Memeverse

These days, I keep hearing of people getting jailed for not a very good reason. Wesley Snipes gets jailed for resisting government theft of his well earned property. And now, one close to our geeky hearts, Hans Reiser gets 25 to life in prison for the supposed murder, despite the fact that, as I keep hearing, evidence was merely circumstantial and the key evidence elements are missing (body of the actual victim, for instance).

Mr. Reiser is a weird guy perhaps, outspoken, easily interpreted as rude. Gee.. who else do we know displaying similar traits? Richard Stallman? Theo De Raadt? Let’s jail them all for not fitting the norm of “accepted” social behavior! Or not?

Because, for lack of better evidence, this is what the Reiser case largely comes down to.

And what do we see our fellow geeks do about it? The sheep just take it as it is. A court says he’s a murderer so he must be called a murderer, and that’s where the story ends. I wonder if they’d be so indifferent if it was them who were falsely accused and rotting in prison now, just because their social behavior was interpreted as oh so hurtful towards good men and women in this sheepish western society.

I expected better from a Free Software community, all so adamant in promoting their cause and supposedly “freedom”.

So how about someone gets a god damn hint here and starts questioning? Are there any geeks out there, who are well versed in the intrigues of “law” and have enough respect for a fellow Free Software supporter to actually care if he is being falsely robbed of his freedom or not?

As american F16s circle above my city in this otherwise peaceful night, I am filled with curiosity. I wonder about a man so important to have 3500 secret agents, 600 security officers, 200 armed guards, 2 F16s, one helicopter, an army of Croatian police, AVAX plane, a war boat docked at stand by on the Adriatic, a nearby NATO base on stand by and more.. protecting him. George Bush is a man accused of many things, from countless deaths and chaos in Iraq to pushing the world into this invisible yet potentially devastating and perpetual “war on terror”.

But I wonder.. about a man who hugs a “bunny” while people mourn the deaths of their soldiers in Iraq..

I’ve originally seen this image in a video about his goofs and couldn’t help but think, this “evil” man is.. just a man after all. It’s just that it is hard for people to cut to that point, when there is such a huge layer of blame /associated with him. He is the leader. He has the power to approve starting a war. He has the power to influence the masses, because the masses listen to him. And if the masses suddenly start disliking what he is saying or the consequences of what he was doing, they’ll turn on the hate.But you are forgetting one thing, and this is perhaps more specific in case of Bush to the people in the USA: It is YOU.Who gives and maintains the power of the government, but the continued support and consent of the people being governed? Who was the one who let the USA turn into a nation in which someone like Bush could get elected? Who were the ones incapable of cutting through their knee jerk emotional reactions to 9/11 and actually supported retaliatory action? Again, it was YOU. “You” here refers to every american who at one point, or even still, supported the US government as it is, supported the war in Iraq, supported the system.

Bush is just one small link in a chain that is the US, and most other societies. He just happens to be in the public eye the most. He just happens to talk the most and therefore happens to be the one blamed and scapegoated the most. It is the system, however, that let the evils that happened happen - and YOU are a part of the system.

This interview is most illuminating. Listening to Bush speak makes me think that he actually believes what he is saying and what he is doing. How deeply does he believe it I don’t know. Even if he merely thinks that way because he or his coleagues brainwashed him into it does not necessarily change the fact that he believes it. And he believes he is doing good, no matter how incredibly illogical that view may sound to the rest of us. It would not be the first time to see someone do absolute horrors while actually believing they are for some good - to better the world.

It therefore becomes useless and in fact irresponsible to go around shouting and screaming how evil Bush is and how he is “garbage”, a “dick” or whatever else I keep hearing, when you consider the fact that he is a product of the system, nothing more and nothing else. Mind you, I am not saying that he is not still largely responsible for many of those evils. I am saying that the problem is much more fundamental than Bush (or any particular president or politician himself). And I am saying that the problem has much more to do with consentual citizens of the state than people think.

It is the easiest thing to do, point a finger, shout and scapegoat someone. It takes more wisdom to look deeper, into the more fundamental reasoning. It is indeed rare for people to actually look back at themselves and ask themselves what they might have done to let things be the way they are in their country and the world at large.
Masses of people continue to believe totally incredible things, like that aggression is necessary to protect from aggression, that your nation is better than other nations, that we are being taxed by the state for the common good regardless of having no control over the money we pay for that “good”, that ignorance is strenght because “politics is boring and you’d just rather spend your life having as much fun as possible”, that slavery is freedom because they protect you from threats, that war is peace as long as they’re showing you enough images of a plane crashing into a skyscraper…

Tell me.. who is the evil one here? Some of us could blame ourselves as much as we could blame Bush. For our stupidity, ignorance, closed mindedness, idiocy and apathy. Interestingly some of those terms fit very well to Bush as well, because, after all, he is fundamentally no different than you.

I was bashing on Croatia entering NATO and EU in my last post, without asking the people for opinion and I was saying that democracy is a sham. It indeed is, but it is not only the people in the government that we can blame for such a state of things, we can blame everyone whose belief, consent and support led us to such a state. This is our world. It is not a world built only by the presidents, dictators and big corporations - it is the world built by all of the people living in it. The power that is being concentrated is only the consequence of people being incapable to believe in power of their own, in true freedom and individuality of their own and in the responsibility which that carries.

That said, NATO, EU, ongoing power grabs between super powers - it can hardly be stopped so easily. In fact, considering the context of the world we’ve built, it is even to an extent understandable why does a military alliance like NATO exist, why are countries such as Croatia so eager to join EU. It only takes looking at the global picture of the world as it is to understand the reasons. And if you don’t like it, what are you gonna do about it? Shout angrily on the streets with immature parolas like “Fuck Bush”? It might make you temporarily feel better, but it will not move you an inch towards the solution.

The solution is something more fundamental, but we have to accept that what took us or our predecessors centuries to build cannot and should not be teared down over night. Not only would that be disastrous, but it would lead us into an even worse situation for which, again, we could blame ourselves, not just the power hungry politicians seizing their opportunities. We have to learn to be wise adapters and world changers at the same time, balancing between the two. You build your freedom and success in the world little by little through a careful balancing act between using the system and defying the system while spreading the truly world changing ideas whenever possible and sufficiently safe.

We have to start the process and be firm in pursuing its continuation. We have to make changing the world a part of our lifestyle. And we have to know our direction in order for that pursuit to have any meaning (which immediately writes off the angry mobs of “anti-globalists”).

The world sucks? Well, maybe it is partly because you suck too. How about that? Now what are you gonna do about it? Shout at someone or change yourself?

I believe that to change the world we first have to change ourselves. Humanity is nothing but a consistence of human individuals. If it sucks, it just means too many of us suck and need to become better.

Bucharest NATO conference is over and the relevant results for the country I live in, Croatia, is that it got an invite. How nice. Considering we are also a candidate for accession into the EU, it looks like we’re proceeding quite well with our “western integration”. In fact, we’re getting a visit, right here in Zagreb, where I happen to live, by Bush himself. And what do we get for that? I mean we the actual citizens, the people living and working in this city and this country? We get overt security measures a traffic halt and an old lady in a village being policed because ONCE a while ago she rented a house to a guy who is apparently a muslim or something to that effect (don’t quote me on that, this is effectively heresay, but I would not wonder if it’s true). Interestingly that happens to be the village I lived in prior to Zagreb.

What is that old lady guilty of for having her property and freedom violated this way for this so special of an occassion? What right does the state or anyone have to interfere?

Anyway, in Croatia, a lot of people, at least passively, seem to object to the European Union, or just don’t care. Same is with NATO. In fact, according to this news story thousands of “anti-imperialist” protesters will be waiting for Bush, protesting against our joining of NATO and pointing out that we may merely be becoming pawns in the larger game. Tell me about it!

Sure, let’s not jump into conspiracy theories. You know, uniting the world into a World Union ruled by the elite of the few etc. Hey, I didn’t mention Lizards! GTFO! The mere fact that we are preparing to enter both EU and NATO despite major opposition of citizens of this country just goes to show what a freaking sham democracy really is. Sure.. we get to elect our leaders every few years, but it’s more like a parade held for us at the end of which we get to choose whose parade we liked better. Absolutely worthless.

Our government, the same one which is supposed to be protecting us from ourselves, is leading us into unions which are just as “democratic” as ours. So democratic in fact, that 70% opinion of the citizens against the EU means we still need to enter EU. Hmm.. reminds me of another curious organization, ISO, also known as I Sold Out. Yes, that is democracy my friends. Worthless piece of crap propaganda. You have an opinion? You voted? Oh cool, good boy. Tough though, I think we don’t like your vote so we might as well proceed as planned, why don’t you go back to your ignorant routine? Oh you’re such a good citizen.

Update: Bush visits on Friday, that is today, and the preparations were even worse than I initially thought. People were ordered by the police to shut down their windows, to not dry their clothes on their own wires, to park their cars away from the streets part of the route he will pass on. They moved trash containers, polished up the trees, renewed the road markings. Everything apparently had to be absolutely perfect. I can understand that for someone of his influence high security measures may be justified, but some of these measures don’t seem to have as much to do with security as much with creating some sort of an unrealistically and ridiculously perfect image of Zagreb to Bush.

I talked recently about the harms of government intervention. Well I’ve got a nice example these days right here in my city, of government essentially interrupting normal lives of people, even beyond reasonable necessity just to please Bush, because who is an individual citizen of the City of Zagreb compared to Bush? Might as well say nobody. 10 million Kunas (about 2.1 million USD) is being spent on accomodating Bush - that’s 2.1 million dollars of taxpayers money. How is this visit for the benefit of the community? How is this for the so called “common good”? Why is anyone morally obliged to pay the government for these kinds of ventures?

Does joining NATO justify that? As I explained above, absolutely not. NATO was not the choice of the people. Joining NATO is an arbitrary decision between our government and NATO. We essentially have no part in it. People are calling for a referendum and all our premier can say to that is that referendums aren’t appropriate when the sovereignity of the country is not in question (as is the case with EU), since NATO is not a union or states and this is not an accession. However, this ignores the fact that by joining NATO we deny ourselves the ability to be neutral should the world powers be pushed into some sort of a conflict, not to mention that we would be essentially the ones potentially dealing with Kosovo crisis should it emerge (it’s part of the reason why Croatia and Albania are being allied with NATO now), to restrain Serbia.

When this big picture is considered, who can think of the interests of the people? Who cares about them really? I see them pretty much as just a helpless group that happen to be in that given pot, and the pot is being moved back and forth as the powers that are please or see fit. If this doesn’t show what a sham democracy really is then I don’t know what does. When the show called “elections” is over, it’s just business as usual.

But that’s the world to which ignorant masses concede to. There you have it. Enjoy your crippled freedom. May Zagreb citizens see and grasp the contrast between their puny individual self and the power of two states colluding in mutual festivities over an event they had no say about.

Welcome to your new province Mr. President. I hope we don’t serve you well.