A few short weeks ago I would have considered that concept preposterous. Now I'm not so sure. Let's look at some of the similarities and some of the differences.
The USSR was a top-down political and economic system in which all major decisions, economic, political, and military, were made at the top. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) had gained the broad consent of the Russian people through its promise of better pay and better working conditions than Russians had enjoyed under the older czarist regime, and for a time after the Bolshevik Revolution and the massive industrialization which took place afterward, seemed to have kept its promises. The lives of ordinary Russians did improve in measurable terms. There was work for all, and the vast majority of the working class, at least, did feel that their government was now working for them, not the other way around.
Then the dictator Josef Stalin came along. Although Stalin was very careful never to present any public appearance of opulence, he began ruthlessly to crush what dissent existed, nearly exterminating the peasant, farming class in the Soviet Union, confiscating their farms for the State, purging the Red Army of all officers who he suspected of being disloyal (or whom, in his warped, paranoid fantasies he imagined might even be disloyal at some point in the future). The end result were the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens long before the first shots of World War II were ever fired, and the virtual extinction of the officer corps of the Red Army. One direct result of the latter was that when National Socialist Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the spring of 1941, the Red Army was hurled back on all fronts, and the German Army was able to proceed as far as the suburbs of Moscow itself. The Soviet Union did manage to recover and, with enormous help in terms of materiel sent from the UK and the USA, push the Germans back at the same time British, American, and Canadian forces were landing in Western Europe, all of which led to the complete, utter collapse of the German National Socialist state.
After Stalin's death, those at the top of the Soviet hierarchy, having learned the price of dictatorship, were careful never to let too much power get into the hands of one man again, but the many of the same excesses which had characterized the old czarist regime began to grow within Soviet society. More and more, as time went on, it became apparent to the Soviet people that all power and privileges were concentrated into the hands of their ruling elite, namely the members of the CPSU and their sons and daughters. Ordinary Soviet citizens began more and more to lose faith in their system, and eventually that system, even though it still possessed massive powers of repression, collapsed virtually overnight without a shot ever being fired in its defense. Indeed, at the very last, realizing that its power was evaporating even in the city of Moscow, when the leaders of the Soviet Union called in the Red Army to help restore order, the rank-and-file of the Soviet military joined forces with the Soviet people, and the once-mighty Soviet system ended not with a bang, but with barely even a whimper.
If a single mantra might be safely attributed to those participating in the various Occupy movements spreading like wildfire across the USA today, that mantra might well be: "We are the 99%!" The movement has spread in a matter of mere days throughout the entire country, from virtually every major city in the country down to and including many small, even tiny in some cases, towns and communities which are located in both "red states" and "blue states," areas which traditionally have espoused wildly divergent political views. All of them are saying that the compact between the rulers and the ruled has been broken here too, that the wealthy, powerful elites of banking and industry have co-opted the American political system to the extent that it now serves only the needs of those wealthy, powerful elites, and not the needs or will of ordinary Americans.
One thing which has struck me almost from the beginning is that the protesters seem to have no "end-game." There are no identifiable leaders, there is no identifiable political program, and it has appeared throughout that the protesters' objective, if any, has been the protests themselves. Could it be that this is the end-game which has so far eluded me? Are they betting that, with tens of thousands of Americans protesting in the streets from coast to coast, and with more people joining their numbers almost by the minute, they believe that the American system of government will also come crashing down, as unable to defend itself as were its Soviet counterparts two decades ago?
Make no mistake about it. The US government does possess the means to defend itself. We have had in this country for a decade now a massive "national security" establishment on a scale never seen in the United States prior to the former Bush administration, an establishment which has, under President Obama, been granted even more power, with the President of the United States himself now able, supposedly legally, even to order the assassination of American citizens without charges and without trial. Any American can now be labeled as a "suspected terrorist" and "detained" indefinitely without any of the traditional due processes of law ever coming into play.
Then there is the US military to consider. Yes, it seems that some, perhaps more than a few, former military personnel have joined the protesters in at least a few places, but that is a far cry from actively serving men and women in the armed forces. Were the government in Washington to begin to feel itself really threatened, what would their reaction be?
I have no idea where it is all leading or how it will all end any more than anyone else does at this point, but I don't think it is any exaggeration to observe that, insofar as what is taking place throughout the United States at this juncture is concerned, no one has ever seen anything like it before.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
What Is The #OWS End-Game?
In short, I don't have a clue, nor am I aware that anyone else has. I'm blogging this today in part to clear up what I perceive to be a misapprehension on the part of quite a number of people who follow me on Twitter or on this blog.
Yes, I've been following the news about the Wall Street protests from the beginning--or very nearly so. And I follow a number of people actively involved in the movement in NYC and across the country via my Twitter "occupy-wall-street" list. Originally I created and curated the list as a private list, but yesterday made the list public so that people who are interested in that topic specifically don't have to follow me on Twitter in order to see the same updates I do. Now they can simply follow the list. But I have never met anyone involved with the movement in person, nor am I (or have ever been) privy to any sort of "inside information" about the movement.
What attracted my attention to begin with was that, all those days ago when I first began following the updates of the New York protesters, a group of young Americans were finally standing up for what they believed in. That takes courage, even if local law-enforcement isn't being particularly heavy-handed, and I admire courage.
Now the movement's spread across the United States, and in a very real sense has even gone global. Commentary in the mainstream media has ranged from being absent at first to claims now that the movement is some sort of left-wing equivalent of the Tea Party all the way to wild claims that those involved are aiming for some sort of American totalitarian state. Via Twitter and a number of online blogs and news sites, I've "observed" people who declare that their political beliefs range from libertarians on the Right to socialists and anarchists on the extreme Left. Several "progressive" groups and sites seem to me to be engaging in wishful thinking when they opine that the movement espouses, or will espouse, their own favorite progressive causes--the re-election of President Obama in 2012 being high on the list among these. Yet based on updates I've read from many of the protesters themselves, it appears that the President's re-election is about the last thing they are interested in.
The one common theme in the original movement, and all (or nearly all) of the various offshoot, sympathy movements I'm watching via the web and social media seems to be, simply: get money out of politics, a sentiment with which I heartily concur.
The trouble, of course, is that the existing two-party system in the United States is never, under any circumstances, going to agree to any such thing. The so-called "rice bowls" of far, far too many professional politicians on the Left and the Right would be upset if money were somehow removed from the political equation. And the melancholy fact of the matter is that no governmental system as deeply and firmly entrenched as is that of the United States is going to voluntarily submit to being reformed, let alone to reform itself from within. Indeed, many years ago (circa 1983) I read a book entitled The Third World War by General Sir John Hackett, Royal Army. I no longer possess a copy of the book, but I do recall one quote Sir John used within it, and although I have had no luck in finding the quote on the web, I remember that it went something like this: "The first duty of any government is to preserve itself in being." Whoever may have originally uttered or written those words, they do ring true and I do not doubt that the government of the United States will adhere to that concept.
Entrenched systems, especially systems based on money and privilege, die hard if and when they die at all. One has only to read about the Bourbon kings of France, the Romanov czars of Russia, and the Manchu dynasty in China to see that this is so, and these are only three examples. The repressive, anti-democratic regime in Tunisia succumbed to change rather quickly. That of former President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt succumbed far less quickly, and the monstrously blood-stained regime of President Assad in Syria is murdering its own citizens with considerable gusto in its resistance to change.
There have been comments now both in the mainstream media and a number of web-based news sites and blogs that the "Occupy Wall Street" movement in the United States, at least, resembles (or may come to resemble) some kind of "American Autumn," the reference being to the revolutionary movements of the "Arab Spring." Is this possible? If it is possible, would it be considered desirable by a majority of Americans from across the political spectrum? Because history teaches that once those gates are opened, once that threshold has been passed, literally almost anything may happen. In historical terms, revolutions have a bad habit of taking on a life of their own, of getting out of the control of the original leaders, and of ultimately bringing results and consequences which few, if any, of the original participants expected.
There have already been unmistakable signs of suppression. In New York at first several young women were pepper-sprayed by police and several young men were roughed-up. Next came the so-called "Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge" during which some seven hundred protesters were arrested. Yesterday evening, it appears that something very akin to a pitched battle was fought in or near Wall Street, resulting in yet more pepper-sprayings, beatings, and arrests. In Seattle yesterday several protesters were arrested, and it appears that even in San Francisco, perennially among the most progressive of American cities, repressive tactics have been used by police against the protesters there.
The mainstream media, of course, as is their wont, have been looking for a specific set of demands from the moment they began covering the protests. They like everything in neat little boxes, easily labeled. And to an extent, I believe that the protesters have been smart in making no real demands, at least as a group, other than that of getting money out of politics. No one connected with the movement, however, has ever, to the best of my knowledge, outlined just what the "end-game" is supposed to be. The system will not, cannot reform itself from within, and as has already been clearly demonstrated on several occasions, is perfectly capable of employing brute force against those whom it perceives may be trying to reform it from without.
And I have the feeling (which truly is nothing more than a feeling) that there is some sort of plan, at least in the minds of some people, somewhere, that all of this is leading up to something, that public opinion and the media are being very skillfully and meticulously conditioned for ultimate purposes which still elude me. I don't give a hang about the media's deadlines or their desperate wish to be able to label what is going on, but people across the country plainly are being encouraged to put themselves in harm's way, and I do believe that they at least have every right to know exactly why they are being encouraged to do so. Generalized objectives such as "getting money out of politics" are all well and good, but if there is some sort of plan as to exactly how that is to be accomplished, I think it is high time that the public should be made aware of exactly what they are getting themselves into.
Yes, I've been following the news about the Wall Street protests from the beginning--or very nearly so. And I follow a number of people actively involved in the movement in NYC and across the country via my Twitter "occupy-wall-street" list. Originally I created and curated the list as a private list, but yesterday made the list public so that people who are interested in that topic specifically don't have to follow me on Twitter in order to see the same updates I do. Now they can simply follow the list. But I have never met anyone involved with the movement in person, nor am I (or have ever been) privy to any sort of "inside information" about the movement.
What attracted my attention to begin with was that, all those days ago when I first began following the updates of the New York protesters, a group of young Americans were finally standing up for what they believed in. That takes courage, even if local law-enforcement isn't being particularly heavy-handed, and I admire courage.
Now the movement's spread across the United States, and in a very real sense has even gone global. Commentary in the mainstream media has ranged from being absent at first to claims now that the movement is some sort of left-wing equivalent of the Tea Party all the way to wild claims that those involved are aiming for some sort of American totalitarian state. Via Twitter and a number of online blogs and news sites, I've "observed" people who declare that their political beliefs range from libertarians on the Right to socialists and anarchists on the extreme Left. Several "progressive" groups and sites seem to me to be engaging in wishful thinking when they opine that the movement espouses, or will espouse, their own favorite progressive causes--the re-election of President Obama in 2012 being high on the list among these. Yet based on updates I've read from many of the protesters themselves, it appears that the President's re-election is about the last thing they are interested in.
The one common theme in the original movement, and all (or nearly all) of the various offshoot, sympathy movements I'm watching via the web and social media seems to be, simply: get money out of politics, a sentiment with which I heartily concur.
The trouble, of course, is that the existing two-party system in the United States is never, under any circumstances, going to agree to any such thing. The so-called "rice bowls" of far, far too many professional politicians on the Left and the Right would be upset if money were somehow removed from the political equation. And the melancholy fact of the matter is that no governmental system as deeply and firmly entrenched as is that of the United States is going to voluntarily submit to being reformed, let alone to reform itself from within. Indeed, many years ago (circa 1983) I read a book entitled The Third World War by General Sir John Hackett, Royal Army. I no longer possess a copy of the book, but I do recall one quote Sir John used within it, and although I have had no luck in finding the quote on the web, I remember that it went something like this: "The first duty of any government is to preserve itself in being." Whoever may have originally uttered or written those words, they do ring true and I do not doubt that the government of the United States will adhere to that concept.
Entrenched systems, especially systems based on money and privilege, die hard if and when they die at all. One has only to read about the Bourbon kings of France, the Romanov czars of Russia, and the Manchu dynasty in China to see that this is so, and these are only three examples. The repressive, anti-democratic regime in Tunisia succumbed to change rather quickly. That of former President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt succumbed far less quickly, and the monstrously blood-stained regime of President Assad in Syria is murdering its own citizens with considerable gusto in its resistance to change.
There have been comments now both in the mainstream media and a number of web-based news sites and blogs that the "Occupy Wall Street" movement in the United States, at least, resembles (or may come to resemble) some kind of "American Autumn," the reference being to the revolutionary movements of the "Arab Spring." Is this possible? If it is possible, would it be considered desirable by a majority of Americans from across the political spectrum? Because history teaches that once those gates are opened, once that threshold has been passed, literally almost anything may happen. In historical terms, revolutions have a bad habit of taking on a life of their own, of getting out of the control of the original leaders, and of ultimately bringing results and consequences which few, if any, of the original participants expected.
There have already been unmistakable signs of suppression. In New York at first several young women were pepper-sprayed by police and several young men were roughed-up. Next came the so-called "Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge" during which some seven hundred protesters were arrested. Yesterday evening, it appears that something very akin to a pitched battle was fought in or near Wall Street, resulting in yet more pepper-sprayings, beatings, and arrests. In Seattle yesterday several protesters were arrested, and it appears that even in San Francisco, perennially among the most progressive of American cities, repressive tactics have been used by police against the protesters there.
The mainstream media, of course, as is their wont, have been looking for a specific set of demands from the moment they began covering the protests. They like everything in neat little boxes, easily labeled. And to an extent, I believe that the protesters have been smart in making no real demands, at least as a group, other than that of getting money out of politics. No one connected with the movement, however, has ever, to the best of my knowledge, outlined just what the "end-game" is supposed to be. The system will not, cannot reform itself from within, and as has already been clearly demonstrated on several occasions, is perfectly capable of employing brute force against those whom it perceives may be trying to reform it from without.
And I have the feeling (which truly is nothing more than a feeling) that there is some sort of plan, at least in the minds of some people, somewhere, that all of this is leading up to something, that public opinion and the media are being very skillfully and meticulously conditioned for ultimate purposes which still elude me. I don't give a hang about the media's deadlines or their desperate wish to be able to label what is going on, but people across the country plainly are being encouraged to put themselves in harm's way, and I do believe that they at least have every right to know exactly why they are being encouraged to do so. Generalized objectives such as "getting money out of politics" are all well and good, but if there is some sort of plan as to exactly how that is to be accomplished, I think it is high time that the public should be made aware of exactly what they are getting themselves into.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Windows 7: Microsoft Gets It Right This Time
A couple of days ago, I finally took the plunge and upgraded from 32-bit Windows XP to the 64-bit edition of Windows 7 Premium. I'd already built a completely new PC a month or so earlier with the following specs:
AMD Phenom X4 9600B Quad-core CPU
Cooler Master AM2 95w CPU fan
Biostar MCP6PB M2+ GeForce 6150 (Socket AM2+) Motherboard
4GB Centon PC6400 DDR2 RAM
Asus GeForce 210 512MB PCIe Dual DVI, HDMI Video card
Western Digital Caviar 500GB SATA HDD
Lite ON 24x DVDRW SATA Optical drive
PowerUp Mid-tower ATX Case w/450w PSU
Building the system took me about two hours, and my old copy of 32-bit Windows XP ran fine on it; but I'd heard good things about Windows 7, and had never run a 64-bit operating system before, so I decided to try Microsoft's newest OS on for size.
Before I go further, I should admit that I haven't been much of a Microsoft fanboy for quite a while. I hated the whole activation thing they started including with their operating systems back with XP, and I still hate it. Also for a while I had a laptop which came with Windows Vista pre-installed, and as far as I was concerned, Vista was a dog. Plus I've run a number of major Linux distributions and really loved some of them for their rock-solid stability and security. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that I have a few games that I refuse to do without, which won't run on Linux even under their Windows emulation, and the fact that Netflix streaming still isn't available to Linux users, I'd probably be running one of them as my OS-of-choice today.
Anyway, my copy of Microsoft's Windows 7 Premium 64-bit operating system arrived a couple of days ago and with some trepidation, I began my installation.
I elected to do a complete wipe, repartition, and reformat of my hard drive so that I'd be installing my new OS on a completely clean system. That process took only a few seconds, and from there I was really surprised at just how fast the installation went. I didn't actually time my last Windows XP install, but off-hand I'd say that my Windows 7 install probably took half the time, possibly even less. Basically, the only information I had to supply was my correct time zone and a username; and I was very pleasantly surprised when the installer even let me skip typing in the product key altogether. I made that choice since I figured that if I managed to bork up the installation somehow, I wouldn't have used up one of the limited number of online activations you get before you have to call Microsoft and explain to them why you need yet another one in too short a period of time.
I did run into one issue, not after the installation was complete, because the first boot into it went flawlessly, but after I'd installed the appropriate drivers for my specific hardware and had to reboot again. What happened was that it appeared that the system hung before it reached the desktop, but I had both my LCD monitor and my HD-TV plugged into the video card, and it turned out that the video driver had somehow assumed that the HD-TV (which I didn't have turned on at the time) was my primary display. That wasn't Microsoft's fault, but rather an oddity in that particular video driver, which I solved at the time by simply unplugging the television from the video card. Once I did boot successfully to the desktop, I plugged it back in and was quickly able to identify the problem and set the driver to recognize my monitor as my primary display.
From there on, it was all a piece of cake. Windows 7 was able to supply a fantastic range of hardware support without my doing anything at all--much, much more so than any other Microsoft operating system I've ever used. I let Windows 7 update itself, including the newly-released Service Pack 1 and Internet Explorer 9, with no issues on my end.
Then I began installing my (mostly 32-bit) software. This had worried me, although I'd read where a number of people had claimed that the vast majority of 32-bit software works just fine in a 64-bit OS; so I had actually earlier downloaded 64-bit versions of as much of my software as I could find. With a single exception, it all installed flawlessly, and that single exception was fairly esoteric: a program designed to run old 16-bit DOS games with full sound and accelerated graphics under modern Windows operating systems. It had worked fine on 32-bit XP, and I knew I was in for a challenge to make it work in a 64-bit environment at all; but with some very helpful suggestions from the author of the program, I've got even that working perfectly now.
I have to add here that the new Windows 7 user interface is downright beautiful. XP's desktop looks like an old clunker compared to it, and while it looks a little similar to Vista in some ways, it isn't nearly the resource hog Vista was. As far as stability is concerned, so far Windows 7 64-bit seems to me to be every bit as stable as even the best Linux distributions I've run, and for me to say that is really extraordinary. It is absolutely rock-solid, seemingly no matter what I throw at it. It has capabilities which were only dreamed about when Windows XP was released, yet insofar as my productivity and gaming software are concerned, it runs like a racehorse.
For anyone thinking of an operating system upgrade, I would definitely at least recommend downloading the free Windows 7 Compatibility checker from Microsoft and giving it a spin. If your computer hardware will support it, either in the 64-bit or 32-bit versions, I would absolutely recommend it. If you're still running XP, you'll find that Windows 7 is at least one example where a Microsoft version upgrade doesn't add a corresponding amount of bloat; and if you're one of those poor souls running Windows Vista, if you can upgrade to Windows 7, you'll experience what it must have felt like when Lincoln freed the slaves.
For once, Microsoft indeed got it right, and my hat's off to them. Now, I've got to get around to doing that online activation!
AMD Phenom X4 9600B Quad-core CPU
Cooler Master AM2 95w CPU fan
Biostar MCP6PB M2+ GeForce 6150 (Socket AM2+) Motherboard
4GB Centon PC6400 DDR2 RAM
Asus GeForce 210 512MB PCIe Dual DVI, HDMI Video card
Western Digital Caviar 500GB SATA HDD
Lite ON 24x DVDRW SATA Optical drive
PowerUp Mid-tower ATX Case w/450w PSU
Building the system took me about two hours, and my old copy of 32-bit Windows XP ran fine on it; but I'd heard good things about Windows 7, and had never run a 64-bit operating system before, so I decided to try Microsoft's newest OS on for size.
Before I go further, I should admit that I haven't been much of a Microsoft fanboy for quite a while. I hated the whole activation thing they started including with their operating systems back with XP, and I still hate it. Also for a while I had a laptop which came with Windows Vista pre-installed, and as far as I was concerned, Vista was a dog. Plus I've run a number of major Linux distributions and really loved some of them for their rock-solid stability and security. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that I have a few games that I refuse to do without, which won't run on Linux even under their Windows emulation, and the fact that Netflix streaming still isn't available to Linux users, I'd probably be running one of them as my OS-of-choice today.
Anyway, my copy of Microsoft's Windows 7 Premium 64-bit operating system arrived a couple of days ago and with some trepidation, I began my installation.
I elected to do a complete wipe, repartition, and reformat of my hard drive so that I'd be installing my new OS on a completely clean system. That process took only a few seconds, and from there I was really surprised at just how fast the installation went. I didn't actually time my last Windows XP install, but off-hand I'd say that my Windows 7 install probably took half the time, possibly even less. Basically, the only information I had to supply was my correct time zone and a username; and I was very pleasantly surprised when the installer even let me skip typing in the product key altogether. I made that choice since I figured that if I managed to bork up the installation somehow, I wouldn't have used up one of the limited number of online activations you get before you have to call Microsoft and explain to them why you need yet another one in too short a period of time.
I did run into one issue, not after the installation was complete, because the first boot into it went flawlessly, but after I'd installed the appropriate drivers for my specific hardware and had to reboot again. What happened was that it appeared that the system hung before it reached the desktop, but I had both my LCD monitor and my HD-TV plugged into the video card, and it turned out that the video driver had somehow assumed that the HD-TV (which I didn't have turned on at the time) was my primary display. That wasn't Microsoft's fault, but rather an oddity in that particular video driver, which I solved at the time by simply unplugging the television from the video card. Once I did boot successfully to the desktop, I plugged it back in and was quickly able to identify the problem and set the driver to recognize my monitor as my primary display.
From there on, it was all a piece of cake. Windows 7 was able to supply a fantastic range of hardware support without my doing anything at all--much, much more so than any other Microsoft operating system I've ever used. I let Windows 7 update itself, including the newly-released Service Pack 1 and Internet Explorer 9, with no issues on my end.
Then I began installing my (mostly 32-bit) software. This had worried me, although I'd read where a number of people had claimed that the vast majority of 32-bit software works just fine in a 64-bit OS; so I had actually earlier downloaded 64-bit versions of as much of my software as I could find. With a single exception, it all installed flawlessly, and that single exception was fairly esoteric: a program designed to run old 16-bit DOS games with full sound and accelerated graphics under modern Windows operating systems. It had worked fine on 32-bit XP, and I knew I was in for a challenge to make it work in a 64-bit environment at all; but with some very helpful suggestions from the author of the program, I've got even that working perfectly now.
I have to add here that the new Windows 7 user interface is downright beautiful. XP's desktop looks like an old clunker compared to it, and while it looks a little similar to Vista in some ways, it isn't nearly the resource hog Vista was. As far as stability is concerned, so far Windows 7 64-bit seems to me to be every bit as stable as even the best Linux distributions I've run, and for me to say that is really extraordinary. It is absolutely rock-solid, seemingly no matter what I throw at it. It has capabilities which were only dreamed about when Windows XP was released, yet insofar as my productivity and gaming software are concerned, it runs like a racehorse.
For anyone thinking of an operating system upgrade, I would definitely at least recommend downloading the free Windows 7 Compatibility checker from Microsoft and giving it a spin. If your computer hardware will support it, either in the 64-bit or 32-bit versions, I would absolutely recommend it. If you're still running XP, you'll find that Windows 7 is at least one example where a Microsoft version upgrade doesn't add a corresponding amount of bloat; and if you're one of those poor souls running Windows Vista, if you can upgrade to Windows 7, you'll experience what it must have felt like when Lincoln freed the slaves.
For once, Microsoft indeed got it right, and my hat's off to them. Now, I've got to get around to doing that online activation!
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