There is No Magic in Space 2 - Beet the System

5 easy steps to reclaim the fields:
-do some research about abandoned places
-get your community together and cycle to a fallow field of land
-start to dig out some soil, plant some seeds
-communicate with neighbors, respect their opinions and try to give constructive input
-cultivate the field as long as possible and leave peacefully before the authorities go all rampage
remember it's a slow growing process; resistence is fertile
(it's kind of shallow I know, but if I don't write it this way I guess I won't write anything at all)

so I was lucky to experience how fast even a small community of autonomous people can set up such a cool project at Vienna's latest occupying movement.
SoliLa! - Solidarisch Landwirtschaften is a collective of citizens who want to farm themselves and regain food sovereignty, the right of the people to define their own food systems (which seems harder and harder if you think of intransparent food production nowadays). regional do-it-yourself gardening seems like the best option to start with. the attitude is: 'if you see a job that's to be done, it's yours!'; the goal is to maintain the city's green spaces instead of building new houses when way too much flats are empty. it's about the opportunities a community without capital strength can achieve to maintain some land for sustainable permaculture and exchange of experience and... ***HOPE*** (are the stars blinding you already? no?)

you can watch a glimpse of the situation in the video above to give you a small picture.
after 11 days people were finally forced to leave by the authorities, well much longer than I had even expected. it struck me that if something is state property it won't even actually belong to the people - only to those with the money to buy it off the state (- so what are taxes for then?? maybe this is going to be the next post...)
however SoliLa! is beginning to reenforce again for the 4th of June where a demonstration is set to react to the horrendous circumstances altogether.

you can get some more news about this on the blog: solila.blogsport.eu
do your research and don't take my words for grenade

-- michi

There is No Magic in Space 1 - Just Cut Debt

yes, debt has been cut one can argue: namely the debt of the banks towards the public; it seems there hasn't been a debt cut the other way around...but now I'll try to cut the polemical approach you've probaby heard enough of already. Lately I did some research about what debt is and I want to sum up what I found out:

David Graeber, anthropologist and author of "Debt: The first 5000 Years" states even though there had been historians writing about the past of money and credit no one has ever done the history of debt up to this point.

according to Graeber debt could be seen in all religions.
like 'life is a debt we owe to the gods'
'we pay interest in the form of rituals'
'and we pay the debt back when we die'

and in more functioal terms:
'you owe a debt to your parents'
'you pay interest in the form of respect'
'and pay them back when becoming a parent'

on the first glance this example looks like you have a symbolic 'primitive' form of monetary debt, however this is not the case at all. I would rather describe it as a form of reciprocity and you can't easily compare reciprocity to money lending:

reciprocity:
you are given the opportunity to live a good life
you pay it back by supporting other people

okay, so we owe debt to cosmos, to nature, to society, and eventually to institutions larger than ourselves, all debt out of material trade eventually became something evil throughout the religions.

let's try to combine the system of reciprocity with the one of monetary debt:
you owe money, give it to someone else, then you can't pay it back
so you have to demand the money back from the person in order to repay the first lender.
so the two things don't really seem to function together...

'cancel the debts and redistribute the land'

if you look at history this isn't even new, it happened over and over again. tax systems - the idea of taxes is basically that you lend the state money and the state owes you social services, right? -- they weren't even typical in ancient greek - at least for greek citizens. the only ones who needed to pay taxes were slaves of conquered land. the conquered people needed to pay back the life they were granted by the heroic colonists thus paying the very army the greeks needed to attack them. and at some point they didn't even realize anymore that they are in debt and debt becomes legitimate in form of taxes. but I want to get deeper into that in a later episode when I've done more research because I most probably still have no idea...

think about it and don't take my words for grenade
-- michi