Revolution night in Canada

photo lariposte on Flickr

Every night at around 9:00pm the population of Quebec is occupied with their new favorite sport, the REVOLUTION. The game is played synchronously across the province. Those who cannot physically participate follow the action religiously on their screens (thank CUTV for their great job). Mainstream media commentators present the action on the streets like ''Hockey night in Canada''. They deconstruct different tactics employed by the police, they talk about their equipment, their training, they also prize the creativity of some demonstrators and criticize the violence of others, even though a hockey game is in fact hundred times more violent.

This is pathetic! We've seen this in the US during the war in Iraq, the media focusing on the technical aspects of the war rather than on the war reality itself. The media should comment on the social issues behind this crisis. They should put this historic moment in context. They should project this massive awakening in the future.      

photo by ricardoaraujoara on flickr

The good news is that Charest already got the red carton. How long will he take before leaving the scene? In my opinion, it's just a matter of days.

Don't get me wrong... it's not Charest who decides when to quit. He is just a puppet. He is just a politician; he doesn't really have power. Let's use the objective language here. The population is not happy with this puppet anymore. The population is also angry about the way the situation was handled, especially with the special law 78. Charest must be sacrificed by his handlers. Their problem is that unlike in the past, they don't have a ready replacement for him. The youth is disillusioned with politics: the PQ lives in the past, the CAQ is totally disoriented. There is no viable option, because mainstream politics is broken. The Quebec Solidaire  would be their worst nightmare. I think they are really panicking. A major power shift is waiting to happen!  

I don't know who had this stupid idea of the special law 78. At this moment I can't see any second order reason behind it... I may be wrong. Are these people who hold the real power in Quebec and in Canada (I don't want to name names...) so clueless about the raising tide of the Multitude Movement? I never wanted to underestimate the elites... but I am starting to believe that they are slightly behind the curve.

What's the situation in Quebec now, 23:00h, May 23, 2012

Photo by thienv on Flickr

First, I can really sense a dramatic shift in the way mainstream media describes the events. All major channels presented the nightly march almost like a big hokey game in which our favorite team is winning. Only a week ago, negative comments were dominating the presentation. The focus used to be on violence, mostly fabricated violence. Furthermore, the media now portrays the government as a looser. Behind this new tone I sense a conscious effort to reassemble the population, which was deeply divided during the conflict between the students and the government, intentionally divided by the usual manipulation deployed by governments during this type of events. I sense an effort to prepare the population for an imminent election, to bring it back together, to form new constituencies.

Second, I am surprised by the absence of the government in the media. Charest gave a no comment! NO COMMENT! His province is going through the biggest crisis since the referendum for independence! His new minister of education very nervously said that she was willing to talk to students (not to negotiate), and another lower level puppet said that the special law 78 will have an effect in time. This absence tells me that the government is going a capital crisis.

Third, every night manifestations are declared illegal by the police, BUT tolerated. HA! HA! HA! Thank you SPVM (Montreal police) for being so nice with us, for tolerating us. Or this is what they want us to believe. The reality is that they are powerless. Yes, they can apply physical force but this, or applying the special law 78 risks to make things worst.

Forth, the protests became widespread geographically with actions in tens of neighborhoods around the city.

 Fifth,  the protests are now generalized, including people from all walks of life joining for all sorts of reasons.

In conclusion, I don't see a solution to this conflict, other than the sacrifice of Charest. Our hope is to elect a weak government, one that would respond to our pressure, and that will insure a transition towards a new society.

What about a peer-to-peer society?


This is what representative democracy looks like...

By t!b!

By AllOfUs

The days of Charest's government are numbered

In this post I present my own analysis of the current situation in the Canadian province of Quebec. My conclusion is that PM Charest will be forced out of power within days, the cause being the conflict between his government and student organizations, over the increase of tuition fees.

There is a lot of material available on the student movement in Quebec. The aim of this post is not to describe the situation, but to provide some analysis in order to speculate on the near future.

The conflict between student organizations and the government of Quebec enters a new phase. This transition is caused by a new special law, Bill 78, recently adopted. This law, which expires next year, is heavenly criticized by the general population and even by serious organizations:

Louis Masson, Bâtonnier of the Bar, said Bill 78 does not balance rights, suggesting the government should have taken another course to deal with the tuition-fee dispute.
“We have serious concerns about this bill and the bill infringes many of the fundamental rights of our citizens,” Masson said.
“We must respect the rule of law and we must respect the orders of courts and we must also respect all the fundamental rights that we have; the right to peacefully protest, our liberty of expression and the liberty of association.” [The Gazette]

We shoud NEVER let CISPA pass and if it does we MUST rebel

By AllOfUs

The Meta Plan

The Meta Plan (see also the Diigo annotated link- it will save you some time reading) is in essence the Multitude Project.

This is the Meta Plan, the plan for building the We Plan...
We are not disorganized but disconnected. We have self-selected and self-organized and self-lead our prior efforts. We must coalesce these efforts into one global organism. One organism with many parts, and a single purpose.
The plan starts with our common purpose...
There are answers. Many have been working on the pieces for years. We must put these answers together in once place: the We Plan.
Some will work on design for technologies; some on design for social structures; some on the logistics systems required to deliver the people, information, and materials required under the plan, some on the architecture of the Plan itself.
Just as we collectively and continuously build Wikipedia, we will collectively build the We Plan.
The We Plan will be developed both top-down and bottom-up simultaneously. Some will tie the pieces together. Some will flesh out the details of the pieces. The entire Plan will be visible to everyone all the time.
The We Plan will be a living plan.
Together, We will comprise the We Movement.
As the We Movement builds, We will begin implementing the plan. We will find resources. We will make the parts. We will educate. We will build.
We will have a movement with the force to make political change where necessary, to pool resources and knowledge, to stop destruction and looting by the few against the many, to remake the world in the image of our highest dreams.

The world is waking us and coming together!

By AllOfUs

Commanding Heights

[The name of this post was inspired by the Commanding Heights documentary.]

Four years ago we launched the Multitude Project with the aim of understanding the effects of the new digital technology on our socio-economic institutions. We convinced ourselves that humanity was fast approaching a transition point, and that a new social order was about to emerge. But, unfortunately, we now realize that the future doesn’t look as unidirectional as we would like it to be.

Three possible worlds

One possibility, the one we would like to see materialized, is another step of emancipation of the multitude. It is a world in which individuals have greater control over what they want to become, over the value they produce, in all dimensions of value and, as a matter of fact, a world in which individuals have greater control over their own lives. It is a continuation of an undeniable historical trend of emancipation, as the multitude became more cohesive with the advance of communication and coordination technologies. We have finally reached the era of real-time peer-to-peer coordination, with practically no spatial barriers. The multitude is now more coherent than ever. It is able to generate very powerful large-scale effects, surpassing the containing forces of any social system designed to constrain it. The will of the people can now be expressed in massive global waves. The #occupy movement is one recent example of such manifestations.

Government as a platform

The multitude stops engaging the government for services and uses the new technology to become the government.

This video is a very good illustration of a thread that runs through the Multitude movement, which is that power relations lose their importance as peer-to-peer coordination and collaboration become possible. The new world will be built on value-based relations!  

By AllOfUs

I DON'T PAY! How corrupt governments commit suicide by cutting open their own veins.

Some corrupt governments go too far, forgetting their dependence on the will of the people to stay alive. Today, in the age of the Internet, the multitude has many, many ways to shut down governments. Not only by protesting or striking, but by cutting critical resources. Today's multitude is a highly coordinated one. It is also a highly creative one.

This video illustrates a very powerful idea. This is just the beginning!



Read also our previous posts:

• How fragile is the system?
• A deal for the elite.

By AllOfUs

New economy - how things will be designed, produced and distributed in the future

Here's another example of the newly emerging pattern of design, production and distribution.

We are glad to see that our vision of the new economy is finally materializing. In 2008 we proposed the Discovery Network concept (see the post describing the initial motivation behind it). In 2010 we launched our first pilot project for the new economy a commons-based peer production system the Matchmaking Device System. It failed...  : (    but we learned a lot.

In 2011 we launched the second pilot project SENSORICA, which evolved into an open, decentralized and self-organizing value network.  SENSORICA is increasing in value and potential since its creation. 

Also in 2011, the know how developed within  SENSORICA spilled over to glocal food systems. In Ohio, USA local food systems are now morphing into value networks, see Greener Acres.

Furthermore, early this year we initiated another project in Montreal, through the #occupy movement, to implement value networks in clothing design and manufacturing. This is the #occupy Fashion project.

In the following weeks we will publish a few videos and documents detailing how value networks form, self-organize, and operate. This information will be put into context based on our new understanding of the new economy.

By t!b!

Where is the #occupy movement now?

Today I dared to look at Google Trends of the search term "occupy". See bellow what I found. You can do the search yourself here.

In this post The multitude movement limited by the pace of cultural change and of general understanding of open movements I wrote:

I've always seen the #occupy movement as a manifestation of this multitude constructive revolution, which is much broader, touching almost all aspects of our activity. Most of these affected aspects don't have a clear manifestation on the public scene, they are just lurking beneath the surface, unseen by the untrained eye. We've witnessed surface waves in the past, starting with the End the Fed movement in 2008, which sparked the TeaParty movement, to the so-called Twitter revolution in 2009 in the Republic of Moldova, to the 2009-2010 Green Revolution in Iran, to the Arab Spring, and to the 15-M movement in Spain. Is the #occupy everywhere the last wave able to tip the establishment over? I don't think so. But every one of these waves leaves permanent marks, which will affect the next wave, and the way the establishment will react to it. If we are not at the tipping point yet, it doesn't mean that change will not happen. The transformative forces introduced by the new technology are extremely powerful. Change will eventually happen, but when and how?

There is no doubt that the #occupy wave has left a permanent mark on the Multitude. I think we are more aware now of the power that the new technology conveys to us. #occupy is the first global movement coordinated almost in real time through the Internet.

Define #occupy? Are you serious?

How focused and defined should be the #occupy movement?

There are a lot of voices within the #occupy movement calling to define the movement, to come up with a clear list of claims, or with a clear action plan. I have also came across a lot of articles arguing that the #occupy movement doesn’t need more structure. In this post I am going to give my opinion in support of a broad and only loosely defined movement, relying on my own understanding, which was built over the last 6 months of active involvement with the movement.