From Wikileaks to Our Common Future

I watched a documentary on Wikileaks as I didn’t know much about what happened behind the scenes. It certainly was a Samson and Goliath scenario. In the beginning of the documentary they showed film of killings. I found myself witnessing real murders and it was deeply disturbing. I noted that there were no warnings for children or myself that the scenes were extreme violence. Such is the mainstreaming of violent images.

I remember growing up in an era where we were protected from violence and it was socially perceived as distressing. Never would we have seen the images we see so frequently on the news today. Today there is so much violence that people become desensitized. Perhaps even young people don’t know the difference anymore.

After the shootings of a group of men, the next scene shows a man who is wounded. Other men come to help him and they are all gunned down by a helicopter gunship. Under Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions states there must be provision made for the wounded in warfare. There was no adherence to the Geneva Conventions indicating there are no rules of warfare or humane behaviour exercised, as soldiers appear to look at screens remotely and excitedly participate in murder. It is so incredible that it is viewed as normal. I honestly cannot understand it. I feel pain if I feel I hurt someone and avoid even stepping on ants, so you can imagine the distance psychologically. Different worlds.

I feel for the soldiers, one day they may have nightmares or maybe realise what they engaged in. Perhaps when they think of the families, their children and the grief of a country destroyed by war, given vested interests. In the US the war was not popular and similar to Vietnam they did not return to tickertape parades as heroes, they were withdrawn, as the battle was lost. Let’s hope this is the end of aggression.

I kept reflecting on the lessons, the values and found myself compelled to write a poem. Which I dedicate to the real freedom of peace in this world.

FROM WIKILEAKS TO OUR COMMON FUTURE

Wikileaks,
Leaky websites,
Whistleblowers,
Blowing the whistle
is to say ‘stop’,
it is a wake up call.

More fuel…

Memos,
Cables,
Documents,

Recording Pan Tilt and Zoom (PTZ)…

Combat cam,
Gunship cam,
Satellite cam,

A cam shaft to a crank shaft,
Opening and closing files,
To stroke the piston,
The spark before the firewall,
The timing belt
a chain of events,
To find a spanner in the works,
For the world knows how intel works,
As the military machine stalls,
To find the fuel in intelligence servers,
Is no longer airtight.

Julian Assange,
One step removed,
From the unmanned drone,
A private manning ostracized and online,
For gay and small is seen as ‘weak’,
Ridiculed and tormented as a ‘freak’,
Bullied and circumvented,
Cultivated the enemy within,
For which no-one takes responsibility,
For they have no ability to respond,
To discrimination,
As private wars of aggression are the modus operandi.

The snuff movie,
Captured on camera,
A violent video
that is no game,
A black and white movie season,
From an age without innocence or reason.

A gunship hovers,
A deadly dragon fly,
Men open the door,
Muffled talk,
Cross hairs,
They start to walk,
Machine gun fires,
65 rounds per minute,
They run hit the ground,
in seconds,
As bullets chop up bodies into dirt.

I watch them

…Falling,
…Crawling,
…Shocked,
…Dead

I am at the Wailing Wall,
Motionless,
Rocking,
To me it is shocking.

Hope …

There is a survivor,
He attracts attention,
Rescuers arrive with tension,
Risk their lives to save his,
As he could be them.

Pilots from the hornets nest,
Want to kill the mocking bird
of inequality,
an insanity,
a blood lust,
For they haven’t had their fill,
Another notch on the belt thrills,
As he opens the guns,
to fire dantes inferno…

It is quiet,
All are murdered,
Gun downed as firepower overwhelms,
There is no chance,
There is no choice,
There is no voice,
For in war democracy has no right to exist,
When occupied eyes are vacant.

I am witnessing murders by stealth,
Video evidence recording a crime scene,
Trained to kill,
To step outside humane limits,
Authority complicit,
No mercy implicit,
At the top it is secret,
This is the reality of wars,
That are not games with civilian interests,
At heart.

There are no arms,
No threat,
The rules of war are nullified,
Sullied in wars of terror that vilify,
A syntax error is downloaded in this pirated program,
Geneva Conventions eliminated in pogroms,
Article 3 a treaty ordering the responsibility to protect the wounded,
How is this protocol legal and binding?
Why blinded by summary executions?
As an International War Crimes Tribunal silently gathers evidence,
As the final re-solution.

This murder cable mainlines to the mainstream,
As we float downstream,
lifeless,
Carried along the tides of apathy,
Not exerting effort to swim upstream
towards the source of our enlightenment,
Our boat leaks as we sink to the bottom of info-tainment,
Tangled in wicked webs,
Where morals are group think,
Opinions coralled in think tanks,
How many tow the official line?
How many are hooked on lines?
Drifting in nets,
Silence between the cyber spaces,
As faceless faces on facebook
Are posted but not present.

Yet the moral is to be learned from the underlying
story line,
A Schindlers list to find what is kind,
A business man profiting from war,
To find himself helping people to be freed,
From concentration camps of oppression,
Whistleblowers of minorities hear the call,
As lessons transcend global financial walls on the street,
As networks of underground cables,
Resurface information sparking renewed pistons,
Restarting movements with new momentum,
A hundred thousand revolutions per day,
Reigniting the engine of re-new-able people power,
To find this is the hour,
of great change.

The real power is in the perfect market,
Where all information is perfectly distributed,
No barriers to entry disadvantage strata,
Equal access to technology is the charter,
Where governments may choose to rise or fall
on swords or ploughshares?
Indeed sheltering under Psalm Sunday
beneath the 44th parallel,

…For it is not by sword that one wins land or victory,
…It was the right hand,
…Right alms,
…The light in the face,
…that loves them,

To remember to love thy neighbor as thyself,
To turn your swords into ploughshares.

Yes we can …

Turn from empty war chests to what is fairest of them all,
For real growth sustains our true nature,
As land masses break up,
The ice shatters divisions and melts,
For the climate has changed the world map,
It is time to come home,
For the war is over,
As it was always a mission impossible when looking out,
Unable to see the enemy is within.

The investments of the future are in children,
It is time to share options in peace,
Implement conflict resolution as neither defence nor attack,
Enshrined in binding UN re-solutions,
As invitations are the new protocols to join
the global free common market,
Where we all equally share,
A kibbutz of interconnecting intentional communities,
Forming a circle agora of perfect markets,
Gathering a global intranet of perfect awareness,
Arriving at the last station just-in-time,
To reclaim the global commons,
As the old empires make way for the new convergence,
Of what we have in common,
Enlightening another way of seeing,
To action the Brundtland Report,
Targeting sustainable consultative communities,
As the real political agenda,
Setting the equality of gender at King Arthur’s round table,
For he is the brightest star of Arcturus,
Guiding all people to renew the vision
of Our Common Future.