2nd Renaissance -43 : Melbourne Indymedia

Lethal Notions of Capitalism [282]
Wealth creation and economic prosperity are, under capitalism, based on principles of competition and survival of the fittest. The phenomenon of capitalism, which is scarcely two hundred years old, it is grounded in these dominant ideas. The notions are not strictly memes, because they are not ingrained in all members of the society, but they are potentially lethal. Not only can corporations fail because they can't adapt to discontinuous change and economic abundance; whole nations can be impoverished unnecessarily and societies can wither and die of anger, recriminations and blame for corporate and other institutional misdeeds and collapses.

Globalisation threatens the old corporations as well as more publicised 'victims,' such as unskilled workers, the natural rights of resident people to their local water and other resources, and the proprietors of small businesses. Globalisation inevitably lowers the price of non-unique products and services, forcing corporations to be more and more efficient, just to remain competitive. A need to achieve economies of scale is driving a rapid concentration of established industries, and the remaining large players are having to grapple with the need to control wider operations with fewer available people. In the drive to remain competitive they are turning to computer systems and away from human employees. Many of the living employees that remain are either part-time workers or contractors, and the core of permanent managers and specialists is also shrinking.

For a time large corporations can follow each other down the path of downsizing and outsourcing their workforces and placing their future in the hands of computerised transactions and control systems. They can run their operations as they would run a database, and increasingly ignore 'old-fashioned' leadership elements such as the trust and loyalty of their employees. The numbers can look really good - for a while. Then, when the global market is rationalised yet again, fewer competitors gain greater economies of scale, the prices drop and so must the direct costs and overheads. Profit margins become so thin that there is no longer room for operational errors or tactical mistakes. With little or no buffer against sudden 'dips' in the market, the corporations, and the investments of their stockholders, become highly vulnerable. Big corporate collapses occur and stock markets fall in response to the crisis. We saw this happen in the airline industry after 911, and in the travel and hospitality industries during the SARS epidemic. We will see a great deal more of it before this decade is over.

Several lethal notions are at work in major corporations in the present-day. One is the idea that the bigger a business is the better it can compete. This is, and always has been, hogwash! The only reason that it seemed to work in the past was due to the protection afforded by trade barriers and cosy 'deals' between big governments and big business interests. The markets were not 'free' in those days, and there were golden opportunities to collude and to contrive conditions of scarcity - super-profits could be made. However, the truth is that while capitalism flourishes under controlled scarcity, it collapses under genuinely free trade and abundance. The latter conditions will prevail during the 2nd Renaissance, and being big and widely spread will become a handicap rather than an advantage.

Another capitalist belief is that only the fittest will survive. Business is seen as a highly combative undertaking in which there are always winners and losers. It simply is not possible for everyone to win under capitalism, but it is under the conditions of free trade and abundance that will surely characterise the 2nd Renaissance. Traditional industries and corporations could possibly survive and prosper if they were able to abandon their increasingly predatory, win-lose, paradigms and develop more cooperative, symbiotic business models and philosophies. But, the task is beyond them because they are holding fast to what will soon prove to be lethal notions of how the world of commerce works and how to succeed in it.

If you have investments in such 'dinosaur' corporations, even if they are so-called 'blue-chip,' get out now! Similarly, try to quit your superannuation and pension fund arrangements if they seem to be heavily into stocks in 'yesterday's heroes' types of corporations. If possible (it has been purposely made hard to get out of many Australian funds) look for financial managers who will invest your savings in the high-technology area or other seemingly 'high-risk' segments. If you can do that you might just, only just, have a little money coming to you when you retire. The concept of capitalism is no longer viable, so investments in capitalist enterprises are no longer a good bet.

Pickering's Organisational Insight [283]
Larry Pickering (now retired) is one of Australia's more famous cartoonists. Entirely self-taught, he was a prolific worker and is reputed to have drawn as many as five cartoons a day during a period of some ten years, mainly during the 1970s. Distinctively, Pickering often drew people, including politicians, without any clothes on. The example of Larry's work shown here reveals his great talent as an observer of his fellow humans and the true nature of their organisations, institutions, and cultures. During his working days this man was truly a sage with a sketch pad. He saw right through Australian society, and most of the prominent people in it at the time.

It is not just the overall depiction of a hierarchically structured organisation that is so accurate in the cartoon shown, we are all aware of this model anyway. It is also the expressions on the faces of the characters that are so true to life; the extrovert sales rep,' the dominant (Alpha male) CEO , the picture of the Founder hanging behind him (a similar type - the universally respected 'Captain of Industry'), the chain of officious senior administrators shuffling paper, the treacherous career-ladder climbers, and so on. You will all recognise these types from your personal experiences of an organisation jungle. Larry Pickering probably drew this insightful sketch from memory, in a couple of hours.

One does not have to look too hard to see the essence of capitalism within the Organisation Jungle. The now lethal notion of competition (internal as well as external), instead of cooperation, is shown there. So is the disaffection of the group of lower level workers, who stand around chatting and giving only grudging compliance within the work models and performance plans of a firm that treats them as position descriptions instead of individuals capable of giving much more than is ever asked for. In the organisation jungle people at lower levels are typically 'controlled' rather than led or inspired. Apathy and wasted talent on a immense scale are the by-products of this treatment. Unfortunately for the business, it is often the people at the lower levels of the tree who have the most direct and telling interactions with its customer base.

Notice that in this model people climb ladders for their own ends. This is nothing like the Snakes and Ladders analogy for the game of life. But it should be, people spend too much of their lives at work to be stressed out by internal competition and politics. Tribal enterprise models will offer fulfilment instead of combativeness.

Capitalism Takes, Spiritualism Gives [284]
The higher one rises up the game-board of life the more spiritual consciousness there is, and the less concern there is with self. The organisation cultures that typify capitalism can't accommodate such thinking because their whole ethos is about competition, and winning at the expense of someone else, who is then, by definition, a loser.

This situation does not auger well for corporations who can't shake themselves loose from the old capitalist mindsets. As abundance and spiritualism increase in the world, under the influence of new technologies and a convergence of science and religion, the 'tried and true' cultures of the industrial age will be entirely out of place. As occurred during the first Renaissance, rising affluence will tip the balance of power away from big, slow, difficult to deal with, institutions, towards small, fast, attentive merchants. A new class of merchant was born then, and a new cultural movement will be born now. Instead of capitalists, and capitalist cultures, we will have leaver-giver cooperatives and talent collectives.

These will be organised on entirely different lines to the organisation jungle. They will be tribal, in the manner of Daniel Quinn's travelling circus example. However, due to humankind's new capacity to generate abundance, people will join new tribal enterprises in order to have the opportunity to contribute fully and give to others. Quinn notes that nobody runs away to join a travelling circus in order to give up something, they expect to get something. In 2nd Renaissance enterprises what members of collectives and cooperatives will get is an outlet for their raised levels of spiritual consciousness.

At higher levels of consciousness the challenge on the game-board of life is not about improving one's personal position, it is mainly about helping other living beings to improve theirs. Now that humankind has access to knowledge and technologies that can create abundance, there is no need to struggle for survival and self-advancement. As this fact dawns on more and more people the emphasis of most enterprises will align with Martinus' guideline:

"Never let your thoughts move away from working on how you
may best serve your fellow beings."

The leaver-giver ethos accords with the thoughts of Martinus and with the sentiment of the well known poem, Abou Ben Adhem, by JHL Hunt (1784p;1859).

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:-
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
'What writest thou? - The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, The names of those that love the Lord.'
'And is mine one? said Abou. 'Nay not so.'
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, 'I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men.'
The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed.
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
As free cities are established and abundance is seen to be achievable, more and more people will join the leaver-giver movement, and begin to raise their levels of spiritual consciousness - by helping others. Those people who are presently pursuing religious teachings in order to improve their own standing with God, Allah, Krishna, or whatever, should take note of the above poem. It indicates that individuals who devote their energies to helping their fellows to improve their lives and spiritual positions will always rank above those who only seek the blessing of God for their own sakes.

Illusions And False Truths Have Limited Us All [285]
References to the deficiencies of capitalism should not be taken as an attack on the people and organisations that practice this philosophy. The only attack here is on the lethal memes that underpin capitalism. One of these, which we were all immersed in soon after birth, is: Resources are, and always will be, scarce. But this is, and always has been, a falsehood. Before humankind achieved the necessary levels of knowledge and insight, resources certainly seemed to be scarce. But that was an illusion due to ignorance. Remember Buckminster Fuller's observation about scarce energy:

"There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance."

There is, however, no justification for attacks on people who genuinely believed that resources are scarce, and then scrambled to control them. Nor can we call these people stupid. Most of us have been similarly deceived by our memes. Once people are able to recognise realities that are normally masked from us by what we see and believe, most will quickly change their attitudes and behaviour. When this starts to happen on a large scale, civilization will go up several gears - and quite rapidly.

What science has begun to discover during the past three decades is that:

Hardly anything in this world is what it seems to be.

We think that our eyes see what is in front of us, but we really see an interpretation of reality fashioned within our brain. We think that matter is solid, but it is almost entirely emptiness. We believe that digital technologies, which manipulate binary digits, are something special, while failing to note that nature is fundamentally analogue. Waveforms, tones and harmonics, are actually shaped and ordered by the prime numbers, and the 'solid' reality we 'see' isn't solid after all.

Until quite recently, very few people were aware of these insights. Ironically, it has been new technologies based on the 'unnatural' use of binary calculations that have finally exposed the truth to all who would know it.

The Real Scarcities [286]
In a societal sense, one real scarcity is understanding. It is ignorance that leads people to do bad things to each other. Once an underclass of 'losers' is created in a society they operate at the lower levels of spiritual consciousness. A vicious cycle of offence, punishment, reoffence ensues; and it leads to millions of people being denied their freedom. The punishment and prison industries then flourish, but our society unravels.

Conversely, people who come to understand the game of life are able to raise their spiritual consciousness to levels at which they not only pose no risk to others but are also content within themselves. To call such an insight enlightenment is too evangelical; a better phrase is understanding life's purpose.

Another great scarcity is mercy. The cause is rooted in takerism and the meme that says: We humans have the right to decide which creatures shall live or die. The earlier call to 'Let the Girls Go,' and to get everyone out of Chowchilla and places like it, was not simply a compassionate response to the increasing horrors of the prisons. It is fundamental to the abandonment of one of the most corrosive notions in the present-day culture - that the rule of law is a civilized and 'just' approach to wrongdoing.

As a prerequisite to the formation of a Level 4 Civilization we must find ways to get not only women and children out of the jails, but the guys as well. Unless we do this the 'justice and punishment' arrogance, that goes back to medieval times and the protection of property held by the nobility, will poison our attempts to found a spiritual society in which goodness prevails over all other traits.

You see, there can be no spiritually grounded society, no Level 4 Civilization, without a recognition of the pre-eminence of mercy in the game of life. We all have free will, and we sometimes do wrong instead of good. But that does not mean that humans can or should sit in judgement on their fellow beings. The place for the assessment of each life is within the forty-nine days that the soul spends in the bardo - after death. It is a divine process that we humans have no role in. The animals don't have the arrogance to judge or punish each other in defiance of the divine order. Neither should we.

Related:

2nd Renaissance -42

On this latter point, Daniel Quinn is undoubtedly correct regarding the first Renaissance, but he is probably mistaken about how rapidly the key memes of the old society need to be abandoned, and new ones adopted. Modern technological developments are now driving change through the old Level 3 Civilization at rates that will totally undermine it in the space of less than a decade. There is an urgent need to find and agree the right new memes for a Level 4 Civilization. The longer we wait the more people will suffer unnecessarily.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/114661.php

CALLING ALL NATIONS

We have a law system and it is bunjil-mummu-wommuloo munghus law and we cannot keep running to this other law system because we are actually committing treason against our own beautiful bunjil=god and we think we are going to that spirit world in peace we are dreamers.

http://adelaide.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/15751

2nd Renaissance -41

Today, Western pharmaceutical corporations are feverishly collecting - and patenting - the store of pharmacological knowledge possessed by such 'primitive' people. Will the West soon be forced to also adopt the explanations of how shamans have obtained their extensive knowledge and repertoire of cures for hundreds of diseases and ailments? That they simply tuned their consciousness to a different channel of reality?

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/114426.php

THE GENERAL STRIKE FOR INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM

Thousands of thoughtful and class-conscious workers in years past have looked to the General Strike for deliverance from wage slavery. Today their hopes are stronger than ever. Their number has been increased with additional thousands who are confident that the General Strike, and the General Strike alone, can save Humanity from the torture and degradation of the continuation of capitalism and the misery and privation of its recurrent wars and depressions.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/114440.php

2nd Renaissance -40

Those in their middle-life stages would also be concerned with meaning, but they are so enmeshed in their repayments - mortgages, credit cards, etc - and a daily struggle to advance within a system of relentless economic scarcity, that they have little time to think about such esoteric matters as the meaning of life. Even women, who used to stay at home and raise their children on a full-time basis, are now forced to work to make ends meet. Only the very young and the very old presently have the luxury of time to wonder and search for meaning. But the situation will change as it becomes apparent that there are new alternatives to economic scarcity and predatory globalism. Soon, everybody will be seeking new meaning and new opportunities to climb as many ladders in the game of life as they possibly can. Once this happens a Level 4 Civilization will be assured.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/114153.php

2nd Renaissance -39

We are living through the downfall of a whole system of civilization, and growing chaos is inevitable. All the while the snowmen and the parrot people will trumpet the 'advances' being made in the War On Terror (aka War On Freedom) and lionise 'good' citizens such as federal agents, police, border guards, and the like. Citizens will be encouraged to inform on each other to 'keep our country safe'. This had already started to happen. It will accelerate as the threat of people breaking away from the control of the old order increases,

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/113936.php

2nd Renaissance -38

The prison system has never been reformed except in name. The prison system is, by now, incapable of reform, and the same can be said for the law enforcement and justice systems which feed it. This reality applies in most nation states within the old Level 3 Civilization, it is not confined to Australia, Britain and the USA. But that doesn't make it right for those administrations to be engaging in the incarceration of women and children. The practice is barbaric wherever it is practiced and by whomever it is authorised and administered.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113687.php

2nd Renaissance -37

The World Organisation for Human Rights USA site also documents another innovation that enables guards to control greater numbers of prisoners, with consequent savings in operating costs.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113467.php

2nd Renaissance -36

It is not fanciful to believe that criminals can be rehabilitated or that the harm they have caused might be repaired, various tribal societies managed to achieve such outcomes for thousands of years. It can be done, and discussing the presently catastrophic regimes of justice and incarceration will lead people to fathom ways of doing so again, within a Level 4 Civilization.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113284.php

2nd Renaissance -35

But, before considering the implications of the death penalty, there is reason to consider how we already treat each other in relation to the imprisonment and punishment of women and their families. Great barbarity is going on right now in this area; within the ambit of the rule of law and the revenge and punishment systems of our "civilized" societies.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113143.php

New Strategy for an Autonomous Politics

My aim in this article is to present some hypotheses on issues of strategy for anti-capitalist emancipatory movements. The idea is to rethink the conditions for an effective politics, with the capacity to radically change the society we live in. Even if I will not have the space to analyze concrete cases, these reflections are not a purely "theoretical" endeavor, but spring from the observation of a series of movements I had the chance to be part of -the movement of neighbor's assemblies in Argentina, some processes of the World Social Forum, and other global networks- or that I followed closely in the past years -the piquetero (unemployed) movement also in Argentina, and the Zapatistas in Mexico.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113147.php

2nd Renaissance -34

Punishment By Imprisonment Is A Medieval Concept [258] Although this is the 21st century, the societies of the Level 3 Civilization have not yet abandoned the medieval notion of prisons being places of punishment. Today’s institutions of incarceration are called 'Correctional Centres' and other sanitised terms, but they remain vehicles for revenge and punishment exacted by courts under the Rule of Law.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113003.php

2nd Renaissance -33

The natural, some would say instinctive, organisation model for humans is the tribe. But there is no suggestion here of attacking or harming the less numerous members of big government and big business organisations that are structured along institutional and militarist lines. Any physical attack on the forces of the OWO would not only violate the sixth commandment, it would fail to advance humanity or benefit society in any way. No, the conflict between the OWO and the rest of us is a battle of ideas and, as such, it holds great potential as a transformational force that will benefit all of humanity - even those people who are presently on the side of federalism, capitalism and a creeping totalitarian control of the many by a few.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/112747.php

2nd Renaissance -32

Then the penny drops, literally. The earthlings are selling water, they are treating it as a commodity. For the sellers of water this means that the scarcer fresh water is the higher the price and the greater the profit. There is still CAPITALISM on Earth; a system that became redundant in most galaxies aeons ago. No wonder water is scarce here.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/112562.php

2nd Renaissance -31

The dissemination of information about the end of the 20th century scientific Dark Age and the advent of wondrous new spike technologies is something we can all do. It is not yet illegal to write or talk about such matters. In order to help raise general awareness of already existing opportunities to end economic scarcity it is necessary to first discover and absorb information that is never presented by the OWO controlled media. Then it is time to spread those alternate perspectives of science and technology at the interpersonal level.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/112310.php

2nd Renaissance -30

"Near-Spike technologies will ensure that everyone could have access to this cornucopia, and while different cultures and moieties within those cultures will respond idiosyncratically to the great change, we might expect a general drift back toward the ancient codes implanted by evolutionary pressures. Humans have evolved in a million years and more of moderate ease, each tribe's small numbers drawing modestly upon the self-replenishing bounty of the earth. We will slip easily back into that blissful state, spared its occasional murderous bouts of uncontrollable fire, flood, drought, plague and infestation.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/112101.php

2nd Renaissance -29

There is a simple answer, however, and that is to set up the bomb, and arm it to go off when the Sun passes through the required geometric point. The newspapers warn us that the tests will be carried out over a series of months, so we sit back with a set of astro tables and paper on which to calculate Sun positions, and wait for the results. When the first start coming in, we must confess to a certain excitement. What began as a theory is proving in actuality to be perfectly correct. We have cracked a code that the atom bomb countries have long tried to hide. "

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/111933.php

2nd Renaissance -28

Far Out Ideas For a Far Out Century [226] This freesite is not concerned with the existence or otherwise of aliens or UFOs, nor is it concerned with what such beings might be doing in our skies. There are thousands of web sites and publications that deal with UFOs and aliens. This freesite is concerned with far more serious threats to the freedom and well-being of humanity than extraterrestrial visitors. These threats have already been identified as takerism, nationalism, capitalism, and militarism. The iron grip of the OWO on the world's resources has far more serious consequences than the alleged activities of aliens and UFOs.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/111733.php

2nd Renaissance -27

At first impression this might seem a good thing, but the real price of such a concealment has been more than seven decades of denying the means and capability to bring abundant energy to the whole world. Not only could the release of such knowledge have ended all militarism and the related suffering caused by wars, it could have enabled presently 'developing' countries to feed, house and clothe their populations to levels that would have freed them from poverty, disease, and the burden of debt they currently 'owe' to the capitalist West.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/111574.php

2nd Renaissance -25

This diagram is not reproduced here to suggest that the absolute amount of energy that can be obtained from matter is known, Cramp points out that it is theoretical. The purpose of the diagram is to drive home the realisation that energy is by no means scarce. All that is required to tap it is the right knowledge. Tesla and many others have already shown that such knowledge exists and that it is practical to draw energy from beyond matter - from the ether itself.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/111235.php

2nd Renaissance -24

The defection of large numbers of people from federal citizenship, and the establishment of free cities that will run on free energy, can and will break the hold of old ideas and false scientific notions that held us back during the entire 20th century. That 2nd Dark Age is now behind us and the way to a better, Level 4 Civilization, is open. How soon the transformation is accomplished is now in the hands of ordinary folk, it has very little to do with our federal 'representatives', the industrial councils of big business, the parrot press, or the dogma specialists of orthodox science.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/111028.php

2nd Renaissance -23

While it is far less radical than Tesla's idea of 'broadcasting' power to everyone on earth, the Christie/Brits generator could revolutionise domestic power supply, if it were ever allowed to do so. Once a household had one of these devices it could not only meet all its own power requirements, it could also feed around 10 kW of energy into the local power grid each day. When a family moved home, it would be practical to take the generator with them to their new residence. Given the long service life of the device, many generations of the family would inherit it, and it would continue to pump out 24 kW of clean power every day.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/110786.php

2nd Renaissance -22

Tesla was arguably one of the most outstanding geniuses of the late 19th century. But he was never astute in business, being far too naive and trusting. Tesla thought that everyone would readily support a discovery that would make energy available to all, and do much to end poverty and scarcity in the world. The capitalist/militarist establishments of the US thought quite differently.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/110212.php

2nd Renaissance -21

Who Is Running The Universe? [205] There is a common piece of street wisdom that describes how to determine who is really running any strange town that you come to on a journey. The advice is to listen to who is mentioned in conversations about the affairs and administration of the town. It is never the people who are talked about in connection with town matters or politics who are actually running things. The rule says that it is always the people who are never mentioned who are in real control. If you want to know who has the power, find out who is never mentioned as having any. When you begin to learn about and debate science with other non-scientists like yourself, remember this piece of street wisdom. Nothing is what it seems to be. The mayor or the police chief might seem to wield the power but, in reality, the power lies elsewhere, and that truth is seldom mentioned.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/109956.php

2nd Renaissance -20

Who are the most imaginative and lateral thinking people in our present society? Are they the scientists, or possibly the high IQ individuals employed to find new products and markets? Are they the entrepreneurs of the world, or are they advisors and consultants to industry and government? The answer to this question is known, and it is surprising to most people.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/109767.php

2nd Renaissance -19

A key principle in such situations will be to limit the time that any individual can serve in political office. One or two terms should be the limit, there should be no opportunity for people to make a career out of politics. Nor should it be possible for generation after generation of any family to be employed in politics or as politicians. One only has to look at the distortions and inequalities that some of these political dynasties have introduced to the course of legislation in Australia and the US to know that long-term careers and generation to generation successions are not a good idea.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/109519.php

2nd Renaissance -18

It is worth learning geometry as the ancients taught it because music is geometric. It is worth studying music in a geometric sense because this uncovers truths about vibrations and patterns of vibrations, Vibrations are important because all matter is formed from them. The 2nd Renaissance involves an explosion of knowledge and discovery that is taking humanity beyond the old 'drop in on your foot' materialistic and mechanistic view of the world and the universe beyond. The 21st century talent collectives that will build new technologies to defeat scarcity and create abundance will do most of their work in the realms of invisible vibration patterns. All young people, both boys and girls, now need to learn within these fields of knowledge, because humanity's future will be built there.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/109198.php

2nd Renaissance -17

Education systems in free cities and regions must be very different to those of nation states. It is not just the methods of encouraging learning that will distinguish education in free cities from that of nation states, but the truth that the knowledge is rooted in. There is no point in swotting to pass examinations in subject knowledge that is wrong. Yet, that is exactly what young people in state education systems are doing. Neither they, or their parents, or their teachers realise this fact, but it remains the case.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/109002.php

2nd Renaissance -16

Supporting secessions and the formation of free cities and regions is going to be crucial. Only in these new beachheads of tomorrow’s society will such innovations as home-schooling, and a lack of state censorship and media spin, enable young people to discover the truths they will need to know to build a Level 4 Civilization.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/108722.php

2nd Renaissance -15

Historically, there have been periods when legal distinctions between animals and humans have been blurred. For instance, in medieval Europe, in the 14th and 15th centuries, numerous trials and executions of animals occurred. One source identifies 34 recorded instances of pigs having been tried and cruelly put to death. Besides pigs; rats, chickens, goats, and bees were similarly tried. Some of the pigs were fully dressed in human clothes at the time they were, inevitably, found guilty. In one case a vicar excommunicated a flock of sparrows that infested his church. All this happened despite the theological stance that animals had no soul, and no morals or conscience. They could not really be guilty of transgressing the Rule of Law.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/108557.php

2nd Renaissance -14

Withdrawing Support For Militarism [179] The problem with revenge is that it lowers the humanity of those who exercise it down to the same level, of even below, those who committed the original crime. Although we can't yet know who was responsible for 911 or 1012, we do now know that forces of the Coalition of the Willing (CoW) have, on occasions, been just as barbaric as the people who killed on those dates. This has been amply demonstrated in Afghanistan and again in Iraq. If you doubt this, seek out more facts about the CoW's use of DU and NDU weaponry and cluster bombs. These horror weapons continue, to this day, to put young children and adult civilians at risk of injury or death from unexploded munitions, radiation, and toxic substances in the ground water and the food chain.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/108373.php

Surveillance

It is up to ordinary people to raise the level of debate about the undemocratic surveillance practices of the many faceless and unaccountable agents who make daily intrusions on individual privacy, and about the apologists and propagandists for the War nn Terror who applaud every new attack on human rights and freedoms as "prudent" or "necessary". If there is no discussion of reverse surveillance in the national media, create it on the streets on a citizen to citizen basis. If nobody is talking about the outrageous assaults on privacy and human rights embodied in the new antiterrorist acts forced through US, UK and Australian legislatures, start talking about it to your neighbours and friends.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/108175.php

2nd Renaissance -13

Such a development is part of the phenomenon of reverse surveillance that will come to characterise the 2nd Renaissance and a rapid transition to a Level 4 Civilization and a truly free society. You can learn more about reverse surveillance at the 'Surveillance' freesite. Reverse surveillance principles extend well beyond the use of ubiquitous digital imaging technologies, and include audits of all aspects of federal government operations, by randomly selected teams of citizens. The Feds and the parrot people will be quick to pronounce that such monitoting is "not in the national interest," but it will definitely be in our interests, and those of future generations of humanity.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/107989.php

2nd Renaissance -12

There are reports that in one Balinese kampong that provided labour to the clubs in Kuta Beach, seven empty coffins were buried, because there were no identifiable remains of the missing workers. It was as if they had been vaporised. Scores of people, mainly locals, are thought to have disappeared without trace.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/107756.php

2nd Renaissance -11

Fortunately, the power and control of government and military elites is illusory in the 21st century. The world no longer works the way it did, and there is nothing to compel people to support failed, outdated systems any longer. This is an understanding that must be widely and quickly shared. The future of our children and the planet depends upon our changing our thinking about governments, and our support for them.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/107560.php

2nd Renaissance -10

In the Afghanistan turkey shoot the CoW forces used vast numbers of hard target weapons and other munitions containing depleted uranium (DU). This substance is almost twice as dense as lead. When it punches through concrete bunkers, armour, or mud huts, DU disintegrates into a chemically toxic and radioactive dust. In contrast to the earlier DU weapons used in Gulf War I, the newer ordinance produced deaths and deformities within weeks of the start of military action by the CoW. Between 1990-91 and 2001 the US arms manufacturers are thought to have "improved" the DU technology by introducing milled uranium ore to their warheads. This non-depleted uranium (NDU) is - wait for it - cheaper to produce and far more potent than DU. It poses massive health risks to civilian populations exposed to it, and constitutes, in every sense of the word, a weapon of mass destruction, or WMD. "Hey they're hunting them in Iraq, aren't they?"

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/107216.php

2nd Renaissance -9

The Old World Order will not do anything to smooth the path to a Level 4 Civilization, and a better world. On the contrary, they will do whatever they can to make it difficult. The police, the military, the media, the financial system, the rule of law, and all the mechanisms of civil control and surveillance will be mobilised in defence of the status quo. But, once they understand their options, the people of the world will not engage in a battle with the forces of the OWO. They will simply abandon the old way of living under national rule, for a better, freer, life in new tribal societies. Kinship mechanisms will help people cope with the pressures of official opposition to radical changes that will finally enable them to escape the invisible prison that the OWO had fashioned around them.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/107047.php

2nd Renaissance -8

Ultimately the old order will lose the battle to preserve their privileged way of life, based on all prevailing scarcity, pseudo-democracy, and the rule of law. But in the interim, hundreds of millions of innocent people might lose their lives in bloody resistance to the changes being made by the Old World Order (OWO).. If such a terrible thing happens, it will all have been for nothing, because:

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/106816.php

Tales of Adam
Daniel Quinn*
http://ishmael.com/index1.cfm

2nd Renaissance -7

When coupled with the introduction of artificial scarcity and taker concepts of property ownership and legal tender, Western death-fearing religions played a significant role in subduing, otherwise independent, tribal peoples.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/106537.php

2nd Renaissance -6

The second route involves the setting up of entirely new living spaces on tribal lands that were previously seized by colonising governments that espoused and followed Taker philosophies. This route has greater credibility, in the sense of secession rights, where clear historical ownership of the land can be shown.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/106327.php

2nd Renaissance -5

Quinn contends that while governments can imagine a revolution they can't imagine abandonment. As he puts it, "..even if it could imagine abandonment , it couldn't defend against it, because abandonment isn't an attack, it's just a discontinuance of support."

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/106136.php

2nd Renaissance -4

In due course, there is one achievement of overriding significance that Caral might well provide. One great contribution or lesson that can be applied to the 2nd Renaissance. How to live in peace, with spiritual meaning, and without warfare, for a thousand years.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/105935.php

The New Renaissance
Daniel Quinn*

http://www.mnforsustain.org/quinn_d_new_renaissance.htm

2nd Renaissance -3

Plichta writes of this model as follows. "There was a time I used to make fun of the Apocalypse of St John and believed it to be a totally unreliable historical source. Today I am filled with deep humility, perhaps because I am now able to give a concrete description of the foundation of the world as seen by St John with my mathematical discoveries, and thus possibly open a new way to all of humanity which has now reached a dead end."

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/105799.php

2nd Renaissance -2

Georg Cantor (1845-1918), by his origination of modern set theory and his studies of the nature of infinity, left science a valuable legacy. Cantor was regularly admitted to a psychiatric clinic within the University of Halle, in Germany, where he lectured and worked as a Professor of Mathematics. On each occasion that he became ill he had been thinking about infinity and the continuum hypothesis. Such intense thought, at the boundaries of his comprehension, caused Cantor to suffer repeated mental breakdowns. Infinity drove him mad.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/105634.php

2nd Renaissance

This story was published in September 2004 and it was a big secret. I received it on disk but I think it should be public by now anyway. It is interesting to look back at it and in terms of today's world some two years on. I will link each chapter as I go along over the coming weeks.- The Old World Order - Happy reading!

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/105519.php

Fight Iemma - Debnam

All they can say is 'lock em up'

It seems we are in the thick of it again - the stupid, heartless "Law & Order" auction.

Premier Morris Iemma and Opposition leader Peter Debnam are trying to outdo each other with idiotic "tough on crime" policies.

Original Article
http://oldsydimc.cat.org.au/front.php3?article_id=64701