Social networks, social revolution

All Quiet on the Western Front

There's no war here. Not overtly, no soldiers in the streets, no tanks. But Sony corp wants your browsing information if you view any sites or videos about jailbreaking PS3s. American corporations want to drive our wages down until competitive with China and India. Companies are hiring less, making more profit and paying less for healthcare, but there's no war here.

No AK-47 pointed at me in the grocery store, but I pay more for food. No watchtower, no soldier at a checkpoint, but the RealID Act could prevent me from entering a government building or an airplane. There's less and less debate every election cycle: the GOP will send six battalions overseas, but the Democrats will only send a half dozen. Republicans will gut union rights, Dems say "we" must make sacrifices and then give tax cuts to rich.

That's why I take such joy in the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. People want what a responsible government is suppose to deliver. And the kicker is the way they are going about it is a form of direct democracy. I hope historians are watching Al Jazeera and taking notes. Kids in the West may need them one day.

Photo: The corner taken w/ iPhone 3GS, Hipstamatic app (Lucifer VI lens, Alfred Infrared film, Cadet Blue Gel flash)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The Tweet Who Sat by the Door

They closed the door in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya - in hopes that descent could be curtailed without Facebook or Twitter. But the Internet is just a tool, not the source of descent. If the human spirit is sicken by oppression, then it will heal itself using all matter of resistance.

You see, protests are just the human collective healing itself from the disease of bad governance. Oppression is a malignancy in human culture. The antibodies are the activists, the freedom fighters, the revolutionaries (sometimes even politicians). The more they are killed, the more they are produced. It's a reaction to the infection of intolerance, poverty, brutality. Lack of freedom is cancer.

While military intervention is the chemotherapy of Failed States, but it's far better for the body politic to heal itself through peaceful resistance. Since chemo can kill as many pro-democratic actors as it does provocateurs, it's a gamble some states like Egypt aren't willing to take.

Photo: Clear 4G Hotspot taken w/ iPhone 3GS, Hipstamatic app (Chunky, Blanko)

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Cream, Two sugars

Is this what they want? Caffeine and emails? A rat race or democracy? In the West, we tend to think it's the same thing. For how can you have the right to vote without the right to purchase?

In America, the tectonic shifting of rich and the government, keep middle class houses under threat. Is this what they want? In Egypt, Tunisia, etc, do they just want the right to choose which elite will rule over them? Is the experiment they seek possible? How do they build a republic without republicans becoming corrupt?

The challenge we face in the West is corporations perverting our democracy. First it was rich land owners that made the laws, now corporations want to run the society like sweat shop: minimum regulations, low wages and no unions. Hope the family in the Middle East can improve on what we call democracy.

Photo: Too expensive coffee and mobile taken w/ iPhone 3GS, Hipstamatic app (Lucefer VI, Blanko Noir, RedEye Gel)

Egyptian Hell

You can really appreciate water in this place. Diamonds are traded for ice cubes here, silk for refreshment.

When a government demands resources like taxes, blood and loyalty, but can't provide food and water, shelter from cold and ignorance. That government should replaced.

When a government commits violence against it's own people, the most grievous violence of poverty, that government should be overthrown.

When clean water is sacrificed for profit, the culture has turned into cancer, eating it's own people to sustain itself.

When education leads to a degree of unemployment worst than the unskilled experience - it's a type of Hell. It's a part of the pit where your books torment you. Your knowledge harasses you.

It's hot in this place, not because of flames but because of embers. Frustration smolders in the mind stealing sleep. Feet pace. There is no comfort.

Here you can not see the sky. Well you can, but it doesn't recognize you. Believing you to an enemy, you get hot rain. Acid that doesn't nourish the soil. Cracks of dry earth appear across your brow. A forehead like a desert floor.

I'm sipping this holy water for my brothers and sisters in Hell. Where demons in police uniforms test your resolve. I sip this cool water and pray for change.

Photo: ice water, taken w/ iPhone 3GS, Hipstamatic app (Kaimal Mark II, Ina's 1935, Cadet Blue Gel)

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Little Wing (for Egypt #Jan25 mvmt)

This guitar is made of blood. Activists write chords to marching feet. Boney, nimble fingers of the Youth, so idealistic because they're fresh from paradise.

January presses skin against steel against wood to make music of this struggle. Bloggers write songs. Political prisoners write songs. Mothers waiting for protesters to come home write suites to a peoples' passion.

If Mubarak breaks our fingers, we play with our tongue, Hendrix style.

Photo: Sylvia, taken w/ iPhone 3GS, Hipstamatic app (Lucifer VI lens, Pistil film)

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Tunisia and Egypt p1

What's my motivation? Voluntary slavery with the hope of owning pieces? I take men and resources, advancing across the board. Hands - invisible corporate hands take comrades in and out of play. I watch people reduced to rooks and pawns giving me the illusion of progress. Tunisia, Egypt peeped the game and started moving on their own. Rejecting the players, the regimes.

So many in America and Europe are restless. The fast food and cable television aren't enough to dim the light of the mind anymore. Pieces are quietly moving on their own in the States. Calls for calm from the State Department may soon be read by Homeland Security. The pawns are getting restless. The rooks are meeting in coffeehouses, knights are moving money overseas.

The only winners are the pieces who don't play. The empty, invisible hands of the Market form a fist at first, then wring themselves before a fearless population. There are calls for calm on the chess board, but nobody is listening.

Photo: my crystal chess board taken w/ my iPhone 3GS, Hipstamatic app (Lucifer VI, Pistil, Cadet Blue Gel)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad