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From Whirlpool 8
(1) Anarchy in the Y2K
(2) Fuck The Music Industry
21Cpunx!
Whirlpool issue 1 included A LETTER FROM
NEWPORT, for Whirlpool 8, The Bard sees the year in...ANARCHY IN THE Y2K
THE revolution will start in the City. Not the city of
the homeless, the bored, the drunk and the agitated - rather THE CITY... the home of
commerce and big, big bucks.
Just as the invention of the printing press was enough to
bring the church - the mightiest and most awful establishment of the 16th Century - to its
knees, so will the Internet topple our Governments and the very basis of world economics
in the 21st.
The world's Governments
occupy the same position as the church did in the 1500s. At that time, the Church had a
monopoly on the wealth and land of its constituents, and it ruled with something of a
fearful streak. Heretics who stood up against the system were crushed mercilessly by the
church bullyboys. The church had the armies, the masses and the money.
Then came the printing press
- a chance for the free-thinkers to publish their dangerous and radical new thoughts. The
church, threatened for the first time in aeons, responded with a bloody crusade and a heap
of puritanical laws which were brutally enforced. Presses were shut down and their owners
punished severely. But the church had acted too late, and nothing could stop the march of
free speech.They were reduced to the miserable state that they now occupy.
Today, Governments use money
to keep their people in line. We need it - they've got it. But this is not a situation
that can last for much longer.
The Internet is an
ungovernable forum for free thought and free speech, for collective bargaining and
unification of ideas - but that's only the half of it.
More importantly, it is taking people away from their
Governments and putting them in a position of self-rule. Before long, Governments -
ignored and unnecessary in the eyes of their public - will be reduced to the level of
agencies, little councils who run our hospitals, our roads, sure, but not us.
Soon, we will get the choice
to pick our own Government. You will be able to pay for what services you require, and you
will have the power not to pay for the ones you don't.
The Internet will end
taxation. As more and more commerce goes online, and more and more transactions take place
without any actual money changing hands, it will become more and more impossible for the
revenue agencies to police this business. Rather than stay within the law, the world's
biggest businesses will join the Trotters in their very own tax evasion - high key
officers might even be appointed to head entire tax evasion divisions. An online
transaction is not a material one, and it won't find its way to the books. Business
profits will spiral online and deplete to nothing on the record. It will no longer be
profitable or competitive for a big business to stay whiter than white.
No tax means no revenue - and no revenue will mean no
Government, at least nothing beyond a puppet state.
This will bring what remains of our state to its knees
and to our ultimate control. Any efforts by authority to control the Net will be quickly
overcome. Within a few decades, we will be able to make our demands of our Governments.
Can you imagine?
Already, this shift of
paradigm is taking effect. What brought the Berlin Wall down? Why did Nik Kershaw and Sade
do more to help world poverty than Margaret Thatcher during Live Aid? Why are the third
world debts so very suddenly being written off?
The cards are stacking more in our favour every day, but
it is the big conglomerations who will finally wrestle the power away from our
Governments. We have little to fear from this - as the world online opens up and develops,
we as individuals will gradually become more important than big suppliers and we will call
the shots. The customer, finally, will be right.
So when your Government or
your church tries to tell you the Internet is evil because it spreads pornography, stop
and think for a second. Is that all they're worried about?
Happy New Millennium.
The Bard xx
29.12.99
email: bard@frug.freeserve.co.uk
website: http://www.geocities.com/frug_uk/ |
| from a
different kind of 20th century time capsule SUCCESS DOES NOT EQUAL FREEDOM
the gutless poetry & ugly force-fed bullshit of our peers, proud of their obedience,
happy in compromise, cushioned by corporate white values having faith in a fucking t-shirt
sale/chart place, too fucking lazy to even want opinions tied to the piss-stained past
glories of pops ugly heritage - grit determined trite middlegrounders wallowing in the
cut-throat idiocy of this shabby, seedy, tattered, rotten, dismal, bleak, drab,
colourless, joyless, glum, wretched, tedious fucking bullshit Industry clinging to some
tiny fascist notion of success, terrified of their tiny worlds collapsing...
fuck ...the new mediocrity - ...the
stalwart indie nation, ...the new wave of FUCK YOU! ...the Beatles & the Stones. And
Pulp. ...bad decisions & lacklustre celebrities. ...would be irony-free dinosaurs
planning careers & their next soundbite interview, going blank again, fuck the 10yr
black hole that is 'INDIE' (re-titled Sony Corporate Industries). Fuck loud guitars &
searing noise attacks that shoot off into space like damp sponges & bore us senseless.
Fuck the smug loud-mouth celebrity icons selling bad nostalgia for their bored,
half-hearted fanbase. Fuck Oasis/Echobelly/S*M*A*S*H for having nothing to say & given
every opportunity to say it. Fuck the grim gift-wrapped shattered paradise of a lost
generation - sweet docile Industry children clamouring for identity, for media space, for
the chance to be wanted, nodding in unified indifference. Fuck your credit-rated consumer
noise. And fuck you for just ACCEPTING
 WE DON'T WANNA GO TO YOUR PARTIES
WE DON'T WANNA MEET YOUR FUCKING FRIENDS
The Music Industry stopped breathing in 1959. Every noise since is the noise of
Institutional Boredom - the mass groan of self-defeat. The mass consumption of FEAR. The
bastardised culture of free enterprise. The politics of Defeat. The dead walk amongst us,
distorted, nervous, ugly, used.
FUCK THE MUSIC INDUSTRY is an umbrella
network of pop fans, punk kids, socialists, queercore kids (anyone in fact who see Oasis
& John Major as part of THE SAME FUCKING DISEASE) bored shitless of your need for
greed, your celebration of money, your fear of freedom...
snippets from a flyer at In
The City, Manchester, early 90s |
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