SPEEDING UP THE
TRANSFORMATION
Journal of a Futurist, 9 July 2007

Hello & goodbye. No, I don't quite mean that. There's a new site in town. It distils the best of the web and provides fresh and original content from a diverse range of contributors. HomepageDAILY is updated every midnight, hence its name. It is still a beta site, an excuse for making mistakes, and it will evolve as we go. Why bother? Because today everything seems to be coming together and falling apart simultaneously, as a new reality reveals itself. Numerous voices are needed to help in this global transformation, and it's time to move beyond solitary blogs. This site will continue as usual in its disorganized way, but I also want work with a team.

While many are aware we are shifting from the industrial era to the age of ecology, transparency and creativity, politicians cling to an imperial paradigm, focused on resource wars, growth-at-all-costs and Biblical fairy tales. These could have been glory days for mainstream media, if they had resisted cheap patriotism and championed truth and justice. What if they had pursued war criminals in high office, or campaigned against cluster bombs, renditions, or torture? But no, they chose to embed themselves with the perpetrators, leaving Amnesty, Seymour Hersh and the blogs to flush out the facts. What if the mainstream had been quicker to recognize the threat of climate change and the folly of invading Iraq?

Even today, Murdoch editorialists are warmongering around the clock: “Anybody who argues we should evacuate Iraq does Australia's national interest, and that of all opponents of Islamist terror a great deal of harm”. This is the mentality that led to the wrecking of the West's reputation and the mushrooming of terror. Now they applaud the theft of civil liberties. Britain has asked its people to be "a little bit un-British" and inform on each other. At least the New York Times has come to its senses, urging the US to leave Iraq, “without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit”, admitting the cause is lost and that the invasion has “created a new stronghold” for terrorism.

Artist: Zoran Velimanovic

LOCKED IN THE FORTRESS

Mass media obtuseness has served to multiply the range of alternative voices. A million tongues wagging on the web, a million eyes glued to incriminating videos. Cyberspace is a tower of Babel, and a network of truth telling at the speed of light. Essentially, this is a digital version of Indra's net, stretching indefinitely in all directions, which "speaks to the hidden interconnectedness and interdependency of everything and everyone in the universe." It is the future.

How scary and thrilling to be living in a time when this ancient insight is being understood. We are what we think. Waste equals food. Continuous innovation. A new concept of the common good….helping each other succeed. Self-organizing with constant feedback. Living systems as models for society. Webs and networks are central. Seeking to be self reliant, self empowered and “off the grid”. Fair trade. Micro lending. Salary caps. Open source. Life after fossil fuels... On it goes, the overdue blooming of a post-modern mental ecology that is vital to restoring planetary health and humanity's sanity. The Old Guard is still locked in the fortress turning back clocks , but it's too late to stop now.

A WHOLE LOTTA MONEY

Some say the future will be a Long Emergency, while others foresee a Long Boom. Isn't it likely to be both? Arms dealers in gold plated Lear jets serving Bollinger to presidents, while the rest of us dirty our hands in the backyard vegie patch. Social injustice is escalating so rapidly, that when the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, was asked how he felt about bank execs getting an annual bonus of $30 million, his tongue turned to lead. "It's a lot of money", he said, several times, "a lot of money, you bet". The interviewer wanted more, and got this: "But I'm still a great believer in the capitalist system". Thanks John, that's helpful. End of discussion. Like my laptop, the Australian nation is quick to revert to sleep mode.

Artist: Robert Williams

You can't blame us, really. Signs of Alzheimer's are leeching into the national psyche, boosted by Government spoon feeding of lies, platitudes and fear mongering, three times a day after meals. Everyone is supposed to sleep soundly on Howard's watch, oblivious to the crimes committed at darkness.

The perils ahead are breathtaking, but so is the surge of creativity and social awareness among people not blinkered by a need to win fortunes or votes. Fundamentalism of any kind, whether market, Marxist or military, is a curse upon the world.

As for HPD, the proof is in the pudding. Sample these stories:

Paternalism, Petrol and Paedophilia

Is my doctor a terrorist?

It's the Crude Dude

Rushdie, Packer, Padma and Vanity Fair

IS THIS MAN A
PSYCHOPATH?

U.S. General Dan McNeill

Certainly. And he's on our side. Following his appointment as commander of NATO's forces in Afghanistan earlier this year, U.S. General Dan McNeill devised a daring new strategy to defeat the Taliban. He would beat them at their own game. That's why today marks an important milestone for General McNeill - “Bomber” to his troops - because his goal has been achieved. Although mocked by British officers for overuse of air power, McNeill proved its effectiveness within days of taking up his post. Air strikes hit homes in the Kapisa province north of Kabul, killing nine people from four generations of a local family, including a 6-month-old child. The usual complaints erupted from human rights fanatics and the lily livered Dutch, but McNeil held his ground.

It was the fault of civilians for living in populated areas, explained Lt. Col. David Accetta at the time, areas that can provide a shelter for Taliban on the run. So homes were “targeted and hit." This was the first clue to the McNeil plan. Among the corpses found in the mud brick rubble at Kapissa in March, were four women, four children under 5 years old, and an 80-year-old man. The Bomber's tactic was on track. The gloves were off. Over the next three months, NATO would set out to prove that its air force could kill more civilians than the number achieved by the Taliban.

But it wasn't easy. The British and Dutch were reluctant to accept the mission, fretting about civilian blood. (General McNeil is a veteran of Vietnam). Some experts spread rumours that the flurry of attacks by US aircraft was “indiscriminate”, but that was the point. Others argued the strategy violated the Geneva provision that parties to conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives (Article 48, 1977 addition to, Part IV). However, as the US Attorney General Gonzales had dismissed the Geneva Conventions as quaint, who cared?

PHOTOS STOLEN AT GUNPOINT

McNeil welcomed input from other services. After the aerial slaughter in Kapisa, a convoy of Marines who were fleeing an ambush east of Kabul, started shooting wildly at the highway traffic. Their score was 19 civilians dead and 50 wounded. Afterwards, US soldiers confiscated photos of the incident at gun point.

In the past few months civilian injuries and deaths have been reported every few days, although Western sources report the numbers are often exaggerated - Chicago Tribune,

A bizarre kill was achieved on June 12, when US troops destroyed a police checkpoint east of Kabul and called in attack aircraft. Seven Afghani police were killed and four wounded. Shredded and bloodstained police gear littered the crash scene. "We are here to protect and serve the Afghan government, but the Americans have come to kill us," said Khan Mohammad, a policemen who felt he was under attack by the Taliban.

Six days later, McNeil's jets bombed a compound suspected of housing al-Qaida militants in eastern Afghanistan, netting seven children. President Hamid Karzai condemned foreign forces for careless 'use of extreme force' and for viewing Afghan lives as 'cheap', but this didn't deter the mission. The following day NATO forces fired a rocket into a building in Pakistan and notched up another tally of civilians - a child, a woman and seven men. Pakistan military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said his country demanded an explanation, but no-one was listening. In the body bag stakes, NATO and the Taliban were now neck and neck. A puzzled Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Secretary-General, came to Kabul to slow Mc Neill's hand, but it was too late for that.

SWORD AND SHIELD THAT GUARDS AMERICA

NATO planes struck again at the end of June in Hyderabad, in the remote Girishk district, killing numerous villagers, including women children. "Six houses have been bombed, three of them have been reduced to rubble," a local named Feda Mohammad said, claiming about 100 had been killed or wounded. "People are still busy bringing out the dead from under the rubble, there are funerals at various places. A local member of parliament, Wali Khan, said “the Taliban were far away from there”. He warned that continued slaughter of civilians will spark revolt against the Afghan government.

Local Police said 25 civilians were killed in air strikes in the same area the week before, including nine women and three young children.

Hamid Karzai said "indiscriminate and unprecise" operations by foreign forces could no longer be tolerated, but his voice was drowned out by this year's Independence Day address delivered by the Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley, which urged American Airman to be proud of their calling:

Artist: Heidi Taillefer

"Wherever you are on our nation's 231st birthday, have a safe and enjoyable holiday, and take pride in knowing that you are a member of the finest Air Force the world has ever known! Your service provides the sword and shield that guard our nation, its interests, and ideals throughout the world. On this Independence Day be proud to be an American Airman -- a warrior who has answered our nation's call to fly, fight and win.

And win they did. This weekend it was confirmed that US troops and their NATO allies have out killed more civilians than the insurgents. UN and local rights groups tallied 314 civilians killed by McNeil's forces and 279 killed by the Taliban and associates. Congratulations, Bomber, enjoy your victory.

AUSTRALIAN AIR CREWS ASSISTED

Except of course, it isn't a victory. Every dead civilian recruits 5 more locals for the Taliban. This will provide an excuse for continued US presence in the region and plenty more Afghanis to use as targets.

Even if Bomber McNeill is arrested for war crimes, such insane attacks will continue. It is what the air force does. That its' enemy lacks warplanes only intensifies its savagery. In bloodless bureaucratic prose, the official site of the US air force reports around 40 sorties each day in Afghanistan (90 in Iraq), which involve the extermination of [suspected] insurgents in tree lines and family compounds. Example: “July 507: F-15Es hit an enemy mortar position with GBU-38s near Kajaki Dam. The JTAC reported the weapons hit their intended target. The pilots also conducted a show of force to try and flush out any insurgents still in the area… aircrews also strafed enemies in a tree line”, etc. C-130 crews from Australia assisted in such attacks, despite Canberra's assurance that its mission is one of “restoring infrastructure”.

Western commanders say any comparison of casualties caused by Western forces and by the Taliban is unfair because there is a clear moral distinction between accidental deaths from combat operations and deliberate killings of innocents by militants. This is claptrap. When invading an impoverished land peopled by extended families with interlocking tribal loyalties, the world's mightiest air power has an obligation to proceed with respect and restraint. Alas, this it failed to do, as it has failed to do in previous wars.

The killings of civilians cannot be excused as regrettable “accidents”. They may not have been intentional, but they arise from a military culture that makes such casualties inevitable. In their hearts, the officers know this. It is why they don't do body counts. It is why in the daily reports hundreds of bombing raids, you'll never see any mention of death.

Artist: Robert Williams

Artwork by Jim Anderson who also embellished the psychedelic images below.

THE RISE AND FALL
OF FLOWER POWER
Journal of a Futurist, 2 June 2007

Were the hippies right? It is tempting to think so in this age of ecocide and terror. “Remember when we used to hang out and talk to each other”, said a barely remembered friend as our paths merged at airport security. In Bali in '71 she had been Queen of Kuta beach. Both of us are time bankrupts now, like thousands of others who once scoffed at 'the system' and tweaked their lifestyles to the phases of the moon, contemplating Herman Hesse and organic fruit, trailing clouds of pot. We stretched to excess the concept of a misspent youth.

The world moved on and so did we, eventually. Parenthood, credit cards, mortgages, the whole shebang. The despised shopping mall was suddenly convenient. Disposable nappies a godsend. The CD/cupholder equipped Subaru never broke down. Our rage against the consumer society softened to a lullaby. Sure, we still supported Adbusters, Greenpeace and the right to strike, but the society of the spectacle seeped into everyday life and the dream of getting rich quick no longer seemed crass. Anyway, you needed the bread to pay the fares to fly to the conferences to learn how the world was endangered by toxic emissions, made worse by flights to conferences.

Our kitchen equipment got shinier and blood pressures rose, along with the intake of drugs. Boring drugs. Cholesterol reducing statins have zero capacity to intensify music or orgasms. We try to run groovy little businesses and get excited about Office Works, letting the latest novels lie by the bed as we cope with the mountain of paperwork thrust on our desks from the Government, who've turned us into a nation of tax collectors, much to the satisfaction of politicians who spend the loot on lavish TV ads to push their agendas. Numbing us with platitudes and workaholia. Which is probably why my email has lately been bombarded with links to a splendid column in the San Francisco Chronicle, Why the Hippies were Right.

TAKING THE TIE DYED
BANNER TO THE DEVILS LAIR

From where comes “all this hot enthusiasm for healing the planet”, asks Mark Morford, and “eating whole foods and avoiding chemicals and working with nature and developing the self? Came from the hippies. Alternative health? Hippies. Green cotton? Hippies. Reclaimed wood? Recycling? Humane treatment of animals? Medical pot? Alternative energy? Natural childbirth? Non-GMA seeds? It came from the granola types (who, of course, absorbed much of it from ancient cultures), from the alternative worldviews, from the underground and the sidelines and from far off the goddamn grid and it's about time the media, the politicians, the culture as a whole sent out a big, wet, hemp-covered apology.” Not a chance Mark, not in Australia, where the Government still hasn't apologised to the aboriginals for colonising their land in1788 and later acquiring their children by force.

Anyway, the hippies have no need of an apology, as the belated adoption of their ideas is sufficient reward. Also, the legacy of hippiedom is not unblemished. Take another look at celluloid fantasies, like Easy Rider, or Hair: the sexism & self indulgence will make you cringe. Hippies helped loosen up of sexuality, but this too has been pushed by pornographers to a level of brutality unforseen by mellow peaceniks.

Still, in the face of climate fears, unlikely figures are emerging from the closet of hippiedom. At an ideas summit, the father of artificial intelligence, Ray Kurzweil, unburdened himself of his flower power past. Rupert Murdoch is carrying the tie dyed banner into the future, with his embrace of yoga and carbon neutrality. Both the Australian Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition are in a race to sit at the feet of his Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Watch for more hippie re-birthings as the 40th anniversary of 1967's Summer of Love looms into view.

THE ODIOUS OPERATION OF THE MACHINE

The counter culture evolved through three stages: student power, flower power and peoples power. The Free Speech Movement sprang from of the university campus at Berkeley, California in the early sixties, as a result of attempts to stifle political discourse, and it set helped off a spirit protest that re-shaped the West. The Berkeley uprising mysteriously coincided with “anti establishment” protests in London, and again in far away Sydney, where students and academics rose up to eradicate censorship. By the end of the decade, the protest agenda had widened and the 30,000 demonstrators in Berkeley who marched to rescue a community-created park from the jaws of developers, were armed with peace signs, 30,000 daisies and a huge banner: LET A THOUSAND PARKS BLOOM.

In 1973, a sarong-wearing delegate at a huge lifestyle festival in the rural town of Nimbin, Australia, reported he was “on full alert to avoid committing such eco atrocities as soaping myself in the creek or driving a car to the campsite.

Each of us took our rubbish to the depot, sorting it as: glass, metal, compost, or paper. After accidentally tossing an apple-core into the bin marked 'metal', I spent ten minutes feeling guilty, then rummaged within. That's how Nimbin got to you.” But not to everyone. It took another 35 years, a thousand scientists and Al Gore to ram home the message of sustainability. Why? Because the hippies had no power and the politicians had no wisdom.

By the mid seventies it was time for counter culturalists to leave the playpen. The flares and beads went into the attic, babies were raised, jobs conquered. Despite the outlandish episodes of the past, not all the insights fell into disrepute. If anything, ecological passions deepened over the years as the coral turned white and shopping became a religion. Hippies who ascended the corporate ladder often retained their formative inclinations; voting green, eating organic and reducing emissions, even as the Dark Ages dawned. And what Dark Ages they have become, especially in nations that put a match to Iraq: Britain, America and Australia. To steal their oil fields, we created the killing fields.

YOU DON'T NEED KAFTANS

While our complicity in this tragedy is an open book, its impact on the soul of conspirator nations is still unfolding. Blair has fled, Bush is sinking and John Howard remains indifferent to the enormity of his crime - both against Iraq, and against nature. In these final months of his power, it is like living in the land of the dead. Australia still has its literary festivals, fine wine and some spirited dissent but, do I need to spell it out? Howard puts nuclear before renewables and prayer before climate science. We turn a blind eye to torture. We mistreat asylum seekers. We withdraw funds from aid and welfare groups which criticise the Government. We stack our cultural boards with toadies, we deport pacifist radicals, we prosecute whistle blowers … and so on, fostering a culture of dull compliance. When I phoned the literary editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, she seemed delighted when I offered to review a book, until I mentioned the author's name. “Our policy is not to review John Pilger”, came the reply. A little thing to be sure, but as Kitty Kallen so sweetly sang, Little Things Mean a Lot. And now the leader of the opposition, Kevin Rudd, is turning himself into Howard's doppelganger, in the tragic belief it will appeal to the TV addled heartland.

Yet on the whole, Australians are starting to wake up. In the next election there is a fighting chance the Government will be overthrown. The impact of this is hard to predict, but it is unlikely to lead to a Summer of Love.

POST SCRIPT

An extract from the speech delivered by activist Mario Savio to the striking students at Berkeley in 1964: “There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” And it was. The machine was wrecked by an uprising of youth, the moral equivalent of an Improvised Explosive Device. Today we suffer a sinister war, restrictions on speech, fundamentalist nuttiness and the defilement of Earth. Tick, tick, tick ….

Footage of Savio's speech is here: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/VideoTest/msavio.ram

An obituary here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1996/11/08/DD46441.DTL

Mario Savio, Berkeley, 1964.

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