World War IV

It has come down to this: a fight to the finish against the evil forces of capital that would wage a terror upon terror upon terror without end.

We, the people, the multitudes, can win this war. Our power comes from our numbers There are more than six billion of us. If we organize ourselves, weave myriad networks and learn how to use them, if we invent an Internet voting system that can hold billion-person plebiscites, if we begin a slow march towards global governance and a world parliament, nothing can stop us.

To get the ball rolling, we initiate persistent, low level civil disobedience on all fronts. A pissed-off global population can force capital to retreat by:

* hacking websites

* jamming broadcasts

* placing organic stink bombs in bathrooms, offices and stores

* plugging up toilets

* crashing spy surveillance systems with spoof emails

* refusing to pay fees and taxes

* obstructing and sabotaging

In time we will learn to modulate our resistance — to raise it to the point where airport-type security systems are needed just to let customers into stores, until the daily pain and cost of doing business as usual becomes simply too high to bear. Then, at our pleasure, we will lower our resistance to reward the concessions being made. We don’t have to get the shit kicked out of us like we did in Miami. Instead, we grow the power and sophistication of our networks and rachet up our disobedience. We attack in the dead of night and under the noonday sun. We hit them before, during and after world events. Bit by bit, hit by hit we bend them to our will.

Strategically, the tables have turned. Military might does not count for much anymore. The global capital machine is now so finely tuned, so delicately balanced, that just one virus, one blackout, one bushfire, one mad cow, one hand-held rocket launcher, one gram of plutonium, has the potential to crash the whole deal. From now on, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will not be able to keep it together.

That’s the dirty, anarchic, kick-ass side of World War IV.

The gentler, everyday flip side is the growing army of meme warriors: artists, writers, activists, environmentalists, green entrepreneurs, pranksters, poets, philosophers and punks, generating cognitive dissonance, spreading startling new ideas, streaming mindbombs, giving birth to new ideologies, paradigms and ways of looking at things.

Another world is possible. Yes! So let’s articulate it, communicate it. Let’s describe it in vivid, inspiring detail.