“Radio Free Albemuth” happens to be my favorite Philip K. Dick novel, so I’ve followed the development of its cinematic incarnation since hearing a production company bought the movie rights nearly a decade ago. As one of the lucky few who has seen an early rough-cut (and has seen nearly every other feature length film based on a PKD novel) I can say with authority that it’s one of the most faithful PKD film adaptations yet. For fans of the novelist, it will probably stand among the ranks of “A Scanner Darkly” and “Blade Runner” but the film should appeal to many non-fans as well because:
Stories set in dystopias are all the rage. The alternate reality America depicted in Radio Free Albemuth is particularly compelling because of its similarity to our own.
For those not into sci-fi, it’s also a political/psychological thriller with themes of friendship, sacrifice and spiritual awakening.
Though not as polished as Hollywood productions with higher budgets, the indie film aesthetic meshes well to the story’s setting (and author’s sensibility) adding to its sense of authenticity.
Radio Free Albemuth has been in ‘radio silence’ mode while we were in the midst of negotiating relatively complex distribution strategies for the film – and completing the unexpectedly difficult and technically complex “delivery” of the film.
But “delivery” is complete – And we finally have definitive news to announce…
JUNE 27th –
In 1905 – Russian sailors mutinied onboard the Battleship Potemkin (the basis for Sergei Eisenstein’s landmark film
in 1929 – the first color television was demonstrated
in 1942 – FBI captured 8 Nazi saboteurs from a sub off Long Island, New York.
1967 – The world’s first ATM is installed in London.
1969 – Police raid Stonewall Bar in Greenwich Village, NY, hundreds of gay patrons protest against police for 3 days
1990 – Salman Rushdie, condemned to death by Iran for his novel The Satanic Verses.
Birthday of anarchist Emma Goldman, blind-deaf author Helen Keller, and the great Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, and…
In 2014 – the day that Radio Free Albemuth will open in theaters in at least ten cities across the United States. Also the same day that Radio Free Albemuth will be available across a wide array of Video on Demand Platforms in the U.S. To be followed by the DVD release and an exclusive subscription streaming window to be announced shortly.
This is a day that both RFA filmmakers and Philip K. Dick fans have been waiting for patiently – (and sometimes not so patiently!)
The first and most important of several deals with partner companies has been signed – and the ink is not even yet dry on the page. Our theatrical booking for the initial ten city release and digital sales partner will be a Los Angeles based company called Freestyle which has overseen the release and digital sales of other indie films such as Bottle Shock, Me & Orson Welles and The Illusionist.
More details will follow shortly about other distribution partners – and hopefully news on the international front.
Many thanks to all our Distribution Kickstarter Backers, Slacker Backers and Philip K. Dick fans and people who saw Radio Free Albemuth at film festivals for your support, sharing and enthusiasm. We can’t do this without you!
We’ll be asking for your help in the weeks that follow to make this an unprecedented grass-roots success in bringing the vision of Philip K. Dick to the widest audience possible. You can start now by sharing this announcement on social media, signing up on our mailing list and liking Radio Free Albemuth Facebook page.
You can also support the filmmakers through the purchase of items related to the film (available after the theatrical release) on this site: http://www.radiofreealbemuth.com/
Only in Obama’s America could something like this bit of ‘news’ be sold to the masses of asses by a corrupt cadre of state-corporate media that long ago chucked their first amendment responsibilities into the crapper to become careerist pressititutes riding on the rogue government gravy train. Those economic sanctions that have hurled at Russia with as much real effect as Zell Miller’s legendary “spitballs” now are getting some real clout as the punishment towards the reincarnated red menace grows a set of teeth. McDonalds, the tip of the spear of the corporate American imperial conquest of the world is closing locations in Crimea. This comes much to the delight of moronic consumers of the cable ‘news’ tabloid infotainment that poisons their minds as surely as the artery clogging food at Micky D’s does to their bodies. It is a sardonically funny real life example of the thoroughly dishonest rhetoric of that pathological political cynic and closet Bircher Paul Ryan’s “full stomachs and empty souls”speech to the low-hanging fruit at the recent CPAC soiree. Nothing could be more ironically truthful of the state of the American “consumer” today, whether it be focus group tested bullshit or cheap fast food that is being devoured.
Boy that is going to show Putin. I can practically see William Kristol, the Kagan Brothers, John McCain and the rest of the neocons popping the champagne corks over this latest fusillade of indignity. Considering the insane levels of hubris, delusion and arrogance among the “end of history” crowd I can really imagine that they think that depriving Russians of greasy, unhealthy American fast food is going to ignite their desired color revolution that will bring about regime change in Russia. What a bunch of reckless and dangerous dummies and Obama and his Skull and Bones stooge John Kerry are no better. With the latest edition of the impossible dream of Israel accepting a peace deal with the Palestinians now going up like a flaming bag of dogshit John Kerry has officially become the grand marshal of the US fool’s parade. My God, what a mind boggling fiasco of a first year on the job in thoroughly screwing up everything that the stammering ass from Mass got involved in, wasn’t John Bolton available? Good God Obama, did it ever dawn on you that there was a reason why the Republicans supported Kerry for the Secretary of State gig? How is that “Team of Rivals” thing workin’ out for you now?
The news of McDonalds pulling out of Crimea is already being picked up and fed through the echo chamber with the launching pad being th neocon transmission station at the Washington Post. While it hasn’t reached the columns of the A team of propagandists over at Pravda on the Potomac, namely neocon war wench Jennifer Rubin and Charles “Dr.Strangelove” Kraüthammer some so-called Russian expert named Kathy Lally is practically peeing in her pants with glee while blogging:
Talk about a Big Mac attack. Here’s a sanction with some real bite to it.
The three McDonald’s restaurants in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that has been abruptly annexed by Russia, are now closed. The Ukrainian branch of McDonald’s, based in Kiev, said in a statement Thursday that they had been closed for technical reasons, perhaps referring to the difficulty of supplying your restaurants when they turn up in a foreign country overnight.
Although the United States has imposed financial and other sanctions on Moscow because of its Crimean takeover, American businesses have been left free to operate in Russia. McDonald’s said the closing was temporary, but its offer to move employees to other jobs in mainland Ukraine – and give them a three-month rent payment – made that assertion sound less than persuasive.
Crimean officials tried to minimize the enormity of being forever deprived of the seductive phrase, “Would you like fries with that?”
My fellow Americans, this is how low that we have sunk in that the closing of McDonalds restaurants in Crimea has become to this point the most kick ass club in the bag in terms of all of those threatened economic sanctions that have been endlessly threatened by Team Obama. Oh, and Mighty Taco has banned Putin from eating in any of their restaurants, I am sure that he is already on the phone with his military commanders to get the fuck out of Crimea asap. This coordinated onslaught of Russia bashing is all so ridiculous that it has descended into parody, I cannot even watch my local news anymore without being blasted with propaganda and last night there was a plea for bay area residents to adopt those stray dogs that were being hunted down to be killed prior to the Sochi Winter Olympics. It never ends as we continue to slouch towards Idiocracy, on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last week much to the delight of a woeful nation of TV addled zombies the reigning queen of American ignoramuses that is Sarah Palin was trotted out to partake in a Putin skewering skit , the woman is a national embarrassment yet in a rotting empire where celebrity is the coin of the realm has become mainstream. It is as if the entire nation is slowly being sucked into the vortex inhabited by such morons and is becoming nothing more than a cartoon version of itself.
Likely to further inflame tensions and up the insanity level is the outstanding denunciation of one Russian political figure who administered a classic smackdown, according to a story in The Guardian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov mocked the current state of lunacy:
“Clearly, the US leadership is really annoyed, and cannot come to terms with the new situation, which has arisen in large part due to the deliberate line taken by the US and its allies in Europe to prepare anti-Russian forces to take power in Ukraine,” said deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, in an interview with Interfax.
“Trying to demonstrate how unhappy it is with the exercise of free will by the population of Crimea and the decisions we took related to it, Washington is ruining contacts even in places where continuing dialogue is in their own interests.”
In addition to sanctions against a number of businessmen and politicians considered to be close to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the US has responded with other measures, including cancelling all co-operation between Nasa and the Russian space agency, except for joint work on the International Space Station.
“The situation is turning into a joke when, for example, meetings between meteorologists are cancelled,” said Ryabkov.
“What can we advise our American colleagues? They should get more fresh air, do yoga, eat healthily, maybe watch some sitcoms on television.
“This is better than getting themselves and others all worked up when they know very well that the train has already departed and that childish tantrums, tears and hysterics will not help things.”
HEAR! HEAR! Enough is enough of this silly horseshit. It’s long past time for the adults to intervene, stick a pacifier into Obama’s pie hole and send Kerry, Powers, Nuland, Rice and the neocons to go and sit in the corner until they can behave in the mature manner that should be expected of statesmen and stateswomen. Oh, and take bad ass Billy Kristol out to the wood shed and give him the type of serious spanking that would give David Vitter a hard on. America is the petulant spoiled child of the world and it is embarrassing to be an American these days due to our tantrum throwing political class. For Christ’s sake, listen to rational war criminals for a change like Henry Kissinger and George Schultz and just ignore the diaper-dumping piss babies like Kristol and the rest of his wretched gang of misfits when it comes to Russia.
Maybe the neocons can take solace that McDonalds has suspended operations in Crimea, thereby depriving the citizens of the Russian territory of the crappy food that is a major contributor to a plague of health problems here in The Homeland where we are number one – in obesity. Like the rest of our sick national obsession with being that oh so exceptional people the brainwashing that is used by McDonalds in targeting advertising to children is essential in the indoctrination process. Just like the pledge of allegiance which is something that has no place in a “free” country and more appropriately belongs in the same types of authoritarian states that are defined by the criteria that is steeped in the same hypocrisy that is being peddled to justify the new Cold War.
“The Fries” – Mr. Lif (remixed by Jeremy R. Stern aka Abdul Malik)
4/2: Guillermo Jimenez has a conversation with Danny Benavides at Traces of Reality to discuss the drug war, the surveillance state, and the increasing use of violence by the Border Patrol among other topics:
4/2: At Red Ice Radio, host Henrik Palmgren interviews Mark Gray to discuss occult symbolism, synchronicity and geomancy in connection to a number of current events. Mystical phenomenon or pattern recognition gone awry? You decide:
4/3: Dave Lindorff of This Can’t Be Happening interviews Elena Teyer mother-in-law of Ibragim Todashev, the man executed by the FBI during their “investigation” of the Boston Bombing. They reveal many details about the case which were ignored by corporate news coverage:
4/4: On the Meria Heller show, Meria and guest Catherine Austin Fitts deliver useful information on the banking system, investing on priorities and improving one’s lifestyle:
4/5: Computer security expert Conrad Jaeger joins host Greg Carlwood at The Higher Side Chats to talk about the deep web, cyber security and the surveillance state:
From the front-lines of conflicts in Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Palestine, Korea, and the North; from Seattle to Genova, and the War on Terror in New York, Afghanistan, and Iraq, The Fourth World War is the story of men and women around the world who resist being annihilated in this war.While our airwaves are crowded with talk of a new world war, narrated by generals and filmed from the noses of bombs, the human story of this global conflict remains untold. The Fourth World War brings together the images and voices of the war on the ground. It is a story of a war without end and of those who resist.The product of over two years of filming on the inside of movements on five continents, The Fourth World War is a film that would have been unimaginable at any other moment in history. Directed by the makers of This Is What Democracy Looks Like and Zapatista, produced through a global network of independent media and activist groups, it is a truly global film from our global movement.
For English speakers, portions of the film may need translation, activated by clicking on the “CC” button on bottom right corner of the video (on some mobile device browsers the function can be found on the upper right corner).
Some might argue they’ve been FUBAR for some time now. Most of the world knows that power corrupts and the rich (as well as the national security state which protects their interests) are above the law. By paying off the right law makers and law enforcers they figuratively and sometimes literally get away with murder. Now, thanks to two recent court rulings, the wealthy in the U.S. are free to lavish unlimited bribes on politicians and can get away with not just murder but child rape. These are the types of stories that corporate media shills don’t want you to know, but with the internet more people than ever are becoming aware (and justifiably outraged).
DuPont Heir Avoids Jail Time for Raping His Children
Weeks ago, we published a report about a member of the DuPont family with a prolonged history of sexually abusing children. The man in question, 47-year-old Robert H. Richards IV, confessed to molesting both of his children and managed to avoid jail time because the judge said that he would not hold up well in prison.
At the time that we reported this story, it was ridiculed as “conspiracy theory” or “sensationalism”, by people who did not want to believe that this type of blatant systematic corruption exists.
However, now that the mainstream media has finally begun to pick this story up, it has gone viral and sparked outrage world wide.
Richards is a member of both the DuPont family, who built the worldwide chemical empire, and the Richards family, who co-founded the prestigious corporate law firm Richards Layton & Finger.
Richards was able avoid any jail time, thanks to his overpriced lawyers and the prestige of his families. In 2008, Richards confessed to the fourth-degree rape of his daughter, and only received probation. Then years later in 2010, he confessed to sexually abusing his son when he was just a toddler. Now this information is finally coming to light as the result of a civil lawsuit that was recently filed by his ex-wife.
Kendall Marlowe, executive director of the National Association for Counsel for Children, told The News Journal that sex offenders are jailed for the safety of the children they threaten.
“Child protection laws are there to safeguard children, and adults who knowingly harm children should be punished,” she said. “Our prisons should be more rehabilitative environments, but the prison system’s inadequacies are not a justification for letting a child molester off the hook.”
It is actually shocking that the mainstream media has picked up this story at all. There is a deep history of crime, corruption and pedophilia among aristocratic families. Luckily, stories like this are actually beginning to get mainstream recognition, but it is unfortunate that most people out there won’t believe that a story is credible until it is seen in one of the state regulated, corporately owned news sources.
John Vibes is an investigative journalist, staff writer and editor for Intellihub News where this article originally appeared. He is also the author of an 65 chapter Book entitled “Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance” and is an artist with an established record label.
Ignorance is Strength, Freedom is Slavery, Money is Speech
It was bad enough when the Supremes declared corporations were people in the infamous Citizens United decision. Now they have decided that money is free speech. In other words, money is to be given the same constitutional protection as free speech. The Washington Post explains it this way:
A split Supreme Court Wednesday struck down limits on the total amount of money an individual may spend on political candidates as a violation of free speech rights, a decision sure to increase the role of money in political campaigns.
The 5 to 4 decision sparked a sharp dissent from liberal justices, who said the decision reflects a wrong-headed hostility to campaign finance laws that the court’s conservatives showed in Citizens United v. FEC , which allowed corporate spending on elections.
“If Citizens United opened a door,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer said in reading his dissent from the bench, “today’s decision we fear will open a floodgate.”
So there it is, the final nail in the coffin to free and fair elections. Bye-bye campaign finance rules. “We the people” is now “we the wealthy.” The First Amendment protection of free speech was designed by the framers of our Constitution to protect our right to express our political opinions and exchange information and ideas without fear of governmental reprisal. By definition, it gives this right equally to every American citizen. Now the Roberts Court has decided, a la Orwell, that some people are more equal than others. If James Madison wanted to equate money with free speech, he would’ve drafted it into the Bill of Rights back in 1787. He must be flipping in his grave. His protection of all citizens has become a guarantee that the vast majority of us will no longer have any say in our electoral process.
This decision must make billionaires like Sheldon Adelson laugh so hard they spit gold coins out their noses. Now Adelson can select from a bevy of eager Neocons up on his auction block. And the brothers Koch can purchase any candidate they think will best do their bidding on Capitol (Capital?) Hill. And the 99% of the rest of us? Well, we will march lemming-like to the polls and pull the lever for whichever corporate candidate the 1% has purchased and placed on the ballot. Our elections will now be about as free and fair as those in N. Korea.
What was that Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence? Something about what must happen whenever a government becomes destructive of our unalienable rights . . . .
One has to wonder why we are dodging this truth about what we’ve become: a nation that turns a blind eye to skimmers, scammers and legal looting.
As in the story of the Emperor’s new clothes, the onlooker who declares the obvious– in this case, that the stock market is rigged–shatters the consensus lie. In the current saga, author Michael Lewis plays the role of the truth-telling boy, and everyone who went along with the fiction that the Emperor’s high-frequency trading finery was resplendent is revealed as credulous, complicit or worse.
Interestingly, Mr. Patterson outlined the solution that the heroes of Lewis’ book ended up pursuing. Here is a Q&A I conducted with Patterson in September 2012:
CHS: While there are various regulatory “tweaks” that could be put in place, I wonder if we don’t need a more fundamental “re-set” that asks what role the market should play in finance and the economy inhabited by everyday investors.Scott: I think there are a lot of people in the industry wondering about whether there needs to be a massive overhaul. But it’s probably not a good idea for that to be imposed on the market by the SEC. The uncertainty would be potentially destabilizing. And I just don’t see it happening.
I think the change needs to come from within the market and needs to be imposed by its most important users–I mean, not the high-frequency traders, who are running the show at the exchanges in many ways–but the institutions, the giant mutual fund companies, the pension funds, the long-short hedge funds. They need to exert pressure on the exchanges to stop giving advantages to high-frequency firms.
If we pull back from the media frenzy about HFT, we find the market is rigged in many other ways. The Federal Reserve’s policies, stripped of Orwellian mumbo-jumbo, are all about rigging the market to go in one direction–up.
Consider this chart, courtesy of long-time contributor Harun I., of the Dow Jones Industrial Average: I call it the tale of Two Dows. In the Great Bull Market of 1982 – 2000, a market fueled by an extraordinary economic expansion, the DJIA gained an average of 610 points a year.
In the anemic “recovery” of 2009 – 2013, the DJIA gained an average of 2,500 points per year. While the Fed rigged the 1990s Bull Market with low interest rates and other policies, it pulled out all the stops in the last five years:
The stock market is only the tip of the iceberg of what’s being rigged. For a taste of what’s rigged, ask yourself this question: if Mr. Elite Insider perpetrates a scam, and Mr. John Q. Citizen breaks similar laws, is there any difference between the treatment each receives?
Let’s go even deeper and ask: why is looting legal, even though it is obviously crooked? Why is high-frequency trading legal? Why is it legal for the Fed to offer money at 0% to its buddies but not to Mr. John Q. Citizen?
Why is it legal to issue student loans to future debt-serfs that is unlike all other debt in that it cannot be discharged in bankruptcy?
Since the legal looting continues unabated regardless of what party or toady is in office, then what actual difference is there between the Demopublicans and Republicrats?
It’s not just the stock market that’s rigged–the entire Status Quo is rigged. There are two sets of laws and two sets of opportunities: one for those holding the concentrated wealth and power, and the other for the rest of us debt-serfs.
If the system isn’t rigged, then why are insolvent banks and bankers protected from the creative destruction of capitalism that befalls John Q. Citizen when his risky bets go bad? Why do we as a nation keep insisting the Emperor’s new clothes are splendid when he is in fact parading around buck-naked?
One has to wonder why we are dodging this truth about what we’ve become: a nation that turns a blind eye to skimmers, scammers and legal looting. Perhaps, in Joseph Conrad’s phrase, we hope to escape the grim shadow of self-knowledge. Here is the passage from Chapter 7 of Lord Jim:
I gave no sign of dissent. I had no intention, for the sake of barren truth, to rob him of the smallest particle of any saving grace that would come in his way. I didn’t know how much of it he believed himself. I didn’t know what he was playing up to–if he was playing up to anything at all–and I suspect he did not know either; for it is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.
Let’s face it, the system is pathologically broken, designed to hurt and exploit the middle class. it is contemptible. The courts are contemptible, the Judges are contemptible, the politicians– almost all of them– are contemptible, the political parties are contemptible. The mainstream media are contemptible. The vast legion of police and police leaders who violate the law or protect lawless cops are contemptible. The laws that are passed by lobbyist-bought or intolerant fundamentalist influenced politicians are contemptible.
So where do we turn to fight back, to bravely move forward towards hope and progress?
First, we don’t put all our eggs in the electoral basket. That is a delusional idea. Okay, so vote, even donate to really strong progressive candidates. But don’t delude yourself into thinking that any effort or donations to electoral activity is enough. Consider electoral action to be comparable to lightly tapping the brakes on a deadly car crash that is already under way.
The fact is the system is not only toxic and broken, it is biting back aggressively at people who speak out in the ways that people fighting for democracy have traditionally fought back. Chris Hedges says,
” All acts of resistance–including nonviolent protest–have been conflated by the corporate state with terrorism. The mainstream, commercial press has been emasculated through the Obama administration’s repeated use of the Espionage Act to charge and sentence traditional whistle-blowers.”
Hedges wrote, last year, about Jeremy Hammond, before he was convicted and sentenced for hacking:
” He said he is fighting as “an anarchist communist” against “centralized state authority” and “exploitative corporations.” His goal is to build “leaderless collectives based on free association, consensus, mutual aid, self-sufficiency and harmony with the environment.” It is essential, he said, that all of us work to cut our personal ties with capitalism and engage in “mass organizing of protests, strikes and boycotts.” Hacking and leaking, he said, are part of this resistance–“effective tools to reveal ugly truths of the system.”
And further discussing Hammond, Hedges says,
” He said resistance must be a way of life. He intends to return to community organizing when he is released, although he said he will work to stay out of prison. “The truth,” he said, “will always come out.” He cautioned activists to be hyper-vigilant and aware that “one mistake can be permanent.” But he added, “Don’t let paranoia or fear deter you from activism. Do the down thing!”
if you want work towards a positive future– one that supports social, economic and ecological justice, fairness and safety– you must stand up to the system– hack it, whistleblow it, expose it, resist it, defy it, undermine it and do all you can every day to wake people up to the malignant, pathological threat assault THEY and their families and communities are currently being subjected to.
James C. Scott, anarchist scholar and Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at Yale University. writes, in his book, Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity and Meaningful Work and Play
“One day you will be called upon to break a big law in the name of justice and rationality. Everything will depend on it. You have to be ready. How are you going to prepare for that day when it really matters? You have to stay “in shape” so that when the big day comes you will be ready. What you need is “anarchist calisthenics.” Every day or so break some trivial law that makes no sense, even if it’s only jaywalking. Use your own head to judge whether a law is just or reasonable. That way, you’ll keep trim; and when the big day comes, you’ll be ready.”
Keith Farnish, author of Undermining and Times Up, talks about how the system systematically engages in a plethora of ways to not only disconnect us but that make us forget that we were connected or desperately need to be connected to be fully human. We have to fight back, but he writes,
“…you can’t attack these great systems, these great structures head on, it’s really not going to work, you’re not powerful enough to do that.
“The only way that we’re going to really get to return humanity to a decent way of living is to look at those tools of disconnection and get people to realize what’s going on. Allow people to be connected again because once you connect people, once you take away all the things that are masking that need that humanity really has to be connected, then you end up with awareness.”
So, to fight disconnection and get people reconnected you have to fight the ways that the system disconnects people from each other and from the positive aspects of community, family and humanity that keep us being fully human.
Farnish says technology keeps us distracted– that people don’t like to hear that almost everything they’ve ever believed in is wrong and they will do everything in their power to retain those beliefs.
“anyone can be an underminer”
“the vast majority of the time I am doing community work which is a form of undermining because what that community work does is allow people to appreciate what’s local to them.”
The thing is Farnish’s goal for undermining goes all the way– to the point that the industrial world is totally undermined and no longer working. That would put people in a situation where they depended entirely on local resources. He says that’s necessary .
“… we need to be looking smaller, yes we need to be banding into communities that are self sufficient, there’s no way we can exist in using any form of mass anything, which is destructive. Therefore we have to start breaking things down into smaller chunks.
We need to be more self controlling. We need to understand that global government and even national government are only in it for the interests of the greater corporate world. But once you start getting local, we call it local government, local administration, then you get a lot more control back. So I can see the argument and that is an inevitable outcome of undermining these great industrial worlds.”
Farnish is not talking about toning things down. He’s talking about shutting them down:
” Greenpeace is saying you can have less damaging technologies, well yes, relatively, 10% less damaging, 20% less damaging, they still screw everything up. They’re still killing the planet.”
” I’ve talked for a couple of years now about the idea that when the dinosaurs died it wasn’t that the little tiny mammals, the little mice, the one-foot high horse, the birds, they didn’t attack the giant dinosaurs and replace them; they out-survived them. Think in terms of what you’re talking about here, this dinosaur of industrial corporate civilization.”
Farnish replied,
” Yes, I can see that. I think it’s a very good metaphor. We have a situation where these dinosaurs, yep I think that’s a good way of, although saying that, I mean, they were natural beings and they were wiped out in a mass extinction event. We’re coming to a massive extinction event, I think this is true, but it’s a mass extinction event caused by something that is entirely unnatural.This idea that you’ve got niches that the people can go into in order to create a new world, yes that’s one way of looking at it but as you say those niches weren’t created until the dinosaurs went. Now, industrial civilization, we can wait for it to collapse if we want. We can say, okay we’ll wait it out. But the problem with waiting it out is when it does collapse, there’s nothing left. It’s done so much damage, there’s already this mass extinction event which is inevitable.
Or we can say industrial civilization is something that we have to get rid of before this mass extinction takes place. Before the Earth is in a state that we can no longer live there. Before it collapses while we are totally dependent on it. That’s another side of things because if we remain dependent upon civilization, when it collapses we’re gone as well.
So we have to learn how to start walking away. We have to become less dependent on it. We have to become connected outside of industrial civilization. So the small mammals, the shrew-like creatures, they didn’t do that. They waited it out. There was a mass extinction event, that mass extinction event actually wiped out the vast majority of the shrew-like creatures as well, fortunately there were a few that managed to survive but who knows what might have come about if that mass extinction hadn’t taken place.
I can guarantee that if humans would have been around at the time, they wouldn’t have survived that mass extinction event either. “
And I threw in another ” another biological metaphor into the conversation.
“There are some insects that plant their eggs in another insect or mammal and then when the egg hatch, they consume the living breathing creature, killing it in the process, and I kind of conceptualize that the way towards a future where corporations and industrial civilization are no longer the dominating destroyers is absolutely not one where there is direct confrontation but rather where we begin building alternative infections that grow into positive structures and constructions where they lead to the acceleration of the death of this industrial civilization.”
Keith Farnish relied,
“Yes, I mean I have used the metaphor on the website of spiders spinning their webs in the eaves or mice making their homes under the floor boards, quietly and industriously. You’re quite right. We need to be doing things all the time. We need to be creating communities, we need to become self-sufficient. All of these things need to be taking place as a replacement, as a viable replacement for what is going to go and that’s something that we should be starting now.Regardless of whatever we do, because in a way that is both a method by which we can live in the future and also a way we can undermine the system. So for instance, if you grow your own food, you’re not going to buy your food from the supermarket because you’ll learn to love that food that you’ve grown. You’ll treasure that, you’ll protect that. The supermarket becomes something that’s other worldly. It’s something that other people use.
If people don’t shop at supermarkets then supermarkets close down. That’s a great lump of civilization gone. The mass consumerism, this idea that you can only get your food in approved places of mass consumption…. “
I said to Keith Farnish, in our interview,
“… your book on undermining goes into a lot of detail on many many different ways and different approaches on how to undermine, starting with just a black magic marker and changing the message on a poster to blocking the entrances to shopping malls. They can get very risky or they can get minimally risky but a lot of them involve in some ways breaking the law.”
Farnish replied:
“Yeah. The law, I think we’ve got to distinguish between what’s legal and what’s lawful here. Laws in, certainly laws in Western countries are, they are statutes, they are things that have been put there by politicians to control you to make sure that you do whatever the system wants you to do. There are certain things like murder, taking someone’s property although you do question where the property came from in the first place, obviously harming someone directly in some way, taking away their liberty, that kind of thing, these common features of human morality, and that’s what I would consider to be a law and they’re the laws by which humans should live.
Yes breaking the law, if we can use that phrase is something that underminers will inevitably do, and it’s incredibly liberating. It’s a wonderful thing. In the vast majority of cases you’re not going to get in any trouble for it if you’re careful and I do provide some instructions on how to be careful but we are going to have to break the law because the laws are about controlling people.
Laws are about benefiting the corporate world and if we’re going to change things then those legal instruments that are being put in place to control people have to be broken apart. They have to be challenged constantly otherwise nothing will change and that is why we have to distinguish between what is lawful? What is something that is naturally right and moral for humans to do and where that overrides what politicians and corporations have put in place to make themselves rich or make themselves powerful.
If you stop a factory polluting the river you could be breaking the law but morally you’re doing the right thing.
So I say to you. What are you doing with the rest of your life? What can you do to make humanity better? What can you do to make the world a little bit better for your children and your grandchildren?
The answer is, a hell of a lot. My hope is that this article will stretch the boundaries of your imagination. You have the potential for a bigger vision and you’ll have to fight for it. Many of the tools of disconnection that Farnish refers to are built to restrict and limit your imagination. You can do ANYTHING. Some of those anythings may cost you more than you are willing to pay. But at the least, please, please expand your view and think of all the possibilities. Snowden was not the first whistleblower. Neither was Daniel Ellsberg.
And please, don’t try to do this alone. Connect, connect, connect. That’s the way bottom-up change is made to happen. Simply connecting in new ways to the same or new people in your communities can be revolutionary, can be undermining can be resistance. Like Jim Scott says. Do something every day. Raise your voice. Expose the lies of the dominating system. Take public the secrets that the billionaires, the corrupt politicians hold tight. Refuse! Refuse to follow the rules that most people accept as mandatory. A few years back police were arresting people who shot videos or photos of them. But people kept at it, exposing their acts, rejecting their orders to stop, REFUSING to give up their rights. Now, not only has the law made it clear that you CAN videotape police, but the police are beginning to record themselves. I’m sure it will be a battle, getting public access to ALL police recordings. But it could happen. Stand up and refuse. In his brilliant book, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, James C. Scott says, “Any public refusal, in the teeth of power, to produce the words, gestures, and other signs of normative compliance is typically construed– and typically intended — as an act of defiance.” Scott points out, “ON very rare occasions when what has been orchestrated as a mass public demonstration of domination and enthusiastic consent erupts into a public display of repudiation from below, the ‘formidable shadow of general impotence’ becomes what can only be described as a symbolic rout.”
We’re talking about parades, ceremonies, public events. Even a moment of televised disruption can open the consciousness of millions and expose the lie of of power and the vulnerability of the elites running the performance. This can be highly planned, like Medea Benjamin did when she interrupted President Obama, or it can be spontaneous, when you discover an unexpected opportunity. I interviewed Medea on how to do it, here.
One last thing. Don’t get stuck with absolutism. You don’t have to change your life completely. Your organization does not have to totally change. Every resistant, undermining, bottom-up step you take as a conscious act contributes to progress. It may take thousands or millions of people doing millions or billions of small acts. But that’s possible. It is the ONLY way that most of the changes in the world happen. Matter of fact, don’t expect your single action will be THE one. Consider your acts to be like drops of water eroding a massive edifice.
