The planet asks for help. Lady Gaia fell sick, because a tiny part of mankind turned us into the greediest species nourished by her. Good news: The species that threatens Lady Gaia can also save her. If we walk together to help her, mankind as a whole can stop the madness of the global corporate state that grew into a psychopathic killer. The next step of evolution requires us to relinquish ownership of this planet and return to our function as custodians for the eco-systems we utilise, and the planet as whole.
Phase 0: The need for to care for every human being remains unanswered by the systems of society in control of the resources of planet. The abundance of this planet combined with accumulated knowledge is applied to fulfil egoistic wants of a tiny minority disconnected from the source of life.
Planning, Phase 1: Fire. It's time to act, this consciousness serves as inspiration and motivation for taking action to stop the system.
Presence, Phase 2: Earth. Fire creates Earth, the occupation as materialisation of the beginning of the resistance emanates.
Process, Phase 3: Metal. Communication and interaction forge the primary tools of the occupation: Respect, love and non-violence.
People, Phase 4: Water. Tools need an operator. Cooperation among different skills and backgrounds allows the application of these tools. All those tuned into the ego-less flow.
Products, Phase 5: Wood. Applied knowledge nurtures the products of the occupation, projects, direct action, physical structures, work groups, art, care and healing.
The lived experience feeds back into Phase 1, for further refinement.
Simultaneously, the phases counteract (control, destroy) each other.
Fire melts Metal. Our imagination limits the tools we specifically use. If fear motivates us, our tools will be blunt, love creates the nurturance to grow a balanced system.
Metal cuts Wood. When we apply we wrong set of tools, our projects will not contribute to growth.
Wood restricts Earth. What people can see of the occupation depends on the projects happening and materialising.
Earth dams Water. Although the organism 'occupation' can exist in separation, it wants to live in community and open space. It thrives by immediate interaction.
Water extinguishes Fire. Without cooperation, the inspiration remains limited. The diversity provides the wealth of ideas from which to harvest the best solution for the next challenge.
As super-organism, all phases are active in any moment, in different balances in each cell (ie occupier). The more balanced and aware about their function individual cells become, the more balanced the occupation as a whole can grow.
We're nurturing a global brain to heal Lady Gaia, we better become familiar with sustainable approaches to describe and think about life. OM lived through many cycles of this ancient map of life, and has already shown resilience to adversity. The antibiotic of a corporate regime failed, we already mutate fast. Evolution goes on, and it's increasing in speed.
On the way to my Shiatsu course, on the pavement of Swanston
Street, the police pushed me into the occupy movement. I stopped in
front of a wall of police, and when I turned around, I got pushed
forward, unaware of the fact that the police decided to herd anyone
on the entire width in Melbourne's city centre towards north.
I got really angry, hurling abuse and demanding my right to go to
the next tram station. I saw many rallies, but the experience of a
human wall forcing everyone around them against their will into a
specific direction was new and truly bizarre. I use my hands and my
Ki when I practise Shiatsu, and felt incapable of doing my job after
this invasion of arbitrary police violence into my life. I stayed in
town and saw a crowd of people vanishing into Trades Hall, with the
army of police it looked like a trap to me.
As I don't use TV or newspapers as primary source to stay
'informed', I researched a bit more what this global occupation
movement is all about. The common global consent, so it seems to me,
lays mainly in the commitment to non-violence. When people remember
the process while they act within the movement, it opens the avenue
to collective creativity, with the tastiest fruits harvested by
consent.
Of course, within a growing movement the knowledge of and
experience with the process, the ability to learn, accept and apply
it, differs among individuals. I met enough people to convince me
that the global thing happened also here in Melbourne. I joined the
First Aid and Care work group, and benefit each time immensely from
the wealth of different expertise coming together on a peaceful lawn
in a peaceful park on a sunny sunday afternoon.
Don't get deluded, it's not a talk fest happening here – in a
time of civil war against basic human rights like freedom of assembly
and freedom of speech many casualties occur. It takes a lot to
organise the safety and health needs of a community of sometimes
hundreds of people, especially when even people wearing First-Aid
vests get clubbed by police while trying to care for pepper-sprayed
peaceful protestors.
Even those who only witnessed the police brutality have been left
traumatised, often reliving in their minds the memories of a
terrifying assault on their believe in justice. The more stories I
hear while debriefing the victims of the ongoing psychological
warfare against a peaceful movement, the more I feel outraged about
the utter disrespect for human life that happens right now in the
city of Melbourne.
I chose as my occupation to teach and heal people, after spending
some time of my life working as IT specialist mainly for the banking
industry. The absurdity of the situation, the constant harassment,
nearly daily new eviction orders were issued and executed, means that
our team needs to build up an external network to cope with the cases
too severe to deal with safely within our capacity.
First Aid usually serves as some sort of insurance policy, good to
have around, but depending on the circumstances, hardly ever needed.
The circumstance for Occupy Melbourne... well, let's call them
sub-optimal from a health care perspective. Melbourne City Council
removed shelter from rain and sun, access to water and sometimes the
kitchen from Treasury Garden, not only increasing the psychological
pressure for the permanent occupiers, but also actively endangering
their immediate health.
Some of the occupiers have special needs, like Brandon, whose
poetry you can listen to on the frontpage of omdigest. Even Brandon
got served an eviction notice and was moved the meat wagon of the
police. Others have difficult family backgrounds, and feel safer from
violence in the occupation than at home. Many are exhausted from
their job as occupier, yet the smallest creature comforts bring with
it the threat of immediate eviction.
The re-occurring raids of the police made the First Aid gear
evaporate. Just being prepared and equipped for good-case scenarios
(prevention material like sun-screen, insect repellent, ponchos and
blankets) becomes a logistical challenge. Not even having a minimal
sheltered space for treatments available makes our task even more
difficult. No time for leadership debates available, and
self-organisation provides a level of First Aid and Care that would
cost a lot of money if sourced for a commercial event.
Why do I occupy? I want to live in a world where we respect each
other, where we care for each other, for all of us. I feel this
vision resonating when I collaborate with the occupy movement, and it's
happening all over the world right now. Let's organise horizontally
and see where it'll lead to.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Civil liberties in times of global terrorism
Here's an assignment I wrote while studying Political Science at Melbourne University. I dug it up via the internet archive, I published it in spring (southern hemisphere) 2007 on privately run website. It's basically an academic piece, with references and probably a bit hard to read. My tutor liked it and marked it favourably.
The world is changing as I speak, into some unknown territory. The old system still clings onto the magic meme '911 has changed history'. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen were justified with the 'war on terror', as well as Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, water boarding, terror watch list, phone tapping, etc.
I followed academic standards to argue that 911 hasn't changed history. No matter who did it, 911 provided a milestone for the project of world domination. The 1% hide their plans only by obscurity, if you learn to detect patterns in published opinions the matrix becomes visible. Please excuse the formatting, if you have trouble reading try the archived copy.
The terror attacks of September 11 2001 mark the beginning of a new era in global politics. The United States, sole global superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union, did not act as global role model for the “End of History”, like Francis Fukuyama suggested after the end of the Cold War, but was faced with a new enemy.
During the Cold War, the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) by the use of nuclear weapons prevented the US and USSR from engaging in an open war, as such a war, even if done pre-emptively, was considered suicidal (Leffler, 2005). Instead, both superpowers fought proxy wars in places like Vietnam, Korea and Afghanistan.
The Post-Cold-War era was far from being peaceful. The US engaged 1991 in wars in Iraq and 1999 in Kosovo, and suffered from terror attacks on the WTC in 1993 and on its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. However, restrictions of civil liberties didn’t take place after these attacks, at least not on a global scale.
That changed after the 911 attacks. 6 weeks later President Bush signed Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, known as Patriot Act (White House, 2001), and its western allies have enacted similar legislation since then. Canada and the UK introduced new anti-terrorism legislation at the end of 2001 (Department of Justice, Canada, 2001; House of Commons, 2001), the European Union passed similar legislation in 2003 (Council of Europe, 2003). Australia followed suit in 2004, just after the train bombings in Madrid.
However, the anti-terrorism laws failed to act as deterrent. Terror attacks happened in Bali in 2002 and 2005, in Madrid 2004, in London 2005 and in Mumbai 2006. The icon of 21st century terrorism, Osama Bin Laden, has not been captured, but numerous people ended up in dubious prisons like Guantanamo Bay as terror suspects, without the presumption of innocence or legal representation.
The anti-terror legislation does not only affect terror suspects, but all citizens. Security checks at airports have increased, several countries plan to introduce ID cards with biometrical information, people have been banned from boarding planes for expressing their opinion by wearing t-shirts with political messages (Dunn, 2006).
Yet some consequences are less palpable. Surveillance has been made much easier and CCTV camera became ubiquitous in public spaces. The increased security measures require more funding, so that more taxpayer’s money is spend on the war on terror. This essay evaluates the phenomenon of 21st century terrorism, the reaction of state actors to it and the consequences for civil liberties.
Terrorism is not a new strategy, yet the scale of the 911 attacks is certainly unprecedented. The images of destruction and the high number of casualties reminded of war, brought by global communication networks to living rooms all across the planet. Although wars in the traditional meaning involve state actors, the US administration considered the terror attacks as an act of war and reacted accordingly.
Five days after 911 President Bush said: “As I said yesterday, people have declared war on America, and they have made a terrible mistake, because this is a fabulous country. … This is a new kind of -- a new kind of evil. …. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.” (Bush, 2001)
The American president kept his promise, and being a neo-conservative (realist) he waged two traditional wars that still linger on. Afghanistan was invaded on October 5 2001, three weeks before the Patriot Act was signed, and the Iraq invasion began on March 20 2002.
Although these wars were announced as part of the Global War On Terror, they fit into the strategies of neo-conservatives in the US which were devised well before 911. The neo-conservative think tank Project for a New American Century (PNAC), founded in 1997, urged President Clinton 1998 in an open letter to complete the unfinished business in Iraq and to impose a regime change (George, 2005).
Ten out of 18 signatories of this open letter became part of the Bush administration, but their influence did not end there. PNAC released in 2000 the strategy paper Rebuilding America’s Defenses, which stresses the importance of increasing the US’ influence in Central Asia and the Middle East, maintaining America’s unique position as a dominant military power, the need for further militarisation and pre-emptive action (PNAC, 2000).
However, by the time the document was released, threats like terrorism and rogue states were not considered as grave danger for the US, which could justify a massive increase in military spending. „[T]he process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor“ (PNAC, 2000).
The “new Pearl Harbor” happened on September 11 2001, and consequently key issues of Rebuilding America’s Defenses like unilateralism, pre-emptive warfare and increase in military spending, became part of President Bush’s National Security Strategy (White House, 2002).
Especially the war in Iraq, a unilateral move of the US without legitimation from the United Nations Security Council, has raised a lot of criticism. More Americans have been killed in Iraq than on 911, and the torture affair of Abu Ghraib has tainted the US administration’s claim to protect human rights (Hersh, 2004).
With the Military Commisions Act of 2006 the US introduced the concept of illegal enemy combatant, a legal construct that denies suspects habeas corpus, allows for indefinite detention and denies the right of compensation for those who were held in error (Smith, 2006).
According to President Bush, the war on terror requires the need to arbitrarily detain people to CIA prisons outside the US, and withhold their basic human rights (Bush, 2006). However, two basic questions about global terrorism seem to be neglected whenever new anti-terror legislation is introduced: the efficiency of proposed changes in legislation, and the size of the problem of global terrorism.
Less than 4,000 people have been killed in the attacks in New York 2001, Bali 2002 and 2005, Madrid 2004, London 2005 and Mumbai 2006. Acts of terrorism, no matter how spectacular, are luckily rare events, and remain - statistically seen – a much less likely cause of death than suicide, traffic accidents, substance abuse or other lifestyle choices, not too mention an average of 25,000 people starving daily due to the imbalances of the global economic system.
The motivations of terrorism are difficult to study, as it is a rare phenomenon, and might find its origins in a diversity of local causes. The simplified rationale promoted the US government, that terrorisms primary goal is the destruction of western liberties, has not proven helpful in counteracting terrorism.
Yet without calling the 911 attacks an attempt to abolish the freedom of western countries, support for the unilateral war efforts of the US would have been unlikely. The 911 attacks can be understand as violent opposition against the US foreign policy in the Middle-East, and its support for Israel (Leahey, 2005). The restrictions of civil rights by the introduction of anti-terror legislation eradicated a lot of liberties taken for granted in democratic societies.
The freedom to assemble, freedom of speech and the privacy of citizens have been severly restricted. If it was the aim of global terrorism to destroy western liberty, western governments have acted as an indispensable helper, and the war could end.
The increase in governmental power to spy on its citizens has not yet proven efficient, but more cases in which these powers were abused become known. The loss of civil liberties for those who disappear in secret CIA prisons is very apparent (Priest, 2005), yet even in Australia the rules of law have been suspended for terror suspects.
The first victim of the Australian anti-terror laws was Faheem Lodhi of Sydney, who was sent for 20 years into a high-security prison. “Justice Anthony Whealy said while there was little case law to guide him, the courts must take a stand against terrorism.” (Lamont, 2006). This stand against terrorism meant that Lodhi was sentenced for a thought crime – he did not commit any acts of terrorism, nor were an concrete plans for a terror attack found. His crime consisted of knowing another terror suspect, having maps of Sydney’s electricity grip and a copy of an internet pamphlet describing how to build bombs.
The presumption of innocence was not used in this case, he was sent to jail for a possible future intention. The latest victim of the terrorist hunt is Dr. Haneef, a Brisbane doctor who is a distant cousin of someone linked to the failed terror attacks in Glasgow in July 2007. Dr. Haneef was detained without charge for 20 days, lost his working visa and can’t return to Australia, although no proof of any terrorist activity could be found (Gooley, 2007).
Once someone gets in the spotlight of any suspicion of terrorism, basic rights will be revoked. Political activists were banned from participating in protests against the G8 conference in Germany and the APEC conference in Sydney, even with a clean legal record.
The idea of pre-emptive activity has spread from warfare to jurisdiction, with dire consequences not only for terror suspects, but for any citizen. Entire areas in Sydney were blocked from public access, demonstration in front of the security fence were not permitted. The $170 million spend for APEC’s security did not prevent the team from ABC’s show Chaser – War on everything to enter the security perimeter with a faked motorcade.
The ABC comedians did not expect to succeed with their prank, yet they demonstrated the illusion of absolute security. The Australian taxpayers had to pay the bill for the APEC conference, while not even being allowed to show their dissent.
Conclusion
Terrorism became an ubiquitous news item since 911, although terror acts remain rare events. The war on terror reaped the lives of hundred thousands people in Iraq and Afghanistan, but hasn’t achieved any of its nominal goals.
Terrorism certainly poses a risk to society, but the size of this risk seems grossly exaggerated in comparison to other challenges the globalised world faces. The war on terror, however, cannot be won, and will last forever, or unless citizens demand from their governments to stop it. Terror is a concept, not an enemy, and using the phrase “war on terror” is not only semantic nonsense, but also distracts from the casualties this war has produced so far (Alomes, 2007).
Yet as long as the “war on terror” continues, the removal of civil liberties is unlikely to be reversed. Especially the restrictions for demonstrations severely impaired the ability for citizens to influence the political process and the public opinion, both vital components of healthy democracies.
The restrictions of civil rights are less visible than the terrible images of destructions following terror acts, but they affect far more people than those acts, at least by the way their taxes are spend. Acts of terrorism, however, are basically criminal acts with an untypical motivation. The experience with the legal system shows that laws cannot prevent crime, yet this idea is suggested by the battery of new anti-terror legislation.
Terrorists can take life, but they cannot change the legal system of societies, only governments can do this. If they primary goal of “global terrorism” is the abolition of freedom in democratic societies, governments acted as their accomplices with the introduction of anti-terror legislations. Civil liberties have never been granted deliberately by governments, most of them have been fought for with democratic means, which are on the brink of becoming illegal.
‘In some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less susceptible to Party propaganda. Once when he happened in some connection to mention the war against Eurasia, she startled him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not happening. The rocket bombs that fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, "just to keep the people frightened".’ (Orwell, 1989)
Some critics of the global occupation movement complained about using iPhones and other hi-tech gear from mega-corps during escalating phases of this shift of consciousness. Technology doesn't need corporations, capitalism or money for its creation, but dedicated and skilled people.
The capitalistic axiom of money as prime motivator succeeded in the memeplex of the world-domination phase of human history. Most great inventors and scientists were not really interested in money, sometimes even rather naive in the crooked game of economics.
Without many 'natural' enemies left, survival on this planet of plenty could be a piece of cake. Food and shelter exists still in abundance, as humans managed to accumulate many wicked skills. Yet some people decided to implant the fear of human predators in the collective spirit of their 'nations'. Without war and paranoia, and with the abundance of practical knowledge collected over millenia and its fruits, modern technology, no human being should spend more than maybe 20 hours per week toiling for the essentials.
Our desire to cooperation get exploited by extreme competition - the common goal is 'to be better' than 'the others', instead of making it better for everyone. The idea to make this world a better place for everyone gets portrayed as unachievable, yet honorable ideal. Sorry, the markets haven't sorted that out yet.
I think that the occupy movement want nothing less than to save this planet from the destructive forces of soulless systems implemented to domesticate human beings. The diversity of talents, preferences, tastes, skills, visions, expressions of human existence can not thrive in a bureaucratic nightmare designed to disguise this cruel global social experiment that lasts already for millennia.
If we learn to respect each other as equals, we can create the solutions needed to sustain a conscious species with billions of members on a planet with free solar power for the next billion years or so, combined with an exponential growth of applicable knowledge about how to do more with less.
The world game produces only winners - for entertainment reasons competitions of all kinds will flourish, albeit without nowadays prescribed celebrity status. As mankind, we got paralysed by fear, inspired by memes like homo hominem lupus est. In groups, people were always able to self-organise their needs with growing experience about their environment, and violence among each other (like statistically nowadays) was mostly an exemption.
Yet during an average day at work, we pass hundred, if not thousands other people, all of them mostly harmless. Even in our crime-drama and security-obsessed societies most of our life-time happens peacefully. I know that some people are exposed to frequent violence in their families, yet I still hope that only a minority suffer from this situation.
What will do with all the time we have available when we stopped fighting each other for profits? At the moment, many people share, teach and learn. Being hypnotised by the latest movie and its paranoid messages hidden beneath cool apparel and computer animations, while vacating a body in a work place for the majority of the 'waking' time.
Humans are naturally curious, and the diversity of artefacts of arts, science and technology not only attract 'consumers', but encourage people to contribute to the richness of life. It's not like nothing needs to be done once we stopped fighting each other - the mess left behind swells our oceans and intoxicates soils and atmosphere, the struggle has left many wounded souls.
It's reassuring to see how fast creative solutions where found to support this noble rescue mission. Open source works not only for software, it works also for the economy. Open source money, open source technology (no more IP, copyrights or the like) can make even large-scale operations work out in favour of all mankind.
Our leaders pretend business as usual, while more and more people occupy this planet to rescue it. And bring their skills with them.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Occupy Everything
Rubber bullet to the head, Oakland, Oct 26 2011
The speed of events left me a bit breathless, tuned into the surge of adrenaline that wavers around the globe since the occupation gained momentum. The evictions in Melbourne, Sydney, Athens, Oakland, Chicago and of course London and NYC have become a talking point in Social media.
The narratives between spectators and 'official' commenters diverges in bizarre ways. Where ever the movement had some time to teach its participants the rules of the process, the moral bankruptcy of the 'leaders' became bloody apparent. Pushing, choking, punching, kneeling on necks, tear-gassing, dragging on hair and limbs, shooting rubber bullets, riding horses into people describes the means with which 'governments' sought conversation with a dissenting public.
When we watch a documentary about civil right movements of the past we hardly get an impression about the time it takes to peacefully shift society towards more justice. Pensions, health insurance, voting rights for woman, indigenous people or descendants of slaves, decriminalisation of homosexuality weren't implemented by reasonable, benevolent politicians but came into existence due to the non-violent resistance against blatant injustices. It just took a bit longer than the average attention span for a movie to happen.
Although Australia claims 'fair dinkum' as a part of her national identity, the desire for justice seems universal. The occupy movement continues the long struggle to liberate mankind from its unchosen leaders, and as their reign of terror and oppression spans the entire planet, the whole world gets involved.
Amazingly, although no leaders emerged, the movement has developed a huge global solidarity, and many voices say similar things in different words. Participatory democracy, self-organisation, the end of wars is possible when people want to work together for that aim. Yet these 'goals' have less overall importance than the means used to achieve them: The process of non-violent communication.
I admit that it takes time to learn and embody this process, and decision-making seems much slower than in hierarchies. The need for speed, however, brought this planet to the brink of an ecological collapse - maybe slowing down prevents sinking into the abyss our society heads towards. Yet those people who learned to interact, talk, decide and live non-violently have tasted the beauty, fun and power of this way of life.
Community turned for them from a buzzword enforcing conformity into a living experience, capable of tackling a variety of practical problems. According to their preferences, different workgroups for different tasks emerged, in which the same process of consensual decision making happens. Working together as equals and the useless violence created a durable bond. 'Leadership' isn't an important task, which didn't stop many to ask for it.
In Melbourne, a small, functioning society emerged, providing exchange of ideas, some free goods, a library, tuition for many aspects of daily life. In six days. Then the Lord (Mayor Robert Doyle) used his mighty fist to smash this fledgling approach to real democracy, to a world without leaders.
No more wars, no more unnecessary starving, no more slavery - does that really sound so scary?
One of the programs to maintain unaccountable power creates the habit of uniting against a common enemy. On the surface, the occupy movement appears as yet another one of those anti-everything but the whales airy-fairy hippie bullshit. Or rather, this portrait creates a decent niche in which to scare the movement. It ignores the diversity of support from various levels of society, intellectuals like Noam Chomsky or Leslie Cannold, entertainers like Keith Olberman, as well as lesser known people from all walks of life, including bankers and politicians.
Banksy installation in front St. Paul's, London
When I spend my time on a self-chosen duty as troll patrol for #occupymelbourne, I often hear that 'you people/hippies/commis/lefties/other insults don't represent me'. I can hear a wish for representation in there, and that's one of things the movement offers. Not in the traditional sense of giving up your voice but by providing an open space for everyone to be heard.
I consider the 'trolls' as my friends, and encourage them to make their voice heard on the next general assembly. First and foremost, I learn about my own reactivity to adversity, and to pause before engaging in troll patrol. Respect exists among friends, yet positions of authority and power predetermine the levels of respect expected and acted out.
I wanted to tweet 'One of the big mysteries of our times - does the Queen wipe her own bum?', yet decided against it. Maybe I need to decode myself more, however, she looks like a nice, old lady, and I respect her as such no matter how little her title means to me. After all, she might still live after the revolution, maybe even in Buckingham Palace. If the royal family finds enough supporters to squat the Palace, hardly anyone should object to this group of people self-organising in that space.
While I'm typing here, today's second wave of police violence erupts in Oakland. I checked the live feed from this morning, shocking. The Nazi had gas chambers, the police in the US throws gas grenades into crowds of peaceful people while wearing gas masks. The images from the protest become more surreal, 1984 available on your doorstep or through youtube.
However, that's also part of the predictive programming you can learn about by studying products of the entertainment industry. We have seen the images of riots in movies, and were trained to obey orders from authority. After the apocalypse, as first step a new government is elected, suggesting the innate need to be a sheep. We don't want a total breakdown of society, that's just the scare tactic from paranoid leaders.
Greed requires power structures to grow into a cancer of society. I understood the message of the GA in Berlin to the world as a determined call to heal this planet from the wounds inflicted by the unaccountable abuse of power the bureaucratic systems have created. Our current leaders simply don't care about this planet, they sent troops and drones in parts they don't live in, sell out indigenous people for the exploitation of natural resources, which mostly includes irreversible damage to well-established eco systems, while demanding us to pay for these non-sensical policies a higher and higher price.
While the planet might be healed, as well as mankind, as well as each individual, the system can't. We need to build a new one. The means of doing so matter more than the results. Nobody can predict the future, although politicians and economists talk often extremely prophetic. There can't be any promise that this experiment succeeds. However, self-organisation maintains the balance of all natural systems around us, so let's try this evolutionary successful strategy for humanity.
Don't get the illusion that this experiment is just a talk fest. Communication is essential, yet many things get done as well. In a different style than in the streamlined job slots for wage slaves, yet amazingly efficient.
No matter how often I referred to 'we', I'm not representing the Occupation Movement. I can only speak for myself, and I hope that sharing my thoughts and ideas finds some common ground.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Sprouting seeds
Day 6 of the New Era of Humanity shows positive signs. Non-violent resistance appears in dead-end situations, usually without much more than the call for justice and equality.
The failure of the systems of society to provide justice and equality became overtly apparent after the so-called Global Financial Crisis. However, it remains mainly a question of believe whether you trust in the current systems of society to fulfil a useful functions, or not.
Obviously, the occupants can't answer this question either. Politics finds its justification by spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. Politicians stopped promising a brighter future, they just promise to prevent everything not to get worse. And no matter how much worse any local situation gets, they can point the finger at some other country where it's much, much, mucho-macho more worse.
At the moment, there are some 'talking points' which could be understood as 'demands'. Transparency in politics, abolishment of the legal status as 'person' for corporations. Basically, it's is a re-negotiation of power structures on a global scale.
Finding consent in a large, diverse group proves difficult. Finding a common ground means a simplification of the rules in order to allow them to be flexible. So far, 'common ground' was rather enforced by law - in Victoria public swearing can be fined on the spot.
In an interesting chat with Dillon I heard some concerns about the penalising system. How should aberrant behaviour be dealt with, don't we have a 'natural need' to be policed. Yet even with an abundance of legislation defining what a society considers 'legal' or 'illegal', crime occurs as exemption from the average daily life.
Unless, of course, the crime is institutionalised. The cops beating up occupants 'just did their jobs', protecting an outdated system violently. Historically, police got away with a lot of violence, although Australian police won't get the nomination of the Biggest Beater in Uniform for October's reality-internet coverage of global affairs.
I hope the Melbourne police doesn't change their ambitions to make Melbourne 'Queen-friendly'. The royal wedding in London showed the disrespect for democracy quite clearly. I don't mind so-called royal families providing some spectacle for their fans. But they still can force everyone to finance their follies, not only those you wish to support them.
I consider human beings generally quite supportive. Especially Australia lives to an amazingly large extend its stereotype to 'give generously for a good cause'. I can even discover something positive in the outrage about free-loaders, I simply disagree about who the 'free-loaders' are.
An escalation of violence would only attract more people to join this peaceful way to resist to be transformed into a piece of corporately owned life-stock. The internet helps to bring abuse of power into the public sphere, and undecided citizens can judge for themselves whether they want to pay with their taxes for a violent and oppressive government in bed with the corporate world, or whether to find new systems of cooperation to organise co-existence of 7 billion people in peaceful ways.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Trolled by a corporate drone
In case you haven't noticed, the revolution has begun. The resistance, slowly building up momentum at least since September 2001, has entered the next stage, it's gone viral on the streets. Australia, like expected, still struggles a bit, but at least Melbourne and Sydney look like making a promising start.
The derision of drones keeps the October movement alive as talking point, and as yet, many haven't even noticed what is brooding on this planet. In New York, the systematic police brutality contributed to a steady growth, as maybe in London and Berlin. In social networks, ignorance of politics still dominates the lived idea of political correctness.
So how does the establishment try to control the situation? First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win. Ignorance worked amazingly well, it took me three weeks after Wall Street's occupation to notice it, from an entirely unexpected source.
So while the spin doctors still insist that 911 changed the world, the global occupation movement takes changing the world in their own hands, unnoticed from the corporate media. The sitzfleisch of the movement in New York made them go through the first three phases of the Gandhi quote. Youtube offers plenty of examples of police brutality, while the 'rioting protester' stereotypes doesn't emanate.
In Australia, a headline of The Age dissed a 'rowdy rally', without quoting any 'rowdyness' in the article, instead calling it a 'peaceful protest'. The occupation in City Square continues, which gives me an opportunity for a closer look.
The mainstream-media-matrix has already a well-established mirror in the blogosphere, no vox populi (as dictated by our leaders) addict needs to switch from the Herald Sun into the Well Weird Web - with the Hun as start page you're unlikely to encounter opinions that could enlighten you.
In the US, in the public perception (mass media matrix) the movement made its appearance, yet it shifted in this arena only into the laughing stage, like in most western countries.
While shaking heads and laughing usually suffices to sway a Fox audience, the blogosphere can be a tougher call. I came across 'an advisor of leaders of the world' (synchronicity - I remembered Bill Hicks while looking at this 'blog'). 'Protesting consumer style' deserves some credits, and certainly appeals to a conservative audience.
I wonder if my comment will go through the moderation.
How lame. As long as corporations protect the fruits of human creativity with non-sensical concepts like Intellectual Property people can’t simply build their video-cam to make use of audio-visual global communication, yet this will change soon.
Bereft of the ideologic background of capitalism, electronic networks like the internet belong factually into the realms of common goods. The current occupation movement just counter-acts the occupation of common goods by the 1%.
After all, corporations created none of the products, but creative human beings did. Unlike the losers in the capitalist game plan, the CEOs of the dinosaur corporate world don’t need to struggle for survival. Technology and human know-how created sufficient wealth for every human being to lead a peaceful life, even deluded ‘leaders’.
It’s easy to identify the corporate parts of the protester’s outfit. Besides the tech gear, there might be much more hand-made stuff embellishing the revolutionaries than a corporate hivemind might imagine. Bought on back street markets, made at home, traded without taxes, but with mutual respect.
The 1% have lost the track. Not to use the gear they provide, sometimes exclusively, would be plain stupid. And that’s just the mindset expected from an obedient servant of the 1%.
So what you demonstrated with this picture is easy to summarize:
We will use every tool available for peaceful resistance to bring down the unjust rulers of the world. We know how to use tools for good purpose.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Our legal systems, our religions, our educational systems are all deeply concerned with controlling pleasure. We have created detailed rules and customs surrounding sex, drugs, food, alcohol, and even gambling. Jails are bursting with people who have violated laws that proscribe certain forms of pleasure or who profit by encouraging others to do so.
Most experiences in our lives that we find transcendent - whether illicit vices or socially sanctioned ritual and social practices as diverse as exercise, meditative prayer, dancing 'til you drop, and playing on the internet: They all evoke neural signals that converge on a small group of interconnected brain areas called the medial forebrain pleasure circuit. Evolution has, in effect, hardwired us to catch a pleasure buzz from a wide variety of experiences from crack to cannabis, from meditation to masturbation, from Bordeau to beef.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Physiologists have long been in the habit of studying not the reactions of the whole organism but the reactions of isolated segments; the so-called reflexes. While it may seem justifiable to construct the reactions of the organism as a whole from the individual reflexes, such an attempt is in reality doomed to failure, since the reactions produced in an isolated element cannot be counted upon to occur when the same element is part of the whole, on account of the mutual inhibitions which the different parts of the organism produce upon each other when in organic connection; and it is, therefore, impossible to express the conduct of a whole animal as the algebraic sum of the reflexes of its isolated segments.... It would, therefore, be a misconception to speak of tropism as of reflexes, since tropisms are reactions of the organism as a whole, while reflexes are reactions of isolated segments. Reflexes and tropisms agree, however, in one respect, inasmuch as both are obviously of a purely physico-chemical character.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
The time-binding capacity or energy of man (no matter what time is—if it is), which is unique to man, is a most subtle complex; it is the highest known energy and probably has many subdivisions. Ears are sensitive to the vibration of the air. Eyes are sensitive to the more subtle vibrations of light; in a similar way, the time-binding apparatus is sensitive to the most subtle energies; besides which it has the capacity to register not only all of our sensations but also the time-binding energies of other people; and it apparently has the capacity to register the energies of the universe.
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Isolation
Time has come to a halt,
and I feel really old.
My mind keeps racing,
and needs some pacing.
I crave for normality,
which means insanity,
all twisting and turning
won't stop that yearning.
Everything is alright,
no end is in sight,
I got it all wrong,
and just move along.
O graceful desire
please relight my fire!
Friday, June 24, 2011
Australasia
I live in a country that speaks its own tongue,
I took it for English and got it all wrong.
The language here loves simplicity,
and thus creates its very own reality.
What should not be that can not be,
is at the heart of its simple philosophy.
If I close my eyes I can't see
how hospitality turns into hostility.
The words have lost their shades of grey,
they merely point to one side of the melee.
In a world brimming of black and white,
the subtlety of life comes out of sight.
We always speak using reason and emotion,
which leads to many odd confusion.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Conception of a nation
While it took only six days to create the entire world, I plan for a bit more earth self-revolutions to give birth to a nation. I consider it a prosperous sign that Liberecujo was conceived on a monday, the start of the week.
We have only one planet, and so far it suffered a great deal from the gullibility of traditional nations, that got lured into the fearful visions of the multi-national madness of the military-industrial complex. As mankind, we have become aware of global challenges, yet the rotten, corrupt, self-interest driven national governments, and international organisations with similar psychopathic nature will rather literally crawl into a hole while the ecosystems of the planets collapse around them, then changing the rules in the interest of all humanity.
Instead of creating solutions, governments create more problem, democracy seized to exist since the start of the global terror campaign in 2001. Many good ideas exist how we can life sustainably and luxurious at the same time, nevertheless the myth of scarcity contributes to often dire living standards. Conventional governments agree on one slogan, like 'carbon tax', which reflect wishful thinking and general naivety.
To have less of the usual national stupidity, we can simply outnumber the war-driven, violent form of nation by creating thousands, if not millions of micro-nations. Mutual recognition could transform international cooperation into a truly democratic process, worthy of the special status of the human race in the game of evolution.
Of course, certain minimal standards should be provided. A simple legal systems, without any extraordinary status for corporations could shift the current legalised-robbery jurisdiction back into a system suitable for global justice. If one day a thousands of micro-nations, without any armies or weapons, but consent of their citizens, declare war on the UN, it has give into democratic pressure. This would mean as well the end of the war against the population, that most nations of this planet currently wage.
I don't expect that running a nation just happens, I suspect quite some work will be involved. The battle of constitutions begins, ruling a nation need creating the rules for your citizens. In long term, micro-nation could as well agree on using new virtual currencies, that make national and corporate currencies redundant. Citizenships for micro-nations to blow away the old power structures need to be fluid, explicitly trust and not evidence based.
The bureaucratic aspect of citizenship deserves more artistic than data-collecting attention. The initial small number of citizens allows a prime opportunity to shape the 'political' aspect of the nation. A micro-nation needs to provide benefits to its citizens in a fair exchange with obligations consented to. This differs from the traditional model of owning the citizens and black-mailing them into protection rackets, euphemistically called taxes.
In the game of evolution, few simple rules lead to unpredictable, often amazingly beautiful outcomes. The simple rule of government by violence creates rather ugly outcomes like torture camps, permanent war zones and environmental destruction in massive scales. Cooperation and non-violent competition are simple enough rules of engagement to establish a network of nations willing to save this planet.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Ten Commandments 2.0
'You shall have no other gods before Me, God Mammon.'
'You shall not make for yourself a currency, or forge banknotes, or engage in barter systems, or any other money-free exchange of goods and services'
'You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain by wasting money for social causes, unless it improves your public image.'
'Remember 24/7 365 days a year, to keep it holy.'
'Honor your father and your mother, from whom you inherited your money.'
'You shall not murder, unless it's an alleged terrorist.'
'You shall not be caught committing adultery.'
'You shall not steal, unless it's taxpayers money.'
'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour, unless he's an alleged terrorist.'
'You shall not be caught coveting your neighbour's house; you shall not be caught coveting your neighbour's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his car, nor his yacht, nor anything that is your neighbor's.'
Friday, April 29, 2011
Intelligent life in the universe
Sometimes, life seems like a never-ending puzzle, with millions of pieces, ever changing and never completing. The missing pieces of the puzzle only open up the next level of experience, and hardly ever lead to insights into tidbits of truth worth memorising in stone.
Yet, some artefacts made of stone survived millennia to tell us about the human past. Carving stone takes more time, skill and effort than writing a blog entry, yet in comparison to the latter, has proven more reliable to survive the changing tides of human evolution.
Our current civilisation, emerged and shaped by the childhood of humanity, might leave its legacy with the Georgia Guidestones, lots of plastic and radioactivity. The net as living, collective historian of the evolution of mankind might not survive as long as the Sphinx or smaller morsels of information cast in stone.
The collective mind of today seems rather insane - not hopelessly and incurably insane, yet more and more dangerously insane. Human curiosity doesn't stop to ask about its origin, its heritage. The myth provided by the consensual reality of (western) societies might contribute to this collective confusion.
Science currently dominates the myth making game in the Western World, yet the revolutions in scientific thinking of the 20st century haven't been transferred into the common meme pool. Let's shortly wrap the scientific narrative about the origin of man.
About 14 billion years the Big Bang happened, with really strange things happening in the very first few moments (a second or so), until all matter drifted away from each other, shaping stars, planets, galaxies and so on. The chemical elements we know of were created by fusing hydrogene, stars breed all the stuff we see around us. Due to our metabolism every atom in our body will be replaced within about seven years, we are literally made of star dust.
According to contemporary scientific belief, chemical 'life' differs drastically from human life (and I totally agree). However, the clay humans animate, has a long story attached to it, actually an extra-terrestial story. It might blunt Occam's razor a bit to prefer the complex cosmology with Big Bang and all, and disregard God's six day job of creating the universe 6000 years ago, but then, I'm convinced by the evidence presented in favour of this ancient, maybe even rusty universe.
Wikipedia states the age of our planet as four and half billion years, so each and every atom found on this planet had spend already billions of years floating though space before ending up in human bodies, cars, computers and pizza. Earth started off very hot-tempered, a bubbly metal core spew various elements onto a slowly solidifying crust.
During this time, this planet got hit by a large celestial object, and lost some of its mass to give birth to the moon. The continuing volcanic activity build the foundation for an atmosphere, the impact of other objects made of ice most likely contributed to the abundance of water we still enjoy today.
When life started exactly remains unknown, somewhere between 2.5 and 4 billion years ago. It developed in the ocean surrounding Pangaea, the massive single continent that broke up about 250 million years ago. Humans or their ancestors missed out on this super-continent, and made their appearance between 1.5 to 6 million years ago. For at least a million years or so, hairless, upright walking members of human family know how to control fire, inventing their own ways to transform energy.
Homo sapiens sapiens, the name given to the current evolutionary phenotype of time-binding humans, exists for about 200,000 years, according to Wikipedia 'history proper' began about 8000 years ago in the region known as 'Middle East'. My head buzzes with all the numbers, especially when I attempt to bring our 'knowledge' about the universe and mankind into a consistent picture.
We distinguish different species by their genetic outfit, and all humans share a similar DNA structure. Homo sapiens sapiens has shared this planet with other human species, another bit of evidence pointing to evolution as law of nature. The methods to look back into time we have at the moment have limits, as organic material deteriorates usually very fast.
Cultural forms to transmit historical information let us stitch back a sketchy picture of something like the last two millennia, yet merely a couple of hundred years with more reliability and credibility. Although the principle of 'scientific objectivity' never dominated among any documented society, we assume that historic scribes did exactly act like this, and reported 'truthfully' about the events around them.
I tend to believe that signal/noise ratio of 'historical' information goes along a Bell-curve, and any source needs a healthy dose of skepticism. Veracity seems of little importance in mass media reporting, and facts rarely make headlines. The field of history represent rather a story collecting than a fact detecting human endeavour. The diversity of explanations around the events of September 11 2001 typifies the amount of story-telling emerging after an cataclysmic event.
We can hardly claim to know for sure what happened in the last ten years, so speculations about events spanning hundreds or even billions of years back can't be considered as facts. Written history, the way we understand it in 2011, only captures a tiny aspect of the adaptions of evolution the human race experienced so far. Yet any group of people has oral traditions telling about their origins.
Many of these creation myths vanished from memepool, many others survived in different shape and forms. As we 'know' the true story, Big Bang and all, studying those old stories can't provide any more useful parts connecting to the puzzle of human existence. All this talking about Gods obviously indicates a naive, pre-civilised concept of reality.
Yet some facts from the past remain unexplained. Many civilisation mastered technology in ways we can't explain or recreate with today's methods. The pyramids demonstrate amazing engineering skills thousands of years before the advent of the computer, which nowadays assists the construction of awe-inspiring mega-structures.
One explanation given for some marvels of the past includes extraterrestrial visitors. Do aliens exist?
I don't know. Yet many stories about aliens exist, and some of them quite old. A friend made me curious by talking repeatedly about UFOs, and so I went on a quest to find out more. I was told an eyewitness account of a sighting, and had a distant sighting myself some time later, but hadn't bothered investigating this phenomenon in the collective story pool of the WWW.
From a scientific point of view, the existence of life outside our tiny planet has a high probability. Astronomers have begun identifying solar systems with planets, and the sheer number of the billions of galaxies with billions of stars indicate how little we really know about our universe. We love the metaphor of the needle in haystake, yet the needle Gaia hides in the haystake Milkyway, which makes finding life elsewhere tricky.
Contemporary science has little ideas how to explain interplanetary travel, and shows little interest in considering visits from outer space. The level of xenophobia seems rampant in the 21st century, and if someone won't open their heart to an 'alien' member of their own species, they would hardly welcome visitors from other planets.
And when in doubt, ask Hollywood. The majority of movies warns about dangerous aliens, so we better avoid hoping for their arrival. Just like the real existing US empire they will invade this planet mercilessly to destroy infrastructure, rob resources and enslave us. Hmm, sounds like the evil aliens have already won the battle, but let's rewind for a second.
Humanity hardly tipped its toes into the ocean of the Milky Way, so swimming like a dolphin in it to master interplanetary travel requires some advanced technology. Mankind brought much suffering among itself by using technology for military purposes. The childhood of humanity looks cruel, bloody, savage from a conscious point of view. Technology fuelled the game of war, trying to establish fear into the nature of the human race.
Anyway, it's too late to be afraid, it seems like the aliens have already reached us. Unless they control the 33 bloodlines running the economic matrix of this planet, they seem to be friendly. Otherwise, the gap in technology should have seen this planet obliterated easily, according to Buzz Aldrin.
More thoughts on this topic will come. Wouldn't it be a great PR stunt if some UFOs hovered over the royal wedding today? A bigger life audience can hardly be reached soon....
