Garden Of Hope

For the first time in my life I claimed responsibility for a garden patch, and I enjoyed the experience immensely so far. If I had still access to my facebook profile, I might pinpoint the time when it all began, I guess it started in January or so.

Due to some accident we had a large branch of a tree in front of the warehouse I'm working in. It looked ugly, took up valuable space and invited itself to be upcycled as sculpture for the front yard. The garden bit was overgrown with weeds at the time, with a healthy parsley bush and some rosemary worth keeping.

Together with Jonyo we decided to create an arch out of two large pieces, after we spend a couple of hours digging up the patch and removing everything not wanted. To make it sturdy, we cemented the base of the branches into the ground, and screwed the other ends into an arch.

As his backyard thrives with plants, Jonyo came back with heaps of cuttings ready to go into the ground, as well as some cans planted with succulents. I enjoyed finding a random arrangement for all the plants given, quite oblivious about their names, growth needs and likeliness to spread. As I finished, it started to rain for a good watering in.

I did know at the time that mulching has plenty of advantages, and enjoyed that the local council provides mulch for free. The parsley and rosemary were still thriving, about twenty or thirty other plants fought for initial survival.

A few weeks after the second of mulch, fruiting bodies of mushrooms appeared. For a few weeks, I could trace the mycelium by connecting the mushrooms sticking their head out. Strike! Shrooms provide a plant nutrient internet, essential for recycling carbon based materials. A fertile canvas opened up, ready for careful experimentation with creating a mini eco system.

While most people enjoyed the transformation, Adrian wanted to plant the front yard as well, but didn't get around doing it. With lots of empty space available, I invited him to cooperate. We found some good spots for heaps of sunflowers, some pepino and chamomile.

I treated all the wooden bits (two planter boxes, the arch and the top of the compost bin) with some old vegetable oil I found in the warehouse. It darkened the milled bits of timber, and brought out plenty of colour in the tree branches. I couldn't resist and integrated a small tensegrity structure.

The chaos came in the shape of a big dog named Wolfie. He enjoyed the garden so much that he dug for sticks, ran over succulents and laid some big heaps of poo. It took me a while to find out the culprit, restoring an unspoiled look of the garden project of mine. Some of the artistic components, a broken vase, a mini chair and a mouse shaped piggy bank have vanished as well. Other bits which might be easy enough to nick still remain. The biggest acts of vandalism are done by visitors to the warehouse usually, and have been sufficiently minor not to be disheartening.

Sometimes neighbours helped themselves to some of the edible parts of the garden, especially while the parsley was thriving. Some of the produce ended up in the kitchen - parsley, rosemary, chard, mint - and I used lots of comfrey for a healing creme.

Winter and some accidents acidifying the soil reduced the variety of plants and colours, and brought some new competitors on. The pineapple sage managed to establish itself and grew into a nice bush, currently flowering in shiny red. Mint and comfrey appeared, and currently thrive as well. Some of the succulents grow very prolific, and take over lots of space.

Watering the garden with an old-fashioned watering can has become a contemplative routine, and a great opportunity to notice what happened with to my plant friends. I hope some of the tomatoes will grow tall and have some fruit, and I'm still waiting for the pepino fruit to ripen. The aloe vera plant which got buried for some while, recovered. It got overgrown by a chard leave as well, but it looks like some of the succulents don't mind living in the shade for a while.

Sorry if I stretched your attention span without eye candy to illustrate the process I witness for nearly a year now. The popular concept of abundance becomes palpable when you stick your hands into soil and keep a garden growing. It takes nurturing, sometimes pruning and weeding out for a good harvest. The hours I spend caring for the front yard never felt like work and gave me a good deal of inner peace.

Self healing

It's the second time of my life without formal medical insurance, this time unlikely to afford services. When I sprained my ankle last Friday, I felt a bit nervous about the fall-out. While I didn't have to move and had access to the web, I investigated Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) approaches to help myself, while cooling my ankle.

The western approach is RICE: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation. While I did this for a couple of hours after the injury, pain prevented me from putting weight onto my left foot. I managed to fall, using both feet reflexively, ending up in agonising pain for some minutes. Back home, dedicated to more rest, treatment and less danger of re-injury I had some food and did a moxa treatment afterwards.

Around the ankle, I wasn't too precise with the point selection, the swelling was noticeable, luckily not too severe. Using heat to dissipate the heat of the inflammation seems at first counter-intuitive, but swelling builds up useless fluids preventing the flow of blood, lymph and chi in the area. While I was still very careful with using my left leg, I had a impression of slightly lesser swelling, less pain and little bit more stability.

On the day after I repeated the moxa treatment, and limped through the day. I remembered having some tiger balm, and used it later in the day to continue the heat treatment. As I was still wearing a bandage, tiger balm felt more convenient than moxa. I avoided walking long distances, spend the day at home and next door. While slow, I managed to lug around boxes, and hardly ever stepped the wrong painful way.

Two days later I did my first longer walk, really slow, although just mentally painful. I noticed each change in elevation, lots of them along only two blocks. I took the tram for two stops, getting in and out wasn't too tricky with the low-floor wagon. While I felt desperate for crutches on Friday, my confidence to move around the hood without too much pain grew.

I spend most of Sunday reading on the front porch, and chatting with some neighbours, when I got the inspiration to google comfrey. Bingo. A miracle herb, great for healing bruises, sprains and soreness. Initially, I just took a leaf and rubbed it around the ankle until the juices tinged the skin greenish. I don't care whether I activated the placebo effect, yet another improvement was noticeable.

I took another longer walk on Monday, no tram this time and slightly faster, yet still limping. I stopped wearing the bandage, and felt much less impaired by the injury than before. I managed climbing awkward stairs and ladders, and lugging heavy things around.

After some more research into comfrey and how it's used I decided to do another experiment. I blended some comfrey, a bit of rosemary (both fresh) with coconut and olive oil. Without bees wax, it's not a real salve, and the moisture of the fresh plants might attract mould and bacteria. For now, I'n not worried, as I used it immediately. I didn't filter the plant material out, about 50% the skin of the area affected is covered with the liquid oil.

A bit of Qi Gong standing on the lawn didn't evoke pain and required only little effort. The bandage mainly holds the comfrey paste in place. I plan to use up the small amount I made in the next few days, with a more generous application before going to bed. So far, I'm surprised about the fast recovery. Straight after the accident I was concerned how this would affect my everyday affairs. Now I'm hoping to be back on a unicycle already next week.

While my financial situation deserves the label 'sub-optimal', the abundance of resources available to me at the moment - information on the web, some plants in the front yard - provide for what's needed for good solutions to urgent challenges.

Habits

This morning turned out different from most others. I got logged out of facebook over night, and haven't been able to access my account since then. For the second time in seven years or so with the same account, I got notified to use a 'real name' AND to provide ID with this name.

While I kept myself busy with domestic things in the morning, and the Free Shop in the afternoon, I didn't miss it much. Now, as the evening has arrived, I start noticing how much time I whiled away on fb, how much browsing through the time line has become a habit.

I have some options to rejoin the happy corporate spy platform, yet I'm hesitant. Losing my account would also mean losing some of my photos which haven't been backed up (or the backup was lost). Some content would become inaccessible as well, but all in all the data 'loss' wouldn't really matter.

And then there are the 'connections', a digital link to people far away while close at heart.

Day two of the changed morning routine, no virtual catch up in the fb arena. I think I need to use some calendar system to keep track of events I'm interested in if I stay abstinent. Without a decent digital passport suitable photo of mine a fake ID isn't possible right now anyway. I substitute the time line by twitter, which performs a bit sluggish on my oldish, not-so-high-end devices.

tbc.

Do I inhabit a fascist nation?

For various reasons I spend lately more time as an internet consumer than producer. 'Social' media, while suggesting productive engagement, works mainly to let time pass. Luckily I came across an old-fashioned webpage with some characteristics of fascism.

As I think most, if not all of them apply to Australia in 2015, I take the artistic freedom to provide some thoughts on each of the given points.

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

Australia celebrates their participation in wars as cannon fodder for either the British or the US Empire as national holidays. There's Anzac Day, Long Tan Day, something about Gallipolli, and 'Australia Day' celebrates the illegal acquisition of an entire continent by means of on-going genocide of more than 600 nations since 1788.

It's funny to see so many flags in this country, being a remote island nation. I would be surprised if island tribes bother coming up with a flag. What an ingenious meme of the Brits, using a piece of cloth as symbol of power. It's a piece of 'black' magic.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

The policy of indefinite detention for refugees, the policy of 'stopping the boats', incarcerating children in detention camps, the entire concept of 'off-shore detention centers', the planned removal of more than 150 remote indigenous communities in Western Australia, the data retention laws speak a very clear language here. Not too mention UN reports published about Australia's Human Rights violations.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

'Stop the boats!' was the official election slogan, islamophobia justifies many civil liberties restrictions. Sydney was the first place to stop air traffic for a hostage situation - the Sydney siege build up the vague concept of 'terrorism' as common threat, just like subscribed by Orwell in 1984.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

Some Japanese fighter planes made it to the Northern Shores of Australia during WW2, but the invasion threat since then is quite minimal. That didn't stop the current government spending $12 billion on 58 fighter planes last year. Not too mention the increase in US military personnel in Darwin and in Pine Gap. Did I mention the Dawn parade for ANZAC day (or whatever let's celebrate slaughtering innocents for profits and call it just war holiday).

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

There was only one woman in the government's set of ministers. The PM himself, known to have a strong misogynic touch, announced himself as minister for women's affairs. Of course, gay marriage can not be tolerated. If you have a chance seeing an interview with PM when asked about homosexuality, you get a free time travel into the Dark Ages.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

Media ownership works more than governmental influence in this case. Murdoch makes and breaks the political puppets of the corporatist system. However, 'national security' is now the get-into-jail-card for journalists who dare to have an eye on those in power. As one of the first ways to 'stop the boats', the current government declared any incidents with refugee boats a matter of national security, and effectively censored any non-government approved reporting.

Just two days ago, blocking of torrent sites increased the level of everyday censorship in this country.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

Lots of elements threaten the 'Australian Way of life' - everyone could be a terrorist! Latest PR stunt I recall asked for the removal of citizenship for terror suspects, yet I certainly mentioned national security earlier here.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

The current PM not only promotes his take on Christian values (Would Jesus have let any refuge in? I don't think so.), but also likes to compare himself to the person praised by his follower as their 'saviour'. And while alleged child abuse was repeatedly used to justify the genocidal act of closing indigenous communities, stealing their children and reeducating them in 'white' families or in Christian orphanages, the PM still confirms his friendship with Bishop George Pell, a confirmed child abuser.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

The mining industry pays hardly any taxes, doesn't employ many people, acts ecologically totally irresponsibly yet nevertheless directs many ecocidal decisions the government had chosen. The current PM went so far to claim that 'Coal is the future for Australia. Coal is the future for the world.' In WA, some of the oldest artefacts made by our current race have been destroyed to make a quick mining buck. 

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

Unions can now be held liable for perceived profit losses if they do their job and organise strikes or pickets. The union asking for adhering to safety standards, after a collapsing wall on a GROCON site killed a pedestrian, has to pay $3.5 million for the picket. Not an elimination of labor unions, just a suppression.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

The current government doesn't need a Ministry for science, so they abolished it. At the moment, severe funding cuts for art in community and education take place. No arrests yet, as far as I know.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

Law enforcement can now legally store all your communication meta data, inspect the communications if they deem it necessary, hack your communications devices, break into your house, create evidence, use created evidence against you. Anti-terror laws make everyone a suspect, the Magna Carta doesn't count for anything anymore.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

The PM's daughter, most likely as act of cronyism, got sponsored by a university. The employee bringing this act favoritism into the public got sued. I guess an investigation into the current treasurer will bring lots of evidence that this is more than hearsay. PS: The speaker of the house, Bronwyn Bishop, has been caught spending lots of taxpayers money for private pleasures. Of course, the current PM protects her.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

I'm really not sure about this one. Besides the manipulation of the Murdoch press, I can't vouch for open manipulation. Finally, a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. I'm happy than happy to discuss this with anyone still believing in the fairytale of democracy in Australia.

PTSD

It's occupy again. I came across some message of social media, got updated on twitter and hooked again in tuning into tweets and feeds from a different 'corner' of our planet. This time, not the US went into the spotlight, but Europe. In Frankfurt the European Central Bank opened its new head quarters which united many Europeans to air their dissent about the wave of austerity sweeping over Europe.

I used to live in Frankfurt, and saw many familiar views in the images and streams I came across. I even used to work for the ECB, walking over red carpet into the opera house in the summer of 1998 when its birth was celebrated. I don't expect my signature to have remained in the guest book, but you'll never know.

When Occupy Wallstreet swept like a virus around the globe, it happened in Melbourne as well as in Frankfurt, and many hundred of other cities. My friends back in Frankfurt weren't too impressed by what happened then, and like, everywhere else, the occupy movement fizzled away.

Or just went into some sort of metamorphosis. Some people continued to provide community support in various ways, continued in activism for other causes, joined cooperatives, started growing food and, of course, some spend endless time licking their wound to keep them fresh.

The major cause of misery, an economic system designed to feed the rich and starve the poor, increased its potency to cause havoc among communities and mother nature. International institutions like the ECB and the ESM (European Stability Mechanism), not to mention IMF, World Bank disempower local governments to become pawns of a monetary aristocracy.

The human family, with 7 billions or even more members, deserves a better organisation of society than one which allows anyone to starve despite the abundance the planet has to offer. All forms of government have been invented by humans. We can invent something which serves everyone. Anything less doesn't make any sense.