It has come down to this: A FIGHT to the finish against the evil forces of capital that would wage a terror upon terror upon terror without end.
We, the people, the multitudes, can win this war. Our power comes from our numbers. There are more than 6 billion of us. If we organize ourselves, weave myriad networks and learn how to use them, if we invent an Internet voting system that can hold billion-person plebiscites, if we begin a slow march towards global governance and a world parliament, nothing can stop us.
To get the ball rolling, we initiate persistent, low-level civil disobedience on all fronts. A pissed-off global population can force capital to retreat by:
-hacking websites
-jamming broadcasts
-placing organic stink bombs in -bathrooms, offices and stores
-plugging up toilets
-crashing spy surveillance systems with spoof emails
-refusing to pay fees and taxes
-obstructing and sabotaging
In time we will learn to modulate our resistance to raise it to the point where airport-style security systems are needed just to let customers into stores, until the daily pain and cost of doing business as usual becomes simply too high to bear. Then, at our pleasure, we will lower our resistance to reward the concessions being made. We dont have to get the shit kicked out of us like we did in Miami (* referring to the brutality towards anti-FTAA protesters in FL, November 2003). Instead, we grow the power and sophistication of our networks and rachet up our disobedience. We attack in the dead of night and under the noonday sun. We hit them before, during, and after world events. Bit by bit, hit by hit we bend them to our will.
Strategically, the tables have turned. Military might does not count for much anymore. The global capital machine is now so finely tuned, so delicately balanced, that just one virus, one blackout, one brushfire, one mad cow, one hand-held rocket launcher, one gram of plutonium, has the potential to crash the whole deal. From now on, all the kings horses, and all the kings men will not be able to keep it together.
Thats the dirty, anarchic, kick-ass side of World War IV.
The gentler, everyday flipside is the growing army of meme warriors: artists, writers, activists, environmentalists, green entrepreneurs, pranksters, poets, philosophers, and punks, generating cognitive dissonance, spreading startling new ideas, streaming mindbombs, giving birth to new ideologies, paradigms and ways of looking at things.
Another world is possible. Yes! So lets articulate it, communicate it. Lets describe it in vivid, inspiring detail.
-Kalle Lasn, art director and founder of
Adbusters magazine
* I added this info for any confusion as to what the autor was referring to.
I think this is brilliant and inspiring. Read Adbusters!
We, the people, the multitudes, can win this war. Our power comes from our numbers. There are more than 6 billion of us. If we organize ourselves, weave myriad networks and learn how to use them, if we invent an Internet voting system that can hold billion-person plebiscites, if we begin a slow march towards global governance and a world parliament, nothing can stop us.
To get the ball rolling, we initiate persistent, low-level civil disobedience on all fronts. A pissed-off global population can force capital to retreat by:
-hacking websites
-jamming broadcasts
-placing organic stink bombs in -bathrooms, offices and stores
-plugging up toilets
-crashing spy surveillance systems with spoof emails
-refusing to pay fees and taxes
-obstructing and sabotaging
In time we will learn to modulate our resistance to raise it to the point where airport-style security systems are needed just to let customers into stores, until the daily pain and cost of doing business as usual becomes simply too high to bear. Then, at our pleasure, we will lower our resistance to reward the concessions being made. We dont have to get the shit kicked out of us like we did in Miami (* referring to the brutality towards anti-FTAA protesters in FL, November 2003). Instead, we grow the power and sophistication of our networks and rachet up our disobedience. We attack in the dead of night and under the noonday sun. We hit them before, during, and after world events. Bit by bit, hit by hit we bend them to our will.
Strategically, the tables have turned. Military might does not count for much anymore. The global capital machine is now so finely tuned, so delicately balanced, that just one virus, one blackout, one brushfire, one mad cow, one hand-held rocket launcher, one gram of plutonium, has the potential to crash the whole deal. From now on, all the kings horses, and all the kings men will not be able to keep it together.
Thats the dirty, anarchic, kick-ass side of World War IV.
The gentler, everyday flipside is the growing army of meme warriors: artists, writers, activists, environmentalists, green entrepreneurs, pranksters, poets, philosophers, and punks, generating cognitive dissonance, spreading startling new ideas, streaming mindbombs, giving birth to new ideologies, paradigms and ways of looking at things.
Another world is possible. Yes! So lets articulate it, communicate it. Lets describe it in vivid, inspiring detail.
-Kalle Lasn, art director and founder of
Adbusters magazine
* I added this info for any confusion as to what the autor was referring to.
I think this is brilliant and inspiring. Read Adbusters!
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
One: interesting concepts.
I just finished reading the Illuminatus! Trilogy a few days ago, and the Midget character got me thinking. If you haven't read it, he's this character who is basically pissed off at the world, so he does all of these tiny little seemingly insignificant things that basically disturb the natural harmony. He'll change the wording of a sign in a store to something that's almost-subliminally insulting to the clientele which therefore destroys the profits of the store, etc... Basically just social engineering as guerilla warfare. Have you heard about the strip-search business at Taco Bell? Some guy has been calling fast food places over the last few years posing as a police officer. He'll give a general description of a woman in the restaurant and tell the manager of the restaurant that she has drugs or something on her person and that he needs to search her or face prosecution. Some asshole Taco Bell manager took a 17 year old girl in to the back room and performed a cavity search on her, and kept her detained for about 3 hours. That's happened several times, and when I heard about it, the first thing I thought about was that Midget character. That's exactly the kind of social engineering-terrorism he'd attempt.
Two: In actual response to the article.
First of all, why? What's the point? Assuming Ms. Lasn's world actually existed, what would be the goal of her techno-rebellion? Anarchy for anarchy's sake? A different(better) government than we have today? What does she see fault in with the current one? Who would lead the new one and what would be different(improved)?
Second, this woman seems to exist solely in the utopian world she discusses in her vegan soy-milk coffee shop, choosing to ignore the realities of the global climate. The world doesn't want a world government, or we would have one. Countries like their sovereignty, citizens like their national identities. In much of the African continent(and parts of the middle east) "country" is even too high up on the org chart of the world. Societies there are divided by hundred and thousand year old tribal lines. Warlords, not presidents or premires hold the power. Go to an African or Mujahadin warlord with talk of a Hegemony and see how far you get.
Thirdly, saying military power doesn't count for anything is at best stupid and more realisticly could be described as "blindly idiotic." Is Saddam Hussein in power anymore? Is the Taliban? No. Why? Is it because of endlessly pointless UN resolutions and debates, or because of the precision and power of the United States military? Saddam basically gave the UN the finger for about 10 years. In a month his regime was toppled. That in itself is even a relatively low-scale example. To actually say in a public venue that militaries don't matter is stunningly and stupendously ignorant.
Four. One attack, one missile, one brushfire, one mad cow can completely stop the works? Let's run off some events from the last 5 years.
1.) The WTC buildings, centers of trade and commerce in the Western world are obliterated. Did the world end?
2.) On a nearly daily basis in Israel, suicide bombers attack civilian targets. Not one missile, but several. Several bombs. Did the world end?
3.) In the first year or two of the millenium, Mad Cow disease hit pretty hard in Europe. It was recommended that you not eat beef, you couldn't fly anywhere without having your shoes disinfected, etc. Did the world end?
4.) Many thousands of acres of woodlands burn nearly every year in the states, including most of Mt. Lemmon an hour south in Tucson. Did the world end?
Five. World War IV? When was World War III?
Six. The evil forces of capital? As in capitalism? Capitalism is why you are sitting there on a computer, in your own apartment, with free and open access to the world internet. It's why you can order a pizza at 3 in the morning, or go buy your $9 latte. It's why you can stand under your shower massage for 20 minutes at the end of a hard day and enjoy the almost-painfully hot water. It's why you're using LJ for free to post your articles. It's why you can go to an all-you-can-eat buffet and stuff yourself to the point of discomfort for the same money a family of six might live on for a week in a lot of the world. I like my 99 cent American cheeseburgers and my broadband internet. I like having a shower-head that uses as much water as I want it to. I like owning a car. I like owning a gun. I like stuff, and I like owning it. Look around your bedroom and think to yourself what stuff you <I>like to own</I>
You're free to go live in a commune somewhere that's entirely self-sufficient and doesn't require any help from the "evil capital". That's the whole point, you're <i>free.</i> If you do make that choice though, make sure you leave your expensive hair products, nice clothes, nice shoes, jewelry, internet, computer, television, CD's, car, air conditioning, stereo, deodorant, websites(SG?, LJ?), Taco Bell, Domino's, chinese delivery, taxi cabs, supermarkets, cellular telephone, makeup, beauty salons, coffee shops and bottled water behind. Take a notepad with you one day and write down every time you use or pay for something, and then at the end of the day cross off everything you truly think you could live comfortably without. Then look at whats left. Put a star next to each of those things that is made possible or available cheaply by a free-market, and then cross those off too.
THAT is your first step in your fight against evil capital.
I admit, there are a lot of things wrong with our society. By our I mean America. In the spirit of that "article" a lot of the post 9-11 programs such as the TIA, CAPPS II, and various other massive-databases scare the shit out of me. As cliched an example as it is, I see many of those things as the first true steps we've taken(publicly) at least towards a 1984 style society.
In the world society, a good portion of this planet lives in barbarism. That's self explanatory.
I'm pretty content though. I'm a decadent, arrogant, materialistic American, and i'm perfectly ok with that. I don't feel like giving up all of my posessions and spending all of my time working in a factory, standing in ration lines and riding public transportation for the benefit of society. The standard of living in America is very very high, and I thank God, gods, Goddess, the Moon, your mom, or whatever power it is that put my soul in an American womb. Yes, I think America as a power should help the frighteningly poor countries to pull themselves up, BUT: the idea destroying our own society with some kind of moronic veganindierocksoymilkgreenpeace rebellion is, to put it in vulgar terms: fucking stupid. We need to take care of our own people first. The rest of the world be damned when an American single mother can barely feed her own family on a minimum wage job. I care about her before I care about a woman whose husband would probably shoot an American soldier in the back. That leads me to my next point, which refers to point two above. Who are you(the author of the article) to speak for 6 billion people? They don't want our help. There will always be your (insert dogma)-fundamentalist types who will kill and maim anybody who isn't them. Muhammad and his 72 virgins don't give a damn about your civil disobediance. Think of how preposteously mind-blowingly fucking stupid it would seem to a Bolivian farmer making 17 cents a day if you, with your OWN personal automobile, and infinite clean drinking water actually consciously worked to destroy that. Imagine what a chinese peasant worker who thinks of flushing toilets as an unreachable marvel would think of you destroying the clean public urinal-cake scented bathrooms you have?
I think that article is ignorant, blind, stupid, pointless, self-contradictory, uninformed, arrogant, presumptous, and utterly idiotic.
Here's another one for you. If true anarchy ever came to pass, the people now who "want" it would be the first to go. I'd like to see what happens to some skinny, white, vegan environmentalist in a free-for-all society. He wouldn't last the first day. He and his girlfriend would be raped, murdered, robbed, and used. THAT is anarchy. Pretentious college kids sipping lattes and pretending to know how the world works isn't anarchy. But, I'm glad that those people exist and can continue to spout their ignorant world-views. You know why? They do it because they can. Because the society they and their bumper-stickers profess to hate is the very society that affords them said opportunity.
Resonse:
1. Billions of dollars were spent in new "anti-terror" measures. This puts a tremendous strain on the classist-capitalst sysytem. Also, The insurance industry is a great example of what happened as a result of 9/11. Many of the major insurance companies were on the verge of bankrupty (a number of smaller ones collapsed) as a result of the attacks. These are the same insurance companies who scream about the the threat to capitalism and democracy in general when questions of a national health care system are mentioned. Interestingly, these same companies are guilty of accepting huge payments in coorporate welfare. Also, there is no reference to 9/11 in the article because it has no bearing on the author's ideas.
2. By the way, the article never mentions violent attacks as a tool for civil disobediance.
3. i lived in Europe through the initial mad cow scare. It had an incredible impact on buisness, marketing, meat consumption,srutiny of buisness practices, how tax dollars were distributed, meat industry production practices, etc. It was also the catalyst for a slew of laws focused on consumer protection and health management which are more pro-people than the pro-buisness laws that preceded them. In the US the mad cow scare was played down by the media even though it was a MAJOR danger. Why do you suppose that is? Refer to what i wrote just above this for a clue. Side note here. Remember Oprah getting sued when she publicly voiced concerns about beef production and the specific danger of mad cow disease. Millions of dollars spent by american beef production companies because of the threat they percieved from 1 notable person's comments.
4. i suspect this portion of the article was not meant to be specific, as in, "a brush fire will lead to the end of capitlism." But rather, a reference to how intricate and potentially flimsy the ties of different buisnesses are to state, and federal tax dollars, and other buisnesses. The recent brush fires in San Diego are a great example. Obviously the cost of fighting those fires strained state coffers almost to the breaking point (federal monies were eventually allocated to help the Californian economy recover). The point here, i believe, is that when you threaten capital accumulation for both the state, and coorporations (the 2 entities sometimes seem indistiguisable from one another) you CAN have a dramatic impact on how those entities have to do buisness.
5. Many social scientists refer to the Cold War of the USA and Soviet Union as world war 3. Even though it was mainly a war of idealogy (or the greed based dogma of the american end of it), it still flaired into armed conflict, with indirect and direct super power participation in places like Southeast Asia, Southwest Asia (mideast), South Amnerica, and as leftist terrorism in Europe, as well as US/British involvement in violence and interference in democratic process in Europe, especially in Italy and Spain.
6. Capitalism makes nothing. Period. That's a Fallacy. It does not produce your 3 am pizza, your computer, or your shower massager. Production produces. Labor produces. People produce.Workers produce. Capitalism exploits (if you feel more comfortable you can use utilizes in place of exploits) the production power of workers. Capitalism is an economic idea. Just as communism is an economic/social idea. Capitalism often works against the people who actually produce all of these things and luxuries that you hold so dear. A capitalist system based on the idea that maximizing wealth is paramount, allows things like a coorporation moving it's factories abroad, finding loopholes in the tax system so that they can gain the most profit possible (cheating and undermining the very system that allows them to become super rich), haphazzard handlig of enviromentally damaging materials, etc. All these things are a threat to the economic power of the mass of people who want to buy those things you mention. Factory closes, moves to mexico = workers have no $$$ to buy the big screen TV. Less tax $$$ paid = damaged roads=hard to move your product, schools not funded = nobody smart enough to do those production/maintenance/engineering/research/whatever jobs.
Toxic waste dumped into water = everybody forced to spend their $$$ on medical care instead of $9 lattes and $.99 cheeseburgers.
The author never says he is an anarchist by the way. The statement that cofused you was, "Thats the dirty, anarchic, kick-ass side of World War IV." It's a reference to the means you can use to disrupt coorporate and oligharcic structures that rule your life. Your last paragraph refers to "anarchy", incorrectly. If you have a true interest in what the social/philosophical idea of what anarchy is, i would encourage you to read Emma Goldman or the author, Bakunin. This is not meant to attack you. i think it's great that you were even patient enough to read what is posted here. That shows you have more interest and less apathy than probably exist in the bulk of the american people.
In the context of non-violent resistance and civil disobediance at home, the millitary is not the end all say all to power. Also, something to bear in mind is, who is in the US millitary. i will use the army for context here becuase i "served" in that branch for 5 1/2 years. The people i met there were mainly from very poor to working poor backgrounds. These are the people who have been on the losing end of a capitalist society. These are people whose parents can't afford to send them to college. These are people who racked up huge loan debt while going to college, and the army offers to pay off a lot of this debt if they join. These are people who have done poorly in underfunded, over crowded, public schools. In the army especially, these are a dispropotiante number of black and latino people from seriously impovershed neighborhoods. LOTS of these people would support, i suspect even through the use of violence, anything that offered a real improvement in their lives and which offereed security for their childeren.
Your comments about being free to go to live in a commune somewhere are nothing more than the same crap spewed forth by people who don't like it when someone disagrees with them. If you don't like it, why don't you move to **insert name of target of contemporary american animosity here**. Disent is patriotic. Slapping an american flag bumpersticker on you car is not. Protesting, patriotic. Bitching about protesters, not. Asking questions, patriotic. "As long as i get what's coming to me", not. Trying to find ways for your peace loving, democratic nation to act responsibly and support social justice for everyone, patriotic. Self centered, consumer-centered idealogy, not.
This statement, "I think that article is ignorant, blind, stupid, pointless, self-contradictory, uninformed, arrogant, presumptous, and utterly idiotic. " is lame. Write something better, submit it to adbusters. They'll print it if it's good.
[Edited on Apr 05, 2004 7:21AM]