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DiEM25— FOR OUR TIME & FOR OUR FUTURE
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A MANIFESTO FOR DEMOCRATISING EUROPE
For all their concerns with global competitiveness, migration and terrorism, only one prospect truly terrifies the Powers of Europe: Democracy! They speak in democracy’s name but only to deny, exorcise and suppress it in practice. They seek to co-opt, evade, corrupt, mystify, usurp and manipulate democracy in order to break its energy and arrest its possibilities.
For rule by Europe’s peoples, government by the demos, is the shared nightmare of:
The Brussels bureaucracy (and its more than 10,000 lobbyists)
Its hit-squad inspectorates and the Troika they formed together with unelected ‘technocrats’ from other international and European institutions
The powerful Eurogroup that has no standing in law or treaty
Bailed out bankers, fund managers and resurgent oligarchies perpetually contemptuous of the multitudes and their organised expression
Political parties appealing to liberalism, democracy, freedom and solidarity to betray their most basic principles when in government
Governments that fuel cruel inequality by implementing self-defeating austerity
Media moguls who have turned fear-mongering into an art form, and a magnificent source of power and profit
Corporations in cahoots with secretive public agencies investing in the same fear to promote secrecy and a culture of surveillance that bend public opinion to their will.
The European Union was an exceptional achievement, bringing together in peace European peoples speaking different languages, submersed in different cultures, proving that it was possible to create a shared framework of human rights across a continent that was, not long ago, home to murderous chauvinism, racism and barbarity. The European Union could have been the proverbial Beacon on the Hill, showing the world how peace and solidarity may be snatched from the jaws of centuries-long conflict and bigotry.
Alas, today, a common bureaucracy and a common currency divide European peoples that were beginning to unite despite our different languages and cultures. A confederacy of myopic politicians, economically naïve officials and financially incompetent ‘experts’ submit slavishly to the edicts of financial and industrial conglomerates, alienating Europeans and stirring up a dangerous anti-European backlash. Proud peoples are being turned against each other.Nationalism, extremism and racism are being re-awakened.
At the heart of our disintegrating EU there lies a guilty deceit: A highly political, top-down, opaque decision-making process is presented as ‘apolitical’, ‘technical’, ‘procedural’ and ‘neutral’. Its purpose is to prevent Europeans from exercising democratic control over their money, finance, working conditions and environment. The price of this deceit is not merely the end of democracy but also poor economic policies:
The Eurozone economies are being marched off the cliff of competitive austerity, resulting in permanent recession in the weaker countries and low investment in the core countries
EU member-states outside the Eurozone are alienated, seeking inspiration and partners in suspect quarters where they are most likely to be greeted with opaque, coercive free trade deals that undermine their sovereignty.
Unprecedented inequality, declining hope and misanthropy flourish throughout Europe
Two dreadful options dominate:
Retreat into the cocoon of our nation-states
Or surrender to the Brussels democracy-free zone
There must be another course. And there is!
It is the one official ‘Europe’ resists with every sinew of its authoritarian mind-set:
A surge of democracy!
Our movement, DiEM25, seeks to call forth just such a surge.
One simple, radical idea is the motivating force behind DiEM25:
Democratise Europe! For the EU will either be democratised or it will disintegrate!
Our goal to democratise Europe is realistic. It is no more utopian than the initial construction of the European Union was. Indeed, it is less utopian than the attempt to keep alive the current, anti-democratic, fragmenting European Union.
Our goal to democratise Europe is terribly urgent, for without a swift start it may be impossible to chisel away at the institutionalised resistance in good time, before Europe goes past the point of no return. We give it a decade, by 2025.
If we fail to democratise Europe within, at most, a decade; if Europe’s autocratic powers succeed in stifling democratisation, then the EU will crumble its hubris, it will splinter, and its fall will cause untold hardship everywhere – not just in Europe.
WHY IS EUROPE LOSING ITS INTEGRITY AND ITS SOUL?
In the post-war decades during which the EU was initially constructed, national cultures were revitalised in a spirit of internationalism, disappearing borders, shared prosperity and raised standards that brought Europeans together. But, the serpent’s egg was at the heart of the integration process.
From an economic viewpoint, the EU began life as a cartel of heavy industry (later co-opting farm owners) determined to fix prices and to re-distribute oligopoly profits through its Brussels bureaucracy. The emergent cartel, and its Brussels-based administrators, feared the demos and despised the idea of government-by-the-people.
Patiently and methodically, a process of de-politicising decision-making was put in place, the result being a draining but relentless drive toward taking-the-demos-out-of-democracy and cloaking all policy-making in a pervasive pseudo-technocratic fatalism. National politicians were rewarded handsomely for their acquiescence to turning the Commission, the Council, the Ecofin, the Eurogroup and the ECB, into politics-free zones. Anyone opposing this process of de-politicisation was labelled ‘un-European’ and treated as a jarring dissonance.
Thus the deceit at the EU’s heart was born, yielding an institutional commitment to policies that generate depressing economic data and avoidable hardship.Meanwhile, simple principles that a more confident Europe once understood, have now been abandoned:
Rules should exist to serve Europeans, not the other way round
Currencies should be instruments, not ends-in-themselves
A single market is consistent with democracy only if it features common defences of the weaker Europeans, and of the environment, that are democratically chosen and built
Democracy cannot be a luxury afforded to creditors while refused to debtors
Democracy is essential for limiting capitalism’s worst, self-destructive drives and opening up a window onto new vistas of social harmony and sustainable development
In response to the inevitable failure of Europe’s cartelised social economy to rebound from the post-2008 Great Recession, the EU’s institutions that caused this failure have been resorting to escalating authoritarianism. The more they asphyxiate democracy, the less legitimate their political authority becomes, the stronger the forces of economic recession, and the greater their need for further authoritarianism. Thus the enemies of democracy gather renewed power while losing legitimacy and confining hope and prosperity to the very few (who may only enjoy it behind the gates and the fences needed to shield them from the rest of society).
This is the unseen process by which Europe’s crisis is turning our peoples inwards, against each other, amplifying pre-existing jingoism, xenophobia.The privatisation of anxiety, the fear of the ‘other’, the nationalisation of ambition, and the re-nationalisation of policy threaten a toxic disintegration of common interests from which Europe can only suffer. Europe’s pitiful reaction to its banking and debt crises, to the refugee crisis, to the need for a coherent foreign, migration and anti-terrorism policy, are all examples of what happens when solidarity loses its meaning:
The injury to Europe’s integrity caused by the crushing of the Athens Spring, and by the subsequent imposition of an economic ‘reform’ program that was designed to fail
The customary assumption that, whenever a state budget must be bolstered or a bank bailed out, society’s weakest must pay for the sins of the wealthiest rentiers
The constant drive to commodify labour and drive democracy out of the workplace
The scandalous ‘not in our backyard’ attitude of most EU member-states to the refugees landing on Europe’s shores, illustrating how a broken European governance model yields ethical decline and political paralysis, as well as evidence that xenophobia towards non-Europeans follows the demise of intra-European solidarity
The comical phrase we end up with when we put together the three words ‘European’, ‘foreign’ and ‘policy’
The ease with which European governments decided after the awful Paris attacks that the solution lies in re-erecting borders, when most of the attackers were EU citizens – yet another sign of the moral panic engulfing a European Union unable to unite Europeans to forge common responses to common problems.
WHAT MUST BE DONE? OUR HORIZON
Realism demands that we work toward reaching milestones within a realistic timeframe. This is why DiEM25 will aim for four breakthroughs at regular intervals in order to bring about a fully democratic, functional Europe by 2025.
Now, today, Europeans are feeling let down by EU institutions everywhere. From Helsinki to Lisbon, from Dublin to Crete, from Leipzig to Aberdeen. Europeans sense that a stark choice is approaching fast. The choice between authentic democracy and insidious disintegration. We must resolve to unite to ensure that Europe makes the obvious choice: Authentic democracy!
When asked what we want, and when we want it, we reply:
IMMEDIATELY: Full transparency in decision-making.
EU Council, Ecofin, FTT and Eurogroup Meetings to be live-streamed
Minutes of European Central Bank governing council meetings to be published a few weeks after the meetings have taken place
All documents pertinent to crucial negotiations (e.g. trade-TTIP, ‘bailout’ loans, Britain’s status) affecting every facet of European citizens’ future to be uploaded on the web
A compulsory register for lobbyists that includes their clients’ names, their remuneration, and a record of meetings with officials (both elected and unelected)
WITHIN TWELVE MONTHS: Address the on-going economic crisis utilising existing institutions and within existing EU Treaties.
Europe’s immediate crisis is unfolding simultaneously in five realms:
Public debt
Banking
Inadequate Investment, and
Migration
Rising Poverty
All five realms are currently left in the hands of national governments powerless to act upon them. DiEM25 will present detailed policy proposals to Europeanise all five while limiting Brussels’ discretionary powers and returning power to national Parliaments, to regional councils, to city halls and to communities. The proposed policies will be aimed at re-deploying existing institutions (through a creative re-interpretation of existing treaties and charters) in order to stabilise the crises of public debt, banking, inadequate investment, and rising poverty.
WITHIN TWO YEARS: Constitutional Assembly
The people of Europe have a right to consider the union’s future and a duty to transform Europe (by 2025) into a full-fledged democracy with a sovereign Parliament respecting national self-determination and sharing power with national Parliaments, regional assemblies and municipal councils. To do this, an Assembly of their representatives must be convened. DiEM25 will promote a Constitutional Assembly consisting of representatives elected on trans-national tickets. Today, when universities apply to Brussels for research funding, they must form alliances across nations. Similarly, election to the Constitutional Assembly should require tickets featuring candidates from a majority of European countries. The resulting Constitutional Assembly will be empowered to decide on a future democratic constitution that will replace all existing European Treaties within a decade.
BY 2025: Enactment of the decisions of the Constitutional Assembly
WHO WILL BRING CHANGE?
We, the peoples of Europe, have a duty to regain control over our Europe from unaccountable ‘technocrats’, complicit politicians and shadowy institutions.
We come from every part of the continent and are united by different cultures, languages, accents, political party affiliations, ideologies, skin colours, gender identities, faiths and conceptions of the good society.
We are forming DiEM25 intent on moving from a Europe of ‘We the Governments’, and ‘We the Technocrats’, to a Europe of ‘We, the peoples of Europe’.
Our four principles:
No European people can be free as long as another’s democracy is violated
No European people can live in dignity as long as another is denied it
No European people can hope for prosperity if another is pushed into permanent insolvency and depression
No European people can grow without basic goods for its weakest citizens, human development, ecological balance and a determination to become fossil-fuel free in a world that changes its ways – not the planet’s climate
We join in a magnificent tradition of fellow Europeans who have struggled for centuries against the ‘wisdom’ that democracy is a luxury and that the weak must suffer what they must.
With our hearts, minds and wills dedicated to these commitments, and determined to make a difference, we declare that.
eo.
OUR PLEDGE
We call on our fellow Europeans to join us forthwith to create the European movement which we call DiEM25.
To fight together, against a European establishment deeply contemptuous of democracy, to democratise the European Union
To end the reduction of all political relations into relations of power masquerading as merely technical decisions
To subject the EU’s bureaucracy to the will of sovereign European peoples
To dismantle the habitual domination of corporate power over the will of citizens
To re-politicise the rules that govern our single market and common currency
We consider the model of national parties which form flimsy alliances at the level of the European Parliament to be obsolete. While the fight for democracy-from below (at the local, regional or national levels) is necessary, it is nevertheless insufficient if it is conducted without an internationalist strategy toward a pan-European coalition for democratising Europe. European democrats must come together first, forge a common agenda, and then find ways of connecting it with local communities and at the regional and national level.
Our overarching aim to democratise the European Union is intertwined with an ambition to promote self-government (economic, political and social) at the local, municipal, regional and national levels; to throw open the corridors of power to the public; to embrace social and civic movements; and to emancipate all levels of government from bureaucratic and corporate power.
We are inspired by a Europe of Reason, Liberty, Tolerance and Imagination made possible by comprehensive Transparency, real Solidarity and authentic Democracy.
We aspire to:
A Democratic Europe in which all political authority stems from Europe’s sovereign peoples
A Transparent Europe where all decision-making takes place under the citizens’ scrutiny
A United Europe whose citizens have as much in common across nations as within them
A Realistic Europe that sets itself the task of radical, yet achievable, democratic reforms
A Decentralised Europe that uses central power to maximise democracy in workplaces, towns, cities, regions and states
A Pluralist Europe of regions, ethnicities, faiths, nations, languages and cultures
An Egalitarian Europe that celebrates difference and ends discrimination based on gender, skin colour, social class or sexual orientation
A Cultured Europe that harnesses its people’s cultural diversity and promotes not only its invaluable heritage but also the work of Europe’s dissident artists, musicians, writers and poets
A Social Europe that recognises that liberty necessitates not only freedom from interference but also the basic goods that render one free from need and exploitation
A Productive Europe that directs investment into a shared, green prosperity
A Sustainable Europe that lives within the planet’s means, minimising its environmental impact, and leaving as much fossil fuel in the earth
An Ecological Europe engaged in genuine world-wide green transition
A Creative Europe that releases the innovative powers of its citizens’ imagination
A Technological Europe pressing new technologies in the service of solidarity
A Historically-minded Europe that seeks a bright future without hiding from its past
An Internationalist Europe that treats non-Europeans as ends-in-themselves
A Peaceful Europe de-escalating tensions in its East and in the Mediterranean, acting as a bulwark against the sirens of militarism and expansionism
An Open Europe that is alive to ideas, people and inspiration from all over the world, recognising fences and borders as signs of weakness spreading insecurity in the name of security
A Liberated Europe where privilege, prejudice, deprivation and the threat of violence wither, allowing Europeans to be born into fewer stereotypical roles, to enjoy even chances to develop their potential, and to be free to choose more of their partners in life, work and society.
Carpe DiEM25
www.diem25.org
F*%CK YOU MONEY
"The Weak" is composed of a gang, a syndicate of rulers, we sometimes call oligarchs who think that keeping the people ignorant, stressed, and distracted is a strong strategy. They have never comprehended a history book in their lives, much less anything having to do with science. Having endured years of abuse, or having been sheltered from any real challenge, or via dumb fate, having been blessed with inherited entitlement, "Rulers" wallow in self-indulgence, groupthink, mal-motivated reasoning, always engaged in forceful social signalling— their minds and souls, at a young age, turn into toxic sludge. They all too often have omnicidal dreams during their fitful sleep. The ruled often suffer from the same pathology with similar results, mostly due to an engineered desire to become "Rulers."
Rulers engineer a world in which they get more attention than their remit requires. Getting too much of this kind of mal-formed attention makes our restless rulers pay attention to the noise while risk piles up. Imagine Dorian Gray with a tactical knife and an AR15 with oversized clips taped together, cocked and loaded, staggering around the back garden, snorting "blood-coke" and shedding tears because enough is never enough. You don't want that guy looking at the real picture before he's disarmed, but how does one put the genie back in the bottle? How can society reform and heal people who fund research into immortality like all the mercury drinking, narcissistic, ruler-alchemists before them? They are becoming pure poison. And remember, Twenty-First Century megalomaniacs have access to neutron and hydrogen bombs, and that's a game-ending genie. Let's not even talk about their denial of natural systems.
So, we plebs can blame the players for creating, maintaining and ending a sick game. We can forgive ourselves for not knowing what we were doing. We were determined to be ignorant. Call it planned obsolescence.
The players are weak because they forgot where they get their power. We are vulnerable because we don't dare to remind them. Perhaps the players and their victims have no idea what real power is.
And, it's unfortunate that healthy people find it impossible to converse with their rulers. Not having these difficult conversations is perhaps the most consequential mistake.
Let's do a little experiment to determine the difference between the ruler-players and the plebs who give them their power. Try this, speak this out loud, and then monitor how it makes you feel. If you can, say it many times while videoing yourself: "Fuck you money, fuck-you-money, FUCK YOU MONEY, I've got fuck you money..."
Did you feel entitled, competitive, superior, aggressive, vengeful, a bit angry, perhaps even violent?
Now try something else like, "I love my curious soul." I love, I love, I love... How does that make you feel?
Fuck you, Money.
Climate Change Information Resources
Here is a collection of science-based resources for researching and learning about climate change.
Climate Communication: Science & Outreach
Michael Mann is a Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State University, and is the lecturer of edX’s online course on Climate Change called “Climate Change and Global Impacts.”
Climate Disinformation Database - DeSmog Blog
An extensive database of individual climate deniers and organizations involved in the global warming denial industry.
Climate Misconceptions
Yale Climate Connections - Yale University
David Suzuki Foundation - Science and LearningCentre
Welcome to the David Suzuki Foundation’s free online library containing more than a decade’s worth of fundamental science, research, and policy work.
This library is a resource for scientists, researchers, journalists, students, activists, and others. We hope it helps connect you with the work of our Science and Policy experts, advancing our collective knowledge of the environmental movement, the challenges we face, and the solutions within our grasp.
DeSmog Blog
DeSmog launched in January 2006 and quickly became the world’s number one source for accurate, fact-based information regarding global warming misinformation campaigns. It is an independent group of investigative journalists investigating the climate-denial fraud.
The Logic of Science
1. Debunking 25 Arguments Against Climate Change in 5 Sentences or Less Each
2. Don’t cherry-pick your experts
The Logic of Science
3. Global Warming - Logic of Science
An excellent science site designed for the average reader to make sense of the science. Topics are well organized and cover most of the bases.
NASA Climate Science Website
NASA’s Climate home page
NASA’s Teachable Moments:
The Evidence
Causes
Effects
Solutions / Resources
Real Climate .org
RealClimate.org - “...one of the best sources on the Internet for clear, accessible, but soundly scientific, discussion about climate change.” ~ James Hoggan, p. 112, “Climate Cover-Up.”
Co-founded by Michael Mann And edX Academy (an e-Learning arm founded in part by Penn State University.
Scientific American
Seven Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense
Skeptical Science
Scientific skepticism is healthy. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer-reviewed scientific literature say?
Rule Of Law Is A Sham
This article by Ralph Nader in Lapham’s Quarterly is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding how the world works. The Law is a scam, and at present, not serving the people, but rather, at the service those who game the system.
Land of the Lawless | Lapham’s Quarterly
In the late 1970s, I had lunch with the head of the Internal Revenue Service. I broached a subject long on my mind: “I have been told that the section on insurance in the tax code is so complex that fewer people understand it than understand Einstein ’s theory of relativity.” He replied that he wouldn’t doubt if that were true. So I followed up and asked, “How can it be enforced?” His answer was that it largely wasn’t.
If this seems shocking, beware—lawlessness is an overwhelming fact of American life, though little attention is paid to this many-unsponsored phenomenon. How many times have we been told that our country is under the rule of law and that nobody is above it? Yet the country’s legal life is defined instead by major zones of lawlessness created, in one aspect, by noncompliance and lack of enforcement and, in another, by raw power, which can be political, economic, or armed. These multiplying zones have pushed the rule of law into little more than a torrent of dysfunctional myths.
You might think attending one of America’s 205 accredited law schools would help a person see through all this. But with few exceptions, law schools teach the rule of law as if it were the norm—as if public condemnations of criminal acts and sometimes prosecuted violations mean our culture really is defined by its laws. Courses push students to hone their analytic skills to find conflicts, inconsistencies, distinctions, ambiguities, and textual improvements in the formal legal system. Rarely is the rule of law exposed for what it is, though from time to time schools of legal thought do examine this—as did the “legal realists” at Yale Law School from the 1920s to the 1950s or the “critical legal studies” professors from the 1970s through the 1990s. But the language of these schools was too abstruse. The scholars did not focus enough on reaching outside their academic groves and were mostly unable to foster any kind of social justice movement that could make the law mean what it should—that is, justice.
It is better to live unknown to the law.
—Irish proverb
Over the past century, as laws have become more remote from public education and distant from popular access, they have also become more complex and more pervasive. In parallel, the various zones of lawlessness have expanded and the rule of power has increased. Occasional high-profile prosecutions or sanctions have helped promulgate the idea that laws are effective in their coverage, but such prosecutions have often been ineffective, with corporations demanding that Congress eliminate criminal penalties for willful and knowing violation of the law. To give just one example, corporate lobbyists succeeded in eliminating the criminal penalty from the 1966 automobile- safety laws, even when people were killed due to knowing violations of the government’s motor-vehicle safety regulations.
To see through a myth as pervasive as our rule of law requires a journey through these zones of lawlessness. Taking it may provoke the constructive outrage that can come from an informed sense of injustice.
Let’s start with systematic violations of the law that escape enforcement year after year. First, the health care industry, in which at least 10 percent of what our country spends goes down the drain from computerized billing fraud and abuse. According to Harvard professor Malcolm Sparrow, author of License to Steal, this 10 percent figure represents the minimum amount. Applying it to this year would produce a fraud amount of about $350 billion. The fraud is rarely prosecuted. In 1992 the Government Accountability Office estimated a comparable 10 percent drain, but Congress continued to starve the enforcement budgets of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice. These agencies recover less than $3 billion of what’s defrauded from Medicaid, Medicare, and Tricare military insurance each year—appallingly low, given that commercial crooks defraud an estimated $60 billion from Medicare alone.
Even more alarming is what we learn from a May 2016 report from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine estimating that there are a minimum of 250,000 lives lost yearly due to preventable problems in our nation’s hospitals. That’s an average of 5,000 deaths a week. These deaths stem largely from continual negligence—which can include accidents, misdiagnoses, malpractice, and hospital-induced infections—but criminal negligence and outright profit-driven criminality are also prevalent. Though these mass violations are supposed to be actionable by public prosecution and by private civil action under our tort laws, far less than 5 percent of potential civil cases are brought to attorneys by next of kin. Prosecutions are much rarer.
Also deeply underreported are the crimes that take place in the lawless zone of wage theft. A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute—which draws on surveys of state labor departments and attorneys general as well as data from the Department of Labor and class-action settlements—estimates $50 billion a year is stolen from mostly low-income workers, while terribly weak enforcement budgets and priorities led to the recovery of only some $2 billion in 2015 and 2016 combined.
The EPI examines wage theft through minimum-wage violations, overtime violations, tipping violations, and employee misclassifications. On average, it finds that workers suffering minimum-wage violations are cheated out of $64 a week, or $3,300 annually —all while the federal minimum wage has been frozen at $7.25 an hour. Such theft is clearly illegal. But in 2016, the EPI reports, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division had only a thousand investigators responsible for 7.3 million workplaces. And workers rarely file private claims anyway, as they are often forced to sign away their right to go to court in order to have a job in the first place.
The more laws, the more lawbreakers.
—Tao Te Ching, 500 BC
This is contract peonage, quite simply. But aside from the rare case of stolen-wage restitution, employers are almost never prosecuted under criminal laws. The absence of civil and criminal deterrence assures that big-time wage theft is part of the American worker’s nightmare.
Corporations further assert their power over the rule of law through tax evasion and avoidance. As Congress cut the IRS budget over the past decade (with inflation adjusted, down more than 25 percent from 2009), the agency has been increasingly unable to enforce the law against what it says is $400 billion a year in “uncollected taxes”—a sum that does not even include huge “avoided taxes” that flow from corporate lobbyists driving their agendas through a greased Congress. The result of this, says Robert McIntyre, who was the director of Citizens for Tax Justice for many years, is that citizen taxpayers have to pay more taxes and receive fewer public services or else incur larger government deficits.
Ongoing myths about the law serve to camouflage or protect these truly dominant acts of power—that’s an important reason for the near nonexistence of regular compliance reports by regulatory agencies to Congress and the public. Such reports would not only show widespread noncompliance and minimal enforcement, they would also reveal just how little help the aggrieved classes receive from legal processes. And, of course, indentured enforcement agencies do not have much interest in publicizing widespread violations of such magnitude. Doing so might generate an appropriate level of outrage —which could spur a movement to change the system that powerful institutions are more interested in keeping the way it is.
Why would government want to help diminish these zones of lawlessness? It, too, operates in one. Our uncontrollable national-security government has given us secret wars, secret law, secret courts, secret evidence, secret prisons, unauthorized secret budgets, unlawful surveillance of attorney-client communications, blatant snooping on all Americans, unauditable secret expenditures for quagmires abroad, and even redacted published judicial decisions. Though due process of law is arguably the greatest legal achievement of Western civilization, unlawful imprisonment (now euphemistically called “detention,” regardless of duration) of domestic persons and aliens are the stuff of media exposés that mostly go nowhere. Our government has too often shunted aside probable cause and upended habeas corpus and other bulwarks of due process. And U.S. courts contribute to the impunity through knee-jerk procedures blocking lawsuit challenges due to presumed “lack of standing” or by saying that a dispute is “political” and can only be resolved between the executive and legislative branches.
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous its laws.
—Tacitus, 110
Then, when legal bodies do attempt to speak out against this lawlessness, they are ignored. In 2005 and 2006, the normally reticent and conservative American Bar Association (under its president Michael Greco) sent three unprecedented white papers to President George W. Bush asserting that he was in violation of the Constitution. Neither Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney ever bothered to acknowledge, much less respond to, these charges from the largest bar association in the world.
The government continued its extensive violations of our constitutional freedoms. In January 2012, an extraordinary article was published in the Washington Post by George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley outlining ten of them, which flowed from the official misuses of laws as well as from the instruments of oppression themselves, including all-too-routine prosecutorial abuses and lawlessness among police and in prisons. New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2018 State of the State address picked up on a similar theme, giving a shocking statistic: 75 percent of all inmates languishing in New York City jails have not been convicted of a crime but are simply awaiting trial. (Although not the subject of this essay, the lawlessness of the powerful—through their actions or inactions—have often worked to worsen the incidence of street and domestic violence.)
The view is no better on the international stage, where law cannot keep up with the violent insults of noncompliance with constitutions, treaties, or statutory restraints— from the general precepts of the laws of war to specific provisions of the Geneva Conventions. National sovereignties are routinely overridden by undeclared wars of choice, drone killings, illegal armed incursions, torture, and the widening license accorded military contractors. Greenhouse gases originate in one nation but traverse the globe, leading to devastating impacts. All are outside of any legal frameworks.
The maturation of the so-called corporate state has made all this even more entrenched. A major factor is military contracting. In September 2007 the government-contracted Blackwater Corporation used weaponized vehicles to slaughter fourteen unarmed Iraqis in one of Baghdad’s public squares. This briefly occasioned some attention from Congress, but by the end of October, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had officially informed the House Oversight Committee that— remarkably—there was no law covering the actions of Blackwater and their private police in Iraq. It seems that any crimes committed by corporations commissioned by the Defense and State Departments to perform guard duty and other classified tasks fell into a gap between Iraqi law—from which they were exempted by the U.S. military occupation—and the laws of the U.S. military itself. The rights of the individual guards were less clear; though some have been prosecuted, a single conviction for first-degree murder was overturned in circuit court in 2017.
Such lawless zones only become more complicated as technology advances. The daily evidence of international cyberwarfare and hacking—as well as corporate espionage— occurs without any framework of international law. There is presently no serious effort by the community of nations to negotiate international treaties regarding this volcanic, intrusive technology that, apart from stealing personal and official records, can destroy the critical infrastructure of societies.
Recourse does—or should—exist. America inherited from medieval England two great liberation movements for private action against wrongdoers: the law of contract and the law of torts. These two pillars of our private law are meant to empower wrongfully injured or defrauded people against wrongdoers by giving them their day in court with a trial by jury.
Lobbying legislatures seriously weakens the content and use of tort law. Though the latter is euphemistically called “tort reform,” it is a reform for corporations, not people. Corporate lobbyists have succeeded in having legislation enacted that arbitrarily ties the hands of judges and juries, who are the only ones who see, hear, and evaluate the evidence in each case in court. These lobbyists seek nothing less than impunity and immunity for their corporate entities.
Prominent lawyers, too, have been involved in weakening these remedies. Their unprofessional conduct flows from their status as so-called officers of the court, whose ethical responsibilities should be pointing them instead toward widening access to justice and its judicial institutions. But corporate law firms are the brains behind the political and economic domination of corporatism and its corporate state, which runs roughshod over weakening labor unions and consumer-defense organizations. They systematically obstruct use of the law by the very people meant to be protected by it.
One pervasive way this affects consumers is in debit- or credit-based cell-phone payment plans—an intricate system of consumer incarceration in which cell-phone users surrender access and privacy and become beholden to fine-print contractual servitude. Any attempts to fight back mean one is confronted with a series of difficult tasks, including reaching a human being working for the vendors. Consumers then have to deal with low bargaining power, nonexistent alternative competition, and the potential arbitrary actions of lowered credit ratings and credit scores. The judiciary usually protects vendors by invoking the myth of consumer consent while precluding practical remedies by the aggrieved. Computerized transactions between consumers and financial vendors have turned unconscionable penalties and fees into corporate profit centers worth tens of billions of dollars a year, especially against the poor, who are forced into these difficult, rigged arrangements and so pay more.
This sort of thing is happening everywhere. Fast-expanding zones of lawlessness emerge from all kinds of rapid changes occurring in societies, from new technologies to new forms of capital to more complex inter-relationships between people and artificial entities like corporations. With government contracts there are the entrenched, complex, often secret abuses by corporate vendors, especially in the military and corporate welfare arenas. These official exercises of power without legal authority are bipartisan under both major political parties.
Law does not keep up, and the modern denizens of lawless territory like it that way. Just ask Wall Streeters, whose economic power allows them to deal in tax havens, complex commercial partnerships, and speculative derivatives that few humans can even understand, much less regulate. Where were the legal boundaries breached by the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury, and the White House during the massive bailout of Wall Street and other companies? George W. Bush’s secretary of the Treasury, former chief of Goldman Sachs Henry Paulson, openly told the Washington Post that he “didn’t have the authorities for anything,” but “someone has to pull it all together.”
In a court of fowls, the cockroach never wins its case.
—Rwandan proverb
It would be nice to believe such actions were aberrations from the rule of law. But they’re not; lawlessness in its many exercised forms of raw power is itself the norm. What it has wrought is the institutionalization of criminality—with overworld and underworld often blurring together—producing inequality of wealth and income, planting the seeds of political seizures by dictatorial, plutocratic, and oligarchic forces.
What can be done? We start with the lawyers, who are not only invested with the monopolistic right to be attorneys for clients but should also be obliged, as officers of the court subject to their code of professional ethics, to be the sentinels for the administration of justice. Some are heroically assuming this august obligation to the people. But far too few of the 1.3 million lawyers in America see the rule of law for the myth it is; too few see the rule of power for the lawlessness it creates. More of them must assume the higher significance of their calling, to respond to the silent cries for justice—which nearly two centuries ago Senator Daniel Webster called “the great interest of man on Earth” and “the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together.”
Ralph Nader is a lecturer, attorney, author, political activist, and four-time candidate for president of the United States. In 2015 he founded the American Museum of Tort Law in Winsted, Connecticut.
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/rule-law/land-lawless
Yuval Harari's Talk at Davos on Existential Threats
Everyone needs to consider Yuval Harari’s concerns. His observations are clear and accurate. People must get involved and pressure our business and political leaders to work towards solutions to these threats. We need to know about these risks and decide how we want to confront them.
As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first Century, humanity faces so many issues and questions, that it is really hard to know what to focus on. So I would like to use the next twenty minutes to help us focus of all the different issues we face. Three problems pose existential challenges to our species.
These three existential challenges are nuclear war, ecological collapse and technological disruption. We should focus on them.
Now nuclear war and ecological collapse are already familiar threats, so let me spend some time explaining the less familiar threat posed by technological disruption.
In Davos we hear so much about the enormous promises of technology – and these promises are certainly real. But technology might also disrupt human society and the very meaning of human life in numerous ways, ranging from the creation of a global useless class to the rise of data colonialism and of digital dictatorships.
First, we might face upheavals on the social and economic level.
Automation will soon eliminate millions upon millions of jobs, and while new jobs will certainly be created, it is unclear whether people will be able to learn the necessary new skills fast enough. Suppose you are a fifty-years-old truck driver, and you just lost your job to a self-driving vehicle. Now there are new jobs in designing software or in teaching yoga to engineers – but how does a fifty-years-old truck driver reinvent himself or herself as a software engineer or as a yoga teacher? And people will have to do it not just once but again and again throughout their lives, because the automation revolution will not be a single watershed event following which the job market will settle down, into a new equilibrium. Rather, it will be a cascade of ever bigger disruptions, because AI is nowhere near its full potential.
Old jobs will disappear, new jobs will emerge, but then the new jobs will rapidly change and vanish. Whereas in the past human had to struggle against exploitation, in the twenty-first century the really big struggle will be against irrelevance. And it is much worse to be irrelevant than exploited.
Those who fail in the struggle against irrelevance would constitute a new “useless class” – people who are useless not from the viewpoint of their friends and family, but useless from the viewpoint of the economic and political system. And this useless class will be separated by an ever-growing gap from the ever more powerful elite.
The AI revolution might create unprecedented inequality not just between classes but also between countries.
In the nineteenth Century, a few countries like Britain and Japan industrialized first, and they went on to conquer and exploit most of the world. If we aren’t careful, the same thing will happen in the twenty-first century with AI.
We are already in the midst of an AI arms race, with China and the USA leading the race, and most countries being left far far behind. Unless we take action to distribute the benefit and power of AI between all humans, AI will likely create immense wealth in a few high-tech hubs, while other countries will either go bankrupt or become exploited data-colonies.
Now we aren’t talking here about a science-fiction scenario of robots rebelling against humans. We are talking about far more primitive AI, which is nevertheless enough to disrupt the global balance.
Just think about what will happen to developing economies once it is cheaper to produce textiles or cars in California than in Mexico? And what will happen to politics in your country in twenty years, when somebody in San Francisco or Beijing knows the entire medical and personal history of every politician, every judge, and every journalist in your country, including all their sexual escapades, all their mental weaknesses and all their corrupt dealings? Will it still be an independent country or will it become a data-colony?
When you have enough data you don't need to send soldiers, in order to control a country.
Alongside inequality, the other major danger we face is the rise of digital dictatorships, that will monitor everyone all the time.
This danger can be stated in the form of a simple equation, which I think might be the defining equation of life in the twenty-first century:
B x C x D = AHH!
Which means? Biological knowledge multiplied by computing power multiplied by data equals the ability to hack humans, ahh.
If you know enough biology and have enough computing power and data, you can hack my body and my brain and my life, and you can understand me better than I understand myself. You can know my personality type, my political views, my sexual preferences, my mental weaknesses, my deepest fears and hopes. You know more about me than I know about myself. And you can do that not just to me, but to everyone.
A system that understands us better than we understand ourselves can predict our feelings and decisions, can manipulate our feelings and decisions, and can ultimately make decisions for us.
Now in the past, many governments and tyrants wanted to do it, but nobody understood biology well enough and nobody had enough computing power and data to hack millions of people. Neither the Gestapo nor the KGB could do it. But soon at least some corporations and governments will be able to systematically hack all the people. We humans should get used to the idea that we are no longer mysterious souls – we are now hackable animals. That's what we are.
The power to hack humans can be used for good purposes – like providing much better healthcare. But if this power falls into the hands of a twenty-first-century Stalin, the result will be the worst totalitarian regime in human history. And we already have a number of applicants for the job of twenty-first-century century Stalin.
Just imagine North Korea in twenty years, when everybody has to wear a biometric bracelet which constantly monitors your blood pressure, your heart rate, your brain activity twenty-four hours a day. You listen to a speech on the radio by the great leader and they know what you actually feel. You can clap your hands and smile, but if you're angry, they know, you'll be in the gulag tomorrow.
And if we allow the emergence of such total surveillance regimes, don’t think that the rich and powerful in places like Davos will be safe, just ask Jeff Bezos. In Stalin’s USSR, the state-monitored members of the communist elite more than anyone else. The same will be true of future total surveillance regimes. The higher you are in the hierarchy – the more closely you’ll be watched.
Do you want your CEO or your president to know what you really think about them?
So it is in the interest of all humans, including the elites, to prevent the rise of such digital dictatorships. And in the meantime, if you get a suspicious WhatsApp message, from some Prince, don't open it.
Now if we indeed prevent the establishment of digital dictatorships, the ability to hack humans might still undermine the very meaning of human freedom. Because as humans will rely on AI to make more and more decisions for us, authority will shift from humans to algorithms and this is already happening.
Already today billions of people trust the Facebook algorithm to tell us what is new, the Google algorithm tells us what is true, Netflix tells us what to watch, and the Amazon and Alibaba algorithms tell us what to buy.
In the not-so-distant future, similar algorithms might tell us where to work and who to marry, and also decide whether to hire us for a job, whether to give us a loan, and whether the central bank should raise the interest rate.
And if you ask why you were not given a loan, and why you the bank didn't raise the interest rate the answer will always be the same – because the computer says no. And since the limited human brain lacks sufficient biological knowledge, computing power and data – humans will simply not be able to understand the computer’s decisions.
So even in supposedly free countries, humans are likely to lose control over our own lives and also lose the ability to understand public policy.
Already now how many humans understand the financial system? Maybe one percent to be very generous. In a couple of decades, the number of humans capable of understanding the financial system will be exactly zero.
Now we humans are used to thinking about life as a drama of decision-making. What will be the meaning of human life, when most decisions are taken by algorithms? We don’t even have philosophical models to understand such an exsistence.
The usual bargain between philosophers and politicians is that philosophers have a lot of fanciful ideas, and politicians basically explain that they lack the means to implement these ideas. Now we are in an opposite situation. We are facing philosophical bankruptcy.
The twin revolutions of infotech and biotech are now giving politicians the means to create heaven or hell, but the philosophers are having trouble conceptualizing what the new heaven and the new hell will look like. And that’s a very dangerous situation.
If we fail to conceptualize the new heaven quickly enough, we might be easily misled by naïve utopias. And if we fail to conceptualize the new hell quickly enough, we might find ourselves entrapped there with no way out.
Finally, technology might disrupt not just our economy, politics and philosophy – but also our biology.
In the coming decades, AI and biotechnology will give us godlike abilities to reengineer life, and even to create completely new life-forms. After four billion years of organic life shaped by natural selection, we are about to enter a new era of inorganic life shaped by intelligent design.
Our intelligent design is going to be the new driving force of the evolution of life and in using our new divine powers of creation we might make mistakes on a cosmic scale. In particular, governments, corporations and armies are likely to use technology to enhance human skills that they need – like intelligence and discipline – while neglecting other humans skills – like compassion, artistic sensitivity and spirituality.
The result might be a race of humans who are very intelligent and very disciplined but lack compassion, lack artistic sensitivity and lack spiritual depth. Of course, this is not a prophecy. These are just possibilities. Technology is never deterministic.
In the twentieth century, people used the same industrial technology to build very different kinds of societies: fascist dictatorships, communist regimes, liberal democracies. The same thing will happen in the twenty-first Century.
AI and biotech will certainly transform the world, but we can use them to create very different kinds of societies. And if you're afraid of some of the possibilities I’ve mentioned, you can still do something about it. But to do something effective, we need global cooperation.
All three existential challenges we face are global problems that demand global solutions.
Whenever a leader says something like “My Country First!” we should remind that leader that no nation can prevent nuclear war or stop ecological collapse by itself, and no nation can regulate AI and bioengineering by itself.
Almost every country will say: “Hey, we don’t want to develop killer robots or to genetically engineer human babies. We are the good guys. But we can't trust our rivals not to do it. So we must do it first”.
If we allow such an arms race to develop in fields like AI and bioengineering, it doesn’t really matter who wins the arms race – the loser will be humanity.
Unfortunately, just when global cooperation is more needed than ever before, some of the most powerful leaders and countries in the world are now deliberately undermining global cooperation. Leaders like the US president tell us that there is an inherent contradiction between nationalism and globalism, and that we should choose nationalism and reject globalism.
But this is a dangerous mistake. There is no contradiction between nationalism and globalism. Because nationalism isn’t about hating foreigners. Nationalism is about loving your compatriots. And in the twenty-first century, in order to protect the safety and the future of your compatriots, you must cooperate with foreigners.
So in the twenty-first century, good nationalists must be also globalists. Now globalism doesn’t mean establishing a global government, abandoning all national traditions, or opening the border to unlimited immigration. Rather, globalism means a commitment to some global rules.
Rules that don’t deny the uniqueness of each nation, but only regulate the relations between nations.
And a good model is the Football World Cup.
The World Cup is a competition between nations, and people often show fierce loyalty to their national team. But at the same time the World Cup is also an amazing display of global harmony. France can't play football against Croatia unless the French and the Croatians agree on the same rules for the game. And that’s globalism in action.
If you like the World Cup – you are already a globalist.
Now hopefully, nations could agree on global rules not just for football, but also for how to prevent ecological collapse, how to regulate dangerous technologies, and how to reduce global inequality. How to make sure, for example, that AI benefits Mexican textile workers and not only American software engineers. Now of course this is going to be much more difficult than football – but not impossible. Because the impossible, well we have already accomplished the impossible.
We have already escaped the violent jungle in which we humans have lived throughout history. For thousands of years, humans lived under the law of the jungle in a condition of omnipresent war. The law of the jungle said that for every two nearby countries, there is a plausible scenario that they will go to war against each other next year. Under this law, peace meant only “the temporary absence of war”.
When there was “peace” between – say – Athens and Sparta, or France and Germany, it meant that now they are not at war, but next year they might be. And for thousands of years, people had assumed that it was impossible to escape this law.
But in the last few decades, humanity has managed to do the impossible, to break the law, and to escape the jungle. We have built the rule-based liberal global order, that despite many imperfections, has nevertheless created the most prosperous and most peaceful era in human history.
The very meaning of the word “peace” has changed.
“Peace” no longer means just the temporary absence of war. Peace now means the implausibility of war.
There are many countries which you simply cannot imagine going to war against each other next year – like France and Germany. There are still wars in some parts of the world. I come from the Middle East, so believe me, I know this perfectly well. But it shouldn't blind us to the overall global picture.
We are now living in a world in which war kills fewer people than suicide, and gunpowder is far less dangerous to your life than sugar. Most countries – with some notable exceptions like Russia – don’t even fantasize about conquering and annexing their neighbors. Which is why most countries can afford to spend maybe just about two percent of their GDP on defense, while spending far, far more on education and healthcare. This is not a jungle.
Unfortunately, we have gotten so used to this wonderful situation, that we take it for granted, and we are therefore becoming extremely careless. Instead of doing everything we can to strengthen the fragile global order, countries neglect it and even deliberately undermine it.
The global order is now like a house that everybody inhabits and nobody repairs. It can hold on for a few more years, but if we continue like this, it will collapse – and we will find ourselves back in the jungle of omnipresent war.
We have forgotten what it's like, but believe me as a historian – you don’t want to be back there. It is far, far worse than you imagine.
Yes, our species has evolved in that jungle and lived and even prospered there for thousands of years, but if we return there now, with the powerful new technologies of the twenty-first century, our species will probably annihilate itself.
Of course, even if we disappear, it will not be the end of the world. Something will survive us. Perhaps the rats will eventually take over and rebuild civilization. Perhaps, then, the rats will learn from our mistakes.
But I very much hope we can rely on the leaders assembled here, and not on the rats.
Thank you.
Who Should We Pay Attention To?
pay attention to the living
The mainstream news media is concerned with people fighting for money, power and attention. Alternative media is concerned with how and why people are fighting for money, power and attention. Social critics, educators, philosophers, engineers, scientists and various kinds of creators are concerned with exploring and articulating possible worlds where people aren't concerned with fighting for money, power and attention.
People do not know what "democracy" is, they have never experienced anything democratic. People do not know what "free agency" means, and most have never explored concepts of "free will." People are emotional and reactionary — rarely are they creative and progressive. Young people are generally emotional, reactionary, and prone to take more risks. The wealthy and powerful use their emotions to make money.
The police become the enemy when a particularly egregious insult finally ignites people's wrath. Anger usually arises after people have been meek followers contented with bread and circuses for so long that they have not been paying attention to the machinations and abuses of the ruling class. The potential for police departments to become fascist tools of the ruling class lies dormant, waiting for violence to unleash their lethal, anti-social potential.
Our social-economic system is pathological. Most people can not perceive this because to do so would be to acknowledge that one is part of the disease. People set the streets alight at night and beat each other in streetfights; during the day, people shop blissfully at the mall, play computer games, and work for corporations that dictate how they may live their lives. We do this for money, of course. We are conditioned for this.
Human beings in such circumstances resemble mindless zombies with a voracious appetite for bread and circuses.
All living beings exist in a symbiotic relationship with their environment. For human beings, a very social species, relationships are quite complicated, and the price of living in harmony with nature is high, although it may not seem so when we can extract so much material wealth and utility from nature. The cost of mindlessness for society is the blood of victims of war. The price for global, industrial consumerism is extinction. We can not avoid paying the price; nature always collects. To understand this, study the laws of thermal dynamics.
The cost of carbon emissions in our pseudo-civilization is extinction. Human society has not known civilization yet, although one might argue that we have been moving in that direction.
Revolution comes around to war, and war equals violence. History tells us this again and again. If one is willing to kill and be killed, then go ahead, surrender to the system — pay the price.
One's consciousness must take many things into account if one is to develop the creativity to move beyond these cycles.
Homo Sapiens live and die. A zombie is a virus, though not a living one, mindlessly consuming itself like a soulless machine.
It is time to resuscitate. It is time to put the soul back into the mind.
https://www.bfi.org/
First, define what you are trying to achieve.
This Is The Thing
I've enjoyed getting lost; I've enjoyed discovering whatever came of the journey. I've experienced losing what I thought I'd found – again and again. Getting lost while not knowing what I was looking for, with only the comfort of what I am, has been a privilege. Reveling in heartbreaks and letdowns, the flawed perfection theory and my wacko bona fides have always been an undeserved comfort to me. Never really suffering, never banged up abroad, awash in tears and proud of it I stumbled along in some mysterious grace. Is it the height of arrogance to know death can not humiliate me? Understanding life as a struggle for humility and knowledge as something that doesn't belong to me is not heroic. The banal beauty of it all can almost be painful it's so good.
That entropic mystery, the illusion of time is nothing as the Buddhists say. I am aware of my strange predetermined, WEIRD background that predetermines nothing in a deterministic universe. I sense the magic of consciousness I'm somehow conscious of that seems to give me agency. I intuitively feel nothing would simulate me. I know I could get bored with my self-illusion – someday. I experience the pure sense of joy that comes more often than not as an undeserved gift. Mystery, it is all a mystery. Do we all live utterly selfish lives in one way or another where we make a few people happy and disappoint the rest whose opinions and sensibilities matter only as threads in the fabric of illusion? Within the noise, if we can not find stillness, silence, and solitude, we will never truly exist. We must not merely find these qualities; we must be them. Only then can we begin to understand genuinely ecstatic connections.
Feeling connected and in love with a few marvelous people, thankfulness flows like a river of life. That's the thing.
Hong Kong, My Friend
So you tried peaceful protest in 2014, and now it's time to take the gloves off?
"The history of sea power is largely, though by no means solely, a narrative of contests between nations, of mutual rivalries, of violence frequently culminating in war. The profound influence of sea commerce upon the wealth and strength of countries was clearly seen long before the true principles which governed its growth and prosperity were detected."
"The study of history lies at the foundation of all sound military conclusions and practice." – Alfred Thayer Mahan
"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."
We have the theory of asymmetric information in economics and the balance of power theory in geopolitics. (Believe me, they are relevant to what I’m saying below.) Emotional reactions to events are never theoretical, but it's essential to understand major Theories if we are going to change things we want to change or maintain things we want to maintain.
It's almost impossible to gauge the many influences that ignite our actions, but we have to try.
We are awash in information that updates every second. It's easy to spark outrage. It's harder and harder to establish well-founded perspectives on fast-paced events.
What's happening in Hong Kong now is hard for me to write about because it's not as straight forward or as narrowly focused as many people might think. Also, I've lived and worked in Hong Kong for many years, and I like the place. I've seen it change, a lot, since I first visited with my parents in 1967. I have waxed nostalgic over many good times and circumstances that I've known here over the years.
After the failure of the "Umbrella Movement," it was inevitable that something would eventually set off more mass action as Hong Kong struggles with its identity during Beijing's ongoing takeover of the Special Administrative Region.
I won't attempt to go into detail or address the structural and political issues involved; there is no shortage of intelligent and informed opinion on the subject. I can only share my impressions as an attempt to break through my own confusion on the matter.
I have spoken to quite a few people about why they are participating in the protests. It seems to me that young people are worried about losing their unique sense of identity. They are concerned about the future. They are concerned about Hong Kong's special status, basic law, human rights, housing, the economy; all the things most people are concerned with around the world.
Take a look at what young people are doing in Russia now. They appear to have similar concerns about their elections.
My intuition tells me that there are interests on both sides of the border that may be operating in bad faith. I haven't found any specific evidence of this so far so I won't go into it. When I talk to people or read articles, it's clear that, especially among young people, trust in the police and the Hong Kong government is diminishing. It's also clear that young people I've talked with don't trust the Communist Party of China.
Young Hong Kong people have grown up in a unique environment with a culture influenced by British Crown Rule from 1847 to 1997. Things are different here. Over the decades of my activities in Hong Kong, I've always found it to be a friendly, open place where a person can do business and live life. It's not a perfect place, no place is, but it can be an excellent place to live and work; it has been for me.
Hong Kong is a complex, international community, open to the world. Its legal system is easy to navigate. Real estate is king. It's gone through many cycles of economic development and reinvented itself many times over its relatively short history. When mainland China opened up, Hong Kong was an essential element of China's strategy for economic growth. Today, so many things have changed. The Pearl River Delta region is a true mega-city. The pace and breadth of development in the region are impressive. I first visited China in 1980, and I can tell you that China is like a timelapse movie. In the late nineties, I'd look out the window of my old apartment in Shanghai watching highway construction; the highway was going up so fast that it seemed that if you took a train to Hangzhou for the weekend, it would be completed when you got back. Hong Kong is a perpetual construction site. The place where I live in Hong Kong is growing so fast that I sometimes wonder what will come of it all. Make debt through development to make money, I guess. Read, "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" by John Perkins, and I think you'll understand where the CCP got their Belt and Road idea. When people are indebted to you, you have "leverage." Hong Kong is continually reclaiming land so they can build on it and increase revenue. Amidst all of this glorious development, the world-class shopping malls, five-star hotels, and private housing estates, most people live modest lives in small concrete apartments.
Most Hong Kong people seem relatively content, no matter how hard life is. Hong Kong has always felt like a safe city to me, a place where you can stagger home blind drunk and not get mugged. It's a place where you can enjoy relationships with people from around the world. It has beautiful places to hike, some attractive beaches, good local food, and lots of shopping areas. Hong Kong's location is also ideal for doing business in Asia.
It's clear to me that Hong Kong people desire to maintain their unique Hong Kong identity. People don't want to become "mainland Chinese." They like their educational system; they enjoy their open connection to the world. They will tolerate the inequality, crowded conditions, the lack of space, and so on if they can just be allowed to maintain their unique culture.
Unfortunately, culture is an emergent thing, always changing, never fixed. Most people will know that Chinese history is long, complicated, and profound. China is becoming a superpower again, and there has never been more at stake. If things go well, the world may benefit from China's new status; if not, we could see another world war. There exists a naturally pressurized context that includes forces way beyond its borders. I've read quite a bit over the years about China, and I still feel way out of my depth when I think about current events in light of the geopolitical ramifications of the ongoing "great game" as dominant players game theory their power plays in the Asia region.
Below are some of my concerns.
In places where demonstrations aren't regularly taking place, Hong Kong is doing its best to maintain business as usual. Is business as usual, a good thing?
I find the motivations of the protestors to be a bit naive. I can't see how their current tactics will meet with a positive result. I understand, however, that they feel that there is nothing else they can do, they feel as if they have found only dead ends down every path. In my opinion, this is evidence of a lack of imagination and sophistication in their leadership. Perhaps there isn't any leadership.
The protests seem like emotional reactions to events and a perceived loss of identity, not strategically designed to engage in a practical course of action that might achieve positive engagement from the CCP.
They are compelled to struggle, but, unfortunately, they most likely won't achieve success. And yet, as Chris Hedges says, "I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists." I'm not saying China is a fascist State. One could say, "We fight for our freedom and identity not because we will win, but because we value our freedom and identity." They are worried that they are losing something precious that they will never get back once lost; this is a compelling reason to "revolt."
The global socio-economic system is unsustainable, any local, conventional action intended to reform the system while maintaining the status quo is doomed to fail. As it collapses, only terrible things can happen to our environment, our ecosystem, our habitat, culture, and health. It's time to recognize that what's happening in Hong Kong, the United States, the U.K., Russia, Central America, Venezuela, Brazil, India, and many other places in the world stems from the same baked in causes. We need a global, coordinated effort to address structural issues and redesign our economic system, emphasizing sustainability, health, and justice for all. Of course, global efforts start locally.
Can we do that? Probably not but its a betrayal of everything good about Homo Sapiens if we don't try.
Climate change is already changing everything anyway, and we can't stop that no matter what we do so we might as well prepare for it for the consequences and allocate the resources needed to continue the journey towards civilization. I don't think we are genuinely civilized yet.
We are living in a period where understanding the big-picture takes on enormous importance. We have to understand the forest and the trees.
We must avoid global conflict and work together across nations to solve problems. A global conflict would be the end of our species. We don't seem to be concerned with biodiversity or the sixth extinction, but shouldn't the lives of our grandchildren matter enough to transcend our differences for peace and long-term prosperity and health?
Hong Kong must find a way to work successfully with the CCP. Gunboats are not coming to Hong Kong's rescue. If people feel the government isn't prepared to help at all, and therefore limit their tactics, it's going to be a long hard road until they finally arrive at an unknowable destination.
There are things worth fighting for, and there are aspects of culture worth preserving, but things are always changing and how you flow with the changes makes all the difference.
I'm hoping people take a break from breaking things on the street and form community comities where they can work on ways to achieve a better Hong Kong by analyzing history, geopolitics, economics, society, culture, technology, science, etc. Young people need a coherent strategy that has a chance of success. I hope they endeavor to come up with proposals that are so good they can't be ignored. Focus on values that are profound and indispensable. The more informed the efforts are, the more likely we are to create long-term solutions.
Also, I hope they focus on the real, structural problems, identify roadblocks, understand their blind spots and the blind spots of their opposition, comprehend the limitations of all sides, and work to help each other overcome all challenges. I'm afraid that if young people aren't patient enough to collaborate, they will ultimately lose the fight.
When Hell breaks loose, it will be too late for anything but panic and suffering. Until then, we must be positive and keep searching for answers.
I know people here believe that the government isn't listening. That's frustrating, indeed. Sometimes when people aren't listening, it's best to find new questions, broaden the conversation, establish common ground, and let parties know that you are in it for the long run and you will do what it takes to find solutions.
More unrest may have horrible unintended consequences. There is a massive power imbalance, and we should recognize this. None of this is to say that people here shouldn't continue to struggle for what they believe is essential.
I feel that China doesn't want things to break down. It benefits no one if Hong Kong stumbles into chaos. Don't give up trying new things. It's not helpful to believe that one's tried everything and nothing will work except unrest.
Here's an excellent resource for peaceful civil disobedience strategies.
About The Wildfire Project
Our world is shifting rapidly. All the systems that shape our lives are in crisis or collapse. Wildfire supports social movements to navigate this time, and adapt and grow through it, by stepping into collective agency in the face of physical, political, and spiritual violence.
Wildfire does more than just activist facilitation. We support organizational transformation as we all navigate the unstable terrain of change. Our Partnerships take grassroots movement groups through creative, experiential, long-term processes that help them shift their own group cultures through cycles of practice. This includes moving through generative conflict; connection to land, our bodies, ritual and song; grounding the work in study, history, and political education; navigating power, rank, and leadership; building concrete strategy and organizing skills; finding balance between purpose & belonging; assisting interpersonal transformation, and building cultures of curiosity learning.
Our programs prepare these groups, and individuals within them, to lead grassroots social movements toward their own potential – to help us all become become big, bold, visionary, and strategic enough to build the world we all deserve.
In addition to our core Partner Programming (see Partner Groups below for more), we also coordinate fellowships and convenings, offer coaching, and facilitate coalitions, single workshops & retreats, pop-ed curriculum development, and meetings for groups on a shorter-term basis.
Civil disobedience can work, but it's a marathon, not a sprint, it takes time and requires sacrifices. A sense of urgency is essential, at this point incremental change may not save us but we have to understand that to achieve success we can't merely go on with our comfortable lives expecting a better status quo than the one that's lead to all the problems in the first place. Also, we can't rely on "creative destruction." Sometimes, when we break things, they remain broken.
Of course, if you are content, maybe nothing can move you. Many people are lazy and fearful of change. Some people have it so good that they will do anything to defend their position. Be careful while backing these people into a corner.
Most importantly, if you are going to break the system, you have to have something better to replace it. We need vision and concrete ways to implement our ideas. We have to design and engineer a new way of living in this world, and we have to convince influential players that change is for their benefit as well.
I'm not optimistic. We are relatively spoiled people, unaccustomed to discomfort. Most of us would settle for some more money and a few more material possessions. If the lights went out for a month, many of us wouldn't survive. Most of us have no idea what keeps the lights on anyway. We could care less about our environment as long as we can go shopping and watch Netflix after work. We are more concerned with who will win the football match than we are about whether our companions feel loved.
I have noticed while doing business here, that when people are focused on making money, everything else in their lives is secondary. They are myopic, only concerned with power, prestige, security, and the things money can buy. We fly off to beautiful places only to trash them for a selfie and to say that we've been there. We rush here and there and lose ourselves in noise.
It's time to reevaluate everything and get serious about working together to make things better for everyone. Of course, if you think things are great and can only get better than you probably think people like me are insane. Well, sit back, enjoy the show, and come what may...
One more thing, when you step out into the streets to fight, you have to understand that you might get hurt. It has to be worth it to you. How long can you handle the pain before you give in? How many sacrifices are you prepared to make and for what exactly. What are you building? What do you want? Why do you want it? How are you going to get it? How are you going to maintain it? The answers to these questions must be crystal clear. Don't think that they are simple questions, the more you know, the more complex these questions become.
Regardless of how you feel about these questions, you'll need to train to be tough. Things are not going to get more comfortable under our current socio-economic way of doing things. New challenges are coming faster than ever. These days, if we want to increase our agency, our ability to make good choices that have a positive impact on life and our future, we have to learn new things continually. We even have to learn to defend ourselves from progress. It's true; certain kinds of rapid growth aren't always good for us. Our world has never been more complex than it is today. All the great things we've developed in our history could disappear in a moment if we aren't careful.
My heart goes out to the young people here; I tear up after I talk with them. They seem so innocent to me. I'm getting old.
One has to be reasonably sophisticated to make good things happen these days. Sure, we can appeal to our basest emotions and move the masses, but what will that achieve? Power? Power for whom? Today, more than ever, we need to know how things work and the consequences of our actions. And, above all, we need each other.
Good luck, my friend, all the best, Hong Kong.
I always wonder about the human rights record of the U.S.A. Never the less, some organizations are keenly interested in what happens in Hong Kong.
Ask Your Representatives to Co-Sponsor Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019
Below is a view from a Beijing media organization as penned by Tom Fowdy, a British political and international relations analyst and a graduate of Durham and Oxford universities.
Just what do people in Hong Kong want?
Given this, whilst news outlets are portraying events in the territory as a noble and chauvinistic struggle between good and evil, the reality is that this is a much more all-embracing social conflict whereby a sense of local exceptionalism is unable to come to terms with the pragmatic implications of its own existence.
However, uprooting the territory and inducing political chaos is not going to change the status quo. Instead, it will only serve to increase the sentiment in Beijing that Hong Kong as it stands is a liability to the stability of the country and region.
I often wonder what freedom is in various contexts. I wonder what democracy means to most people. I wonder what free will is and all sorts of things. I watch cycles of unrest happen over and over again, everywhere. I live through economic bubbles and crashes. I watch wars, police actions and social turmoil on T.V. I know the ice is melting in the Arctic and on Greenland and I know that’s not a good thing. I wonder if consumerism makes anyone happy. I’ve come to believe that the way things are organized is far from optimal. I’m constantly improving the discipline required to operate my bull shit detector kit. My epistemic humility grows by the day. I question the value of hope. I am more focused on what can be done and on whether people can find ways of doing things together. I know that human life is about community, sharing and interdependence. Perhaps the values that underpin that will make a comeback in the Anthropocene when bread and circuses had never been more exciting, entertaining and in some cases enlightening.
"Final Evasion" will not be the final scandal unless we do some real work, now.
Horrific scandals of corruption and greed emerge into public scrutiny almost monthly. The amount of information about these crimes is voluminous and factual and yet, people yawn, go fishing and wait for the next horrific scandal as if it were an episode of House of Cards. I can only surmise that we are all so utterly programmed to conform to this system that we can hardly think about the ramifications of our pathological culture of greed to our own families.
These tragic crimes are in your face, and we only seem to care when it's someone close to us that gets destroyed. What's worse is that we don't do a damn thing to reform the root causes of our affliction. It's as if an advertising agency convinced all of us that cancer and war are great things for society because a few big businesses become wildly profitable, and a few people grow super rich. Wait a minute, not "as if," this is our society; this is what we tolerate year after year.
Please read the article below. Are we not shocked? What does that say about us?
For 30 years, prosecutors and victims tried to hold Jeffrey Epstein to account. At every turn, he slipped away.
By Marc Fisher, Jonathan O'Connell
At the beginning, middle and end of his career, Jeffrey Epstein faced a reckoning with his misdeeds. At every stage, he managed to avoid the efforts of prosecutors and victims to confront him with his financial chicanery and sexual abuses. On Saturday, he apparently chose to end his life rather than face what he had done.
“That money would have been my real retirement,” said Veriena Braune, a 91-year-old retired teacher in Granbury, Tex., who invested all of her savings — $112,000 — in bonds that a young Epstein sold for his partner, Steven Hoffenberg. She lost every penny of the money.
“Somebody should know: that Epstein did a number on a little teacher in Texas,” Braune said.
Hoffenberg, who headed up the investment scheme and spent 18 years in prison because of it, said in an interview with The Washington Post this week that Epstein was “the architect of the scam.” Federal prosecutors agreed. Yet Epstein was never charged. His name, initially included in prosecutors’ descriptions of the scheme, quickly vanished from the record.
“I thought Jeffrey was the best hustler on two feet,” Hoffenberg said. “Talent, charisma, genius, criminal mastermind. We had a thing that could make a lot of money. We called it Ponzi.”
Hoffenberg pleaded guilty in 1995 to mail fraud, obstruction of justice and tax evasion in two scams — one designed to misuse the assets of two Illinois insurance companies and the other fleecing more than $460-million from about 200,000 investors who bought notes and bonds from Hoffenberg’s Towers Financial Corp.
“Last year, I got a call at home from no less than Steven Hoffenberg,” said Marvin Gerber, another victim of the scam and a tour operator on Long Island who lost about $250,000 that he’d invested in promissory notes that Epstein and Hoffenberg were selling. “He said he sat in jail for years trying to figure out how he was going to get the money to give back to the people who lost it. He said he was going to try to get it from the guy who absconded with the money – Epstein. But of course, I got nothing. From the very start, I was screwed.”
Last year, two of the victims in the scam filed suit against Epstein seeking the return of their original investments. Two months later, they dropped their suit.
'Genius' with 'no moral compass'
Epstein’s career in finance started at Bear Stearns, the investment banking firm that hired him away from his job teaching math at the tony Dalton School. (It may have helped that he came to Bear Stearns after having tutored the son of the firm’s chairman.) He quickly rose to become a limited partner but left the company suddenly in 1981. Epstein later testified in a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation that some people at the firm thought his departure had to do with “an illicit affair with a secretary,” but Epstein said he had been questioned by his bosses about an improper loan he’d made to a friend to buy stock.
He spent the next few years on his own, trying to build a money management practice known as J. Epstein & Co. In 1987, he met Hoffenberg.
In the late ’80s, Hoffenberg was, by his own account, a schemer. “I was always under investigation,” he said. From afar, he seemed successful – he briefly owned the New York Post, and he rented a floor in Trump Tower (“Donald’s crowd was my crowd,” Hoffenberg said). But much of Hoffenberg’s career involved schemes to separate investors from their money. He figured Epstein had the smarts to help him do that on a much bigger scale.
Hoffenberg said he was introduced to Epstein by Douglas Leese, a British arms dealer. “The guy’s a genius,” Hoffenberg said Leese told him. “He’s great at selling securities. And he has no moral compass.” Leese did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Between about 1987 and 1993, Epstein worked for Hoffenberg, who paid him $25,000 a month and gave him a $2-million loan in 1988 that Epstein would never have to pay back, according to court documents.
Hoffenberg’s firm, Towers Financial, started out as a collection agency, buying bills that were owed to other firms and collecting as much of the unpaid debts as it could. In 1986, after adding business units in finance and leasing, Towers reported nearly 1,200 employees and nationwide sales of $95-million.
Hoffenberg — like Epstein a Brooklyn native who never finished college — was on his way to acquiring many of the trappings of New York’s financial elite, including chauffeured luxury cars, speedboats and a 72-foot yacht.
But in 1987, Towers began constructing one of the largest frauds in history. The scheme began when Towers acquired the parent of two insurance companies, Associated Life Insurance and United Fire. Then, Towers launched a takeover attempt against Pan Am, the once-proud but then-struggling airline.
To boost its chances, Towers told the SEC that it had an expert on its team: Epstein. Towers called him “a financial advisor who has been familiar with Pan Am for approximately six years” and was now advising Towers.
What neither regulators nor Pan Am knew was that, as Hoffenberg admitted later in court, Towers had begun devising a classic Ponzi scheme, named for a swindler who defrauded investors by moving money back and forth to create the false impression that profit was being made.
After acquiring the insurance companies, Towers began siphoning funds from them to make its bid for Pan Am look viable. Hoffenberg and Epstein also began pulling out hundreds of thousands of dollars for themselves, court documents show. Hoffenberg issued more than 50 checks from the insurance companies to pay his stepdaughter’s tuition, expenses on his private plane and monthly $25,000 checks to Epstein.
“I advanced money to Epstein perpetually because I thought this thing could work,” Hoffenberg said. “He could sell anything. People loved him.”
When the airline takeover failed, the insurance companies faltered. Then, in 1988, Towers took another $1.8-million from the insurers and used it to attempt another airline takeover, of Emery Air Freight. Towers filed fake financial information to accountants and investors to cover its tracks, according to court records.
That takeover also failed, leaving the insurance companies insolvent. The looting of the two insurers left 4,000 Illinois customers out $9-million that had been set aside to cover their medical bills. Another 2,200 Ohio customers lost about $1.8-million.
The IL Dept. of Insurance placed the companies in receivership. The state and the SEC sued Towers.
But Hoffenberg and Epstein weren’t done. According to prosecutors, they expanded the fraud dramatically. Beginning in 1988, Towers began selling more than $270-million worth of promissory notes, offering returns of 12 to 16 percent and marketing them largely to people of modest means, among them widows, retirees and people with disabilities.
Hoffenberg and his company used several million dollars from those investors to show Illinois regulators that they were putting sufficient capital into the insurance companies to guarantee that those insurers could cover claims. But that money actually wasn’t available to pay claims because it had been used in the efforts to take over the airlines.
“I call it a turnover,” Hoffenberg said this week. “You raise a dollar here, you pay a dollar there. Epstein was brilliant at this.”
Sometimes, the machinations went very wrong. The money Towers used to try to buy control of Emery Air Freight was lost when Emery’s stock price plummeted.
By 1993, prosecutors in Illinois and New York who had spent years investigating Hoffenberg’s companies were ready to spell out their findings.
In front of a grand jury in Chicago, federal prosecutor Edward Kohler walked Hoffenberg, who had just agreed to cooperate with the government, through the design of the scam. In the narrative Kohler laid out, Epstein was the technical wizard who kept the money moving around to support Hoffenberg’s various schemes.
Over and over, Kohler asked Hoffenberg whether Epstein had designed Towers’ scams. Hoffenberg affirmed the prosecutor’s story at every turn.
“Jeffrey Epstein was the person in charge of the transactions,” Hoffenberg said.
“Epstein was trying to manipulate the price of the stock?” Kohler asked.
“Yes,” Hoffenberg replied.
“You didn’t object to that, sir?”
“No,” Hoffenberg said.
That was in November 1993. Three months later, Epstein’s name disappeared from the case.
Beginnings of mysterious wealth
In court hearings, FBI reports and affidavits throughout 1994 and 1995, prosecutors and FBI agents referred to Hoffenberg’s “co-conspirators,” “confederates” and “others.”
A review of court files finds no further reference to Epstein as the case moved toward a conclusion that convicted Hoffenberg and sent him to prison for 18 years.
Kohler, still a prosecutor in the US attorney’s office in Chicago, declined to comment on why Epstein was removed from the case.
“All I can tell you is it was 25 years ago,” Kohler said this week. “I really haven’t thought about it since then.”
Other prosecutors who worked on the cases said that Hoffenberg was always their primary target and that Epstein was removed from the government’s narrative because he cooperated with prosecutors.
“Epstein was not the focus of what we were doing,” said Barry Gross, who represented the Illinois Department of Insurance in the case against Hoffenberg. “We were trying to take over these insurance companies and eliminate the Hoffenberg management to protect the policyholders. Epstein was someone Hoffenberg favored, and he transferred substantial insurance company funds to Epstein. If you’re looking at Epstein’s mysterious accumulation of wealth, it sounds right that this is the place to start. But Epstein was never our focus.”
Hoffenberg also cooperated with the government, beginning in March 1993. But his deal collapsed in early 1994, when, according to testimony by prosecutor Daniel Nardello, Hoffenberg violated the agreement by starting three new collection agencies and lying about it to prosecutors — effectively continuing the scheme that got him in trouble in the first place. Through a spokesman, Nardello declined to comment.
One month after the government presented its version of the case with Epstein as a major player, Hoffenberg admitted to prosecutors that “he had lied to the government in an effort to find a way to support his family,” Nardello wrote in an affidavit. Nardello moved to terminate the government’s deal with Hoffenberg.
Amy Millard, a federal prosecutor in New York who handled the case during sentencing, said Hoffenberg’s repeated lying made it difficult to rely on anything he said. She pushed to revoke his bail and move forward with the charges.
“I did not think he was a credible witness,” she said. Hoffenberg was hospitalized with depression in 1970; a psychiatric exam when he was sentenced in 1996 concluded that although he was narcissistic, he was “well oriented” and not “disturbed or impaired.”
Why Hoffenberg did not give prosecutors details of Epstein’s role in the scheme as part of his bid for a reduced sentence remains something of a mystery.
Gary H. Baise, a Washington lawyer who represented Hoffenberg during his incarceration, said the judge in the case, Robert W. Sweet, told him years later that the purpose of the long sentence was to get Hoffenberg to give up co-conspirators. Sweet died this year.
“Judge Sweet did not like the idea that he had sentenced Steven to 18 years, but he said, ‘By golly, I was trying to break him,’ ” Baise said. “He couldn’t figure out why Steve didn’t blow the whistle on Epstein or others.”
Baise said he also couldn’t figure it out. Clearly, any friendship between the two men had ended. After Hoffenberg was released from prison in 2013, Baise and his wife met Hoffenberg in New York, where the newly freed man unexpectedly offered to take them to Epstein’s townhouse. Baise said a young woman greeted them at the door, took their names and disappeared inside. When she returned, Baise said, she slammed the door in their faces.
Four other Towers executives were convicted of roles in the fraud, generally serving little or no jail time.
Hoffenberg said he had decided he could not rat out a partner. He said variously that he was under threat from Epstein to remain silent and that prosecutors faced similar pressure to drop Epstein from their case. Hoffenberg offered no evidence for his allegation, which Nardello, the prosecutor at the time, called “desperate and ludicrous. . . . Hoffenberg’s insinuations reflect only on his apparent ability to project his corrupt view of the world onto others.”
Hoffenberg said Epstein’s role in the scam eats at him. “He got away with it because I didn’t cooperate,” Hoffenberg said. “How could you remove the architect of the crime from the story of the crime? I screwed myself, but I also got in bed with the wrong set of criminals. The whole thing blew up, but he wasn’t touched.”
Victims' Last Hope
Frail and in ill-health, Hoffenberg says his last goal in life is to reimburse investors who lost money in the Towers scam. He intends to do that with Epstein’s money. “Every dollar Epstein has raised since leaving me has been tainted because everything came from the money he stole in Towers,” Hoffenberg said.
In 2016, Hoffenberg and some of his victims joined forces to file suit against Epstein, seeking restitution. But when a judge expressed skepticism that Hoffenberg could legally be part of a class action with his own victims, Hoffenberg withdrew the suit.
Some of the victims say they believe Hoffenberg is truly remorseful. Others aren’t buying it.
“The concept of Hoffenberg being penitent is pure theater,” said Gross, the lawyer who represented Illinois in the insurance case.
“I’m not looking to clear my name,” said Hoffenberg, who was interviewed in his room at Stamford Hospital in Connecticut, where he was awaiting surgery. “I’m 74, I’m in a hospital bed, what do I have to gain? I owe people half a billion dollars. The only way they get paid is with the money that Epstein took, which originally comes from the Towers scam.”
But although Hoffenberg claims to know where Epstein stashed his money overseas, he has not contacted law enforcement and doesn’t plan to. “They know my number,” he said.
Epstein’s death by hanging in his cell in a New York jail appears to be a macabre final escape in a long series of evasions by a fabulously wealthy financier and convicted sex offender who used his private jet and Palm Beach parties to lure presidents and plutocrats into his orbit.
Equal parts charismatic and devious, he was a Wall Street washout with a knack for numbers and, according to those who worked with him, a mind set on deceit. From his beginnings as a college dropout who scored a job as a math teacher at a Manhattan prep school to his career as a millionaire adviser to some of the nation’s top corporate executives and politicians, Epstein acted as if the rules of life did not apply to him.
A decade ago, he avoided a long prison sentence even after police and prosecutors amassed an enormous array of evidence showing that he regularly abused girls at his Palm Beach mansion and on a Caribbean island that he’d bought. In that case, as at several pivotal points throughout his life, Epstein avoided the law by deploying some of the nation’s most famous lawyers and leaning on friendships with powerful figures in politics, business and academia.
Epstein’s ability to slip away even when those around him are held to account reaches back to well before he’d accumulated any fortune. Epstein, who died at 66, reported to federal authorities recently that he was worth $559 million, but some of his associates contend he had much more than that hidden overseas; others wonder whether he had anything close to that sum. Whatever the truth, he worked to build the impression that he was wealthy and influential, helping him connect with powerful people who for many years defended his character when rumors emerged that he was abusing women and girls.
The story of Epstein’s first great escape is a tale of financial wizardry and brazen criminality, in which hundreds of thousands of Americans lost their retirement money, their life’s savings, on an investment intended to enrich only its creators.
If you want this destruction to end and believe that people and society must be better, more morally and ethically grounded, then read the following book and give your train of thought a healthy upgrade.
Understand The Contradictions
I know "white" men in Hong Kong who are racist (although they pretend not to know it) and misogynistic (although they would deny it). They would feel much better in a "white" country, although, ironically, they livein an Asian country. They believe that the only thing a woman is good for is cheating on their wives. Some of these men don't work; their wives support them. There is a contradiction there, no?
U.S. candidates for President talk about saving capitalism by paying people a universal, basic income while ignoring structural issues that produced inequality, underemployment, and poverty. They can't see the contradictions within their non-solutions.
Below is an excerpt from Niall Ferguson's book, "The War Of The World – History's Age of Hatred."
This list is from a Nazi handbook for young couples produced in 1933.
1. Remember that you are German.
2. If of sound stock, do not remain unwed.
3. Keep your body pure.
4. Keep spirit and soul pure.
5. As a German, choose someone of German or Nordic blood for your partner.
6. When choosing your spouse, look into their lineage.
7. Health is a precondition of external beauty.
8. Marry only out of love.
9. Seek not a playmate but a partner in marriage.
10. Wish for as many children as possible
The Nazis knew that they would be needing cannon fodder and they also needed an enemy they could focus on and rob. They found that in their highly integrated Jewish community. You know what followed.
What do you suppose “pure” meant to the authors of the handbook? Search your spirit and soul and leave your answer in the comment section below.
Ferguson's book is far from perfect, but it's a fascinating read and worth your time, in my opinion. The shocking thing about reading a history book like this now is how many aspects of the cultures it describes are echoed in today's extremist rhetoric.
If you don’t read the book, please read this review of the book by Nicholas Humphrey: Killer Instinct: a Review of Niall Ferguson's "World of War: History's Century of Hatred".
And from Nazis handbooks on marriage, I'd like to jump ahead to our present-day Alt-Right. Please watch the video below about why some women are spokespeople for the Alt-Right.
Did you understand the contradictions she describes in the video? I hope you did. Either these women are simply opportunists entertaining a niche market, or they are very conflicted. At the very least their logic is tragically flawed.
The next video talks about the flawed logic of our leaders who are dead set on ignoring structural issues in favor of tired tropes of the past. They are ineffectual, and nothing but mass action will discourage them from the delusion that they are fit to lead. As you watch, please be mindful of the contradictions the commentators are pointing out.
Education may not be a panacea, but it would greatly help society if voters educated themselves.
Be always mindful of contradictions.
If You Can't Criticize Your Government You Aren't Free
I had to post this segment of The Jimmy Dore show because its main point is absolutely on the mark. Representatives are supposed to criticize the government. If you live in a government without representatives who are critical of the government, you are living in a dictatorship.
A few quick takeaways off the tops of my head:
Rand Paul is a hypocrite who takes Ayn Rand too seriously
People in the USA don't now history
Americans are very easily manipulated
The vast majority of people in the USA are immigrants (define immigrants)
California was part of Mexico before it was taken by the United States
The United States hasn't done working people any favors for decades
They mentioned a lot of excellent books that every American should read
I could go on with the list; the segment is full of insight from beginning to end. I have to add that it's disappointing that so many people in the United States are militantly, and stubbornly willfully-ignorant. People in the United States are infected by an ideology that they don't understand. The problem is how to develop an intellectually curious and active society again.
Why Will There Be A World War In The 21st Century?
This is an important presentation that everyone should watch. We need to understand these things if we are going to avoid catastrophe. The world you know was created by the science of WAR. The geniuses you worship are only marketing guys. Do you want more control over your life and future? Understand what this man is saying.
Beau Provides a Fresh Voice of Compassionate Reason
I have to share this. I feel what he’s saying in the depths of my mind and spirit, in my body and soul. If America is ever great, it’s the young people today that will make it so. They will create a new story that will develop into a truly great country that will help our human family achieve greatness. Finally.
InterReflections – A Film by Peter Joseph
If you can afford it, please support this film. It will be a big step up from his other films and should have much greater impact.
2019 video update by Peter Joseph regarding the long-delayed InterReflections film trilogy project. www.interreflectionsmovie.com
It’s Time To Change The Rhyme
A SAID POEM
for Ronald and Beatrice Gross
"I have seen the future, and it doesn't work," said Robert Fulford.
"If there weren't any Poland, there wouldn't be any Poles," said Alfred Jarry.
"We aren't making the film they contracted for," said Robert Flaherty.
"History never repeats itself, but it rhymes," said Mark Twain.
In 1845 an interesting thematic precursor using the descriptive phrase "mystic rhyme" was printed in the publication "The Christian Remembrancer":
"The vision recurs; the eastern sun has a second rise; history repeats her tale unconsciously, and goes off into a mystic rhyme; ages are prototypes of other ages, and the winding course of time brings us round to the same spot again."
I was going to quiz you, but I decided to get straight to the point. Below are two inaugural speeches; the first from Franklin Delano Roosevelt; the latter from Adolf Hitler. Both of these speeches profoundly inspired their respective constituencies. The rhetoric echoes a dire sense of emergency.
Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes administers the constitutional oath of office to Franklin Delano Roosevelt as it occurred on March 4, 1933. President Roosevelt's inaugural address follows.
President Hoover, Mr. Chief Justice, my friends: This is a day of national consecration, and I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our nation impels.
This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.
So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear. . .is fear itself. . . nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days. In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels: taxes have risen, our ability to pay has fallen, government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income, the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade, the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side, farmers find no markets for their produce, the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.
More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.
Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failures and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True, they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money.
Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored conditions. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers.
They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers have fled their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.
The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money, it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow-men.
Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be values only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit, and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing.
Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This nation asks for action, and action now.
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously.
It can be accompanied in part by direct recruiting by the government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our national resources.
Hand in hand with this, we must frankly recognize the over-balance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land.
The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities.
It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss, through foreclosure, of our small homes and our farms.
It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced.
It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character.
There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act, and act quickly.
Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order: there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.
These are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the several States.
Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo.
Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are, to point in time and necessity, secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy.
I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.
The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic.
It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in and parts of the United States. . . a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer.
It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that the recovery will endure.
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor. . .the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others. . .the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.
If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize, as we have never realized before, our interdependence on each other: that we cannot merely take, but we must give as well, that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective.
We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline because it makes possibly a leadership which aims at a larger good.
This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will hind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.
With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people, dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.
Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors.
Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form.
That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.
It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.
I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require.
But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me.
I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis. . .broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.
For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.
We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of national unity, with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values, with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike.
We aim at the assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.
We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action.
They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I will take it.
In this dedication of a nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us! May He guide me in the days to come!
BERLIN, REICHSTAG
SPEECH OF MARCH 23, 1933
IN NOVEMBER, 1918, Marxist organizations seized the executive power by means of a revolution. The monarchs were dethroned, the authorities of the Reich and of the States removed from office, and thereby a breach of the Constitution was committed. The success of the revolution in a material sense protected the guilty parties from the hands of the law. They sought to justify it morally by asserting that Germany or its Government bore the guilt for the outbreak of the War.
This assertion was deliberately and actually untrue. In consequence, however, these untrue accusations in the interest of our former enemies led to the severest oppression of the entire German nation and to the breach of the assurances given to us in Wilson's fourteen points, and so for Germany, that is to say the working classes of the German people, to a time of infinite misfortune....
The splitting up of the nation into groups with irreconcilable views, systematically brought about by the false doctrines of Marxism, means the destruction of the basis of a possible communal life.... It is only the creation of a real national community, rising above the interests and differences of rank and class, that can permanently remove the source of nourishment of these aberrations of the human mind. The establishment of such a solidarity of views in the German body corporate is all the more important, for it is only thereby that the possibility is provided of maintaining friendly relations with foreign Powers without regard to the tendencies or general principles by which they are dominated, for the elimination of communism in Germany is a purely domestic German affair.
Simultaneously with this political purification of our public life, the Government of the Reich will undertake a thorough moral purging of the body corporate of the nation. The entire educational system, the theater, the cinema, literature, the Press, and the wireless - all these will be used as means to this end and valued accordingly. They must all serve for the maintenance of the eternal values present in the essential character of our people. Art will always remain the expression and the reflection of the longings and the realities of an era. The neutral international attitude of aloofness is rapidly disappearing. Heroism is coming forward passionately and will in future shape and lead political destiny. It is the task of art to be the expression of this determining spirit of the age. Blood and race will once more become the source of artistic intuition....
Our legal institutions must serve above all for the maintenance of this national community. The irremovableness of the judges must ensure a sense of responsibility and the exercise of discretion in their judgments in the interests of society. Not the individual but the nation as a whole alone can be the center of legislative solicitude. High treason and treachery to the nation will be ruthlessly eradicated in the future. The foundations of the existence of justice cannot be other than the foundations of the existence of the nation.
The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, is creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life.
The advantages of a personal and political nature that might arise from compromising with atheistic organizations would not outweigh the consequences which would become apparent in the destruction of general moral basic values. The national Government regards the two Christian confessions as the weightiest factors for the maintenance of our nationality. It will respect the agreements concluded between it and the federal States. Their rights are not to be infringed. But the Government hopes and expects that the work on the national and moral regeneration of our nation which it has made its task will, on the other hand, be treated with the same respect....
Great are the tasks of the national Government in the sphere of economic life.
Here all action must be governed by one law: the people does not live for business, and business does not exist for capital; but capital serves business, and business serves the people. In principle, the Government will not protect the economic interests of the German people by the circuitous method of an economic bureaucracy to be organized by the State, but by the utmost furtherance of private initiative and by the recognition of the rights of property....
The Government will systematically avoid currency experiments. We are faced above all by two economic tasks of the first magnitude. The salvation of the German farmer must be achieved at all costs....
Furthermore, it is perfectly clear to the national Government that the final removal of the distress both in agricultural business and in that of the towns depends on the absorption of the army of the unemployed in the process of production. This constitutes the second of the great economic tasks. It can only be solved by a general appeasement, in applying sound natural economic principles and all measures necessary, even if, at the time, they cannot reckon with any degree of popularity. The providing of work and the compulsory labor service are, in this connection, only individual measures within the scope of the entire action proposed....
We are aware that the geographic position of Germany, with her lack of raw materials, does not fully permit of economic self-sufficiency for the Reich. It cannot be too often emphasized that nothing is further from the thoughts of the Government of the Reich than hostility to exporting. We are fully aware that we have need of the connection with the outside world, and that the marketing of German commodities in the world provides a livelihood for many millions of our fellow-countrymen.
We also know what are the conditions necessary for a sound exchange of services between the nations of the world. For Germany has been compelled for years to perform services without receiving an equivalent, with the result that the task of maintaining Germany as an active partner in the exchange of commodities is not so much one of commercial as of financial policy. So long as we are not accorded a reasonable settlement of our foreign debts corresponding to our economic capacity, we are unfortunately compelled to maintain our foreign-exchange control. The Government of the Reich is, for that reason, also compelled to maintain the restrictions on the efflux of capital across the frontiers of Germany....
The protection of the frontiers of the Reich and thereby of the lives of our people and the existence of our business is now in the hands of the Reichswehr, which, in accordance with the terms imposed upon us by the Treaty of Versailles, is to be regarded as the only really disarmed army in the world. In spite of its enforced smallness and entirely insufficient armament, the German people may regard their Reichswehr with proud satisfaction. This little instrument of our national self-defence has come into being under the most difficult conditions. The spirit imbuing it is that of our best military traditions. The German nation has thus fulfilled with painful conscientiousness the obligations imposed upon it by the Peace Treaty, indeed, even the replacement of ships for our fleet then sanctioned has, I may perhaps be allowed to say, unfortunately, only been carried out to a small extent.
For years Germany has been waiting in vain for the fulfillment of the promise of disarmament made to her by the others. It is the sincere desire of the national Government to be able to refrain from increasing our army and our weapons, insofar as the rest of the world is now also ready to fulfill its obligations in the matter of radical disarmament. For Germany desires nothing except an equal right to live and equal freedom.
In any case the national Government will educate the German people in this spirit of a desire for freedom. The national honor, the honor of our army and the ideal of freedom must once more become sacred to the German people!
The German nation wishes to live in peace with the rest of the world. But it is for this very reason that the Government of the Reich will employ every means to obtain the final removal of the division of the nations of the world into two categories. The keeping open of this wound leads to distrust on the one side and hatred on the other, and thus to a general feeling of insecurity. The national Government is ready to extend a hand in sincere understanding to every nation that is ready finally to make an end of the tragic past. The international economic distress can only disappear when the basis has been provided by stable political relations and when the nations have regained confidence in each other.
For the overcoming of the economic catastrophe three things are necessary:
Absolutely authoritative leadership in internal affairs, in order to create confidence in the stability of conditions.
The securing of peace by the great nations for a long time to come, with a view to restoring the confidence of the nations in each other.
The final victory of the principles of common sense in the organization and conduct of business, and also a general release from reparations and impossible liabilities for debts and interest.
We are unfortunately faced by the fact that the Geneva Conference, in spite of lengthy negotiations, has so far reached no practical result. The decision regarding the securing of a real measure of disarmament has been constantly delayed by the raising of questions of technical detail and by the introduction of problems that have nothing to do with disarmament. This procedure is useless.
The illegal state of one-sided disarmament and the resulting national insecurity of Germany cannot continue any longer.
We recognize it as a sign of the feeling of responsibility and of the good will of the British Government that they have endeavored, by means of their disarmament proposal, to cause the Conference finally to arrive at speedy decisions. The Government of the Reich will support every endeavor aimed at really carrying out general disarmament and securing the fulfillment of Germany's long-overdue claim for disarmament. For fourteen years we have been disarmed, and for fourteen months we have been waiting for the results of the Disarmament Conference. Even more far-reaching is the plan of the head of the Italian Government, which makes a broad-minded and far-seeing attempt to secure a peaceful and consistent development of the whole of European policy. We attach the greatest weight to this plan, and we are ready to co-operate with absolute sincerity on the basis it provides, in order to unite the four Great Powers, England, France, Italy, and Germany, in friendly co-operation in attacking with courage and determination the problems upon the solution of which the fate of Europe depends.
It is for this reason that we are particularly grateful for the appreciative heartiness with which the national renaissance of Germany has been greeted in Italy....
In the same way, the Government of the Reich, which regards Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation, attaches the greatest value to friendly relations with the Holy See, and is endeavoring to develop them. We feel sympathy for our brother nation in Austria in its trouble and distress. In all their doings the Government of the Reich is conscious of the connection between the destiny of all German races. Their attitude toward the other foreign Powers may be gathered from what has already been said. But even in cases where our mutual relations are encumbered with difficulties, we shall endeavor to arrive at a settlement. But in any case the basis for an understanding can never be the distinction between victor and vanquished.
We are convinced that such a settlement is possible in our relations with France, if the Governments will attack the problems affecting them on both sides in a really broadminded way. The Government of the Reich is ready to cultivate with the Soviet Union friendly relations profitable to both parties. It is above all the Government of the National Revolution which feels itself in a position to adopt such a positive policy with regard to Soviet Russia. The fight against communism in Germany is our internal affair in which we will never permit interference from outside....
We have particularly at heart the fate of the Germans living beyond the frontiers of Germany who are allied with us in speech, culture, and customs and have to make a hard fight to retain these values. The national Government is resolved to use all the means at its disposal to support the rights internationally guaranteed to the German minorities.
We welcome the plan for a World Economic Conference and approve of its meeting at an early date. The Government of the Reich is ready to take part in this Conference, in order to arrive at positive results at last. . . .
“More than 14 years have passed since that ill-fated day when, blinded by promises at home and abroad, the German volk [people] lost sight of the most valuable assets of our past and of our Reich, its honour and its freedom – and thus lost everything. Since those days of treachery, the Almighty has withheld His blessing from our Volk. Dissension and hatred have made their way into our midst. In the most profound distress, millions of the best German men and women from all walks of life watch as the unity of the nation vanishes and dissolves in a muddle of political and egotistical opinions, economic interests and differences…
HITLER’S FIRST ADDRESS AS CHANCELLOR (1933)
Adolf Hitler made his first address as chancellor in February 1933. In this extract, Hitler condemns the previous government and outlines the focus of his new regime:
The misery of our volk is appalling! The starving millions of unemployed proletarians in industry are being followed by the impoverishment of the entire Mittelstand [middle-class] and artisan professions. When this disintegration ultimately reaches the German peasants, we will be confronted by a catastrophe of unfathomable dimensions. For not only will the Reich disintegrate, but with it a 2000-year-old inheritance, the most valuable assets of human culture and civilisation.
The warning signs of this approaching disintegration are all about us. In a single gigantic offensive of willpower and violence, the communist method of madness is attempting to poison and disrupt the volk, which is shaken and uprooted to its innermost core…
Peasants, workers, and bourgeoisie must all join together to provide the building blocks for the new Reich. The government will therefore regard it as its first and foremost duty to re-establish Volksgemeinschaft – the unity of spirit and will of our volk. It will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests. It will extend its strong, protecting hand over Christianity as the basis of our entire morality, and the family as the germ cell of the body of our volk and State. It will reawaken in our volk, beyond the borders of rank and class, its sense of national and political unity, and its resultant duties. It will establish reverence for our great past and pride in our old traditions as the basis for the education of our German youth. It will declare a merciless war against spiritual, political and cultural nihilism. Germany must not and will not drown in anarchistic communism…
Resolved and true to our oath, we will — in view of the present Reichstag’s inability to support this work — ask the German volk itself to take on this task we call our own. Reich President von Hindenburg has called upon us and given us the order to use our own unity to restore to the nation the chance for recovery. Thus we now appeal to the German volk to take part in signing this deed of reconciliation.
The government wants to work – and it will work. It was not this government which led the German nation into ruin for 14 years. This government wants to lead the nation to the top once more. It is determined to pay the debt of 14 years in four years. But it cannot make the work of reconstruction dependent upon the approval of those who are to blame for the collapse.
The Marxist parties and their fellow travellers have had 14 years to prove their prowess. The result is a heap of ruins. Now, German volk, give us four years, and then pass judgment upon us!
True to the order of the Field Marshal, we shall begin. May Almighty God look mercifully upon our work, lead our will on the right path, bless our wisdom, and reward us with the confidence of our volk. We are not fighting for ourselves, but for Germany!”
Today, our leaders still echo a sense of defeat, of emergency, but what are our leader's real concerns? That question is so important, and yet we seldom ask it. While our leaders deftly work to inspire fear and mobilize their base, real emergencies face our civilization – crises that most of us have been trained to ignore in favor of our desire to consume.
Although today we have access to more information than ever, we may find it hard to determine the difference between propaganda and information intended to inspire and inform.
Put aside your emotional habits, and think carefully, learn from history, read primary sources, prepare yourself for what's to come. Everything in our world is changing fast, and the remedies of the past will not help us in the twenty-first century.
We are currently facing our species' extinction – this is a fact. It's time to learn why this is so and to demand that everyone take action to prevent our destruction. The global conflagrations of the past two centuries are nothing compared to what is coming. If you are distracted, if you can't focus, if you don't have the strength to educate yourself, if you are not fit, if your mind is not healthy, you will only know horror and panic in the days to come.
I am not a doomsayer, I am a truth-teller, and I blush when I say it because it sounds so arrogant.
When you imagine yourself to be noble and righteous because you are just getting on with it, try to remember that future generations will be the most impacted by how you are getting on with it. If you turn away from reality now, you are not doing younger people any favors by paying rent and tuition. We must all speak truth to power now. Our voices must rise in concert – all of our voices across the world.
We must put aside our differences and come together as a species and determine the right way forward. We don't have a minute to waste. Organize within your community and talk about what we are facing. Don't let yourself be mesmerized by selfish leaders who are only in their position for money, power, and fame.
Do what you can to educate and enlighten those who are less interested in understanding how the world works. The full knowledge of humanity is at your fingertips – learn, discuss, and share.
In many ways, today looks like 1933. We are at a crossroads; only this time, civilization truly is at stake.
Get your inspiration from sincere teachers like Chris Hedges and Peter Josephs.
Train Your Mind | Compassion or Hate – Decide
We highly recommend this article. Our near future will require great strength, intelligence and wisdom. Civilization as we have known it is coming to an end. Business as usual won’t help us. We must learn how to liberate ourselves. Learning from various wisdom traditions can help us cope with what’s to come.
“Buddhism Is What Science Should Be Doing”
Robert Thurman discuss the Buddha’s scientific worldview and argues that it is less dogmatic than modern science.
By Matthew Abrahams with Robert A. F. Thurman
JUN 21, 2019
That involves a couple of presuppositions. One is that mindfulness is Buddhism—or even that meditation is Buddhism—which is highly sold but not the case. The three educations, or trisikkha, is usually translated as trainings. But shiksha is the word used in India’s department of education today. Calling it training allows Western people to avoid the idea that Buddhism has a knowledge that is equal to and/or superior to the knowledge of materialist science.
Saying that mindfulness is all you need to thrive in your corporation or in your household is completely overselling it, and there should be a backlash against it. Also, it’s not all of Buddhism by any means. It’s one branch of eight branches, the seventh part of the eightfold path. And mindfulness by itself is not at all how you get free of suffering. Real mindfulness will actually make you more aware of how much you are suffering and will make you resolve to try to do more about it. But it won’t be by just sitting and being more mindful.
Some people will say, “I’m spiritual, and science has nothing to say about my spirituality. Why would I want my spirituality to be dragged down?” But that ignores the fact that science is the religion of the modern world. The idea that Buddhism can get dragged down falls into the scientific materialistic trap by assuming that our religious beliefs make us feel good but are unrealistic and not scientifically corroborable. And that, again, is conflating Buddhism with blind faith, which it isn’t. Buddha was 100 percent against blind faith. He said if you believe in something that your reason and common sense say couldn’t be true, that belief will cripple you mentally.
No, I’m being a little more aggressive. I’m saying that Buddhism is what science should be doing—Buddha’s wisdom teaching is what scientists should practice. They can do their material science, too, but the modern idea that secular means totally materialistic is a very rare case in history. The Buddha was seeking knowledge of reality, but for him, the mind was part of that secular reality. So by practicing Buddhist science, they would be taking a different kind of responsibility about the quality of their own minds and experience, and they would truly drop the dogma of materialism.
I am insisting that Buddhism be taken seriously as a knowledge system. The arrogance of Western materialist scientists, that they understand the world and know how to fix it, is ridiculous because they are destroying it, not fixing it. They need higher knowledge—not just some faith or god. And the Buddha’s teaching has a way of helping them. Scientists who meet the Dalai Lama often come away saying, “Boy, I had some new insights talking with him. He’s so smart.” But they don’t ask any questions about Buddhist science or what Buddhist knowledge is. They don’t think that he knowssomething, they just think he’s peaceful and nice and that, in his presence, they have great ideas. That is our Western arrogance. It’s really terrible.
When I say that everyone should be a Buddhist scientist, I don’t mean they have to be a Buddhist or change their group affiliation, just that they need to be more enlightened. [His Holiness the 14th] Dalai Lama often says he doesn’t want people leaving their grandmother’s religions because they studied some Buddhism. He wants people to keep granny happy and stay in that religion, and if they learn by meditating, studying, or being more ethical, then they’re elevating their own cultural setting, which is great.
Imagine going to [New York City] Mayor Bill De Blasio and asking for a big building in the park for anybody who wants to shave their head, put on an orange robe, and renounce their name and property to live there, be fed freely, and be respected and asked questions. What would he say?
That is what the Buddha did, and it is revolutionary. He created a non-caste caste in the middle of the rigid Indian system and got the kings and the warriors to cater to it. In my [1998] book Inner Revolution, I argue that it is a total social revolution to say that the individual has a higher destiny than just fitting into their role in society—and the idea that the individual can achieve freedom from suffering and achieve higher awareness of the nature of reality.
Sometimes when I speak to a big audience of four, five hundred people, I will ask, “How many of you think that we will avoid major war, avoid this climate catastrophe that looms over us, and make the radical changes necessary to govern wisely?” Very few people will raise their hands. People are resigned; they are all brainwashed into thinking that they have no power. They think that nobody good will ever come and that all governments are equally bad. People voted for [President Donald] Trump because they hate all of them, and they thought, “Here’s some guy who hates them all too.” Meanwhile, he’s the worst of them.
Compassion in the teeth of that cynicism is radical. But there is a tendency among some Buddhists to act like, you can’t be too compassionate because you’ll get wasted. Well, that’s not the Buddhist attitude. Compassion and nonviolence is a powerful thing, it’s not a weakness. The Harvard sociologist Gene Sharp wrote many books on nonviolence and how, for example, under the Nazis, nonviolent protests saved trainloads of people. Determined nonviolent protests by masses of people are really very effective. Even the worst, nastiest people will not endlessly kill people who are opposing them unarmed. They might kill a few hoping to take it down, but they don’t kill them all.
The Dalai Lama has been fighting back against the genocidal invasion of his country, nonviolently, and seeking dialogue with the government. Many people have said, and they continue to say, “That’s unrealistic, it’ll never work, and it’s a lost cause.” But my question to them is, how is violence doing? How is militarism doing? Has anyone really won anything? Is it ever going to be stable? I don’t think so. So my point is, radical compassion is the one thing that could possibly save the world at this time.
With Focused Attention Comes Love
"For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone." – Audrey Hepburn
"In order to control myself, I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature." – Bruce Lee
In 2019, more than any time in human history, one's primary concern must be: What can I do to become wiser, every day? Wisdom discovers the flow of truth from authentic experiences. Wisdom allows one’s experience in the world to come into focus with acceptance, obliterating one's conflict with reality. With understanding, one encounters her emotions with equanimity, and her attitude towards the world becomes more compassionate.
"You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip, and it can crash. Become like water my friend." – Bruce Lee
This kind of focus allows one to think clearly, rationally and logically, to slow down and examine one's circumstances more closely with childlike curiosity, flexibility, and resilience.
Clear, precise, and gentle awareness opens the heart and mind to the miracle of conscious existence. From this posture, possibility expands and opportunities to create flows forth. Creativity is an elixir; it's the healthiest stimulus we have.
The system we live in today uses the science of division and contradiction to control us. Our socioeconomic system programs us to think and behave in ways that will support the system. Our education does the same, and as we socialize, we are being programmed to join or form groups that conflict with each other. This conflict also supports the system. So we must learn what this system is, we must become wise to it if we are going to learn what freedom means; if we are going to learn how to improve our society. We must redesign our system of conflict and remake it as a system based on wisdom.
Wise people, are compassionate intellectuals who are always learning and teaching – they are committed to curiosity and to helping others; they are individuals without egoism; they hold their knowledge lightly with a sense of epistemic humility. Wise people also notice where their thoughts, expertise, and emotional reactions originate. For them, the world is symbiotic and interconnected. Community and relationships are integral, valuable, and even potentially dangerous, which is why they focus on health. Healthy societies are peaceful and secure; they minimize conflict with other cultures through positive interactions. Is it time that we transcended war in favor of compassionate, positive relationships designed to improve the health and welfare of life on earth. This must be done no matter how impossible it seems to us today. How else can our children have a prosperous future? Would you give your grandchild a world without elephants, without fresh air, good food and kind people?
To consistently become wiser one must be concerned with physical, emotional, and intellectual health, and practice deliberately and systematically to improve in these areas.
I listened to a podcast recently that made me wonder why I quit meditating twenty years ago. As I thought about it, an epic, personal story began to emerge, one that I hope to share someday.
How the brains of master meditators change
The scientist joins The Ezra Klein Show to discuss what he learned from bringing the Dalai Lama to his lab.
Richie Davidson has spent a lifetime studying meditation. He's studied it as a practitioner, sitting daily, going on retreats, and learning under masters. And he's pioneered the study of it as a scientist, working with the Dalai Lama to bring master meditators into his lab at the University of Wisconsin and quantifying the way thousands of hours of meditation changed their brains.
The word "meditation," Davidson is quick to note, is akin to the word "sports": It describes a huge range of pursuits. And what he's found is that different types of meditation do very different things to your brain, just as different sports trigger different changes in your body.
There are wisdom traditions in every culture across time. Wise people can be straightforward, sophisticated, or conventional.
Sadhguru may look like a textbook, Indian wise man, and regardless of his unique talents, he has worked hard to develop his wisdom. I am always skeptical of people with power, but there are influential, thoughtful people in the world who can be trusted. What do you think of his insights in this video?
Here is another perspective on wisdom.
Morality In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence: Why Do We Need Wisdom To Lead In The Future?
We live in a society that encourages us to think about how to have a great career but leaves us inarticulate about how to cultivate the inner life. The road to success is definitively paved through competition and so fiercely that it becomes all-consuming for many of us. It is commonly accepted today that information is the key source of all being; yet, information alone doesn’t laver one with knowledge as knowledge alone doesn’t lead to righteous action. In the age of artificial information, we need to consider beyond data to drive purposeful progression and authentic illuminations.
We need wisdom and compassion to develop a sustainable and just human civilization. At present, we are still far from achieving such a society. We have made material, scientific and technological progress at a fast rate over the past one hundred and seventy years, however, very few of us understand its cost to public health and the health of vital ecosystems. What's more important is that we are far from understanding how to deploy our scientific and technical knowledge with wisdom and compassion. And this, we must learn.
Let's all chose the path of enlightenment. Allow me to paraphrase a Navaho prayer:
All day long, in wisdom may you walk
With wisdom on your right
And wisdom on your left
Wisdom ahead of you
And wisdom behind you
With many wise friends, teachers, and students
May wisdom sustain and motivate you
And may wisdom be your gift to share
Through your actions in this life
And may your wisdom linger for many generations to come
And, as always, I hope you will read, "The New Human Rights Movement," by Peter Josephs. You will find wisdom there also.
With All The Nonsense Out There, Wouldn't It Be Prudent To Slow Down A Bit?
5G is coming at us fast. The last one hundred and seventy years went by us like a bullet. The level of complexity in human society has skyrocketed. It's hard to keep up with the amount of information coming at us every day, and it's even harder to separate the nonsense from practical and beneficial information. It seems that even the most biased and false narratives always contain a grain of truth, making it even harder to evaluate its value.
What's worse is that communicators from conspiracy theorists to scientists, to government officials and media pundits, are getting extremely good at the art & science of bull shit.
Nonetheless, I'm fascinated by conspiracy cranks. They can be as mesmerizing as an evangelical preacher or a new age profit's garbled and confused musings.
Today I watched another episode of The Corbett Report on YouTube. If you aren't familiar with James Corbett, he's a prolific proponent of alternative narratives and conspiracy theories.
Media Bias|Fact Check summarizes his work this way:
CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE
Sources in the Conspiracy-Pseudoscience category may publish unverifiable information that is not always supported by evidence. These sources may be untrustworthy for credible/verifiable information; therefore, fact-checking and further investigation is recommended on a per article basis when obtaining information from these sources. See all Conspiracy-Pseudoscience sources.
Factual Reporting: LOW
Notes: The Corbett Reports is a right-wing biased conspiracy site. Some featured topics are the New World Order, 9-11 conspiracies and of course false flag operations. There are many more. (D. Van Zandt 2/4/2017)
Never the less, sometimes people like James Corbett publish something that inspires one to do more investigation of a subject, and that's not a bad thing.
Case in point, his rundown of the dangers of 5G networks and the so-called, Internet of Things. Have a look.
Many of his concerns are interesting, while some, like his veering off into his typically biased views on technocratic initiatives and movements may be a bit off the mark. It's not my desire here to breakdown and criticizes his video. I only want to suggest that the unintended consequences of 5G could be daunting and we might want to slow down a bit before connecting everything in the world to a data producing network with their massive databases run by supercomputers that are controlled by organizations|corporations that don’t necessarily have ordinary people's best interests at heart. If we could first solve the socioeconomic structural issues that make our civilization vulnerable to so many existential risks, all of this technocratic stuff would probably be a good thing.
The world is getting more complex, and people can't digest it. The rate of change is fast. It's impossible to keep up. Soon we may find ourselves without any sovereignty or agency what so ever.
I wish we could slow down somehow so ordinary people could take back more control. Democracy is in decline; inequality is exacerbating concerns about freedom and justice; ecosystems are deteriorating; and then there is climate change. Oh, and, how do you think you’d fare if the grid went down and you didn’t have all of your gadgets? Could you last a month?
Where shall we invest our resources? In what ways does The Internet of Things benefit us when our civilization is falling apart?
Falling apart, Steven, now you sound like a conspiracy nut.
Advanced technological civilization developed fast, and it could, even more quickly, deteriorate.
Is The Corbett Report fake news?
Below are some links to, perhaps, some better information about 5G. It's essential to understand it because it's coming fast.
5G Is Coming
The imminent roll-out of 5G technology has again sparked media coverage of the possible risks of EMF exposure, but the scientific consensus remains that the technology is safe.
Steven Novella / May 15, 2019
Are Smart Meters a Health Risk?
Don't worry. There is no plausible health risk from the miniscule EMF from smart meters.
Steven Novella on February 27, 2019
What is 5G?
The definitive guide to next-generation wireless technology
It is a capital improvement project the size of the entire planet, replacing one wireless architecture created this century with another one that aims to lower energy consumption and maintenance costs. It's also a huge gamble on the future of transmission technology, doubling down on consumers' willingness to upgrade.
Scott Fulton III
By Scott Fulton III | February 1, 2019 -- 17:01 GMT (01:01 GMT+08:00) | Topic: How 5G Will Transform Business
What Is 5G?
AT&T, Verizon, and other carriers are starting to launch 5G networks this year. But what exactly is 5G, and how fast is it compared with 4G? Here are the facts we know so far.
By Sascha Segan April 16, 2019 10:23AM EST
Where Each Wireless Carrier Stands in the 5G Race
5G technology could change the world, but carriers have to build networks that support it first.
Adam Levy (TMFnCaffeine) Sep 21, 2018 at 8:18AM
5G Radiation Dangers – 11 Reasons To Be Concerned
Posted by Lloyd Burrell on May 12, 2017
5G Mobile Wireless Technology
The new 5G mobile communications system will enable many new mobile capabilities to be realized - offering high speed, enormous capacity, IoT capability, low latency and much more it provides the bearer for many new applications.
Why Controlling 5G Could Mean Controlling the World
The United States believes that whoever controls fifth-generation cellular networks, known as 5G, will have a global advantage for decades to come. The fear is that China is almost there. NYT Daily Podcast
And last but not least, please read this essay by Chris Hedges. When a few corporations and governments have all of our data, who will watch the watchers?
The Thought Police Are Coming
Chris Hedges Columnist
We have watched over the last decade as freedom of the press and legal protection for those who expose government abuses and lies have been obliterated by wholesale government surveillance and the criminalizing of the leaking and, with Julian’s persecution, publication of these secrets. The press has been largely emasculated in the United States. The repeated use of the Espionage Act, especially under the Obama administration, to charge and sentence whistleblowers has shut down our ability to shine a light into the inner workings of power and empire. Governmental officials with a conscience, knowing all of their communications are monitored, captured and stored by intelligence agencies, are too frightened to reach out to reporters. The last line of defense lies with those with the skills that allow them to burrow into the records of the security and surveillance state and with the courage to make them public, such as Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Jeremy Hammond, now serving a 10-year prison term in the United States for hacking into the Texas-based private security firm Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor. The price of resistance is high not only for them, but for those such as Julian willing to publish this information. As Sarah Harrison has pointed out: “This is our data, our information, our history. We must fight to own it.”
Our Data Is Precious So Why Are We Squandering It? Privacy, What Privacy?
Please read this article. We need to think about this more than ever. Do you really want a few people and global corporations to own you?
The New Wilderness
We’re at the point where we need a similar shift in perspective in our privacy law. The infrastructure of mass surveillance is too complex, and the tech oligopoly too powerful, to make it meaningful to talk about individual consent. Even experts don’t have a full picture of the surveillance economy, in part because its beneficiaries are so secretive, and in part because the whole system is in flux. Telling people that they own their data, and should decide what to do with it, is just another way of disempowering them.
Our discourse around privacy needs to expand to address foundational questions about the role of automation: To what extent is living in a surveillance-saturated world compatible with pluralism and democracy? What are the consequences of raising a generation of children whose every action feeds into a corporate database? What does it mean to be manipulated from an early age by machine learning algorithms that adaptively learn to shape our behavior?
We Must Manage Global Resources For Life Support And For Quality of Life
Below are three videos I saw recently on YouTube that I'd like to recommend. We must all consider the messages within them. They tell our story and can point us in a better direction. Regardless of what that might be, we can't stay on the path we're on now.
We can't go on with business as usual and continue to survive. Somehow we must find ways to make people understand this. If you want to live a thoughtful, well-examined life and thrive, you must risk losing one community to create a better one.
Many people don't want to think; they are perfectly comfortable with their beliefs. Thoughtless people are followers who need leadership. We must supersede our current guidance and replace it with something completely different.
When I hear experts across multiple domains speak about climate change as an urgent emergency requiring radical action, I think about the TZM framework.
First, please watch Part One of a series produced by Breakthrough Productions in Australia titled, "Home Front." Absorb what these experts, many from Australia's defense and security sector, have to say about climate change.
Whether you know it or not, you are living through the most challenging crisis humanity has ever faced.
Video description:
Part I of HOME FRONT, Facing Australia's Climate Emergency. The film documents the existential threat of climate change from a uniquely Australian economic and national security perspective.
The film is a powerful and eye-opening analysis that presents some of Australia's former security, defense and political leaders who all warn us that climate change is 'a catalyst for conflict' and a 'threat multiplier' as it fuels instability in the world's most vulnerable regions.
Now listen to what Dr. Ira Leifer has to say about our chances of survival in the coming years. Dr. Leifer says there is strong evidence that we are headed for a global average temperature of 4C or higher. Global carbon emissions are rising in a straight line. Our carbon emissions are driving rapid climate change and global warming; the effects of which will last for centuries. Nothing short of a coordinated, global effort can save civilization. We can't do that within our current socioeconomic paradigm. "The data doesn't lie, and there are no excuses in physics." We are talking about a revolution.
Here's a quote from Dr. Leifer in a truthout.org article published last year.
"The jet stream, which controls seasonal storms in the mid-latitudes, is a result of these three cells, and would disappear in a single weather cell planet, dramatically altering rain patterns and almost certainly heralding an ecosystem catastrophe," Leifer explained. "The plants that underlie the food chain would be replaced by others that the local animals (insects to apex predators) could not utilize — in short, an abrupt acceleration of the current Great Anthropocene Extinction event."
Video description:
Stuart Scott engages with Dr. Ira Leifer, atmospheric scientist, and researcher, in this fascinating discussion of the desperate portends of our inability as a society to deal with the knowledge that we have destabilized the climate system. The bad news, according to Dr. Leifer, is that only a few thousand humans may survive at the poles. The 'good news' is that some of life is likely to survive (including cockroaches) since the Earth has proven so resilient over the eons of time since life evolved.
So you see, you are, in fact, either a part of the solution or a walking breathing part of the disaster. There is no middle ground. We don't have time to waste.
Of course, if you think absolutely nothing can be done, then you can join the global hospice movement and focus instead on living life in the moment. For that message let's turn to Guy McPherson. To me, his message is very positive and makes perfect sense. It's even uplifting and inspiring. After all, truth and honesty are refreshing in our current world.
Download:
EXISTENTIAL CLIMATE-RELATED SECURITY RISK
A scenario approach
Understanding climate-driven security risks relies on climate impact projections, but much knowledge produced for policymakers is too conservative. Because the risks are now existential, a new approach to climate and security risk assessment is required using scenario analysis.