Category Archives: Sociology

Cutting the Cords of Empire: The Spectacle of US Elections

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By William Hawes

Source: Global Research

“The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist.” -Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

It’s almost time for our quadrennial political distraction, masquerading as the US presidential election. As opposed to previous elections, this one feels quite different. Even with Obama/Romney in 2012, important, basic economic issues were discussed, health care reform was questioned, and foreign policy was given its due.

However, this time, the spectacle of the personalities seems to dominate the conversation: Mrs. Clinton is somehow on a feminist crusade, an inspiration for women everywhere. Going unmentioned are her irredeemable backers, such as the genocidal Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright. As for Trump, his version of America is as naïve, narrow-minded, and delusional as a Leave It to Beaver episode, or a Captain America comic book. In the background, the monstrosity of global capitalism goes unquestioned, and the cries from victims of US institutional racism and structural violence go unheard.

Global warming, broad economic policy, and nuanced foreign policy are simply too much to ask of these candidates. Their stupidity knows no end; their corruption and depravity know no bounds, and many of both of their supporters, as well as media, political, and corporate backers and sycophants can be considered “deplorable”. Many supporters of the two-party system do not bother to think about the damage either potential president would do to people outside the US. Many backers of Trump and Clinton have little to no basic knowledge of world cultures and history.

What are the cords that connect us to these “leaders”, to our American Empire? They are the same ones that the Industrial Revolution, the basis of our civilization, has implanted in each of us since birth, as Alvin Toffler explains in The Third Wave. As our social world became modeled on the factory floors developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, a set of unspoken principles were ironed out, and transferred to the political, social, and economic realms. (1)  As we shall see, these principles spread unchecked, and have infiltrated political discourse and social hierarchies. Toffler identifies these implicit rules as:

1) Standardization: Industry, production, and factory life revolved around endless loops and inputs of metals, fabrics, coal, oil, and specialized parts for trains, cars, etc. The simplification and standard mechanical parts used were mirrored and reflected in the culture at large: eventually, markets, the media, radio and TV, and even great art and literature succumbed to commoditization and homogenization. We now have mass marketing, public relations, and “electioneering”, where our duopoly controls all branches of government.

2) Specialization: With the explosion in the fields of science and engineering, specialized techniques were taught to develop, invent, and maintain mechanical and electric equipment. Yet again, this philosophy infected the general society:  only bureaucrats are able to work in the halls of power, only industrial experts are able to administer federal agencies, creating the disgraceful revolving door phenomena in Washington.

3) Synchronization: As more people flocked into cities with gleaming promises of steady, factory jobs, time and punctuality became of prime importance. Punching timecards and meeting quotas were necessary: there was no room for leeway, as assembly lines demanded strict timelines. The time demands of labor leaked into white-collar work as well: in banking and finance, railroads, time zones, and office jobs, advanced scheduling became the norm. Eventually, synchronization of the political system gained traction, and the imperial system came to resemble a deathly machine, marching in time to bloody footsteps: military, immoral diplomacy and ideology, and industry worked together to lord over Latin America with the Monroe Doctrine, annihilate Native Americans using Manifest Destiny, even as today, the excuse of the “War on Terror” is used to exterminate entire populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere.

4) Concentration: Think of the vast oil and coal stored underground for millions of years, only to be strip-mined, taken up by rigs, and transported by rail and tanker into vast refineries: concentration of energy. Further, every class of people became absorbed and intensified in the industrial system: workers into factories, children into schools, mentally ill into institutions, finance concentrated into New York, London, and Paris. Mega-mergers of corporations: today, it is the Apple, Google, Shell, and BP’s of the world who have coffers of blood money held tidily in banks throughout the world. Further, the concentration of technocrats who we supposedly need to run our societies: in the West, the military-industrialists, just as the Soviets were once told the nomenklatura was necessary.

5) Maximization: Firms were encouraged to grow as large as possible, and expand into as many fields as possible. Companies in Japan in the mid-twentieth century would actually have workers sing of the glory and greatness of their employer. Today, 62 people have the same wealth as half the world’s population. This is concentration and maximizing at its most obscene. Of course, you won’t hear Clinton, Trump, or anyone in Washington talking about this. Maximizing GDP, corporate profits, fossil fuel use, and flexing imperial muscle is what the Feds do best.

6) Centralization: Connected to the first five rules of empire stated above, centralizing power, wealth, and using knowledge for private gain is required to uphold the industrial state. Taxation, subsidies for industry, political debates via the sham Committee on Presidential Debates, the backroom shenanigans of the DNC and RNC, and cloak and dagger lobbying and bribery now dominate our system of government. Further, the Leviathan of state-sanctioned violence now lords over the world from the Pentagon and NATO, and the centralization of information runs through fiber-optic cables straight to the infernal, yet temperature-controlled offices of the CIA and NSA.

The elections have adopted all the patterns of the industrial, imperial state: we have standardized TV, scripted questions, airbrushed candidates, and childlike debates. We’ve seen specialized tactics of gerrymandering, vote-rigging, PR bullshit, and strategists whose careers accomplish nothing for the public good. We all know of the synchronization of Wall Street, defense and oil companies. The concentration of power in the hands of the few hardly needs mention: here’s the study by Princeton and Northwestern professors who conclude that the US is an oligarchy, not a democracy. We’ve witnessed the maximization of endless primaries, debates, press conferences, and town-hall meetings ad infinitum. The centralization of political ideology (triangulation in Clintonite terms, Machiavellian to a rational person) and the limitations of discourse that our candidates display are all too clear.

These are the iron chains holding us down, shackling us in Plato’s cave: our candidates are figureheads, shadows on the wall; they are puppets of the super-elite. The central position they carve out in the mainstream is really a pit, an abyss: one that we all find ourselves in, as we continue to vote for those who don’t fight for our interests.

The two best options for this election seem to be: voting for Jill Stein, or boycotting the election, as Joel Hirschhorn advocates. As for our obscene election cycles, I believe Zach de la Rocha summed it up best:

  A spectacle monopolized

The camera’s eyes on choice disguised

Was it cast for the mass who burn and toil?

Or for vultures who thirst for blood and oil?

William Hawes is a writer specializing in politics and environmental issues. His articles have appeared online at Global Research, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, The World Financial Review, Gods & Radicals, and Countercurrents. He is author of the e-book Planetary Vision: Essays on Freedom and Empire. You can reach him at wilhawes@gmail.com

Notes:

1.) Alvin Toffler. The Third Wave. Bantam, 1980. p. 46-60.

 

The Party’s Over: Beyond Politics, Beyond Democracy

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Source: CrimethInc.

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!”

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

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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!

Mainstream Academia/Media Attacks “Conspiracy Theorists”: Ignore Compelling Info, Focus on Irrational Sounding Things

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By Cassius Methyl

Source: Era of Wisdom

Another hit was recently attempted on the rising culture of educated people: people educated about “conspiracies.” Mainstream academic institution the University of Kent published a study claiming that conspiracy theorists tend to be narcissistic.

A Daily Mail article sports the headline “Believe in conspiracy theories? You’re probably a narcissist: People who doubt the moon landings are more likely to be selfish and attention-seeking.”

Right: the University of Kent experts have really pinned down the root psychological machinations of a conspiracy theorist.

Like other recent attacks on “conspiracy theorists” in mainstream academia, they associate “moon landing conspiracy theories” with all kinds of other historically proven, irrefutably true facts.

The article tries to paint these people as absurd, saying “Do you think the moon-landings were faked, vaccines are a plot for mind control, or that shadowy government agencies are keeping alien technology locked up in hidden bunkers?”

Here are some irrefutable facts to put reality in perspective: from an article titled “Governments and Biowarfare: a Brief History”

 

– 1932: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study begins. 200 black men diagnosed with syphilis are never told of their illness, are denied treatment, and instead are used as human guinea pigs in order to follow the progression and symptoms of the disease. They all subsequently die from syphilis, their families never told that they could have been treated. Follow this link for more info.

– 1950: In an experiment to determine how susceptible an American city would be to biological attack, the U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of bacteria from ships over San Francisco. Monitoring devices are situated throughout the city in order to test the extent of infection. Many residents become ill with pneumonia-like symptoms. Follow this link for more info.

– 1955: The CIA, in an experiment to test its ability to infect human populations with biological agents, releases a bacteria withdrawn from the Army’s biological warfare arsenal over Tampa Bay, Fl. Follow this link for more info.

– 1956: U.S. military releases mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, Ga and Avon Park, Fl. Following each test, Army agents posing as public health officials test victims for effects. Follow this link for more info.

– 1965: Prisoners at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia are subjected to dioxin, the highly toxic chemical component of Agent Orange used in Viet Nam. The men are later studied for development of cancer, which indicates that Agent Orange had been a suspected carcinogen all along. Follow this link for more info.

– 1966: U.S. Army dispenses Bacillus subtilis variant niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million civilians are exposed when army scientists drop lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates. Follow this link for more info.

– 1990: More than 1500 six-month old black and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles are given an “experimental” measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States. CDC later admits that parents were never informed that the vaccine being injected to their children was experimental. Follow this link for more info.

– 1994: With a technique called “gene tracking,” Dr. Garth Nicolson at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX discovers that many returning Desert Storm veterans are infected with an altered strain of Mycoplasma incognitus, a microbe commonly used in the production of biological weapons. Incorporated into its molecular structure is 40 percent of the HIV protein coat, indicating that it had been man-made. Follow this link for more info.

The bottom line is, there are all types of historical facts, crimes committed by governments, events, pieces of information, that the ordinary person has not investigated. Once you learn about historical facts that are suppressed by governments, corporations, and their media partners, you realize this:

Nobody has a perfect measure of probability. Nobody has the ability to say “no, that can’t be true, that’s not probable,” because to have an accurate sense of probability, you’d have to know a lot more than you do.

There are so many historical facts that could obliterate a person’s perception of “probable.”

If an ordinary person spent a few days being educated by a person into these facts, a person who mainstream culture would condemn as a “conspiracy theorist,” they would never see the world the same again.

Mainstream academia cannot reasonably sit on a pedestal and claim that they have supreme ability to measure probability.

Moon landing conspiracy theories have little to do with an understanding of the irrefutable reality of hegemony and it’s conniving, conspiring nature: the conspiring history of Rockefeller and Carnegie, the industrial magnates of the United States, creating corrupt academic institutions such as the University of Chicago, for example.

Moon landing theories have little to do with the recent conspiracy facts of Halliburton being granted contracts in Iraq, or the US taking out Gaddafi in Libya to defend the petrodollar.

There’s an entire world of geopolitics, an entire obfuscated world of geo-economic warfare, an entire world of power beneath the curtain of mainstream culture.

There’s an entire world of history behind the industrial powers that fought in the World Wars (IG Farbin, National City Bank).

There’s an entire world of depth behind the curtain of political theater, and it takes more effort to try and understand than some contracted, paid off mainstream academics at the University of Kent are willing to put forth. Well, the amount of effort it takes is not something they can’t do, it’s something they won’t do. If you’re reading this, that’s probably abundantly clear to you.

The establishment media would like to crush dissent, to crush speculation or questions for the official narrative: the truth is, it’s not narcissists who like to look deeper, it’s people with the common sense to realize that many things in our society are not right, and we need to understand history better to know why they are not right.

Perhaps sometimes the more open minded people could fall prey to an illusion, as we all might at times, but to try and paint it as some overarching, general rule of psychology that conspiracy theorists are narcissistic is preposterous.

We need to understand where the structures of our society, corporations, and government powers really originated: the truth is, people conspire. Wealthy people conspire, infiltrate academia, have wars, use propaganda, and if a man in power can get away with something, history shows that they will take advantage.

 

Democracy Is Dead

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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.

War Pabulum: The Perils of War as a Master Narrative

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photo posted on post-gazette.com

By W.J. Astore

Source: Bracing Views

I was reading the novelist Ursula K. Le Guin and came across the following commentary by her:

“A hero whose heroism consists of killing people is uninteresting to me, and I detest the hormonal war orgies of our visual media … War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous.  By reducing the choices of action to ‘a war against’ whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off.  This is puerile, misleading, and degrading.  In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance.  All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the ‘right’ side and therefore will win.”

This passage is copyrighted 2012, and surely Le Guin is commenting in part on the American political and war scene, even if these comments came as an afterword to her novel “A Wizard of Earthsea.”

The stories we tell ourselves – our driving narratives and metaphors – are very powerful.  I learned this almost three decades ago from one of my professors at Johns Hopkins.  We were talking about the scientific revolution, the label applied after the fact by historians to the era of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton.  Did that era truly deserve the label of a “revolution” in thought?  On one level, yes.  A heliocentric vision replaced a geocentric one.  Newtonian physics replaced Aristotelian metaphysics.  But on another level, the label was misleading.  If you view this era only through a “revolutionary” lens, everything gets magnified and refracted through it.  You’re always looking for evidence of the “revolution” that you know is there.  The revolutionary narrative/metaphor, in other words, restricts and distorts your vision.  It also tends to answer questions before they’re even asked.  Certain historical figures get labeled as “revolutionaries,” others as “reactionaries,” some as winners, others as losers, almost without having to think about it.

That’s disturbing enough for a historian dealing with the “dead” past.  Think about how that distortion, that resort to easy categorization, applies to the living, to the present, in “wartime.”  Viewing everything through a war lens both restricts and distorts our vision.  We quickly force people to take sides, or we assign them a side regardless of their complexity (“You’re either for us or against us,” as George W. Bush noted in the aftermath of 9/11).  Just as quickly, the “heroes” adopt the violent methods of the bad guys (witness the bombing, the invasions, the use of torture, performed by the U.S. in the stated cause of “liberation”).  No ethical complexity is tolerated since “our” troops are on the right side (so we think).  Even when they embrace violence and lose control, deadly mistakes and even war crimes are readily excused as aberrations that should be forgotten, rare exceptions that do nothing to besmirch America’s exceptional and heroic nature.

The power of narratives is remarkable.  The United States continues to be driven by one that’s dominated by power, violence, and war.  Is it any wonder, then, that the two major party candidates for the presidency, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, fit so easily and readily into this narrative?  Hillary plans to continue to wage war even more aggressively than Obama has, and Trump is all about violent solutions and an “Us” versus “Them” mentality.  (Build a wall!  Biggest, baddest military!  Make America great again!  Punch the protesters!    Extreme vetting!  Throw the illegals out!)

Until we change our national narrative from one of constant war and violence to something more pacific and modulated, our political scene will continue to be, to borrow Le Guin’s words, puerile and misleading and degrading, with candidates serving up heroic violence as pabulum, as infantile reassurance.

Positively Thriving Through the Collapse of Civilisation

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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)

America, the World’s Most Dangerous Dictatorship

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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.