Across The Tracks and Through The Looking Glass

My apologies for not updating my blog for a few months but I have had more ‘computer problems’.

I have yet again been the victim of a targeted hacking attack by representatives of the “urban art cartel” those heroic, freedom loving, anti surveillance, pro human rights, pro individualist, champions of the outsider, the dispossessed and downtrodden yes those guys, who this time even sent me a “greeting card”.

However this has proved to be yet another, albeit significant milestone in a catalogue of Pyrric Victories in the cartel’s campaign of monopolist domination through intimidation, censorship, hacking, threats, mismanagement, smears and stalking against myself and other artists,  webmasters and dissenters, in total diametric opposition to their carefully crafted projected personas. 

They accessed files detailing the full extent of all events, which I have methodically  accumulated and set down, and as such, would seem to indicate people’s involvement, directly and indirectly, in  the campaign against our intended gallery in Brick Lane showing visionary fine painting by oldskool London train writers.

As a result certain key players in this campaign have since taken significant steps  to distance themselves and attempted to forge alliances via a charm offensive. Others have continued the threats, re-enforcing a hundredfold  the resolve of myself and my allies.

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
Buddha

They also accessed material I had been preparing for LSD magazine and attempted to negate the value of its’ content ……I withdrew the piece from the magazine.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

Abraham Lincoln, (attributed) 16th president of US (1809 – 1865)

On that note I’ll hand over to the stunning intro written by the publishers, those wily wordsmiths and enlightened empaths, those pioneers of freedom in deed and thought, Wayne Anthony (Class of 88) and Sirius 23; to the current issue of the planet’s finest mag, which you will find embedded below for your reading pleasure…..

As the creaking autocracies of the Middle East and North Africa rumble, stumble and begin to tumble, we are assured by breathless commentators worldwide that the internet has finally come of age as a political weapon, and that social networking channelled through the prism of protest has heralded a glinting, nascent dawn in people power, connectivity and a new egalitarianism in which traditional hierarchies dissolve into the digital.

There can be no doubt that we are entering a new paradigm in human interaction and the chemical bonds that held 20th century conceptions of society together are slowly turning liquid in the virtual flame. Formal institutions, unions, and rigid organisational frameworks are being relentlessly subsumed by the underlying laws of physics – that a cloud of cosmic matter will inexorably and exponentially begin to self organise into an ever more complex organic system. And thus we see the chaotic platform, the medium, the base elements of the internet attract into ripples of order so sophisticated, we’d tip our hats to God for such intricate design if we weren’t already kneeling before the empowerment of the Enlightenment.

The tiniest act can start a revolution or end up valued at $25 billion with virtually no investment, no permission and no control. In the biting irony of our times, the most resolute, sophisticated and well funded control structures in the world have given birth to an open source reality where physical dominion is all but vaporised and individuals have a potential power never before witnessed in history. Geography is looking like a dated relic of a clumsy 3 dimensional age, sub cultures coalesce in a quantum vortex of cyberspace, magazines like this are possible, artists and musicians go viral and local expression suddenly has global reach.

And yet we have to be more vigilant than ever before. It is certainly true that in the recent sweeping seismic shifts in the Arab world, social networking has been used to an extraordinarily powerful end, and the internet has been used to turn heavy handed censorship and 20thcentury bullying tactics on their head. But can we really say the same for the West?

The online profile most of us hold so dear may be the triumph of the world according to advertising. We may deplore the numb acquiescence that has seen the hysterical corporatisation of our public spaces and claim to despise the capitalist constructs of aspirational advertising, but whether we like it or not, our egos have in many ways seized the day. The sudden ability to control public perceptions of our identity have encouraged us to see the world through the spectrum of advertising and present who we would like to be to the outside world far more effectively than many of us can manage in person. Of course we have always advertised in some sense – fashion alone wins that argument, but as we encounter the multi dimensional realities of information and connectivity, are we missing out on new, non linear, synapse shattering angles of perception through which to hone our interpretations of reality.

The internet was once seen as the absolute victory of the individual and the subculture over the vertical structures of ‘old’ society, and even now, the war being spoken of is the power of corporations and governments to pressure threats such as Wikileaks by terminating access to digital funding and host servers. But it is critically important never to underestimate the shifting nature of control, and the real threat that faces us all. Repression, oppression and the ham fisted simplicity of shutting down organisations and banning dissent may be losing the battle against the virtual in the old school militaristic regimes of the Middle East, but in the West, that kind of identifiable enemy is the least of our worries. Infinitely more ingenious is the new, equally virtual form of mass manipulation….unrestrained freedom.

Take one part sense of security and blend vigorously with the skin deep sincerity of advertising culture and you have an endless stream of freely shared subversive opinion that results in very little beyond self congratulation within the subculture.

We can Save the Whales, Support the Myanmar Monks, protest against local gentrification and register our disapproval of swingeing budget cuts all in 5 minutes on Facebook. We’ve made a difference, we’ve presented a gleaming hologram of our better selves and as the armchair militancy of the comments come rolling in, we can all bask in the glow of our own power without ever actually doing anything. As long as we can talk about it and let the world know where we stand – that’s us done for the day – let’s get some youtube vids on the go. There’s nothing quite like the sense of being free to render you completely ineffective.

None of this is to dismiss the awesome power of the internet and social networking – this magazine would be a hollow idea and nothing more without them. And obviously there is nothing wrong with defining your online identity through what you wish for yourself rather than who you actually are at work on a rainy Tuesday.

Support the Whales – great – not everyone can fight pitched naval battles with Greenpeace. There is no conclusion, there is no answer…just an awful lot of questions that it’s so tempting to forget we should ask.

And the overriding, fundamental aspect of this and any social and political debate is summed up by Faust’s greatest biographer, Goethe… ‘None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.’

Control is a serpentine, shape shifting force that defies categorization and often exists as a self organizing system itself – almost as a form of social gravity rather than necessarily within nefarious individuals, and it is never, ever as visceral as when we surrender to it unknowingly and voluntarily.

The might of a thousand invading armies will never have the same raw, magnetic, all conquering hypnosis as a dose of consumerism and the expression of your own personal consciousness through a colonial language you always assumed was your own.

On that note – let’s GO

Wayne Anthony (Class of 88) and Sirius 23

See my article on CENSORSHIP on page 232 and I interview anarcho punk legends the Disrupters and Prem Nick on page 380, plus there’s the usual array underground talent from around the globe…….

The history of humanity is an ever changing progression of ideals and achievements, tempered with a shameful, but inherent catalogue of atrocity and tyranny. The towering monuments to history’s human story are written in change.

To presume stability is to ignore the human spirit.  To languish on ones laurels in decadence is to  jettison awareness of the stark privations of those who unwillingly give life to such through their very existence.

Pride and prejudice are the barricades to freedom manned by those who follow blindly the architects of tyranny,  tempered by the affirmation of the established, unquestioning blind eyes and insulated from reality by loyalty, and perceived  safety in numbers, rewarded by belonging and affirmation within the group. Such is the way of the bully.

Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous.
William Wells Brown

In the new Egypt we find a new signpost to change that towers above previous maps that offer passage at a price of humility and quiet patience, only a fool would presume that arrival at its destination was guaranteed,   however a transformation of the very essence of human spirit itself has occured today in Tahrir Square, elevating it to a new plain. Never again will any tyrant sleep so soundly or will ‘Inquisitorial’ terrorist tactics, the domination of the intellectual world through the physical, be a steadfast  guarantee of blind obedience.

One solitary voice, that of a poor man who was prevented from selling his vegetables by regime thugs, catalysed the upending of a vast geopolitical region and iron-rooted dynasty in the most resource rich, strategically vital area on the planet. The right of a poor man to put bread on his table by trading the fruits of his own labours is the most very basic of all human rights, to deny this is wicked beyond words and all who aid and abet such a vile atrocity are rightfully implicated in any just logic. Good, decent, ordinary people despise such tyranny, and abhor dishonesty and betrayal, anger at the regime was pre-loaded by misdeed, the shout was loud, the call was answered and grievance heard.

Perpetuating such deeds, the meat grinders and ‘garbage’ disposal systems of terrorist states of the world will continue their grim task, as they once did at Treblinka, Kolyma, Cambodia and do still  at Guantanamo, however something has changed that will be remembered forever in the story of humanity, human dignity will now absolutely demand the freedom to be.

How could anyone, knowing as they did the tortures that awaited them at the hands of the Mukhabarat, still risk that by going onto the street and demanding an end to such tyranny? Each of those protestors you saw on the news had that at the forefront of their consciousness,  yet still they went, in fact that is why they went, emboldened by thirty years of such tyranny, still they gave their easily traceable names to foreign media ‘spies’. Every syllable uttered knowing the hell that may await, but speak, nay shout, they did, all the louder until their fury wailed and sobbed at the vile injustice of their undeserved fear. The threats and violence worked against their perpetrators, by exponentially increasing the resolve of the oppressed and destroying any credibility of their oppressors.

Human dignity,  privacy and freedom of opinion and expression must never be left for tyrants to decide, it is better to have one moment of freedom and heartfelt voice than to shudder under the skewed morality, greed, censorship, cronyism and doublespeak of a redundant elite, for a lifetime of obedient quietude, for that is no life at all. We would do well to take courage from the martyrs of Tahrir Square; those unwilling combatants, those peaceful brothers and sisters of the revolution who protected it so valiantly against the armed and organised thugs of a dying empire, those doctors, lawyers, labourers, artists, professors, homeless beggars, women and children who through their blood and tears changed the world forever, and leave an eternal example to all who truly value humanity and cherish freedom.

America, what price have you demanded from these hitherto voiceless millions in your aspirations? Your joyous fanfare of democracy  that excuses, and justifies your acts of war becomes an awkward silence in the face of the actuality of human endeavor and aspiration. Surely even Pharoah’s pyramids, themselves a monument to tyranny, recede into the desert as a dune in the wind in the shadow of the noble Egyptian peoples towering achievement today.

Even now Mubarak and his regime are thinking of how they may have done things differently, how if they had been more liberal with freedoms, a little less greedy then maybe things would be better for them…

A new beginning , a journey into the unknown is infinitely better than no journey at all, the great and proud people of Egypt cornered, repressed and starved and sadistically bullied had no choice and took their only option; change will, like the ripples on a pond carry far and wide for better or for worse, such is the thirst for freedom, such is the nature of the human spirit, such is the way of this new dawn.

The genie is out of the bottle, try as the oppressors might they will never put it back.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called

John Stuart Mill

Photographs of Tahrir Square 12th February 2011 used under Creative Commons and taken by sierragoddess many thanks.

See more amazing photographs….

http://www.sierragoddess.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sierragoddess/