NOVAD FLASHzine Volume n

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OAS Node n: Alessandro Ambrossini's ~SEEYOURSOULWITHATELESCOPE~

[From Ale/OAS Node n]:

Dear Playaz;

Please welcome to our Fibonacci Arena a Italian artist, Mr. Ambrossini! he has a beautiful project called ~SEEYOURSOULWITHATELESCOPE~ which seems incredibly similar to Kaleidoscope, right #jez3prez? :-) it is a project filled with poetry, inviting people to share their greatest dreams. not  consumerist, not necessarily dreams you dream at night but rather dreams that keep you awake and actually keep you going. #OWS is such a dream for many of us, this pluripotential space where we our dreams together trying to make them a reality.  ∞ to ooze #poiesis! ∞  always… :: here is a brief summary ::

~SEEYOURSOULWITHATELESCOPE~

a dream weaver, a dream catcher.   
with a few words (200-400 words) can you share your utmost dream? I believe that dreams can help people and maybe they can change the world a little bit, specially when dreamt together.  if you want you can add some image or video that illustrates your hypothetical, possible or impossible dream ~ even write a poem about your dream. or dreams. 
Would love to have dreams from #OWS. can you share it with me and the world? 

he is a little shy about his English, but there is no need to be shy here my friend. Rafa also speaks Italian pretty well, you guys should definitely Skype! 

He draws and does other media as well. i was thinking about the incredible combo #OAS node 1 + Direct Action Flaneurs + Occupied Stories? :-)  

anyway, let’s make it happen. #OWS could use some dreams to get a bit of #poiesis back on our movement.  

Ale! 

∞

Update on Monday, September 24, 2012 at 10:57PM by admin

Here's my dream…if it is of interest send it along, anywhere...

solidarity,

Chris

Up

Flocks of tamed pigeons

float from a tunnel painted

on the mountainside,

Boulders push their bellies

into the morning light, pear

trees ride the tall grass…

Out on the bay, icebergs drag

their skirts in the summer haze.

Houses slip inch by inch into

the sea as if afraid of the cold.

Occasional breezes stir

The ash and soot falling

In clouds from the east

Somewhere and when they do

The sunlight spotlights

A fellow stepped off the cliff’s

Edge, his legs churning mid-air—

no forward progress, no sudden drop…

Bullets stop at eye-level,

Red clouds pause overhead,

He walks on, not looking

Down, pushing his weight

Into the emptiness that suspends

Him. Pigeons watch with the blank

tranquility of sleep as another

and another steps off, as if

the air beneath their feet held

not space or force or grim

prospects but another kind of

obvious, something worth

the risk of losing , while

others rest…What does it take

to step off the cliff’s edge

when so much is falling:

houses dropping, towns

vanishing in a red sea...

A loud noise sends the flocks

Flying back into the painted dark,

A sudden storm shreds the paper

World, but those who occupy

The edge, the free air, and

The horizon beyond are as

light as baby's breath...

When will they come down?

Maybe soon, maybe never.

Maybe it doesn’t really matter

So long as they persist,

Keep at it, keep going,

Not look up, not look down,

But ahead, taking to air,

everywhere.

#S17 -- year 1 anniversary reflection [OAS Node n /Transmission]

temporary absence from the field of action gives you a good spot to observe spirals. yes, history is a collection of spirals, pendulums that rover. sometimes it is funny my friends, funny how so much intensity can take us time to digest. to overcome a police officer kicking you in the ribs and smiling sadistically is a slow process. one. two. three

~ go 

the choice \\ to #bloom,, to #ooze a fresh movement :: is urgent to be reconciled with......#year1 is done. now, a tad bit of coffee (or tea) and some peace of mind, some books, a humming-bird whistling political literature,, a kiss from your love and we are on our way for #year2. but what is precisely crossing that valley, we still don't know.

in the last months of our movement,, it became clear that it will take nothing more than a philosophic rebellion in #occupy to dissolve the consolidation of power and remove the stench of our stagnated waters :: our ideological springs are contaminated with pus, and became no longer a good source to drink from ........... if we are to thrive as a viable project it is paramount to reject stagnations and seek fresh currents of thought.

to #occupy with our bodies a given space and park there,, pretending that everything is going to be ok because we are there for "as long as we can!" -- is #ostrichism. and the same can be mentioned about refusing debt or domination without refusing to dominate others:: one is not complete without the other.

~ abolition is volition, says the Oracle of Delphi.

sometimes i wonder if we were to "win" or take power. how different our project would actually be? i see organizers,, sympathetic journalist and theoretical gurus still working under a Toyotist paradigm, {{dling! dling!}} ~ JUST IN TIME ~ {{dling! dling!}} :: "hello! we are here to sell you redemption, with the utmost attention to efficiency & results!"{{dling! dling!}} --

or what acid historians call

                  POST-MODERNIST CRAP 

and we BUY IT! efficiency & results! we BUY it! 

#occupy has only one enemy :: ITSELF :: and not because we are blind, unable to see our adversaries marching on us,, hunting us down - it takes more than physical violence to legitimize a dying order. this is clear for everybody with their necks deep enough. we know that THEIR project was discredited after the fall of the Wall in 2008. not even their own priests believe in their bullshit anymore,, and this will always be for our advantage. the greatest threat comes from the obscurity of our own shadows...

the question is if #occupy is "reformable" or will it take a radical departure from the dominating schools of thought in #OWS to break the chains arresting our imagination.

 -- maybe the mirror is a set of questions -- :: despite the Diaspora,, are we dancing revolution freely and with #poiesis, or are we insisting on the same shit? are we adventurous and curious and experimental or are we picking the safe, broad road?

before trying to destroy the Beast (neoliberal state) by clogging its circulatory system (financial capitalism),,

 _ did we ::

(1) prepared something in its place,, a QUOTIDIAN alternative,, or are we making the same mistake of the French Revolution?

 ~~~ the French Terror occupied the vaccum left by decapitations ~~~

_did we ::

(2) realize that we don't need to clash with the state, but rather make it obsolete?

so this is it. #year2 ~

! we more than ever enter a time of self-discovery. maybe #occupy can't be reformed, but this might not be a bad thing :: it takes a while to understand that we can always write history in the way of a wanderer, 

     ~ instead of #settling,

#rooting,

                     ;; instead of #occupying

or  #OCCUPY -- :: maybe just to       #ROVER?

             Happy Birthday family.

Atchu

NOVADIC TRANSMISSIONS No.01∞ [OASN1@BH]

Novadic Transmissions [09.2012]

1.

[From OASN1 embodied spirit, Ambrose Curry: artist, surf guru + poet]

[Part 1][Progression]

You mean this?

when is a participle hanging,...?

when there is wall space .

when is a participle dangling...,?

whenever ee cummings 

says So... Ho.

...ambrose...

never met

 the man.

altho I have been

 arrested.

Ambrose's shop.

SEE THE new OwA ABROSE CURRY PHOTO GALLERY HERE.

[PART 2] [I WAS SO INSPIRED BY YOUR LETTER]

i went out in the yard

and turned on the

prosthetic device...

and now having survived

 building a fire

at the blue campfire,

who builds a fire at

10:30 am,I will now                                              

set to sweating in

the tropical summer heat.

what would Gauguin do?

he certainly wouldn't have to

 look up the spelling of his name

yet he wouldn't have such a fine

prosthetic memory.

Yes he would probaly pop a bottle

of absenthe to forget how to spell

his name to free his creative mind

from worries of the world.

...ambrose...

and then I found this movie set...wow!

Ambrose's movie set.

2.

[From novadic poet & transpershamaformist Richard Machado]

Commons like rivers are hands of love, 
flow transient in the dance of new comrades


Badasses, rads and wholly new beings
emerge from the sensations of home


Amazing tchru native with a living death abated
Now has the rest of the infiniTime Nov-A-d'd


#<---<<O
The Colonized Indigenous

3.

[From Alexandre Carvalho, occupier of both Borges + Cervantes Chairs @OASN1]

Alex at his Liberty Square birthday / bon voyage novadic festival.

∞...

Have been wondering a lot about how we can start a whole new civilization.  Imagine if we started a WikiPedia entry of a mysterious people know as Rovers >>> they have a whole different Architecture, Art, (A)narchives, Ethos, Libraries, Political Frameworks, Direct Actions e.g. Rio+20 "They Don't Represent Us", Housing experiments (Magic Mountain); some crazy shit. good shit. following the flow;;; 

Eliade mentions a concept called "in ilo tempore", a mythological time for humanity where space was relative and time absolute. absent. when archetypes enacted the creation of the cosmos. The anarchical Communa:: an arquipelago-constellation of communes founded on the principles of trust, proximity and solidarity:: interdependent, autonomous and interlinked, they form a fluid network of communes:: the Communa is never static // hence the name communa mobilis. never stops asking questions or changing, acquiring history, becoming... and then it wakes up Communa Fluens:: the Sunflower of the Garden:: 

let's #playtogether with what Luis Borges suggests. Borges  was the author of "Labyrinths", a book that collects many of his short fantastic lit stories. in one of them called Tlon, Uqbar & Orbius Tertiurus, Borges have his two characters in pursuit of a disquieting truth: they must discover if this legendary place called Tlon exists or is a bad joke of a bibliotec prankster. the characters find a strange yellowish copy of a 1907 Encyclopedia Brittanica which contais this weird article about Tlon: it contains its demographics, art, architecture, music, language, history, political configuration, religion, juris, its schools (OAS, e.g.), ethical beliefs, games played, publications (Novad zine) etc etc etc. 

describing Tlon could be an elegant literary license to unleash our best radical dreams publicly; to ooze #poiesis revgamers.   

Tlon - wikipedia. crazy experiment. let me know what you think.

Me and Rafa started writing what the Rovers would probably have economically and in politik. Nicole could do geometry by hoola hooping her spirals?, mitch pour architecture/urbanist rad ideas? #jez3prez, the Anarchives a way rovers write history? 

thoughts?

A.

(#braingasm)

...∞

4.

[From anarchivist, dimensional filmmaker + metatronic mechanic, Bold Jez]:

<draft> The state of nature as a state of play

There is no pure "state of nature"... except for, perhaps, in the invitation to play.  The invitation to play is an opportunity to re-invent the World, not necessarily in its entirety, but certainly some important aspects of its specificity: in its Object(s), Purpose(s) or Rules. These aspects represent the magic circle of Play, the state of a game, and a world that is open to all agents, infinitely beyond and underneath the boundaries of the State.

When Hobbes postulates that prior to the invention of Sovereigns & States existed a natural "state of war," he is inviting us to consider the world in terms of a particular political game. This game is based in fear, power, and security; and for those of us well-educated in the history of Western states, this portrayal of politics should not seem so very strange. (This version of politics, well illustrated in Shakespeare's royal courts, could have informed Hobbes of this well if he did not learn it from his birth; born prematurely when his mother heard of the approach of the Spanish Armada, he remarked that he was born "a twin with fear."

What **IS** strange to us is the possibility of a *return* to anarchy as it were: we feel discomfort at the mere suggestion of returning to nature, the uncertainty of a world w/o governors, the insecurity of our responsibility for maintaining the environment we live in.

Update on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 at 10:44PM by admin

[From Richie]:

This sounds fantastic and ties into a conversation I've been having with Jez & Joe from occupied stories. To create a new civilization -- that's the charge right? Well what better way to do that than with play? With play defining social interactions, and a removal of economics as separate from the natural anarchical way we relate, but to reinvent the power of social currency over property, inheritance, exploitation & just plain-old bad gamesmanship (bosses are such bad gamers, they ain't got no fun in their hearts, no play and no poetry.).

And the exciting part about this venture is that we have an entire WORLD that can be shaped by even the poor, and we don't need the permissions of the bosses. We have the internet. And like myspace, youtube, google, facebook, twitter, email, world of warcraft, all MMOs, and goddamn porn sites, a new order that appears in this world has the potential to send a shockwave across the physical earth, captivating and entrancing whole populations at once. What we're talking about here is a new game. A new social networking interface that is a game at its very heart, one that incorporates reality into to, producing an augmented reality game that reinforces one's physical life, and the physical life reinforces the fun had in the game. If we can achieve this, it will be a break from the current state of MMOs which usually take people further away from the importance of the physical life, or social networks which usually just keep people away from the gaming and playing aspect of social networks because of ego.

I would like to hear back on these points to see if they are resonating. what could the game be called? It seems it's going to be a place, definitely a place, that one could post their achievements in the physical world, and have anyone on the open social network of the game be able to give you points of skill improvement based on how legitimate THEY think your claim is. Exp: I post pictures of me reading a book at different times, and I produce something in response to what I read, like a report or a poem, and someone on the game might see these forms of "proof" and believe I read the book, and possibly giving me a +1 in something like reading and intellect skills. A different person might not need pictures or a poem, they might just believe me when I say I read this book, and they might give me +1 reading and intellect points anyway. This model emphasizes the importance of relative legitimacy, of friendship and trust and also destroys the power-over structures of authentication. Furthermore, if that same person thought that my reading "How to Grow a Rooftop Garden" was beneficial to people or society as a whole in someway, each person would have the option to give some amount of social currency as reward for doing something that was desired. And, If for instance there was a food shortage, reading that book might incline that person to getting some multiple more of social currency, since they are learning to fill some need of society. This model of social currency makes us socially and economically interdependent, and smashes the hierarchy of the state's monopoly on issuing "legitimate" money, since in this game, everyone has the power to issue currency & reward the aspects of society they deem important and necessary. (Smash the philanthropist hierarchy of only the rich being able to make real the things they think should exist in the world.)

This is the preliminary idea for the social network game which has yet to be named. Think Facebook meets World of Warcraft meets the open-source, playnarchy revolution.

ideas?



Update on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 at 12:26PM by admin

Yes! Thanks for cluing me in, Richie.

So Richie and I were talking about gamification recently, of using game design and mechanics do get people to do things in the real world. One game I participated in playing that used this idea was Evoke, which is meant to encourage people to think up innovative ways to solve world problems (the game was sponsored by World Bank which had some people skeptical about the entire thing but that's beside the point--what we care about here are mechanics.)

Evoke worked similarly to what Richie mentions: each week, players would be given a "mission" which would be centered around a world problem--let's go with Richie's initial suggestion of a food shortage. What players then do is a) research this issue, b) propose, make or do an innovation that helps solve this issue; find or volunteer time with a group that is actively trying to fix this problem in the real world and c) do some visioning and imagine your absolute wildest dream of what the future will be in relation to the issue. So given this mission, I might research what the cause of a food shortage somewhere will be, etc. Let's take Richie's idea and say that I'll begin a rooftop garden, so I write my plans and can get feedback from others in the network as to how to best do this. Now let's say I go out and join a rooftop farm--or organize one in my community!

So with each part in the three-part mission, players essentially write a reportback of what they found for each part, and are rewarded with experience points given to them by other players in the network. Here are areas you could gain experience in in Evoke:

    * collaboration
    * creativity
    * knowledge share
    * resourcefulness
    * sustainability
    * courage
    * entrepreneurship
    * local insight
    * spark
    * vision

Richie made great points about an experience/social currency. If people are rewarding others, then people are encouraged to actively pay attention to what others are doing--and on the other side, it's great to see at a glance what your natural area of contribution to the community is (let's say I'm awarded points mostly in "creativity") but you can also see where you might want to improve in a new area ("how can I achieve more 'courage'?") People are assessed strictly by their contribution to the community or their own gains of knowledge that may later be used to help the community.

The Evoke system isn't without things to watch out for, though--would we run into a situation in which some people with more resources than others hold a greater influence of ideas in the community?

But how could we use these ideas in the real world? OWS is great because it essentially gives all the resources and issues Evoke prompted--we have the issues, or "missions" (stop the Spectra pipeline! End homelessness! etcetc) and we have the affinity groups and network to easily mobilize, plan actions, etc that would be ripe for "gaining experience"--we really, I think, would only need to form a system of social currency to encourage people to go out, do stuff, and collaborate where they otherwise might not feel so encouraged.

Would having a system like this help new activists better find a place to begin in the community? Let's say we don't gamify a new society for whatever reason--we can at least gamify a system that educates people what resources we have to make change.

I'm taking an online course currently in gamification, if my IRL classes don't take up all of my time. It's free! So if anyone finds any of this interesting, you might want to check it out. I'll let you guys know of any insight I gain from it if this social currency idea seems interesting.

- Joe

Update on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 at 01:11PM by admin

[From Richie]:

And the sparks of collaboration and imagination begin unstoppable #wildfires...

[From Alex]:

I just added Joe and Danny to the revgames atrium. :-) 

Also, welcome Marisa, my friend and comrade. 

Joe, this is long overdue. Danny, same. would love for us to jam not only in music -- which we already know we can have a great time -- but in poetry and theoretical imagination. RevGames has brought together a brilliant mix of people on its virtual atrium and it is great to see the fluent exchanges!... keep stealing the fire of Zeus, comrades. 

Newbies, we like strategy, play, #theory and #poiesis a lot. not to mention a undying love for literature and its cosmogonic potential. Our discussions are wild and fueled by a flirt with insanity, so please feel free to write your most raw thought, art piece, emotion, political eutopias, and of course, information and scheming in the most poetic sense of Anarchy.  

Would love to hear more about the gamefying of reality. 

Sent from my soul

Update on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 at 04:00PM by admin

Dymaxion map courtesy BFI installed at Wall Street to Main Street's Occupy Reading room (Sam Truitt) 3-17-2012

[From Jenjoy (Part 1)]

 Hi everyone,

Thanks for including me Paul. I started to read the blog and have to throw in Buckminster Fuller's World Game idea. Some people are still trying to employ it, even recently for the London Olympics. Last year some people were trying to commercialize the idea for corporate stakeholders to use as a marketing ploy (aka the IMBs of the world.) I think they're still in R&D mode, yikes! not a fan of that approach. 

Anyway, The World Game was way before it's time and hasn't been actualized in the way Bucky envisioned, primarily because technology wasn't available. However, he predicted much of the networked technology and database capacity we have today and anticipated that it could be done in real time. 

useful here: http://bfi.org/about-bucky/buckys-big-ideas/world-game

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Game

The quick definition:

R. Buckminster Fuller conceived the World Game as an interactive role-playing experience that would teach participants to organize, revitalize and distribute depleted world resources. Relying on computers to provide raw data, players work non-competitively to allocate the earth's natural capital worldwide, scoring points through efficient management. If cooperation degenerates into competition, the first step towards war, the game is lost.  

There is much to mined and consider with this idea. Hope that strikes a chord. 

Best,

JenJoy

Update on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 at 04:07PM by admin

[From Jenjoy (Part 2)]:

Oh and Evoke was heavily influenced by Bucky's World Game. Anyway, in response to the game idea that you all are imagining I would throw in a rhetorical question– what tools/knowledge/technologies are available for people to participate? In this sense the Buckminster Fuller Challenge was a net that gathered some of the best on the planet. You can check out the idea index here: http://challenge.bfi.org/ideaindex

Bucky always said that there is not a manual for spaceship earth. I think the idea index and the Whole Earth Catalog are a response, or an attempt to create one. All that to say is that a really good tool box would need to accompany a game so people could 'win'. 

jj

Update on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 at 10:12PM by admin

Image by Chris Moylan for CO-OP at bj spoke

[Chris Moylan]:

A couple of responses. Love the idea of revolutionary gaming in this manifestation, as in previous. Paul and I brainstormed a game approach back in Jan.-- Google Earth plus Cadcam plus other resources (gaming code and so on) to simulate Occupy taking over a small town. Lots of angles are possible with this--if you were the mayor (Occupy mayor) what would you do? abolish the office? keep the office and do...what... Same for culture in the town, schools, etc. And then what kind of opposition would one encounter? How to respond, etc. Floated this at the school where I teach--the computer profs. loved it, the students didn't line up. Weird. Kind of instructive.

Taking off a bit from what JenJoy said, I think of this in terms of rehearsal and modeling as well as a karmic point system (love that you switched the dynamic from blood and gore to spiritual choices, for want of a better term). With that said, my experience of oppression with Occupy has me feeling conflicted. The angel of my better nature urges passive nonviolent resistance, the Boston boyo in me doesn't like getting smacked by cops and would see some good in Black Bloc strategic rehearsals and scenarios--not violent, but not inclined to back down.

In any event, what is being contemplated in this discussion is the construction of a counter-Matrix. All kinds of things are possible when we take the red pill, including using the instruments of the virtual against themselves.

in solidarity,
Chris

Update on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 at 10:17PM by admin

[AC]:

Folks, just a reminder:

When spiraling upwards, you break binaries. what we create here can serve as raw material for whatever you want. in any event, Paul MacLean is constantly documenting these moments and posting #mosaics of the ideas that ooze out of the discussion. the more the merrier.

%\\

 Dude. DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE. (echo of [dudes... [dude.. [dude. 

That idea that the Direct Action Flaneurs played with, at the inauguration of #Occupational Art S School n1,,,,, that idea of //////// pluripotential spaces is very pertinent to this discussion of a global game. yellow papers with typewriters in the middle of the street. cars passing over them. tire marks, rubber anxiety on the carbon paper. all these are games, microfractures; i think that's it, games are political incisions. what was #holioccupy, if not cuts to make pus drain? or the Salons activating the principle of play?        

           (flow),

                         all these are like outdoor Salons. Shen She Chuen -- style of kung-fu named "Style of the Sacred Serpent" teaches us to "occupy empty". 

WorldGames are perfectly possible since reality is "gamefyable". 

it is not a new idea, Antonin Artaud, the french playwriter that fell to psychiatric illness mentioned in one of his pieces the allegory of the "BodyWithoutOrgans" {Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalism & Schyzophrenia}.  

The term originates from Artaud's radio play "To Have Done with the Judgment of God" (1947): 

\\\\\\\\\\\\ -- When you will have made him a body without organs, then you will have delivered him from all his automatic reactions and restored him to his true freedom. \\\\\\\\\\\\\  -- anarchy to its best

the Body Without Organs (BwO) -- is an embryonic morulla, an ovule fertilized by a spermatozoid just a couple days ago;  it has in itself all the genetic potential to generate a full human being; it is as infinite as it will ever be. the decision, then, is what differentiates. 

atchu

Update on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 at 10:46PM by admin

[From Joseph]: in re: Alex's post above^

Update on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 at 11:11PM by admin

Hey Atchu et al!

Thanks for the warm welcome, and here's the essay you're talking about, actually a playlist with an introductory essay.  I did it as part of the YouTube School of Social Politics, which some here might find interesting generally.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL28678BBA25D4A283&feature=plcp

More soon,

-m

Update on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 at 11:50PM by admin

[AC]:

Crew,

warm welcome to Mark Read, our playful rebel-illuminator!

he is also a scholar of #play, sharing lines of flight with Hakim Bey, Huizinga, etc. had some great Salons together on #Magic Mountain. Mark, feel free to enter the Fibonaci Arena. virtual atrium where you flare your most creative thought. here don't do just #theory; rather do //////#poiesis.

would love if you introduced yourself and maybe send us that amazing #play video piece you've made? relations with what you've experienced in that Salon @Magic Mountain? anyway, feel free

All the best,

Atchu



Update on Thursday, August 30, 2012 at 12:12AM by admin

Foucault, preface, The Order of Things (xvi):

The monstruous quality that runs through Borges's enumeration consists, on the contrary, in the fact that the common ground on which such meetings are possible has itself been destroyed. What is impossible is not the propinquity of the things listed, but the very site on which their propinquity would be possible. The animals '(i) frienzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush' - where could they ever meet, except in the immaterial sound of the voice pronouncing their enumeration, or on the page transcribing it? Where else could they be juxtaposed except in the non-place of language? Yet, though language can spread them before us, it can do so only in the unthinkable space. [+]

We must occupy the unthinkable space, which is the body, the spirit, emotion. This is the habitation of art, its de-occupation. - PJM

Transmission: #Meditations (Borges & Atchu, the Quixote of OWS)

[From Alex]

#Meditations (Borges & Atchu, the Quixote of OWS)

"he comprehended that the effort to mold the incoherent and vertiginous matter dreams are made of was the most arduous task a man                           

              could undertake, though he might penetrate all the enigmas of the upper and lower orders: much more arduous than weaving a rope of                                           sand or coining the faceless wind. he comprehended that an initial failure was inevitable. he swore he would forget the enormous hallucination which                       had misled him at first, and he sought another method."



[revgames] Dandelions on Fire

[From Alex]:

This is what DHS and police do when they repress free speech and collective liberation:

Update on Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 10:42PM by admin

Hundreds Arrested In Massive Crackdown on #Blockupy

May 19, 2012 By Jérôme E. Roos

Jérôme E. Roos's ZSpace Page / ZSpace

Frankfurt on lock-down as over 5.000 police are deployed in an unprecedented operation to keep protesters out of the city and away from the banks.

 

The atmosphere here in Frankfurt is tense. The police are omnipresent. The sound of sirens permeates the city streets.

As I write this, some thousands of protesters are huddled together at the university, pitching tents or simply squatting a place on the ground to try and catch some sleep before tomorrow’s big actions. But as the activists here prepare to physically block the headquarters of the European Central Bank, the police already seem to have done the job for them.

The entire city is on lock-down. Roadblocks sever the main traffic arteries going into the city center. Everywhere, small squads of riot police patrol the streets looking for anyone who looks “suspicious” (i.e., like a potential Leftist). Shops and banks downtown have barricaded their windows with wooden planks, and at almost any random corner you will find a line of police vans, sometimes as many as 50 or 60 parked in a row. It feels like Frankfurt is preparing for civil war.

A few times today, small groups of people tried to make their voices heard by protesting or camping in one of the city’s squares. At some point, over 1,000 gathered in the central square, while later a small tent camp was set up elsewhere. Yet on every single occasion, the protesters were met with thousands of police who quickly cordoned off the squares, forced those present to identify themselves, and then continued by dragging them away one by one.

While German media report at least 150 arrests so far, the actual numbers are likely to be much higher. We have seen dozens of people arrested for “offenses” as simple as being in the wrong place at the wrong time; or carrying around a sleeping bag into the city center. The Italian newspaper Repubblica reports that 100 Italians alone have been arrested; leaving aside the Germans, Greeks, French, and countless other nationalities who have descended upon the city.

 

The Blockupy actions, scheduled to culminate in a large demonstration on Saturday, have already been banned by authorities (a ban that was, bizarrely enough, upheld by the country’s highest constitutional court). In an attempt to enforce this absurd ban, over 5,000 police have been drawn in from across the country. So far, it seems that there are at least 2.5 policemen to every protester in the city. The overreaction of the authorities is truly staggering.

This morning, as we walked towards the central station with four friends, we were stopped by a group of eight riot police who took our IDs, searched our bags and bodies and, after not finding anything suspicious, threatened us with immediate arrest if they found us in the city center again. In other words, not only does the state rudely violate the constitutional right to assembly; it also denies average citizens and independent journalists access to public spaces.

A caravan of three buses coming from Berlin was stopped before even arriving in Frankfurt, and directed straight back to Berlin under police escort. A kettling operation at the train station this morning ensured that those arriving by train could not join others gathering in the city center. Anywhere we tried to go, we literally had to keep an eye out not to run into more riot police and risk being arrested simply for walking in the street. It truly looks like a police state here.

Indeed, in Frankfurt, the financial capital of continental Europe, it feels like democracy has temporarily been put on halt. In the process, the state once again reveals its true nature. In an attempt to protect the city’s powerful banks, millions of euros are expended and basic constitutional rights suspended just to maintain a degree of control over the situation. Yet the intensity of the repression is only likely to further stir frustration among the protesters here.

In the most bizarre twist of all, the German and international media do not appear to be reporting on this extreme situation at all. When hundreds of peaceful protesters are arrested in Russia, our leaders and newspapers are quick to denounce Putin for being a dictator. Yet when it happens in a civilized society and advanced economy like Germany, the peaceful protesters are suddenly denounced as violent criminals — or simply not spoken about at all.

 

Tomorrow we will not only take the struggle to the ECB; we will also fight for our right to protest peacefully, publicly and passionately. We will not be intimidated. We will not be crushed. And most certainly, we will not back down. And even if they crack down on us again — which they will — let it be known that our aims have already been achieved: the financial epicenter of eurocapitalism is completely blocked. And the authorities were kind enough to do it for us.