Unscene Berlin

Nuit Debout. Wikimedia Commons photo Maybe it's because I smile a lot, but Germans seem to enjoy telling me, with near-zealous amounts of fatalism, that the world is going down in flames. And if you're in Australia  right now then yeah, that must seem pretty true. They must figure that I am oblivious to all of the latest apocalyptic news flashes - but nah, that's far from true. It's just that I look at the world with both eyes open: the one that sees the negative shit that is happening out there and  the one that sees humanity's equal and opposite reactions to it. Yes, I'm talking about activism. Again. The media pretty much always leaves activism out of the picture. It speaks about the concerns of the wealthiest 1 percent almost exclusively. Therefore, it sees everything with one eye closed, or one eye 99% closed at the very least. As everyone looks back on the past year and  the past decade, that tendency will surely be amplified.  So join me, if...

The other day, I came across a report that the FBI released in 2002. It described a wave of deadly and random public attacks by 'lone wolf' shooters that had spread across the U.S. during the 1990s . The report had found that all these attacks had had several features in common:     •     They were rarely sudden, impulsive acts.     •     Most attackers did not threaten their targets directly prior to advancing the attack.     •     There was no accurate or useful profile of [people] who engaged in targeted violence.      •     Most attackers engaged in some behaviour prior to the incident that caused others concern or indicated a need for help.     •     Many attackers felt bullied, persecuted, or injured by others prior to the attack.     •     Most attackers had access to a...