Yearly Archives: 2015

Historical cycles: are we doomed to repeat the past?

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By Stefan Verstappen

Source: Intrepid Report

“Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.”—George Santayana

Few people have not heard the above quote, but is the reason history repeats itself because we fail to learn from it, or because history follows an unbreakable pattern we are doomed to repeat? The answer is crucial since, by all indicators, we are about to repeat the classic pattern of social collapse. This would explain why your government is preparing for the worst.

The theory of history repeating itself is as old as history itself. The earliest written account dates back 3,500 years to the Hindu writings known as the Vedas. Since then, many who studied history, from the Greek historian Polybius, to the father of modern history A. J. Toynbee, have formulated a theory of historical cycles.

The clearest example of repeating patterns can be seen in the Chinese Dynastic Cycle. China’s three-thousand-year unbroken history shows a repetitive rise and fall of dynasties. Historians divide this cycle into four parts; the founding of the dynasty, the flowering, the decline, and the period of chaos between dynasties.

This four stage pattern is common to most theories of historical cycles from the Roman poet Ovid, to Hindu philosopher P. J. Sarkar, and more recently in the Strauss–Howe generational theory. Although the titles of the four stages vary among the theories, their characteristics remain nearly identical. I have combined the most commonly used terms for each age as: Warrior, Intellectual, Merchant, and Chaos.

To better illustrate the four stages let us see how they compare to China’s rollercoaster of history.

Warrior

After the previous dynasty has collapsed and the country broken apart, a new warlord vanquishes his rivals, declares himself emperor, and founds the next dynasty.

This is the age of heroes with value placed on honor, strength, and courage. Notable activities include exploration, conquering, colonising, and building infrastructure. Crime is at its lowest, women’s equality at its highest. Wealth is distributed on a meritocratic basis and the population level recovers from previous lows.

Intellectual

Each new dynasty needs to establish its legitimacy through benevolent rule and so during the reigns of the next few emperors the living conditions of the common people begin to improve. This is often the dynasty’s ‘Golden Age.’

This is the age of arts and sciences valuing new ideas, inventions, and techniques. Notable activities include public art projects and the founding of libraries and universities. Crime is low, women’s equality remains high, and wealth begins accumulating towards administration. Population continues to increase.

Merchant

While the empire enjoys a period of peace and stability, merchants prosper and the standard of living continues to improve. However, the seeds of the dynasty’s decline are already being sown in the growth of a vast bureaucracy. Soon the government is controlling and taxing all facets of daily life.

This is the age when greed dominates the political system. Crime increases, women’s social status declines, wealth begins accumulating towards oligarchs. Population continues to increase.

Chaos

The dynasty is in decay and on the verge of collapse. The court and courtiers are corrupt and decadent. The emperor is effeminate, licentious, often an idiot.

Having pilfered the treasury, the empire raises taxes until the common people are reduced to poverty.

The country’s infrastructure falls into disrepair. Levies and irrigations systems fail, destroying farms and crops and causing famines. The people rise up.

This is the age where government is so corrupt that it is unable to effectively rule. There is a breakdown of law and order. Crime is rampant, women’s status reaches its lowest point, and because of disease, warfare, and natural disasters, population declines rapidly. Wealth is in the hands of criminals.

The country splits apart into warring factions each fighting for dominance through a series of civil wars. The fighting continues until a new ‘Hero’ takes control and founds the next dynasty.

This then is the Chinese Dynastic cycle based on a four stage pattern. Can the theory be applied to all civilizations and used to predict future trends? If you study various histories from ancient Egypt and Rome, to the Aztec and Inca you will find this four stage pattern, with slight variations, always discernible.

So what stage in this cycle is America in and where are we heading?

Comparing the characteristics of each stage to our current conditions we can quickly eliminate the Warrior and Intellectual ages. The days of heroic leaders and brilliant thinkers belong to an America long past.

Obviously we are in the Merchant stage, and as anyone who has tried to buy anything ‘Made in America’ can tell you, we are at the end of that stage. The destruction of America’s manufacturing base and devastation of its natural resources can only mean that the fat lady is about to take to the stage.

So is history doomed to repeat itself or can we learn from previous mistakes and avoid rushing headlong into chaos?

In the case of China, their history shows no dynasty was able to avoid this fate. Did they fail to learn from the past? Far from it, Chinese history is the most thoroughly documented of any civilization. China’s philosophers and historians were well aware of the mistakes made by the previous dynasties and ceaselessly warned the emperors of the perils of ignoring the past, all to no avail.

Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that civilizations are indeed doomed to repeat the past.

Whether warned by a predictive model based on historical cycles, or mindlessly playing out their villainous roles, there can be little doubt that the current elite are preparing for Chaos. How else to explain the militarization of domestic police, the massive purchase of arms, ammunition, and armored vehicles, the full spectrum domestic surveillance and the endless nibbling away at our rights and freedoms.

Obviously their plan, as was the plan of all despots before them, is to hole up behind a wall of security while the rest of us fight over the remaining scraps of our civilization.

What to expect

Of the four ages the easiest to predict is the age of Chaos. It seems every regime throughout history uses the same worn out playbook on how to self-destruct. So here is the future.

Widespread corruption drains the state of its treasury. To recover the losses, the state increases taxation driving businesses into bankruptcy and employees into poverty. Taxation quickly becomes forcible confiscation of property, precious metals, and food.

Food protests turn into riots. The state marches out their henchmen to ‘teach the rabble a lesson.’ Martial law is declared and the full array of terror tactics, from unreasonable search and seizure, to imprisonment and torture are used against ‘dissenters.’

Meanwhile, the lack of government funding leaves the infrastructure to crumble. In the past, this meant farmlands were either flooded, or dried up. Crops failed and starvation ensued. In our modern world we can add grid failure, no gas to heat your homes or run your vehicles, and no access to clean drinking water.

Starving people become desperate and crime increases. Poor nutrition and a lack of funding for hospitals or medical supplies contribute to an increase in epidemic diseases.

The state’s last play is to start a war to kill off a goodly number of ‘useless eaters’ and cower the survivors into submission.

So what did people in the past do to survive the age of Chaos? One strategy used in many civilizations is the monastic system. After the fall of Rome, monasteries served as centers of trade and produced much of the local wealth through farming, winemaking, and small industries. They were the only places where one could receive any sort of education, and if not for the books they preserved and copied, we would know nothing about ancient history.

In China, India, Japan, and the Middle East monasteries were able to survive relatively unscathed while their societies collapsed around them.

If we remove the religious aspect, what we have are autonomous communities that are self-sufficient, share knowledge and skills, and support each other during the bad times. A more recent and secular example of such communities can be found in the mutual aid societies of the 1800s. Learning basic disaster preparedness and working together in mutual support is the key survival strategy.

Despite the grim short-term forecast, the not too distant future will be brighter since the next stage is the Warrior age and a return to ethics, prosperity, and equality.

So what of the elite? Will they emerge from their bunkers to enslave and rule the world as their ultimate dream comes true? In this Chinese history is in accord with Karma. Every member of the aristocracy, of each failed dynasty, was hunted down and executed during the ages of Chaos. Only one emperor lived long enough to see the founding of the succeeding dynasty, and he did so by hiding for forty years—in a monastery.

Stefan H. Verstappen is a Canadian writer, and researcher and author of six books, including “The Art of Urban Survival” and “The Thirty-Six Strategies of Ancient China.”

Arcadian Gates by T.A. Wardrope: Dystopia on the Fringe

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51J0Tmr3+IL._SX330_BO1,204,203,200_By Brian Whitney

Source: Disinfo

T.A. Wardrope‘s new novel, Arcadian Gates, tells the story of how ten years ago, the entire nation was struck by a chemical weapon which destroyed most people’s memories. Akiry, a young woman who makes her way smuggling amongst the lower caste of the rebuilt country, is haunted by dreams of a daughter she otherwise does not remember. As civil war erupts in the city around her, she takes the last chance she has to find the truth about her daughter and her past.

We talked to author and Disinfo contributor T.A. Wardrope about his new book.

T.A., Thanks for talking to me. Can you tell me a little bit about what inspired Arcadian Gates and what your process was writing it?

The book began as a short story in a writing workshop. I had fun with it and so I just kept building it forwards and backwards for quite a few years. There was a substantial amount of world building that was a byproduct of writing Akiry’s story. Next thing I knew I had a book with a glossary and a map on the inside cover.

The story itself evolved as I tried to understand Akiry’s relationship to the world around her. I wanted a dystopia that was drawn from the lore and theories that Disinfo readers would recognize. Fringe stuff that you might hear about on Darkness Radio or Art Bell’s classic Coast to Coast AM. There’s kind of a unified conspiracy theory under the whole thing. A substantial amount of Terence McKenna and William Burroughs influence too. I joke that it is my “Streets of Fire”; one book that has everything I enjoy about science-fiction in the mix.

In your book almost an entire nation loses its memory due to a chemical weapon. Memory is always a fight, even in the best of times, it can be tricky and elusive, can you touch on how the loss of a nation’s memory changes everything?

Oh, I think we can just look around. I think that part of the book comes from a place of satire or critique. Americans, in particular, are very good at forgetting the lessons of the not-so-distant past. This bizarre hyper news cycle is a particularly troublesome symptom of this. By making something so very important for a few days, nothing becomes important at all. It’s very Orwellian.

But within the Administrated Republic, the weapon’s effect allows for a constantly shifting narrative of history. It’s the least subtle method of the winner defining history. Practically speaking, families are separated, identities destroyed, and personal empowerment disintegrated. It’s very hard for people to trust who they are if they don’t really know their past. Plus the shared experience allows for national community and a national wound that is easy to use as needed. Again, we can look at our recent history for evidence of that. That Administrated Republic just takes all of this to the next level of control. They had their reasons, though. I wanted them to be much more authentic than your standard dystopic power state. I had as much writing their side of things as I did the roughnecks in Akiry’s world.

You seem to have the chops of someone who has long been a student of the Sci-fi masters. What writer influenced you along your path?

Oh, thank you. There’s a solid foundation of Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury and David Drake. But the actual authors who had a direct influence on how I thought about the world of Arcadian Gates would be people like Philip K. Dick, William Burroughs, Samuel Delaney, J.G. Ballard, China Mieville, Moebius, Alan Moore, Robert Anton Wilson and Margaret Atwood. My program advisor at Hamline, Lawrence Sutin, is a PKD scholar so his input was especially helpful. I am a student of cinema too, so there’s plenty of influence from that realm. Some folks have asked me to write a screenplay version, but the book seems basically unfilmmable to me. Movies about underdog drug dealers don’t get the kind of budgets it would need to get made correctly.

Are there lessons to be learned from the Dystopian world that we see in Arcadian Gates?

I see it as satire in the tradition of 1984, Brave New World or We, so the lessons available in the story are just as evident in the world around us now. I think that one reason dystopia was so popular with young readers is that the world around them is a dystopia in many ways and fiction just distills that into a less confusing form. Arcadian Gates isn’t a YA book, by any means, but every part of it is drawn from history or historical theory. I didn’t write it for a particular moral, though, I wanted to keep it focused on how one woman navigates this world and how her actions reverberate throughout that world. I suppose the lesson is that history is a collision of millions of stories driven by many more decisions and desires. Akiry’s journey is one of those stories.

What are you up to next?

I am working on a pair of books drawn from the Sirius Business blog that runs here on Disinfo. One of those will actually be in the same continuity of Arcadian Gates. There will be a sequel to Arcadian Gates, as Akiry is just getting started. In between the books there are some short stories written that are both in continuity and some not at all related. Those could wind up in a collection at some point. Finally, I’m doing some more world building for a project that is firmly grounded in the horror side of things. Sometimes I wonder if I love the development stuff too much, even the shorts have considerable background to them.

More info on all of this stuff will pop up on social media. I’ve got more things planned in support of Arcadian Gates, too. Readings and maybe some convention visits. Being an indie author requires a having a finely honed sense of the balance between creative work and promotional work. I’ve still got a lot to learn in both of those aspects, I think. I’ll be learning advanced time engineering. Whiskey, too. Plenty of whiskey.

Billionaire Fears The Poor RIsing Up Against The Rich

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By Stephen D. Foster Jr.

Source: Popular Resistance

A billionaire finally had a epiphany and told all his wealthy friends about it.

Johann Rupert is the filthy rich owner of Richemont, a luxury goods company that serves as parent company to jeweler Cartier. His net worth tops out at nearly $8 billion making him part of the 1% of wealthy people who are greedily taking control of most of the world’s wealth to the detriment of poor people and the middle class.

According to Oxfam, an organization that fights poverty, the richest one percent are on pace to control more global wealth than the rest of the 99 percent combined by 2016. And it doesn’t show any signs of stopping.

Unsurprisingly, most of the billionaires in the world live in the United States, where they hire armies of lobbyists to influence the passage of government policies that help them keep their vast wealth and keep it growing. Meanwhile, other nations, despite having a few billionaires, have more regulations designed to narrow the income inequality gap.

Nevertheless, the system that allows the rich to keep getting richer isn’t doing anything for the rest of humanity as most people around the world continue to struggle to make ends meet. While the wealthy continue to make more money, everyone else is making less, which is starting to cause social unrest and upheaval that worries Johann Rupert.

Rupert now fears that the greed of the 1 percent has gone too far, and the thought that one day the rest of the world will grab their pitchforks and torches makes sleeping more difficult for him.

How is society going to cope with structural unemployment and the envy, hatred and the social warfare? We are destroying the middle classes at this stage and it will affect us. It’s unfair. So that’s what keeps me awake at night.

Rupert revealed his terror at the Financial Times Business of Luxury Summit in Monaco, and frankly, he is right to fear this scenario.

There are 7 billion people in this world and only a few hundred grotesquely wealthy people. As people become more desperate to care for themselves and their struggling families in a world where rich people are making more money they don’t need off the backs of the working poor, it won’t be long before people get so fed up that they literally band together to bring down the greedy assholes who care more about owning the world than they do about everyone who lives in it.

That especially applies here in America as income inequality has cast millions of Americans into a never-ending cycle of poverty that becomes harder to escape year after year while the super-wealthy continually try to roll back policies such as minimum wage laws and other benefits in order to engineer a cheaper workforce through legislation. In other words, wealthy businessmen are treating the rest of the world as nothing more than slave labor put on this Earth to keep themselves rich.

Eventually, people will get sick and tired of the game that rich people are playing. They will rise up like Rupert fears and come for them. And then they will wish they had shared the wealth instead of hoarding it all for themselves.

Indulge . . . & Undermine

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Source: CrimethInc.

Have you noticed—exhortations to indulge yourself are always followed by suggestions? Adherents of doctrines seek footholds to claim territory within you, salesmen grasp for handles to jerk you around . . . from new-age prophets to advertisers, from pornographers to radicals, everyone exhorts you to “pursue your desires,” but the question remains: which ones? The “real” ones? Who decides which those are?

This just makes it clear what’s going on: a war for your soul on every front. And those much talked-about desires are all constructed, anyway—they change, they’re dependent on external factors, culture, the whole context and history of our society. We “like” fast food because we have to hurry back to work, because processed supermarket food doesn’t taste much better, because the nuclear family—for those who still have even that—is too small and stressed to sustain much festivity in cooking and eating. We “have to” check our email because the dissolution of community has taken our friends and kindred far away, because our bosses would rather not have to talk to us, because “time-saving” technology has claimed the hours once used to write letters—and killed all the passenger pigeons, besides. We “want” to go to work because in this society no one looks out for those who don’t, because it’s hard to imagine more pleasurable ways to spend our time when everything around us is designed for commerce and consumption. Every craving we feel, every conception we form, is framed in the language of the civilization that creates us.

Does this mean we would want differently in a different world? Yes, but not because we would be free to feel our “natural” desires—no such things exist. Beyond the life you live, you have no “true” self—you are precisely what you do and think and feel. That’s the real tragedy about the life of the man who spends it talking on his cell phone and attending business seminars and fidgeting with the remote control: it’s not that he denies himself his dreams, necessarily, but that he makes them answer to reality rather than attempting the opposite. The accountant regarded with such pity by runaway teenage lovers may in fact be “happy”—but it is a different happiness than the one they experience on the lam.

If our desires are constructs, if we are indeed the products of our environment, then our freedom is measured by how much control of these environments we have. It’s nonsense to say a woman is free to feel however she wants about her body when she grows up surrounded by diet advertisements and posters of anorexic models. It’s nonsense to say a man is free when everything he needs to do to get food, shelter, success, and companionship is already established by his society, and all that remains is for him to choose between established options (bureaucrat or technician? bourgeois or bohemian? Democrat or Republican?). We must make our freedom by cutting holes in the fabric of this reality, by forging new realities which will, in turn, fashion us. Putting yourself in new situations constantly is the only way to ensure that you make your decisions unencumbered by the inertia of habit, custom, law, or prejudice—and it is up to you to create these situations. Freedom only exists in the moment of revolution.

And those moments are not as rare as you think. Change, revolutionary change, is going on constantly and everywhere—and everyone plays a part in it, consciously or not. “To be radical is simply to keep abreast of reality,” in the words of the old expatriate. The question is simply whether you take responsibility for your part in the ongoing transformation of the cosmos, acting deliberately and with a sense of your own power—or frame your actions as reactions, participating in unfolding events accidentally, randomly, involuntarily, as if you were purely a victim of circumstance.

If, as idealists like us insist, we can indeed create whatever world we want, then perhaps it’s true that we can adapt to any world, too. But the former is infinitely preferable. Choosing to spend your life in reaction and adaptation, hurrying to catch up to whatever is already happening, means being perpetually at the mercy of everything. That’s no way to go about pursuing your desires, whichever ones you choose.

So forget about whether “the” revolution will ever happen—the best reason to be a revolutionary is simply that it is a better way to live. It offers you a chance to lead a life that matters, gives you a relationship to injustice so you don’t have to deny your own grief and outrage, keeps you conscious of the give and take always going on between individual and institution, self and community, one and all. No institution can offer you freedom—but you can experience it in challenging and reinventing institutions. When school children make up their own words to the songs they are taught, when people show up by the tens of thousands to interfere with a closed-door meeting of expert economists discussing their lives, that’s what they’re up to: rediscovering that self-determination, like power, belongs only to the ones who exercise it.

Shout it over the rooftops: Culture can belong to us. We can make our own music, mythology, science, technology, tradition, psychology, literature, history, ethics, political power. Until we do, we’re stuck buying mass-produced movies and compact discs made by corporate mercenaries, sitting faceless and immobilized at arena rock performances and sports events, struggling with other people’s inventions and programs and theories that make less sense to us than sorcery did to our ancestors, shamefacedly accepting the judgments of priests and agony columnists and radio talk show hosts, berating ourselves for not living up to the standards set by college entrance exams and glamour magazines, listening to parents and counselors and psychiatrists and managers tell us we are the ones with the problems, buying our whole lives from the same specialists and entrepreneurs we sell them to—and gnashing our teeth in secret fury as they cut down the last trees and heroes with the cash and authority we give them. These things aren’t inevitable, inescapable tragedies—they’re consequences of the passivity to which we have relegated ourselves. In the checkout lines of supermarkets, on the dialing and receiving ends of 900 numbers, in the locker rooms before gym classes and cafeteria shifts, we long to be protagonists in our own epics, masters of our own fate.

If we are to transform ourselves, we must transform the world—but to begin reconstructing the world, we must reconstruct ourselves. Today all of us are occupied territory. Our appetites and attitudes and roles have all been molded by this world that turns us against ourselves and each other. How can we take and share control of our lives, and neither fear nor falter, when we’ve spent those lives being conditioned to do the opposite?

Whatever you do, don’t blame yourself for the fragments of the old order that remain within you. You can’t sever yourself from the chain of cause and effect that produced you—not with any amount of willpower. The trick is to find ways to indulge your programming that simultaneously subvert it—that create, in the process of satisfying those desires, conditions which foster new ones. If you need to follow leaders, find leaders who will depose themselves from the thrones in your head; if you need to “lead” others, find equals who will help you dethrone yourself; if you have to fight against others, find wars you can wage for everyone’s benefit. When it comes to dodging the imperatives of your conditioning, you’ll find that indulge and undermine is a far more effective program than the old heritage of “renounce and struggle” passed down from a humorless Christianity.

To return, finally, to the original question—yes, we too are making suggestions about which desires you pursue. We would be scoundrels to deny that! But we would be scoundrels not to make these suggestions, not to extol freedom and self-determination in a world that discourages them. Exhorting others to “think for themselves” is ironic—but today, refusing to oppose the propaganda of the missionaries and entrepreneurs and politicians simply means abandoning our society and species to their control. There’s no purity in silence. And liberty does not simply exist in the absence of control—it is something we have to make together. Taking responsibility for our part in the ongoing metamorphoses of the world means not being afraid to take part in the making of our society, influencing and being influenced as we do.

We make suggestions, we spread this propaganda of desire, because we hope by doing so to indulge our own programmed passion for propaganda in a way that undermines an order that discourages all of us from playing with our passions—and so to enter a world of total liberty and diversity, where propaganda and power struggles alike are obsolete. See you on the other side.

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Saturday Matinee: Everything is Terrible! The Movie

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From Wikipedia:

Everything is Terrible! is a Chicago-based video blogging website that features clips of VHS tapes from the late 20th century. The project was founded in 2000 by a group of friends while at Ohio University. “Every weekend or free afternoon they get,” according to NPR, they search at thrift stores, garage sales, and “bargain bins” for the worst and most outrageous VHS tapes to share with each other. The website was launched in 2007 in Chicago….In 2009, the website released a video titled Everything is Terrible! The Movie, which featured the same type of VHS clips that would be featured on their website. The A.V. Club called the video “a portal into a world halfway between showbiz and real life—a look at how the people who make entertainment for a living think the rest of us saps actually live”, adding that it’s “simultaneously enlightening, hilarious, and deeply sad”.

“Breaking the Fear Factor”: Opposing War, Financial Fraud and State Terrorism, Dismantling Propaganda

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By Peter Koenig

Source: Global Research

We are living in a (western) world dominated by neoliberal dictators, criminals and crooks. And many of us, impregnated with the human idiocy, as so well described by  Andre Vltcheck (The West Spreads Intellectual Idiocy) are every day deeper and deeper immersed into fear – fear of action, fear of what’s next – fear of losing our comfort zone. The western propaganda machine paid for by the corporate and financial oligarchy through the presstitute media is constantly indoctrinating the little we have left of our free-thinking brains.

Fear is everywhere. People who are afraid can easily be manipulated. People who are afraid obey. The system needs people who don’t resist. Renegades are potential drone targets. The Big Constant that pervades our western world with ambitions to also infiltrate Asia – is terrorism. Man-made terrorism – or better – elite-made terrorism; George Orwell would have called it Big Brother-made terrorism; terrorism with a particular purpose: spreading fear and submission.

On Friday, 21 August 2015, on a train from Amsterdam to Paris, according to the New York Times, “a heavily armed gunman opened fire aboard a packed high-speed train, traveling from Amsterdam to Paris [….] wounding several passengers before he was tackled and subdued” by two American military servicemen (on leave), who were helped by a third American. According to French officials, they “averted a mass killing.”- The gunman was armed with an automatic pistol, an AK47 and a knife (NYT annotation: AK47 is Al Qaeda’s preferred weapon). The Americans were coincidentally and suitably near to subdue the shooting 26 year-old Moroccan, a convenient Arab, who was taken into custody when the train stopped in Arras, France, just beyond the French-Belgian border. No doubt, he will be squeezed for confession. He may try to escape – and then may be shot death. Amen.

The French anti-terrorist unit took immediately charge of the investigation. The unit is known to work in utmost secrecy. Whatever news comes out of it is most likely ‘cooked’ to suit the system.

The NYT proclaims that the three Americans saved the train from a massacre. Nobody was killed. Just one of the American heroes was injured. Hollande thanked Obama for the brave Americans’ exemplary behavior and for preventing a train carnage. Propaganda all over. In America we trust – is dogma number one; dogma number two is – there is no save place on earth.

Fear everywhere, but America is there to help. Danger lingers at every corner. A terrorist may be just next door. Just give yourself up to Big Brother and he won’t let you down.

The first step towards sub-doing fear is asking yourself: Who invented and fabricated terrorism in the first place? In countries and entire regions ravaged by Washington incited wars and conflicts, terrorism is the expression of hopelessness, of wrath – of fighting back, when there is nothing left to lose. Look at the Middle East. A battlefield of nations destroyed by years of war – people living in ruins, in miserable squalor; some escape – and become the endless and EU loathed stream of refugees. According to the UN High Commissioner, there are more than 50 million refugees worldwide.

People take-up arms in self-defense. The west calls them terrorists. A term popularized by the media. A term that instills fear. – Imagine a world where the Judeo-Christian aggressors would suddenly see the light and stop spreading wars and conflicts and subjugating the world – peace would break out and settle in – terrorism, one of the key reasons for fear, would have no purpose to persist – fear would die, trust and solidarity would grow. The empires worst enemy: solidarity, friendship, and trust among people.

All wars and conflicts are multi-purpose. They boost the elite-dominated war industry; in the US more than 50% of GDP; they help dominate and subjugate people, exploit their resources, and are trailblazing a path towards Full Spectrum Dominance – world hegemony. They also help one of the ‘elite’s’ key objective – depopulating the world, so the elite may live longer with the ever scarcer resources of our gradually depleted planet. Reducing world population is a key objective of the Bilderberg Society – voiced by Henry Kissinger already in the 1960s. Recently I overheard one buddy telling another: I hate wars; but the only good thing about wars is – they reduce world population.

That is the horrendous level of immorality and greed to which humanity has sunk. – We the over-fed west may not get enough in an ‘overpopulated world’ (sic), therefore let’s reduce the human stock by killing off the under-people.

According to FAO – the UN Food and Agriculture Organization – with the current available agricultural technology Mother Earth could aliment at least 12 billion people, almost double of today’s world population. Fear and greed decimate our rational thinking. The me-me-me of abject western consumerism – and the fear of losing it – overwhelms our innate sense of human solidarity.

Remember the infamous Christmas Day 2009 ‘underwear bomber’ on a Northwest Airliner approaching Detroit wanting to detonate a plastic bomb sewed into his undies? He was suitably identified as a Nigerian Al Qaeda fighter and also conveniently and par hazard filmed by a passenger in the back row — This was such an amateurish attempt to spread fear, that after a short while even the media didn’t want to lose their ‘credibility’ (sic) and shut up.

Is there ever a thought among the fearful that such terrorists might be ‘planted’ by those who are served by the fear they cause?

A former CIA official recently admitted that virtually all so-called terror acts in the US and most of those in other parts of the world since (and including – added by me) 9/11 are false flags. With every false flag, the system can tighten its grip on the population under the pretext of ‘protection and security’. The populace literally asks for it – please protect us, please come to our houses, put them upside down and see whether there are terrorists hiding in our closets… that’s how the Boston people reacted after the April 2013 false-flag Marathon bombing.

Since 9/11 US citizens have lost more than 90% of their civil rights; first through the Patriot Act, then by subsequent extensions of police ‘protective measures’. Most US citizens are not even aware of the power they gave up to the police which has now the authority to invade people’s homes at will, without search warrant or explanation and then find anything justifying the arrest and indefinite confinement without trial of an inconvenient person. The ‘suspects’ are mostly Muslims. These days it’s easy selling to the brainwashed western world a Muslim as a criminal or terrorist.

Yet, the Boston Marathon false flag was of such low grade that anybody with a little bit of reason left, could recognize that the bombs were detonated by special forces with the mere purpose of implanting the notion that even a relatively progressive thinking university town like Boston is in danger of terrorism. Therefore let’s control the people, let’s not this ‘intellectual Boston crowd’ choose its own ways, abandoning the sinking ship. All sheep must be kept together in false solidarity, of course.

The two Chechnyan brothers were pre-identified, they had no clue what may eventually happen to them. They conveniently had a police record, maybe fabricated, to also hurt Russia, hitting two flies with the same stone. The Chechnyan ‘malfeasance’ could easily be sold to the public. One of the two alleged suspects was killed – and silenced – in an artificially created ‘shootout’. The other one is in solidarity confinement and is not allowed to talk, not even in court – condemned to die – soon to be silenced too.

Public events henceforth project fear. – People, please stand up against police and state-sponsored violence and terrorism! – Analyze for yourselves! Don’t believe the lies spread by the mainstream media. Yes, it takes a little effort, seeking out the truth and reading the news on internet – Global Research, Information Clearing House, Sputnik News, VNN, RT, TeleSUR, PressTV, CounterPunch, New Easter Outlook, The Saker – and many more – but it is one of the few chances you have to see the light and stand up for your rights – and get rid of fear.

The Boston false flag bombing, was followed by a similar horror event in Paris, in January this year. The Hebdo Charlie and related supermarket assault killed 17 people. It was opportunely planned at a notoriously anti-Muslim cartoon magazine, executed by CIA-Mossad forces in full connivance with the French secret service

(see http://www.globalresearch.ca/paris-charlie-the-shock-doctrine-par-excellence/5424960).

Two plus one ‘suspects’ with previous police records, were pre-identified. One of them ‘forgets or loses’ casually his ID in the get-away car – the only link the police has to the ‘terrorists’ – they find two, kill them at sight – so they won’t talk anymore. – The third related alleged assassin of a Jewish supermarket at the outskirts of Paris awaited the same fate: death by a police barrage of bullets. A blurred amateur video (maybe by now taken off internet) shows how a hand-cuffed individual is thrown before the wolves outside of the supermarket, to be riddled mercilessly with bullets. Nobody to talk. The truth remains ugly propaganda – propaganda for the system – a system that prevails over and feeds on terrorism. Millions of people, dulled by the event, walked the streets of European cities, solemnly parading placards lettered with “I am Charlie” — millions of people submitted – and still do – to a miserable lie – spreading and perpetuating fear.

Hollande had a justification to tighten the grip around France and within Paris – police everywhere, reducing civil liberties just a tad more – orders from the Washington masters. Being a nominal ‘socialist’ (sic), the emperor doesn’t quite trust him – as he may resent having been forced by the White House to abrogate his country’s lucrative sale of two Mistral type amphibious assault ships to Russia. To dampen any lingering sympathy for Russian President Putin, Hollande had to be reined in; and the spineless French leader (sic) did indeed cave in.

Fear is everywhere. European politicians are all afraid they may be in the crosshairs of the CIA or Pentagon or other US mercenary hit men if they don’t behave. A couple of days ago it was reported that Hollande is now also planning preventive drone assassinations, mimicking his brother-in-crime, Peace Nobel Laureate, Barack Obama. Imagine! – How far can you sink to lick – ehhh – the naked toes of the naked emperor. How far has our western civilization sunk in only the last 30 years – the onset of neoliberalism!

Fear commands everyone – almost. Fear is the public enemy number One – but it can be overcome – with courage, an open mind and foremost an awakened consciousness.

People feel reasonably happy. They feel protected. They gladly trade their civil rights for police and military protection. Terrorism is horrible and it is so unpredictable. It lurks everywhere. And nobody dares to question these bloody fabricated horror events. Nobody dares ask: what motivates the terrorists? How come their number has increased exponentially in the last 15 years? Terror sows more terror. Fear disseminates more fear. More fear facilitates more oppression and manipulation of people – and eventually more terrorism.

Take the massive flood of refugees engulfing Europe. The EU laments the ‘refugee crisis; seemingly not realizing that they helped making it. The Eurocrats cannot deal with the overwhelming influx of refugees. They use the bought media to make people afraid of them. The refugees come from these Arab countries the west is fighting for ‘freedom and democracy’. They are dark-skinned, poor and no-good. They steal our jobs, food and women. The human touch and solidarity of westerners has been annihilated long ago – by the neoliberal doctrine – that knows no mercy, only profit and power. Western powers don’t want these poor homeless beggars within their frontiers. What to do with them? They are a costly nuisance. Most of them are Muslims anyway. There is no space for them.

Would it ever occur to one of those high-flying, arrogant never elected Maastricht politicians to ask ‘why is this onslaught of refugees increasing by the day?’ – They may find the answer in front of their nose, in case they still have some left-over ticking brains. We, Europeans, in full complicity with war-mongering hegemonic Washington have helped destroy their countries, their economies, their jobs, torn apart their families, killed their children, have bombed their very homes to ashes – now they come to seek help from us. These poor people have no choice but asking their hangmen for a bit of mercy, for some crumbs of bread, for some rudimentary shelter. The raped seeks alms from the rapist. It’s the Stockholm syndrome. – Its fear from dying. Maybe the criminals who almost killed them have some humanity left, a bit of mercy – please.

What makes them tick – these criminal hegemonic politicians? Why are they so inhumanly selfish, greedy and violent? The public at large is afraid to even ask. Asking could produce answers that may derange one’s comfort zone. Better don’t ask and follow the rules. Let fear continue to rule.

The NYT also reports, “Stock prices around the world continued to plunge on Friday, threatening to end one of the longest bull runs in the history of the United States stock market.” Fear of losing money is spread. Such ‘market’ fluctuations, as most of us know, have little to do with ‘markets’, be it share or money markets. Money is fabricated by a mouse-click of a bank dishing out debt. Markets are manipulated by banks and political powers for monetary profit and political gains – and to sow fear – fear that something horrendously drastic may happen, may affect our fragile economy – and may foremost affect our stolen well-being. Yes, stolen. Our western riches have been stolen during hundreds of years of abject, murderous colonization of the southern hemisphere. And we continue colonizing them with our modern weapon – MONEY. When banks spread fear, it is to steal the money, pension funds, social systems from us, their faithful clients. Stealing from abroad is not enough.

Rather than fearfully shutting up – wake up! Dare stand up fellow citizen – against the white collar onslaught of fraud and exploitation, against corruption of our elitist neoliberal system! Get rid of those deceiving politicians – the scum of greed and power. Expose them. Neutralize them.

The US as well as the European Commission just enacted laws, allowing banks, effective immediately – to ‘rescue’ themselves by so-called ‘bail-ins’ – meaning, a bank that has overstretched and over-speculated itself into bankruptcy may literally save itself by stealing the money from its depositors and shareholders. – Why does such an edict – not really a law because those who designed the rule are unelected Eurocrats – not prompt an immediate run on the banks? – Why does nobody even protest? – Because people don’t know? Maybe. But Fear – sheer fear from being punished for ‘disobedience’ – is a better explanation.

Instead, our fear makes us trust that such ‘bail-ins’ will always happen to others. We so easily forget what happened only two years ago, in March 2013 to the people of Cyprus, when their deposits were decimated by the infamous ‘haircut’, administered by the highly indebted Cypriot banks, by order of the BCE, with full complicity of the Cypriot elites, who first transferred their fortunes abroad. It was like a trial run. How much would the populace swallow without (too much) protesting? – It worked. The rule is now institutionalized – and nobody says beep. – For fear that worse may follow? – Or for sheer comfort of not moving our butts.

The famous late Howard Zinn said civil disobedience is our – as in ‘we the people’ – strongest weapon against corporate and state injustice and abuse. Today’s version of this wisdom might be for the 99.99% of us, the people, to organize and infiltrate the reigning criminal system and breaking it down from within. Much like did and do the State Department funded Washington-based thinktanks (sic) – initiating the deadly and destructive ‘Arab Spring’, intruding and subverting the European Parliament with bought proxies and fake NGOs – and what they attempt to do in Russia and China, albeit unsuccessfully.

—

Back to the NYT article on the plunge of the US stock exchange. Finger-pointing of the guilty is of the order. The fear factor has to be substantiated and enhanced by fault of an ‘outsider’ – in this case China – which according to the NYT has ‘unexpectedly’ devalued its currency, a sign of a troubled economy and a bleak outlook for the economy of other large ‘developing countries’.

Let’s fear the Evil East. – No good may come from the east. The NYT has of course no explanation of truth. Namely that the Chinese Yuan had been artificially over-valued under pressure of the US, and kept within a 2% band of fluctuation by the Chinese authorities. This was also in line with China’s huge dollar reserves, some 1.6 trillion dollars. Relaxation of the fluctuation – letting the rate slide naturally to an expected 3% margin, would not only make China more competitive, but might enhance the currency’s international standing to eventually becoming a new currency in the IMF’s basket constituting the SDRs, or Special Drawing Rights. The SDR is an international virtual money that may be lent to countries which so desire, hence, better balancing the currency exchange risk of the loan. The current SDR basket is composed of only four ‘world’ currencies; the US dollar, the British Pound, the Euro and the Japanese Yen.

If the Yuan can keep its own by floating against other major currencies, chances are it may be admitted by the west-dominated IMF as the fifth currency to the SDR basket, thereby opening the door for the Chinese Yuan to become a major official world reserve currency. Washington may not like it, but may have little choice preventing the currency of the world’s strongest economy to become an officially admitted reserve currency.

—

Fear may also be the main reason for the Greek Tsipras Government 180 degree U-turn after the 62% NO vote on July 5 – No to austerity, No to more strangulation by the infamous troika – European Central Bank (ECB), European Commission (EC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Not Germany, not the troika, are Greece’s strongest enemies; fear is. The Syriza government was pressured, blackmailed, coerced – and possibly even corrupted – into accepting an even more nefarious austerity package than the one against which Greeks voted with an overwhelming NO. If indeed enacted, the new debt commitment of € 86 billion will drive Greece’s debt to GDP ratio way above 200 % – and not one euro will flow into Greece’s economy, her social system, fighting unemployment, bringing back public hospitals, schools, water and electricity.

The Syriza Tsipras Government has committed an illegal act against Greece’s own Constitution which puts the people above parliament and above the executive – as a true democracy should. Tsipras’ anti-democratic act could be undone any time by a simple decision of the Supreme Court. According to international standards, Greece’s accumulated debt is fully illegal and could be erased by a mouse click, the same way it was created. Any contract – in this case debt – concluded under duress, coercion, corruption and / or blackmail does not stand up before an international court of law. This must have been known to the Tsipras government. Yet, Tsipras and his inner circle went to Brussels to ‘negotiate’ ignoring this chance. Instead they sold out their country to the banksters, let themselves be humiliated, ridiculed in the face of their own people, let alone the rest of the world.

Fear was most likely the engine for Tsipras’ behavior. Many of his Syriza colleagues left the government coalition. Ministers who didn’t agree with his politics were fired. He preferred succumbing to fear – fear of the potential wrath that might emanate from the corrupt and criminal EU; from greedy Germany whose neoliberalism is rapidly taking on the colors of Nazism. – German supremacy over Europe – again? – Maybe there were death-threats involved, who knows. It is common practice when power and resources are at stake.

However, a true leader has no fear. He or she stands tall with the moral and ethical obligation to defend the interests of the people who elected him or her. As did Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Rafael Correa, Evo Morales, Cristina Kirchner, Lula, Dilma Rousseff and many more.

Traveling recently all over Greece fear was visible everywhere. When asked, why their inaction in the face of this shameful treason of their PM – no protests, the streets remained calm – the answer was almost uniformly – we are afraid. Afraid of what? Of the police; they shoot at us with rubber bullets, with water cannons – and we don’t know when the military will intervene.

In Delphi, the very town where democracy was born some 2,500 years ago, a shop owner confessed, democracy is dead, not only in Greece – but in Europe, in the world. With this backdrop, a new military takeover was according to him not far-fetched. The Tsipras betrayal was a boon for the rightwing, the Nazi-like ‘Golden Dawn’ – a perfect backing for a new military regime.

After the 1967 US-supported so-called Coup of the Colonels, Greece suffered seven years of a most repressive right wing military dictatorship, where full obedience was of the order, where people disappeared, where the communist party was forbidden and communists were prosecuted and killed, where anything resembling left-wing literature was censured, during which miniskirts, pop-music, long hair, the peace sign and the like were prohibited. This repressive regime has deeply marked the Greek population. They are afraid it may return. They are aware of their country’s vulnerability due to its importance for Washington, hosting the southern-most strategic NATO base. Any deviation of the Washington made and EC imposed rule may bring back the military horror – reminiscent of Costa Cavras’ 1969 extraordinary docudrama “Z”.

Now, the Tsipras Government has resigned – for fear of the domestic consequences of its actions? – A new interim government is to be prepared before the announced 20 September election. Will the radical break-away Syriza faction, the new Unity Party, be able to form a viable coalition and gather the necessary trust to win the coming September elections?

Will Greece after all be able to break the paralyzing streak of fear?

Will Greece set the new standard of fearlessness for the rest of Europe to follow? – Will Greece dare to go the only practical way – exit the unviable euro – go back to her drachma and revamp their economy with public banking for the benefit of the Greek people? – I trust Greece will dare take back her sovereignty, breaking the all-permeating Fear Factor and become a flagship of courage for Europe and for the world.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik News, TeleSur, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance . 

Dollar As World’s Reserve Currency Threatened

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By Stephen Lendman

Source: Stephen Lendman Blog

US dollar dominance finances Washington’s reckless spending, global militarism, its empire of bases, endless wars, corporate takeovers, as well as speculative excess creating bubbles and economic crises – at the expense of democratic freedoms and beneficial social change.

China, Russia and other nations increasingly trading in their own currencies pose a significant threat to dollar dominance. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya explained Washington’s currency war on China, saying:

“The Chinese are in the process of displacing the monopoly of the US dollar. They are dropping their US Treasury bonds, stockpiling gold reserves, and opening regional distribution banks for their own national currency.”

“This will give them easier access to capital markets and insulate them from financial manipulation by Washington and Wall Street.”

China bashing by public and private US officials is part of a campaign to denigrate its government – making inflammatory accusations without proof about hacking, defying its legitimate right to do what it wishes in its own waters, and threatening sanctions – legal only by Security Council members, never by individual countries against others, Washington’s longstanding weapon against independent governments.

“As the financial architecture of the world is being altered by China and Russia, the US dollar is gradually being neutralized as one of Washington’s weapon of choice,” Nazemroaya explained.

The post-WW II US-dominated international monetary system is threatened with unraveling. Washington is fighting back with propaganda, energy, financial, economic and currency wars against China and Russia, said Nazemroaya.

Russia sold a fifth of its $125 billion in US Treasuries holdings last March. China’s US Treasuries holdings exceed $1 trillion dollars. It’s been aggressively dumping them.

It’s gone from the world’s largest buyer to its biggest seller. Will other countries follow suit? Nations are increasingly trading in their own currencies. Weakening America’s financial strength is the best way curb its imperial ambitions.

Russia drafted legislation aimed at eliminating dollars and euros in trade between Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Russia, and other former Soviet republics.

A Kremlin statement said “(t)his would help expand the use of national currencies in foreign trade payments and financial services and thus create preconditions for greater liquidity of domestic currency markets.”

It would facilitate regional trade and help achieve economic stability. It would reduce dependency on the world’s two dominant currencies.

China’s central bank launched a Heilongjiang Province yuan/ruble program – Russia’s currency replacing the dollar.

Both countries are increasingly trading in their own currencies – bypassing dollar transactions. If enough other countries follow suit, dollar strength will weaken. Its hegemonic ambitions will be curbed – how much, how soon remains to be seen.

 

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.