The Party’s Over: Beyond Politics, Beyond Democracy

Posted on September 28, 2016 by Reid Mukai

Nowadays, democracy rules the world. Communism is long dead, elections are taking place even in Afghanistan and Iraq, and world leaders are meeting to plan the “global community” we hear so much about. So why isn’t everybody happy, finally? For that matter-why do so few of the eligible voters in the United States, the world’s flagship democracy, even bother to vote?

Could it be that democracy, long the catchword of every revolution and rebellion, is simply not democratic enough? What could be the problem?
Every little child can grow up to be President

No, they can’t. Being President means occupying a position of hierarchical power, just like being a billionaire: for every person who is President, there have to be millions who are not. It’s no coincidence that billionaires and Presidents tend to rub shoulders; both exist in a privileged world off limits to the rest of us. Speaking of billionaires, our economy isn’t exactly democratic-capitalism distributes resources in absurdly unequal proportions, and you have to start with resources if you’re ever going to get elected.

Even if it was true that anyone could grow up to be President, that wouldn’t help the millions who inevitably don’t, who must still live in the shadow of that power. This imbalance is intrinsic to the structure of representative democracy, at the local level as much as at the top. The professional politicians of a town council discuss municipal affairs and pass ordinances all day without consulting the citizens of the town, who have to be at work; when one of those ordinances displeases citizens, they have to use what little leisure time they have to contest it, and then they’re back at work again the next time the town council meets. In theory, the citizens could elect a different town council from the available pool of politicians and would-be politicians, but the interests of politicians as a class always remain essentially at odds with their own-besides, voting fraud, gerrymandering, and inane party loyalty usually prevent them from going that far. Even in the unlikely scenario that a whole new government was elected consisting of firebrands intent on undoing the imbalance of power between politicians and citizens, they would inevitably perpetuate it simply by accepting roles in the system-for the political apparatus itself is the foundation of that imbalance. To succeed in their objective, they would have to dissolve the government and join the rest of the populace in restructuring society from the roots up.

But even if there were no Presidents or town councils, democracy as we know it would still be an impediment to freedom. Corruption, privilege, and hierarchy aside, majority rule is not only inherently oppressive but also paradoxically divisive and homogenizing at the same time.
The Tyranny of the Majority

If you ever found yourself in a vastly outnumbered minority, and the majority voted that you had to give up something as necessary to your life as water and air, would you comply? When it comes down to it, does anyone really believe it makes sense to accept the authority of a group simply on the grounds that they outnumber everyone else? We accept majority rule because we do not believe it will threaten us-and those it does threaten are already silenced before anyone can hear their misgivings.

The average self-professed law-abiding citizen does not consider himself threatened by majority rule because, consciously or not, he conceives of himself as having the power and moral authority of the majority: if not in fact, by virtue of his being politically and socially “moderate,” then in theory, because he believes everyone would be convinced by his arguments if only he had the opportunity to present them. Majority-rule democracy has always rested on the conviction that if all the facts were known, everyone could be made to see that there is only one right course of action-without this belief, it amounts to nothing more than the dictatorship of the herd. But even if “the” facts could be made equally clear to everyone, assuming such a thing were possible, people still would have their individual perspectives and motivations and needs. We need social and political structures that take this into account, in which we are free from the mob rule of the majority as well as the ascendancy of the privileged class.

Living under democratic rule teaches people to think in terms of quantity, to focus more on public opinion than on what their consciences tell them, to see themselves as powerless unless they are immersed in a mass. The root of majority-rule democracy is competition: competition to persuade everyone else to your position whether or not it is in their best interest, competition to constitute a majority to wield power before others outmaneuver you to do the same-and the losers (that is to say, the minorities) be damned. At the same time, majority rule forces those who wish for power to appeal to the lowest common denominator, precipitating a race to the bottom that rewards the most bland, superficial, and demagogic; under democracy, power itself comes to be associated with conformity rather than individuality. And the more power is concentrated in the hands of the majority, the less any individual can do on her own, whether she is inside or outside that majority.

In purporting to give everyone an opportunity to participate, majority-rule democracy offers a perfect justification for repressing those who don’t abide by its dictates: if they don’t like the government, why don’t they go into politics themselves? And if they don’t win at the game of building up a majority to wield power, didn’t they get their chance? This is the same blame-the-victim reasoning used to justify capitalism: if the dishwasher isn’t happy with his salary, he should work harder so he too can own a restaurant chain. Sure, everyone gets a chance to compete, however unequal-but what about those of us who don’t want to compete, who never wanted power to be centralized in the hands of a government in the first place? What if we don’t care to rule or be ruled?

That’s what police are for-and courts and judges and prisons.
The Rule of Law

Even if you don’t believe their purpose is to grind out nonconformity wherever it appears, you have to acknowledge that legal institutions are no substitute for fairness, mutual respect, and good will. The rule of “just and equal law,” as fetishized by the stockholders and landlords whose interests it protects, offers no guarantees against injustice; it simply creates another arena of specialization, in which power and responsibility are ceded to expensive lawyers and pompous judges. Rather than serving to protect our communities and work out conflicts, this arrangement ensures that our communities’ skills for conflict resolution and self-defense atrophy-and that those whose profession it supposedly is to discourage crime have a stake in it proliferating, since their careers depend upon it.

Ironically, we are told that we need these institutions to protect the rights of minorities-even though the implicit function of the courts is, at best, to impose the legislation of the majority on the minority. In actuality, a person is only able to use the courts to defend his rights when he can bring sufficient force to bear upon them in a currency they recognize; thanks to capitalism, only a minority can do this, so in a roundabout way it turns out that, indeed, the courts exist to protect the rights of at least a certain minority.

Justice cannot be established through the mere drawing up and enforcement of laws; such laws can only institutionalize what is already the rule in a society. Common sense and compassion are always preferable to the enforcement of strict, impersonal regulations. Where the law is the private province of an elite invested in its own perpetuation, the sensible and compassionate are bound to end up as defendants; we need a social system that fosters and rewards those qualities rather than blind obedience and impassivity.
Who Loses?

In contrast to forms of decision-making in which everyone’s needs matter, the disempowerment of losers and out-groups is central to democracy. It is well known that in ancient Athens, the “cradle of democracy,” scarcely an eighth of the population was permitted to vote, as women, foreigners, slaves, and others were excluded from citizenship. This is generally regarded as an early kink that time has ironed out, but one could also conclude that exclusion itself is the most essential and abiding characteristic of democracy: millions who live in the United States today are not permitted to vote either, and the distinctions between citizen and non-citizen have not eroded significantly in 2500 years. Every bourgeois property owner can come up with a thousand reasons why it isn’t practical to allow everyone who is affected to share in decision making, just as no boss or bureaucrat would dream of giving his employees an equal say in their workplace, but that doesn’t make it any less exclusive. What if democracy arose in Greece not as a step in Man’s Progress Towards Freedom, but as a way of keeping power out of certain hands?

Democracy is the most sustainable way to maintain the division between powerful and powerless because it gives the greatest possible number of people incentive to defend that division.

That’s why the high-water mark of democracy-its current ascendancy around the globe-corresponds with unprecedented inequalities in the distribution of resources and power. Dictatorships are inherently unstable: you can slaughter, imprison, and brainwash entire generations and their children will invent the struggle for freedom anew. But promise every man the opportunity to be a dictator, to be able to force the “will of the majority” upon his fellows rather than work through disagreements like a mature adult, and you can build a common front of destructive self-interest against the cooperation and collectivity that make individual freedom possible. All the better if there are even more repressive dictatorships around to point to as “the” alternative, so you can glorify all this in the rhetoric of liberty.
Capitalism and Democracy

Now let’s suspend our misgivings about democracy long enough to consider whether, if it were an effective means for people to share power over their lives, it could be compatible with capitalism. In a democracy, informed citizens are supposed to vote according to their enlightened self-interest-but who controls the flow of information, if not wealthy executives? They can’t help but skew their coverage according to their class interests, and you can hardly blame them-the newspapers and networks that didn’t flinch at alienating corporate advertisers were run out of business long ago by competitors with fewer scruples.

Likewise, voting means choosing between options, according to which possibilities seem most desirable-but who sets the options, who establishes what is considered possible, who constructs desire itself but the wealthy patriarchs of the political establishment, and their nephews in advertising and public relations firms? In the United States, the two-party system has reduced politics to choosing the lesser of two identical evils, both of which answer to their funders before anyone else. Sure, the parties differ over exactly how much to repress personal freedoms or spend on bombs-but do we ever get to vote on who controls “public” spaces such as shopping malls, or whether workers are entitled to the full product of their labor, or any other question that could seriously change the way we live? In such a state of affairs, the essential function of the democratic process is to limit the appearance of what is possible to the narrow spectrum debated by candidates for office. This demoralizes dissidents and contributes to the general impression that they are impotent utopians-when nothing is more utopian than trusting representatives from the owning class to solve the problems caused by their own dominance, and nothing more impotent than accepting their political system as the only possible system.

Ultimately, the most transparent democratic political process will always be trumped by economic matters such as property ownership. Even if we could convene everyone, capitalists and convicts alike, in one vast general assembly, what would prevent the same dynamics that rule the marketplace from spilling over into that space? So long as resources are unevenly distributed, the rich can always buy others’ votes: either literally, or by promising them a piece of the pie, or else by means of propaganda and intimidation. Intimidation may be oblique-“Those radicals want to take away your hard-earned property”-or as overt as the bloody gang wars that accompanied electoral campaigns in nineteenth century America.

Thus, even at best, democracy can only serve its purported purpose if it occurs among those who explicitly oppose capitalism and foreswear its prizes-and in those circles, there are alternatives that make a lot more sense than majority rule.
It’s no coincidence freedom is not on the ballot

Freedom is a quality of activity, not a condition that exists in a vacuum: it is a prize to be won daily, not a possession that can be kept in the basement and taken out and polished up for parades. Freedom cannot be given-the most you can hope is to free others from the forces that prevent them from finding it themselves. Real freedom has nothing to do with voting; being free doesn’t mean simply being able to choose between options, but actively participating in establishing the options in the first place.

If the freedom for which so many generations have fought and died is best exemplified by a man in a voting booth checking a box on a ballot before returning to work in an environment no more under his control than it was before, then the heritage our emancipating forefathers and suffragette grandmothers have left us is nothing but a sham substitute for the liberty they sought.

For a better illustration of real freedom in action, look at the musician in the act of improvising with her companions: in joyous, seemingly effortless cooperation, they create a sonic and emotional environment, transforming the world that in turn transforms them. Take this model and extend it to every one of our interactions with each other and you would have something qualitatively different from our present system-a harmony in human relationships and activity. To get there from here, we have to dispense with voting as the archetypal expression of freedom and participation.

Representative democracy is a contradiction.

No one can represent your power and interests for you-you can only have power by wielding it, you can only learn what your interests are by getting involved. Politicians make careers out of claiming to represent others, as if freedom and political power could be held by proxy; in fact, they are a priest class that answers only to itself, and their very existence is proof of our disenfranchisement.

Voting in elections is an expression of our powerlessness: it is an admission that we can only approach the resources and capabilities of our own society through the mediation of that priest caste. When we let them prefabricate our options for us, we relinquish control of our communities to these politicians in the same way that we have ceded technology to engineers, health care to doctors, and control of our living environments to city planners and private real estate developers. We end up living in a world that is alien to us, even though our labor has built it, for we have acted like sleepwalkers hypnotized by the monopoly our leaders and specialists hold on setting the possibilities.

But we don’t have to simply choose between presidential candidates, soft drink brands, television shows, and political ideologies. We can make our own decisions as individuals and communities, we can make our own delicious beverages and social structures and power, we can establish a new society on the basis of freedom and cooperation.

Sometimes a candidate appears who says everything people have been saying to each other for a long time-he seems to have appeared from outside the world of politics, to really be one of us. By persuasively critiquing the system within its own logic, he subtly persuades people that the system can be reformed-that it could work, if only the right people were in power. Thus a lot of energy that would have gone into challenging the system itself is redirected into backing yet another candidate for office, who inevitably fails to deliver.

But where do these candidates-and more importantly, their ideas and momentum-come from? How do they rise into the spotlight? They only receive so much attention because they are drawing on popular sentiments; often, they are explicitly trying to divert energy from existing grass-roots movements. So should we put our energy into supporting them, or into building on the momentum that forced them to take radical stances in the first place?

More frequently, we are terrorized into focusing on the electoral spectacle by the prospect of being ruled by the worst possible candidates. “What if he gets into power?” To think that things could get even worse!

But the problem is that the government has so much power in the first place-otherwise, it wouldn’t matter as much who held the reigns. So long as this is the case, there will always be tyrants. This is why it is all the more important that we put our energy into the lasting solution of opposing the power of the state.
But what are the alternatives to democracy?
Consensus

Consensus-based decision-making is already practiced around the globe, from indigenous communities in Latin America and direct action groups in Europe to organic farming cooperatives in Australia. In contrast to representative democracy, the participants take part in the decision-making process on an ongoing basis and exercise real control over their daily lives. Unlike majority-rule democracy, consensus process values the needs and concerns of each individual equally; if one person is unhappy with a resolution, it is everyone’s responsibility to find a new solution that is acceptable to all. Consensus-based decision-making does not demand that any person accept others’ power over her, though it does require that everybody consider everyone else’s needs; what it loses in efficiency it makes up tenfold in freedom and accountability. Instead of asking that people accept leaders or find common cause by homogenizing themselves, proper consensus process integrates everyone into a working whole while allowing each to retain his or her own autonomy.
Autonomy

To be free, you must have control over your immediate surroundings and the basic matters of your life. No one is more qualified than you are to decide how you live; no one should be able to vote on what you do with your time and your potential unless you invite them to. To claim these privileges for yourself and respect them in others is to cultivate autonomy.

Autonomy is not to be confused with so-called independence: in actuality, no one is independent, since our lives all depend on each other. The glamorization of self-sufficiency in competitive society is an underhanded way to accuse those who will not exploit others of being responsible for their own poverty; as such, it is one of the most significant obstacles to building community.

In contrast to this Western mirage, autonomy offers a free interdependence between people who share consensus.

Autonomy is the antithesis of bureaucracy. There is nothing more efficient than people acting on their own initiative as they see fit, and nothing more inefficient than attempting to dictate everyone’s actions from above-that is, unless your fundamental goal is to control other people. Top-down coordination is only necessary when people must be made to do something they would never do of their own accord; likewise, obligatory uniformity, however horizontally it is imposed, can only empower a group by disempowering the individuals who comprise it. Consensus can be as repressive as democracy unless the participants retain their autonomy.

Autonomous individuals can cooperate without agreeing on a shared agenda, so long as everyone benefits from everyone else’s participation. Groups that cooperate thus can contain conflicts and contradictions, just as each of us does individually, and still empower the participants. Let’s leave marching under a single flag to the military.

Finally, autonomy entails self-defense. Autonomous groups have a stake in defending themselves against the encroachments of those who do not recognize their right to self-determination, and in expanding the territory of autonomy and consensus by doing everything in their power to destroy coercive structures.
Topless Federations

Independent autonomous groups can work together in federations without any of them wielding authority. Such a structure sounds utopian, but it can actually be quite practical and efficient. International mail delivery and railway travel both work on this system, to name two examples: while individual postal and transportation systems are internally hierarchical, they all cooperate together to get mail or rail passengers from one nation to another without an ultimate authority being necessary at any point in the process. Similarly, individuals who cannot agree enough to work together within one collective can still coexist in separate groups. For this to work in the long run, of course, we need to instill values of cooperation, consideration, and tolerance in the coming generations-but that’s exactly what we are proposing, and we can hardly do worse at this task than the partisans of capitalism and hierarchy have.
Direct Action

Autonomy necessitates that you act for yourself: that rather than waiting for requests to pass through the established channels only to bog down in paperwork and endless negotiations, establish your own channels instead. This is called direct action. If you want hungry people to have food to eat, don’t just give money to a bureaucratic charity organization-find out where food is going to waste, collect it, and share. If you want affordable housing, don’t try to get the town council to pass a bill-that will take years, while people sleep outside every night; take over abandoned buildings, open them up to the public, and organize groups to defend them when the thugs of the absentee landlords show up. If you want corporations to have less power, don’t petition the politicians they bought to put limits on their own masters-take that power from them yourself. Don’t buy their products, don’t work for them, sabotage their billboards and offices, prevent their meetings from taking place and their merchandise from being delivered. They use similar tactics to exert their power over you, too-it only looks valid because they bought up the laws and values of your society long before you were born.

Don’t wait for permission or leadership from some outside authority, don’t beg some higher power to organize your life for you. Take the initiative!
How to Solve Disagreements without Calling the Authorities

In a social arrangement that is truly in the best interest of each participating individual, the threat of exclusion should be enough to discourage most destructive or disrespectful behavior. Even when it is impossible to avoid, exclusion is certainly a more humanitarian approach than prisons and executions, which corrupt police and judges as much as they embitter criminals. Those who refuse to respect others’ needs, who will not integrate themselves into any community, may find themselves banished from social life-but that is still better than exile in the mental ward or on death row, two of the possibilities awaiting such people today. Violence should only be used by communities in self-defense, not with the smug sense of entitlement with which it is applied by our present injustice system. Unfortunately, in a world governed by force, autonomous consensus-based groups are likely to find themselves at odds with those who do not abide by cooperative or tolerant values; they must be careful not to lose those values themselves in the process of defending them.

Serious disagreements within communities can be solved in many cases by reorganizing or subdividing groups. Often individuals who can’t get along in one social configuration have more success cooperating in another setting or as members of parallel communities. If consensus cannot be reached within a group, that group can split into smaller groups that can achieve it internally-such a thing may be inconvenient and frustrating, but it is better than group decisions ultimately being made by force by those who have the most power. As with individuals and society, so with different collectives: if the benefits of working together outweigh the frustrations, that should be incentive enough for people to sort out their differences. Even drastically dissimilar communities still have it in their best interest to coexist peacefully, and must somehow negotiate ways to achieve this…
Living Without Permission

…that’s the most difficult part, of course. But we’re not talking about just another social system here, we’re talking about a total transformation of human relations-for it will take nothing less to solve the problems our species faces today. Let’s not kid ourselves-until we can achieve this, the violence and strife inherent in conflict-based relations will continue to intensify, and no law or system will be able to protect us. In consensus-based structures, there are no fake solutions, no ways to suppress conflict without resolving it; those who participate in them must learn to coexist without coercion and submission.

The first precious grains of this new world can be found in your friendships and love affairs whenever they are free from power dynamics, whenever cooperation occurs naturally. Imagine those moments expanded to the scale of our entire society-that’s the life that waits beyond democracy.

It may feel like we are separated from that world by an uncrossable chasm, but the wonderful thing about consensus and autonomy is that you don’t have to wait for the government to vote for them-you can practice them right now with the people around you. Put into practice, the virtues of this way of living are clear. Form your own autonomous group, answering to no power but your own, and chase down freedom for yourselves, if your representatives will not do it for you-since they cannot do it for you.
Appendix: A Fable

Three wolves and six goats are discussing what to have for dinner. One courageous goat makes an impassioned case: “We should put it to a vote!” The other goats fear for his life, but surprisingly, the wolves acquiesce. But when everyone is preparing to vote, the wolves take three of the goats aside.

“Vote with us to make the other three goats dinner,” they threaten. “Otherwise, vote or no vote, we’ll eat you.”

The other three goats are shocked by the outcome of the election: a majority, including their comrades, has voted for them to be killed and eaten. They protest in outrage and terror, but the goat who first suggested the vote rebukes them: “Be thankful you live in a democracy! At least we got to have a say in this!”

Fascism Trumps Democracy: America, A State of Impunity

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Reid Mukai

By Norman Pollack

Source: CounterPunch

Notwithstanding my title’s oblique reference to Trump, he is not the greater of the dangers now facing America, but an entirely known factor, representing a gut incipient fascism grounded primarily in capital accumulation, a nymphomaniac drive for ownership, deal-making, undisguised prestige—in short, the very traits becoming to American’s wish for wealth, power, and status on which its system of capitalism is based. Ethnocentrism gives it a psychological heart, sheer ignorance of humane sensibility, a soul, indifference to the humiliation and destruction of others because of capitalism’s workings, a modal personality and societal mental set. We’ve had many examples of The Donald up-and-down the line, from the 10%, 5%, 1%, down to the bottom of the social-class scale, that being how effective false consciousness has been disseminated downward through the American value system. He presently vibrates with what appears to be a significant portion of the working class. So be it; at least the portents and record are there for fighting back.

Not so the Obamas and Clintons in our midst, largely free from serious criticism by a supine, homogenized radicalism, chanting the “lesser-of-two-evils” song on the way, not to the gas chambers (not even Trump has, as yet, gone this far), but a manifestation and structure of liberal fascism, possibly more militaristic, more ensconced deeply in a Cold War mental set, talking a good game on immigration while actively promoting a class-state of monopolism equal to anything Trump favors. We have then a condition of growing fascistization with little internal checks and differentiate primarily by rhetorical flourishes. Obama is the point man, exceeding his predecessors, in global counterrevolution, intervention, regime change, and the steady pressures toward confrontation with, above all, China, but also Russia. Meanwhile, Clinton fits the bill, perhaps more viscerally combative, with Russia, rather than China, the chief ADVERSARY. (Caps. are necessary, because the US cannot exist, much less thrive, without an enemy, whether for the mammoth defense industry, an hegemonic foreign policy, or the social discipline at home, to keep the internal market going, ferret out dissent on policy, favor the already enriched and favored.)

Stealth destroyers, appropriation $4B+, already noticed in today’s Times; the safety net grows more outmoded, environmental degradation and pollution continue apace, the murder rate in Chicago and other major cities climbs, but imperialism is, literally, business-as-usual. And business itself is business as usual: Bank of America last week’s poster boy of questionable behavior. “You break it, you own it” might be the slogan in a small business souvenir shop, but what of the bigger picture? American business, notably, railroads and banking, by the mid-19th century, had already broken the promise of democracy, and fixing the system on democratic lines has grown more remote with time. That is where “fascism” is not an expletive, but reality: the interpenetration of business and government, capitalism and the State, the cozy amalgam of wealth, power, the military, which even the strongest chisel could not pry them apart.

Germany had its form, Italy, its, Japan, its, all signifying cultural and linguistic differences, but not systemic ones, capitalism in each case, and the social structure of hierarchy it created, the determinative factor in shaping the polity and its purposes of Order, deservedly the dirtiest word in the political lexicon. Everyone knows his/her place in a fascist social order. Substantive protest is muted, whether through repression or indoctrination. America now joins the 20th century’s historical Big Three of fascist persuasion, relying more on indoctrination than explicit, overt repression. Fly-over military jets at football games is the Pavlovian reminder of requisite patriotism to be considered, and consider oneself, the Good American. (Trump merely echoes the man-in-the-street, his difference being a silk shirt for a denim work shirt.) But it is Clinton who deserves, and has earned the respect, of all right-thinking Americans, parroting the vitriol of the defense intellectuals, propaganda masters (even Axelrod in today’s paper seems to have become critical), her controlled shrillness, backed by her husband’s man-of-destiny complex, posing more serious risks for putting nails into the coffin of democracy.

Why choose either, Trump or Clinton? Elections are rigged, not by corruption, but, more profoundly, by the political culture and class structure of the society, the candidates merely the façade for several centuries of political-economic-ideological development, cumulative, self-renewing, above all, hubristic, i.e., exaggerated pride, the Chosen, backed by the military force to cram it down the throats of all and sundry, where “friends and allies” become, for these purposes of unilateral global dominance, indistinguishable from adversaries and enemies in successfully maintaining claims of leadership and greatness.

Norman Pollack Ph.D. Harvard, Guggenheim Fellow, early writings on American Populism as a radical movement, prof., activist.. His interests are social theory and the structural analysis of capitalism and fascism. He can be reached at pollackn@msu.edu.

Charlie Kaufman on Zombie Ants, Mind Control, and Consumerist Culture

Posted on September 25, 2016 by Reid Mukai

By The Unknown

Source: High Existence

Charlie Kaufman has one of the most inventive and original minds in Hollywood. That’s probably why he has eluded mainstream success.

Mr. Kaufman is perhaps best known for writing the modern classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for which he was awarded an Oscar for best original screenplay. He’s also the writer of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Anomalisa, and the writer-director of the little-known but brilliant Synecdoche, New York, which Roger Ebert named the “best film of the decade” (2000-2010).

In the words of fellow writer Jeremy Brock:

One of the few screenwriters to transcend his profession, Charlie Kaufman is responsible for some of the most unique, daring, and inventive screenplays in contemporary cinema. […] His films deal with identity, mortality, relationships, and the meaning or purpose of life. They are metaphysical, self-reflexive, hyper-aware, often using surrealist conceits to explore our fundamental anxieties. It is in this tradition of finding new, startling, and funny ways of exploring human psychology that Charlie Kaufman sits comfortably amongst the world’s greatest living writers.

Fans love him. Critics adore him. Mainstream audiences… ignore him.

And that’s a shame.

In a world filled with sequels, prequels, remakes, and reboots, creativity is dying in Hollywood.Worse than dying, I’d argue that creativity is being tied up, beaten, tortured, mocked, murdered, then thrown in a gutter and pissed on.

You could argue that I’m cynical.

You could also argue that I’m tired of being patronized by the regurgitated garbage Hollywood pukes up and tries to spoon feed us. We all know the difference between food and vomit, and Hollywood’s been steadily feeding us barf for the last ten years while distracting us with silly airplane noises like we’re babies.

But I’m getting sidetracked.

This isn’t about my personal disdain for Hollywood; this is about Charlie Kaufman’s views on consumerism, and Charlie Kaufman is much more polite, intelligent, and eloquent than I am.

I stumbled across a speech Charlie Kaufman delivered at a BAFTA lecture in 2011 and absolutely loved it.

Mr. Kaufman was supposed to deliver a speech about screenwriting, but gave the audience much more. The full speech covers a broad range of topics, but I spliced together a few of my favorites — Zombie Ants, Mind Control, and Consumerist Culture — and created the video below.

Watch and listen as Charlie Kaufman dissects and diagnoses the fallacies of our present-day culture, but rather than react with juvenile indignation (as I did in my brief rant earlier), he responds with poignant words of heartbroken yet hopeful wisdom.

Enjoy!

Democracy Is Dead

Posted on September 21, 2016 by Reid Mukai

By Gilbert Mercier

Source: News Junkie Post

From the west to the east, and the south to the north of our global horizon, it is the same tableau: the horrendous killing fields of disaster capitalism where its cohorts of 18-wheelers, heavy road machinery and police patrol cars roam the landscape continuously and are turning us and the better principles of our humanity into countless road kills. Hell on Earth is to be our common fate, and we might have already reached a point of no return. The corporate hyenas and political vultures that generally constitute the global elite are joyfully feeding on the carcasses of justice and morality; rationality and empathy; common sense and the notion of public good; sound governance without corruption and equality before the law; and last but not least, freedom and fair governance through democracy.

Comparing this small group of depraved elite sociopaths, with not a trace of compassion or even consciousness to the scavengers of the natural world, is actually unfair to vultures and hyenas. Scavengers in nature have an important function in the ecosystem for their role of recycling waste. On the other hand, the few thousand rulers of global corporate imperialism are parasites weakening our common life force. If vultures are the useful garbage collectors of the natural world, the corrupt rulers of globalization are tics and leeches gorging on our blood. The British exit vote from the European Union, known as Brexit, has to be understood in the context of rejection of globalization. The global corporate world order has only worked for its masters but certainly not for the vast majority of the people, who are becoming the serfs of a new feudalism.

Calling the vote in favor of Brexit xenophobic doesn’t address the issues at stake. Cheap labor coming from Eastern Europe has served the interests of corporations and the rich very well, but it has had a negative impact on the welfare of British-born workers. This problem is general across the EU. The purpose of the EU was never to be a capitalist paradise where a free circulation of people, money, goods, and services would cater to the needs of multinational corporations, and where people ultimately would be uprooted to become the slaves of the so-called free market. The EU project was not centered on economic considerations but instead on cultural and social-value notions. It was a way out of the nightmare eras of World War I and World War II for founding members France and Germany. The formation of the EU was about a resolute rejection of war to embrace lasting peace. Other countries might follow the British people in their intention of leaving supra-national entities such as the EU. Paradoxically, the United Kingdom itself might disintegrate with the independence of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Globalists of all stripes are calling this nationalist revival narrow-minded and obscurantist. Their leading argument is that global problems such as climate change, overpopulation, and poverty require institutions with global authority. But what they should keep in mind is that those various supra-national institutions or entities, which started with stated good intentions, such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), not only have failed to solve any global problems but have, by their corrupt nature made them worse. In the case of the supra-national North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), there is no pretense of being a do-gooder. The armed fist of the Orwellian empire is in the business of globalization of war with decisions made in Washington, DC. In Orwellian times, many supra-national organizations behave like corporations under humanitarian pretenses, when they are in fact parasitic organisms depleting our strength. Meanwhile, no one represents We The People at all. In the world of humanitarianism for profit, public servants have vanished and been replaced by corrupt incompetent groups operating like crime families.

All members of the fake left advocate that the system must be changed progressively from within and that a collapse would be mainly a disaster for the poor and weak. This notion is as valid as to claim that a building destroyed by an earthquake is in need of some fresh window dressing. Regardless of the global elite’s arrogance, a systemic collapse is on its way and will exponentially take hold of the planet within two or three decades. The super-rich will eventually have nowhere to run or hide, and no private armies to protect them from the wrath of nature. Forcefully resisting the brand of globalization imposed on us by the thugs and slave drivers of disaster capitalism is a moral obligation all world citizens should embrace. When people in power live in the castle of their own lies, it is time to dismantle the fortress. When governance has lost all moral ground and reason, it is time to call for a revolution.

If, as human beings, we could understand that We The People should be all of us, regardless of geographic location, then perhaps the concept of globalization would serve a purpose and be beneficial. No workers in Europe and the United States should tolerate that people in places like Haiti, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Honduras be paid slave wages; otherwise, down the line they will either lose their jobs or be exploited by the same corporations. Under the globalization of the plantation owners, the people are living in chains. Once upon a time, words like freedom, liberty, and democracy had meaning. They have largely been gutted out and are just empty shells, ghosts in a play of smoke and mirrors animated by the sinister masters of ceremony of the universal rat race. A first necessary step to take would be for all people still able to exercise free will and critical thinking to understand that what government and political representation has become is precisely the opposite of democracy. Voting under these kinds of circumstances is as delusional as giving substance to the figments of our own imaginations. When democracy is dead, it is time to boycott elections.

Gilbert Mercier is the author of The Orwellian Empire.

Positively Thriving Through the Collapse of Civilisation

Posted on September 18, 2016 by Reid Mukai

By Open

Source: ZenGardner.com

Have you ever watched something happening in slow motion? You can quite clearly see the end result, but nevertheless, you can’t quite believe in your mind what your eyes are seeing. Like when the twin towers ‘collapsed’. The demolition was happening there right in front of you, but you had to pinch yourself to make sure you weren’t just dreaming. I feel exactly that way about modern society right now. The collapse is already happening, but in slow motion, so you can’t quite believe the entirety of it. What will it look like as the ‘buildings’ topple? More importantly, how can we not only survive the shift, but positively thrive in it?…

Slow motion free fall

Have you seen the film “Collapse” yet? It’s a grounded, real and at times very emotive interview with the late whistle-blower Michael C Rupert. I believe everybody on the planet should watch it (I’ve included it below). You hear the calling of a soul, put here for a purpose. Never so clearly have I witnessed a man express so eloquently, the destiny that drew him here.

He sums up so marvelously the reason why society is going to collapse. Let me correct myself: why it is already collapsing, just that it’s in slow motion, and not everyone has yet pinched themselves out of the dream that prevents them seeing the reality of it.

Society is built on the foundation of ‘infinite growth’, the need to continuously expand in order to service a surging ocean of debt. It depends on the ever burgeoning exploitation of natural resources. Which is why governments and corporations are more concerned with the last pockets of oil under the pole, rather than the ice on top of it. It’s why they’re stripping the tar from the sand, and fracking the earth into oblivion. Therein lies the problem. That’s why society is already in a state of slow motion free fall. Because we live on a planet of finite resources, and the two ends no longer meet. We’ve built foundations on sand and now the tide is fast flowing in.

Nevertheless, I am an optimist. Where others might slip into fear, I see the light shining through the shadows. There’s a way to survive what is to come. No, there’s a way to positively thrive in it!

Thriving the meltdown

You first have to accept what you see. That’s a challenge in itself. Watch the film, especially towards the end, because it’s fascinating. The interviewer suggests all manner of information can be presented to support the view you want to put across (like the ‘debate’ on global warming for example). And he’s right. But that’s not what Michael is about and neither am I. For me, and for others I work with, the debate is not necessary – such intellectual pontification is a pointless waste of time. We’ve already seen the towers collapsing. I can feel the energies of higher benevolence instigating the collapse mechanism. The earth needs to be saved from the wanton, consumeristic destruction. The debate – if ever there was one – is over. And until you can see through the veil, there’s nowhere to begin. So my first suggestion – assuming you feel any resonance with me – is to work to see past the veil into what is surely now taking place: collapse of the civilisation we currently depend upon.

When this lands for you, you’ll realise like the Hopi Elders, that the only way to prosper through this collapse, is by spiritual means. This will be a ‘war’ of the spiritual through the material. Not fighting. Rather breaking through the sense of physical disempowerment into the liberation of the spirit. The expression of the boundless, unlimited you, and watching this miraculous nature shine out into the world. Trusting that your every step will be supported. Not in the way your ego might want. It won’t deliver the physical outcome you desire. It’ll deliver much more than that: as the old skin peels off, a metamorphosis into an interconnected, interdimensional way of being – The rise of the Divine Human.

But yes, at this time we are physical beings too. And we’ll need a platform from which to unveil our divine being at the heart of every man, woman and child. Just as the dragonfly stands on the leaf, peels off the old skin and unfolds its wings in the sunlight before taking flight, so we’ll need a stable background to help people learn to fly.

What does that mean exactly?

It means we have to bring as swift an end to the system as possible. It’s gobbling up precious resources and energy, ridiculously wasting them on idle rubbish, mindless entertainment and hopeless addiction. We have to ween ourselves off this crutch through non-compliance with the corporations that would try to bolster it – those that would like to keep mankind dwelling in the murky depths of the pond, rather than flying liberated above it.

Discovering how less is more

We have to spend our time and money wisely now: to invest in ourselves and our future (especially since paper money will lose its value); to gather together the resources and communities that can help one another out as society steadily pulls itself apart. Even if you continue to work in the matrix, you can still prepare. And don’t worry, you have time, if you begin now. Society will not collapse in one fell swoop. It will be a steady degradation. It’s happening now. It’s just that most haven’t clicked yet as to what’s going on. So you’ve got time to gather together, share ideas, support and suggestions about what might work best. You can start growing your own food and collect a reserve of essentials to tide you through difficult times.

That’s the inspirational idea behind Transition Towns, which have been springing up and thriving all around the world for several years now. It’s about supporting local skills, already developing the web of a local support and resource mechanism. Even if it’s just a micro community of a few neighbours and friends, it will make all the difference as the globalised structure fractures.

In the film below, Michael shares a poignant and prophetic example of the fate of two countries – North Korea and Cuba – that both suffered through the collapse of the iron curtain: affected because they were both dependent on Soviet oil, just as the civilised world is right now.

The North Korean approach was to centralise resource, for government to control everything, like the collectivised food supply and nationalised energy. Communism? It sounds suspiciously like the leading western ‘democracies’ to me. And what was the result? Starvation on a massive scale. Cuba on the other hand encouraged people to come together in local communities, to grow their own food in their own back gardens, thus consuming a fraction of the energy. They no longer have the paraphernalia of modern society – a blessing – and the people positively thrived by needing less, discovering that less is more.

Some will say we can use unlimited supplies of ‘free energy’. Whilst we may benefit from new technologies that could come through, what we have to realise is how hopelessly dependent the current system is on oil. How will all those fossil fuel engines be replaced? Where will the resources come from to build the new machines, gadgets and widgets? Whatever technology we discover to tide us through, it is my strong assertion that we need to get used to consuming less, using wisely the resources we currently have…

Even if you new the world was to end tomorrow, would you plant that apple tree today? Would you live wisely, with compassion and a soft footprint on the earth? It is these souls that will ascend through the collapse of the old world. This is the new consciousness which will thrive as the old is peeled away.

Pinch yourself awake

The universe is a flowing ocean of energy. Humanity – spurred by an Interdimensional Intervention – has built a dam and tried to contain it in some eddy current. And we’ve turned a blind eye as the realigning energy of higher dimensional forces and devic consciousness now comes in to break apart the false reality fabric over time.

This shift and cleansing process that is beginning will be unlike any other to have taken place on earth. Why? Because Gaia has released her karma. She needed the control mechanism too, in order to experience being fully accepting and forgiving of those that would disrespect her. But she’s processed that constriction now and needs it no longer. Thus the ‘matrix’ no longer has a foundation. It will be peeled off over time. There will be no place for the old human consciousness, which will be shed with the skin too. Instead, will incarnate the new human consciousness – Divinicus Cometh – to thrive through this cleansing process which has now begun.

The renewed human spirit is meant to ride this realigning wave, rather than try to manipulate it. Because anything that tries to control something else, ultimately ends up controlling only itself. So we need to learn to ride the wave of the soul once more. To listen to it and above all, feel it coursing through our veins, respond to its direction. We need to master the inner alchemy of change. There’s two streams of consciousness within you. Which do you identify with: the sense of separation, the fear and contraction? or do you penetrate that, soften through it and flow with your eternal spirit?Right now too many are still caught ‘rabbit like’ in the car headlamps as the slow motion tsunami approaches them. Hoping, pretending, that they’re just in a dream and when they wake up, all will be okay, the car won’t really be careering towards them. But by then, it’s too late.

I urge you then to watch the film, pinch yourself awake, but then let the soul inspire you to make new choices in this new multidimensional landscape. And if you can’t yet clearly hear the soul and follow its guidance through every choice, then I would suggest that’s the best place to begin. Here’s the documentary and afterwards, if you’d like help with the soul guidance part, feel free to get in touch.

from my heart to yours

Open
(on behalf of Openhand)

The Secret Global Court – Why Corporate Criminals and Corrupt Politicians Desperately Want the TPP

Posted on September 15, 2016 by Reid Mukai

By Michael Krieger

Source: Liberty Blitzkrieg

Obama needs to ensure he gets well compensated after leaving office for a job well done protecting, defending and further enriching the global oligarch class. This is precisely why he’s so adamant about passing the TPP during the upcoming lame duck session of Congress, when he knows “representatives” who no longer face reelection can be coerced or bribed into voting for this monumental public betrayal.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) ins’t really a free trade deal, it’s a way for global oligarchs to consolidate, grow and protect their enormous wealth. The investor-state dispute settlement system (ISDS) is perhaps the most nefarious and objectionable aspect of the deal, with this shadowy court system being used to accomplish the following for the super rich and powerful:

1) Eliminate sovereign risk from their investments.

2) Earn money by scouring the world for potential ISDS “opportunities” and then speculating on them.

3) Escape prosecution from criminality on a global basis.

The whole thing is absolutely disgusting and epitomizes all that is wrong and unethical about the world today. As such, stopping the TPP from passage is probably the most important near-term challenge ahead for all of us who want to make the world a better place (or at least prevent it from getting much, much worse).

Before getting into today’s article, I want to commend Chris Hamby and BuzzFeed for publishing this extremely timely and important work. We can only hope that it will inform millions of Americans sufficiently to create the needed pushback to prevent the TPP from ever becoming law.

So without further ado, let’s get on with it. What follows are excerpts from Part 1 of a four part investigative series. My snippets don’t do this work the justice it deserves; as such, I strongly encourage you to read the entire piece and share it with everyone you know.

Now, from the blockbuster piece, The Court That Rules the World:

Imagine a private, global super court that empowers corporations to bend countries to their will.

Say a nation tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution. Imagine that a company could turn to this super court and sue the whole country for daring to interfere with its profits, demanding hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars as retribution.

Imagine that this court is so powerful that nations often must heed its rulings as if they came from their own supreme courts, with no meaningful way to appeal. That it operates unconstrained by precedent or any significant public oversight, often keeping its proceedings and sometimes even its decisions secret. That the people who decide its cases are largely elite Western corporate attorneys who have a vested interest in expanding the court’s authority because they profit from it directly, arguing cases one day and then sitting in judgment another. That some of them half-jokingly refer to themselves as “The Club” or “The Mafia.”

And imagine that the penalties this court has imposed have been so crushing — and its decisions so unpredictable — that some nations dare not risk a trial, responding to the mere threat of a lawsuit by offering vast concessions, such as rolling back their own laws or even wiping away the punishments of convicted criminals.

This system is already in place, operating behind closed doors in office buildings and conference rooms in cities around the world. Known as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, it is written into a vast network of treaties that govern international trade and investment, including NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Congress must soon decide whether to ratify.

The BuzzFeed News investigation explores four different aspects of ISDS. In coming days, it will show how the mere threat of an ISDS case can intimidate a nation into gutting its own laws, how some financial firms have transformed what was intended to be a system of justice into an engine of profit, and how America is surprisingly vulnerable to suits from foreign companies.

The series starts today with perhaps the least known and most jarring revelation: Companies and executives accused or even convicted of crimes have escaped punishment by turning to this special forum. Based on exclusive reporting from the Middle East, Central America, and Asia, BuzzFeed News has found the following:

A Dubai real estate mogul and former business partner of Donald Trump was sentenced to prison for collaborating on a deal that would swindle the Egyptian people out of millions of dollars — but then he turned to ISDS and got his prison sentence wiped away.

In El Salvador, a court found that a factory had poisoned a village — including dozens of children — with lead, failing for years to take government-ordered steps to prevent the toxic metal from seeping out. But the factory owners’ lawyers used ISDS to help the company dodge a criminal conviction and the responsibility for cleaning up the area and providing needed medical care.

Two financiers convicted of embezzling more than $300 million from an Indonesian bank used an ISDS finding to fend off Interpol, shield their assets, and effectively nullify their punishment.

When the US Congress votes on whether to give final approval to the sprawling Trans-Pacific Partnership, which President Barack Obama staunchly supports, it will be deciding on a massive expansion of ISDS. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton oppose the overall treaty, but they have focused mainly on what they say would be the loss of American jobs. Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine, has voiced concern about ISDS in particular, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren has lambasted it. Last year, members of both houses of Congress tried to keep it out of the Pacific trade deal. They failed.

I wonder why they failed. Perhaps the following will provide some insight: New Report from Princeton and Northwestern Proves It: The U.S. is an Oligarchy

ISDS is basically binding arbitration on a global scale, designed to settle disputes between countries and foreign companies that do business within their borders. Different treaties can mandate slightly different rules, but the system is broadly the same. When companies sue, their cases are usually heard in front of a tribunal of three arbitrators, often private attorneys. The business appoints one arbitrator and the country another, then both sides usually decide on the third together.

“It works,” said Charles Brower, a longtime ISDS arbitrator. “Like any system of law, there will be disappointments; you’re dealing with human systems. But this system fundamentally produces as good justice as the federal courts of the United States.”

I mean, it takes some nerve to make a statement like that.

But over the last two decades, ISDS has morphed from a rarely used last resort, designed for egregious cases of state theft or blatant discrimination, into a powerful tool that corporations brandish ever more frequently, often against broad public policies that they claim crimp profits.

Because the system is so secretive, it is not possible to know the total number of ISDS cases, but lawyers in the field say it is skyrocketing. Indeed, of the almost 700 publicly known cases across the last half century, more than a tenth were filed just last year.

Bull market in oligarch thievery continues unabated:

Driving this expansion are the lawyers themselves. They have devised new and creative ways to deploy ISDS, and in the process bill millions to both the businesses and the governments they represent. At posh locales around the globe, members of The Club meet to swap strategies and drum up potential clients, some of which are household names, such as ExxonMobil or Eli Lilly, but many more of which are much lower profile. In specialty publications, the lawyers suggest novel ways to use ISDS as leverage against governments. It’s a sort of sophisticated, international version of the plaintiff’s attorney TV ad or billboard: Has your business been harmed by an increase in mining royalties in Mali? Our experienced team of lawyers may be able to help.

In a little-noticed 2014 dissent, US Chief Justice John Roberts warned that ISDS arbitration panels hold the alarming power to review a nation’s laws and “effectively annul the authoritative acts of its legislature, executive, and judiciary.” ISDS arbitrators, he continued, “can meet literally anywhere in the world” and “sit in judgment” on a nation’s “sovereign acts.”

Some entrepreneurial lawyers scout for ways to make money from ISDS. Selvyn Seidel, an attorney who represented clients in ISDS suits, now runs a specialty firm, one that finds investors willing to fund promising suits for a cut of the eventual award. Some lawyers, he said, monitor governments around the world in search of proposed laws and regulations that might spark objections from foreign companies. “You know it’s coming down the road,” he said, “so, in that year before it’s actually changed, you can line up the right claimants and the right law firms to bring a number of cases.”

Can you believe this? Outside of technology, pretty much all the big money being made these days is from purely parasitic, extractive activities.

Opposition to ISDS is spreading across the political spectrum, with groups on the left and right attacking the system. Around the world, a growing number of countries are pushing for reforms or pulling out entirely. But most of the alarm has been focused on the potential use of ISDS by corporations to roll back public-interest laws, such as those banning the use of hazardous chemicals or raising the minimum wage. The system’s usefulness as a shield for the criminal and the corrupt has remained virtually unknown.

This is why Obama will try to pass it when the fewest members of government can be held accountable.

Most of the 35-plus cases are still ongoing. But in at least eight of the cases, bringing an ISDS claim got results for the accused wrongdoers, including a multimillion-dollar award, a dropped criminal investigation, and dropped criminal charges. In another, the tribunal has directed the government to halt a criminal case while the arbitration is pending.

One lawyer who regularly represents governments said he’s seen evidence of corporate criminality that he “couldn’t believe.” Speaking on the condition that he not be named because he’s currently handling ISDS cases, he said, “You have a lot of scuzzy sort-of thieves for whom this is a way to hit the jackpot.

Now here’s an example of ISDS abuse from Egypt.

But, though Mubarak was gone, he had left behind a gift for investors like Sajwani: one of the world’s largest networks of investment treaties — twice the size of the United States’ — that allowed foreign businesses to file ISDS claims against Egypt. Within a week of Sajwani’s conviction over the Red Sea deal, Damac invoked one of these treaties and sued Egypt before the international arbitration arm of the World Bank.

This argument — that the government at the time gave its blessing, so the sweetheart deal couldn’t be criminal — became the template for other businesses facing similar accusations.

By filing an ISDS claim, Sajwani took his case out of the Egyptian court system and placed it in the hands of three private lawyers convening in Paris. For the arbitrator he was entitled to choose, Sajwani appointed a prominent American lawyer who had often represented businesses in ISDS cases. And to press his case, Sajwani hired some of the world’s best ISDS attorneys.

For Egypt, the potential losses were big and would come as the country struggled to revive its floundering economy.

It decided to settle.

But the key benefit for Sajwani, according to all three: In exchange for dropping his ISDS case, Egypt would wipe away his five-year prison sentence and close out the probes of the other deals. The man who had been convicted of collaborating on a deal that would bilk the Egyptian people out of millions of dollars was now free and clear.

“Damac, followed by multiple other cases filed, made them say, ‘You know what, no; there should be another way,’” said Girgis Abd el-Shahid, a lawyer who represents corporate clients and assisted with Sajwani’s arbitration claim. “I believe that, after Damac, Egypt learned its lesson.”

Virtually across the board, the government began trying to settle.

In one case, an Egyptian court had declared a foreign company’s purchase of a factory corrupt and nullified the deal, court records show. But after the company filed an ISDS claim, the government agreed to pay $54 million in a settlement — roughly twice the price the company had paid for the factory just a few years earlier, according to news reports and documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News. A lawyer for the company said that his client had not been found guilty of a crime and that the company had made “significant investments” in the factory after acquiring it.

In another case, a second Dubai developer was under investigation — until he threatened an ISDS claim, according to the Cairo lawyer Hani Sarie-Eldin, who has represented the company. Instead of a criminal trial, the government opted for a settlement, and the mogul’s company went forward with its project, Sarie-Eldin said.

Meanwhile, the government has changed its laws, stripping public-interest lawyers and average citizens of the right to file court challenges to dubious public contracts, such as the sale of public land to a developer like Sajwani.

Heba Khalil, a researcher at an Egyptian human rights organization, recently recalled the chaotic but hopeful days after the fall of Mubarak. “No one knew what Egypt would be like,” she said. “International investors were kind of scared that the kind of deals that they did with the Mubarak regime wouldn’t be possible anymore.”

Then came the ISDS claims. “I think the impact of international arbitration,” Khalil said, was that Egyptians “started knowing that, ‘Oops, if we try to expose corruption, then those investors will take us to court internationally, and we will lose the case. Which means we had better just shut up and let the wrongs of Mubarak continue the way they are.’”

Here’s an example from El Salvador.

Not long after the battery factory set up shop on the edge of Sitio del Niño in 1998, people began noticing clouds of ash floating over from their new neighbor, descending on fields where children played soccer and seeping into their homes at night. It burned people’s throats and sent them into coughing fits.

Eventually, people started connecting the ash with the persistent headaches, dizziness, extreme fatigue, and constant bone and joint pain that children in particular were suffering. In 2004, a committee of local citizens began petitioning leaders for help, writing the town’s mayor, national government ministries, and eventually even other nations’ embassies and international aid organizations. For years, their efforts came to naught.

Then lead started showing up at potentially dangerous levels in the blood of the town’s children. Testing in 2006 and 2007 found that dozens of children, some as young as 3, had been contaminated.

In the midst of the trial, the prosecution agreed to settle. Prosecutors declined to comment on the role ISDS played, but the settlement document lays out the terms. The company agreed to pay for a limited cleanup of only the factory site, far short of the much more expansive cleanup the government has said is needed, and to establish a medical clinic in the village, albeit one that would provide only basic care and be funded for only three years. The company would also pay for some of the costs associated with the prosecution and make small donations to the community. And it agreed to drop its threat and not pursue an ISDS case.

Ultimately, the court concluded that the factory had contaminated the village. But that same court acquitted the three lower-level managers, so, it reasoned, it had no choice but to exonerate the company, too.

A force that helped persuade the judges, said Girón, the company’s lawyer, was the ISDS threat and its potential to slam the government with huge compensatory damages.

The failure to hold the factory accountable is an open wound for the impoverished residents of Sitio del Niño — a village whose very name, “Place of the Child,” is now a cruel joke. For six years, their community has been designated an “environmental emergency” by the government, which has warned them not to eat anything grown in the town’s contaminated soil. But many of them have no other option.

When NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, took effect in 1994, some lawyers at top firms took notice of ISDS for the first time. One heralded “a new territory” where some pioneering attorneys had ventured and “prepared maps showing a vast continent beyond.” What they saw was the opportunity to expand and reshape ISDS to their benefit, and the previously dormant system changed forever.

“A whole industry grew up,” said Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah, an international lawyer and ISDS arbitrator who argued that the system is now being misused. Large law firms, he said, see ISDS “as a lucrative area of practice, so what happens is they think up new ways of bringing cases before the arbitration tribunals.”

A key service offered by the ISDS legal industry goes by various euphemisms: “corporate structuring,” “re-domiciling,” “nationality planning.” Critics have a different term: “treaty shopping.” It amounts to helping businesses figure out which countries’ treaties afford the most leeway for bringing ISDS claims, then setting up a holding company there — sometimes little more than some space in an office building — from which to launch attacks.

ISDS lawyers also grow the market for their services by advocating for new treaties, and some of the most outspoken are beneficiaries of the revolving door between the US government and top law firms.

Now meet a particularly nefarious cretin, Daniel Price.

Daniel M. Price negotiated the section of NAFTA containing ISDS when he was a lawyer at the Office of the US Trade Representative. He later served as a top international trade official in the George W. Bush White House.

In between these government stints, he worked as a private lawyer helping clients in ISDS cases. Twice he used the treaty he himself had helped negotiate to help US-based businesses pursue claims against Mexico.

He founded and chaired the unit handling ISDS claims at Sidley Austin, a leading global law firm. Today, he promotes his services as an arbitrator and, along with a powerhouse team that includes other former government lawyers, sells international expertise on ISDS and related matters.

Price, who at first agreed to an interview but later stopped responding to messages, is only one of a number of private lawyers who have exerted outsize influence on American policy on ISDS.

Yes, America. This is your government.

Finally, companies can gain advantages by bringing an ISDS suit, even if they don’t expect to win the case. Krzysztof Pelc, an associate professor at McGill University, found that there has been a proliferation of frivolous cases primarily intended not to win compensation but rather to bully the government — and other nations that want to avoid a similar suit — into dropping public-interest regulations. These new cases, Pelc found, represent a fundamental transformation of ISDS: The system was designed to deal primarily with theft by autocrats, but, in the majority of cases today, businesses are suing democracies for enacting regulations.

Finally, here’s the third example of how ISDS allows powerful people convicted of crimes to escape justice.

The British financial guru Rafat Ali Rizvi had a big problem: In Indonesia, where he’d plied his trade, he and a business partner had been convicted of embezzling more than $300 million from one of the country’s banks. The government there had to bail out the bank — sparking enraged protests that police tried to quell with tear gas and water cannons — and Indonesian authorities were pursuing him and the money they said he’d stashed in accounts around the world.

Ensconced overseas, Rizvi was beyond the reach of the Indonesian authorities. But the conviction came with an Interpol “red notice,” meaning he risked extradition if he traveled abroad. Some of his bank accounts were frozen. And with this stain on his record, he was largely cut off from the world of global finance he’d played in for years.

Rizvi’s topflight criminal lawyer had threatened to sue Interpol if the agency didn’t delete the alert, but so far it hadn’t worked. What Rizvi needed was an entirely different type of lawyer. Someone like George Burn.

Burn had spent years representing businesses in corporate disputes, but, like many of his colleagues, he was drawn to ISDS as the system began to flourish in the 1990s. Now, he said, ISDS cases make up the majority of his work as a London-based partner at the U.S. firm Vinson & Elkins.

The strategy he crafted for Rizvi epitomizes the ingenuity of elite ISDS lawyers and the willingness of arbitrators — many of whom are also attorneys who argue ISDS cases — to expand their own authority. It is a stark example of how canny and audacious lawyers can work the system, crafting a win even when they technically lose. The only real losers: a nation of taxpayers.

As usual.

First, Burn needed to find a treaty that would apply to this case. His team discovered an obscure agreement among predominantly Islamic nations, including Indonesia, where the case was unfolding, and Saudi Arabia, where al-Warraq was a citizen. There was no record of anyone using that pact to file an ISDS claim before, but Burn audaciously forged ahead.

In fact, an official present at the creation of that treaty 30 years earlier told the tribunal that the agreement was not supposed to allow ISDS cases at all. The arbitrators waved off this objection as “irrelevant.”

The key argument that Burn planned to make was that the criminal trial in Jakarta had violated al-Warraq’s right to fair treatment as a foreign investor. This protection is now commonplace in investment treaties and trade deals, and it has become one of the most controversial aspects of ISDS.

Guaranteeing foreign businesses “fair and equitable treatment” sounds like common sense. But many treaties don’t say what exactly that means, so arbitrators have found that governments have acted unfairly even when they regulated the price of water or merely complied with European Union law. Critics argue that such judgments have transformed a system that was supposed to uphold the rule of law into one that places foreign businesses above the law, able to get out of obeying almost any statute or regulation, no matter how worthwhile, that cuts into profits.

Many scholars and activists say the “fair and equitable treatment” provision, which is included in the Trans-Pacific Partnership now being considered by Congress, is the most widely abused element of treaties containing ISDS. Numbers from the UN’s trade and development body show that arbitrators find violations of this controversial provision far more than any other.

As it happened, though, the treaty Burn had invoked didn’t include that clause. But the agreement did have another common and often controversial clause, which requires a government to treat foreign businesses covered under one treaty at least as well as businesses covered under any of its other treaties.

So Burn plucked the fair-treatment provision from another agreement and applied it to the Islamic nations pact. In effect, he constructed his own super-treaty.

And the ISDS arbitrators allowed it, giving themselves the authority to rule on the actual merits of the case.

Martha took that crucial finding and presented it to his former employer. He argued that, unless Interpol dropped its red alerts against Rizvi and al-Warraq, the international cops themselves would be violating international law. Interpol obliged, deleting the red notices.

“Unprecedented Concessions by Interpol,” trumpeted a press release put out on behalf of Martha’s firm. The international cops also had agreed to delete information about the two convicts from its files and to send letters to certain risk profiling and due diligence agencies, as well as the roughly 190 Interpol member countries, according to the release.

“As a result, Mr. Rizvi and Mr. Al-Warraq will be able to travel and conduct business without restriction,” the release boasted. “Such results have never been obtained before from INTERPOL.” Reached by BuzzFeed News, Martha at first agreed to an interview but didn’t respond to subsequent messages.

So gross.

Now the legal team is trying to use the ISDS decision to block Indonesia from seizing the men’s foreign bank accounts. Initially, Indonesian authorities had won a small victory when a Hong Kong court granted them access to a $4 million account. But that’s been put in doubt…

If all of this enraged you as much as it did me, please share this post as widely as possible and consider sending a message to Chris (chris.hamby@buzzfeed.com) thanking him for his work. Also, do whatever you possibly can to push back against Obama’s plan to pass this monstrosity after the election.

Finally, if all that wasn’t enough for you, I suggest reading the following article written by David Dayen a few days ago titled: The Big Problem With The Trans-Pacific Partnership’s Super Court That We’re Not Talking About.

An Open Letter to the People of Brazil

Posted on September 14, 2016 by Reid Mukai

By Robert J. Burrowes

As I read of the latest coup in Brazil, once again removing a democratically elected leader from power, my anger surged. Not again! However, as I see and read about the ongoing massive protests, as well as calls by prominent community leaders to mobilize in defense of your country’s democracy, I feel great hope for Brazil. Having been a nonviolent activist for many years, I would like to support Brazilian activists to develop a nonviolent strategy that will increase your chances of success.

On 31 August 2016, the Brazilian elite executed a political coup to remove your democratically elected president Dilma Rousseff from office in a desperate attempt to halt corruption investigations in which they are clearly implicated. See ‘Democracy Is Dead in Brazil‘ and ‘The Real Reason Brazil’s Democratically Elected Dilma Rousseff Was Impeached‘.

Behind the scenes, of course, the United States elite was heavily involved. With vast quantities of highly profitable fossil fuels, mineral and forest resources, as well as fresh water at stake, the US elite (and its allied elites) is not going to stand aside while Brazil
and BRICS endeavour to create a more just world for at least some of its human inhabitants. See ‘Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff: Brazil’s Parliamentary Coup and the “Progressive Media”‘.

Despite what has happened and as your ongoing street protests demonstrate, you know that you do not have to accept this outcome. You also know that you do not have to wait until the 2018 election to register your disapproval of this coup.

In fact, you can reverse this coup and restore the president you first elected in 2010 to finish her current term so that her party can face your judgment in 2018. And this is what Joao Pedro Stedile, a founder and leader of the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil has called on you to do. See ‘MST: Social Movements Must Rise up Against Coup Govt in Brazil‘.

If you do this, you will also have widespread support among your solidarity allies around the world as indicated in this letter: ‘Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone Sign Letter Against Brazil’s Coup‘.

Given my own support for your right to elect any president of your choice (and to remove them if necessary at a subsequent election), I invite you to consider planning and implementing a nonviolent strategy to remove the coupmakers in your country and restore the president that you elected.

If you are interested in doing so, I have outlined a strategy for removing coupmakers on the website Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy which is a straightforward presentation of the more detailed explanation offered in the book ‘The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach‘.

If you want an idea of the twelve components of strategy that you will need to plan, you can see them on the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel. If you want a taste of how this strategy works (at the tactical level), you will get it by reading ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions‘.

Vitally, the strategic goals need to include mobilizing people in strategically focused ways and causing the police and military to withdraw their support for the coupmakers. It will usefully include causing key local and foreign corporations to withdraw their support too. This would usually include corporations involved in the weapons industry, the mainstream media, banks and the resource extraction of fossil fuels, strategic minerals, forest products and fresh water. To make it clear, I have listed a provisional set of strategic goals that you might consider modifying as appropriate below.

Of course, as suggested above, you will need a comprehensive strategy and it might take some time to plan and then fully implement.

However, if you do plan and implement a comprehensive strategy, you have every chance of reversing this coup with minimal loss of life. For example, the article ‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression‘ identifies 20 things that you can do to minimize the risk that your mobilizations will be violently repressed. This article was written after a careful study, throughout history, of nonviolent mobilizations that were met with extreme violence.

Suggested Strategic Goals in a Nonviolent Strategy to Liberate Brazil

Strategic goals that would usually be appropriate for resisting a political or military coup include those listed below although, it should be noted, the list would be considerably longer as individual organizations should be specified separately.

Of course, individual groups resisting the coup would usually accept responsibility for focusing their work on achieving just one or two of the strategic goals. It is the responsibility of the struggle’s strategic leadership to ensure that each of the strategic goals, which should be identified and prioritized according to your precise understanding of the circumstances in Brazil, is being addressed.

(1) To cause the women in [women’s organizations WO1, WO2, WO…] in
Brazil to join the liberation strategy by participating in [your
nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities]. For example, simple nonviolent actions would be to wear a
national symbol (such as a badge of your national flag or ribbons in the
national colors), to boycott all corporate media outlets supporting the
coup and/or to withdraw all funds from banks supporting the coup. For
this item and many items hereafter, see the list of possible actions you
can take here: ‘198 Tactics of Nonviolent Action’.
https://nonviolentliberationstrategy.wordpress.com/strategywheel/tactics-and-peacekeeping/198-tactics-of-nonviolent-action/

(2) To cause the workers in [trade unions or labor organizations T1, T2,
T…] in Brazil to join the liberation strategy by participating in [your
nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities]. For example, this might include withdrawing their labor
from an elite-controlled or foreign-owned bank/corporation operating in
Brazil.

(3) To cause the small farmers and farmworkers in [organizations F1, F2,
F…] in Brazil to join the liberation strategy by participating in
[your nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive
program activities].

(4) To cause the members of [religious denominations R1, R2, R…] in
Brazil to join the liberation strategy by participating in [your
nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities].

(5) To cause the members of [ethnic communities EC1, EC2, EC…] in Brazil
to join the liberation strategy by participating in [your nominated
nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities].

(6) To cause the activists, artists, musicians, intellectuals and other
key social groups in [organizations O1, O2, O…] in Brazil to join the
liberation strategy by participating in [your nominated nonviolent
action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities].

(7) To cause the students in [student organizations S1, S2, S…] in
Brazil to join the liberation strategy by participating in [your
nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities].

(8) To cause the soldiers in [military units M1, M2, M…] to refuse to
obey orders from the coupmakers to arrest, assault, torture and shoot
nonviolent activists and the other citizens of Brazil.

(9) To cause the police in [police units P1, P2, P…] to refuse to obey
orders from the coupmakers to arrest, assault, torture and shoot
nonviolent activists and the other citizens of Brazil.

(10) To cause businesspeople who conduct small businesses in
[organizations SB1, SB2, SB…] in Brazil to refuse to cooperate with the
coupmakers by participating in [your nominated nonviolent
action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities].

(11) To cause businesspeople who operate multinational franchises in
[organizations MF1, MF2, MF…] in Brazil to refuse to cooperate with the
coupmakers by participating in [your nominated nonviolent
action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities].

(12) To cause businesspeople who manage local branches of large
multinational corporations in [organizations MNC1, MNC2, MNC…] in Brazil
to refuse to cooperate with the coupmakers by participating in [your
nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program
activities].

(13) To cause large farmers and ranchers in [organizations FO1, FO2,
FO…] in Brazil to refuse to cooperate with the coupmakers by
participating in [your nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or
constructive program activities].

(14) To cause the foreign managers and technical workers [working for
resource extraction corporations X1, X2, X…] who are from [the United
States and other relevant countries where the elite supports the
coupmakers in Brazil] to withdraw from Brazil.

(15) To cause the workers [in trade union or labor organizations T4, T5,
T…] in [the United States and other relevant countries where the elite
supports the coupmakers in Brazil] to interrupt the supply of military
weapons to Brazil.

(16) To cause the workers in [trade unions or labor organizations T7,
T8, T…] in [the United States and other relevant countries where the
elite supports the coupmakers in Brazil] to interrupt the transport of
[military personnel/military weapons] to Brazil.

(17) To cause the workers in [trade unions or labor organizations T10,
T11, T…] in [the United States and other relevant countries where the
elite supports the coupmakers in Brazil] to support your liberation
struggle by refusing to handle [a particular resource] extracted and
exported from Brazil.

(18) To cause the workers [in trade unions or labor organizations T13,
T14, T…] working in [the United States and other relevant countries
where the elite supports the coupmakers in Brazil] to support your
liberation struggle by participating in [your nominated nonviolent
action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities].

(19) To cause the women in [women’s organizations WO4, WO5, WO…] in [the
United States and other relevant countries where the elite supports the
coupmakers in Brazil] to support your liberation struggle by
participating in [your nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or
constructive program activities].

(20) To cause the members of [religious denominations R4,R5, R…] in [the
United States and other relevant countries where the elite supports the
coupmakers in Brazil] to support your liberation struggle by
participating in [your nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or
constructive program activities].

(21) To cause the solidarity activists in [activist organizations A1,
A2, A…] in [the United States and other relevant countries where the
elite supports the coupmakers in Brazil] to support your liberation
struggle by participating in [your nominated nonviolent
action(s)/campaign(s) and/or constructive program activities].

(22) To cause the members of [your exile communities E1, E2, E…] in [the
United States and other relevant countries where the elite supports the
coupmakers in Brazil] to support your liberation struggle by
participating in [your nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or
constructive program activities].

(23) To cause the students in [students organizations S4, S5, S…] in
[the United States and other relevant countries where the elite supports
the coupmakers in Brazil] to support your liberation struggle by
participating in [your nominated nonviolent action(s)/campaign(s) and/or
constructive program activities].

In the struggle to make this world the place of peace, justice and environmental sustainability that it could be, the people of Brazil have been playing an inspirational role. You do not need to let this coup be more than a temporary setback. You also have solidarity allies around the world and many of us are willing to assist you, if you decide to let us play a role too.

For the liberation of Brazil,

Robert

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding
and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in
an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a
nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.
—
Websites:
http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com (Nonviolence Charter)
http://tinyurl.com/flametree (Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth)
http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence (‘Why Violence?’)
https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/ (Nonviolent Campaign Strategy)
https://nonviolentliberationstrategy.wordpress.com/ (Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy)
http://anitamckone.wordpress.com (Anita: Songs of Nonviolence)
http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com (Robert)
https://globalnonviolencenetwork.wordpress.com/ (Global Nonviolence Network)

America, the World’s Most Dangerous Dictatorship

Posted on September 12, 2016 by Reid Mukai

By Gordon Duff

Source: New Eastern Outlook

Though Russia doesn’t consider herself a superpower, other than the US, and just perhaps China, Russia is as close as we come. A very real problem is that Russia has a very poor understanding of America, how politics work, what Americans think and, more than anything else, Russia still thinks America is a democracy.

You see, at the same time America was tearing the Soviet Union apart, the same thing was being done to America. Neither nation survived, it wasn’t just the Soviet Union that fell to the New World Order, it was America as well. Let me explain as succinctly as possible.

During the Clinton years, powerful Nazi inspired elements in America plotted what has been the successful overthrow of America’s constitution. The movement was led by rogue “industrialist” John Mellon Scaife and lawyers Antonio Scalia and Newt Gingrich. Financing them all was the Rothschild owned and controlled Federal Reserve Corporation.

A secret society hidden in plain sight was set up called the Federalist Society. This Nazi controlled group, backed by the powerful Israel lobby, moved into every law school in America, recruiting top candidates based on skill sets needed.

This program was devised by the CIA and recruited thousands of budding sociopathic personality types, recruiting them into the Federalist Society and channeling them into top law firms or government agencies.

Adding to these recruits were senior lawyers with ties to organized and corporate crime, thousands of them in a major CIA operation.

There, they were pushed forward and after a decade ran the US Department of Justice, nearly every court in the nation, controlled the law schools, controlled the American Bar Association, the FBI and had put over 150 of their members into the Congress of the United States.

They also controlled every regulatory agency, environment, banking and finance, food and drug safety, you can see where this is going.

They also controlled 5 justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.

During the Clinton Administration, they managed to temporarily get control of the US House of Representatives through the help of the Contract with America and Newt Gingrich, financed by Zionist “black propaganda” moneyman Rupert Murdoch. In payment for this, “Newt” gave Murdoch an American broadcast network, Fox, though illegal. You see, non-Americans can’t control networks, or couldn’t. That’s ok, Gingrich eventually gave Murdoch illegal American citizenship as well.

Murdoch only had to publish Newt’s useless books and give his wife, and Newt traded them in with regularity, a highly paid “do nothing job” as a bribe.

Where things really paid off was 2000. During the Clinton administration, Scaife hired lawyer Ken Starr to investigate Clinton and get himself nominated as Special Prosecutor. Scaife paid Starr by naming him President of Pepperdine University, which Scaife controlled, for those who care about facts.

Clinton backer George Soros hired a former CIA agent named Steve Kangas to get dirt on Scaife. Kangas amassed enough evidence on Scaife and his deal with Starr to send them both to the electric chair. Scaife, Scalia and the Federalists had Kangas kidnapped and murdered in order to save Ken Starr who had been promised a seat on the US Supreme Court. Look into it.

The deal really came to life in 2000. The CIA and Diebold Corporation had contracted with a computer guru named Michael Connell who developed software that would simply flip votes done on electronic voting machines. Targeted would be the states of Ohio, Florida and Virginia only, piling up votes in key precincts just enough to guarantee control of the Electoral College.

Without this it is impossible for the Republican Party to get a president elected without staging an international incident such as the kidnapping of US diplomats in Tehran. We aren’t going to say the Ayatollah was an MI6 agent and was sent to Iran for exactly this purpose, even though it is true and we can prove it.

In 2000, even with millions of votes flipped, exit polls support Bush losing by 5 million votes, the election couldn’t be saved. Here, the Federalists stepped in and had their 5 Supreme Court justices step in and overthrow both the areas of equal protection and states’ rights of the US Constitution to place Bush in office.

2000 was important. This was a presidential election that also took place on a census year. You see, the census is a rationale for redistricting the US House of Representatives using State legislatures, which were largely taken over by the Federalist Society. Bribes and payoffs at state level are hard to control and organized crime easily got control of enough states to allow redistricting.

Here, the CIA developed a program for designing odd shaped congressional districts that would pile union workers and minorities into bizarre and often discontiguous shapes, taking districts away from democrats by joining them together and creating new republican only districts, often with almost no people living in them.

Additionally, problem representatives like Ohio’s Dennis Kucinich were eliminated entirely, their districts were simply erased, all of this, and it is called gerrymandering, is illegal.

By 2004 there were no more free elections for the House of Representatives, giving this house free rein to investigate anyone, any time and to quell any investigation as well, such as 9/11.

By 2005, by a 5/4 vote, the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case overturned for all time limitations on foreign and corporate spending on American elections, citing an end to democracy in America.

Mike Connell, GOP “guru” died in a mysterious plane crash in Ohio just before testifying about his role in CIA “vote flipping.”

This is as short and sweet as it could be put. For those who fail to understand the Federalist Society and the hold organized crime through the Republican Party has gained over American government, the new Cold War and the threat of a hot war as well is a total surprise.

For those who pay attention, we saw it coming all along.

	You Don’t Have To Wa… on You Don’t Have To Wait For Hal…
	ALL OUT WAR ON THE L… on ALL OUT WAR ON THE LIFE F…
	Pacific.scoop.co.nz… on Killing the Biosphere to Fast-…
	Reid Mukai on Saturday Matinee: Wizards
	Lara/Trace on Saturday Matinee: Wizards

After the Crash

Dispatches From a Long Recovery (Est. 10/2024)

Category Archives: Economics

Positively Thriving Through the Collapse of Civilisation

Slow motion free fall

Thriving the meltdown

Discovering how less is more

Pinch yourself awake

Slow motion free fall

Thriving the meltdown

Discovering how less is more

Pinch yourself awake

Related Article: The Most Brazen Corporate Power Grab in American History by Chris Hedges

Suggested Strategic Goals in a Nonviolent Strategy to Liberate Brazil