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The world seems to be coming apart at the seams. It’s critical to understand why, so that we can avoid the worst and find the best responses so as to move toward the environmentally and socially healthy future we want. It turns out that there’s a relatively simple frame for gaining such understanding.

This straightforward explanation proposes that the main force driving societal change is available energy—an assertion that’s backed by a substantial amount of scientific research. Those with the patience and curiosity to investigate further can find other contributing factors to societal evolution—technology, investment, laws regarding property rights, histories of injustice, and more, many of which entail complex systemic interactions that take time to tease apart and comprehend mentally. These are important. But not as important as energy.

Energy is necessary in order for any organism to do anything whatsoever. For humans, food is energy that powers labor. But, in addition, people long ago learned how to harness energy from fire, water, and wind. Using firewood, paddlewheels, and sails, we built agrarian societies with irrigation systems, cities, cathedrals, mills, and seagoing ships, and created some pretty great art, music, and literature along the way. People also used energy from various sources to engage in wars and conquests, and to enslave millions of others in order to steal the fruits of their forced labor. In addition, humans deforested enormous regions to harvest firewood, and ruined millions of acres of soil with unsustainable farming methods.

When humans started using fossil fuels, a couple of centuries ago, they gained access to millions of years’ worth of solar energy that nature had gathered, stored, and transformed into energy sources that were far superior, at least over the short term, to firewood. It was a game-changing moment.

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

John Pilger: The Stalinist Trial of Julian Assange

September 7, 2020

John Pilger: The Stalinist Trial of Julian Assange

The extradition hearing beginning this week is the final act of an Anglo-American campaign to bury Julian Assange. It is not due process. It is due revenge, said John Pilger in a speech Monday outside the court building.

Having reported the long, epic ordeal of Julian Assange, John Pilger gave this address outside the Central Criminal Court in London on Sept. 7 as the WikiLeaks Editor’s extradition hearing entered its final stage.

When I first met Julian Assange more than ten years ago, I asked him why he had started WikiLeaks. He replied: “Transparency and accountability are moral issues that must be the essence of public life and journalism.”

I had never heard a publisher or an editor invoke morality in this way. Assange believes that journalists are the agents of people, not power: that we, the people, have a right to know about the darkest secrets of those who claim to act in our name.

If the powerful lie to us, we have the right to know. If they say one thing in private and the opposite in public, we have the right to know. If they conspire against us, as Bush and Blair did over Iraq, then pretend to be democrats, we have the right to know.

It is this morality of purpose that so threatens the collusion of powers that want to plunge much of the world into war and wants to bury Julian alive in Trump’s fascist America.

In 2008, a top secret U.S. State Department report described in detail how the United States would combat this new moral threat. A secretly-directed personal smear campaign against Julian Assange would lead to “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”.

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

No Go Zones: A Guide to Western Failed States and European Secessionist Movements

September 6, 2020

No Go Zones: A Guide to Western Failed States and European Secessionist Movements

The failed state is to post-modernity what the nation-state was to modernity. It’s a recent development that is a hallmark of our age – like a state, but incapable of exercising sovereignty over all of its nominal territory. And while it might sound a little far-fetched, the failed state isn’t just coming to the West. It might already be here.

What Is a Failed State?

A failed state is a state no longer exercising effective control over the whole of its nominal territory. This can take a number of forms in practice, such as:

A de facto separatist nation or nations existing within the boundaries of their de jure territory, competing for the monopoly on legitimate use of physical force.
Failure of the legitimate authority of the nation to make practical, collective decisions.
Inability to adequately provide basic social services such as policing, firefighting or emergency medical services to some or all of its territory.
Inability to connect with other states through diplomatic channels; a lack of participation in the international community.
A central government incapable of collecting enough tax revenue to operate effectively.

One or several of these factors can be present in a failed state. Once a state is “failed,” this often means widespread crime, corruption and outsized influence by non-state actors.

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

A letter to real power: a letter to us

September 2, 2020

A letter to real power: a letter to us

When I heard that Culture Declares Emergency was organizing a series of ‘Letters to Power’, I thought to myself: “Rupert, you should probably write one”. You see, I have spent much of my life attempting to talk to, persuade, even beg those with power – our elected leaders, heads of banks and businesses, big organisations or media companies, for example. I have written many, many letters to power before.

Though to be frank, it’s been largely pointless; while some appear to listen, most fail to hear and even more refuse to act.

Trying once again felt a bit like bashing my head against a brick wall. I felt my enthusiasm for the project draining away.

But then I stopped for a minute and really thought about power. Especially in the context of these last three tumultuous years.

I started to re-assess my assumption about who this letter would be directed to. When I looked up the dictionary definition – “the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events” – and I recalled the way the world has changed since 2018, it became clearer where the power really is.

With us, the people.

We were the ones who, earlier this year, initiated precautionary action when, at least in the UK, our government was clearly going down a different, deadly, route of (non-) response to the Covid crisis.

We were the ones who supported our family, friends and neighbours with countless good deeds during lockdown, and who stood in public solidarity with the NHS and key workers.

We were the ones who questioned, and continue to question, the motives of our rudderless governments in their stance on coronavirus.

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

Evil Geniuses: How the Rich Took Control of America (and Canada)

August 29, 2020

Evil Geniuses: How the Rich Took Control of America (and Canada)

Kurt Andersen looks at the not-so-secret conspiracy by the rich, right and big business.

Donald Trump’s presidency is just one result of a 50-year conspiracy to ensure the rich and the right controlled America. Photo: US government.

They may have sentenced Leonard Cohen to 20 years of boredom for trying to change the system from within, but a whole generation of American conservatives were richly rewarded for doing just that.

As Kurt Andersen says in summarizing his own book, “Evil Geniuses chronicles the quite deliberate re-engineering of our economy and society since the 1960s by a highly rational confederacy of the rich, the right and big business.”

Canada, Britain and many other countries were pulled along in the Americans’ wake, though without quite the same awful results. Canada may be able to recover, but it will not be easy.

Andersen admits the re-engineering of America sounds like a great conspiracy theory. But he documents the efforts to transform the country meticulously and credibly.

That’s possible in part because the conspirators made no attempt to conceal themselves; on the contrary, the arch-conspirator was a famous corporate lawyer, Lewis Powell, who authored the memorandum that sparked the movement in 1971 and was soon after appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Taking the 1960s radicals more seriously than he should have, Powell argued for long-term changes that would further enrich the wealthy at the expense of workers and the middle class.

The memorandum was probably the single most influential American document since George F. Kennan’s “long telegram” of 1946, which set the terms of the Cold War that followed. Corporate leaders fell in behind Powell, and began to pour millions into think tanks, foundations and law schools — not to mention journalism scholarships to develop a new generation of right-wing pundits.

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

Abnormalize The Status Quo

August 17, 2020

Abnormalize The Status Quo

If we’d been living in a healthy society and then suddenly had this society’s sick, insane status quo thrust upon us by powerful people, we’d have all been out in the streets making life very hard for those powerful people in an instant.

We are in the same situation now. We are having a wildly insane status quo thrust upon us by the powerful and for the benefit of the powerful. Only difference is we’re not all out in the streets, and instead of thrusting this horrible situation upon us suddenly, they’ve been doing it this entire time.

Which is precisely why we’re not out in the streets. We were born into this mess, so we assume it’s normal and that things are supposed to be this way. But it isn’t, and they aren’t.

What is normal is health. Health is the normal default condition. If you wake up with a fever and stabbing pain in your abdomen you don’t say “Ah well I guess that’s normal now, you can’t expect to just not have a fever and stabbing abdominal pain,” you recognize that there’s an urgent problem and you take action to fix it.

Even if you’d been sick your entire life, you would understand that your situation is not normal. You would understand that the basic default condition is health, but some dysfunction in your specific system has deprived you of that normal state of being.

In order for us to begin pushing back on the dysfunction of our current system, we need to begin looking at it in the same way. We need to clearly come to see how spectacularly divergent it is from the basic default condition of health. How sick it is. How abnormal it is.

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

The Spreading Feeling “This Is All Happening By Design”

August 3, 2020

The Spreading Feeling “This Is All Happening By Design”

As events unfold I have witnessed a growing opinion being battered around that something sinister is happening beneath the surface. This includes the feeling we are no longer in control of our fate. More and more the idea that form follows function and the winners were picked before all this started is being injected into the mix. This theory embraces the proposition the bottom half of society is destitute and totally dependent on the government which means they have been removed from the battlefield. Now that these people are no longer a threat, corporate and government collaborators are consolidating power and control.

Like many of the people watching this slow-moving train wreck, I’m beginning to lose perspective. My insight has become blocked by the increasingly irrational actions taking place. The uneasy feeling that things will get far worse is being heightened by the suggestion this is all by design, and when you don’t get that, you have no defense is indeed frightening. It is bolstered by the supporting argument we should not listen to what those in charge say but rather that we watch what they do. Much of the growing apprehension is rooted in the domino effects about to be unleashed upon the economy. An example is, the tenant doesn’t pay the landlord and risks eviction. The landlord doesn’t pay his mortgage and risks foreclosure. The bank doesn’t get paid, but that’s OK because taxpayers will bail them out.

With so much unresolved and hanging in the wind conspiracy theories are taking wing. While I do not endorse the theory this is all developing as planned, it is difficult to deny the situation is dire and the general population remains clueless as to the dangers ahead.

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

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh

August 1, 2020

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh

As I approach my 7th decade on this planet, I have reached the conclusion that we all interpret the world through mythical narratives; some of our own creation, many (most?) others ‘imposed’ upon us. The ruling class of society conditions us in numerous ways to accept stories that, for the most part, support and prolong their position of power and control.

From hereditary chieftains/monarchs to ‘democratic’ leadership, the ‘elite’ of society maintain a hold over the ‘tribe’ so as to ensure their revenue streams and wealth (some would argue this is a parasitic arrangement since this class returns little in the way of productive value to the system). They use the various tools at their disposal (e.g., education system, media, etc.) to inculcate/predispose us to accepting this arrangement and continuing to control and expand the wealth-generating/extraction systems that arise from everyday human economic interactions.

Power and wealth is concentrated significantly at the top of the pyramid; yet we are constantly exposed to narratives that we not only have agency, but that the ‘elite’ put our needs at the forefront of their policies and decision-making. I strongly believe these are false and propagated to influence/manipulate our thinking and beliefs.

Just like our financial institutions (especially the big banks) who knowingly engage in criminal activity and then receive raps on the wrist with minimal fines when caught (making their brazen thievery well worth it), the ruling class is more than willing to break ‘rules/laws’ (in fact, I would argue they are constantly doing so) because the ‘price’ for doing so is negligible (with the occasional sacrifice made to appease the masses).

I don’t believe there is a ‘solution’ to any of this (unlike most who do because, you know, hope–and reduction of cognitive dissonance) aside from complete sociopolitical collapse–which I would argue will eventually happen as it has for every complex society that has preceded ours. My response to this has been to accept it, and try and remove myself from the Matrix as much as is possible and prepare accordingly.

The world is not as we have been conditioned to believe by the narrative managers who weave the various storylines (read Edward Bernays book Propaganda for interesting insight on this). Awareness of this is a first step towards a better understanding of how messed up this world truly is and, possibly, doing something for your family/community to make it more resilient as the system inevitably declines/collapses.

When Corporate Power Is Your Real Government, Corporate Media Is State Media

July 31, 2020

When Corporate Power Is Your Real Government, Corporate Media Is State Media

The New York Times published an astonishingly horrible article the other day titled “Latin America Is Facing a ‘Decline of Democracy’ Under the Pandemic” accusing governments like Venezuela and Nicaragua of exploiting Covid-19 to quash opposition and oppress democracy.

The article sources its jarringly propagandistic claims in multiple US government-funded narrative management operations like the Wilson Center and the National Endowment for Democracy-sponsored Freedom House, the extensively plutocrat-funded Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the United States Naval Academy.

The crown jewel of this piece of State Department stenography reads as follows:

“Adding to these challenges, democracy in Latin America has also lost a champion in the United States, which had played an important role in promoting democracy after the end of the Cold War by financing good governance programs and calling out authoritarian abuses.”

Whoa, nelly.

The fact that America’s most widely regarded newspaper feels perfectly comfortable making such a spectacularly in-your-face lie on behalf of the US government tells you everything you need to know about what the mass media in America really are and what they do.

The United States has never at any time been a champion of democracy in Latin America, before or since the Cold War. It has intervened hundreds of times in the continent’s affairs throughout history with everything from murderous corporate colonialism to deadly CIA regime change operations to overt military invasions. It is currently trying to orchestrate a coup in Venezuela after failing to stage one during the Bush administration, it’s pushing regime change in Nicaragua, and The New York Times itself admitted this year that it was wrong to promote the false US government narrative of electoral shenanigans in Bolivia’s presidential race last year, a narrative which facilitated a bloody fascist coup.

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

The Only Obstacle To A Healthy World Is Government Secrecy And Propaganda

July 21, 2020

The Only Obstacle To A Healthy World Is Government Secrecy And Propaganda

If people in power were no longer able to hide secrets and spin lies about what’s going on in the world, all of our major problems would come to an end. Because secretive and manipulative power structures are the source of all of our major problems.

If the public could see what’s actually happening in their world, they would immediately begin using the power of their numbers to overhaul our current system. This is why our current system pours so much energy into preventing the public from seeing what’s actually happening in their world.

If it weren’t for the constant campaign of obfuscation and manipulation of public perception via veils of government secrecy and propaganda, humanity would naturally find its way out of the power-driven tribulations it now faces, as surely as you’ll avoid obstacles and hazards in your path when you are walking with your eyes open. The only problem in this case is that our eyes have not been permitted to open.

It isn’t actually necessary to hold a bunch of hard, rigid ideas about exactly what kind of society we should have, what kind of political system we should have, what kind of economic system we should have. There’s nothing wrong with promoting ideas and having preferences of course, but really if you just gave humanity the ability to navigate through its own troubles by removing the blindfolds of propaganda and power opacity, it would organically create a healthy society, and realistically such a society probably won’t look a whole lot like our mental models.

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

Cracks in the supply chain: Is metastable turning into unstable?

July 14, 2020

Cracks in the supply chain: Is metastable turning into unstable?

You who are reading this sentence are metastable systems. So, is the biosphere, and so is all of human society. A metastable system is one that remains stable so long as the inputs necessary to maintain its stability are available.

For humans this includes food (energy) and water. For the biosphere the key element is the energy input from the Sun. For human society, which is a subset of the biosphere, the Sun is also the key energy input. Much of the energy used by humans is stored in the form of wood, coal, natural gas and oil which all ultimately come from living organisms dependent on the Sun for energy.

Hydropower is also a product of the Sun which drives the water cycle on Earth and therefore allows hydroelectric dams to be filled. Wind and solar energy are, of course, products of the Sun as well. The energy harvested by humans gets expressed in manufacturing and transportation in machines. It gets expressed in human labor, but also in the thought, planning, and communications needed to make things happen.

What we are witnessing as a result of this pandemic is a widespread challenge to metastable systems upon which our societies depend. The most obvious are those related to hospitals and health care products. We often read in the news that hospitals are near “the breaking point” as if the hospital walls will burst when too many patients crowd into the building.

What this really means, of course, is that beyond certain levels of activity, the normal systems of a hospital will not function properly for want of people to provide services, for want of supplies needed to provide those services—tests for the COVID-19 virus come to mind—for want of space to examine all those seeking medical attention and for want of money to finance it all.

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

Robert Kiyosaki: “I was told not to talk about this”

June 22, 2020

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: “I WAS TOLD NOT TO TALK ABOUT THIS”

Robert Kiyosaki has been on the front lines warning people of what’s coming. He continues to speak up, even though he was told to “stay in your lane” and not alert the public to what’s going on right in front of them, with their unknowing consent.

Kiyosaki also says that he doesn’t know what’s coming, but that something bigger is coming our way. As a person speaking out against the ruling class, the elitists, and their system of control and slavery, he could be at the forefront of waking people up. Those still stuck in the left/right paradigm, regardless of the side you choose are going to have to make the worst of choices in the coming future.

Robert Kiyosaki: What The Elites Don’t Want You To Know

Ultimately, Kiyosaki appears to have the same goal as I do right now: waking people up and getting them to leave the Matrix. This is a tough spot to be in because those who still think the ruling class and Donald Trump will save them are going be hurt. The truth is, you are going to have to save yourself, and I agree wholeheartedly with Kiyosaki on that. No government, no false savior (Trump), no bankster, not elitist, no other human is coming to save you. You must wake up, leave the system, and save yourself.

Is this redundant in recent articles? You bet. But far too many are still stuck in a state of hopeful unawareness of what’s really going on all to support a member of the ruling class who has done nothing but advance the elitists’ agenda. And yes, I mean Trump. Look, it was a tough pill for me to swallow too, and I’ll admit it.

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

The Illusion of Control: What If Nobody’s in Charge?

June 22, 2020

The Illusion of Control: What If Nobody’s in Charge?

The last shred of power the elites hold is the belief of the masses that the elites are still in control.

I understand the natural desire to believe somebody’s in charge: whether it’s the Deep State, the Chinese Communist Party, the Kremlin or Agenda 21 globalists, we’re primed to believe somebody somewhere is controlling events or pursuing agendas that drive global responses to events.

I submit whatever control we discern is illusory, as the dynamics unleashed by the pandemic have already escaped the control of elites. The fundamental reason the elites have lost control is that all the systems they depend on have been broken for 12 years, but were successfully papered over by doing more of what broke them in the first place. This papering over of broken systems generated an illusion of functionality: everything appeared to function as before even as dysfunction spread into every corner of every system.

As doing more of what broke the systems in the first place is failing, the illusion of functionality has been shredded. Now that the illusion of functionality has been lost, control of the narrative via institutional authority has also been lost.

I’ve often written about the difference between force and power; elites often mistakenly believe the two are equivalent, but they are worlds apart. Those who wield power persuade the masses to obey without being coerced, and to accept the self-serving narratives of the elite without question. Power leverages institutional authority and cultural myths and beliefs.

Force is costly, as coercion is costly. Force is a poor substitute for power, not only because the costs are so burdensome, but because the masses are not acting on their own volition; they are obeying only because the costs of not obeying are so high.

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

We Need to Shut Them Down

May 3, 2020

We Need to Shut Them Down

We need to shut them down. Governments that is. At least the ones that cannot pay their bills because of unnecessary economic lockdown orders.

I have tried just about everything in these pages to induce politicians to see that they are pushing the worst policies since at least the New Deal and are not going to get reelected if they continue their lockdown policies, which could end in bloody revolt if the power or another essential system goes out.

I’ve also tried to induce Americans to sue for their freedom on both civil and Constitutional grounds. I’ve tried to stir their patriotism, and to shame them into rising above the status of mindless test subjects or medieval peasants. I’ve tried to get “Progressives” to see that they can’t have both Social Security and government health insurance simultaneously without increasing the probability of future fiascos.

I have also proffered two separate ways out of this mess, one recently implicitly endorsed by Elon Musk, and another that no self-respecting social scientist could dispute. And I suggested that COVID-19 life insurance would help Americans to face death more like their brave ancestors, or younger selves, did at Woodstock.

But oh the powers that be, be a mighty whale some doth call Leviathan, with the magical power of creating something out of nothing, or rather, like the Wizard of Oz, appearing to create something out of nothing! So the money doth spew forth from the whale’s blow hole in mighty bursts to assuage and calm those who might wish it ill. And worked so far it has.

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

The New COVID-19 Authoritarians Will Only Give Up Power If They Fear Blowback

April 18, 2020

The New COVID-19 Authoritarians Will Only Give Up Power If They Fear Blowback

It was autumn 1989. Momentous things were taking place in the world.

The Berlin Wall had fallen. The people of the Eastern Bloc had succeeded at getting to the West through Hungary. The firm line between east and west was wavering. The situation was moving away from the course that Warsaw Pact communist governments had charted: that their populations must remain captive within the borders of the Communist Bloc.

It was unclear whether this social contagion for freedom would spread into Czechoslovakia.

But then November 17, 1989, arrived, a day etched in history. This was Students Day, a legal holiday. Everything had to close under government fiat. People were off school and off work. But some folks were agitated about prior government actions which many saw as abuses.

When the government gave the people of Czechoslovakia that day off, it was like a match to tinder. The small flame grew into a big one.

It was a revolution noted for its bloodlessness. The Velvet Revolution, we call it today, leaning on what the Czechs called it. People, for as far as the eye could see, gathered in a giant square in Prague and called for the ouster of their government.

In the face of the idea that saying the wrong words politically could be toxic to one’s health, much like in America today, some did not resort to speaking words against their government. They merely pulled their keys out of their pockets and jingled them.

The message was clear.

Imagine tens of thousands of people jingling their keys at once.

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

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