It's worth keeping in mind that in the next months and years (already!), police
ranks are being filled with well-equipped, well-trained, and battle-hardened
Iraq/Afghanistan vets. They have been tested under extreme conditions far
beyond a milling crowd of disorganized quasi-squatters -- imagining that
'tactical' field deployments of Occupiers can work in effective (neutralizing)
opposition to the police is dangerously naive. I recommend a closer read of Sun
Tzu and Machiavelli as well as military field manuals available online, etc. Do
not underestimate your opponents. The characterization of tactics in this
article are, again, extremely naive (pretending to draw on 'historical'
precedent) and represent a high-risk for poorly-informed protesters. Police rank
and command are quite aware of the simple permutations suggested in this posting ...
The tactical evolution that evolved relies on two military tactics that
are thousands of years old- the tactical superiority of light infantry
over heavy infantry, and the tactical superiority of the retreat over
the advance.
IMHO long term strategic considerations have to include methods which
change/evolve/alter the structural relations in the social system overall
(addressing the perceived imbalance of wealth, etc) -- these issues will not be
contested as tactical play on the streets which is largely a media circus (count
the cameras versus 'occupiers'!). They are generally contested only when large
numbers of people change their patterns of (resource) consumption as it is this
consumption which enrich the 1%. Occupy, per se, will not accomplish this.
jh
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
John Hopkins
Watching the Dhao rather than the Dow!
http://neoscenes.net/
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
