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Page added on August 2, 2019
The Twilight of the Monofuture
I’m pleased to say that my post here two weeks ago, on the way that belief in progress depends on a certain kind of historical amnesia, got a lively and mostly thoughtful response. Oh, I fielded and deleted some saliva-flecked denunciations, to be sure, but that always happens when I try to pose hard questions about the faith-based mythology of perpetual progress that plays so important and unexamined a role in mass culture nowadays.
Faith in progress really is the established religion of our time. Most people nowadays believe in the inevitability of progress just as fervently as medieval peasants believed in saints and angels. What’s more, when the great majority of people talk about progress these days, they don’t simply mean that the technology of the future will be different from, and somewhat more complex than, the technology of today. No, it’s much more precise than that. Just as Joseph Campbell lopped and stretched all the world’s diverse mythologies into a single pattern he called the Monomyth, our collective imagination has done the same thing with the extraordinary range of possible futures our species might have, shrinking it down to a suffocatingly narrow and strictly enforced consensus we might as well call the Monofuture.
You know the Monofuture, dear reader. It’s been splashed across the media for decades, turned into the backgroud of an endless stream of repetitive movies and novels and video games, used just as repetitively to justify the downsides of the present. The Monofuture is when we finally get routine spaceflight, orbital habitats, colonies on other worlds—all the things my generation was promised in its childhood and hasn’t gotten yet. The Monofuture has fusion power or some other limitless clean energy source, it’s got equally limitless supplies of raw materials, and replicators or robot factories or some other gimmick so that everyone gets all the consumer goods they want. It’s got flying cars, of course, and humanoid robots, and superhumanly intelligent AIs, and all the other technological wet dreams that have been squirted across the imagination of the industrial world for decades now. For a place that doesn’t exist, it has immense emotional power, and one measure of that power is just how upset believers in the Monofuture get if you point out that it’s not going to happen.
Probably the easiest way to see this in operation is to suggest in public that human beings are never going to colonize other planets. If you do that, I can promise you that you’ll get an impressive degree of pushback. As it happens, there are a great many good reasons to think that human beings are in fact never going to colonize other planets. We can start with the nightmarish economics of establishing self-supporting colonies on the frozen, airless, bleach-laced deserts of Mars, go from there to the bleak fact that no other habitable body in the solar system besides Earth has a magnetic field capable of protecting vulnerable human tissues from the torrents of hard radiation blasting out from the vast unshielded thermonuclear reactor at the center of the solar system, and proceed through all the other reasons why manned space flight has turned out to be nothing more than an expensive and temporary hobby of rich nations.
Of course there are plenty of arguments in circulation as to why none of these things matter. It’s entertaining, if nothing else, to test these arguments against something that isn’t part of the Monofuture. For example—to return to a point that’s been made in this blog already—all the arguments that have been made for the colonization of Mars can be made with even more force for the colonization of central Antarctica. Compared to Mars, Antarctica is practically a tropical paradise: the climate’s significantly warmer, water and oxygen are much easier to come by, there’s a planetary magnetic field screening out most of the Sun’s dangerous radiation, mineral resources are at least as abundant, the soil’s not saturated with toxic perchlorates, getting there is easy with existing technology, and if something goes wrong, help can get there in a day or two—it’s not nine long and silent months away if Earth and Mars happen to be in the right orbital configuration just then, and anything up to twice that if you’re not so lucky.
You can make equally sound arguments why colonizing the top of Mount Everest, the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the waterless and windswept Takla Makan desert of central Asia, or just about any other environment on Earth makes more sense than colonizing Mars. All of them are better suited to human habitation than Mars, and Mars is better suited to human habitation than any other body in the solar system other than Earth. Why aren’t colonists signing up to colonize Antarctica, then? Because the colonization of Antarctica isn’t part of the Monofuture, and so most people can do the math and figure out that an Antarctic colony makes no sense.
Such clarity is rarely to be found when it comes to the Monofuture. What you get instead is a remarkable degree of devout enthusiasm propped up with some of the most colorfully absurd thoughtstoppers to be found in captivity. I lost track a long time ago, for example, of the number of people I’ve heard insist in this context that “anything that people can conceive, they can achieve.” That’s absurdity on a truly grand scale—I can conceive quite readily of a working perpetual motion machine, a Paddington Bear stuffie the size of the entire cosmos, a four-sided triangle, and colorless green ideas that sleep furiously, just for starters—but if you question the weary fantasy of space colonization, you can count not only on hearing it, but on watching those who propose it scramble around for reasons why a claim so obviously false in every other context must be true in this one.
You can have serious fun with those who insist on the thoughtstopper just cited, if that interests you. Ask someone who believes in it whether human beings will ever be able to predict the future by observing the movements of the planets, for example, and you can be sure of getting an indignant denial! Astrology, while it’s quite easy for people to conceive—and indeed many millions of people today do so—isn’t part of the Monofuture, and so it’s not defended by the belief system we’re discussing. I’ve referred to that belief system as faith in progress, but again, the word “progress” has to be understood in a very nuanced way. Figuring out how to predict the future by observing planetary movements would be a very remarkable sort of progress indeed, but believers in progress aren’t interested in that. The kind of progress in which they place their faith is much more narrowly defined; it consists solely of progress toward the Monofuture.
And the Monofuture itself, with its space colonies and flying cars, its superintelligent computers and clever humanoid robots, its life-extension technologies and replicators churning out consumer goods from thin air at the push of a button, its limitless pollution-free energy sources and gleaming cities where people of every race and gender have exactly the same lifestyles and beliefs and opinions about everything that matters—where did it come from? How come this single, suffocatingly narrow notion of what the future has to be like has become such an item of faith in the industrial world that many people can’t imagine any other future at all—besides, that is, some masturbatory fantasy or other of apocalyptic mass death?
Here I have to hang my head and scuff my feet a little, because I’m pretty sure that the culprit is one of my favorite genres of literature. Yes, we’re talking about science fiction.
It’s only fair to say that science fiction didn’t start out talking about the Monofuture, or for that matter any of its standard-issue components such as space travel. Many historians of the genre agree that the first work of science fiction—the first story that centers on a scientific or technological development that hasn’t yet been achieved, and makes the consequences of that development central to the plot—is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and that’s not about space travel or any of the other standard features of the Monofuture. For that matter, the next two really great names in the history of science fiction, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, devoted relatively little of their prodigious literary output to space travel or other Monofuturistic gimmicks.
What’s more, if you go on to the next golden age of science fiction, the pulp era between the wars, and read the stories as they appeared in the magazines of that era, you’ll find that a great many of the stories went out of their way to ignore the Monofuture or anything like it. Plenty of those stories were set in the ordinary world of the 1920s and 1930s, just as Frankenstein was set in the ordinary world of the late 18th century, and the discoveries and inventions described in the stories don’t change the world in the least. While most of those stories have sunk into oblivion at this point—some deservedly, some not—it occurs to me that a few of my readers may have read C.S. Lewis’s science fiction novel Out of the Silent Planet, which is cut from the same cloth.
Lewis’ story is a tale of space travel. The mad scientist who is an important character (and also, of course, one of the stock figures of the pulp SF era) has achieved the major technological breakthroughs needed to cross interplanetary space, and the protagonist of the series, an Oxford philologist named Elwin Ransom—yes, he was modeled by Lewis on a friend of his, another Oxford philologist named J.R.R. Tolkien—thus finds himself taking an unexpected journey to Mars. Does the world change utterly as a result? Not at all. When Ransom eventually gets back to Earth, he goes to the nearest pub to buy a pint in the serene certainty that nothing much on Earth has changed, or will change, as a result of the journey.
Mind you, stories already in print when Out of the Silent Planet was first published had begun the process of inventing the Monofuture, and you can find plenty of anthologies of old SF stories that cherrypick Monofuturistic tales out of the great mass that had nothing to do with space ships and flying cars. (That’s why it’s such an education to go back to the magazines as they appeared, and get a sense of what else science fiction was doing in those days.) Nor was the Monofuture the only game in town for a long time thereafter. If anything, as science fiction matured after the Second World War, the range of futures it was willing to explore broadened dramatically.
Now of course part of that had to do with something most people in SF won’t talk about these days—the huge crossover between pre-1980s science fiction and occultism. The takeover of science fiction fandom by materialist pseudoskeptics of the CSICOP variety in the early 1980s marked a radical shift in the genre. Before that time, a great many SF fans and no small number of important SF authors were up to their eyeballs in popular occultism. That’s why you’ll find a tolerably good description of parts of an early Wiccan initiation ritual in Heinlein’s novel If This Goes On…, why more than half the big names in 1950s and 1960s SF wrote novels in which psychic powers were the mainspring of the plot, and why the classified ads in the back of SF magazines were full of advertisements for occult correspondence courses. (It’s also why the first science fiction convention I ever attended, back in 1978, included workshops on Tarot divination—not something you found in such venues much after that.) It was a different world, a lot more open to alternative realities.
Still, there was a great deal more to it than that. Science fiction authors vied with each other in those days to come up with future societies that varied as wildly as possible from the world we inhabit today. Read Vonda McIntyre’s Dreamsnake, John Crowley’s Beasts, Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse, Susan Coon’s Rahne, M. John Harrison’s The Pastel City, and Poul Anderson’s The Winter of the World—just to cite the examples that come first to mind—and in each case you’re so far away from the Monofuture that you’d need a high-powered Macroscope to spot its traces way out there in the intergalactic distance.
Exactly what happened to science fiction in the decades immediately thereafter is a complex question. I suspect that part of it had to do with the space probes that brought back picture after picture of a solar system far less welcoming to human beings than anyone in the golden age of SF had ever speculated. Part of it, too, had to do with the awkward discovery that none of the many attempts to make space-based manufacturing pay for itself came close to breaking even, and let’s not even talk about living up to the enthusiastic handwaving in Arthur C. Clarke’s The Promise of Space and its many equivalents. Another part, surely, had to do with the mutation of SF from fringe literature to mass-market media property, a process set in motion by the frankly hokey if durable Star Trek franchise and propelled to warp speeds by the immense financial success of such Hollywood cash cows as Star Wars and E.T.: The Extraterrestrial.
Whatever the concatenation of causes, though, what had been one of the most innovative of literary genres became by and large as rigidly formulaic as Harlequin romances, with the Monofuture playing the role of the ruggedly handsome male lead and humanity as the female lead swooning into his cybernetically enhanced arms. One measure of that descent into formula was the chorus of outrage that rose in SF fandom a little while back when Kim Stanley Robinson, one of the best of the current crop of SF authors, published a frankly brilliant novel titled Aurora about a failed attempt at interstellar colonization. Such stories were entirely acceptable back when SF was open to a wider range of futures—John Brunner’s harrowing Total Eclipse and John Crowley’s lyrical Engine Summer are only two of many novels that used it as a theme—but the reaction to Robinson’s book? Here again, Harlequin romances offer the best equivalent: it’s exactly the sort of reaction you’d expect if Harlequin published a well-written romance novel in which the heroine, after meeting the hero and going through the usual plot twists, decided that she really did prefer to stay single after all.
That parallel, I suspect, points straight toward the reason why the monofuture has become stuck sideways in the collective imagination of our time. People don’t read Harlequin romances because they want realistic accounts of love; they read Harlequin romances because they want to enjoy a particular kind of fantasy that’s satisfying precisely because it doesn’t imitate real life. That’s what formulaic genre fiction does—and there’s nothing wrong with that. If readers feel a little better about themselves and the inevitable frustrations of their lives because they have the chance to wallow in lush daydreams about rich and ruggedly handsome guys who fall in love with ordinary women, or heroic adventures in which a mismatched bunch of protagonists wield the Magic McGuffin of Doom to save Upper Lower Southeast Central Earth from Lord Blorg the Bad, or cozy mysteries in which the middle-aged owner of the You Know You Want One More Chocolate Bonbon Shop single-handedly catches one diabolical murderer after another, or what have you, why, that’s one of the basic human needs that literature has always served.
Most of us, though, realize that our own romantic encounters aren’t going to have much of anything in common with what goes on between the covers of a Harlequin romance. Most of us understand that our chances of being called forth on a heroic quest to liberate Upper Lower Southeast Central Earth from Lord Blorg the Bad are significantly lower than our chances of winning the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes, and that if we end up witnessing a serious crime, the closest we can expect to get to feats of brilliant detection is a series of long sessions repeating the same eleven facts to bored detectives in a downtown office building. That is to say, we understand the difference between imaginative literature and the real world, and don’t pretend that the latter is under some kind of obligation to imitate the former.
That, in turn, is exactly where the contemporary myth of progress toward the Monofuture has run off the rails. It’s not just that there are solid reasons why we will never colonize other planets, or that flying cars have been built and tested repeatedly since 1917 and consistently turn out to be a lousy idea, or that fusion power was twenty years in the future when I was born and will still be twenty years in the future when the distant descendants of chipmunks study our fossilized bones. It’s that by most measurements, the quality of life for a majority of people in the US and a good many other industrial countries has been moving raggedly but remorselessly downhill since the 1970s and show no sign of changing direction.
Leave the enclaves where the comfortable preen themselves on how progressive they are, and go walk the mean streets of Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Manchester, Glasgow, the decaying industrial faubourgs that ring Paris—well, I could go on at length, but the point stands: from those places, it’s easy to see that the Monofuture isn’t coming closer at all. It’s moving further off, heading to whichever elephant’s graveyard dreams seek out when it’s their time to die. That’s why so many people insist in such shrill terms that the Monofuture is still on its way, just you wait and see. As social psychologists have been pointing out for a good long time, it’s when a belief system no longer does an adequate job of explaining the world that people cling to it most dogmatically and get most irritable when it’s questioned.
One of my readers in a recent open post mentioned that in the circles he frequents, at least, the New Age belief system that was once so widespread has become rare enough that it’s a source of surprise when someone starts talking about creating their own reality and the rest of it. What happened there was no surprise to those who were paying attention. New Age teachers made a series of claims about what their teachings would do, and by and large, those claims didn’t pan out. The impressive number of people who tried to use New Age guru Rhonda Byrne’s “Law of Attraction” to get rich flipping real estate in the years immediately before the 2008-2009 crash, and lost their shirts as a result was just the last and biggest of a series of comparable fiascos.
Since the normal human response to that kind of failure is to double down at least once, what happened after the 2008-2009 crash is that a huge number of New Agers staked everything on the supposed end of the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012. When that day came and went without incident, in turn, the New Age movement quietly dissolved. There are still people who believe in its teachings, to be sure, and in fact little enclaves of true believers are the normal aftermath of a failed prediction of this sort, but as a significant cultural force, it’s finished.
Exactly what will do the same thing to the cult of the Monofuture is an interesting question. That something will pull the plug on Tomorrowland sooner or later, though, is baked into the cake at this point. Science fiction, delightful though it is, is no more about real futures than romance novels are about real relationships, and the fate of the New Age movement demonstrates clearly enough what happens when true believers insist that the universe is obligated to cater to an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and fork over the future they think they deserve, just because they think they deserve it. What sequence of events will deliver that awkward but inescapable lesson to believers in the Monofuture is an interesting question; all things considered, though, I don’t think we’ll have to wait indefinitely to find out.
Ecosophiaby John Michael Greer
77 Comments on "The Twilight of the Monofuture"
Robert Inget on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 9:28 am
Peak oil barrel world production update reveals 70% of global producers’ production is flatlining while the other 30% is falling fast
No wonder there’s panic in the White House.
Gasoline is headed higher No Matter the Jawboning or War on Trade.
https://www.investorvillage.com/groups.asp?mb=19168&mn=215221&pt=msg&mid=19648596
Dredd on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 9:36 am
Excellent points IMO.
Faith in the technical and faith in the mystical have ebbed and flowed over large amounts of time with the technical generally winning out.
As Mr. Greer points out, the faith in technology is still winning out (The Machine Religion).
Robert Inget on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 9:55 am
A substantial raise in liquid fuels prices kills Trump’s chances of reelection. It’s that simple.
Here are a few concerns Trump and his hard right
boys haven’t yet dealt.
China will import oil and gas with yuan ONLY.
Russia and Iran,Venezuela maybe Iraq, Sudan, Algeria, will go along.
The effect could well be a weaker more fragile dollar.
Only Ecuador uses USD’s as currency. If USD gets inflated Ecuador might make the shift to yuan
Venezuela could make the shift to yuan as have many nations in the past used USD’s as currency.
Cloggie on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 10:36 am
Communist News Network is against Brexit, which is good enough reason to be in favor of it:
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/02/uk/boris-johnson-brecon-analysis-gbr-intl/index.html
Cloggie on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 11:33 am
In libtard countries parenthood is going to be a thing of the past:
https://twitter.com/FactTank/status/1157323672706670592
Child = “accident”, that can be “corrected”.
I AM THE MOB on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 1:50 pm
Here goes clogg squealing about the birth rate..It won’t be long before he is calling for woman to be tied up and turned into sex slaves for the elite whites..
That is the end game of the far right!
Anonymouse on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 2:17 pm
No one here cares cloggtard. No really, just fuck off already kosherboy. No one is listening, or cares about your brexit hobby horse. Or any of your other wingnut fantasies either. You’re as delusional as the exceptionlturd, and that takes some effort. Get a job, or, something. Im sure the Marxist-commie government of [whatever] swamp you live in, has some kind of job-placement or diversity program you can go sign up for. Im not suggesting this because I think you are employable in any capacity, but, rather just as a means to get your sodden jew ass out of your wheelchair and off the internet. If for only part of a day. Baby steps and all. You know, being a crippled brain-damaged jew, I bet your government could find some token diversity job you could fill.
Why dont you use this internet thing to see if they have a program like that you could qualify for? Bet they do.
Idiot alert on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 2:25 pm
Anonymouse on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 2:17 pm
Davy sock puppet on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 2:51 pm
Idiot alert on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 2:25 pm
Davy Alert on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 2:53 pm
Davy the Idiot on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 2:25 pm
Mich on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 2:57 pm
Idiot alert on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 2:25 pm
Anonymouse on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 2:17 pm
More like impolite and uneducated Kanadin
JuanP on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 2:59 pm
Anonymouse, I like you
Davy sock puppet on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 3:02 pm
Mich on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 2:57 pm
Davy ID Fraud on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 3:03 pm
JuanP on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 2:59 pm
Committee for a clean forum on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 3:22 pm
JuanP you are nearing the point of being banned. Please stop then fraudulent ID usage. We also expect contribution to the topics of which you fail to do.
More Davy sock fraud on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 3:28 pm
Committee for a clean forum on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 3:22 pm
Committee for clean Mental Health on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 4:15 pm
Davy you are nearing the point of being committed to a mental-health facility. Please stop your lunacy. We also expect you to follow good mental health guidelines and practices, which you fail to do.
I AM THE MOB on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 5:28 pm
‘Forgotten’ Roma Holocaust marked at Auschwitz ceremony
https://www.france24.com/en/20190802-forgotten-roma-holocaust-marked-auschwitz-ceremony
Fact checkers on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 5:55 pm
juanpee, the committee has multiple examples of you describing in your own words your mental health issues over multiple years. This forum is full of examples but with Davy there are none. Dumbasses like makati1 or anonymouse don’t count. They are just as mentally ill as you are.
More Davy Fraudulent ID Usage on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 6:02 pm
Fact checkers on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 5:55 pm
committee for fraudulent behavior on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 6:07 pm
“More Davy Fraudulent ID Usage said Fact checkers on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 5:55 pm”
JuanPee, you are pushing us to the limit. Cease the terrible behavior or we will have no choice but to ban you.
More Davy Fraudulent ID Usage and Hypocrisy on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 6:10 pm
committee for fraudulent behavior on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 6:07 pm
Gaia on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 6:51 pm
Western society is in the late-stage capitalism. Our world needs to shift its focus on people’s wellbeing, not on short-term profit (greed).
Gaiaa on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 6:54 pm
JuanP, should stop cluttering the forum with fake ID’s.
More Davy Fraudulent ID Usage on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 7:00 pm
Gaiaa on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 6:54 pm
JuanP, should stop cluttering the forum with fake ID’s.
Anonymouse on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 7:02 pm
Davy clearly had to spell Gaia as Gaiaa, since he was probably blocked from stealing Gaia’s handle by the site. Too funny.
Sucks to be a sock that cant steal handles with 100% precision and has to resort to socking with pseudo-handles. But, its a Friday in his swampland paradise and clearly, there is nothing better to do, or in need of doing on the excepionalturd ‘estate’, except do what he does the other 90% of the week.
Complete dumbass, and whack-job to boot. Well done. And I’m sure you are just getting started, which is even sadder still.
Gaia on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 7:03 pm
Davy, nobody cares what you say or think.
juanPee sock fraud on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 7:12 pm
Gaia on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 7:03 pm
idiot alert on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 7:12 pm
Anonymouse on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 7:02 pm
Anonymouse on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 7:14 pm
I am not an idiot. I am struggling to be an engineers in the great state of kanada.
More Davy Idiocy and Child Like Behaviour on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 7:18 pm
juanPee sock fraud on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 7:12 pm
idiot alert on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 7:12 pm
Anonymouse on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 7:14 pm
Anonymouse on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 7:48 pm
Hey dumbass, how do you know 7:03 was anyone other than Gaia? Have any, you know, evidence or proof it was anyone other than who it said it was? Since your a ‘moderator’ should be trivial to show it was ‘JuanP’. Oh wait, I get it, JuanP is everyone and everyone is JuanP. Case closed right? or, at least in your diseased mind it would be.
Idiot!
Cloggie on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 10:18 pm
Can’t make this stuff up: Brexit potentially torpedoed by the Brexit Party!
#OwnGoal
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-party-brecon-radnorshire-by-election-result-conservatives-defeat-steve-baker-a9037001.html
“Brexit Party standing against Conservatives would be ‘massive own goal’, warns Tory Brexiteer after by-election defeat”
Cloggie on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 10:38 pm
Probably the largest, lasting achievement of Trump: the demise of the leftist-globalist MSM in America:
https://www.infowars.com/msnbcs-rachel-maddow-show-audience-plummets/
“MSNBC’S RACHEL MADDOW SHOW AUDIENCE PLUMMETS”
Charles on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 11:39 pm
“Davy”
I hope you appreciate just how nuttier than a fruitcake you appear.
Perhaps you should provide your family with the PO.com website so they can see for themselves.
juanpee posted this on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 12:03 am
Charles on Fri, 2nd Aug 2019 11:39 pm
Davy on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 12:24 am
I am juanpee and juanpee is me. That’s perfectly normal in my world Charles.
dumbass
Cloggie on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 2:51 am
Farage has learned from the Brecon debacle that in order to achieve Brexit, the British electoral map needs to be divided between Tories and Brexit party, in order to avoid a split of the “conservative” (read: globalist-business) vote:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7316607/Nigel-Farage-sips-champagne-Polo-Georgia-Toffolo-costing-Tories-election-win.html
“Nigel Farage sips champagne at the Polo with Georgia Toffolo after ‘costing Tories by-election win’ and warns Boris will have to do a deal with him for Conservatives to stand aside in the north to let his Brexit party win seats in Labour heartlands”
In itself it makes electoral sense, and we Europeans should hope these two clowns succeed in their strive to auto-deport England from the white European world, where they don’t belong.
But it remains to be seen if BoJo can jump over his own shadow and do what is reasonable in the light of Brexit, he claims to be such a fervent supporter of (he isn’t, he is about being “King” only).
About the state of British white nationalism, it doesn’t exist:
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/08/03/01/16794194-7316607-image-a-14_1564793500736.jpg
UKIP, basically another anti-white, anti-European party, has lately flirted with white nationalism, was demonized as such by all the media, Farage and the rest of the political landscape and scored a majestic 0.7% as a result. London no longer is majority English, expect the other major English towns to be sacrificed one after the other on the altar of money, business and globalism, just like the US, while merrily committing demographic suicide while they are at it.
A look at the following ranking should illustrate how stupid a strategy globalism really is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_current_account_balance
If you rank the countries that produce more than they consume you get this:
1. Germany 297B
2. Japan 195B
3. China 165B
4. Holland 81B
5. Taiwan 80B
One wonders why such a small country as Taiwan is showing up in the list, but then again, they had good capitalist teachers in the 17th century:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Formosa
At the total bottom of the ranking we find our Anglo globalist champs:
1. USA -466B
2. UK -107B
3. India -57B
4. Canada -49B
5. Turkey -47
6. France -37B
7. Australia -32B
You can read near future geopolitics from these figures. The only reason why the US and UK can still afford these imbalances is because the world still (but ever more reluctantly) accepts US$ and GBP reserve currencies (60% and 4% resp.), a last remnant of former 19-20th century Anglo glory.
But this is the 21st century, where mono-racialism will defeat Anglo mongrelism.
RIP Anglo-Zionism.
makati1 on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 3:41 am
JMG is pointing out that techie fantasies are just that, wet dreams of future fiction, not reality. Having lived thru all of the American brainwashed “George Jetson” futures, hippies, New Age, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc., I can see the time when even the internet will be … GASP!…gone.
Vinyl records, transistor radios, cassettes, eight track tapes, compact disks, etc. All have come and gone, but the wall seems to have been reached and no new technical advances have happened since the computer chip.
We have begun to devolve back to the quaint times of vinyl 78s and record players. I chuckled when I saw the new record players and new 78s in the music store here. I’m looking for a windup one for my preps. My old record collection can come alive again when my CDs can no longer be played.
Flying cars, and all the other techie bullshit we were fed over the decades have never, and will never happen. The opportunity passed about 50+ years ago, if it ever existed. I hope to live and observe the next 25 years as we devolve back to, well, not the freedom and secure lifestyle of the 50s America but, maybe 50s China? I’ll be 100 then. Man! What history I have seen! WHEW!
Cloggie on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 3:41 am
Priti Patel, the new “British” home secretary knows very well on which side her bread is buttered, namely the kosher side:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7316073/Home-Secretary-vows-terrorise-criminals-interview.html
“Priti’s Project Fear! As Home Secretary vows to terrorise criminals, she reveals her love of the Minions, her favourite Churchill quote and how she’s ‘partial to a G&T’ in first interview”
She speaks for the first time of her abuse at the hands of a racists online troll… Last week, just two days after her appointment, a man from Oldham was jailed after a series of vicious messages including one to Ms Patel calling her a ‘dirty Indian Ugandan, black P*** n*****’. In her statement to the police, London-born Ms Patel described the content as ‘hugely upsetting’ and ‘intimidating’…‘I have had a lot of hate crime online,’ she tells me. ‘I’m a Member of Parliament and I attract all kind of comments. There has been, over the years, a catalogue of things. They did a full investigation and saw that there was a history of abusive attacks, the type of stuff [the Oldham man] was saying. It is appalling.’… Now she’s in the Home Office, she is determined to tackle this and the wider problem of online abuse. ‘I have been clear that I don’t think we should accept or tolerate abusive language, hate crimes, intimidation at all.
OK, so in the UK people from Uganda can throw English in jail for a few online messages. Check.
Why (a balkanized) white America has still a chance (hint: the largest minority in America is still German, that’s why, ssssht):
So what did she think about Donald Trump’s ‘Go Home’ remark to four Congresswomen of colour — three of whom were born in the U.S. and the other who had come as a child refugee?
‘That doesn’t have a place in this country,’ she says firmly. Ms Patel was one of six black or ethnic minority politicians appointed to Boris Johnson’s Cabinet, a fact that sent Corbynistas into meltdown.
Labour MP Clive Lewis said they had to ‘sell your souls and your self-respect to get there.’ She has no time for this type of ‘identity politics.
And then comes a revealing admission:
She does worry, though, about growing levels of racism in Britain, particularly anti-Semitism. Part of her childhood was spent in Hertfordshire, she says, in a predominantly Jewish community and she ‘didn’t know what racism was’.
‘I talk to my mum and dad about this a lot still…I used to get on the school bus with all the other girls and we were quite fearless. None of us were getting racist abuse, or anti-Jewish remarks.
‘I’m having to teach my son about behaviours and what is acceptable and not acceptable and there is no place for racism. There is no place for hate, in particular against other people.
Translation: England is no longer the country for the English, after all that would be such a racist thing to say and Priti Patel is glad she is not like that.
Seriously, there can be no doubt she has a “sponsor” too, like Churchill, Blair, Brown and Cameron had and BoJo no doubt has.
If the (real) English are to have a future at all, it will be because their beloved American “hinterland” (“Special Relationship” of the Stockholm syndrome variety) falls flat on its face and will be divided between white Confederate flag wavers of former Trump voters, dressed in “1776” t-shirts on the one hand and Rainbow-flag wavers with BLM t-shirts, white libtards, poofters and “wetbacks”, all led (from behind) by jews.
The white counter revolution in Russia 1917-1922 failed, because Europe lay flat on its face in the aftermath of WW1.
That won’t be the case if all hell will break lose in the US, probably shortly after Trump. Then we’ll be having tout Eurasia standing by in order to take geopolitical advantage of the developing situation, namely supporting white insurgents and give Washington a thorough haircut and phase it out from history.
Only THEN do the English have a real chance of escaping from Priti Patel and BoJo/Farage and their globalist menace.
Cloggie on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 3:55 am
We have begun to devolve back to the quaint times of vinyl 78s and record players. I chuckled when I saw the new record players and new 78s in the music store here. I’m looking for a windup one for my preps. My old record collection can come alive again when my CDs can no longer be played.
They vanished because they were replaced by something better and less material. Currently youngsters listen to music unrestricted without keeping copies of songs, namely by streaming the songs from a server until they have enough of them and listen to something else.
#Spotify
https://www.digitaltrends.com/music/best-music-streaming-services/
You can register at Spotify for a few buck/month and listen to every sound track you can imagine.
Flying cars, and all the other techie bullshit we were fed over the decades have never, and will never happen.
That won’t happen indeed. Nevertheless, technological progress is real. My hometown Eindhoven (including my nothingness) are working on chip-producing machines that will make every desktop and laptop in the world superfluous in a matter of 3-5 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL3TYXr52BY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ultraviolet_lithography
You will just have your mobile gadget in your shirt-pocket, like you have today, and that’s it, both private and at work. Just stick the gadget in a docking station and you’re good.
Other major innovations will be the self-driving, publicly owned cars (on the road, not flying), as well as all sorts of storage technologies, most of them probably hydrogen-derived.
Anonymouse on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 4:04 am
No is paying any attention to you koshercreature. You’re talking to yourself…… again. Have you been able to check into any of the local gov’ts diversity employment options for disabled welfare recipients like yourself? Oh, let me guess. Been too busy talking to yourself on the internet again?
Davy on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 4:45 am
“Debt Book Diplomacy” Across BRI: ‘Hidden Debts’ Reveal Risks Of China’s Lending-Spree”
https://tinyurl.com/y5bjdqjs Gordon Watts via The Asia Times via zero hedge
“For many poor nations, it is a long and winding road to ‘debt’ and ‘corruption.’ A journey littered with economic potholes in the shape of China’s signature foreign policy project which was unveiled by President Xi Jinping six years ago. In short, the US$1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative, along with other foreign funding, has become a magical mystery tour, baffling the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Or, according to critics, a diplomatic car crash waiting to happen.”
“‘Hidden debts’ to China are especially significant for about three dozen developing countries, and distort the risk assessment in both policy surveillance and the market pricing of sovereign debt,” the working paper added. The study then went on to highlight that China is now the world’s largest creditor. A breakdown of the numbers showed that lending soared to around US$5 trillion by 2018 from roughly $500 billion in 2000, which dwarfs World Bank and IMF credit lines.”
“How can you strike hard on corruption here at home and give a free hand to Chinese people and business groups [that are] reckless abroad,” La Yifan, the director-general for international co-operation at the CCDI, told the Financial Times last week. “Part of the campaign is to go after corruption and stolen assets abroad. “[We aim to] create a network of law enforcement of all these Belt and Road countries,” he added. So, will this long and winding road finally have flashing warning signs of “debt” and “corruption?” Or will this continue to be a highway to economic hell? BRI nations might want to buckle up for a bumpy ride.”
makati1 on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 4:50 am
Cloggie, you are into some heavy drugs, it seems. Eindhoven exists on the resources and imported energy from other countries. The Netherlands is not important in the world. If it disappeared tomorrow, no one would miss it.
You techie fantasies are really delusional. Reality is not in your vocabulary. You apparently live on the welfare of others.
“Given Netherlands’ population of 17.2 million people, its total $646 billion in 2018 imports translates to roughly $37,700 in yearly product demand from every person in the core European Union country.”
http://www.worldstopexports.com/netherlands-top-10-imports/
BTW: The US imports about $4,000 per person, 1/10th that of the Netherlands.
Oh, and the Philippines 2018 imports totaled ~$16 per person. (Not a typo!)
Who will be hurting when the music stoops? LOL
Davy on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 4:52 am
“I Love Spam Madly, Deeply, Unironically”
https://tinyurl.com/y5lxedqa Lenny
I am skilled at classical French cooking. I have a Higher Certificate from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust. I also, however, love Spam. (In case you were wondering, Spam pairs well with Gewürztraminer.) I kept kosher for a few years (long story). When I broke away from the dietary laws — because I was quitting smoking and could not maintain so many forms of self-abnegation at once — the food item I cheated with was Spam. It symbolizes both the part of me that is Korean and the part of me that is American — two identities that are difficult to unite. More important, I associate Spam with relaxation, being present, and not worrying about what you can’t control. Why? Because Spam evokes beaches, pineapples, funny tropical shirts: i.e., Hawaii. It’s the one place in the world where I can be un-stressed-out, and it happens to be the only U.S. state that loves Spam as much as I do. Mainland Americans have given me no end of grief for this. First rule of Spam Club: You never talk about Spam Club. Otherwise, you risk social death. Case in point: When I was at university, my friend Mike told me that his freshman-year roommate threw out Mike’s Spam and gave him $5 to cover the cost. But Mike and I both had a really good excuse for this embarrassing proclivity: We’re of Korean extraction, and Korea is the world’s largest consumer of Spam outside the United States. How did Korea become hooked on the laughingstock of all supermarket products? The meat that was so ridiculous that Monty Python created not only a sketch around it but an entire Broadway musical? A bit of history: Spam has been manufactured by the Austin, Minnesota-based Hormel Foods Corporation since 1937. It became widespread in Korea during and after the Korean War (1950 to 1953), when the U.S. government shipped loads of Spam to Korea, at a time when fresh meat was hard to come by. Korea was by no means the only beneficiary of this largesse; during and after WWII, the U.K. also turned to Spam to supplement monthly meat rations. In fact, articles on Spam’s role in wartime Britain bear titles such as “Spam: Did It Save the Nation?” (Here are some nostalgic British WWII-era Spam recipes.) Unlike the U.K., however, where they poke fun at Spam, Korean Spam consumption was unironic. While modern-day Brits no longer regularly eat Spam, it has remained part of the diet in Korea. In September 2017, Korean sales of Spam reached 1 billion tins. And Spam’s Korean co-distributor, Cheil Jedang, announced in January that its top-selling New Year gift box was Spam. In my day, the tins were usually packed in velvet-lined boxes and wrapped in white satin ribbon. Spam is an important part of Korean home cooking. It’s the sine qua non ingredient of kimchi jjigae (stewed kimchi) and budae jjigae — literally “army stew.” My mother, a biochemist with a particular fear of foodborne illnesses, was virulently anti-pork, making it sound like a veritable menagerie of revolting organisms — trichinosis, tapeworm, hepatitis, all reproducing at exponential rates. Yet we always had Spam in our pantry. Apparently Koreans are now accepting their love of the lowbrow: David Chang, the Michelin-starred Korean-American chef, is extolling Spam. Spam’s enduring popularity in Korea surprises me, because I had assumed Koreans were now prosperous enough to abandon any food item that you need a key to open. This is a common phenomenon, though — hardship habits die hard. Some Germans raised on the substitute coffee product “Ersatzkaffee” — either during the Second World War or subsequently in the former GDR — occasionally used the bad stuff over real coffee much longer than was necessary. Wartime food is a symbol of survival. I am constantly surprised by how many non-Koreans have never seen Spam, so I’ll describe it. It’s like gefilte fish but made from compressed processed ham. As with gefilte fish, Spam is surrounded by a clear gelatinous amniotic fluid. After you open the tin (now it’s regular pull-tab, but when I was growing up, you needed to twirl open the top with a key), you hit the bottom until the Spam block pops out, though most of the time you need to go around the edge with a knife. When it exits the can’s vacuum seal, it makes a slurpy noise, like when you push cranberry jelly out of a tin. Whenever we moved house — which was pretty often — the first meal in our new home, usually eaten on moving boxes instead of tables — was Spam and instant ramen. Spam is already fully cooked, but in my house we usually fried it anyway, cut into narrow slabs. When my family lived in the United States, my parents were really into long road trips to national parks, which I enjoyed about as much as those kids did in the movie National Lampoon’s Vacation. And my parents must have been victims of Manchurian Candidate levels of Midwestern American suburban brainwashing, because they really did sing folk songs in harmony while driving — “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad” comes to mind. At the end of a long day in the car, we’d stay in these cheap hotels, where my mother would violate the hotel fire code — and every basic tenet of the social contract — by secretly making rice and frying up Spam right on the floor of the hotel room. She’d use a rice cooker and hot plate THAT SHE HAD BROUGHT FROM HOME. On one such occasion, I spilled my Spam and rice all over the hotel carpet, leading her to yell at me, “This hotel will never let Oriental [sic] people stay here again!” To which I replied, “Erm … why should they, really?” So Spam, in other words, evokes all kinds of memories: changing house, boring road trips, and my cheap-ass family. There is no substitute for Spam. When I lived in France, where Spam was unavailable, I was forced to resort to a depressing Danish knock-off. A few years ago, I went with some Korean-American friends to a trendy Korean restaurant in New York (not David Chang’s, a different one). We ordered the aforementioned budae jjigae, the army stew, so named because it was invented using random U.S. Army-provided rations, like Spam, hot dogs, and waxy government-manufactured cheese. This restaurant’s upscale version, however, was made with homemade ramen noodles, high-quality mozzarella, and what looked like Spam but was too fancy. “I’m really not into this artisanal Spam,” my friend said, grimacing and poking at it with a chopstick. I agreed. It felt wrong to dress up a poor man’s dish, like making puttanesca sauce with caviar or cottage pie with chopped truffles. Which — what am I saying? — probably does exist somewhere. I’m not a purist about food, but I do object when I feel that people are just missing the ontological essence of a dish. I needed the real thing. The healthy versions are not nearly salty or greasy enough, and the salt and grease are precisely why Spam goes so well with rice. By far the most common form in which I’ve eaten Spam is in the form of kimbap. Imagine maki rolls — the kind of sushi that is rolled into logs and cut into small cylinders — but instead of fish, they contain vegetables, a thin omelet cut into strips, and, in our house, Spam. Kimbap wasn’t really dinner food. I associate it primarily with picnics. In Korean school, kimbap was, without exception, the food that everyone’s mom packed for their kids’ school-picnic lunches. As a sullen teen, I hated those picnics with a passion you can only imagine. They were hokey affairs with long hikes and teachers screaming at you about what a nice fucking day we were having. Invariably, some tool would bring a guitar, and everyone would be forced to sing. To this day, I hate acoustic guitar. But then there was my Spam kimbap. It was a reminder that this hell passing for a picnic was only temporary, and that somewhere out there was a mother with whom I battled daily but who had nonetheless gotten up at dawn to make me Spam kimbap. My mother, in addition to the frugality, had a psychological hang-up about food. She hated cooking and resented that it was considered the domain of women. Cooking symbolized her wasted education and the career sacrifices she had made for her family. Perhaps because of her hostility toward cooking, I hated food until age twelve or so. I remember wishing it were possible to take a pill instead of having to eat dinner. Consequently, I looked like a famine victim. When I hit puberty, though, my metabolism kicked in, and I developed a normal teenage appetite. This concerned my mother. When I was five-foot-six (167 centimeters) and my weight crept past the 115-pound mark (52 kilograms), she put me on a kale-juice diet. And trust me, kale was not easy to find in those days. Yay, body dysmorphia. And yet, paradoxically, she also served me greasy, salty, insanely caloric Spam, always fried. Why, you ask? Well, isn’t it obvious? Fried foods are always evocative of love. The smell of frying itself is mouth-watering — be it Spam, tempura, croquettes, or chicken drumsticks. Even people who don’t like you can make a sandwich. I mean, what is the office deli platter if not hard evidence of that? But no one who hates you will fry you some Spam. I remember from those school picnics that some of the other kids’ mothers didn’t use Spam in their kimbap, instead using surimi, that pink fake-crab thing. Surimi — now, that’s bad parenting. Life is too short to have more than one dubious processed-meat product in your kitchen: Let Spam be it.
More Davy ID Fraud on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 4:54 am
makati1 on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 4:50 am
Davy on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 4:57 am
“What Would Chinese Military Intervention In Hong Kong Look Like?”
https://tinyurl.com/y36f2mmj zero hedge
“The Bloomberg report begins by noting that though Chinese army occupation of Hong Kong remains unlikely, it remains that “even smaller-scale intervention could spark a knee-jerk exodus from the city’s financial markets, drag down property prices and prompt international companies to reconsider their presence in the territory, analysts say.” The major financial hub could suffer “irreparable damage” by such an exodus, along with severely weakening the “one country, two systems” concept in effect since 1997. Chinese military officials, and especially state media have begun floating the argument for “military options” and intervention. Officials also recently described the US as a “black hand” behind the anti-Beijing protests – which began over a proposed extradition bill – something which the US state department dismissed as “ridiculous”.
Cloggie on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 5:06 am
Eindhoven exists on the resources and imported energy from other countries.
Not really. The Netherlands still has a large income from its own natural gas:
https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2019/22/aardgasbaten-uit-gaswinning-bijna-417-miljard-euro
The Netherlands is not important in the world.
If it disappeared tomorrow, no one would miss it.
The world wouldn’t die, indeed, that’s for sure. But in 7 years time the entire planetary advanced industry would crumble… because there would be no replacement for all these aging chips that are currently present in ALL machinery. And Eindhoven happens to have 90% of the world market of chips machines, where Toshiba has the remaining 10%, with a vastly inferior technology. Chips-producing machines, that cost 200 million per piece, last about 7 years. And nobody is able to replace or even mimic a technology that was incubated over 4 decades within Philips Electronics in Eindhoven.
Not that the Chinese didn’t try, as always:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asml-china-spying/asml-says-it-suffered-intellectual-property-theft-rejects-chinese-label-idUSKCN1RN0DK
(But hey, Chinese aren’t even able to produce a car that is ready for prime time, let alone steal, understand and copy one of the most complex technologies in the world)
But fortunately for the world, Holland has no intention of disappearing. We’ll continue to do what Holland always has done: be at the global forefront of new developments, ever since the 16th century.
Davy on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 5:11 am
“The Rise Of The American Gestapo”
https://tinyurl.com/y5ocfc9c zero hedge
“Despite the finger-pointing and outcries of dismay from those who are watching the government discard the rule of law at every turn, the question is not whether Donald Trump is the new Adolf Hitler but whether the American Police State is the new Third Reich.”
“For those who can view the present and past political landscape without partisan blinders, the warning signs are unmistakable: the Deep State’s love affair with totalitarianism began long ago.”
“Indeed, the U.S. government so admired the Nazi regime that following the second World War, it secretly recruited Hitler’s employees, adopted his protocols, embraced his mindset about law and order, implemented his tactics in incremental steps, and began to lay the foundations for the rise of the Fourth Reich.”
“Sounds far-fetched? Read on. It’s all documented.”
“As historian Robert Gellately recounts, “After five years of Hitler’s dictatorship, the Nazi police had won the FBI’s seal of approval.” The Nazi police state was initially so admired for its efficiency and order by the world powers of the day that J. Edgar Hoover, then-head of the FBI, actually sent one of his right-hand men, Edmund Patrick Coffey, to Berlin in January 1938 at the invitation of Germany’s secret police—the Gestapo.”
“The FBI was so impressed with the Nazi regime that, according to the New York Times, in the decades after World War II, the FBI, along with other government agencies, aggressively recruited at least a thousand Nazis, including some of Hitler’s highest henchmen.”
“All told, thousands of Nazi collaborators—including the head of a Nazi concentration camp, among others—were given secret visas and brought to America by way of Project Paperclip. Subsequently, they were hired on as spies and informants, and then camouflaged to ensure that their true identities and ties to Hitler’s holocaust machine would remain unknown. All the while, thousands of Jewish refugees were refused entry visas to the U.S. on the grounds that it could threaten national security.”
“Adding further insult to injury, American taxpayers have been paying to keep these ex-Nazis on the U.S. government’s payroll ever since. And in true Gestapo fashion, anyone who has dared to blow the whistle on the FBI’s illicit Nazi ties has found himself spied upon, intimidated, harassed and labeled a threat to national security.”
“As if the government’s covert, taxpayer-funded employment of Nazis after World War II wasn’t bad enough, U.S. government agencies—the FBI, CIA and the military—have fully embraced many of the Nazi’s well-honed policing tactics, and have used them repeatedly against American citizens.”
“Indeed, with every passing day, the United States government borrows yet another leaf from Nazi Germany’s playbook: Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Censorship. Intimidation. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment. Indoctrination. Indefinite detention.”
“These are not tactics used by constitutional republics, where the rule of law and the rights of the citizenry reign supreme. Rather, they are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes, where the only law that counts comes in the form of heavy-handed, unilateral dictates from a supreme ruler who uses a secret police to control the populace.”
“That danger is now posed by the FBI, whose laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, harassment and indoctrination, governmental overreach, abuse, misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, and that’s just based on what we know.”
Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government; recruiting high school students to spy on and report fellow students who show signs of being future terrorists; or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents, and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.”
“Whatever minimal restrictions initially kept the FBI’s surveillance activities within the bounds of the law have all but disappeared post-9/11. Since then, the FBI has been transformed into a mammoth federal policing and surveillance agency that largely operates as a power unto itself, beyond the reach of established laws, court rulings and legislative mandates.”
“Consider the FBI’s far-reaching powers to surveil, detain, interrogate, investigate, prosecute, punish, police and generally act as a law unto themselves—much like their Nazi cousins, the Gestapo—and then try to convince yourself that the United States is still a constitutional republic.”
“Just like the Gestapo, the FBI has vast resources, vast investigatory powers, and vast discretion to determine who is an enemy of the state.”
“Today, the FBI employs more than 35,000 individuals and operates more than 56 field offices in major cities across the U.S., as well as 400 resident agencies in smaller towns, and more than 50 international offices. In addition to their “data campus,” which houses more than 96 million sets of fingerprints from across the United States and elsewhere, the FBI has also built a vast repository of “profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime. What they have done is appear to be acting suspiciously to a town sheriff, a traffic cop or even a neighbor.” The FBI’s burgeoning databases on Americans are not only being added to and used by local police agencies, but are also being made available to employers for real-time background checks.”
“All of this is made possible by the agency’s nearly unlimited resources (its minimum budget alone in fiscal year 2015 was $8.3 billion), the government’s vast arsenal of technology, the interconnectedness of government intelligence agencies, and information sharing through fusion centers—data collecting intelligence agencies spread throughout the country that constantly monitor communications (including those of American citizens), everything from internet activity and web searches to text messages, phone calls and emails.”
“Much like the Gestapo spied on mail and phone calls, FBI agents have carte blanche access to the citizenry’s most personal information.”
“Working through the U.S. Post Office, the FBI has access to every piece of mail that passes through the postal system: more than 160 billion pieces are scanned and recorded annually. Moreover, the agency’s National Security Letters, one of the many illicit powers authorized by the USA Patriot Act, allows the FBI to secretly demand that banks, phone companies, and other businesses provide them with customer information and not disclose those demands to the customer. An internal audit of the agency found that the FBI practice of issuing tens of thousands of NSLs every year for sensitive information such as phone and financial records, often in non-emergency cases, is riddled with widespread constitutional violations.”
“Much like the Gestapo’s sophisticated surveillance programs, the FBI’s spying capabilities can delve into Americans’ most intimate details (and allow local police to do so, as well).”
“In addition to technology (which is shared with police agencies) that allows them to listen in on phone calls, read emails and text messages, and monitor web activities, the FBI’s surveillance boasts an invasive collection of spy tools ranging from Stingray devices that can track the location of cell phones to Triggerfish devices which allow agents to eavesdrop on phone calls. In one case, the FBI actually managed to remotely reprogram a “suspect’s” wireless internet card so that it would send “real-time cell-site location data to Verizon, which forwarded the data to the FBI.” Law enforcement agencies are also using social media tracking software to monitor Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts. Moreover, secret FBI rules also allow agents to spy on journalists without significant judicial oversight.”
“Much like the Gestapo’s ability to profile based on race and religion, and its assumption of guilt by association, the FBI’s approach to pre-crime allows it to profile Americans based on a broad range of characteristics including race and religion.”
“The agency’s biometric database has grown to massive proportions, the largest in the world, encompassing everything from fingerprints, palm, face and iris scans to DNA, and is being increasingly shared between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in an effort to target potential criminals long before they ever commit a crime. This is what’s known as pre-crime. Yet it’s not just your actions that will get you in trouble. In many cases, it’s also who you know—even minimally—and where your sympathies lie that could land you on a government watch list. Moreover, as the Intercept reports, despite anti-profiling prohibitions, the bureau “claims considerable latitude to use race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion in deciding which people and communities to investigate.”
“Much like the Gestapo’s power to render anyone an enemy of the state, the FBI has the power to label anyone a domestic terrorist.”
“As part of the government’s so-called ongoing war on terror, the nation’s de facto secret police force has begun using the terms “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably. Moreover, the government continues to add to its growing list of characteristics that can be used to identify an individual (especially anyone who disagrees with the government) as a potential domestic terrorist. For instance, you might be a domestic terrorist in the eyes of the FBI (and its network of snitches) if you: express libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers) exhibit Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership) read survivalist literature, including apocalyptic fictional books show signs of self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo hand tools, medical supplies) fear an economic collapse buy gold and barter items subscribe to religious views concerning the book of Revelation voice fears about Big Brother or big government expound about constitutional rights and civil liberties believe in a New World Order conspiracy”
“Much like the Gestapo infiltrated communities in order to spy on the German citizenry, the FBI routinely infiltrates political and religious groups, as well as businesses.”
“As Cora Currier writes for the Intercept: “Using loopholes it has kept secret for years, the FBI can in certain circumstances bypass its own rules in order to send undercover agents or informants into political and religious organizations, as well as schools, clubs, and businesses…” The FBI has even been paying Geek Squad technicians at Best Buy to spy on customers’ computers without a warrant.”
“Just as the Gestapo united and militarized Germany’s police forces into a national police force, America’s police forces have largely been federalized and turned into a national police force.”
“In addition to government programs that provide the nation’s police forces with military equipment and training, the FBI also operates a National Academy that trains thousands of police chiefs every year and indoctrinates them into an agency mindset that advocates the use of surveillance technology and information sharing between local, state, federal, and international agencies.”
“Just as the Gestapo’s secret files on political leaders were used to intimidate and coerce, the FBI’s files on anyone suspected of “anti-government” sentiment have been similarly abused.”
“As countless documents make clear, the FBI has no qualms about using its extensive powers in order to blackmail politicians, spy on celebrities and high-ranking government officials, and intimidate and attempt to discredit dissidents of all stripes. For example, not only did the FBI follow Martin Luther King Jr. and bug his phones and hotel rooms, but agents also sent him anonymous letters urging him to commit suicide and pressured a Massachusetts college into dropping King as its commencement speaker.”
“Just as the Gestapo carried out entrapment operations, the FBI has become a master in the art of entrapment.”
“In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks the FBI has not only targeted vulnerable individuals but has also lured or blackmailed them into fake terror plots while actually equipping them with the organization, money, weapons and motivation to carry out the plots—entrapment—and then jailing or deporting them for their so-called terrorist plotting. This is what the FBI characterizes as “forward leaning—preventative—prosecutions.” In addition to creating certain crimes in order to then “solve” them, the FBI also gives certain informants permission to break the law, “including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies,” in exchange for their cooperation on other fronts. USA Todayestimates that agents have authorized criminals to engage in as many as 15 crimes a day. Some of these informants are getting paid astronomical sums: one particularly unsavory fellow, later arrested for attempting to run over a police officer, was actually paid $85,000 for his help laying the trap for an entrapment scheme.”
“When and if a true history of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America, in much the same way that the empowerment of Germany’s secret police tracked with the rise of the Nazi regime.”
“How did the Gestapo become the terror of the Third Reich?”
“It did so by creating a sophisticated surveillance and law enforcement system that relied for its success on the cooperation of the military, the police, the intelligence community, neighborhood watchdogs, government workers for the post office and railroads, ordinary civil servants, and a nation of snitches inclined to report “rumors, deviant behavior, or even just loose talk.”
“In other words, ordinary citizens working with government agents helped create the monster that became Nazi Germany. Writing for the New York Times, Barry Ewen paints a particularly chilling portrait of how an entire nation becomes complicit in its own downfall by looking the other way:”
“In what may be his most provocative statement, [author Eric A.] Johnson says that ‘‘most Germans may not even have realized until very late in the war, if ever, that they were living in a vile dictatorship.’’ This is not to say that they were unaware of the Holocaust; Johnson demonstrates that millions of Germans must have known at least some of the truth. But, he concludes, ‘‘a tacit Faustian bargain was struck between the regime and the citizenry.’’ The government looked the other way when petty crimes were being committed. Ordinary Germans looked the other way when Jews were being rounded up and murdered; they abetted one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century not through active collaboration but through passivity, denial and indifference.”
“Much like the German people, “we the people” have become passive, polarized, gullible, easily manipulated, and lacking in critical thinking skills. Distracted by entertainment spectacles, politics and screen devices, we too are complicit, silent partners in creating a police state similar to the terror practiced by former regimes.”
“Had the government tried to ram such a state of affairs down our throats suddenly, it might have had a rebellion on its hands.”
“Instead, the American people have been given the boiling frog treatment, immersed in water that slowly is heated up—degree by degree—so that they’ve fail to notice that they’re being trapped and cooked and killed.”
“We the people” are in hot water now.”
“The Constitution doesn’t stand a chance against a federalized, globalized standing army of government henchmen protected by legislative, judicial and executive branches that are all on the same side, no matter what political views they subscribe to: suffice it to say, they are not on our side or the side of freedom.”
“From Clinton to Bush, then Obama and now Trump, it’s as if we’ve been caught in a time loop, forced to re-live the same thing over and over again: the same assaults on our freedoms, the same disregard for the rule of law, the same subservience to the Deep State, and the same corrupt, self-serving government that exists only to amass power, enrich its shareholders and ensure its continued domination.”
Davy on Sat, 3rd Aug 2019 5:38 am
“A Deluge of Batteries Is About to Rewire the Power Grid”
“Breakthroughs in energy storage are turning cars and homes into electricity providers.”
https://tinyurl.com/y2nty7gb bloomberg
“If you are wanting to run your home just on solar and batteries … it’s going to be tough. … At this point it’s pretty overstated”
Islanders are also testing a network of about 40 charging stations. Banks of second-life batteries—cells that are no longer powerful enough to be used in a car but remain adequate for less-intensive storage applications—have been connected to a local grid to soak up excess energy from wind and solar farms.
The next step in storage technology is to turn electric cars into money makers for their owners. The latest global experiments along these lines entail hooking the cars’ batteries directly to power grids. These vehicle-to-grid connections enable reversible charging, the two-way transfer of electricity from cars to houses or back to power grids. A vehicle’s battery can power home appliances, sure. But more significantly, whenever it’s parked and plugged in, the car can make money by storing energy or helping stabilize supply and demand on the grid.
Customers can already earn some money by charging their cars on a schedule determined by the availability of energy on the grid, Assef says. Under a program Renault operates in the Netherlands, a typical consumer makes €60 ($67) a year from the utility for charging during low-demand periods only, she says. “As a customer,” she says, “the journey is quite easy—you plug in, you forget, and you make money.”