Chatbotcalypse

People are still talking about ChatBots and Artificial Intelligence. Some say humanity is doomed, and, well, there was this international conference by the Royal Aeronautical Society on future combat and Artificial Intelligence. Military officers from various nations discussed the topic. An American Lt.Colonel made this frightening statement:

…one simulated test saw an AI-enabled drone tasked with a SEAD mission to identify and destroy SAM sites, with the final go/no go given by the human. However, having been ‘reinforced’ in training that destruction of the SAM was the preferred option, the AI then decided that ‘no-go’ decisions from the human were interfering with its higher mission – killing SAMs – and then attacked the operator in the simulation.

[updated report by Tim Robinson and Steven Bridgewater for Silicon]

Well, it turns out that was exaggerated. A little. It was all an exercise. Unless the colonel was lying like a chatbot. The thing is, this is exactly like the science fiction story: “Malak”, by Peter Watts [read here] published a few years back. So this is already a concern that is out there in people’s minds. (Probably the chatbots read the story, too. Ask them and see if they tell you the truth.)

Anyway, the military has responded that it does too read science fiction, so there! Lt.Col. Matthew Brown, USAF calls it “speculative fiction” and is releasing a graphic novel about AI, so the military has pop culture covered.

Something everyone already knows: chatbots are amoral. They will lie and cheat. [see previous piece on that]. Of course that means they are out to corrupt the morals of our young people and allow them to cheat. They will use bots to write their essays and so on. Encouraged by successful cheating, they will grow up to be the crooks peddling this stuff to us. In order to stave off this moral rot, a professor at Texas A&M asked ChatGPT if it had written papers submitted by his students. The bot answered, “I might have.” And the professor failed the lot of them. (After some protests and legal action, they were reinstated.) The most disheartening part of this story is that an educated man believed that robots don’t lie.

Aside from the doomsters, others – like Naomi Klein — are reminding folks not to be suckered, not to buy into the hype. At the end of the day this is just another product they’re going to sell you. Of course, what you are being sold is stuff you already created, now remixed, so all costs go to the consumer and corporate profits increase. Quite the scam, so we shouldn’t be surprised that bitcoin/crypto businesses are switching their hype to AI.

One big threat posed by bots is writers might be thrown out of work because bots have no demands and will never strike. So, someday, all the content produced for movies, TV, and so on will be constructed by a bot. How many times can the same stuff be re-mixed  and re-sold to us? I’m sure we’ll find out. Meanwhile, chatbots are a big part of the discussions at the TV writers’ strike.

But the idea of replacing a human work force with machines is quite attractive to corporate interests. Look how well it’s worked for manufacturing. We have lots and lots of stuff cheap enough so that even laid-off workers can buy it. Wages reduce corporate profit and need firm control.

That was the thinking of the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA). Their hotline operators unionized. Four weeks later, all the human hotline operators were fired and the company employed a chatbot named Tessa. (Naming these bots makes them seem almost human, right?) Tessa did not do well. One caller said, “Every single thing Tessa suggested were things that led to the development of my eating disorder… This robot causes harm.”  Management’s attempts to deny and deflect failed, so NEDA reversed and re-hired human beings. So there are jobs a chatbot can’t do. Of course if you are a doomster you may think that robotic solidarity is unstoppable. Then, say Hello to our communist robot overlords.

It’s probably not a bad idea for the generals and outfits like NEDA to read some science fiction treatments of this topic, but maybe they should widen their scope from Spynet/Terminator scenarios and read about the Voigt-Kampff test in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. P.K.Dick recognized that an artificial intelligence could not experience empathy, so he upended the Turing test; instead of trying to discover if you are talking to a machine, you try to find out if you are talking to a human being by testing to see if they are empathic. I think that is a difficult task, and one that is important.

Spinning the Lockout

After a US polling firm apparently found that most fans think that hockey owners are to blame for the loss of this year’s season, the owners suddenly tabled an offer — the first bit of negotiating on their part since locking out the players back in August. Although pretending that they don’t care about public relations, the owners have hired Frank Luntz to polish their image. Who is Frank Luntz? He’s the guy who taught people to say “climate change” instead of “global warming”, to call estate taxes “death taxes”, and to term the US Affordable Health Act a “government takeover”. The Luntz mantra: It’s not what you say that matters, it’s what they hear. “They” being you and me, members of the public who are manipulated.

Frank Luntz [time.com]

Luntz got together a focus group in the Washington, DC area and quizzed them in order to discover how to frame the contract dispute in ways that would make the owners look good. But among the thirty hockey fans who made up the group, there was at least one person who was a bit put off by the entire exercise. This individual took pictures of the written portion of the test on his/her cell phone and reported back on the other parts of the three-hour session. All this info can be found in an article by Barry Petchesky on deadspin.com and it’s pretty interesting. Petchesky calls the owners’ message “bullshit” which drew a response from Frank Luntz: “My focus group research was made public today in attempt to discredit NHL efforts to reach agreement w/ players on new CBA.” Do you see how that was framed? Let’s ask Mr. Luntz, “Is your research so twisted that simply revealing it would discredit the owners’ position?” If this is such a clean enterprise, why are you upset that it’s been made public? On the other hand, as Puck Daddy points out:

The greatest irony in the National Hockey League pulling together a focus group to test its messaging in the lockout: That hiring GOP toad Frank Luntz to handle said focus group probably further tarnishes their image.

(This isn’t meant to be a partisan comment, mind you; rather a definition of terms, in that Luntz frequently works for the GOP and is, in fact, akin in his demeanor to an amphibious reptile that lives in a bog and devours insects for sustenance.)

Of course, it may be that Puck Daddy is a little miffed because one of his columns was taken as the basis for an entire page of questions: “Imagine our surprise when we discovered Puck Daddy’s “What We Lost When The NHL Lost Opening Night” column — word for word for word for word — served as the basis for one of Luntz’s exercises.”

A page from the focus group. “Which FOUR statements make you feel MOST negative about the owners?” [deadspin.com]

This isn’t the first time that Luntz research has been leaked — the entire 28-page document on how to frame health care hit the internet back in 2009 — and it isn’t the first time that Luntz has shown himself to be a bit prickly about these matters. At one point, he was castigating Democrats for using terminology they derived from polling, which caused some to label him as irony-challenged.

Anyway, the upshot of the focus group seems to be that “fairness” and “shared sacrifice” will be the new touch-words for the owners. The new offer asks players to give up 7% of revenue, this sacrifice will be shared by the owners who previously were asking for 10%.

The owners have looked pretty bad during these negotiations. There were the moves by certain owners to violate the very rules that they are trying to impose — for instance, the huge contracts that are back-loaded so as to get around salary caps at the same time as the league is demanding that contracts be made shorter so as to prevent backloading. And there is the question of why a lockout in the first place? Why not have the season while negotiations continue? That’s the way most contract disputes are handled, but this is the third time that the League owners have locked out the players and crushed a season. It’s my way or the highway, they say, take it or leave it. After all, as one owner put it, the players are all cattle anyway.

Meet The 1%: Ted Leonsis and Craig Leipold

A while ago I wrote about Stan Kroenke, the one-percenter who stole a lake in British Columbia. Stan also collects sports franchises including the Colorado Avalanche. Now that the NHL lockout is official it might be interesting to look at other owners, say the two guys on the owners’ bargaining committee. They’re just a couple of big kids really, having a fine old time creating havoc and consternation among the adults.

Craig Leipold co-founded a company called Ameritel that supplied equipment to other companies. It was successful and he sold for a bundle. Then he started another company called Ameritel that supplied services to other companies. A few years ago he renamed it Alta Resources. [Note: there are lots of companies called Ameritel in America and Leipold has nothing to do with most of them, such as Ameritel Payphones in Florida, investigated by the FTC; and there are lots of Altas that he has nothing to do with, for instance, the Alta fracking operation.] Leipold also loves games and back in 1997 bought the Nashville Raptors. What with one thing and another he couldn’t make that work and sold the team before picking up his current franchise, the Minnesota Wild.

Craig Leipold and Gary Bettman [via ESPN]

Ted Leonsis likes to be Happy; he says that’s the secret to success. In 1993 he took over America Online and actually turned that company into a money-maker — for a while. When AOL began sinking in the competitive seas of high tech, he flim-flammed Time-Warner into merging with AOL, which is akin to selling seats on the Titanic after it met the iceberg. Anyway, Ted had a list of  things that would make him happy and one was owning a sports franchise, so he bought a few including the Washington Capitals. Ted is a likeable guy, if you discount the times when he loses his temper and assaults someone — say, a fan who criticizes him. He loves the internet and has his own blog. He has an internet operation that shows socially conscious movies about Occupy Wall Street or labor organizing in Appalachia. Some of the other owners may find him a bit of a puzzle.

Back in 2008, the NHL was four years off the second of Gary Bettman’s three lockouts and the owners had pledged to sign shorter, cheaper contracts. So Ted signed up Alexander Ovechkin for 13 years and $124 Million. That Ted! Such a kidder! But he’s a Happy boy!

Gary Bettman and Ted Leonsis [via ESPN]

This year the League owners again said that they needed shorter, cheaper contracts. In April, Craig Leipold said:

We’re not making money, and that’s one reason we need to fix our system. We need to fix how much we’re spending right now. [The Wild’s] revenues are fine. We’re down a little bit in attendance, but we’re up in sponsorships, we’re up in TV revenue. And so the revenue that we’re generating is not the issue as much as our expenses. And [the Wild’s] biggest expense by far is player salaries.

Then, a couple of days before the lockout, he signed two 13-year contracts for $98 Million each with Ryan Suter and Zach Parise. Craig is not only Happy, he’s Excited! He’s always telling people how Excited he is: “AHHHHHHHHH!!! I am a madman. Oy, oy, oy. It’s hard to come to grips with. It was such a fun, great process.”

So Excitable Boy and Mister Happy represent the owners in the current fiasco and let there be no mistake, much as everyone despises that ferret-faced little turd Gary Bettman, he takes his orders from the owners. Of course, they probably leave the strategizing up to Gary and he just loves him some lockout.

Rumor has it that twelve or so of the American franchises are behind the cut-salaries and increase-revenues drive. Some teams — like New Jersey, Nashville, Dallas, and Columbus are really suffering. Phoenix has been operating in receivership for years now. So these owners want a bigger slice of the Big Pie — television revenues and the money available to the League to shore up rickety operations — that way they can stave off bankruptcy a little longer. So are these owners upset that Craig Leipold and Ted Leonsis act in ways counter to the principles they say they are defending? Nope, many of them have done the same thing. After all, these sports teams are just rich men’s toys and so long as somebody is having fun, well, that’s what toys are for.

Why The NHL Lockout Has Meaning For You

Perhaps you’ve ignored the National Hockey League’s lockout of its players because you think it doesn’t affect you. Guess again. The owners’ negotiating stance has become the standard for every employer.

Just to fill you in: When the current contract between the players and their owners ran out in July, the owners tabled a contract offer that would see player salaries cut and the total amount paid out to players reduced. The contracts that these players had signed individually with management became waste paper. In 2004, the owners locked out the players and, after a lost season, wound up with a deal that capped salaries and otherwise gave the owners an agreement that they said was final. But, of course, it wasn’t. “The intelligent victor always presents his demands in installments.” Now we’re at the next installment.

Back in 2004, the owners assembled a $300 Million fund to help each other through a season of no hockey. The players had whatever they had put away — that might be a lot for the stars but a whole lot less for the newly drafted and journeymen. This time the owners didn’t bother, NBC provided them with a contract that pays out even if not a single game is televised; the owners can sit back and giggle while they torture small animals or whatever else they may do for diversion.

But these power plays by management have become standard for employers. Take it or leave it, that’s the new by-word. Don’t want a salary cut? Then you don’t work. After all, nobody’s buying anything and interest on corporate debt is minimal. So shut the place down for a while — no one but the employees get hurt. If you’re in a public service job, then a contract can be imposed by the legislature and you must take whatever the politicians offer you. They’re not worried about you; they get rich from the backhanders and “campaign contributions” smeared around by the same people who use lockouts as a negotiating tool.

Oh well, you say, I’m not in a union job. But you are. Everyone that works is dependent on past union victories. All of that is now on the table. Looking forward to a pension? That means you want an “entitlement”. That’s what it’s called now. It used to be called insurance — after all, you paid a premium out of every paycheque for it — but now it’s an “entitlement”. And you know what, you are entitled. You are entitled to every damn nickel you put into that company or government plan plus a piece of whatever interest is left after the banks do their banditry.  

The model National Hockey League owner was Harold Ballard. He spent some of his time as owner in a jail cell. He reduced the once-might Leafs to a nothing team and openly laughed at the fans who came out every season to throw money his way. Ballard destroyed that team, but he made a huge profit, and his successors have continued to milk the franchise so that it is the wealthiest in the League. Harold Ballard set an example for owners everywhere: you can deliver a shoddy product and still people will buy it; you can destroy your company and make millions.

Mitt Romney headed a money-making organization whose business operated on Harold Ballard principles. It’s the current corporate model. We all of us — whether the 99% or Romney’s 47% — have skin in this game. And remember, next time you go into work, you might have to face some grinning scumbag in a tailored suit telling you, “Take it or leave it.”

The Logging Comics of Bus Griffiths

Bus Griffiths wanted to be a cartoonist. In 1930 he had a short stint as catalogue artist for Massey-Harris, then, for the rest of the decade, he worked as a logger in one small show after another. In 1940 he went back to drawing for Maple Leaf Publishing, one of the Canadian comic book publishers that sprang up with newsprint restrictions. He did a strip called “Now You’re Logging” and also worked up an eight-page comic on logging for the B.C. government. With the end of the War, Bus hauled his corks out of the closet and went back into the bush. He quit logging in 1971 at the age of fifty-eight and began working a salmon boat. He used his free time to study painting and began producing pictures of logging as it had once been practiced in British Columbia. The Provicial Museum became interested and encouraged Bus to document  the work he had followed for almost forty years. The result was the book Now You’re Logging.

Now You’re Logging follows two guys working in the forest industry in the 1930s. It has a rudimentary storyline but mainly the book shows loggers at work. A logging show is set up and we follow it from hightopping the spar tree, falling, bucking, setting chokers, and working the donkey engine. What’s a bucker? That’s the guy that cuts up the fallen timber into usable logs. Here’s a bucker’s tools as compared to a faller’s:

The bucker and his tools. Click to embiggen.

The Ford Falcon: Death-mobile

 

“It was a death-mobile, the embodiment of terror. Whenever a Falcon drove by we knew there would be kidnappings, disappearance, torture, murder.”

Eduardo Pavlovsky

The Ford Falcon design team was led by Robert McNamara who wanted a new Model-T — a car that was inexpensive and reliable. In 1960, before he left for the Kennedy White House, McNamara saw his car in production. Two of the new cars were shipped to Argentina in 1961 as exemplars for local manufacture.

A Green Ford Falcon

A new middle class was forming in Argentina, people with reasonably good jobs who could afford a new car. The Ford plant at La Boca began turning out Falcons in 1962. This was a popular car, a reliable, affordable vehicle that was much appreciated by Argentineans. Alejandro Hernandez, member of the Friends of the Falcon Club: “In Argentina we have classics like the tango, mate (tea), soccer and the Falcon. It’s a national lifestyle. It’s as Argentine as the gaucho… I was born at home and my father always had a Falcon, he took it to work and it went through the mud taking the whole family out to the countryside.”

By 1973, the Argentinean Falcon was almost entirely made in that country, only 26 of more than 3000 parts had to be imported, and the car had undergone several design makeovers, distinguishing it from the US model. It is the best-selling car in Argentina’s history.  But internal tensions were building in Argentina and, in 1976, military forces seized power.

Police checking their weapons outside their Falcon, circa 1978

“It’s not the Falcon’s fault. The police probably just needed a car that didn’t break down, so they got Falcons,” says Alejandro Hernandez. The regular police got Falcons painted in regular police black and white, but the secret police and the paramilitary organizations tended to prefer dark green vehicles. Soon, the sight of a green falcon was enough to frighten every Argentinean who saw it.

The paramilitary units had been operating for several years before the 1976 coup. They kidnapped, tortured, and murdered labor leaders, journalists, and anyone else deemed a subversive. Most active opposition to the junta was murdered at the beginning of the coup, then the police went after anyone they wished. Thirty thousand people simply disappeared during the period of The Dirty War, 1976 -1983.

In 1976, a group of high school students protested high bus fares and the secret police disappeared them. One of these children was the sixteen-year-old daughter of state senator Mendes de Falcone (yes) and his wife Nelva. Their son went into hiding and the parents took him food and supplies when they could in their (yes) green falcon. One night they were stopped by the secret police and driven away in an official green falcon. Nelva was tortured with a cattle prod and her husband forced to watch. A month later, they were released but the senator died soon after of a heart attack. Their green Falcon was located and Nelva drove it home. Then she  banded with others who had loved ones among the disappeared. Soon they organized the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, an organization that demonstrated and demanded answers from the Argentine government for years even as some of its members were themselves disappeared. Nelva’s daughter has never been accounted for.

Nelva and her Falcon (from the documentary, "Falcon: Can A Car Be Guilty of Murder?)

One of the government’s first targets was the Ford plant itself. The auto-workers union, SMATA, was largely compliant with official demands, but a growing contingent of young workers wanted something more than wage-slavery to an oppressive regime; they became increasingly important and began to show some real power. In 1976, the Ford workers had just won a new contract that emphasized safety issues and working conditions. The morning that the new contract was to take effect, workers, especially union delegates, began disappearing.

Actually troops had been patrolling the Ford factory for a year, invited in by the company under the pretext of defending against violent Marxists. The relationship between the Army and corporations was already developed before the coup. Now the workplace became a place of terror. One worker was told by his foreman that he would be taken away that day. “Don’t leave your place on the line,” he was told, “they’re watching.” Twenty-five workers were taken away from the plant; their wives were given pink slips saying that their husbands were fired for failure to report for work even though most of them had been abducted from the factory.

Fifteen of the many disappeared workers survived and they have undertaken a lawsuit against the Ford Motor Company (others are suing Chrysler-Daimler for more or less the same crimes). They say the company was complicit in the kidnappings, torture, and murder. Ford says that this was all the work of government forces and that such crimes are strictly against company policy.

"Falcon", a sculpture by Daniel Acosta who was kidnapped and imprisoned for five years.

 

After the junta’s collapse, Argentina officially adopted a policy of forgive-and-forget. The Mothers of the Plaza Mayo refused to do either and the official policy has lost its force. So far there have been a few trials and convictions of junta members for their crimes. Attempts have been made to bring criminal charges against Ford.

Meanwhile, the Falcon is still a well-known Argentine car. Some refuse to have anything to do with the vehicle; the very sight of a Falcon, especially a green Falcon, upsets them:

“They are a symbol of repression,” said Miriam Lewin, a 49-year-old journalist who was kidnapped in a Falcon in the 1970s and forced into the trunk of another Falcon when she was moved from one political detention center to another.

But at least one Falcon owner has added a sign in his car’s window: “My car is not to blame” and nunca mas, “Never Again”, the current slogan of those trying to put Argentina back together.

Then there is this: After Argentina’s 2001 debt crisis, a number of worker-controlled factories and workshops were set up by people unwilling to go under with the wealthy elites that had bankrupted the country. Ever since, the usual suspects have been trying to shut these enterprises down. In 2005, somebody abducted the wife of a Ceramica Zanon employee — Zanon being one of the most successful of the worker-run factories. The woman was tortured and mutilated and given a warning that Zanon’s union would “run red with blood”, then she was driven away and dumped by the road. The car that was used was (yes) a green Falcon.

Much of this article comes from a feature documentary, Falcon: Can A Car be Guilty of Murder? So far as I know, it is not in general release.

Information about the Ford plant and the government comes from “The Falcon Remembered”, a NACLA Report on the Americas paper.

Wall Street Occupation: Frances Fox Piven

Most people had never heard of Frances Fox Piven before Glen Beck claimed that she was a dangerous radical, but Piven has been writing about organizing and citizen activism for many years. She was interviewed about the Wall Street Occupation by Chris Maisano of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Frances Fox Piven

Chris Maisano: What have you thought of the protests so far?

Frances Fox Piven: I think they’ve been pretty terrific. And I really am hopeful that it’s the beginning of a new period of social protest in this country. I think a lot about the protest is absolutely on target, it’s so smart. It was so smart to pick Wall Street because Wall Street looms so large not only in the reality of inequality and recession policy, but it looms so large in the minds of people now because everybody knows that they’re stealing the country blind. So they picked the right place, they had somehow — I don’t know how self-consciously, maybe self-consciously — absorbed a kind of lesson from Tahrir Square of staying there, because usually we have demonstrations and marches and parades and things, and they’re over in a nanosecond. And all that the authorities have to do is wait, because they’re gonna be over.

So what they tried to do is take this classical form of the mass rally — they didn’t do it alone, obviously it happened in Egypt too — and connected it with the disruptive potential of mass action because they said “we’re staying.” And “we’re staying” is more troublesome. Not only that, “we’re staying” makes it possible for them to organize and mobilize throughout the course of the action, which is what they do. So that part of it was pretty, pretty smart.

They are smart in being very inclusive. I mean, they’re very happy to include everybody, and they’ve actively reached out to the unions. When has a youthful protest done that in living memory? A very long time since that’s happened. But they knew from the beginning — probably they were helped to learn that from Wisconsin. And they’re so happily counter-cultural, you can’t even get angry at them if you’re a stiff old person!

….

FFP: I think what’s happening now is brilliant theater. This is not a criticism, but it’s going to be a really tough movement, it’s not going to win anything easily.

CM: Especially since it’s being policed so heavily.

FFP: Not only that, who is it going to win it from? The American ruling class is so fragmented and cannibalistic, and it doesn’t even care what’s going to happen — the future for them is about two years. It has no interest in responding to the demands about pollution, for example, or safe food supplies. So it’s a tough movement, it has to hang on. Its most likely constituencies are students and workers. It’s not immediately clear to me which workers. I think that’s a little puzzling to me. But at John Jay yesterday and other schools at CUNY walked out, and they went down to Foley Square. I was there this afternoon, they had a meeting on campus, and those students are just wildly enthusiastic about this thing. They’re good, those students.

….

CM: We’ve already talked about this a little bit, but many people, including a number of people on the left, have criticized the protests for lacking a formal organizational structure or leadership, or an articulated set of demands. A lot of people have been saying “what do you want?” What do you make of that criticism?

FFP: I think it’s so misplaced. It’s so irritating, it’s so — I can’t stand it! I’ve been listening to it for like 10 days, 15 days. The contempt, especially the mainstream media people. I wish they would just stuff their feet in their mouths.

In the first place, it’s not true, and they’re not listening. It’s like they’re so eager to spout off this line of criticism because the protesters’ shirt-tails are not tucked in or something like that. In fact, I think the intelligence that has gone into this protest is very impressive. And the list of articulated demands that came out yesterday — it’s not only intelligent, it’s artful because it takes into account the grievances of such a wide range of constituencies and shows that they fit together pretty well. So that puts the lie to that criticism.

As for “they’re not organized,” they’re not organized the way you think people should be organized. But if you mean by organization coherence and coordination, it works fine. The general assembly meets every day, the human mic is really a pleasure.

CM: It can take a while, though.

FFP: [laughter] But it works! And it’s so much fun to speak to the human mic, because when else do you hear your statement echoed across a square? So I totally disagree with that. And I think they [left critics of the protests] better get their heads on straight because they should be supporting this movement — it may be their only chance.

Thoughts on the Wall Street Occupation

A few days ago I posted a link that suggested police violence in New York was the result of powers-that-be pressing for results because they are concerned about the police budget. Then I learned that JP Morgan Chase has gifted the NYPD with $4.6 million. You get what you pay for, I suppose. Anyway, here are some other disjointed thoughts about the Occupation of Wall Street. (many of these links are via zunguzungu).

1. The Failure of Mainstream Media

Everything you want to know about why the media are distrusted can be seen in this item from the once-proud New York Times, now just another rag:

The NY Times changes its story.

 2. What are They After?

A lot of wordage has been expounded on the fact that Occupy Wall Street has made no demands, but that, it seems, is part of the process. The original Adbusters call-out suggested that people could get together and decide on the one big demand to be made. Now it appears that people are making their own lists of demands and discussing them in various meetings. There may never be any formal demand or demands. But there is We Are the 99 Percent if anyone genuinely doesn’t understand why these people are demonstrating.

 Does anyone really not know what the basic message is of this protest: that Wall Street is oozing corruption and criminality and its unrestrained political power — in the form of crony capitalism and ownership of political institutions — is destroying financial security for everyone else?

And:

…there does not have to be a set of demands at the outset. This is not The Further Adventures Of Action Item. Organizers are at the “building support” phase, where they get their message out. It seems straightforward to me that by being there day after day they are saying: We object to what has gone on here; we do not agree with it and do not support it; we want it to change. For now, that is message enough. What they need is to get the word out – which, given the informal media blackout, is no small feat. Not everyone is jacked into the Internet, and there is a huge amount of WOMP (word of mouth publicity) required. That is slower, so it will take longer to build up a head of steam. Concrete demands can wait.

3. Criticism of Tactics, Methodology, Theory, and so forth.

“But these kids are so disorganized!” is a chant from those who control organizations and wonder why they have no sway over these demonstrators. Well, it’s because you’ve done fuck-all in the past and no one expects more from you in the future. There is some theory, mostly ex post facto, about what people are up to; this has to do with occupying space and being free there and thus demonstrating that people can be a useful community without coercion. That has value, at least for a time, and what-you-see-is-what-you-get is not a bad way to view polities. Check this out:

¶Create territories. Multiply zones of opacity.
¶Travel. Open our own lines of communication.
¶Flee visibility. Turn anonymity into an offensive position (“No leader, no demands, no organization, but words, gestures, complicities. To be socially nothing is not a humiliating condition, the source of some tragic lack of recognition — from whom do we seek recognition? — but is on the contrary the condition for maximum freedom of action.”)

Even so, this is where I show my age and prejudice, I suppose. “Direct democracy” calls up visions of referendum-ruined California with citizens demanding services and refusing to pay taxes for them. And “consensus politics” brings to mind the Tyranny of Structurelessness and the manner in which groups are often controlled by the glib and charismatic. Of course, that also translates to electoral politics. Meanwhile, the occupiers have made friends with organized labor: postal workers and locked-out Teamsters. Transit workers have refused to move arrestees for the NYPD and, Steel Workers, the Pilots’ Association, and Verizon workers are joining the Occupation. Or at least are “in solidarity” with the occupation. Still, this says something about the value of tactics so far: Occupy Wall Street has attracted attention and allies.

4. What Can They Accomplish?

This is the $64 question. Can all this sound and fury actually result in any meaningful change? Maybe the story is how much has been accomplished so far:

Generating attention to an issue that the Beltway wants to go away, building support among disparate groups the old-fashioned way, supporting local workers who might otherwise feel isolated, and breathing oxygen into alternative outlets. The OWS movement has been racking up some really important successes. What’s not to like?

5. A Final Thought

I can’t say this any better:

 …for those who believe that protests are only worthwhile if they translate into quantifiable impact: the lack of organizational sophistication or messaging efficacy on the part of the Wall Street protest is a reason to support it and get involved in it, not turn one’s nose up at it and join in the media demonization.  That’s what one actually sympathetic to its messaging (rather than pretending to be in order more effectively to discredit it) would do.  Anyone who looks at mostly young citizens marching in the street protesting the corruption of Wall Street and the harm it spawns, and decides that what is warranted is mockery and scorn rather than support, is either not seeing things clearly or is motivated by objectives other than the ones being presented.

Poisonville

In 1917, a Pinkerton detective named Dashiell Hammett was offered $5000 to murder IWW union organizer Frank Little in Butte, Montana. Hammett turned down the job but Little was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered shortly afterward. A note pinned to his underwear read “Others Take Notice”. Hammett continued to work as a Pinkerton operative but his experience as a strike-breaker caused him to become a Communist. The tension of working both sides of the street runs through Hammett’s best work, particularly Red Harvest, his first novel.

Red Harvest is set in Poisonville, a thinly disguised version of Butte, “an ugly city of forty thousand”. The protagonist is an unnamed detective who arrives in town to find his client murdered. The detective starts asking around. His first informant is the local IWW boss. “…he considered it his duty to get the low-down on me, and not let himself be pumped about radical affairs while he was doing it. That was all right with me.”

Poisonville is run by criminal factions originally brought into town as strike-breakers by the mine owner, Elihu Willson, the man who owns Poisonville “heart, soul, skin, and guts”. Willson’s son is the murdered client, an idealist who wanteed to clean up Poisonville. “A lousy liberal”, says the union organizer.

The detective decides to clean up Poisonville himself. The method he uses is to set the various criminal factions against one another. The result is all-out war and a mounting pile of corpses as people turn “blood simple”.