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Beware of the “dark side” of humanity during any collapse

August 22, 2017

Image: Beware of the “dark side” of humanity during any collapse
While there have been countless books, movies and television shows about life after some type of apocalyptic event, chances are none of us will ever actually be forced to experience what its like trying to rebuild society from the ground up. More than likely, the majority of us will never be so hungry that we’re forced to get food from somewhere other than the local supermarket, craft our own tools and weapons just to make it through the day, or make decisions that are a matter of life or death. All that being said, there is still a burning question that millions of Americans across the country find themselves asking every now and then: what if?

What if society really did crumble like a house of cards? What if we really were forced to rebuild from the ground up? What would that look like? Would mankind be able to set aside our differences for the greater good, or would the ensuing chaos and fear bring out the worse in us?

All of these can be answered by addressing one more overarching question: are human beings good or evil by nature? It would appear that when reduced to their natural state as a species, humans possess the will and desire to work together with one another; if the opposite were true, then society would never have had the opportunity to be built in the first place. (Related: These are the top ten cities that would be rebuilt first after a societal collapse.) However, it would be inaccurate to say that human beings are entirely good in nature because, as demonstrated through people like Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, our species clearly has a dark side.

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

The Myth of the Rule of Law

May 8, 2017

The Myth of the Rule of Law

George_Bush_signs_the_Federal_Funding_Accountability_and_Transparency_Act_of_2006.jpg

Any state, no matter how powerful, cannot not rule solely through the use of brute force. There are too few rulers and too many of us for coercion alone to be an effective means of control. The political class must rely on ideology to achieve popular compliance, masking the iron fist in a velvet glove. Violence is always behind every state action, but the most efficient form of expropriation occurs when the public believes it is in their interest to be extorted.

Mythology is necessary to blunt the violent nature of state power in order to maximize the plunder of property — and, most importantly, provide an aura of legitimacy. The perception of legitimacy “is the only thing distinguishing a tax collector from an extortionist, a police officer from a vigilante, and a soldier from a mercenary. Legitimacy is an illusion in the mind without which the government does not even exist.”1

State authority, and public obedience to it, is manufactured through smokescreens of ideology and deception. These myths sustain the state and offer an illusion of legitimacy, where orders, no matter how immoral or horrific, are followed because they are seen as emanating from a just authority. The state cannot implement violence against everyone everywhere and overwhelm the host, so the battle is waged against the hearts and minds of the public. Fear is exploited, language is distorted, and propaganda is spread, while narratives and history are tightly controlled. The gulag of state power, first and foremost, always exists in the mind.

If the mythology of state power is smashed, then the state is exposed for what it is: institutionalized violence, expropriator of the peaceful and productive, and entirely illegitimate.

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

Politicians Are Now Making Plans in Case the Public Turns Against Them Violently

February 10, 2017

Politicians Are Now Making Plans in Case the Public Turns Against Them Violently

(ANTIMEDIA) Washington, D.C. — As protests continue to break out all around the nation over President Donald Trump’s desire to scrap Obamacare, Politico reported Tuesday that many politicians are beginning to worry about their own personal safety — to the point where some are having private sessions to discuss the matter.

Citing sources who were in the room, Politico writes:

“House Republicans during a closed-door meeting Tuesday discussed how to protect themselves and their staffs from protesters storming town halls and offices in opposition to repealing Obamacare.”

Some of the suggestions, the news outlet reports, include “having a physical exit strategy at town halls, or a backdoor at congressional offices to slip out of, in case demonstrations turn violent; having local police monitor town halls; replacing any glass office-door entrances with heavy doors and deadbolts; and setting up intercoms to ensure those entering congressional offices are there for appointments, not to cause chaos.”

While protests are popping up all over, the Republicans’ private session was no doubt prompted by events that happened over the weekend. While speaking before a raucous crowd in Roseville, California, Representative Tom McClintock had to be escorted from the stage and away from the event by local police officers.

McClintock, who held town hall meetings during the politically volatile days of both the Tea Party and Occupy movements, told The Hill he’s never seen anything like it:

“This was something very different. After an hour, the incident commander for the Roseville Police Department advised us the situation was deteriorating and felt it necessary to get me out of the venue. That’s never happened before.”

This sentiment appeared to be echoed at Tuesday’s closed-door session. Commenting on the meeting, Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker of North Carolina stated:

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

Thinking Dangerously in the Age of Normalized Ignorance

October 1, 2016

Thinking Dangerously in the Age of Normalized Ignorance

CC BY 2.0

Photo by new 1lluminati | CC BY 2.0

What happens to a society when thinking is eviscerated and is disdained in favor of raw emotion? [1] What happens when political discourse functions as a bunker rather than a bridge? What happens when the spheres of morality and spirituality give way to the naked instrumentalism of a savage market rationality? What happens when time becomes a burden for most people and surviving becomes more crucial than trying to lead a life with dignity? What happens when domestic terrorism, disposability, and social death become the new signposts and defining features of a society? What happens to a social order ruled by an “economics of contempt” that blames the poor for their condition and wallows in a culture of shaming?[2] What happens when loneliness and isolation become the preferred modes of sociality? What happens to a polity when it retreats into private silos and is no longer able to connect personal suffering with larger social issues? What happens to thinking when a society is addicted to speed and over-stimulation? What happens to a country when the presiding principles of a society are violence and ignorance? What happens is that democracy withers not just as an ideal but also as a reality, and individual and social agency become weaponized as part of the larger spectacle and matrix of violence?[3]

The forces normalizing and contributing to such violence are too expansive to cite, but surely they would include: the absurdity of celebrity culture; the blight of rampant consumerism; state-legitimated pedagogies of repression that kill the imagination of students; a culture of immediacy in which accelerated time leaves no room for reflection; the reduction of education to training; the transformation of mainstream media into a mix of advertisements, propaganda, and entertainment;

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

The American Empire: Murder Inc.

January 5, 2016

The American Empire: Murder Inc. 

    As Indonesia’s former President Suharto lay ill in 2008, a supporter displayed a portrait of him outside the Jakarta hospital where the military dictator died two weeks later. It was in Suharto’s brutal three-decade reign that Indonesia invaded East Timor, where investigative journalist Allan Nairn covered atrocities the general’s troops committed. (Vincent Thian / AP)

Terror, intimidation and violence are the glue that holds empire together. Aerial bombardment, drone and missile attacks, artillery and mortar strikes, targeted assassinations, massacres, the detention of tens of thousands, death squad killings, torture, wholesale surveillance, extraordinary renditions, curfews, propaganda, a loss of civil liberties and pliant political puppets are the grist of our wars and proxy wars.

Countries we seek to dominate, from Indonesia and Guatemala to Iraq and Afghanistan, are intimately familiar with these brutal mechanisms of control. But the reality of empire rarely reaches the American public. The few atrocities that come to light are dismissed as isolated aberrations. The public is assured what has been uncovered will be investigated and will not take place again. The goals of empire, we are told by a subservient media and our ruling elites, are virtuous and noble. And the vast killing machine grinds forward, feeding, as it has always done, the swollen bank accounts of defense contractors and corporations that exploit natural resources and cheap labor around the globe.

There are very few journalists who have covered empire with more courage, tenacity and integrity than Allan Nairn. For more than three decades, he has reported from Central America, East Timor, Palestine, South Africa, Haiti and Indonesia—where Indonesian soldiers fractured his skull and arrested him. His reporting on the Indonesian government massacres in East Timor saw him branded a “threat to national security” and officially banned from occupied East Timor.

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

Playing the Government’s Game: When It Comes to Violence, We All Lose

January 4, 2016

Playing the Government’s Game: When It Comes to Violence, We All Lose

By John Whitehead, constitutional and civil rights attorney, the Rutherford Institute.

“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.”—John Lennon

Yes, the government is corrupt.

Yes, the system is broken. By broken, I mean it’s “dysfunctional, gridlocked, and, in general, incapable of doing what needs to be done.”

Yes, the government is out of control and overreaching on almost every front.

Yes, the government’s excesses—pork barrel spending, endless wars, etc.—are pushing the nation to a breaking point.

Yes, many Americans are afraid. Who wouldn’t be afraid of an increasingly violent and oppressive federal government?

Yes, the citizenry has little protection against standing armies (domestic and military), invasive surveillance, marauding SWAT teams, an overwhelming government arsenal of assault vehicles and firepower, and a barrage of laws that criminalize everything from vegetable gardens to lemonade stands.

Yes, in the eyes of the American surveillance state, “we the people” are little more than suspects and criminals to be monitored, policed, prosecuted and imprisoned. As former law professor John Baker, who has studied the growing problem of overcriminalization, noted, “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime.”

Yes, the United States of America is not the democracy that is purports to be, but rather an oligarchy ruled by a wealthy corporate elite.

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

Introduction: Bank-Money

December 3, 2015

Introduction: Bank-Money

‘BANK ROBBERY’ is not a book about how to rob a bank: it’s about how banks rob us. The title sounds a bit sensationalist: perhaps people think it’s not meant to be taken too seriously. Banks don’t actually rob us, surely: they provide a service – even if they do charge too much, and behave badly when they think they can get away with it.

But actually, the title is to be taken literally. Robbery means ‘theft backed up by violence, or by threat of violence’. The theft in banking is that banks create money out of nothing for the use of themselves and selected others: the overall effect of this is a continual transfer of assets from the rest of us to governments and a financial elite. The violence, or threat of violence, is what the state may use, to back up the rule of law: in this case, to enforce the laws that allow banks to create money.

It’s obvious to most people that if there is to be a functioning rule of law, the State must be able to use force when necessary to back it up. So it’s our responsibility, as citizens and voters, to make sure that the laws are just. In the West, we tend to assume that if an unjust law does exist it will soon be changed, because public opinion will not put up with it.

There have been many unjust laws in our history: the Corn Laws, laws supporting the slave trade, laws about who is entitled to vote, laws about the property rights of married women are a few examples. Many of these unjust laws lasted for generations before they were changed or repealed.

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

Globalization and Terror

November 3, 2015

Globalization and Terror

kenyaFor people in the modern world, there may be nothing more difficult to comprehend than the group calling itself the Islamic State, or ISIS. The beheadings, rapes, and other acts of cruelty seem beyond understanding, as does the wanton destruction of priceless ancient monuments. Perhaps most mystifying of all is the way ISIS has been able to recruit young men — and even some young women — from the industralized West, particularly Europe: the conventional wisdom is that the cure for ethnic and religious violence is “development,” education, and the opportunities provided by free markets. This seems not to be the case.

Because of the mainstream media’s narrow and often misplaced focus, it’s not surprising that most Westerners believe that religious extremism is primarily a problem of Islam. But the fighting in Syria and Iraq is not the only ethnic or religious conflict underway. There has been violence between Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka, Buddhists and Hindus in Bhutan, Hindus and Sikhs in Punjab, Eritreans and Ethiopians in the Horn of Africa, Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda, ethnic Russians and Ukrainians in the former Soviet Union, and many more. The fact is, fanaticism, fundamentalism, and ethnic conflict have been growing for many decades—and not just in the Islamic world.

Failure to recognize this trend can lead to the belief that terrorism is a product of nothing more than religious extremism and will end when secular market-based democracies are established throughout the world. Unfortunately the reality is far more complex, and unless we address the underlying causes of conflict and terrorism, a more peaceful and secure future will remain elusive.

To really understand the rise of religious fundamentalism and ethnic conflict we need to look at the deep impacts of the global consumer culture on living cultures throughout the planet. Doing so allows us not only to better understand ISIS and similar groups, but also to see a way forward that lessens violence on all sides.

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

German police deploy water cannon as far-right, antifascists rally in Cologne

October 26, 2015

German police deploy water cannon as far-right, antifascists rally in Cologne

© Ruptly
© Ruptly

Concealment Strategies Against Social Unrest, Theft, or Confiscation

September 24, 2015

Concealment Strategies Against Social Unrest, Theft, or Confiscation

It does little good to spend a lot of time and money in preparing for difficult times if you don’t also plan on securing those supplies  against the very threats you are preparing for.   Severe social dislocations caused by war, economic problems, or widespread natural disasters are almost always accompanied by looting, theft, and increased criminal behavior—sometimes in large mobs that even police cannot control.  We need to plan ahead on how to deal with those threats without resorting to violent confrontations, which should be a last resort.

We also have to consider government’s propensity to confiscate stored supplies when in short supply.  There is still a 1950’s law on the books that gives the government the power to declare anything in short supply as “hoarding.”   In the March 3, 2012 edition of my World Affairs Brief,  I covered the relevant sections with the Defense Production Act of 1950 that affect personal storage:

“Sec. 102. HOARDING OF DESIGNATED SCARCE MATERIALS [50 U.S.C. App. § 2072]

In order to prevent hoarding , no person shall accumulate (1) in excess of the reasonable demands of business, personal, or home consumption, or (2) for the purpose of resale at prices in excess of prevailing market prices, materials which have been designated by the President as scarce materials or materials the supply of which would be threatened by such accumulation.”

The wording implies that the government is taking action against those that start to hoard for profit once something gets scarce in a crises, but notice that there is no provision for acknowledging or exempting stockpiles that were accumulated before something was declared scare.  That’s what is dangerous about this wording. And there are severe penalties for getting caught “hoarding,” regardless of when your supplies were purchased:

 

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

Turkey Arrests Journalists, Sets Up Terrorist “Tip Line” As Currency Plunges, Violence Escalates

September 4, 2015

Turkey Arrests Journalists, Sets Up Terrorist “Tip Line” As Currency Plunges, Violence Escalates

Last month, Turkey’s central bank had a chance to give the plunging lira some respite by preempting the Fed and hiking rates.

Only they didn’t.

And not only did they not hike, they made it clear that tightening would only occur once the Fed tightened and then made matters immeasurably worse by proceeding to stumble through a “roadmap” of how they planned to deal with DM policy normalization. That, combined with political turmoil, an escalating civil war (and yes, that’s what it is), and pressure on EM in general has led directly to further weakness for TRY:

We bring this up because Turkey, like Brazil, is a country to keep an eye on and not only because of the prominent role it will ultimately play in deciding the fate of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, but because much like Brazil, things seem to get worse by the day both economically and politically. Take Thursday for instance, when inflation came in hot, prompting Goldman to suggest that the central bank had indeed missed its window. Here’s Goldman:

Headline and core inflation accelerated sequentially in August, on broad-based price increases. This trend will likely continue, as renewed exchange rate weakness passes through to domestic prices in the coming months, and food disinflation loses momentum. We continue to forecast end-2015 CPI at 8.2% but with moderate upside risks.

In our view, the CBRT may have missed an opportunity to start normalising/simplifying its policy framework by keeping all policy rates unchanged in the August MPC meeting. This raises the risk of earlier and more aggressive rate hikes than we have been forecasting. We reiterate our long-held Conviction View to own Turkey protection, through 5-year CDS spreads.

And a bit more from Credit Suisse:

 

We are revising our headline inflation forecasts higher. Following the lira’s depreciation in August and the recent upside surprises to food price inflation, we are revising our end-2015 inflation forecast to 8.6% from 7.8% previously and our end-2016 inflation forecast to 7.4% from 7.2% previously. 

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

 

The Last Refuge of the Incompetent

August 20, 2015

The Last Refuge of the Incompetent

There are certain advantages to writing out the ideas central to this blog in weekly bursts. Back in the days before the internet, when a galaxy of weekly magazines provided the same free mix of ideas and opinions that fills the blogosphere today, plenty of writers kept themselves occupied turning out articles and essays for the weeklies, and the benefits weren’t just financial: feedback from readers, on the one hand, and the contributions of other writers in related fields, on the other, really do make it easier to keep slogging ahead at the writer’s lonely trade.

This week’s essay has benefited from that latter effect, in a somewhat unexpected way. In recent weeks, here and there in the corners of the internet I frequent, there’s been another round of essays and forum comments insisting that it’s time for the middle-class intellectuals who frequent the environmental and climate change movements to take up violence against the industrial system. That may not seem to have much to do with the theme of the current sequence of posts—the vacuum that currently occupies the place in our collective imagination where meaningful visions of the future used to be found—but there’s a connection, and following it out will help explain one of the core themes I want to discuss.

The science fiction author Isaac Asimov used to say that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. That’s a half-truth at best, for there are situations in which effective violence is the only tool that will do what needs to be done—we’ll get to that in a moment. It so happens, though, that a particular kind of incompetence does indeed tend to turn to violence when every other option has fallen flat, and goes down in a final outburst of pointless bloodshed.

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

 

The Art of Fighting Without Fighting

July 22, 2015

The Art of Fighting Without Fighting

“Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” –Sun Tzu

“It is useless to fight against people’s rigid ways, or to argue against their irrational concepts. You will only waste time and make yourself rigid in the process. The best strategy is to simply accept rigidity in others, outwardly displaying deference to their need for order. On your own, however, you must work to maintain your open spirit, letting go of bad habits and deliberately cultivating new ideas.” –Robert Greene

Imagine you are back in high school and a bully starts making fun of you in front of everyone. What do you do? Poke fun back? Cry? Run? Punch him in the face? What? The answer is none of the above.

The best way to deal with a bully who is making fun of you is to make fun of yourself better than the bully did. The worst way to deal with a bully is to retaliate. This is because retaliation perpetuates the bully’s agenda and leads to violence, whereas making fun of yourself uses self-deprecating humor to derail the bully’s agenda while forcing the bully into a confused psychosocial dilemma. It’s a power-play, and it’s all psychological. The bully expects you to poke fun back at him, or cry, or run, or throw a punch; anything but you making fun of yourself. And if you can do it better than the bully did, then bully for you. Pun intended.

Like Carlos Castaneda said:

“Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid… Self-importance is man’s greatest enemy. What weakens him is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of his fellow men. Self-importance requires that one spend most of one’s life offended by something or someone… The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.”

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

 

The Dissident Dad – 10 Things I Had to Unlearn That My Children Won’t

May 29, 2015

The Dissident Dad – 10 Things I Had to Unlearn That My Children Won’t

Screen Shot 2015-05-28 at 4.31.12 PM

This list could grow to 1,000 ideas, but I’ve kept it down to ten. In the future, I might update it and add some more.

There are a lot of bad ideas that dominate the world we live in today, most of which are uncritically accepted as the norm and fully embraced by society.

As a millennial myself, I’ve noticed my peers seem to accept most of these as conventional wisdom. Hook, line, and sinker.

Here are some ideas I was propagandized with that I hope my children will never have to “unlearn.”

1. Violence is normal.

Presidential candidates today are fighting over who can kill better by using drones or boots on the ground. By constantly threatening the use of violence against other countries, statists have conditioned the population into thinking that killing tens of thousands of people is normal behavior, instead of the immoral, dangerous provocation it is. Rather than being charged with murder, politicians and others that help support this behavior are often paid $250,000 or more a speech after they leave office, and referred to as Mr. President or former Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Video games, movies, television shows, and even toys all have a common theme: death and destruction. For example, there’s nothing like teaching your child about policing in 2015 America via these Playmobil toys:

 

Screen Shot 2015-05-28 at 4.34.43 PM

This isn’t normal; this is psychotic. And the sociopaths that rule over us are murdering and imprisoning people every day because “we the people” are not only allowing it, but often times, cheering it on.

Outside of self-defense, respecting other peoples’ property should become the new norm.

 

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

Violent Conditions Generate Violent Revolts: The Logic of Rebellion

May 4, 2015

Violent Conditions Generate Violent Revolts: The Logic of Rebellion

My eyes were glued to my television set as I watched civil unrest unfold in Baltimore. Yet, as a historian who has studied urban rebellions, I was not surprised. Since last August, the question for me has not been why, but when.

I watched CNN’s and MSNBC’s coverage. What I noticed was not surprising, but vexing, nonetheless. Commentators like Al Sharpton, Dr. Jamal Bryant, and others resorted to condemning and condescending participants and denying the uprising’s political significance. The assumption that violence is senseless and apolitical was embedded in their sanctimony.

Now, I do not aim to advocate for the use of collective violence, but I believe it is imperative that we analyze its political significance. In yesterday’s press conference, President Obama argued that the “riot” distracted us from the pursuit of reform. I argue otherwise, the Baltimore rebellion not only highlights the problem of policing, it opens a space for analysis and conversation of all of the structural problems that President Obama mentioned in his reactions yesterday. Rebellions historically have also created political opportunities for reform. Dismissing collective violence as senseless, criminal, and apolitical narrows our frame for understanding the history of interconnected problems plaguing cities and municipalities like Baltimore and Ferguson such as racial and economic segregation and redlining, deindustrialization, overpolicing, the emergence of mass incarceration, and even criminal activity. I argue that collective violence is protest politics. Violent protest does contain a logic, even if it appears chaotic.

The pressing question underlying live analyses of the Baltimore uprising was: Why do African Americans rebel?

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

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