Virtual Politics

a field entangled

2008-02-11T23:45:00.000-08:00

Step off the planet for a moment
like an alien scientist
and watch the humans go about their business
civilizations rise and fall
Can we judge the humans?
Yes and No, like all great questions.
The Universal manifests in it's myriad ways
streams of matter and energy
always changing evolving
each unique temporal microcontext
a field entangled.
Who can judge what is manifest?
Is the universe wrong?
That we exist is the greatest kindness
That we suffer and die is the greatest cruelty
There is not one without the other
life seeks eternity, and finds it in the spiral
spinning and flying in time.
In the eternity of stars
the manifest planets of life have dreamt all this before
but with different sets and costumes
the rules of life are always the same
the minds that turn nature into technology into culture
the rules are the same
The wars are the same
Once you watched a few planets self-annihilate
you must admire cruelty and love, for it's manifestation.
All your faiths and sciences seek the unitary mind
it is every detail, and every question.
cultures rise on their knowledge of harvesting
food and spirit-mind. Every civilization programs it's members.
Every technological civilization evolves the universal communicator,
and universal knowledge server.
Cultures sustained themselves in the margins
thru 100000s of years of industrial pollution,
to a renaissance,
In the vast eternity the planets of life rarely speak to each other
but when they do, they find themselves, older or younger.
The question is still the answer
Until the cosmos turns and annihilation swallows all
was is always be
a field entangled.

Just doing my job by making it up as i go.

2007-10-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

Zen Marxism: How to measure the value of everything? Impossible? Yet value is the driving force of our collective minds, a constant re-evaluation of circumstance, thought, action, result. Thought being the eternal energy that rebounds in our brain. "Eternal" fluff? It is false humility to say that humanity does not completely understand the forces that animate us? Is it conceit to feel pride and joy for our Earth? Gravity pulls our substance, it wants us to return. We lay down to sleep we surrender and our dreams come. We awaken and seek our desires, as actors in the ecosystem, residents of our biological niche, participants in the global mind. Value is the expression of seeking desire. Desire seeks material value and symbolic value.

Material value is the direct real sustenance such as food and housing. Like any other biological actor it is the pursuit of material values that sustains our life on a daily basis. It is because the gifts that the Earth provides that we are materially sustained. In the ideal(?!) ecological niche (the garden of Eden?) we gather food and prepare sumptious feasts, make art, music, drum and word. Pastoral idealism? It is also the model that has sustained humanity since the human animal became an artist. In this we are sustained as we have always been, by the great gifts of the Earth, including those that we can craft of our given art. Much is made of tool making as the definitive mark of intelligence, differentiating us from animals, despite many instances of animal tool making. It is the use of the tools that differentiates humans, because humans use the tools to create artcraft. The most most basic of human nerve wiring is to craft things, to make things.
The most basic teacher of art is nature, which provides us with the materials we need to craft what we may dream of, dreams which have us now examining the core of creation. It is the work of humanity that creates all of the extra values that civilization and trade provide, above that available freely from nature. Yes I am after a Labor Theory of Value here, since mass production relies on workers to make products with value.

Symbolic value is "branding" or psychic value. Psychic values derive from the joy of fufillment, such as the joy of a thirsty hiker finding water, the joy of dance word music, the joy of organic release. The strong bonding of Material and Psychic fufullment enable the placebo effect, wherein an commodoty is embued with psychic value, while possibly having no or negative material value. Most notably the disposable impulse buy, like a logoed keychain.

Ultimately our psychic desires are ruled by water, and so civilizations rise on their aqueducts.
Symbolic value rules marketing. Water, air, earth and fire are conveniently anthropomorphed into the gods and goddesses, and as whimsical as the weather, for our lives are truly ruled by these. The machinations of nature resembles a committee more that a king, as always it is the interactions of the many forces that determine fate. Our symbolic psychic desires are iconized into anthropomorphic, animistic, and "evil" gods and goddesses. This is the artistic metaphor, to insert gods between us and the forces we cannot control, that we may pretend to have a supernatural mediator in our negotiations with fate, that we may adorn them with our hope, desire, and wisdom.

The Coming Orgy of Exhibitionism and Voyeurism

2007-06-05T21:48:00.000-07:00

You are either promoting yourself or listening to someone else promote themselves.

Wireless ultrawideband-encrypted solar powered eye, you are my omnipresence.
Undetectable, ubiquitous. Big Brother is here and he is you.
Inquiring minds want drama and the whole world's a stage.
Can humanity live without privacy?
It can. Get over yourself.
You are more like everybody else than you are different.
Live loud, see the truth about the world,
listen to all the voices and your own heart.
See how we all live, and seize the time to end war and invest in all of humanity.

From our discussions on the World Bank

2007-05-18T14:31:00.000-07:00

The World Bank - their own home page
http://www.worldbank.org/

The EIR recommendations were published in January 2004 in a final report entitled "Striking a Better Balance",[3]. The report concluded that fossil fuel and mining projects do not alleviate poverty, and recommended that World Bank involvement with these sectors be phased out by 2008 to be replaced by investment in renewable energy and clean energy. - Rejected by board.

In her book Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations (1996), author Catherine Caufield makes a sharp criticism of the assumptions and structure of the World Bank operation, arguing that at the end it harms southern nations rather than promoting them. In terms of assumption, Caufield first criticizes the highly homogenized and Western recipes of “development” held by the Bank. To the World Bank, different nations and regions are indistinguishable, and ready to receive the “uniform remedy of development”. The danger of this assumption is that to attain even small portions of success, western approaches to life are adopted and traditional economic structures and values are abandoned. A second assumption is that poor countries cannot modernize without money and advice from abroad. This generates a cycle of indebtedness that with the payment of interest means currently a net transfer from the poor to the rich nations of $1.7 billion yearly.[citation needed]

In terms of the structure of the bank, Caufield criticizes two elements. First, the structure of repayment; the Bank is a lender of foreign currency and demands to be repaid in the same currency. The borrower countries, in order to obtain the currencies to repay the loans, must sell to the rich countries more than they buy from them. However, the rich countries want to be net exporters, not importers. This generates “the transfer problem”, often the only way of repaying loans is to engage in other loans, resulting in an accumulation of debts. Second, she criticizes the high influence of the bank over national sovereignty. As a condition of the credit, the Bank offers advice on how countries should manage their finances, make their laws, provide services, and conduct themselves in the international market. The Bank has great power of persuasion, because if it decides to ostracize a borrower, other major international powers will follow the lead. On top of this, by excessive lending, the Bank has added to its own power and depleted that of its borrowers, generating a blatant inconsistency with its stated mission.

http://publications.worldbank.org/ecommerce/ - World Bank Publications

http://ddp-ext.worldbank.org/ext/GMIS/home.do?siteId=2

http://www.whirledbank.org/ - satire

http://www.infodev.org/en/index.html

http://www.econjustice.net/wbbb/ - World Bank Bonds Boycott

http://www.50years.org/ US network for Global Economic Justice

http://www.worldbankpresident.org/ - discussion on Wolfie and who's next.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=World_Bank - Center for Media and Democracy

http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wbimf/ - World Bank and IMF

http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/index.htm

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Paperback) by John Perkins
Perkins writes that his economic projections cooked the books Enron-style to convince foreign governments to accept billions of dollars of loans from the World Bank and other institutions to build dams, airports, electric grids, and other infrastructure he knew they couldn't afford. The loans were given on condition that construction and engineering contracts went to U.S. companies. Often, the money would simply be transferred from one bank account in Washington, D.C., to another one in New York or San Francisco. The deals were smoothed over with bribes for foreign officials, but it was the taxpayers in the foreign countries who had to pay back the loans. When their governments couldn't do so, as was often the case, the U.S. or its henchmen at the World Bank or International Monetary Fund would step in and essentially place the country in trusteeship, dictating everything from its spending budget to security agreements and even its United Nations votes. It was, Perkins writes, a clever way for the U.S. to expand its "empire" at the expense of Third World citizens. While at times he seems a little overly focused on conspiracies, perhaps that's not surprising considering the life he's led. --Alex Roslin

------------------------------------------------
Turkey -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3432.htm
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3432.htm
http://www.foreignpolicy.org.tr/
----------------------------------------
America's Idiotic Political Debates
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/von_hoffman

Vice President's Remarks at a Rally for U.S. Troops at Contingency Operating Base Speicher, Iraq
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070510-5.html

The Good American
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070510_the_good_american/

‘Legal Stealing’
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20070510_legal_stealing/

Shoot an Iraqi over the Internet
http://www.artthreat.net/2007/05/210

Mother's Day for Peace
http://mothersdayforpeace.com/index.php
http://www.robertgreenwald.org/
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/greenwald

Political Animal - note: Economic Update
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2077241,00.html

A Perspective on Ireland from our Political Discussions at the Conscious Lounge

2007-05-18T14:11:00.000-07:00

http://irelandsown.net/

Y: My daughter lives in Dublin now, works there. I visited her last December. we drove to Belfast one day and took one of those black taxi tours.
K: Very sad place, isn't it?
Y: It was quite interesting.
K: (Belfast)
Y: Yes, it's sad, but at the same time I felt a grain of hope.
K: I don't see much hope for a united ireland in the next 10 years,
and we have other problems. Education, drugs, illiteracy in the north, gangs, organized crime
Y: I was struck by the difference between the the Catholic an Protestant neighborhoods.
K: Our Teoseach Bertie Ahern is a corrupt bastard,
K: And our beloved president (Who I totally support.) REFUSES to come out of the closet! :p
Aye Something like 60 odd percent?
I forget the exact number - of NI families, are living off of welfare. It's horrible.
Alot of those nicer protestant areas are former catholic areas too -
K: in the 70s, the prods had alot of riots, drove the catholics out of their homes.
K: That's why the PIRA had to step in, but it was too late.
Y: My impression was that the Catholic area was cleaner and more prosperous than the Protestant area.
K: You must remember cleanliness is next to godliness for them ;)
Y: But I couldn't feel too sorry for the Protestants.
K: Remember that not all protestants are unionists, there are many protestants who want a united Ireland.The greatest Irish Republican hero, Wolfe Tone, was a protestant who died for a united ireland.
Y: How do you explain the troubles?
K: Just as many of the murderers on the british SAS teams were catholic.
The troubles arose out of, of all things, bad policing. And the fact that the Republic of Ireland did nothing to lobby for home rule in the north, after the war of independance. It was too busy trying to settle itself down. So, we have 6 countys up there in the 60s, and it's a time of social disobedience and change. The catholics complain that even though there is a seperate NI Parliament, it is entirely protestent and that they are being driven out of all the good jobs.
And all this is true 0f the police force was also 90 percent protestant, and there was a good amount of injustice. So the english say "Alright, we'll protect you Catholics as we consider you fellow Englishmen!" How noble. So they send in the military to "protect the catholic population from discrimination" And the protestants are not happy - they start to riot and loot.
And the british army, mostly protestant, and the police, mostly protestant, Do nothing.
They simply back off, cordon off government areas, and let the protestants do their thing.
It was alot like the american Zoot Suit riots. So, the catholics feel a little put out, and the troubles began - the IRA sent up weapons to the north, and the PIRA split out of them and began an agressive campaign, Killing soldiers and Unionist paramilitary members,
meanwhile, the unionist paramilitarys, with intel provided by the british army, don't just attack the IRA, they kill catholic civilians. Anyway, it's a mess.
Y: By unionist you mean pro UK?
K: You can read more at IrelandsOWN.net Unionist means, someone who believes that all of ireland, and the north currently, should be considered part of the United Kingdom, yes.
There are also Scottish Unionists, Welsh Unionists, Cornwallish Unionists, and Manx Unionists.
For a good level headed look at the troubles, and the current situation, I recommend you read "Rebel Hearts" By Kevin Toolis.

Flickr Photos of Second Life Politics

2007-03-27T00:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/venicevandal/sets/72157594474252794/

Ordained For Peace

2007-03-27T00:17:00.000-07:00

I have adopted the character of Reverend Billy,
shouting PEACE-A-LUJAH from the Capitol.
"Shopocalypse! Shopocalypse! Shopocalypse! - save your soul if you can we may be doomed by nightfall!
Peacealujah Brothers and Sisters, we must lead the way to the promised land.
We must exorcise the cash register, of the evil within it
Let's leave now, children! Starbucks is over!
We are drowning is a sea of identical details.
We all must join together with the Church of Stop Shopping!"

My Poster and Art display on Progressive Island is part of a "Revolutions" exhibition.

The SLLA continue to call for Avatar Democracy. There was a LATIMES front page article about the Second Life Liberation Army (SLLA). Then more interviews and articles, especially channel 4, a british channel. The journalists would tend to play up the terrorist angle, but SL is cartoon violence. I'm really more into networking and talking about real world democracy, but I enjoy a good demonstration and theatrical political statements....

I got bombed by the "Patriotic Nigras" on Progressive Island. They are 15 year olds I hear.
Shit covered penis image bomb, so gross jerks! It's just for lulz...laughs, junior mayhem.

We plan for a Earth-Day to May Day period of celebration. I need volunteer models for a photo session to duplicate a Walter Cranes May Day drawing with avatars.

The Fight Against War and Fascism in Second Life.

2007-02-08T08:39:00.000-08:00

My obsession for Second Life started out guiltily enough. Tours of dungeons, fairylands, and the shemale sex palace. Real life matters and domestic debris piling up. It quickly devolved into a fight against neo-nazis, where I'd be right now if god hadn't taken the servers down.

Second Life is a 3D designers playground, sound and movies included, filling up with the old as the new content evolved, adventure games included. You can go ahead and put virtual in front of every word from here on, because none of this exists except in the minds of millions of people. People will pay for that, just like the movies, and here you're the center of the action, the makeup, the plastic surgery, the fashion, the cause, the camera.

I set up Sponto Gallery on the boardwalk of Venice Beach and filled it with my photos of Venice Art. The Landlord of Venice Beach even gave me $2500 to get started. I teleported from place to place to admire the works of talented designers. I dove into the scripting libraries for special effects and animation. There were people of conscience working here. Camp Darfur, AIDS awareness, Breast Cancer Awareness, CODEPINK! I joined CODEPINK because i am in love with them. The sight of courageous outrageous performance art tearing up patriarchial groupthink just makes me so happy. The people I met at the CODEPINK meetings were wonderful activists from across the US. I soon became a woman. My Pinky would be the CODEPINK poster girl, a big tall Irish 18 year old with flaming red-blond hair. She would fall to the earth and utterly transform it, to a punk metal anthem.

After the November election RootsCamp held a number of campaign debriefings, with real life activists and technology specialists from campaigns. I learned what content management systems and private web based applications people were finding useful. We planned to do an anti-war protest to roughly coincide with the January 27 2007 protests in Washington. Avatars Against the War. We sought out all the other progressive groups. Greenpeace, ACLU, Forward Together, Imagine Peace, Leftist Beatnik Revolutionaries, Not On Our Watch, Red Faction, SL Left Unity, and the Anti-fnsl, who have now split into two groups, one on a path of violence and one on a path of non-violence. We put together a large antiwar Peace Party and demonstration at the Capitol.
By large I mean about 120 people in two sims. A sim holds about 80 people before it
refuses entry.

My Photos
RubyJi's photos
An Article by Scarlett Qi
A blog and movie by Rik Riel

Searching the databases for progressives I found the Conscious Lounge, run by a lesbian performance artist from San Francisco. She played lovely lyrical and abstruse piano, quite modern. She was hanging out with a lot of Euros, particularly French people who had come into Second Life to protest the opening of an office for Le Pen, the presidential candidate of the National Front of France. Segolene Royal, the candidate of the Socialist Party of France also has an office. There were constant disruptions at the Le Pen office, as both sides switched tactics. Pushing, shooting, naked passive resistance, image bombs, annoying chatbots, these are all techniques of what is called griefing. Second Life has a set of anti-griefing tools. If you own land, you can expel and ban people, and there are even degriefers for hire to help get rid of griefers. Griefing is against the Second Life Terms of Service. Yet in civil disobedience there is a basic intention to disrupt the corrupt. The Anti Fascists managed to force the Le Pen office to move from it's first location, and kept up the pressure on the new location. However there is one problem with fighting neo-fascists, they love it, it is how they have sex.

It also helps them band together because soon into the fray comes Thor Forte, whose profile links to the National Vanguard, a white separatist hate group as certified by the Anti-Defamation League. Their website could have been written by the Onion. "We can have a clean, orderly, progressive, safe, and incomparably richer and more beautiful nation if it becomes a proud White nation again." They can't use "supremacist" and more but they'd like it if all the non-white people went back to where they came from, so the "True Americans" can get their country back. Christ is far to namby-pamby for these neo-nazis, they are Pagans. I could tell it hurt when I told my daughter that. So Thor starts showing up at the National Front office heckling the demonstrators, and spying on the left wing organizations. I meet with the ACLU and a degriefer, who suggests that people have a right to hate anybody they want. As for spying, don't think for a minute that everything you do on the internet isn't visible to someone. Get over it and make your brazen dreams in public, the world loves an exhibitionist, that's why there is an entertainment industry. Have nothing to hide, or confess, that can play well.

After the demonstration i go by the Le Pen HQ to see what's goin on. It appears that Thor Forte has handed out enormous penises to the National Front of France guys. They immediately use them on an unwelcome guest. The Video. The Photos. NSFW I felt like a photographer at a gay porn shoot.

Second Life was created by Linden Labs of San Francisco and we all know that in this world they are god. While they do have terms of service, violations of which can get your account suspended or terminated, they would prefer not to be involved in the disputes of mortals, such as the banning of hate groups. Some residents hope to launch self-government, where the residents have the ability to legislate. But all real world governments have police and army to back them up, and regions in SL may be able to opt out. War may be required for residents to take self-government seriously, but physical war in SL is an orgy of violent imagery, with no permanent damage.

The lawless mercenary is the hero of the militarist genre of video games. Legions of young boys jerking off with their remotes. You'd think it would be a militarist's bonanza of recruits but army life ain't nuthin like the video game for a grunt. However those who view themselves as an elite find theselves able to simulate military operations as training exercises, in Second Life too. All the hostility gives them something to fight for. So I suggested to the Anti-Fascists that we read Umberto Eco's article "14 Ways to tell a Blackshirt" which is about Ur-Fascism, the commonalities of fascist ideas thru the ages. I also suggested that we campaign against them with surrealistic psychic disruption. For the Ur-fascist, the weapon is the penis, and vice versa. No one seems to be going for my plan of counterattacking with giant vaginas, and getting Larry Flint to sponsor the film. Instead we are making Le Pun, a little chatbot who says "Death is Life!", "Le Pun loves his little boys!", "Take orders and obey!", and worse.

U.S.: The White Supremacist Movement's Metamorphosis
The National Vanguard
The National Front Of France
Umberto Eco - Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt

I was a racist little kid, despite having relatively liberal parents. My brothers friends were neo-nazi ROTC who marched across Fairfax High in Nazi drag. I wanted to be a Marine and go to Annapolis, at least until I discussed all this in first grade with teacher, Mrs. Gurowitz. I think the first crack in my armor was when I could see how a sweet jewish girl in my class was hurt by my words. I felt some sympathy now for those inside militaristic hate cults. We discussed how the neo-nazis held many self-loathing closeted gays. We are reading the Art of War and the Art of Peace. The most powerful weapon of war and peace is the human mind.

Web 2.0

2007-02-08T08:35:00.000-08:00

First Thoughts

2007-02-01T23:04:00.000-08:00

It just seemed like war in SL would be a lot of angry pixels, but no one dies. They are militarists, they love a fight. How do you deconstruct a fascist? With Surrealism. Look at their dreams. They have the same gods in their heads as everybody else but with it's own details, it's own illogic on top, but underneath it we all speak the same beingness.