Within that framework, Occupy groups would make clear agreements about which tactics to use for a given action. This frame is strategic—it makes no moral judgments about whether or not violence is ever appropriate, it does not demand we commit ourselves to a lifetime of Gandhian pacifism, but it says, ‘This is how we agree to act together at this time.’ It is active, not passive. It seeks to create a dilemma for the opposition, and to dramatize the difference between our values and theirs.

Strategic nonviolent direct action has powerful advantages:

We make agreements about what types of action we will take, and hold one another accountable for keeping them . . . ."


Worth a read.

http://trainersalliance.org/?p=221

tsisageya said...

I understand the desire for violence. I am not above it. (I,I,I---sorry) I'm extremely anti-violent right now but have left room to change my mind.

The apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey apparently evolved into (yes, just a fucking movie)the desire for violence and understanding of domination. Apparently that was the movie's version of the rise of humanity.

I understand it.

Hey, even Jesus got violent in the temple, right? According to certain sources, he even stopped to make a whip before he tore through that motherfucking place, overturning tables and such.

I love that part---that he stopped to make a whip.

If he'd had an AK-47, where would we be right now? Kidding.

I'm only rambling because I agree with you Jack. But I also disagree with you.

I'm not convinced.

Jack Crow said...

Lisa,

Yours would make the third time someone has offered that link to me (twice, at Corrente) as a response to my argument against non-violence, as a creed.

Heh.

I understand that it's offered in good faith and friendship, but it replies to an argument I'm not really making. Still, I think I have a post in the making, about it.

tsisageya,

If it matters, I'm not really trying to address the desire to do violence. I think part of the problem - and Justin refers to it here and elsewhere - is the establishment of a false equivalence, with any act of violence treated as a fungible and identical act, equal to any other acts of violence occurring anywhere else, under any and all circumstances, as performed by any other persons or parties. This is what I mean when I state that I reject the creed of non-violence, and the mystical metaphysics and middling politics which inform it.

Further, I think it's of some import that violence is set up, especially by the confessing believers of that creed, as an exact and negating opposite to peace, or non-violence. Those of us who refuse to exclude non-pacifist responses to power are heaped with opprobrium, blamed for movement failures, scorned as traitors and castigated as bad actors. And yet, by and large, we are more than willing to accept and work with the completely "non-violent."

There's a tactical continuum which is not too difficult to recognize, but the creedon'ts of the non-violent persuasion would have a healthy portion of it ignored, to satisfy ultimately bourgeois sentiments about property, personhood and moral rectitude.

tsisageya said...

Jack, could you lay it out for the stupid layperson? All yer big werds make me confused.

What are you saying, exactly?

Jack Crow said...

tsisageya,

There's no way to sincerely answer that request. You are asking me to assume you are stupid.

Especially since I'm not really clear as to which parts have "big werds."

tsisageya said...

How about this: You make me tired.

tsisageya said...

P.S. I never asked you to assume. I told you outright that I was stupid.

Which I am.

tsisageya said...

Therefore, I'm thinking that you should answer me:

What EXACTLY are you saying?

tsisageya said...

I blame the patriarchy.

Jack Crow said...

It doesn't occur to me to assume ownership of your reaction, tsisageya. If I tire you, it is what it is.

I wish you the best, but as I'm not clear which parts of my reply to you I've answered poorly enough to make less sense than you'd prefer, I lack the information necessary to remedy my error.

Anonymous said...

Are you positive you do not perceive the promise of peaceful resistance, Crow? Your coping with tsisageya's belligerence was ably accomplished.

Jack Crow said...

Meh, nonny. I don't know about "belligerence." Just not sure what tsisageya wants me to clarify.

Lisa Simeone said...

" to satisfy ultimately bourgeois sentiments about property, personhood, and moral rectitude."

Maybe for some, Jack, but not sure that's the case for everyone. It's also about simply getting things done. What are we likely to accomplish using the different means available? And are we more likely to gain supporters if we use this means, that means, or that other one? In the end, we live in a real world with real consequences, not just an abstract one of philosophical concerns. I have no interest in purity. I just want to get shit done.

Jack Crow said...

I think Americans are far more amenable to resistance which does not conform to Non-Violence than the advocates of Non-Violence care to admit.

For better or worse, this is not a continent upon which concerns about the efficacy or morality of violence move most people to crises of faith.

I think if an active resistance really wants supporters, it has to accept the first rule of conflict: winning makes winners and winners get fans.

almostinfamous said...

in the indian independence movement, the anarchists were executed, and the statists exalted.

that gandhi's 'non-violence' worked where other efforts such as the swadeshis' did not, was precisely because he was the guy in charge of a team that could and would keep the essential structure of the british rule [and therefore existing capitalist interests] intact.

PS: as an indian, i have a strong distaste for gandhi-related hagiography. dude was pretty fucked up.

Jack Crow said...

Well fuck. Re-reading the above, it seems as if I'm saying, "Go out and win, motherfuckers."

Instead - if the opinions of the public matter, especially as mediated through corporate press vehicles, than the last impression a "movement" wants to give is that of roll-over losers.

I'm not really sure the opinions of the mediated public actually matter.

*

ai,

Yes he was fucked up. Regarding the Dalits alone, you'd think the Euro/American types who are so fond of him would at at least draw the line there.

David K Wayne said...

"I think if an active resistance really wants supporters, it has to accept the first rule of conflict: winning makes winners and winners get fans."

- Yep. If liberalish-leftists want to appease mainstream ideology, they need to remember that. I'm finding it somewhat delusional this idea that 'violence would alienate the public'. ??? It's the USA, for God's sake! I can't even keep up with how many wars it's currently engaged in, and smashing windows isn't on the same level of bombs, or even trigger-happy cops.

Great post BTW - and spot on about that useful - useful - but pretty revolting (as in repulsive) figure Gandhi. There was a helluva lot more to Indian decolonization (stretching back to way before he was born) than the personality cult than the west conveniently built around him.

tsisageya said...

belligerent

I didn't realize I was being that.

I'm just thinking of all the wonderful and fancy words expended that mean nothing to me. They are bullshit. I have an aversion to that.

Why do those fancy words mean nothing to me?

Because you---and I---are living, arguing, and speaking, with motherfucking privilege, on stolen ground by way of genocide. No one ever speaks about it.

All the fancy intellectual words in the motherfucking universe will never make me forget.

That's where I'm coming from. Is it enough info for you?

Now let the boo-hoo-hoo comments begin.

tsisageya said...

Of course, Jack, I would never expect you to own me, or my comments, or my feelings.

But I do appreciate you allowing me to speak.

Thank you.

Jack Crow said...

Tsisageya,

If you want to point your dagger at actually big words, I can direct you towards any number of dialecticians, Democratic Party cheerleaders, technocrats and corporatists who use real mumbo-jumbo.

And I remain open to clarifying for you, if you'd like. You just have to tell which exact and specific phrases I've failed to offer in a manner which pleases you. "All of them" won't cut it. I've got a lot of words posted, these last two years.

tsisageya said...

Jack, I have no dagger. If only you would read my prior comment and stop talking.

That would please me.

Jack Crow said...

Tsisageya,

Which comment, please and thank you? The one where you complain that people are using big words, but where you refuse to identify those words which irk you so? Or the one where you ask me, on my own blog, while you are engaging me in an ongoing discussion, to "shut up"? I mean, seriously, that's a curious request. Is that so you can offer one-sided, criticism free, poorly defined and nebulous complaints without any reproach or response?

Mighty white of you, that.

I guess a solution would be for you to not read me, but then you wouldn't get to be such pleasant company, would you?

tsisageya said...

I'm just a person, Jack.

Thanks for not listening. Good one.

I'm sorry for not being polite. I forgot about all the manners.

Jack Crow said...

The invite stands, Tsisageya. If you'd like to quote those portions above which you find objectionable, I'll make an attempt to clarify them.

tsisageya said...

You're right. We're really not supposed to speak up, or disagree on someone else's blog, right?

After all, it's your blog.

Well, fuck me then. Delete it.

Jack Crow said...

So I guess we're clear what you actually want to accomplish here, now, tsisageya.

You can disagree, speak up and criticize to your heart's content. I won't delete it.

But, if you really want me to simplify or clarify a portion of what I've written, you do have to tell which part. Sad to say, I lack psychic powers.

tsisageya said...

Psychic powers? No. Listening? Yes.

I'm sorry if my words insulted you.

tsisageya said...

I'm trollin
I'm trollin
I'm trollin
I'm trollin

I'm trollin

tsisageya said...

Anyone that says, "It is what it is" is full of shit.

Stop saying that.

tsisageya said...

No. tsisageya does not troll.

tsisageya said...

And so, you see how you you all make me tired.

Whatever, dudes.

Jack Crow said...

With that amount of effort, and with fewer words, you could have told which portions of my reply you wanted re-explained.

Heh.

Jack Crow said...

tsisageya,

I could have kept my patience with you. I did not. For that I apologize.

I still don't know what portion of my reply you found troublesome. And I remain willing to clarify it for you.