2011 London riots august

About 15 hours ago or so I was listening to Obama’s voice over the internet…online radio…

 I was doing something else, nothing important really… I had returned from Japan a few days before, but somehow this time jetlag had hit me pretty hard despite having played such energetic shows over there…

Sometimes in the past I felt nothing, but this time it was like that scene in Fight Club in which Edward Norton lays on the couch with his remote control, flicking through TV channels, suffering from insomnia. The only difference was that I had got rid of my TVset almost 10 years ago. I had three totally different books in front of me, couldn’t focus at all.

But when Obama came on, I suddenly felt a shot of adrenaline, I woke up. He was talking about how “Standard & Poor’s doubted our political system’s ability to act” – the US had been downgraded to an AA+ level. The debt level was increased, the problems far from solved. The information wasn’t what alerted me, it was the tone of his voice.

When Obama got elected, he convinced a whole generation just by speaking to them in a certain way, that democracy and capitalism will work out for everybody. We CAN change and improve things. Even though I come from a very different political standpoint and I am very aware of the power of the system, when it comes to the system changing individuals who tried to change it, I heard an honesty in this man’s voice which was rare amongst politicians. But suddenly what seemed to have changed mostly for me was his voice. It was the voice of a man who failed badly but out of respect for his listeners was performing a duty.  The job of being President.

We live in a society which has no place for optimism anymore. It’s gone. Nobody wants to take the risk and predict a future,  mainly because everybody feels powerless. Nobody even wants to take the responsibility and take matters into their own hands.

It’s stagnant. Establishments are regarded as fools. It is a constant battle between the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ and the ‘mob mentality’.

So while I was starting to feel like I was actually back in Berlin and awake, I looked outside the window, down on the street in which Atari Teenage Riot had played the peace demonstration on May 1st 1999. Thousands of people protested against Germany’s first involvement in an attack war since World War II. I remembered when I was on the microphone during a song and saw how the police beat into the, at that point, peaceful crowd. Of course the situation escalated, it’s all on film. Even though the images have become iconic and still give viewers the chills, but in my opinon they also tell a story of failure…

There is a long tradition in Berlin that the labor day, the 1st May ends in violence. In 1999 it was supposed to be different. The intent was to get across how serious people treat this issue of Germany sending their soldiers to war. The police failed, because they didn’t break up the crowd and things got out of hand. We all failed to get the real message across. The media had their images of violence, and basically a decade later, it seems perfectly ‘normal’ for German politicians to send troops into other countries.

Violence is always the result of people failing. Failing to communicate, failing to take responsibilities, failing to solve problems. Always.

Now the street in Berlin, Kreuzberg looks peaceful and quiet. Like it did a day before May 1st 1999 and the day after.

I turned back to my computer. The different news feeds were sending update after update. “Freddie Mac reports 2nd quarter loss, asks for $1.5B in federal aid”, “Bank of America now down -20.31%”, “Asia stocks fall after U.S. #stocks dive”, “Losses accelerating at Australian stock market; S&P/ASX200 index off 5%”