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Octavianus Augustus Caesar (63 BC – 14 AD). Perhaps the most successful leader in history, he didn’t just become the absolute ruler of the Roman State, but took over the role of the highest religious authority (the “Pontifex Maximum”) and transformed himself into a living deity. Turning a democracy into a dictatorship is a pattern that was repeated many times in history, but that was not always successful. It was the case of the 9/11 attacks that did not lead to an absolute dictatorship in the United States. Here, I argue that it was because of the different structure of the memesphere in the 21st century.

In 30 BC, Octavianus, later to be known as “Augustus Caesar,” defeated his remaining competitors for the control of the Roman state, Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra, and took the title of “Augustus,” the absolute ruler of the Empire. The most fascinating element of this story is how Octavianus established the pattern of how a successful leader takes over the government and concentrates all power on himself. The recipe goes as follows:

Obtain sufficient funds for the task
Build up support among the poor and the disgruntled.
Enlist your supporters in a para-military or military organization.
Obtain a high-level government position using a mixture of intimidation and legal means.
Exploit a dramatic event to scare everyone and obtain special emergency powers.
Never relinquish your emergency powers, but always increase them.

This is what Augustus did: his money came initially from the inheritance he obtained from his grand-uncle, Julius Caesar, but surely also from the support of high-level people who wanted tight control of the Roman State. He used the money to acquire a military force that he used to intimidate the Senate and defeat his competitors…

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

The World’s Deadliest Terrorist Group: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

September 11, 2021

The World’s Deadliest Terrorist Group: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article:

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The CIA just casually discussed sinking a boat full of Cuban refugees and planting bombs in Miami and blaming Castro, but you’re bat shit crazy if you suspect such agencies may have had similar discussions about other geostrategic situations and decided to go through with it.

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There’s more public criticism of ordinary people taking ivermectin than there is of planet-dominating power structures driving humanity to armageddon.

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Nobody who supports internet censorship does so because they’re worried they themselves might consume dangerous words and believe them, it’s always to protect other people from dangerous words. It’s about the most megalomaniacal, emotionally stunted desire anyone could possibly have.

They see themselves as responsible adults who can be trusted to independently sort out truth from falsehood, but see other people as infants who cannot be trusted to do this. This is nothing other than garden variety narcissism.

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Internet censorship via monopolistic government-tied tech corporations isn’t just a problem because of free speech issues, it’s a problem because the way it’s applied is completely uneven and power-serving: politicians and the mass media circulate disinformation constantly without ever being censored. It’s not just silencing people, it’s actually shifting power upwards.

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There is no path forward for humanity on this planet without complete female reproductive sovereignty.

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Imagine if the world’s deadliest terrorist group got their hands on drones and cruise missiles and nuclear warheads and aircraft carriers and circled the planet with hundreds of military bases and began waging wars and destroying any country which disobeyed their dictates.

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

Afghanistan: The Twilight of the Global Empire

July 25, 2021

Afghanistan: The Twilight of the Global Empire

Afghanistan: a ragged blot of land more or less at the center of the mass of Eurasia and Africa. Over a couple of centuries, it repelled invasions from the largest empires in modern history: Britain, the Soviet Union, and now the United States. Not for nothing, Afghanistan is called the “Graveyard of Empires.” It is possible to make an educated guess on what led the United States to invade Afghanistan in 2001 (oil, what else?), but now the time of expansion is over for the Global Empire. We are entering the twilight zone that all empires tend to reach and maintain for a short time before their final collapse.

In 117 AD, Emperor Trajan died after having expanded the Roman Empire to the largest extension it would ever have. It was a major disaster: the coffers of the state were nearly empty, the production of the mines was in decline, the army was overstretched and undermanned, unrest was brewing in some of the provinces. Trajan’s successor, Hadrian, did his best to salvage the situation. He abandoned the territories that could not be kept, quelled the internal unrest, directed the remaining resources to build fortification at the borders of the Empire. It was a successful strategy and the result was about one century of “Pax Romana.” It was the twilight of the Roman Empire, a century or so of relative peace that preceded the final descent.

Empires in history tend to follow similar paths. Not that empires are intelligent, they are nearly pure virtual holobionts and they tend to react to perturbations only by trying to maintain their internal homeostasis. In other words, they have little or no capability to plan for the future…

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

The Screams Of A Dying Empire: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

June 2, 2021

The Screams Of A Dying Empire: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article:

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Ana Kasparian’s infamous Young Turks tantrum about Aaron Maté was the screams of a dying empire.

Some want to dismantle the imperial slaughter machine and create a harmonious world; others just want the imperial slaughter machine to give them healthcare. These are two entirely different positions. It’s not strange that these factions feud—it would be strange if they didn’t.

US progressives who smear The Grayzone and other anti-imperialist media never have any other equally anti-imperialist media that they promote and uphold as good. This is because they are imperialists.

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The only way to do actual foreign policy journalism in the western world is to make a conscious decision to tell the truth without being bullied into accepting any unproven US narrative, no matter how badly they smear you and no matter how hard it is to find work and make a living.

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US liberals are orders of magnitude more outraged about a small group of wingnuts making people nervous in the Capitol building for a few hours than they are about the fact that their government is constantly murdering people around the world.

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The blame for public distrust in government and media institutions rests solely on those government and media institutions.

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Most westerners know that Bush and his allies destroyed Iraq, while hardly any westerners know Obama and his allies destroyed Syria. That right there tells you why we haven’t seen any full-scale US ground invasions lately. America’s solution to the PR crisis caused by the horrific consequences of its military interventionism has been to switch to preferencing sanctions, blockades, and proxy wars where violence is outsourced to other powers so the US doesn’t take the blame.

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

The US Isn’t An Israel Puppet, Israel Isn’t A US Puppet: It’s One Empire

May 25, 2021

The US Isn’t An Israel Puppet, Israel Isn’t A US Puppet: It’s One Empire

Listen to this article:

Nearly 200,000 protesters attended a pro-Palestine demonstration in Central London on Saturday afternoon, another clear sign that support for Palestinian rights is becoming increasingly mainstream and the imperialists are losing control of the Israel narrative.

The real consequence of this is that people will begin losing trust in the government and media institutions which support Israel, because without trust the empire can’t propagandize people, and without the ability to propagandize us our rulers cannot rule. There’s no risk for Israel of losing US backing due to the US government suddenly evolving a conscience or listening to its constituents, that won’t happen, but losing control of the narrative poses a major problem for the empire. Someone’s image is going to have to change, and those changes could end up benefiting Palestinians.

We’re already seeing this narrative management campaign come into play as mainstream outlets are now permitting some serious criticisms of Israel. This is done cynically to prevent people from losing trust in propaganda institutions, but it also has real effects that can benefit real people. This is a good example of how expanding consciousness is always beneficial, even on the most depraved institutions. The more aware the public becomes of abusive imperial power dynamics, the less abuse the empire can get away with. The empire losing control of the narrative is always a good thing.

As criticism of Israel’s malfeasance becomes more widespread, so too do attempts to analyze exactly what Israel’s role is on the world stage and why it receives so much support from the United States…

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

The American infrastructure, ancient Rome and ‘Limits to Growth’

May 23, 2021

The American infrastructure, ancient Rome and ‘Limits to Growth’

Infrastructure is the talk of the town in Washington, D.C. where I now live and with good reason. The infrastructure upon which the livelihoods and lives of all Americans depends is in sorry shape. The American Society of Civil Engineers 2021 infrastructure report card gives the United States an overall grade of C minus.

Everyone in Washington, yes, everyone, believes some sort of major investment needs to be made in our transportation, water, and sewer systems which have been sorely neglected. There are other concerns as well about our energy infrastructure and our communications infrastructure—both of which are largely in private hands. The wrangling over how much will be spent and on what is likely to go on for months.

What won’t be talked about is that the cost of maintaining our infrastructure is rising for one key reason: There’s more it every day. We keep expanding all these systems so that when they degrade and require maintenance and replacement, the cost keeps growing.

There is a lesson on this from ancient Rome. Few modern people understand that the Romans financed their expansion and government operations using the booty taken from vanquished territories. That worked until it didn’t. When Rome reached its maximum expanse, when it no longer conquered new territories, the booty stopped coming. With the borders of Rome the longest the empire had ever had to defend, it now relied primarily on taxes to finance a large army and administrative presence across the empire in order to maintain control.
Our modern-day version of booty has been cheap energy, much of it supplied by the oil, natural gas and coal fields of America and later its uranium mines…

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

US Presidents Are Always Evil Because The US Empire Is Evil: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

May 22, 2021

US Presidents Are Always Evil Because The US Empire Is Evil: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to this article:

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Joe Biden is a corrupt, murderous empire lackey. He is also a very normal US president. The same was true of Trump. The same was true of Obama. The same was true of Bush. If you can’t see this, it’s because propaganda and partisan politics have warped your perception of reality. US presidents will always be evil because the US empire is evil and only evil people will be allowed to participate in its operation.

By far the single most important job of a US president is to take responsibility for decisions on empire management that would have been made regardless of who is in office, whether Democrat or Republican or tuna fish sandwich. Their job is to provide the illusion of democracy, letting you feel as though you “voted out” the perceived perpetrators of various misdeeds while leaving the actual power structure responsible for those misdeeds fully intact.

It’s like rectifying a corporation’s misdeeds by firing the secretary. They just rotate in a new secretary every few years.

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Nobody is born supporting nonstop military expansionism and regime change interventionism. It takes a lot of education to make us this stupid.

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It’s always hilarious how the US pretends its “unwavering support” for Israel is some kind of principled stance based on morals and not the need to have a nuclear-armed military enforcer in the most resource-rich region on earth.

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Anti-semitic this, anti-semitic that. Hey, maybe supporters of a brutal apartheid ethnostate shouldn’t be the authorities that people look to on what constitutes religious bigotry.

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Opposing Israeli war crimes is anti-semitic. Opposing US imperialism is sexist. Opposing starvation sanctions is homophobic. Opposing proxy wars is misgendering. Opposing nuclear brinkmanship is kink shaming.

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

Meditations On US Forces Firing A Howitzer Into The Empty Desert “Just To Say We’re Here”

April 14, 2021

Meditations On US Forces Firing A Howitzer Into The Empty Desert “Just To Say We’re Here”

I saw a line in a recent New Yorker article about America’s endless wars, and it’s been been rattling around in my head ever since:

“In Syria, McKenzie visited the Green Village, a community of decrepit apartment blocks near a bombed-out oil facility that served as the operational headquarters for the final push to erase the caliphate, in 2019. These days, the only military action there is from U.S. forces firing a 155-millimetre howitzer twice a week into the surrounding desert, at no specific target, ‘just to say we’re here,’ one officer told me.”

U.S. forces firing a 155-millimetre howitzer twice a week into the surrounding desert, at no specific target, “just to say we’re here.”

Tell me that’s not the sexiest line you have ever read in your entire life. The poetical beauty! The ennui! The oh-so-relatable existential ache! Oh God, I need a cigarette.

I mean it just hits on so many different levels. Could you ask for a better snapshot of life within the soulless US war machine than a small cast of Beckettian soldiers, waiting around near a bombed-out oil facility for a Godot who never arrives, firing heavy artillery rounds into the desert twice a week for no reason whatsoever? You just want to hang it in an ornate wooden frame with the caption “YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK, LADIES AND GENTS” and then shove it so far up Tom Cotton’s personal anatomy that it takes an entire emergency room team to extract it.

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

War Is A Rich Man’s Game: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

March 16, 2021

War Is A Rich Man’s Game: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

War is always powerful people making up fake reasons for poor people to kill each other.

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Capitalism is working great if you ignore how it’s about to destroy our ecosystem and kill everything.

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Socialism is the collective’s best self-defense against sociopaths.

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In the old days the rulers would kill those who criticized the dominant power structure. Now they just make sure such people never ascend to prominent platforms or positions of influence.

And, if that fails, they kill them.

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Most of what gets called journalism today is really just advertising. Advertising imperialism, capitalism, status quo politics, status quo mindsets. All this fuss about journalists leaving for Substack and stuff is really just outrage over people leaving the advertising industry.

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Imperialists see the American people as nothing more than local fauna who need to be kept from interfering in the business of the empire. That’s why keeping Americans poor and ignorant has so much institutional support; it keeps the local fauna away from the gears of the machine.

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Supporters of western imperialism are always wrong because the western empire is always wrong. The western empire is always wrong because imperialism itself is immoral and requires the perpetration of great evils to maintain. It’s really a lot simpler than people make it seem.

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The only way to justify support for western interventionist foreign policy is to believe that western interventionism is ever actually humanitarian in nature. The only way to believe western interventionism is ever humanitarian in nature is to be an intellectual infant.

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Don’t buy into the narrative that Democrats are resisting leftward movement in order to appease Republicans. It’s so much worse than that: they’re not appeasing Republicans, they’re appeasing their own donors.

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

GEOPOLITICS & EMPIRE INTERVIEW: The Energy Cliff, Green Energy Myth, Gold, Crypto, & Mad Max Future

January 2, 2021

GEOPOLITICS & EMPIRE INTERVIEW: The Energy Cliff, Green Energy Myth, Gold, Crypto, & Mad Max Future

With the world heading into deeper troubles in 2021, I sat down and chatted with the folks at Geopolitics & Empire. In the interview, we discussed the impact of the coming ENERGY CLIFF on the global economy and markets. We also talked about how this would impact Green Energy, gold, and the cryptos. While some think we are heading towards a Mad Max scenario, I believe it will be different.

Even though the world is heading towards a collapse, due to the coming ENERGY CLIFF, it will likely take decades to play out. Thus, over time, the situation becomes grimmer. So, for those who want to prepare for the negative impacts of the energy cliff, it’s best to work steadily towards an alternative gameplan than to try to do it overnight. But, as time goes by, it will become more difficult to make the changes.

Unfortunately, as the light-bulb goes off in citizens worldwide, access to country living may become harder in the future as country homes and small farms are snatched up and are no longer sold. I see this as a likely scenario that will play out much similar to individuals stockpiling toilet paper during the pandemic’s early days. Those who get the toilet paper first will have supply while those who come later, might not be able to get any.

However, toilet paper can be replaced, but not the small number of country homes and small farms. Once those are bought up and held by families that realize they are STAYING… it will be hard to acquire these types of properties… even at much HIGHER PRICES.

I will be providing more details in articles and videos on this type of information in 2021 and onwards.

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Empire with a Human Face

December 16, 2020

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Empire with a Human Face

The Biden people are unlikely to speak of a new cold war with China, but they appear likely to wage one all dressed up as a sophisticated trans–Pacific strategy.

A portion of China’s Great Wall at dawn. (Hao Wei, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Those boneheaded Trump people explained their hostile, xenophobic, fated-to-fail policy toward China by telling the rest of Asia that America stood for “a free and open Indo–Pacific.”

No, no and no, say the big shots President-elect Joe Biden has named to shape and execute his foreign policy. Instead, they mean to tell Asians to line up behind their hostile, xenophobic, fated-to-fail policy toward China in the name of “a secure and prosperous Indo–Pacific.”

Way different.

It is simply remarkable to watch as the party that howled in response to everything the Trump regime attempted on the foreign-policy side adopts one Trump-era strategy after another more or less intact but for the cosmetics.

The sin of those egregious hawks who commandeered the outgoing regime was to conduct the business of empire imperially. This new crew offers what we had better recognize now as nothing more than empire with a human face.

Of all the Biden regime’s failures in the making one can already see in prospect that none will be greater than its insistence that the U.S. must continue to treat China as a predatory competitor and strategic adversary.

As Mike Pompeo failed to enlist Asians in his crusade against the mainland — and our baboon secretary of state has flopped spectacularly, if you have not noticed — so will Antony Blinken, his successor at State, and Jake Sullivan, Biden’s nominee for national security adviser.

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

The militarization of the Western Empire: How the COVID pandemic accelerated the process

October 20, 2020

The militarization of the Western Empire: How the COVID pandemic accelerated the process

Donald Trump may not have been not such a warlike emperor as previous Western Emperors have been (and probably will be). But, even assuming that Trump is trying to avoid wars, he cannot oppose the militarization trends of the Western economy that was boosted by the COVID-19 epidemics.

History repeats itself – oh, yes! And sometimes it repeats itself so fast and so ruthlessly that it leaves you out of breath. Think of what’s happening right now: the COVID; the lockdowns, the face masks, the limitations to movements: all that happened in a few months, and the world of last year looks so remote that it could be seen as part of the still ongoing Middle Ages.

And, yet, there is some logic in what has happened. History may surprise you and it usually does (the only sure thing we learn from history is that people never learn from history). But whatever happens in history has a reason to happen. And what we are seeing is not unexpected. We have seen it already, stark clear and unavoidable: it is the militarization trend of a decaying society.

Let’s go back to the Roman Empire, as always the paradigmatic story of a state that went through a full cycle of growth and collapse. The Roman world was not so technologically sophisticated as ours, but the basic needs of the citizens were the same and the Roman government provided many of them. You may have heard the expression “Panem et Circenses” (bread and circus games). That described two of the services that the Roman state ensured: the shipment of wheat from Africa to the Roman cities and the various kind of games performed in the amphitheaters.

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

Regime Change The Media: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

August 4, 2020

Regime Change The Media: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

America this is serious: if you re-elect Trump, you’ll be trapped in a fascist dystopian oligarchy which will keep robbing you of your rights and wellbeing for the benefit of the powerful and the wealthy.

And it gets even worse: these things will also be true if you elect Biden.

People often ask me for suggestions on how they can learn to understand the world better. Here is a link to an article full of tips on how to punch through the obfuscations of propaganda and make sense of things, and here is a link to a Twitter list of my favorite news-gatherers and dot-connecters which you can bookmark and scroll through daily. Those should get you started.

Mainstream media reporters have a much higher body count than all serial killers and terrorist organizations combined. They do not deserve respect, and their institutions should not exist.

You are infinitely more qualified to report the news than all the scumbags in the mass media who are paid by billionaires to parrot government lies. I mean that 100 percent literally. If you’re not being paid by the wealthy to lie to the public, you are more qualified to report the news than those who are. Doesn’t matter if all you have is a smartphone and a Twitter account; you are set up to be a better news reporter than them.

You know all that space mass media reporters take up in society’s awareness proclaiming what’s true and what’s going on in the world? That’s your space. They usurped it. Take it back from them. The MSM have betrayed humanity to an unforgivable extent. We must become the media.

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

Shape Yourself Into The Perfect Weapon Against The Empire

August 4, 2020

Shape Yourself Into The Perfect Weapon Against The Empire

Do you want to win this thing? Actually win it?

By that I mean, do you actually want to create a healthy world instead of a world where we are ruled by lying, murderous, warmongering, oppressive, ecocidal, omnicidal sociopaths? Is that something you truly, deeply want?

It’s okay if you don’t, but be real with yourself about it.

A large percentage of the people who get involved in revolutionary political movements and criticism of establishment power structures, if they were honest with themselves, would admit that they do so not out of a sincere desire to replace the sociopathic ruling empire with something that benefits all life on this earth, but out of a desire to feel good about themselves. It’s not a real battle for them, it’s just a titillating ego game. A hobby, no different from any other.

If this is you, that’s fine. Humanity is asleep in a whole host of ways, and it wouldn’t be fair to single you out as uniquely awful when you’re not any different from the vast majority of people. But at the very least please do try and be real with yourself about it.

If this is not you, and you really are in this fight to win it, then you should be spending every day doing everything you can to hone yourself into the perfect weapon in that fight.

If this were a revolution that is fought with physical weaponry, then you should be training every day to use those weapons effectively in that revolution. But this is not a revolution that is being fought with physical weaponry. The frontline of this revolution is propaganda, and the guerrilla psywar that we are fighting against it.

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

China v USA

May 30, 2020

China v USA

QUESTION: Obviously, China is not Hitler or Napoleon with dreams of conquering the world. The days of empire building are gone. China has always been the one who is invaded from the Mongols and Japanese to the Europeans. Do you see China becoming more dominant in empire building retaking Taiwan?

ANSWER: I am working a report on this subject. You are correct that China historically has not been the aggressor. They were conquered by the Mongols and were invaded by Japan. They never set out on a world domination plan like Hitler or Napoleon because that culture was not prevalent in Asia compared to Europe where each country at one point was the dominant political state in Europe. Russia, on the other hand, believed that it was their position to spread communism to the world.

That said, both Hong Kong and Taiwan were part of China historically. From their perspective, it is not a conquest compared to reunification as Germany viewed the return of East Germany.

What has protected Hong Kong is the economy. That is why China was willing to allow it to retain a lot of its freedom. Now that the world economy is under assault, the protection of both Hong Kong and Taiwan is not as secure as it once was. Alienate China and they have no incentive to just observe.

This is not the war of old. Standing by and not engaging against Hitler and hoping he would stop each time was the wrong decision BECAUSE Hitler was motivated by revenge and conquering Europe. That incentive is no longer present today among the superpowers. Nobody wants to occupy the other. As long as everyone got along economically, that was the bottom-line benefactor to prevent war. Today, war would be strikingly different. It would not be one of conquest, but of annihilating an enemy. Stop the world economy and you encourage war today.

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