Home » Posts tagged 'ruling class' (Page 2)

Tag Archives: ruling class

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XL

February 19, 2022

The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost, 1915

While reportedly written as a joke by Frost for his hiking companion, Edward Thomas, who often struggled to pick a path among diverging ones when they were out on walks together, this poem has been commonly interpreted as a narrative about our choices and how these shape our future. The decision to take the road ‘less traveled’ versus the one ‘not taken’ speaks to the meaningful impact this seemingly innocuous choice can have upon subsequent events[1].

I was reminded of Frost’s poem and the general interpretation of it as I contemplated the request to post for a wider audience a comment I had made regarding an article someone added to a Facebook group I am a member of. In composing this ‘contemplation’ I reflected upon this request, my thoughts regarding humanity’s choices as we consider how best to deal with our existential predicament of ecological overshoot, and some of the conversations I’ve engaged in with others over the past week or so.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXXIX

January 29, 2022

Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by author

Another contemplation prompted by an email my mum sent me. This is a lengthier article than usual (and intended) since I added further points each time I proofread it…

“This was sent to us from a college friend of XXX’s but I think he has a valid point!

___

I’ve always doubted mankind’s impact on the issue of climate change. After all, earth has had two ice ages that were followed by two warming cycles, all before humans left their caves. So, to me, the debate is whether there is a new natural, million year warming or cooling trend. If there is, there is nothing we can do about it. The following is a mixture of pictures and political comment on the matter [not included]. I am disappointed no one has followed the money and identified all those who gained notoriety, wealth, and power over the past 20 years of fear mongering.

I will begin by stating there are a growing number of people who have (and for some time) been following the ‘money’ and have uncovered growing manipulation by the ‘elite’ in a variety of areas and ways (it goes far beyond global warming/climate change). G. Edward Griffin, for example, talks about this entire situation of environmental concerns being leveraged by the ‘ruling class’ to profit from in some detail at the end of his in-depth and biting critique of the U.S.’s central banking system, the Federal Reserve, in The Creature From Jekyll Island (1994) — given the world reserve currency status of the U.S. dollar, the Fed is perhaps the most pernicious institution currently on our planet, for it those who control the creation and distribution of ‘money’ that are amongst the most powerful on the planet.

Most of those who have done this type of research, however, do not have the platform or finances for disseminating their ideas in the way that the mainstream media and/or politicians do, and for the most part their concerns have been overwhelmed by the constant propaganda of the ruling class and suppressed (and increasingly so given the expanding calls for censorship amid accusations of ‘fake news/misinformation’ by ‘the-powers-that-be’). I believe that’s changing but the impediments to revealing those manipulating the dials behind the curtain are huge; and when one does throw light upon the dark corners of our elite, more often than not if the challengers of mainstream narratives cannot be ostracised or marginalised, they are increasingly ending up like Edward Snowden or Julian Assange.

Regardless, here’s my spin on things ‘environmental’ and the connection with those who would use them for profit.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Inflation Is The Kryptonite That Will End Our Decades-Long Monetary Policy Ponzi Scheme

January 27, 2022

Inflation Is The Kryptonite That Will End Our Decades-Long Monetary Policy Ponzi Scheme

“It means buckle your seatbelt Dorothy, because Kansas is going bye-bye.”

The linchpin that allows the world’s nefarious central banking model to be so effective is that the commonfolk – the plumber, the electrician, the teacher, the bartender, bus driver or barber – don’t understand it.

Countless times, I have reminded my readers and listeners that the inflationary “machinery of night” blankets the most regressive tax possible upon the people who can least afford it, and does so in an extraordinarily convenient way for elites, politicians, central bankers and central planners whose titles and “jobs” hinge upon nobody questioning them and/or figuring out how the system works in the first place.

Today, the fabric of our modern banking world is held together by a logical fallacy of a system, wherein central banks are afforded the asinine luxury of being able to print infinite amounts of “money”, which is then disproportionately distributed toward the ruling class, billionaires, and elites, instead of the people who need it the most.

This shows up, literally, as a widening gap between the “haves” and the “have nots” that has widened consistently since the late 1970’s.

As a result of the most recent re-distribution of purchasing power disguised as “monetary stimulus” during the Covid-19 “crisis”, billionaires amassed an additional $4.1 trillion of wealth during a period of time in which the World Bank estimates that “some 100 million people have fallen into extreme poverty,” Bloomberg reported, in conjunction with the World Inequality Report, in December.

As I have asked many times, when the Fed considers stimulating by printing trillions: why not just divide up the money evenly amongst everybody in the country? Why must it be re-balanced and then deployed in a fashion that benefits those who already own financial assets?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXXVI

December 22, 2021

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXXVI

On Narrative Control and ‘Fact Checking’

One of the areas of interest for me as I weaved my way through my ten years of formal post-secondary education (yes, I spent the entire decade of the 1980s pursuing four degrees at several different universities; some of it part-time as I waffled between education and full-time work for relatively good pay in a grocery store) was that of epistemology (the nature and origins of ‘knowledge’). It was likely the result of some of my required readings: Stephen Jay Gould’s Ever Since Darwin, Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Clifford Gertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures. Regardless, I ended up exploring (outside of my regular classes) such topics as deconstructive criticism, hermeneutics, and philology; interesting topics for someone who ended up teaching elementary school students (10 years) and as a school administrator (15 years).

Upon reflection, this exploration of how humans come to ‘know’ what they know (or at least what they believe) has led me to be rather skeptical of dominant narratives, especially of ‘authority figures’. My challenging of ‘authority’, as it were, may have come somewhat ‘naturally’ given I grew up in the household of a police officer. Not that I consider my dad to have been ‘authoritarian’, not at all, but the somewhat ‘natural’ pushback children can give to parents was slightly coloured in our household by the simple fact that my dad was a sociocultural authority figure on top of his role as a father.

Anyways, I believe I have always questioned to a certain extent the ‘popular’ stories we are exposed to. And as I’ve read more widely over the years, I’ve come to hold that these stories tend to always play to the pursuits of the people that dominate society’s economic and power structures.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Are We Already Living In A Brave New World? – Huxley’s Warning To The World

November 27, 2021

Are We Already Living In A Brave New World? – Huxley’s Warning To The World

In the 21st century, how far away are we from Huxley’s dystopian vision of the future?

“It seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: That we are in the process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and will always exist to get people to love their servitude.” 

– Aldous Huxley, interview at University of California Berkeley (1962)

Is it too late to turn back the forces of technocracy and the scientific dictatorship?

The answer to this question is becoming more murky by the hour.

The following video presentation was produced by the Academy of Ideas, entitled, “Do We Live in a Brave New World? – Aldous Huxley’s Warning to the World.”

Watch: 

Source: 21st Century Wire

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXXI

November 2, 2021

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXXI

                    Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by author

So, dozens of political leaders, their hundreds of staff, multitudes of corporate leaders, and who knows how many ‘celebrities’ have all gathered in Glasgow, Scotland for an elite confab (#26) to discuss the ‘Climate Crisis’. Heaven knows how many resources have been extracted and pollutants dispersed in this latest political theatre (mostly? all? at taxpayer expense). The irony is not lost on many, except perhaps much of the mainstream media that tends to simply regurgitate political media releases and share simplistic narratives for exceedingly complex issues — it is indeed difficult to get someone to understand something if their income depends on them not understanding it.

Needless to say I expect little of substance to result from this event. In fact, I am increasingly seeing this event as an expo for marketing of ‘green/clean’ energy products (and making sure most? all? countries pursue purchasing them) that do not address our fundamental predicament — ecological overshoot — of which greenhouse gases is but one negative consequence (and not even the worst). And, of course, all of this provides the justification to create trillions of more dollars out of thin air (the debt held by a variety of the ruling class) that will be funnelled towards specific industries (owned by others of the ruling class) while doing little to reduce actual consumption or ecologically-destructive extraction industries.

This is increasingly looking not like a problem that can be solved but a predicament that may at best be mitigated on the margins. One of the most significant dilemmas, however, appears to be the ‘solutions’ that are being bandied about also appear to be the ones that will simply make the situation worse: increasing technology and complexities in the form of ‘renewables’.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We’re Starting to Feel Like There’s Nothing Left to Lose

November 2, 2021

Striketober is just the beginning.

Adobe Stock

Everyone’s had enough.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We Are Ruled By Apes With PR Firms: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

October 23, 2021

We Are Ruled By Apes With PR Firms: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

So yeah basically we’re watching sociopathic oligarchs shore up more and more control over the global population and our electoral systems are rigged to prevent us from doing anything about it and our information systems are stacked to prevent mass-scale direct action against it.

You can’t vote your way out of a problem you never voted your way into in the first place. You can’t have a revolution while everyone is being successfully propagandized into accepting things as they are. Any solution is therefore going to have to come from somewhere they haven’t secured.

So we’re all just kind of watching this happen and hoping for what amounts to a miracle, or really a stack of miracles. What gives me hope is that I know humans have a lot of surprises within themselves that they haven’t even begun to explore yet. We might just get some miracles.

❖

The behavior of global oligarchic power structures makes a lot more sense when you see that it’s not as much a lucid elite conspiracy as it is a few barely-conscious humans compulsively acting out psychological dynamics within themselves that they don’t really understand. Elite conspiracies happen to be sure, but what’s ultimately driving them is not a complete and coherent vision for the future which takes all things into account but rather the simple egoic impulses of barely-evolved primates blindly trying to shore up control like chimps asserting dominance.

The sociopaths who rule our world are no more conscious of their own inner processes than your average serial killer…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pandora Papers Show True Face of Global Britain

October 5, 2021

Pandora Papers Show True Face of Global Britain

Through its network of tax havens, the U.K. is the fulcrum of a system that benefits the rich and powerful writes Adam Ramsay. 

Cherie and Tony and Blair in 2003. The former U.K. prime minister and his wife are among those mentioned in the Pandora Papers. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Perhaps more than anything else, the Pandora Papers — the tranche of documents published Sunday night, which reveal the secret wealth of the world’s rich and powerful — tell a story about Britain.

There’s the role, for instance, played by the British Virgin Islands, an overseas territory of the U.K. that functions as a tax haven. Czechia’s multimillionaire prime minister used the territory to hide his ownership of a chateau in France. Others, including the family of Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Vladimir Putin’s PR man, have made similar use of the islands to conceal wealth — while Tony and Cherie Blair reportedly saved £312,000 in stamp duty when they bought a London property from a company registered in the British Virgin Islands in 2017.

Then there’s London itself. The leaked documents show how the King of Jordan squirrelled personal cash away in the capital’s property market, as did key allies of Imran Khan, Pakistan’s president.

More details will emerge in the coming days. But one thing is already clear. This isn’t a story about countries on the periphery of the world economy. It is a story about how the British state drives a global system in which the richest extract wealth from the rest.

British Through & Through

Cayman Islands government administration building. (Kmanian345, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Can We Learn About Covid Tyranny From Australia And Afghanistan?

August 28, 2021

What Can We Learn About Covid Tyranny From Australia And Afghanistan?

Despotic people tend to telegraph their future actions like inexperienced fighters tend to telegraph their punches; it’s not as if the intentions of totalitarians are obscured or hard to predict. In some cases they may even believe that they can be as obvious as they wish because they assume no one will ever try to stop them. They’ve been destroying lives for so long they adopt a sense of superiority, as if they are untouchable.

In my extensive study of psychopathy I find that, unfortunately, the primary catalyst for the exploitation and victimization of large populations of people is that many of them can’t wrap their heads around the idea of an organized conspiracy of human monsters. They refuse to acknowledge the existence of the evil right in front of them, so the evil is able to go unopposed for long stretches of time. There is ALWAYS a moment, though, when psychopaths push the wrong people too far. They just can’t help it, and this is when they find themselves on the business end of a noose or the barrel of a gun.

When it comes to organizations of psychopaths, the same moment also eventually arrives, it just takes longer for the public to comes to grips with the necessity of it.

In terms of the “Great Reset” agenda, medical tyranny using covid as a rationale is clearly a key ingredient to the future objectives of the power elite. At the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns last year I made several predictions and warnings. I said that the mandates and lockdowns for most people around the world would never go away, and I called this “Wave Theory”; the use of intermittent moments of limited freedom followed by increasingly more aggressive restrictions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXIX

August 18, 2021

Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by author

Today’s contemplation was prompted by an email my mum sent me. As she closes in on 80, I find that she’s becoming a bit more open-minded about things but remains somewhat of a skeptic when it comes to global warming/anthropogenic climate change. We periodically share thoughts on the state of the world, especially politics, and I think I’ve almost got her convinced to abandon her faith/trust in government…

Anyways, here is the comment about global warming she forwarded to me and my relatively quick response (typed up while I was engaged in replacing a floor/foundation for one of our greenhouses — I never considered a decade ago when I installed the first greenhouse, of three, that the mini-garden ties I was using to terrace our backyard would decay/rot so quickly so I am replacing them with concrete blocks and putting in a patio stone floor so that my eldest daughter who has taken over the greenhouse can have many years of use with it, hopefully). I have added some minor supplemental thoughts (in italics) and supporting links to a few sources (see endnotes).

Comment:

With global warming having become as much a political issue as a scientific inquiry, I went from wondering whether mankind might really be influencing the climate to someone questioning a science I do not understand. I am now worried we are being duped by people with an agenda, like keep the money gravy train running. No one has yet explained to my satisfaction the big ice age followed by warming then a mini-ice age, followed by warming, all before mankind was a significant presence on earth and did nothing but have a few campfires.

Response:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Inequality Could Be Addressed By Removing Our Options

August 11, 2021

Inequality Could Be Addressed By Removing Our Options

Recently I stumbled upon an interesting and informative YouTube video on the environment that gives information on both sides of the question, “is there a climate change crisis?” A fella who has studied this subject indicated there is not and what we are being told by many so-called experts is more hype than truth. An example is that while he agreed that the earth’s oceans were being over-fished, he saw the answer to be growing more of our fish in fish farms. As far as the sea rising, he reminded viewers that Holland is nine feet below sea level, surrounded by dikes, and doing fine.Still, the world is changing, and as I delved deeper into his views of how society should face its current challenges I became a bit disturbed. Conceding he was generally a liberal, he espoused the message it would be a win-win for the environment to bring the rest of the world into the modern world and it is our duty to do so. While he didn’t just come out and say it, this would address inequality across the world at our expense it “kinda would.”

Does This Look Familiar?

To me, this equates to putting us in a row of buildings or little boxes, rationing our food and energy use, and providing people with endless superficial entertainment including virtual travel opportunities and calling the experience life. This promise, where they take away your right to drive or own anything in exchange for more leisure time and less work is a trap well set. Unfortunately, it has the potential to gain traction when put before those on the bottom, often, these people have little to lose.…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It’s About The System, Not The Individuals: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

July 31, 2021

It’s About The System, Not The Individuals: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

If the working class had as much class solidarity as the ruling class has there never would’ve been a ruling class.

❖

Stealing someone’s labor is worse than stealing their property, because it’s theft of their life; you can replace property if you want, but you can’t replace hours of life. And rigging the system so people need to work longer hours in order to survive is this form of theft at mass scale.

Right now it’s ass backwards: people have to spend their lives away from their loved ones in pointless jobs, and if you tell the cop your employer stole hours from you he’ll just shrug while if your employer tells the cop you stole a company iPad you’ll be hauled off in chains.

This would all be a lot less confusing if we said people get paid by the Life Unit instead of by the hour, because it makes it much clearer what you’re actually trading. “You want a unit of my life for seven dollar bills and a quarter? Fuck you.”

❖

Six months into Biden’s presidency it’s definitely not okay to be a grown adult and still believe Trump was a uniquely monstrous president.

❖

Biden may be stopping all progress and breaking most of his campaign promises, but he did also campaign on bringing back the Obama years so in that sense he kept all his campaign promises.

❖

Focusing on individuals instead of the system creates the illusion that if you replaced the individuals you could fix the problems with the system. The individuals are symptoms of the disease.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XVII

June 1, 2021

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XVII

Teotihuacan, Mexico (1986) Photo by author

‘Renewables’. They will save us! This is one of the most common beliefs being bandied about by the ruling class and especially those that stand to profit from a shift to them in an attempt to power our complex society. I would argue, however, that we are not being told some uncomfortable truths about such a shift. Here is my comment to a Tyee article that discusses the city of Vancouver’s plan to address air pollution.

“…shifting industrial power sources from coal to renewables…”

As Mike Tyson is credited with saying: “Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.”

And the face punch here is the fact that many industrial processes cannot be shifted to renewables — to say little about the fact that renewables also rely heavily upon the industrial processes that depend upon fossil fuels and simply externalise the pollutants/ecological destruction required to ‘energise’ technology.

Here are a handful of articles that explain why alternatives are inadequate for significant industrial processes we rely upon:
https://www.vox.com/energy-…
https://www.energypolicy.co…
http://energyskeptic.com/20…
http://energyskeptic.com/20…
https://www.independent.co….

But let’s be frank, the Overton Window being forced upon this discussion (i.e., the only choice for our energy-intensive society is to shift from fossil fuels to ‘renewables’), including by many journalists, completely ignores some harsh realities, such as biophysical limits on a finite planet and thermodynamics. The assumption seems to be always that we can only fight climate change (ignoring all the other ecologically-destructive consequences of our constant pursuit of growth) by shifting away from fossil fuels (a high-density and easily transportable fuel that supports almost everything about our globalised and industrial complex world) to ‘renewable’ forms of energy (that are not truly renewable and especially not ‘green/clean’).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

1984 vs. Brave New World: Which Dystopian Nightmare Is Likelier to Come True?

May 5, 2021

1984 vs. Brave New World: Which Dystopian Nightmare Is Likelier to Come True?

That the global human population is hurdling towards dystopia at breakneck speed is a foregone conclusion by this point. The tea leaves read “red” with human pain and suffering.

The deeper question remains: will the coming authoritarian hellscape be more Mad-Max–kill-rape-pillage-scorched-Earth style or more lobotomized-institutionalized-submissive-heavily-medicated style?

.

OR…

?

In dystopian literary terms, will the horrific anti-human engineered society of tomorrow more resemble the vision of George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World?

I read the first quarter of 1984, for the first time, at 15 years of age in the shed behind my father’s house in Topeka, Kansas on top of the family lawnmower. His wife at the time had banished me from the house, so there I sat at dusk under dim light from a single light bulb in the corner. Things were dark.

The human misery of Winston’s world leapt from the pages in crystal-clear notes.

“1984” in everyday parlance is synonymous with the ethos of that novel’s brutal ruling class. The prevailing ideology of the state depicted by Orwell was summarized in its arguably most haunting quote, delivered by agent of state O’Brien as he tortures the protagonist Winston:

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

Police state rule-by-cop is the standard concern when most civil libertarians discuss authoritarian overreach because it is the most visible, most obvious form of government power grab.

The Party of 1984 (the state) pursues power not as a means to an end but as an end entirely of itself: the “pressing forever” on the nerve of power:

“That is the world that we are preparing, Winston. A world of victory after victory, triumph after triumph after triumph: an endless pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve of power.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Post navigation

← Older posts Newer posts →

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress