This is a peaceful protest

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.

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.

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.

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.