Occupy Wall Street's 'occucopter' who's watching whom?

Tim Pool's citizen drone that keeps tabs on the police may lift protesters' spirits, but it could lead to a surveillance nightmare

Noel Sharkey and Sarah Knuckey
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 December 2011 12.46 GMT

Tim Pool's 'occucopter' is a response to the police eviction of Occupy Wall Street protestors from Zuccotti Park, New York. Photograph: Keystone USA-ZUMA/Rex Features

The police may soon be watching you in your garden picking your vegetables or your bottom. As police plans for increasing unmanned aerial surveillance take shape, there is a new twist. Private citizens can now buy their own surveillance drones to watch the police.


This week in New York, Occupy Wall Street protesters have a new toy to help them expose potentially dubious actions of the New York police department. In response to constant police surveillance, police violence and thousands of arrests, Occupy Wall Street protesters and legal observers have been turning their cameras back on the police. But police have sometimes made filming difficult through physical obstruction and "frozen zones". This occurred most notably during the eviction of protesters from Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, where police prevented even credentialed journalists from entering.


Now the protesters are fighting back with their own surveillance drone. Tim Pool, an Occupy Wall Street protester, has acquired a Parrot AR drone he amusingly calls the "occucopter". It is a lightweight four-rotor helicopter that you can buy cheaply on Amazon and control with your iPhone. It has an onboard camera so that you can view everything on your phone that it points at. Pool has modified the software to stream live video to the internet so that we can watch the action as it unfolds. You can see video clips of his first experiments here. He told us that the reason he is doing this "comes back to giving ordinary people the same tools that these multimillion-dollar news corporations have. It provides a clever loophole around certain restrictions such as when the police block press from taking shots of an incident."


Pool is attempting to police-proof the device: "We are trying to get a stable live feed so you can have 50 people controlling it in series. If the cops see you controlling it from a computer they can shut you down, but then control could automatically switch to someone else."


This is clever stuff and it doesn't stop there. He is also working on a 3G controller so that "you could even control the occucopter in New York from Sheffield in England". We asked him if he was concerned about police shooting it down. "No," he said firmly. "They can't just fire a weapon in the air because it could seriously hurt someone. They would have no excuse because the occucopter is strictly not illegal. Their only recourse would be to make it illegal, but it is only a toy and so they might as well make the press illegal they have already arrested 30 journalists here."


Ordinary people having the technology to watch the watcher is not something George Orwell predicted in his futuristic vision of 1984. He introduced us to the idea of a totalitarian state using total surveillance to suppress the entire population. This is why CCTV cameras and police drones watching us unseen sends shivers down the spines of so many of us. We are not so much worried about the current political establishment than we are about the possibility of a technology that enables the creation of a repressive regime.


That might be less likely to happen when the same surveillance systems are turned back on the authorities. But it is not all good news. These devices could also extend the range of potential breaches of privacy. You could fly over your neighbour's garden or up to their bedroom window. And drones could be a great asset for criminals to "case a joint" or to keep watch for the police.


There are also concerns that the roll-out of citizen drones might be disingenuously used by the police to justify and speed up police acquisition and use of drones for the surveillance of protests. Police departments in the UK and across the US are eager to use drones, but there has been little or no debate about the impacts on public safety, privacy and liberty. And there has certainly been no public engagement about this expansion of police surveillance.


It will probably not be long before there are test cases in court or before legislation is introduced to ground citizen drones. Our spirits were lifted talking to Pool about his occucopter, yet we feel uneasy about the ever-increasing use of drone surveillance. Like all tools they can be used for both good and bad, and for repression and resistance.


The question is, do we really want the paranoiac nightmare of our airspace being polluted by police and personal drones with all of us watching our watchers? We are not sure how this will unfold, but we are sure that the outcome will be as unpredictable as the technological developments themselves.

Clean This! An Office Cleaners' Strike is Just What Occupy Wall Street Needs

December 21, 2011

In the post-champagne haze of the first business days of 2012 the white collar workforce of this great city might just find itself in a messy situation.

The 22,000 office cleaners and commercial building workers represented by Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union in New York have authorized a strike if a new deal with the Realty Advisory Board (RAB) isn't struck by midnight Dec. 31. A strike could directly affect 1,500 commercial office buildings, including Rockefeller Center, the Met Life Building and the Time Warner Center. While the union has a long history of issuing strike threats to the RAB and then reaching a deal at the 11th hour, this time is not an idle threat. The givebacks the landlords have demanded from the workers who clean up after them are simply too egregious for the membership to ignore, according to sources within the union.

To begin with, the RAB, which represents the city's large building owners, demanded that a lower wage tier be created for new workers, a move that would create hostility between rookies and old-timers, as well as sow the seeds for a new workforce that would be inclined to decertify the union a few years down the road not to mention the fact that it would make it impossible to live in the city on a building cleaner's wage.

The top pay rate for this majority immigrant workforce is $47,000 a year, according to the union. Enma Mehmedovic, who cleans the Sony Building in Midtown Manhattan, said in a statement, "$47,000 a year is not a lot of money in New York City ... I'm raising my two teenage children by myself. It takes two paychecks just to be able to buy my kids' clothes and shoes."

Union President Mike Fishman said in a statement, "These workers live in the city with the highest cost of living in the country, and the real estate market here is the most profitable in the country. Their wages afford them only a lower-middle-class standard of living."

The second issue is that the RAB refused to allow members' payments to the union's political action committee to be deducted automatically from their paychecks, asserting that employers should not have to aid an organization that is actively working against their interests.

As Occupy Wall Street, now homeless after the violent eviction by police in November, searches for a way to move forward, the imagery and timing of this possible work stoppage is just too perfect. For starters, the union said in a statement, "the $20 billion Manhattan commercial real estate industry has just experienced its busiest third quarter in three years with sales activity reaching $6.3 billion, according to Crain's." On top of that, many of the occupants of these buildings are financial houses, corporate law firms and insurance companies. They are buzzing with people in the 1 percent and their apparatchiks.

While the rank and file of Local 32BJ would be marching for their contract demands, they would be emboldened if OWS were on the streets not just picketing, but helping in the union's disruption of the 1 percent's work life.

After all, one tactical goal of OWS has been to disrupt the system to the point that it makes the power brokers pay attention. The strike, which would leave toilets and floors sullied for the stock brokers and associate attorneys, would certainly have that effect. So would having hordes of unemployed and under-employed people blocking building entrances and occupying lobbies.

It would also bring the issue of good jobs to the forefront of the national debate about inequality. Far too often we've heard taunts such as "Shut up and get a job." The office cleaners want jobs, ones with good pay that employers can afford but are resisting. The onus will be on the RAB and its supporters to explain why they so steadfastly oppose their workers being allowed to earn an honest living.

Informal talks between OWS supporters and SEIU 32BJ organizers are already under way. More needs to happen, and while OWS supporters might wish for a general strike to accompany this movement, that is far off in the distance, and something like this is far more real and just as disruptive.

An Appeal To The Occupy Wall Street Movement

by Mark Taylor Canfield[URL="https://twitter.com/share"]
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Anyone who has read Dr. King's "Letters From The Birmingham Jail" must be as impressed and inspired as I am by this man's quest for dignity and honor. His eloquence and mindfulness is unsurpassed by some of the greatest Greek philosophers, and the courage which he displays in his writing matches that of Daniel in the proverbial lion's den.
Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography is also another example how people all over the world have come to know the power of the sound of truth in their own voice. The sound of justice and wisdom is undeniable and this kind of naked truth strikes at the very foundations of the institutions that control the wealth of nations and wage international wars for profit. If you have not read the writings of MLK or Gandhi, I suggest you do that as soon as possible. These men were not perfect, but they obviously sacrificed a great deal for the larger cause of justice and freedom.
Dr. King and Gandhi spoke of the strength of love in the face of adversity. One of the messages of any powerful movement is that together we find strength while separated we are weak and ineffectual. It is that struggle within all social justice movements which is the greatest challenge to organizing for change. People of many diverse backgrounds must be able to join together in some kind of harmony, or at least in a kind of mutual solidarity.
The voices of the many can not be ignored forever. Those who lord over us are given their powerful positions only by us, the people. If these leaders are not held accountable to the people, then we can usually expect some kind of messy chaotic disaster. These are the circumstances which human nature will inevitably create when folks are given an unbounded license to plunder and pillage. That is precisely why it is imperative that we as the people speak out when our leaders deceive us or misrepresent our interests. I believe it was a combination of these forces which brought about the birth of the Occupy Wall Street groups.
It is often institutional violence that serves as the spark for a populist uprising. When people feel oppressed and abused, they fight back. But in order to control the high ground, and retain legitimacy from an ethical point of view, any movement for justice must within itself demonstrate equality and non-violence. Any other path leads not only to a loss of public support, it also leads to outright hypocrisy.
A movement for justice can't morally oppose state violence without first endorsing peace as its goal. Otherwise, the fight against the state becomes nothing but a battle to replace one form of violence with another. The large majority of participants and supporters of the occupy movement believe that mob violence is just as unethical as government or corporate violence. To oppose violence, one must first endorse peace!
I am not suggesting that we take a fruitless journey of passive resistance that fails to bring about any change. We have many examples of non-violent struggles for freedom that have been historically victorious. Gandhi's movement for independence is just one case in point. I would argue that if it were not for the sacrifices made by US civil rights activists, we would not be able to enjoy some of the freedoms we take for granted every day. We should remember that police used attack dogs and fire hoses on people standing up for their rights in the US.
We have had a great history of non-violent civil disobedience movements from around the world including the examples of Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Anna Hazare, Tawakkal Karman, etc. They have all been courageous campaigners for freedom and justice, and all of them have suffered and sacrificed for their beliefs. No one could ever call any one of them a coward, and yet each one stood for peace even while facing official state oppression and violence.
Today there is a grand uprising taking place all over the globe. From Tunisia to Syria folks are rising up against dictators and military regimes. In the United State the Occupy Wall Street movement has resonated with many Americans who feel that the mythical "American Dream" is over. They blame "banksters" and corrupt politicians who have sold them out to the big corporations that now control the government and our electoral system.
So far, the occupiers have had to face only so-called "non-lethal" weaponry from local police departments, such as pepper spray, stun and flash grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas. The uprising in the US is perhaps less of a revolution and more of a populist reaction to the corporate takeovers. I am opposed to the use of any type of violence used by police against peaceful protesters. Fortunately, the occupy movement in the US is not facing an army using live weapons.
In that sense, the protesters in the US are far safer and much more privileged than many of the people who are involved in uprisings in other countries. And, unlike some demonstrators in Greece and Italy, Occupy Wall Street activists have embraced a non-violent stance, preferring to commit civil disobedience and occupying public places or foreclosed buildings.
The importance of this commitment to the peaceful transformation of society is precisely why the Occupy Wall Street movement has gained such widespread appeal among the American public. Even suburban soccer moms and small business owners can relate to a movement which is trying to stand up for the little guy. If the movement were to turn to using violent means to reach its goals, the power of the campaign for social justice would be immediately diminished until it became nothing but a small group of radicals easily swept up by the government. Besides being unethical, if people gave up their commitment to non-violence, they would give the authorities the justification they need to crackdown and suppress them, and the movement would become nothing but a sad example of useless, wasted martyrdom.
The evidence of the existence of a hyper-surveillance regime has already been presented in the pubic media. A series of articles in the Washington Post - "Top Secret America" showed why US residents should be alarmed. The National Defense Authorization Act is just the latest example of how our constitutional rights are being taken away by agencies of the US government and by private corporations. The USA Patriot Act was just the beginning of a wide reaching effort to police society in almost every way. The private security and intelligence industries have been booming since George W. Bush inhabited the White House. Billions of dollars have been spent and scores of government agencies and private corporations are now involved in the collecting of data on American citizens. Nobody knows exactly how much is being spent on these programs because the information is kept secret.
My point is, the surveillance/security police state is poised and ready to utilize its vast resources against any perceived threats to US national security. Under this incredibly well funded and largely unaccountable regime, domestic activist groups are sure to become targets of infiltration and surveillance by various corporate and government entities. Much of this activity is unmonitored by any publicly accountable agency. In truth, no one really knows who's spying on whom any more…
That is another reason why occupiers must maintain a commitment to peaceful protests. If they were to become targets of the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, etc. the movement could be wiped out completely by various tactics, including the use of infiltrators and agitators.
Programs like COINTELPRO are not just a distant memory from the past. Some of the more frightening provisions of the USA Patriot Act and other bills could be used to round up participants of the occupy movement, justified by the violent acts of a few radical or subversive individuals who could use the movement as a cover for their own destructive tactics.
Some of the current participants of the Occupy Wall Street movement seem to hold a rather naive view of these policing agencies in the US. They are perhaps not fully aware of the potential threats to both their precious movement and to their own personal liberty posed by potential actions from US government agencies. My assumption is that the government is already conducting surveillance on any group whose participants may have had physical confrontations with police or who may have damaged property.
The failure of the members of this movement to realize exactly what they are up against could spell ruin for them if they are not very careful. My guess is that the occupy groups are being watched very closely by police and by the FBI. We already know that SWAT teams have been used to raid occupy groups and that police in Seattle admitted they had undercover officers in the crowd taking photos and videotaping the Occupy Seattle protesters during the West coast port actions on December 12th.
So far, the American public has been mostly intolerant of heavy-handed tactics by police. But if even a handful of folks aligning themselves with the occupy movement choose to act violently, it could call the curtains down on the rest of the movement. If they lose the public's support, law enforcement agencies will feel they have permission to repress the movement in the name of public safety.
I never want to see the Occupy Wall Street movement decay into acts of mob violence. I do not want to see it taken over by radical groups bent on destruction. This populist uprising has given a great breath of fresh air to the American people and to the world. It has inspired many Americans to believe for the first time that as a people we can actually change our society. It is the duty of those who started the occupy movement to keep it alive and healthy. An entire generation is counting on it to succeed.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has forever changed the US cultural dialogue. It has taken on the privileged few who benefit from a system that exploits others. It has spoken truth to power at a time when most people are afraid to speak out against what we all recognize as mass corruption on Wall Street and in our government. We can't afford to lose this mass movement if we ever want to be able to hold our leaders accountable.

For once the little guy in America is beginning to have a voice. Whether it's the unemployed truck driver in Omaha or the disabled veteran in New York City, the people who really matter are starting to speak their truth to power. We must not allow a few agitators to deliver us into the hands of the waiting police. People who are violently opposed to authority often bring down the hammer of that authority on everyone.

Despite what some young inexperienced activists might claim, this is not a revolution happening in the United States. There are no guns, no currently active internment camps and no charges of treason or subversion. This is because the political parties here are much more adept at co-opting people's anti-government and anti-corporate anger.
The majority of people are not out in the streets manning the barricades. Most of the population still feels either hopeful or powerless enough not to try to challenge the status quo directly. For many years there has been a plague of political apathy in America. A minority of the people who are eligible to vote in the US actually choose to exercise that right. The fact is, many of them are now relying on a small contingents of wide-eyed activists to keep the rebellion going long enough for it to become an effective influence on changing national policy.
Because of this continued reliance upon the grassroots street activists to show the way, it is very important that they set the best example possible. If the movement says it wants a peaceful world and thereby an end to individual and institutional violence against minorities, women, the LGBT community, disabled persons, the poor, children, animals, the environment, etc, then it must take a pro-active step to promote non-violence, to show that the world can be changed through peaceful means.
I urge every occupy group to endorse and embrace non-violence as a tool for social change. If the world is going to learn the right lessons from this movement for social justice, then the participants in that movement have to recognize their ethical responsibility to practice transparency and peaceful political action.
We, the people, are the government! If we are going to change the system then we must replace our elected representatives with people who will actually represent the 99%. It is my personal opinion that we will not be able to replace the present corrupt government and financial system until we agree to stop wasting our votes by dividing them between the two corporate parties the Republicans and Democrats (or as I like to refer to them - Demopublicans and the Republicrats). But since the current "winner take all" electoral system does not allow for viable third party candidates, our work is going to be long and difficult.
It is not, however, a completely impossible mission. We have seen unexpected massive changes in many nations in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. A global wave of populist sentiment is on the rise, sweeping many undemocratic regimes away with its massive force. Uprisings in Europe are also leading the people to a more assertive role when dealing with their financial and political leadership.
When people are suffering, they fight for survival even against the most outlandish odds. In solidarity they become one person out of many. Once their voices become unified, the small group of elites who run the institutions are often in for the battle of their lives. People power has showed itself to be much more powerful than military weapons and police many times in our planet's history. It is the proverbial hero's quest, the battle against titans and the universal conflict between good and evil played out in city streets and on computer and i phone screens.
This is a movement to change society to transform its institutions and its systems of economic and political control. We may differ on how this can be accomplished, but we must not let our differences divide us and make us weak. The old ideas of class, race, gender, culture, religion or political affiliations are no longer relevant.
We are one. We are the people.
It is not "us" against "them."
This is our society.
It is actually us against ourselves…
Si se puede!

Why America's 99% have rebelled




If you haven't seen it yet, you owe yourself a visit. If you're already familiar with it, go back to remind yourself why the #Occupy movement is so powerful.
I am referring to the We are the 99 per cent[/url] blog, the most direct and articulate explanation available of why so many across the US and beyond have rebelled. The site is a blog to which people submit pictures of themselves. Usually, a person holds out a notebook or sheet of paper, their face partially obscured. On the paper, they have written their stories. Almost always, you can see their eyes.

Photo by [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/shankbone/]David Shankbone under a CC Licence

A stocky man with a short beard, maybe in his forties, has written neatly in marker: 947 days unemployed. 2,000+ resumes sent out. 0 job prospects.'
A young woman in light lipstick: I'm a full-time grad student and a full-time worker. I have chronic, excruciating migraines. I live in fear of the next attack. I can barely cover rent, gas, and groceries. I can't afford a doctor's visit, let alone health insurance.'
A woman with a weary stare: My husband has been looking for work for five years. I support him, myself, our six-year-old son, and (increasingly) my ageing parents. Now my job is in jeopardy too.'
They write: I am one paycheck away from not being able to make my loan payments.' I am 32 years old and live with my mother.' I have lost hope.' What am I doing wrong?'
They sign their messages, I am the 99%'.
You will not get through all of the stories. As I write, there are 185 pages of them. Yet the message of the site is immediately clear: while our society's richest one per cent enjoys a hugely disproportionate share of wealth and income, the economy has left the vast majority of us behind.
The majority has had enough.
Conservatives say that those protesting Wall Street are just complaining. Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain tells them, Get a job'.
As a response to the movement's website, rightwingers have made a blog called We are the 53 per cent'. It is based on the misleading notion that since only around half of Americans pay federal income taxes, the rest are freeloading. (In fact, even those not subject to federal taxes on income nevertheless pay state and local taxes, gas and excise taxes, plus mandatory contributions for Medicare and Social Security.)
The 53 per cent' stories are testimonials to dogged determination. One man, a father of a five-month-old, expresses pride in working 70-hour weeks in an effort to pay $100,000 in student loans. I will be responsible for my own success through character and hard work,' he writes. Another story that has gained notoriety reads: I am a former Marine. I work two jobs. I don't have health insurance… I haven't had four consecutive days off in over four years. But I don't blame Wall Street. Suck it up, you whiners.'
These stories only reinforce the message of the occupations. For if you're working nearly all of your waking hours, we think you deserve healthcare. We want you to be free of crippling debt. In fact, we want these things for those who work 40 hours per week. We believe a just society should allow you to spend time with your children.
In large part, the difference between the two blogs is not the description of our economic plight. It's whether individuals have recognized their personal struggles as part of something larger.
Those who have joined the #Occupy movement are not whining. They are drawing strength from shared experience. They are laying bare the failure of a system. And they are doing something to change it.
Their signature is not merely a denunciation of economic inequality. It is an assertion of a solution: true democracy and collective action. It is a statement of power. We are the 99 per cent.
Mark Engler

The End of the Beginning

Reid December 21, 2011
Occupy Eugene members are reporting that Eugene Police began posting the below notices on tents as of late afternoon, Dec 21st.

Keith Millea Wrote:The End of the Beginning

Reid December 21, 2011
Occupy Eugene members are reporting that Eugene Police began posting the below notices on tents as of late afternoon, Dec 21st.

,,,,"no weapons of any kind'.....like tents or computers or?!?!?!? OWS has universally denounced violence and weapons.....its a psyop....like 'have you stopped beating your wife?'............

Strange Contours: Resistance and the Manipulation of People Power

by Edmund Berger / December 21st, 2011
Even as attempts to curb protests through evictions and violence are conducted across the country, the movement is spreading every day, more and more flock to their local parks and city centers, rallying under the banner of "Occupy!" First it was Occupy Wall Street, a call put out by Adbusters, a quasi-Situationist organization that has been at the forefront of the "culture jamming" ethos since 1989. From there, it was Occupy Chicago, Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Boston, Occupy Omaha. The movement has gone global, with protestors catching the Zeitgeist in London and Rome. Regionalized discontent led to international solidarity in Greece, as further austerity measures loom on the horizon imposed by none other than a government that dares to call itself socialist.
The central concept of the OWS movement is populist in nature, harking back to those that resisted capitalism's harsh realities in the earlier parts of the 1900s: there is a major disconnect between the 99% of the population and the 1% that acts as the center of wealth and power. At the core, this division is rooted in Marxist terminology, the proletariat versus the bourgeois and their exploitation. We demand democracy, the multitude is saying, from Lexington, Kentucky to Madrid, Spain. We demand freedom from economic exploitation, freedom from indentured servitude to the moneyed class, freedom to live our lives with a higher degree of autonomy than has been allowed by those who seek to manipulate and oppress for their own material gain. Be they students in the universities, underpaid workers who need government aid to live, or citizens horrified that a piece of every paycheck is going to bail-out reckless firms and to support foreign wars, the multitude is gradually realizing thatthey are the engine of this world, and that it is time for them to sit in the driver seat. But all is not right in the movement. It is in times of unrest and cries to social change that hegemony rears its ugly head. Since time immemorial, overt repression has been swapped for the far more subtle process of assimilation the system acknowledges its defects, and then harnesses people power and guides it by hand into compromises that leave the primary mechanisms of domination intact. Radical change is exchanged for the more "mature" approach of working within the system. This is a very real threat to the Occupy movement, one that needs to be acknowledged and resisted by any member who truly believes in striving for a better tomorrow.
Egypt: The Inspiration
OWS's genesis lies not just in Adbusters, but in the Spanish Indignants movement, a coalition advocating grassroots democracy in reaction to the impact of the international financial crisis on their nation. Leading the coalition is a group by the name of ¡Democracia Real YA! (Real Democracy NOW!), which called for international solidarity and protests on October 15th. Adbusters responded with a poster portraying a dancer atop the Wall Street bull, and request for people to join together to occupy the "second capital" of wealth and power in the United States Wall Street.
¡Democracia Real YA!'s initial inspiration for the international protest was the shocking success of Arab Spring,[SUP]3[/SUP] the multi-country revolt that succeeded in toppling one of the world's worst dictators, the US-backed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The opposing coalition, consisting mainly of tech-savy youth organizations such as the Coalition of the Youth of the Revolution and the 6 April Youth Movement, has been a consistent icon and inspiration for the Occupy movement, and rightfully so it is one of the rare examples of people pushing for social change and getting it. So often we see revolt being crushed under the wheels of power, organization shattered, and violence suppressing hope. But even with Egypt, questions must be asked.
Ideological solidarity is giving way now to direct ties being formed between these desperate threads that are disrupting the international order. Egyptian activist Mohammed Ezzeldin gave a rousing speech to protestors in NYC's Washington Square Park, discussing the direct lineage between the two revolts. ""I am coming from there from the Arab Spring. From the Arab Spring to the fall of Wall Street," he said. "From Liberation Square to Washington Square, to the fall of Wall Street and market domination, and capitalist domination."[SUP]4[/SUP]
Wired magazine has also reported that Ahmed Maher, one of the founding members of the 6 April Youth Movement, has traveled from Egypt to Washington D.C.'s McPherson Square to directly interact with the Occupiers there and advise them on courses of action. For sometime now Maher has been communicating with the protestors in the multitude's medium of choice "We talk on the internet about what happened in Egypt, about our structure, about our organization, how to organize a flash mob, how to organize a sit-in, how to be non-violent with police"[SUP]5[/SUP] but this will mark the first time that he has come face to face with the people he refers to as his "brothers."
Behind and Below the Masses: the revolution factory
The Egyptian revolt, much like its counterparts in Tunisia and Libya, was a direct fall-out from the processes of globalization; namely, the domestic impact of US policies that were driving high the price of essential living commodities. As reported in the McClatchy Newspapers:
As the article notes, the Fed's quantitative easing has led to wheat prices rising 70% over the past year, certainly bad news for the country of Egypt, which stands as the US's eight largest export market. With an economy pried open by the International Monetary Fund to a flood of international products under the banner of benevolent "structural adjustments," the skyrocketing prices in the US means skyrocketing prices in Egypt. With an oppressive leader under the thumb of the United States military, the stage was ripe for revolution. In other words, Egypt, like the other countries involved in Arab Spring, was on the surface revolting against domestic policies; at its core; however, the revolt was against the structures of Late Capitalism, the mechanics of what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri refer to as "Empire" the international monetary system that is rapidly rendering the concept of the "nation-state" obsolete.
So Mubarak is toppled and the Egyptian people seemingly liberate themselves. And what is the result? The country comes under the rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Led by Mohamed Hussein Tantawi (a man described as "Mubarak's poodle" for his loyalty to the disposed leader[SUP]7[/SUP] the Council has declared to honor all existing political treaties and agreements, as well as maintaining the neoliberal stance of its predecessor. "We are not moving back to a socialist past," Egypt's temporary government has declared,[SUP]8[/SUP]as the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, and the European Investment Bank plan to descend upon the country with an "action plan" for foreign investment and "sustainable growth.[SUP]9[/SUP]
Thus, Washington and the IMF's program will go unchanged as it moves from Mubarak's dictatorship to the new parliamentary democracy. How did it happen? How did we get from point A (the masses, infused with revolutionary potential) to point B (a cosmetic facelift of the prevailing economic system)? An analogous situation can be found in South Africa, where the spirit of the revolution was laid down in a document known as the Freedom Charter. In this document we can find declarations such as "the national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people… the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole.[SUP]10[/SUP] Yet when the dust settled after 1994, a radically different picture emerged: the apartheid-era finance minister, Derek Keyes, remained in his position as head of the South African bank; the ANC signed onto the international General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; the World Bank was free to impose restrictions on socialized business models; and the IMF exerted authority over the approach to issues such as minimum wage. In the words of one activist, "they never freed us. They only took the chain from around our neck and put it around our ankles."[SUP]11[/SUP]
The dominant system will always resist widespread structural change, and the most common method of doing this is through the power of non-governmental institutions. Foundations constitute a main apparatus of this process "everything the Foundation did could be regarded as making the World safe for capitalism', reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government," said McGeorge Bundy, the long-time president of the Ford Foundation.[SUP]12[/SUP] There is also the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a brainchild of the Reagan administration that seeks to provide a capitalist economic framework for developing nations, and ease former left-wing states into a financial and militaristic stance in line with Washington's key values. The NED receives its funding from the State Department through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and in turn funnels the money into four subsidiary organizations: the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (Solidarity Center). The NDI and IRI are allied with their respective American political parties, while the CIPE is affiliated with the US Chamber of Commerce. The Solidarity Center, on the other hand, is a program of the AFL-CIO labor union consortium. Other NED funds flow into Freedom House, a US-based human rights organization that has been described as a "Who's Who of neoconservatives from government, business, academia, labor, and the press."[SUP]13[/SUP] American libertarian politician Ron Paul has provided an excellent analysis and critique of the whole "democracy promoting" apparatus:
After playing a role in the "color revolutions" of Georgia and the Ukraine, the NED's attention then turned to Egypt. A recent New York Times article has revealed, citing WikiLeaks cables, that the disparate bands of dissident groups have been receiving "training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and Freedom House."[SUP]15[/SUP] Verification independent of the New York Times article can be found as well. Madeleine Albright, former Clinton-era Secretary of State and chairman of the NDI, appeared on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show to give her analysis of the events in Egypt. "You mentioned that I was chairman of the board of the National Democratic Institute," Albright says to Maddow in the interview, responding to the pundit's questions concerning the post-Mubarak government. "We have been working within Egypt for a very long time, in terms of developing various aspects of civil society, and dealing with various and talking to opposition groups who are prepared to participate in a fair and free election."
Freedom House also openly admits their role in fomenting the unrest. In a May 2009 report, the organization discusses their "New Generation Project" within Egypt, seeking to empower the nation's "Youtube generation" by "promoting exchange" between "democracy advocates" and "emerging democracies" to "share best practices," "providing advanced training on civil mobilization" and helping them understand the benefits of "new media."[SUP]16[/SUP] In 2008, representatives from the organization attended the "Alliance of Youth Movements," an activist summit funded by the State Department, Facebook, MTV, Google, and Youtube to provide a fertile meeting ground for digital activists' and the corporate leaders behind "new media." The summit has subsequently been the topic of a set of leaked WikiLeaks cables, describing an unnamed activist' who there presented "his movement's goals for democratic change in Egypt." This same unnamed activist then met with a series of US Congressmen, discussing with them an "unwritten plan for democratic transition" of Egypt into a parliamentary democracy, a plan that had been accepted by "several opposition parties and movements."[SUP]17[/SUP]
Disturbingly, this is the same milieu that Ahmed Maher, now an adviser to OWS, travelled in. As researcher Tony Cartalucci has reported:
CANVAS (Centre for Applied Non Violent Action and Strategies) was founded in 2003 by the Serbian youth organization Optor! (Resistance!), which utilized nonviolent methods of revolt to bring down Slobodan Milošević. Not surprisingly in the least, the organization had received millions of dollars in funding from both the NED and IRI[SUP]19[/SUP] while CANVAS itself has worked closely with Freedom House.[SUP]20[/SUP] Given the close ties between these youth-based activist organizations and US State Department's bureaucracy, perhaps it is distressing to note that former Optor! Member and leader of CANVAS, Ivan Marovic, has given talks at the OWS rallies in NYC.[SUP]21[/SUP]
The Right's Favorite Boogeyman and a useful opportunity
Perhaps the centerpiece of the Egyptian Revolution was the individual Mohamed ElBaradei, a director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and presidential hopeful for Egypt's parliamentary democracy. ElBaradei, however, has ties of his own to suspicious Western interests he sits on the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group, which has been described by Madeleine Albright as a "full-service conflict prevention organization." Despite this astute observation, the membership rosters of the Crisis Group's various chairmen, trustees, and directors shows a significant overlap with affiliates of the National Endowment for Democracy: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Morton I. Abramowitz, and Stephen Solarz are just a handful of Crisis Group members who represent the interests of both. Here we can find the favorite whipping boy of the right-wing media, the billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Vilified as some sort of a socialist by the likes of Glenn Beck and Michael Savage, Soros, in truth, is far from that sort of ideology. A key figure in the transition of former Soviet states into the world of globalized capitalism, Soros helped engineer the economic shock therapy' that thrust Poland into a financial tail spin as extensive structural adjustments rattled the already crumbling economy.[SUP]22[/SUP]
Soros, despite being a clear member of the 1%, has publicly stated his support of OWS:
There are ties, albeit indirect ones, that can tie Soros to the fledgling Occupy movement. MoveOn.org, a regular recipient of Soros funding, has thrown its weight behind the protestors in an apparent sign of solidarity. As TruthOut's Steve Horn writes:
MoveOn.org has a long history of left-wing co-option; as people flooded the streets of American cities in protest of the Iraq War, the online institution dove right into the populist fervor and proceeded to utilize people's discontent with the Bush administration to garner support for John Kerry's presidential campaign. The same process was repeated just a handful of years later, with MoveOn.org acting the second largest lobbying organization for Barack Obama (aside from the President's own Organizing for America). Through a strategic ad campaign one of MoveOn's personnel is John Hlinko, a "social media marketing expert" the organization managed to create a literal army of voters for Obama, reinforcing that the same "hope and change" imagery that was being pumped out by the campaign itself. Both MoveOn and Organizing America's methodology was a foreshadow to the systems of new media utilized by the Arab Spring protestors; this tool is now being called "netroots," the transporting of traditional grassroots activities into the virtual sphere.
MoveOn.org is not the only group chiming in to support for OWS. Rebuild the Dream, a progressive-style organization founded by former Obama White House adviser Van Jones, has championed the protestors "Let's all support Occupy Wall St." reads a blurb on their website homepage. During an MSNBC interview, Van Jones directly linked the OWS movement to the Arab Spring, stating "you are going to see an American Fall, an American Autumn, just like we saw the Arab Spring."
However, the institution changes that OWS is calling for contrast sharply with Jones' vision of how to take America back: "We're talking about U.S. senators who want to run as American Dream candidates soon to be announced. We've reached out to the House Democratic Caucus; there are House members who want to run as American Dream candidates.[SUP]25[/SUP] Simply put, Rebuild the Dream is an unofficial organ of the Democrat Party, much like how MoveOn.org utilized, mobilized anti-war protestors to generate a large sector of the Democrat's voting base. In actuality the ties run closer than that Jones had worked hand in hand with MoveOn.org to initially launch Rebuild the Dream. Furthermore, he had been a senior fellow at Center for American Progress; the progressive institution has received funding from both George Soros[SUP]26[/SUP] and the Democracy Alliance organization, where Soros sits on the board of directors.
Co-option of social activism has always been the modus operandi of the Democrat Party. They play "'the role of shock absorber, trying to head off and co-opt restive [and potentially radical] segments of the electorate'" by posing as the party of the people.[SUP]27[/SUP] President Obama, riding the crest of the MoveOn.orgs of the country and not to mention a well orchestrated propaganda campaign has fit this concept to a T, something that has even been noted by members of the liberal establishment:
Liberal commentator Thomas Frank has observed the process of "voting for one thing, getting another" at work in the Republican Party:
Is it really any different for the Democrat Party? Vote to end wars, receive troop escalation and change only years after the fact. Vote to allow workers to retain their rights, receive trade agreements that export jobs overseas. Vote to reign in the power of Wall Street, receive taxpayer-funded bail-outs that create moral hazards and prop up corrupt financial regimes. From the left to the right, the story is the same the great violin keeps playing cheerfully as the world burns. It's only the hands grasping it, not the system that change.
One of the clearest portraits of co-option in recent history would be the history of the conservative Tea Party Movement. In its infancy, the Tea Party was a movement launched by libertarian politician Ron Paul, a staunch opponent of the government's infringement on civil liberties, its use of military force on foreign soil, the monopolization of the financial market by entities such as the Federal Reserve Bank, and the crony capitalism that eventually erupted into the bail-outs. Aside from certain economics view, there is certainly a great deal in Ron Paul's and the early Tea Party Movement's agenda that is entirely compatible with the demands of the Occupy Movement; it is for this very reason that libertarians have begun to reach out and join in solidarity with the protestors. Furthermore, given the anti-foreign aid and anti-Federal Reserve stance of the early Tea Party Movement, there can perhaps be observed an unspoken lineage between the Tea Party and the uprisings in Egypt and surrounding countries, triggered by Western support of the people's oppressors and the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve.
Just as Soros controls the purse strings to disrupt and redirect leftist movements into positions aligned with the Democrat Party, the right can find his counterpart in the Koch brothers, the billionaire owners of the little-known Koch Industries. With their money bankrolling organizations such as Americans for Prosperity, David and Charles Koch were able to train torrents of so-called Tea Party activists whose espoused viewpoints far more in line with typical Republican dialogue than with Ron Paul's libertarian ethos. The focus was shifted from attacking the Fed and ending the wars and towards union-busting, securing borders, and more often than not, reinforcing unequivocal US support for Israel a direct clash with stance that Paul has taken on the topic.
This "astro-turfing" of grassroots movements, of course, requires multiple organizations and front groups to create the veneer of a unified public opinion, and operating alongside Americans for Prosperity is FreedomWorks. Perhaps it is worthy to take into consideration that when the organization was created from a 2004 merger between the Koch-funded Citizens for a Sound Economy and the neoconservative Empower America, several prominent NED officials sat on the board of directors of the former including Vin Weber (an adviser to Mitt Romney's ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign), Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (one of the most prominent of Cold War-era hardliners), and Michael Novak (an expert at the neoconservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute).
The Tea Party's assimilation into the broader spectrum of the Republican political arena was marked by the establishment of the Tea Party Caucus, a coalition of House of Representatives and Senate members that represents perhaps the most powerful political body sitting in the US government this consortium of leaders are essentially calling the shots when it comes to the right-wing of the American political system. Its members show utter disregard for the original protests of the Tea Party: Louie Gohmert has been a strong and vocal supporter of the war in Iraq, Steve King has openly supported the lobbying industry for their "effective and useful job[s][SUP]29[/SUP] and Dennis A. Ross was a member of the United States House Oversight Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs. Joe Barton eviscerated any ideological tie between himself and the early stages of the movement that he claims to rally behind (not to mention a disregard for any allegiance to the notion of really existing free markets) by arguing that the removal of subsidies to oil companies would act as a "disincentive" and result in the corporations going out of business.[SUP]30[/SUP]
Curiously, the place where this whole process of right-wing co-option began the corporate-financed milieu of Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks was intended to be a "powerful answer to the challenge presented by the Left and groups like America Coming Together (ACT), MoveOn.org, and the Media Fund.[SUP]31[/SUP] All three of these organizations are Soros-financed, revealing the hidden irony that ultimately, these seemingly opposing institutions are simply moving potentially disruptive individuals into an entirely compatible paradigm of power that sits in the dual capitals of Washington D.C. and Wall Street. However, this odd dialectic can be entirely useful. Realizing this process will allow individuals who yearn for legitimate change on either side of the aisle to separate themselves from the system, and hopefully, discover the disparate strands that are ideologically compatible between them and their counterparts. It is a rare opportunity for the discontents of "left" and the "right" to shake off the labels applied to them and create an open dialogue and eventual solidarity with one another.
Conclusions and Other Thoughts
Though it may certainly seem like it, this essay was not written to belittle the OWS movement, or attack the actions of those who stood in opposition to Milosevic, apartheid, or Mubarak. However, it was my intention to acknowledge the shortcomings in the aftermath of these fights Serbia and South Africa both jumped into bed with the IMF, imposing austerity measures in their nations that allowed persistent poverty to fester and even continue to grow. Egypt is certainly following suit now, so even though the brutal fist of the American-backed regime is gone, the slow-burning fires of neoliberalism continue to carry on the torch. For Serbia and Egypt, their revolts, though brilliant displays of the potential of people power, were in no small part shaped by the technicians in State Department, operating through the long arm of the NED. For South Africa, money from George Soros ended up in the coffers of activist groups who quickly changed their tune from the ANC's quasi-socialist demands to jump starting South African neoliberalism.[SUP]32[/SUP] Not surprisingly, these same groups showed a willingness to work closely with the NED.[SUP]33[/SUP]
The NED, much like Soros' civil society empowering programs, promotes a little known methodology called low-intensity democracy.
Thus, it can be considered to be worrisome that individuals who were trained under institutions that implement this system are turning up at OWS rallies. While the NED's agenda is to establish low-intensity democracies around the world, this is precisely the type of governance that we are dealing with in the United States, the very system that produced the antagonism found in both the Tea Party and OWS. To consent to it would be a rejection of the spirit of the protest and an embrace of what is opposes.
It is the Democrat Party that could possibly represent this system even more so than the Republicans. It is the party of Social Security, government-provided medical care, and other welfare programs. Does this function of the party not dim and obfuscate the fact that it is also the party of bail-outs and NAFTA? Realizing this simple fact is paramount to creating a movement of legitimate change in the world; we must seek deconstruct low-intensity democracy and replace it with Really Existing Democracy. We have already seen this functioning in a micro-sense at OWS rallies, where leadership positions are voluntary and voted in by the whole of the people. Decisions are made in a similar matter, putting the course of action and the direction of the movement in its entirety in the hands of the protestors, not in bureaucrats and moneymen with agendas of their own. It is organic and autonomous, and on an international level holds to be what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari referred to as a rhizome' "a nonhierarchal and noncentered network structure.[SUP]35[/SUP]
There are further reasons to be optimistic about the movement's direction. The official OWS website hosts a petition with a "formal demand that MoveOn.org leaves" "this is OUR movement and it is NOT Obama's personal reelection campaign," it reads.[SUP]36[/SUP] The leftist online newspaper TruthOut has called attention MoveOn.Org and Rebuild the Dream's attempts to cozy up to the protestors, while Michel Chossudovsky, the professor emeritus of the economics department at the University of Ottowa, has published a piece for his Centre for Research on Globalization detailing the arrival of NED associates at OWS rallies.
There is an opportunity here. We live in a time marked by crisis, catastrophe, poverty, and war, but it is in times of disruption like these that rifts open in the landscapes of the global system, providing people with a chance to take the wheel, if they so choose. For America, this time arises from the great disappointments of our so-called democratic process the hookwinking of the masses by the left-right one-two punch by the back to back presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama has led more people to step back, reconsider their presumptions about the world's machinery, and begin to demand that their voices be heard. What happens from here, with the choices marked by the path to liberation or the well-worn roads of hegemony, is entirely contingent on the will of the people.

• Barry Gills, Joen Rocamora, and Richard Wilson, Low Intensity Democracy: Political Power in the New World Order Pluto Press, 1993, quoted in Michael Barker "Do Capitalists Fund Revolutions? (Part 1 of 2)" Znet, September 4th, 2007.> [↩]
  
• James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900-1918 Beacon Press, 1968, pg. 254, quoted in Michael Barker, "Liberal Elites and the Pacification of Workers," State of Nature.> [↩]
  
• Lauren Frayer "Inspired by Arab Protests, Spain's Unemployed Rally for Change," Voice of AmericaMay 19, 2011. [↩]
  
• Matt Sledge "Occupy Wall Street Egyptian Activist Goes From Liberation Square To Washington Square'," Huffington Post, October 8, 2011. [↩]
  
• Spencer Ackerman "Egypt's Top Facebook Revolutionary' Now Advising Occupy Wall Street," Wired, October 18, 2011. [↩]
  
• Kevin G. Hall "Egypt's unrest may have roots in food prices, U.S. Fed Policy" McClatchy Newspapers, January 31, 2011. [↩]
  
• "Mubarak's Poodle' at Head of Egypt's Transition," CBS News, February 16, 2011. [↩]
  
• Emad Mekay, "http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54544″>Egypt takes a step back from IMF ways," Inter Press Service, February 20, 2011. [↩]
  
• "Multilateral banks join forces to aid Arab nations," Yahoo! News, April 14, 2011. [↩]
  
• Naomi Klein The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Picador, 2007, p. 247-248. [↩]
  
• Ibid., p. 256-257 [↩]
  
• Quoted in Michel Chossudovsky, "Manufacturing Dissent" Center for Research on Globalization, September 20, 2010. [↩]
  
• Diana Barahona, "The Freedom House Files," Monthly Review, January 3, 2007. [↩]
  
• Ron Paul "National Endowment for Democracy: Paying to Make Enemies of America," October 11, 2003. [↩]
  
• Ron Nixon, "U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings," New York Times, April 14, 2011. [↩]
  
• Freedom House, "New Generation of Advocates: Empower Civil Society in Egypt."> [↩]
  
• "Egypt protests: secret US document discloses support for protesters," The Telegraph, April 23, 2011. [↩]
  
• Tony Cartalucci "US State Department Funded Agitator in DC Advising #OWS," Land Destroyer Report, October 18, 2011. [↩]
  
• Roger Cohen, "Who Really Brought Down Milosevic?" New York Times November 26, 2000. [↩]
  
• Peter Ackerman, "Skills or Conditions: What Key Factors Shape the Success or Failure of Civil Resistance?" Conference on Civil Resistance & Power Politics, St Antony's College, University of Oxford, 15-18 March 2007. [↩]
  
• Michel Chossudovsky, "Occupy Wall Street and The American Autumn': Is It a Colored Revolution?'"Centre for Research on Globalization, October 13, 2011. [↩]
  
• This topic is covered extensively in Klein, The Shock Doctrine, p. 215-229 and 241-243 [↩]
  
• "George Soros Says He Sympathizes With Occupy Wall Street Protesters," Huffington Post, October 23, 2011.> [↩]
  
• Steve Horn, "MoveOn.Org and Friends Attempt to Co-Opt Occupy Wall Street Movement,"TruthOut. [↩]
  
• Horn, "MoveOn.Org and Friends Attempt to Co-Opt Occupy Wall Street Movement" [↩]
  
• Laura Blumenfeld "Soros's Deep Pockets vs. Bush," Washington Post, November 11, 2003. [↩]
  
• Paul Street, "Obama's Violin: Populist rage and the uncertain containment of change,"ZCommunications May 2009. [↩] [↩]
  
• Thomas Frank What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of AmericaHenry Holt & Company, 2004 pg. 7 [↩]
  
• Bara Vaida "Rep. King: "Lobbyists Are Useful," The National Journal's Under the Influence Monday, March 1, 2010. [↩]
  
• Brian Beutler "Barton: Govt Subsidies Necessary To Keep Exxon From Going Out Of Business,"Talking Points Memo March 10, 2011. [↩]
  
• "Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) and Empower America Merge to Form FreedomWorks," Media release, undated, archived from July 25, 2004. [↩]
  
• This topic is covered in Michael Barker, "George Soros And South Africa's Elite Transition," Swans Commentary May 31, 2010. [↩]
  
• This is not the only case of NED/Soros collaboration; I have covered the role of both in fomenting unrest in Iran in "Soros and the State Department: Moving Iran towards the Open Society," Foreign Policy Journal May 14, 2011. [↩]
  
• William Avilés Global Capitalism, Democracy, and Civil-Military Relations in Columbia State University of New York Press, 2006, p. 18-19. [↩]
  
• Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire Harvard University Press, 2000 p. 299. [↩]
  
• "Formally demand that Moveon.org leave," October 16, 2011. [↩]
  

Edmund Berger is an independent writer and researcher from Louisville Kentucky, where he has been active in the pro-Palestinian movement.Read other articles by Edmund.
This article was posted on Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 at 8:01am and is filed under Activism, Capitalism, Corruption, Democracy,Democrats, Egypt, Espionage/"Intelligence", Imperialism, Neoliberalism,NGOs, South Africa, Tea Party movement.

Berkeley was attacked by the Police last night [in strange run and grab actions by the Police with a lot of brutality and absolutely unnecessary violence]. Tonight it is Eugene. Someone [likely DHS in coordination with other intelligence, police and such] are trying to shut them all down before the New Year. Minor park 'rules and regulations', as well as 'safety and sanitation' concerns are being used to trump issues of money running and buying government; corporate and governmental corruption, malfeasance and crimes, as well as war crimes et al. :joystick: Proportionality and priorities of the upside-down society where war is peace; black is white and propaganda, lies and theft at the top of the bottom and middle are considered standard operating procedure. America and the World are literally falling off of the abyss, and anyone who points out that the Empire 'has no clothes' or dares to suggest another 'way' will be pushed over the abyss first, if those in power have their way about it.

Fight back!

The Occupy Movement is adapting to a less physical presence in encampments and more single day actions and presence on the internet, however there have been some negative consequences to the movement from not having encampments in some places. First there is not the physical presence as a statement and reminder to most in the community; next donations are down by over 95% in some locations [such as NYC], where most of the money donated came from those who came to visit the encampment; last there is the out of sight - out of mind phenomenon and various MSM and politicians declaring OWS is over [or nearly so], though this is far from the case. Stay tuned. January will be a true test of the Occupy Movement with a number of actions in D.C. and support actions around the country and World. Jan 16th is Occupy the Fed; Jan 17 Occupy Congress; Jan 18 Occupy the Federal Courts. Other actions planned before, during, after. It ain't over!