a violent reaction to nonviolent revolution

`Buzzflash posted a debate on violent versus nonviolent revolution between anti-war activists David Swanson and Ted Rall, but I felt an important angle was left out.  Here's my comment:

RE: blocking the courthouse

The hypothetical Swanson mentioned about blocking the courthouse until they allow gay marriages and Rall's reply to it about the cops dragging off the protesters or them being slaughtered shows the real use of violence, and even Martin Luther King used it in this way: when you get those in power to use violence against non-violent protesters and it is broadcast on TV for all to see, those in power have lost.  They can only retain power by using escalating violence and eventually, they will get to the point where police and soldiers will no longer pull the trigger--and then we have won.

That is what happened during the coup against Gorbachev and what happened when we tried to overthrow Hugo Chavez early in the Bush years.  In the latter case, enough of the military was tired of being the bad guys to their own people to undo the coup.

Nonviolence can work if you are willing to be on the receiving end of a rifle butt, tear gas canister, or even a bullet.

But as cities and states across the country are cutting police forces and looking to cut public pensions (which police would have), I don't think we have far to go before they will stop beating us and start joining us.

All AIG execs FIRED, jobs outsourced to India

In a desperate move to restore public confidence in the giant Wall St. firm AIG, the board of directors fired all the executives and replaced them with executives from India.

"We thought the bailout would help," said a board member who wished to remain anonymous, "but when the top executives used the money to give themselves bonuses and go on multiple group vacations, we knew it was time for a more serious intervention."

The execs were fired while away on one of their retreats. Their company credit cards were cancelled, the corporate jet called home, and they were left stranded in Bali. When the resort realized they couldn't pay for their rooms and bar tab, they called the Indonesian authorities, who caned them and threw them in jail until family members wire the money for their bills. None have done so as of yet.

The board member went on to say that they realized their hiring practices were deeply flawed.

"Look, we pretend we hire these guys because they are the best and the brightest, the 'masters of the universe,' and sure they graduated from Ivy League schools, but they got into those schools for the same reason we hired them: their families are rich, and their dads called someone on the board who belonged to their frat or secret society in college. However, the fact someone's father had sex with a goat, spilled their seed on a cracker, or had prison sex in a coffin doesn't qualify their son to run a business that is so essential to the smooth running of the American economy."

Another incredible admission is that most of the hired executives never held a job in their lives below corporate vice president.

Despite their Ivy League educations, few had any real job skills they brought to the table. "Let's face it," the board member said, "these guys are trust fund babies like George W. Bush. They lived on an allowance from their parents until they were 26, and most of them still do in spite of the multi-million dollar salaries we pay them. One VP panicked when the bathroom attendant was out one day because he had never wiped his own ass. We had to call one of the janitors to do it."

"What these guys are good at is stealing and hiding what they stole. In spite of their generous allowances, most of them would burn through that pretty quick and have to figure out how to steal from their parents to pay for their gambling, alcohol, cocaine, and hookers, without their parents noticing. We're not talking five bucks from mommy's purse here, but real money. Jeff Gannon is not a cheap date. That skill was very valuable to us for a while, but now that everybody is playing hide the pea with shell corporations, off shore accounts and the like, the whole thing is collapsing."

"We need people who actually know how to run a business."

While the Indians, who were brought to the US on H-1B visas, have only been in the states a few days, the board is already impressed with their work.

"These guys show up on time, they're good at math, they don't drink, they don't lounge around at the country club, hell, I don't even think any of them know how to golf. And the best thing is, none of them gets paid over a million dollars--NONE."

The board member added that if this move is as successful as he hopes it will be, it could set an example for other corporations. "We have been going about this outsourcing business all wrong," he said. "Everyone was trying to cut the fat by cutting workers, but it's pretty obvious that fat floats to the top, and needs to be skimmed off every once in a while and fed to the pigs."