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Max Ernst Ubu Imperator 1923

Ilargi: This is part 3 of Alexander Aston’s view of how upheaval and collapse can lead to new insights, new bursts of creativity, in science, religion, society and the arts. Part 1 of Quantum, Jazz and Dada can be found here, part 2 is here.

Here’s Alexander:

Quantum, Jazz and Dada:
The Dynamic Symmetry of Destruction and Creativity

Human Development

“Every breath is a sacrament, an affirmation of our connection with all other living things, a renewal of our link with our ancestors and a contribution to generations yet to come. Our breath is a part of life’s breath, the ocean of air that envelopes the earth.”
– David Suzuki

As human minds first started to emerge from the ocean and step onto the shores of Africa, they increasingly began to respond to their own presence. Hominids co-evolved through the complex social structures generated through the ecosystem engineering of tool using communities, forming a kind of “multicellular” cognition. The unique features of human cognitive evolution emerged from the dense feedback between brains, bodies, and their environments. As humans learn to engage with the material world around us we transform our collective developmental processes. “The structure of the brain reflects its history: as an evolving dynamic system, in which one part evolves out of another”. (20)

Tools made available whole new energetic niches for early hominins while sharing and cooperation increased group resiliency. This stimulated the growth of new neural structures capable of mediating the growing complexity of hominin interaction with the world. It is from these socio-cognitive ecologies that the phenomena we call history has emerged. What is clear from our deep past is that cooperative behaviour is overwhelmingly the dominant evolutionary characteristic of our species.

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

Foundation and Empire

November 12, 2018

Foundation and Empire

**Thomas Cole, “The Consummation of Empire” (1836)**

Every vice of the Empire has been repeated in the Foundation. Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.

That quote is the narrative crux of Isaac Asimov’s second book of the Foundation trilogy, Foundation and Empire (1952). It’s the fatal flaw of the Foundation, formed originally as a noble form of galactic government, but now no better than (and easy pickings for) the Empire.

Hold that thought.

The narrative crux of the second note of the Things Fall Apart trilogy, Things Fall Apart (Part 2), can be found in the following chart. It’s the relationship between U.S. household net worth (how rich we are) versus U.S. GDP (how much our economy has grown) from 1951 through today.

Both data sets are in nominal dollars (meaning neither is adjusted for inflation), both are compiled by the same people (the Fed) using the same methodology, and both are normalized at 100 to show growth rates. It’s an apples-to-apples comparison, so don’t @ me about semi-log charting – it adds nothing here.

For 46 years, from 1951 to 1997, we were no more and no less rich than our economy grew. Which makes sense. That’s the neutral vision of monetary policy, where you’re not trying to pull forward future growth through leverage and easy money in order to create more wealth today.

For the past 20 years, however, we have had a series of wealth bubbles – first the Dot-Com bubble, then the Housing Bubble, and today the Financial Asset Bubble – that have made us richer than our economy grows. Each of these bubbles was intentionally “blown” by the Fed through monetary policy.

Quantum, Jazz and Dada – 2

November 12, 2018

Quantum, Jazz and Dada – 2

Hannah Höch Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany 1919

Ilargi: This is part 2 of Alexander Aston’s view of how upheaval and collapse can lead to new insights, new bursts of creativity, in science, religion, society and the arts. Part 1 of Quantum, Jazz and Dada can be found here. Part 3 will follow soon. Check TheAutomaticEarth.com.

Here’s Alexander:

Quantum, Jazz and Dada:
The Dynamic Symmetry of Destruction and Creativity

Energy, Ecology and Ecosystems

“Erwin Schrodinger (1945) has described life as a system in steady-state thermodynamic disequilibrium that maintains its constant distance from equilibrium (death) by feeding on low entropy from its environment – that is, by exchanging high-entropy outputs for low-entropy inputs. The same statement would hold verbatim as a physical description of our economic process. A corollary of this statement is that an organism cannot live in a medium of its own waste products.”
– Herman Daly and Kenneth Townsend

The concept of energy is essentially an accounting process we have devised for describing the relationships of flow and transformation observed in the fundamental structure of the universe. It is an elegant concept, whether discussing the life of stars, the feeding of bodies or the intensity of industries, the movement of energy is remarkably consistent. In other words, it is very hard to lie about. It has one key characteristic in its movement through systems, the creation of feedback between material structures. Matter congeals from energy, planets and the basic chemical elements of life originate in novae, bronze is forged with fire and earth.

Positive feedback structures the growth of energetic systems and negative feedback shapes their stability. Stars and atmospheres remain balanced between gravity and the void, bodies respire, species co-evolve, ecological cycles persist. A self-similar pattern begins to becomes apparent in the flows of energy and matter through our universe.

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

The Secret Society That Rules The World

November 10, 2018

The Secret Society That Rules The World

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen machanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”[1]

Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud and founding father of modern propaganda, 1928

Since the dawn of civilisation, kings, emperors and other men and women of wealth have wanted to rule the world, but none has succeeded. Every empire that arose on the blood of the people it subjected and enslaved – the ancient kingdoms of Egypt and Assyria, the successive Persian and Chinese empires, the Roman empire, the Islamic caliphates, the Ottoman empire, the various European colonial empires and even the communist regime of the Soviet Union – all eventually fell. Even the United States’ global primacy, a logic result of the end of the Cold War, is now being tested by re-emerging superpowers and increasing calls for a more multilateral world order. But these are all well-known attempts at establishing world supremacy. Since the rise of democracy, people – not tyrants – were suddenly said to be in charge. Therefore, if one wanted to obtain or maintain hegemony, one had to find a way to shape world order through hidden means while simultaneously convincing the people the gradual change was of their own making.

PART 1: THE BIRTH OF A SECRET SOCIETY

One man who understood this early on was Cecil Rhodes, an ardent believer in British imperialism and white supremacism who aside from his lucrative career as mining magnate served as prime minister of Cape Colony and co-founded Rhodesia, a colony established by the British South Africa Company eventually named after himself.

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

Quantum, Jazz and Dada – 1

November 9, 2018

Quantum, Jazz and Dada – 1

Marcel Duchamp Nude descending a staircase 1912

Ilargi: Much to my surprise, I received a mail from an old friend. Alexander Aston last wrote for the Automatic Earth in 2014. But he hasn’t been idle. Alexander is presently finishing his doctorate in archeology at Oxford, after prior degrees in philosophy and history. And for this article, he’s been thinking about how upheaval and collapse tend to lead to new insights, new bursts of creativity, in science, religion, society and the arts. A view that’s -too- rarely contemplated. It’s so long I cut it into three parts. Please don’t miss any of them.

Here’s Alexander:

Quantum, Jazz and Dada:
The Dynamic Symmetry of Destruction and Creativity

“Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke

Introduction

This paper is not about Quantum, Jazz and Dada per se, but rather a meditation on those radical bursts of human creativity that occur during historically destructive moments. Ultimately, my thesis is quite simple. Barring the possibility of extinction, humans are on the precipice of the most radical social reorganizations in the history of the species. In navigating this process of transformation, if we wish to create a world worth living in, it is necessary to understand the interactions between energy, ecosystems, cognitive development and social organization.

Without a grasp on the interdependence of these relationships there is no hope for shaping our world in a healthier manner. What is historically unquestionable is that periods of radical upheaval result in drastic reconfigurations of belief, meaning and knowledge.

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

Trump, Gorbachev and the fall of the American empire

November 8, 2018

Trump, Gorbachev and the fall of the American empire

“The only wealth you keep is wealth you have given away,” said Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD), last of the great Roman emperors. US President Donald Trump might know of another Italian, Mario Puzo’s Don Vito Corleone, and his memorable mumble: “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.” Forgetting such Aurelian and godfather codes is propelling the decline and fall of the American empire.

Trump is making offers the world can refuse – by reshaping trade deals, dispensing with American sops and forcing powerful corporations to return home, the US is regaining economic wealth but relinquishing global power.

As the last leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika (restructuring) led to the breakup of its vast territory(22 million square kilometers). Gorbachev’s failed policies led to the dissolution of the USSR into Russia and independent countries, and the end of a superpower.

Ironically, the success of Trump’s policies will hasten the demise of the American empire: the US regaining economic health but losing its insidious hold over the world.

This diminishing influence was highlighted when India and seven other countries geared up to defy Washington’s re-imposition of its unilateral, illegal sanctions against Iran, starting Monday.

The US State Department granting “permission” on the weekend to the eight countries to buy Iranian oil was akin to waving the green flag at a train that has already left the station

The US State Department granting “permission” on the weekend to the eight countries to buy Iranian oil was akin to waving the green flag at a train that has already left the station.

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

The Troika of Tyranny: The Imperialist Project in Latin America and Its Epigones

November 7, 2018

The Troika of Tyranny: The Imperialist Project in Latin America and Its Epigones

Photo Source vaticanus | CC BY 2.0

Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are today threatened by US imperialism. The first salvo of the modern Age of Imperialism started back in 1898 when the US seized Cuba along with Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the Spanish-American War.

The Age of Imperialism, as Lenin observed, is characterized by the competition of the various imperial powers for dominance. That inter-imperialist rivalry led to World War I. Lenin called those putative socialists who supported their own national imperialist projects “social imperialists.” Social imperialism is a tendency that is socialist in name and imperialist in deed. Imperialism and its social imperialist minions are still with us today.

US Emerges as the World’s Hegemon

The United States emerged after World War II as the leading imperialist power. With the implosion of the Socialist Bloc around 1991, US hegemony became even more consolidated. Today the US is the undisputed world’s hegemon.

Hegemony means to rule but even more so to dominate. As the world’s hegemon, the US will not tolerate neutral parties, let alone hostile ones. As articulated in the Bush Doctrine, the US will try to asphyxiate any nascent counter-hegemonic project, no matter how insignificant.

In the Caribbean, for instance, the US snuffed out the leftist government of Grenada in 1983 in what was code named Operation Urgent Fury. Grenada has a population smaller than Vacaville, California.

The only powers that the world’s hegemon will tolerate are junior partners such as Colombia in Latin America. The junior partner must accept a neoliberal economic regime designed to serve the interests of capital. Structural adjustment of the economy is demanded such that the neoliberal “reforms” become irreversible; so that you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.

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

What Empire Loyalists Are Really Saying When They Bash Julian Assange

November 4, 2018

What Empire Loyalists Are Really Saying When They Bash Julian Assange

Wired has just published what might be the single most brazenly dishonest and manipulative piece of down-punching empire smut that I have ever read. An article by Virginia Heffernan titled “The Real Houseguest of the Ecuadorian Embassy” revolves around the outright lie that Julian Assange is suing the Ecuadorian government because he doesn’t feel like cleaning up after his cat and maintaining basic hygiene in the embassy he’s been confined to since 2012. In reality, the legal case arose from the fact that despite being granted political asylum for his journalism, Assange has for months been cut off from the world and forbidden to practice journalism by the new government of Ecuador, and would remain unable to practice journalism under the new conditions Quito recently imposed upon him.

The article reads as though its author is attempting to force snarky humor through a thick fog of hatred and personal misery while seeing how many lies she can pack into each paragraph. Heffernan claims falsely that Assange is “wanted on various criminal charges”; Assange has not been charged with anything. Heffernan claims falsely that Assange “has been closely linked to the Kremlin and Russian president Vladimir Putin”; this is just objectively false with no evidence backing it up whatsoever. Heffernan claims falsely that “the distinct possibility has surfaced that during his embassy tenure Assange communicated with Roger Stone, Donald Trump’s consigliere, via magic decoder rings or the internet”; there’s no evidence that Stone had any back channel with WikiLeaks, and the information he notoriously amplified was already public. Heffernan claims falsely that WikiLeaks is “Russia-aligned”; another assertion for which there is zero evidence and much evidence to the contrary.

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

The Untouchable US-Saudi Relation Is a Core Element of US Imperialism

November 4, 2018

The Untouchable US-Saudi Relation Is a Core Element of US Imperialism

In the last few weeks, numerous articles and analyses have been produced relating to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. However, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States has not been questioned, and the reason for this has not yet been explained.

Nixon’s decision in 1971 to withdraw the United States from the gold standard greatly influenced the future direction of humanity. The US dollar rose in importance from the mid-1950s to become the world reserve currency as a result of the need for countries to use the dollar in trade. One of the most consumed commodities in the world is oil, and as is well known, the price is set by OPEC in US dollars, with this organization being strongly influenced by Saudi Arabia.

It is therefore towards Riyadh that we must look in order to understand the workings of the petrodollar. After the dollar was withdrawn from the gold standard, Washington made an arrangement with Riyadh to price oil solely in dollars. In return, the Saudis received protection and were granted a free hand in the region. This decision forced the rest of the world to hold a high amount of US dollars in their currency reserves, requiring the purchase of US treasuries. The relationship between the US dollar and oil breathed new life to this currency, placing it at the centre of the global financial and economic system. This privileged role enjoyed by the dollar allowed the United States to finance its economy through the simple process of printing its fiat currency, relying on its credibility and supported by the petrodollar that required other countries to store reserves of US treasuries in their basket of currencies.

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

Europe & Risk of Revolution

October 29, 2018

Europe & Risk of Revolution

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr Armstrong, for your lifetime work. mindblowing as always.
I picture Europe now as Greece during the Roman Republic (before its conquest). isolated, corrupted to the core. And the US as the new Roman Republic. Will it become an empire after 2032?
Marius was the man of the people and in the end, he was defeated by Sylla (Senate if I m correct). But Marius’ idea was carried on by Cesar. Was he a socialist before the hour?
as a European, which side is the safest to pick when we will be dragged in the conflict???
thanks again!

best regards from France

ANSWER: Ironically, people may think history is just the past. The next time you watch Star Wars, look closer. It is about this very struggle of the people versus the Empire. Instead of swords, they fight with laser swords. If you look at the royal guard, they had cloaks and helmets much as the Romans were dressed. This is actually a saga that is repeated time and again throughout history. Pericles in Athens was charged and put on trial as they are trying to do with Trump. Today, we call it the Deep States. In Roman times, Caesar fought against the corrupt Senate who was the political party known as the Optimates.

You are correct, Marius lost. His coins refected the anti-establishment. You can see the female head of Italia, for which he was fighting. Caesar’s reputation has been distorted by the corrupt Optimates such as Cato and Cicero. Caesar was a man of the people, not a socialist, just an anti-establishment from the perspective of corruption. He too had to flee Rome under the dictatorship of Sulla who would have killed him much as Stalin killed anyone who might oppose him.

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

Does Society Turn More Violent During its End Times?

October 27, 2018

Does Society Turn More Violent During its End Times?

QUESTION: Is MMA the new Roman Colosseum? I’m a layman in history but didn’t blood sports rise in popularity during Rome’s decline? Now everyone and their mother is talking about MMA, and random celebrities e.g. Logan Paul or now Trump Jr. are jumping in the octagon or being challenged.

JR
ANSWER: Yes. For some reason, society begins to turn more violent toward its end times. Mixed martial arts is a full-contact combat sport that allows striking and grappling, both standing and on the ground, using techniques from other combat sports and martial arts. It is an interesting pattern. The Christian Persecutions really came into full swing only as the Empire was collapsing during the 3rd century.

The United States of Empire

October 22, 2018

The United States of Empire

We’re getting close to the end now. Can you feel it? I do. It’s in the news, on the streets, and in your face every day. You can’t tune it out anymore, even if you wanted to.

Where once there was civil debate in the court of public opinion, we now have censorship, monopoly, screaming, insults, demonization, and, finally, the use of force to silence the opposition. There is no turning back now. The political extremes are going to war, and you will be dragged into it even if you consider yourself apolitical.

There are great pivot points in history, and we’ve arrived at one. The United States, ruptured by a thousand grievance groups, torn by shadowy agencies drunk on a gross excess of power, robbed blind by oligarchs and their treasonous henchmen and decimated by frivolous wars of choice, has finally come to a point where the end begins in earnest. The center isn’t holding… indeed, finding a center is no longer even conceivable. We are the schizophrenic nation, bound by no societal norms, constrained by no religion, with no shared sense of history, myth, language, art, philosophy, music, or culture, rushing toward an uncertain future fueled by nothing more than easy money, hubris, and sheer momentum.

There comes a time when hard choices must be made…when it is no longer possible to remain aloof or amused, because the barbarians have arrived at the gate. Indeed, they are here now, and they often look a whole lot like deracinated, conflicted, yet bellicose fellow Americans, certain of only one thing, and that is that they possess “rights”, even though they could scarcely form an intelligible sentence explaining exactly what those rights secure or how they came into being. But that isn’t necessary, from their point of view, you see.

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

Putin Lays Down the Law at Valdai

October 20, 2018

Putin Lays Down the Law at Valdai

Every year Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the Valdai Economic Forum. And each year his talk is important. Putin isn’t one to mince words on important issues.

With tensions between Russia and the West reaching Cold War levels, Valdai represented the first time we’ve heard Putin speak in a long-form discussion since Helsinki and the events thereafter — IL-20, Khashoggi, etc.

So, this talk is worth everyone’s time. And when I say everyone’s I mean every single person who could be affected by the breakdown of the U.S. political system and how that spills over onto Russia’s shores.

In other words, pretty much everyone on the planet.

Because what Putin did at Valdai was to lay down the new rules of conduct in geopolitical affairs. He put the U.S. and European oligarchs I call The Davos Crowd on notice.

There is a limit to your provocations and attempts to undermine Russia. So don’t cross that line.

Peace Through Strength

The big quote from his talk is the one everyone is focusing on, and rightly so, Russia’s policy about using nuclear weapons.

It’s not that Putin’s stance was any different than in the past. Russia will strike back at an aggressor under any circumstance where the future of Russia is at stake. It was his assurance that in doing so 1) it would be just and righteous “dying like martyrs” and 2) so swift and brutal the aggressors would “die like dogs” bereft of the chance to ask for salvation.

Those are strong words. They are the words of a meek man. And the word meek, as Jordan Peterson reminds us, describes someone who has weapons, knows how to use them and keeps them sheathed until they have no other option.

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

How Trump Win changed US Politics forever

October 8, 2018

How Trump Win changed US Politics forever

Global Intel Hub (Zero Hedge Exclusive) 10/7/2018 — Now that MidTerms are coming up, the heat is being turned up on Trump in the deep state’s ‘death by a thousand cuts’ approach to assassinate his character and any of his allies as well. But in this flagrant and public information war against Trump, the deep-state has shown it’s hand, as it’s a public game, so it’s easy to explain here what’s going on. As we have explained in our book Splitting Bits, the world is not as it seems.

Since about 1950, the United States has developed an extremely sophisticated system of manipulating political systems:

The most infamous episodes include the ousting of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 — whose government was replaced by an authoritarian monarchy favorable to Washington — the removal and assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in 1961, and the violent toppling of socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende, whose government was swept aside in 1973 by a military coup led by the ruthless Gen. Augusto Pinochet. For decades, these actions were considered imperatives of the Cold War, part of a global struggle against the Soviet Union and its supposed leftist proxies. Its key participants included scheming diplomats like John Foster Dulles and Henry Kissinger, who advocated aggressive, covert policies to stanch the supposedly expanding threat of communism. Sometimes that agenda also explicitly converged with the interests of U.S. business: In 1954, Washington unseated Guatemala’s left-wing president, Jacobo Arbenz, who had had the temerity to challenge the vast control of the United Fruit Co., a U.S. corporation, with agrarian laws that would be fairer to Guatemalan farmers. The CIA went on to install and back a series of right-wing dictatorships that brutalized the impoverished nation for almost half a century.

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

US Sanctions Against Russia Are “A Colossal Strategic Mistake”, Putin Warns

October 4, 2018

US Sanctions Against Russia Are “A Colossal Strategic Mistake”, Putin Warns

As Russia is preparing plans to wean its banking system off the dollar, advancing a trend of de-dollarization among the US’s largest economic and geopolitical rivals, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Washington of making a “colossal” but “typical” mistake by exploiting the dominance of the dollar by levying economic sanctions against regimes that don’t bow to its whims.

“It seems to me that our American partners make a colossal strategic mistake,” Putin said.

“This is a typical mistake of any empire,” Putin said, explaining that the US is ignoring the consequences of its actions because its economy is strong and the dollar’s hegemonic grasp on global markets remains intact. However “the consequences come sooner or later.”

These remarks echoed a sentiment expressed by Putin back in May, when he said that Russia can no longer trust the US dollar because of America’s decisions to impose unilateral sanctions and violate WTO rules.

While Putin’s criticisms are hardly new, these latest remarks happen to follow a report in the Financial Times, published Tuesday night, detailing Russia’s efforts to wean its economy off of the dollar. The upshot is that while de-dollarization may be painful, it is, ultimately doable.

The US imposed another round of sanctions against Russia over the summer in response to the poisoning of former double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, and the US Senate is considering measures that would effectively cut Russia’s biggest banks off from the dollar and largely exclude Moscow from foreign debt markets.

With the possibility of being cut off from the dollar system looming, a plan prepared by Andrei Kostin, the head of Russian bank VTB, is being embraced by much of the Russian establishment. Kostin’s plan would facilitate the conversion of dollar settlements into other currencies which would help wean Russian industries off the dollar. And it already has the backing of Russia’s finance ministry, central bank and Putin.

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

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