This is in the "Existential Risks" section instead of just "Politics" because its about events that could lead to World War 3, if you read to the end, but its also about how the world is changing in amazing ways.
There are 2 purposes of this writing. It will help people continue organizing on a global scale toward our common goals, and we should keep records of these events as they occur for the history books. The world is about to change in a way most people have difficulty imagining, from a hierarchy based society to decentralized ways to organize it.
Occupy Wall Street Protesters
Anonymous
Zeitgeist Movement
Open Source Movement
Libertarians
These groups recently started working together, and that will accelerate. They are like the first few departments of government of the decentralized new world order, not directly replacing existing governments but gradually (not necessarily slowly) obsoleting them. The combination is an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_group which means we think alike and work toward the same things while many of us don't know about eachother yet.
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters
It went too far by blocking the streets, but what they had to say and the fact that many people came together and the ways they interacted were important.
When they were in public areas where microphones were not allowed, they communicated in a way I've never seen. They took turns standing at the center of a huge group of people, and 2 rings of people around them would repeat what they said. First the person in the center speaks, then the inner ring repeats, then the outer ring repeats what they heard the inner ring say, so regardless of how far away a person was, they could hear. Anyone who wanted to could get in a line to speak at the center. It took 3 times longer to say anything, but it worked where no other communication method was available, and it gave them more time to think about what was said.
As the Occupy Movement spread past Wall Street and went global, they needed a way to agree on what the whole movement wanted. They formed a temporary government where meetings are called "General Assembly" and they vote on amendments to their list of demands by raising hands and counting. They have leaders but the function of the leaders is to count votes, act as news reporters, and propose major votes like accepting or rejecting lists of demands from other locations.
The protests which started as chaos of everyone saying what they wanted for themself became a more unified voice made of what the most people agree on. Millions of people watched (on the news and at http://occupystream.com and other places) as the idea that we could have democracy without permission of governments spread. But to see that part of it, you have to look deeper than what most news broadcasts.
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Anonymous
The main idea that defines Anonymous is what makes http://wikipedia.org work.
http://www.whatis-theplan.org/t1-what-is-the-plan
QUOTE: While some may think that being Anonymous requires concealing one's identity, this is simply not the case. Identity matters not to a member of Anonymous. While some who practice online activist acts (hacktivism), certainly desire to keep their true identity secret for security purposes, others whom you will find in this community understand that who they are does not matter so much as what they stand for. In Anonymous there are no leaders, no figure-heads, no designated spokesmen...as each of us are all of these things in our own right. We have taken the initiative to rise to the occasion and stand firm against the oppressive and destructive forces that have laid waste to our world and raped our way of life. END QUOTE.
Anonymous' quote "We do not forgive. We do not forget." does not mean to them what most people think it means. Its about justice, not revenge. Example: If the Federal Reserve causes unfair laws to be created that indirectly move money from most people to the Federal Reserve, then we should do something about that instead of forgetting it. Its a problem to solve.
Research has shown that frogs usually sit in a pot of water as the temperature slowly increases from comfortable to boiling, and the frogs die because they can only sense changes in temperature. Similarly, people usually do nothing when their rights are slowly taken away, since they get used to having less rights and a little less than that isn't much difference. Anonymous cares about total amount of rights more than recent changes.
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Zeitgeist Movement
http://thezeitgeistmovement.com
QUOTE: The Movement's principle focus includes the recognition that the majority of the social problems which plague the human species at this time are not the sole result of some institutional corruption, scarcity, a political policy, a flaw of "human nature" or other commonly held assumptions of causality in the activist community. Rather, The Movement recognizes that issues such as poverty, corruption, collapse, homelessness, war, starvation and the like appear to be "Symptoms" born out of an outdated social structure.
While intermediate Reform steps and temporal Community Support are of interest to The Movement, the defining goal here is the installation of a new socioeconomic model based upon technically responsible Resource Management, Allocation and Distribution through what would be considered The Scientific Method of reasoning problems and finding optimized solutions.
This "Resource-Based Economic Model” is about taking a direct technical approach to social management as opposed to a Monetary or even Political one. It is about updating the workings of society to the most advanced and proven methods Science has to offer, leaving behind the damaging consequences and limiting inhibitions which are generated by our current system of monetary exchange, profits, corporations and other structural and motivational components. END QUOTE.
One of their best videos is this version of "Zeitgeist Addendum" which you can watch for free at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EewGMBOB4Gg
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Open Source Movement
http://fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software
QUOTE: Free software is software that gives you the user the freedom to share, study and modify it. We call this free software because the user is free. To use free software is to make a political and ethical choice asserting the right to learn, and share what we learn with others. Free software has become the foundation of a learning society where we share our knowledge in a way that others can build upon and enjoy.
Currently, many people use proprietary software that denies users these freedoms and benefits. If we make a copy and give it to a friend, if we try to figure out how the program works, if we put a copy on more than one of our own computers in our own home, we could be caught and fined or put in jail. That’s what’s in the fine print of the license agreement you accept when using proprietary software.
The corporations behind proprietary software will often spy on your activities and restrict you from sharing with others. And because our computers control much of our personal information and daily activities, proprietary software represents an unacceptable danger to a free society. END QUOTE.
An important example is the peer to peer software Bitcoin, an Internet calculator that only does plus and minus. When they talk about banning Bitcoin, remember that they're really banning basic math. Would we let them censor the plus and minus section of a math book? If not, then why let them censor a computer calculating plus and minus through the Internet and displaying the result on our screens?
Everyone starts with a number on their screen and can send and receive those numbers to other people like money, except without the regulations that cripple normal money systems. Everyones' number starts as 0, so where do the positive numbers come from? Its done in a fair decentralized way. Its enforced with decentralized encryption that the only way anyone can create bitcoins (these numbers) is that on average a certain number of bitcoins will be created each hour and computers compete to do the most of a specific calculation (called "proof of work" in the design document) and the new bitcoins for that hour are divided among the computers which did that "proof of work". An economy for doing "proof of work" calculations formed, and the free market approximately regulates that the electricity and hardware cost of creating bitcoins equals the value of those bitcoins, and they can be spent again any number of times like cash once the cash is created. The use of that calculation is to strengthen the security of the global Bitcoin network, so all our Bitcoin money is protected.
If you have alot of money in Bitcoins, you should protect it by only running Bitcoin in Linux installed in a USB memory stick, and backup your wallet.dat file to a few other USB memory sticks. Your money is stored in the peer to peer Bitcoin network, but to spend it you need wallet.dat which you can drop into any Bitcoin data folder. You can get Linux for a USB memory stick free at http://ubuntu.com which is also Open Source. You'll only need a small 4 gigabyte USB memory stick, but buy high quality since you don't want Linux to crash from repeated reads and writes to the USB stick as operating systems need to do, which is another reason to backup your wallet.dat to multiple USB memory sticks. But if you just want to try Bitcoin with a small amount of money, its ok to do it on Windows. Either way it will work without any unusual setup.
Now January 2012 there are approximately 8 million bitcoins trading for $6.70 each. The most common way to trade between Bitcoins and Dollars is through your bank account to http://dwolla.com to http://mtgox.com to the Bitcoin network, and from there you buy and sell with Bitcoins directly, or trade back to Dollars or other kinds of money. The value fluctuates on an exponential scale and exponentially increases overall. Open Source created this economy out of nothing, without putting in any dollars, but instead devaluing dollars and other centralized kinds of money as that value flowed into bitcoins, something that different money systems have been doing to eachother for hundreds of years.
Many people want to shut down Bitcoin because its hard for them to control. Some people use Bitcoin with the anonymous Tor network to buy drugs through the mail, but people buy drugs with cash too, and the other part is assisted by government transporting the mailed packages. Open Sourcing money is too big an improvement to the world to let that stand in our way. Hierarchies are not the only way to solve problems.
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Libertarians
http://lp.org/platform
QUOTE: As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.
We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.
Consequently, we defend each person's right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any authoritarian power. END QUOTE.
Libertarianism has expanded to mean many things that are common sense as governments have expanded their claimed power to rediculous levels. Example: USA claims to have the right to arrest anyone and keep them in prison "indefinitely" (meaning up to forever) without charging the person with a crime or a trial. Everyone who believes in the right to a trial and to only be arrested for crimes (instead of government doesn't like you) is now leaning strongly toward Libertarianism.
Example: Ron Paul ran for president of USA as a Libertarian and now is running as a Republican, but his ideas are still Libertarian. His recent surprising popularity, and even more surprising is that the Republicans are accepting him as one of their own, is a result of the combination of the things in this writing coming together.
While its not completely a hierarchy, the Federal Reserve is mostly the top of the global money hierarchy, given authority to create money laws by USA with no obligation toward democracy since its a private business. People are taking Ron Paul's plan to audit the Federal Reserve seriously, which would almost certainly lead to its crimes being exposed as it hasn't been audited in many years exactly because if crimes were found it would have to be shut down and its "too big to fail". How about too corrupt to succeed? Bitcoin doesn't need political corruption to succeed. It needs no hierarchies at all.
This writing is not about specific political parties. Its about ideas that are coming together on a global scale.
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Its a battle between centralized control and decentralized organization of society, which is fought politically, economically, and sometimes violently. As long as Humans have existed, there have been hierarchies of control: countries, presidents, kings, cities, department of motor vehicles, money systems which you're not allowed to compete with, etc. As technology advanced, organizing society in decentralized ways became possible. The authorities represent centralization of power. The things in this writing are toward decentralization of global power between all 7 billion people equally. The continuing increases in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship are an attack on the things in this writing, because for us to cooperate we need to communicate. That's why we have the right to free speech.
Fighting for peace doesn't work. We don't want to fight, but we will defend if necessary. Violence and hate are inefficient ways to change the world.
"Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." --Sun Tzu
The Global Decentralization Process has Critical Mass, and the explosion of ideas and global changes can't be stopped by any amount of military or political or corporate power. This is not a time to sit back and enjoy the ride. We the 7 billion people need to learn to work together to stabilize this process before it turns into World War 3 as a conflict between global organization as hierarchies and decentralization. We can get through this by keeping an open mind.
