Greenwash Is Ecoterrorism, Eco-Fascism, and High-Tech, Neo-Feudal, “Green” Imperialism.
Indigenous cultures in the “lithium triangle” of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia are being robbed, subjugated, poisoned and plundered, to make Teslas and cell phones. Corporate-state violence is the continuing norm, in response. Welcome to “Green” Imperialism. This is the primary camouflage, among various other psyops and modes of propaganda and psychological warfare, of the Davos/WEF corporate-state empire’s, Great Reset and Green New Deal. It is eco-fascism – and it is as ecodical, as it is genocidal, imperialist, techno-feudal and fascistic.
Cell phones, tablets, laptops and electric cars are all based in unsustainable, ecodical, extractive, environmental imperialism. No more greenwash.
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Note that I have personally been deeply involved in the environmental movement for four decades, having fund raised and canvassed for Greenpeace and the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, helping to build the Green Party of Canada when it was new to the country, and having written the draft constitution for the Green Party of Peterborough, when it was just being born, in my university town.
My roots are deeply libertarian left, and solidly, deeply green, as well as anti-war, anti-racist, pro-diversity and equality, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist. I am no right-winger on a rant of corporatist-globalist neoliberal apologetics, that is certain, and undeniably clear.
Nor am I naive, nor inclined to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and smugly and foolishly pronounce all environmentalists as eco-fascists – which is a dangerous and flatly untrue obfuscation, confusion, illusion, and lie, which is being paraded commonly as informed opinion. It is not. It is idiocy and ignorance on the part of many; and sheer propaganda and lies on the part of the globalist corporate-state power elite, and their willing tools and intellectual prostitutes – which includes all of the corporate/state media, the presstitutes, virtually the entire political class of the Global North, and much of the Global South, most of academia, and a great number of “scientists”, “thought leaders”, religious leaders, and pop culture celebrity gurus.
Beware the herd instinct. Question everything – especially authority, your own club, clique, sect, tribe, clan or social circle, and everything you thought you knew for certain.
Question everything. Think for yourself.
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The great majority of Earth’s people now reject fascism, communism and dictatorship, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, imperialism, racism and colonialism, and they lean strongly towards a left libertarian nexus of values, including freedom, decentralization, diversity, equality, ecology and peace. These are also the values and sympathies of the global green movement, at the grassroots. The fact that the big NGOs have now been co-opted and corrupted by their ties with the corporate elite, does not change that fact.
Question everything. The Green Left is back. And it is decidedly libertarian, and on the side of freedom, indigenous peoples, and the people of the world, everywhere.
But having said that, what we need most, is not a renewed, anti-authoritarian Green Left – but a uniting of the people. If you believe that freedom is fundamental, that peace is vital, that fascism, communism, technocracy, neofeudalism, colonialism, imperialism, or any form of tyranny over human beings and life on Earth is an intolerable abomination, and that the Earth we live on and share must be protected and cared for, and not merely plundered, pillaged, poisoned and destroyed, then we are allies – whether you are on the political left or right, rich or poor, urban or rural, or where you come from, or how you look.
I have always been, and always will be, on the side of the anti-fascists and anti-authoritarians. At present, in 2021, that represents about 30% of the people. That may sound like a small minority, until you realize that represents more than 500 million people in the Western world, in North America, Latin America and Europe. And we are growing in number and in strength, and rapidly so. Further, and more important, we are on the moral side, the side of justice, democracy and freedom – and the winning side, as we will see in the end.
As to history, there are obvious parallels from WWII, when we defeated the fascists the first time, 75 years ago, as we will once again.
There are also interesting parallels from further back in time: the republic of Athens vs tyranny, the Roman Republic vs the Empire; and there are parallels in the Renaissance as well.
Ghibelline or Guelph? Blacks or Whites? Dante sided with the anti-imperialist, anti-elitist, and anti-papist, Guelph Whites, and was banished from Florence for it. I would choose the same, and not look back. You don’t sacrifice your principles for the sake of easy conformity, material gain, or illusions of security, unless you want to reap the bitter harvest you have sown. Ethics are non-negotiable – as Dante’s popes found out, when they found themselves in the bowels of the Inferno.
The central problem, and the central dynamic, globally now, is one of class warfare. The richest few hundred individuals among the global banking and corporate elite, are now in control, and their long-standing war on the people, the 99.99%, and on nature and the Earth, is being pushed to its final conclusion. The mechanism of that global class war is primarily three-fold. It is economic warfare; it is a propaganda war; and it is a vicious and ruthless campaign of global psychological warfare. And of course, if you are waging an imperial war, a class war, and a war on the people, then anything that empowers the people needs to be destroyed, including religion, freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of travel, freedom of conscience, thought and belief, freedom of the press, and including liberty, constitutional rule and democracy, themselves. This is what needs to be understood now – and resisted, fought, and defeated.
Remember, the people outnumber the elite, by a million to one. Furthermore, the elite are utterly dependent upon the people, and need the people, but the people do not need the elite. They are parasitic, as well as sociopathic, ecocidal, genocidal, and literally neo-fascist – and they are in no way necessary to the continuance of human life, or human well-being, or the health and future of the planet, but are, in fact, the primary obstacles, and the enemies, of all of these. That means that, we, the people, always have the greater power, as the great Scottish philosopher, David Hume also said. The empire must go, so that the people and the Earth may live. That is the plain and simple truth of it. But to accomplish that, we must defeat the elites’ propaganda war, above all.
Six corporations now control 80% of the major media of the world. And all of them are deeply invested in the Big Pharma criminal drug cartels, which is what they are. Anyone who watches, listens to, or reads the corporate-state “news”, or who thinks they have any remaining credibility, needs their head examined.
(See Chomsky’s, Necessary Illusions, and Manufacturing Consent. And yes, they are available in audiobook and film, for the intellectually lazy, who feel that “book” is a four-letter word. Question more, scroll less.)
As to the major political parties: They’re all neoliberals now. They have all accepted a de facto global government by the international banking and corporate elite, seated at Davos, as something that is either a good thing, or an inevitable thing, which cannot be fought. They have all, therefore, surrendered the sovereignty of their nations, and our democratic governments, to foreign powers, which makes them, by legal definition, guilty of treason. Worse, all the established parties are now cheer-leading for authoritarianism. The Davos corporate elite are in love with the totalitarian model of China, and are now importing it and imposing it upon the West and upon the entire world. The “leadership” of the established political parties, therefore, have either lost their souls, or lost their spines, in the face of a putsch by Davos, while the followers are gullible and docile as usual. Leadership will not come from that quarter.
Further: What’s the point of reading or listening to the faux left, is another good question, when they too have become clueless and befuddled, and can’t spot a fascist coup when it stares them in the face? Again, leadership will not come from that quarter, either.
The leadership must come from below, where, historically, it has always come from.
J. Todd Ring, October 11, 2021
An interesting footnote: I stayed in a family hotel in Florence, which was a mansion during the Renaissance, where Dante himself stayed. I’d say I’m in good company. If the masses want to stampede across the river Styx into Hades, that’s their choice. It’s not mine.
Sometimes exile is the best option, as it was for Dante – if, that is, you want to preserve your integrity, and carry on the just fight, from stronger ground. Whether you relocate, go off-grid, or stay put, the fight is global, and it will not likely be over soon. This is the fight for the future of humanity. And you have to ask yourself: Are you on the side of the empire, or are you on the side of democracy and freedom? You cannot be on both sides at once.
Things are changing rapidly in the world, but as of this moment, we can say a few things about the major political parties of the Western world, with reasonable certainty. It is now undeniable, that by their actions, the major parties of the Western world, including the Democratic party of the US, the Liberal party of Canada, and the Conservative party of Britain, have clearly demonstrated that they have followed the lead, or the orders, of the true rulers, who are the business elite of Wall Street, Bay Street, the City of London, Basel and Davos; and due to that unholy alliance, these parties have all demonstrated that they have formed what was a previously unthinkable alliance, with the totalitarian Communist government of China, and are busily and rapidly importing and implementing the Chinese Communist model of totalitarianism, here in the West.
(We must realize that it is clearly no mere “conspiracy theory” that the world’s billionaires and corporate oligarchs, who meet annually at Davos, in the World Economic Forum, have effectively taken over the world. Even the leading business journal of the Western world, the Financial Times, calls the World Economic Forum the “de facto world government”. And what is their demonstrated modus operandi? They are quite literally neo-fascists, egomaniacs, and neo-Malthusians.)
That, of course, makes all of these parties utterly unsupportable. To support any of them, would be to support authoritarianism – or what has been variously called technocracy, totalitarianism, Communism or fascism – and all of these are appropriate terms, since they all represent essentially the same thing, with variations of flavour and inflection only: they represent the culmination of a decades long war on democracy, freedom and constitutional rights, in favour of elitism and authoritarian rule.
To support any of them, therefore, is not only unconscionable, but would mean that we are complicit in the final destruction of democracy, freedom, constitutional rule and human rights, and it would mean we are supporting our would-be slavers. Every thinking person, every person of courage, conviction, or of principle, and every sane person, must reject them, and reject the new rise of authoritarianism – which is a blend of fascism, technocracy, and totalitarian Communism.
As for the other major political parties of the Western world, including the Republican party of the United States, the Conservative, NDP and Green parties of Canada, and the Labour party of Britain, I have seen no clear, strong or firm rejection of authoritarianism, or the Chinese model, from them. That makes them, as well, unsupportable by anyone of principle, or of sound mind. They have become Quislings, and are ominously silent about the new authoritarianism, or are else, and more commonly, are actively cheer-leading for it.
For the record, I will repeat what I said in my first book, Enlightened Democracy, from 2014, where I clearly warned of the growing trend towards corporate fascism. I would support almost any party, candidate, or political movement, that is firmly, and in practice, not just in principle or in rhetoric, opposed to authoritarianism and the destruction of freedom and constitutional rule.
We are entering a very dark time now. As I said to a very gentlemanly older man who came to my door to canvass for the Conservative party of Canada, anything is better than totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is the worst thing possible. And that is precisely where we are rapidly headed, in Canada, the US, Britain and Europe, and in most nations around the world.
Even the normally staid and compliant Church of England has taken a stand, saying that the churches have never been closed in the history of England – not even during the Blitzkrieg, not even during the Great Plague, which killed a third of Europe (compared to the fraction of one percent from covid) – until now. The church leaders made a very clear and strong, unequivocal public statement, in which they said that the current authoritarian measures which are being implemented pose a grave threat to freedom and constitutional rights, and may spell the death of democracy. We would be foolish in the extreme to dismiss such warnings.
What we are seeing, is the culmination and final phase of a decades long war on democracy, and a slow-motion global corporate-fascist coup: one which has been waged successfully by the global corporate elite and their loyal minions in government, academia and the media; and now, recently, with the allegiance and support of the totalitarian regime of Communist China.
Remember, the business elite, and most of the political elite, across the Western world, openly praised fascism in the 1920s and into the 1930s; then actively supported and orchestrated fascist coups, viciously destroying democracy and freedom, across the Third World, for the past 75 years. They have no qualms with fascism, and in fact prefer it. Nor do they have any real qualms with totalitarian Communism, despite their decades of rhetoric. Their motives and interests are proven by their actions, over the past 100 years: they value their own wealth and power above all other concerns. Anything that increases their wealth, and more importantly, anything that increases their power, is both acceptable and desirable to them. That includes fascism, Communism and totalitarianism. These are the harsh realities we must now come to see, and to viscerally understand. Denial now, would be truly disastrous.
I would prefer a government that is left libertarian, along the lines that have been clearly laid out by people such as Kropotkin, Rocker, Chomsky, Bertrand Russell, Bookchin, and Yanis Varoufakis. But as I said in my first book, the first priority, which dwarfs all others, is for the people to reclaim their democracy, and their constitutional rights, and to resist, reject, and defeat the rising tide of global corporate fascism.
I would support a liberal, conservative, libertarian, social democrat or green government, so long as it was truly and genuinely opposed to authoritarianism and to fascism, and was serious about defending and restoring constitutional democracy, freedom, and human rights for all.
What we most need now, is an alliance between all political parties, political candidates and representatives, and all political movements, which are authentically anti-authoritarian, and strongly and actively in support of constitutional democracy, freedom, and constitutionally guaranteed human rights for all. This is the most urgent task of our time. If we lose on this most central of challenges, or if we are too blind and bewildered to even recognize it as the central task, then all is lost, and it is a dark age ahead, marked by the total destruction of democracy, freedom, constitutional rule and human rights, and by a deeply Orwellian global empire, ruled by the Western billionaire elite, and their new partners in Beijing – while the people and the planet continue to be eaten alive, and enslaved, by the ruling oligarchs, and with accelerating speed.
Unite the forces of freedom now, or watch as darkness envelopes and devours the world.
In the 1960s, there was a cultural awakening which spread rapidly around the world, and Chomsky is right in calling it both a cultural awakening, and also, an outbreak of democracy. The civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the gay rights movement, the native rights movement, the anti-war and peace movement, and the environmental movement, either began or took on a whole new level of grassroots popular power, in the 1960s. This, of course, made the political elite, and the business elite who effectively rule them, shudder and shake with terror and rage. The Pentagon Papers – which were top secret and classified at the time, and which were written in and around 1968, and were leaked by one courageous man, thankfully – spelled out in detail how the power elite, as the great sociologist C. Wright Mills called them – the political elite, the military and paramilitary (the “intelligence” community), and the corporate elite who dominates them both – responded to the outbreak of democracy. They were unsurprisingly dead-set against it, and made it clear and explicit in their top secret planning documents, including the Pentagon Papers, that, as they see it, democracy must be rolled back, and once again constrained, so that the elite could once again rule, as they should, without the hindrance of democracy getting in the way. That was the 1960s. Since that time, the war on democracy has been continuous, highly conscious, and escalating. By now, in the early 21st century, by way of a constellation of methods and strategies, democracy has been thoroughly gutted across the Western world, with a few hundred billionaires in Davos effectively in control. As the leading business journal of the Western world itself admitted, Davos is now “the de facto world government”. Also, by now, after the crash of 2008 and the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the Bernie Sanders campaign (which failed to gain political power, but succeeded greatly in opening up free and critical thought and debate), the great majority of people now realize that we no longer live in a democracy – we live in an oligarchy, a global plutocracy, ruled by the bankers and the billionaire elite. The question is, of course, what are we going to do about it?
I have devoted four decades to research, reflection, and writing on this subject, and my first two books lay out a global and historical analysis, a vision for a better world, and a set of strategies for getting there. What I will focus on here, is the crystallization of the key steps that are necessary to achieve that goal: the goal of a rebirth of democracy, freedom, and constitutional rule, and a better world for all.
What are some of the necessary and unavoidable steps we must take, if we are serious about reclaiming our democracy, our freedom, or our rights – all of which are being systematically destroyed now, in the name of an authoritarian benevolence, which, of course, is always a lie, and always a contradiction in terms?
1. Create a free and diverse, open, transparent, and democratic media. This applies not just to the corporate media, but also to the state-controlled media, and the “public”, “alternative”, “independent” and “progressive” media – all of which, or 99% of which, are heavily dependent on money from big corporations, or from billionaire-controlled foundations: which, of course, means that they are not free or independent media, but are on a short leash, and are also part of the corporate-controlled media empire.
2. Apply strict election financing laws – banning all “donations” (which, for adults, translates as bribes) to elections from any corporation or organization, and limiting contributions to elections to $1,000 a year per person. This requires public financing of elections, which is something that has been tried in Europe, and works very well – much better than allowing the rich and the big corporations to buy elections, and buy politicians, political parties and governments, as they currently do now.
3. Implement proportional democracy. That means that your vote is not wasted by voting for a minority party. That millions more people would vote for an anti-establishment party.
If, for example, the Green Party wins 15% of the popular vote, the NDP receive 15% of the vote, and each of the dominant, establishment parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, receive 25-29% of the vote – and this is a conservative estimate of the voting shift, since almost everybody mistrusts or hates both the Liberals and Conservatives by now, just as the majority of Americans now mistrust if not hate both the Republicans and the Democrats. The Greens would then get 15% of the seats in government, the NDP would get 15% of the seats, and the Liberals and Conservatives would each get less than 30% of the seats. Neither the Liberals or Conservatives would be able to form a majority government, and the two arch rivals would not likely form a coalition government with each other. The much more likely outcome would be a Green/NDP coalition government, which, while mild and tepid, white-bread and weak-kneed in nature, would at least make some minor reforms in favour of justice, pensions, elder care, child care, public health and education, and environmental protection – all of which, are regressing and have been under heavy attack by both the Liberals and Conservatives, ever since Pierre Elliot Trudeau left office, in 1979.
The British parliamentary system is a very good system in some respects, but it is systematically biased towards favouring established, dominant political parties. Across Europe, proportional representation is the norm. That is a far more democratic system.
If we are serious about democracy, then we must take these first three steps immediately. But there is more that is needed, if democracy is to survive – or, given that it is now effectively dead, we should say, these three steps and more are required to resurrect democracy, and allow it to be reborn.
4. Reject all “trade agreements” and other international agreements which surrender the sovereignty of a democratically elected parliament (or Congress) to foreign powers – namely, the multi-national corporations, and international organizations such as the NAFTA tribunal, the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, the BIS and the WHO. We should note here that these so-called “trade agreements” are really corporate rights agreements. They are less about trade, and more about giving multi-national corporations the power to sue governments for loss of profits, or possible loss of future profits, if, for example, environmental, health or other legislation threatens or harms their profits. This means that all governments, and all politicians who have signed such agreements, which surrender the sovereignty of parliament to foreign powers (multi-national corporations), are, under the explicit terms of Canadian federal law, guilty of treason – which, under Canadian law, is the only crime punishable by death. I am not suggesting we resort to the death penalty, which I am firmly opposed to. I am, however, trying to covey the extreme gravity and severity of the crime of surrendering the sovereignty of Parliament or Congress to any foreign power, including multi-national corporations – or the WHO, BIS, ECB or WTO. We should, at the very least, remove these traitors from government, and elect only political representatives and true leaders who are sworn and committed to upholding both the constitution, and the sovereignty of our democratically elected government and nation.
Why should the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), or the World Health Organization, effectively set the policies, laws, rules, regulations and norms for Canada, or any sovereign nation? The World Health Organization is controlled by Big Pharma, Washington, and Bill Gates, who are its three primary sources of funds. Anyone who trusts these three, is bordering on clinical insanity. Bill Gates, even more than the other two, took over the WHO, over the past decade. Even the Financial Times, the leading business journal of the Western hemisphere, acknowledges that the World Health Organization doesn’t do anything without prior approval from the Gates Foundation.
The banking elites and other billionaire corporate elites control the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, and the BIS, and Bill Gates controls the WHO. Are we going to allow a handful of ultra-rich plutocrats to control our laws, our rules and regulations, and to determine our policies and our choices? This is neo-feudalism. It is also an oligarchy, a plutocracy, a kleptocracy, and an empire, and it is increasingly authoritarian, in addition. The time to reclaim our democracy, our sovereignty, and our freedom, is now.
The World Economic Forum at Davos has publicly announced their plan for humanity, to be fulfilled, they say, by 2030: “You’ll own nothing – and you’ll be happy.” We, the people, the 99%, will own nothing – that is the plan. Who then, will own everything? The Davos billionaires, of course. As I said, this is the new feudalism. We must dethrone the corporate oligarchs, and take back our power, our freedom, and our democracy, now.
5. Tax financial speculation. We must invoke immediately, a tax on financial speculation, and currency speculation in particular. Without that measure, we will continue to have our current, pathological, anti-democratic norm, which is, that billionaires and hedge funds can continue to attack and devalue, or threaten to attack and devalue, the nation’s currency, and through this financial extortion, bring virtually any government to its knees. BlackRock alone, the biggest hedge fund in the world, which is the tool for managing the wealth of the super-rich, controls $8 trillion. The entire Canadian economy is only $1.7 trillion – and Canada is one of the seven richest countries in the world. We invoke this measure, along with the other vital steps I am outlining here, and BlackRock, and the billionaires, lose their power over us.
6. Keep the nation’s central bank public, and democratically controlled. The Bank of Canada, which is an exception in the world, in that it is a publicly owned central bank, must not only remain a publicly owned central bank, but even more essentially, it must be under the control of the democratically elected federal Canadian government – and not under the control of Davos billionaires, or the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland (which is the central bankers’ central bank). All other nations in the world, if they are intelligent, will follow these most vital and urgently necessary six steps to reclaiming their democracy, or not only will their democracy die, but also their freedom, their constitutions, and their rights, will be shredded, trampled, and burned to the ground – as is already well underway.
7. Apply serious and vigorous anti-trust legislation, especially and most immediately in key sectors: the media, banking and finance, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Agra and Big Oil. Teddy Roosevelt led a successful, populist movement to dethrone and reign in the powerful business oligarchs – most notably Standard Oil, which was and still is controlled by the Rockefeller dynasty: the most powerful family in the Americas, until the geek-barons of Big Tech came to rival and slightly overshadow them. But the anti-trust actions failed, because they did not go far enough. Standard Oil, for example, was broken up into numerous smaller corporations, but over time, the Rockefeller dynasty brought them back together again, like hydra heads merging back to their host body, and Standard Oil was reborn as the Frankenstein monster of Exxon-Mobil, the biggest oil company in the world. We failed then, because we were too timid, too limited in our foresight, and did not go far enough. What we must do, is not simply to (a) break up the big banks, media empires, hedge funds, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Agra and Big Oil companies – but also, and further, (b) revoke their corporate charters; then, most critically (c) seize all of their assets, and transform them into networks and federations of decentralized, democratically-controlled, worker-owned co-ops. That kills the beast which is the ruling global corporate oligarchy, because it gets to its dark heart, and cuts it out. Remove the assets of the corporate giants, and they cannot resurrect themselves from the dead. This is the stake through the heart, which is necessary now, if we are to have freedom and democracy, and constitutional rights for all, and not descend into the Orwellian dystopia, into which we are now headed. It is furthermore the most central, most vital, and most urgent of actions, if we are going to see serious action on the growing environmental crisis – or any other social issue.
8. End all subsidies, tax breaks and tax loopholes for big business, the richest 1% and the large corporations. Government can and should support small business, which is the primary engine of the economy, and the primary employer, and can and should support entrepreneurship and new start-ups. What we cannot afford to do, is to continue to give billions of dollars a year – or in the case of the US, trillions of dollars a year – to giant corporations that are already excessively powerful. Aldous Huxley was right: the primary problem in society is the excessive concentration, or centralization, of power. We need to break up the corporate empires, and dethrone them, not feed them and fuel their further cancerous growth with massive subsidies and tax breaks. The crony capitalism and corporatism must end. Take the rich off welfare now. If either constitutional democracy or freedom are to survive, or be reborn, we must stop feeding the corporate oligarchs. That much should be plainly obvious, and undeniable to all.
Furthermore, by implementing a progressive income, profit and wealth tax on the richest 1% and the large corporations, we will not only balance all budgets and eliminate deficit spending, and be able to fully fund critically needed social programs, such as health care, and fund urgently needed environmental programs to make the transition to a green and regenerative society: we will also be able to reduce the greatly excessive tax burden on the middle class, small business and farmers, and eliminate taxes for new start-up businesses and the poor. The social, ecological and economic benefits would be, and will be, enormous. But the preservation of our freedom and democracy that it will also help to safeguard and renew, is priceless. Be bold now, I say, or watch our world burn, along with our freedom, our democracy, and our rights.
9. Implement a pollution tax, to be collected exclusively by local communities and municipalities. This will greatly help the environment while strengthening democracy, and strengthening local economies. Cities, towns, villages and municipalities are facing a growing nexus of problems and crises, including a growing financial and economic crisis. At the same time, we are in the midst of a rapidly escalating environmental emergency. We must create disincentives to pollution, and we must create incentives to switch from polluting technologies and modes of business, transportation, housing, agriculture and energy. By giving local communities and municipalities the power to implement and collect a pollution tax, we answer both of these problems in one stroke. It is true that the billionaire corporate elite want a global governance system with a global carbon tax, collected by the IMF. That would give the oligarchs exactly what they want: more profits and more power. But it is highly questionable if the technocratic, authoritarian answer they are proposing would truly halt the environmental crisis, or whether it would simply create a new, deeply dystopian society of global technocratic fascist rule, with the bankers then even more firmly in control of the world. We are already very close to that reality, and are being driven further into that scenario by the day. We must tax pollution, but we must also reject any global collection of a pollution tax, because that would ensure effective slavery for humanity, or at least, global servitude and the death of freedom and democracy. By allowing local communities to implement and collect a pollution tax, we can accomplish the vital goal of creating a shift away from polluting modes and methods and systems, and towards clean, renewable, sustainable and regenerative modes and systems of business, transportation, housing, agriculture and energy – without creating a global police state in the process, but instead, fostering a rebirth of freedom and constitutional democracy.
A pollution tax, along with a tax on the richest 1% and the big corporations, and a tax on financial speculation, will enable all social and environmental programs to be fully funded. And by making the pollution tax collected solely by local municipal governments, we will see local communities flourish, and lead the way in the transition to a clean, green, sustainable and regenerative, thriving and free society. Local communities will then have the funds to invest in community self-reliance in energy, food and water – which is critically important for adaptability, mitigation and resilience. Local communities will then have the funds for building community gardens, urban and peri-urban organic regenerative farms, community-controlled solar and wind power, excellent bus systems, walking and cycling routes, tiny green home villages, and funds for creating ponds, aquaculture systems, natural flood control and fire resistance, water reservoirs, rainwater catchment systems, grey-water systems, composting systems, wetlands and reforestation, parks, nature trails, community car-share co-ops, bicycle co-ops, child care co-ops and pedestrian malls, and funds for retrofitting every home and building for high energy efficiency and thermal insulation, along with funds for local community economic development and entrepreneurship seed capital. In short, a pollution tax that is collected by local communities and municipalities would positively transform our communities, and our nation, in short order.
For example, I live in a town of 18,000 people, and in North America there is an average of at least one vehicle per capita, disturbingly. That means there are roughly 18,000 fossil fuel burning vehicles in this small town, appallingly. A pollution tax, collected by local governments, on roughly 18,000 fossil fuel burning vehicles, set at 5% of the market value of the vehicle annually, with an estimated average market value per vehicle of just $20,000, would create an annual revenue fund from the locally-collected pollution tax, of $18 million dollars – per year, for one small city. The entire budget of a town of this size is roughly $36 million per year – and most towns, cities and villages are running a large annual deficit, which in the case of typical towns of this size, is easily $10 billion a year. That means, a pollution tax that is collected by the local community could eliminate the annual deficits, and still leave $8 million a year for investment in the community, or an additional 25% in annual revenue available, after eliminating all deficits. The transformative power of this simple, urgently necessary idea, is simply profound. Yes, of course, pollution tax revenues would gradually fall, if they work as a disincentive to pollution, as they are intended to do. And they will work, of course, because when you create economic disincentives, you reduce the social pattern you have disincentivized. But as pollution tax revenues fall, that is a good sign – it means we are making progress in reducing pollution, and creating a clean, green, sustainable and regenerative community and society. It also means that as pollution tax revenues gradually decline, the funds from that revenue stream have already been invested in creating clean, renewable infrastructure, and a thriving, resilient community and society. To turn down this idea would be short-sighted to the point of madness. It is time for such bold thinking, and for such bold action, and there is zero time to delay.
Would you rather have the IMF and the globalist billionaire elite collect a pollution tax, and remove the remains of your freedom, democracy and human rights along with it? Or would you rather have democratically-elected, local communities collect the pollution tax, while retaining our freedoms, our democracy and our rights, and strengthening them all, while strengthening and rebuilding our local communities, and making the shift to a society that is democratic and free, as well as sustainable? We are going to have one or the other. I would say the more pleasant medicine is the locally-empowering option, and the only option that is compatible with freedom and democracy. The path of globalized tax collection for a globalized government, run by and for the ruling business elite, will be more than a disaster, if we allow it to happen – it will make Chairman Mao’s China and Mussolini’s Italy look mild by comparison. Choose wisely, and choose now – as we must.
Community-based, town hall democracy – which Thomas Jefferson also advised and urged – along with referendums on all major issues, is the most direct, robust, and accountable form of democracy. If we truly value either democracy or freedom, to say nothing of thriving, resilient, sustainable green communities, then we will not only accept such a proposal as this, but passionately and resolutely commit to bringing it to fruition. Again, what do we prefer: thriving, green communities, based in democracy and freedom, or a global police state, run by the robber barons and the super-rich plutocrats? These are our choices now. Let us be very thoughtful, and also, decisive, in what we now choose, for thatwill determine our fate.
10. Respect the sovereignty of the individual over his or her person, body and mind. We cannot expect to have a free or democratic society, or a society based on constitutional rule and human rights, until and unless we recognize personal sovereignty as fundamental, and inviolable. The basis of all human rights and all constitutional rights, is sovereignty over one’s own person and body. That is the basis for the Magna Carta, the Great Seal, which is the foundation of 800 years of Western law, and all constitutional law. If we allow the sovereignty over our bodies to be violated, then all our rights, our democracy and our freedom, are all null and void. The basis for a free and democratic society is that the individual has sovereignty over his or her own body and mind. This is, and must be, non-negotiable. Informed consent is therefore fundamental to our most basic and fundamental human rights. Without that, we have nothing. Without that, we are mere chattel, mere objects, to be used, harvested, yoked, exploited and disposed of, at will be our masters. Life with freedom requires there be no masters and no slaves. That requires that we insist upon retaining our fundamental, God-given right to sovereignty over our own person, body and mind.
11. Tax the rich. Yes, this is both necessary and legitimate. Moreover, the great majority of people support such a move. Put a tax of 90% on all personal income over $1 million a year, and all corporate profits over $1 billion a year. Furthermore, we must now tax not only income and profits, but also accumulated wealth. There must be a reasonable cap on incomes and wealth, otherwise, inequality soars, and the super-rich become so vastly powerful that they effectively become the masters of the nation and of the world, in which case, both freedom and democracy will inevitably die, and oligarchy, neo-feudalism and tyranny will take their place – that is what we have allowed to happen, and now, we must remedy our mistake. We should immediately implement a wealth tax of 90% on all personal wealth over $100 million. (And all of those figures are incredibly lenient, by the way.) If that means redistributing shares in corporations more equally among all citizens, then that is the wisest and most prudent, and just, course of action. That still leaves room for tolerance of those who want to be wealthy in material terms, yet provides urgently needed funds for social programs, environmental protection, and the urgently needed shift to a truly sustainable, free and democratic, regenerative and thriving society. Close all tax loopholes for the richest 1% and large corporations, and implement a forensic audit on all of the biggest 200 corporations operating in Canada, and on all of the nation’s billionaires. This means tracking down all off-shored profits and wealth, and halting capital flight. When the wealth of the nation overwhelmingly accumulates in the hands of the giant corporations, the richest 1%, and in offshore private bank accounts, you can be sure the nation is slowly being drained of its lifeblood. Stop the blood-letting. You can be wealthy, you can be rich, you can be very successful in business or entrepreneurship; but obscene levels of greed and parasitism are not tolerable, and must be stopped.
12. Implement sound fiscal and monetary policies. The founder of the Bank of Canada was right:
“Once a nation parts with control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes that nation’s laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.”
– William Lyon Mackenzie
Sound fiscal and monetary policy necessitates that the central bank of the nation remain publicly owned, as we have said. Secondly, it necessitates that the central bank, the Bank of Canada in this case, be controlled by a democratically-elected Parliament – and not by any foreign powers, such as Moody’s investment firm, Goldman Sachs, Wall Street, the City of London, Davos, the IMF, the BIS, or the global financial elite, who control all of these institutions, along with the big banks, the global economy, and most nations and governments in the world.
Thirdly, in order to safeguard the nation’s sovereignty and independence, a tax must be imposed on financial speculation, and particularly on currency speculation. That protects the nation’s currency, and hence its economy, and hence, its sovereignty and democratic independence, from manipulation by foreign powers – principally, the global financial elite.
Fourth, to have a sound economy, among other necessary actions, it is vital to implement capital controls. That includes, above all, stopping capital flight, and halting the offshoring of profits and wealth in private offshore bank accounts and shell companies. Set a low limit for moving large sums of money or capital offshore. Moving more than a million dollars a year out of the country should require an audit, to establish that such a drain on the nation’s economy is justified. And that, again, is a very lenient figure! But it would be enough to at least stop the hemorrhaging.
Fifth, to have sound fiscal and monetary policy, and sound money, you must, of course, have sound money. This means the nation’s currency must be backed by real world assets, such as gold or silver – or by a combination of real world assets, including gold, silver and Bitcoin. Fiat currency is the policy of printing money out of thin air. No currency can remain stable for long under that policy. The fact that we have survived economically at all, after 50 years of such a policy, is surprising. We are pushing our luck to continue it any longer. Sooner or later the house of cards will implode. Better to build real-world assets to back our nation’s currency now – as China, Russia, and several other nations have done. Instead of selling off our nation’s gold reserves, foolishly and disastrously, we should be increasing them, and building reserves of silver, Bitcoin, and other real world assets, as well. Promoting the use of Bitcoin and local currencies is another important element in a comprehensive strategy to secure a sound and resilient, thriving economy, and this policy should also be implemented immediately.
Sixth, a policy of balanced budgets should be a natural target, and also necessary for stability and prosperity, or independence, is a balance in terms of trade. We can have cycles of government investment in the nation which run a short-term deficit, and later reap the rewards with greater economic prosperity – just as we invest heavily in spring to plant a garden or plant the fields, and reap the harvest later. But a policy of endless, perpetual deficits, creating endlessly growing debt, is a policy designed for failure and collapse. Just look at our neighbours to the south. The US is near to imploding, both for sociological reasons, for political reasons, and also for financial and economic reasons. You cannot offshore all production, and import everything the nation needs, without sooner or later going bankrupt. Buying local and buying Canadian, and investing in our communities and our nation, should be top priorities – for both ecological as well as economic reasons. Globalized supply chains, shipping food and other goods thousands of miles from China, Mexico, California, and from all over the world, when most of them we could make or grow ourselves, is a foolish and disastrous policy and habit, both in terms of ecology, and in terms of economics – and in terms of our sovereignty and democratic independence. If we want to be sovereign, democratic and free, then we must be more self-reliant – not isolationist, but self-reliant. If we have a sound economy – a green, just, and regenerative economy, and a sound economy – it is much more likely that we will be able to preserve our freedom, our democracy, and our independence. If we do not, then we are losing all of these priceless treasures, and rapidly. Buying local, first of all, and above all, and buying Canadian products and services, is truly, vitally important.
Unless we implement all of these steps to creating a sound fiscal and monetary policy, and a sound economic policy, our nation can forget about such lofty ideals as freedom, independence, sovereignty, democracy, or even economic stability, for they will all be sacrificed on the altar of the new global corporate-financial empire.
13. Abolish the absurd legal notion that corporations are persons. This disastrous and illogical policy, built upon a sham and a lie, has allowed corporations to overshadow, and then finally to dominate and control, virtually every nation in the world. End the fiction that corporations are persons, and end their legal status as persons, and their house of cards collapses. For the sake of our planet, for the sake of our future, and our very survival; and for the sake of our health, our children’s health, our democracy, our sovereignty, our human rights and our freedom, this fiction must end now.
14. Uphold the rule of constitutional law, and uphold the inherent, inalienable human rights of all. The UN Charter of Human Rights spells out our basic, inalienable rights very clearly, succinctly, and well. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Constitution and Bill of Rights in the United States, the Constitution of Mexico, and the relevant constitutions of nations around the world, should, and must, be upheld, and defended – against all threats, foreign or domestic. This is vital. Democracy without constitutional rights and freedoms in place, and limits on state and government power, becomes just another form of tyranny. And when both democracy and constitutional rights are gutted by an international elite of businessmen and technocrats, and their local political minions, then we have an abomination brewing, and a dystopia has arrived. That is where we stand right now. If we want something better, either for ourselves or for our children, we are going to have to fight for it.
15. Build self-reliance, adaptability and resilience. The world is faced with a nexus of interwoven crises – economic, political, social, psychological (in the “leading” industrialized nations, at least), ecological, and in terms of public health. These crises require of us a clear mind, above all, which requires that we slow down, unplug from the veritable tsunami of “news” and “analysis”, infotainment, “social media”, chronic distraction, restless busyness and entertainment addiction: so that we can pause long enough to think, and to reflect, and also, to do some serious research, and then reflect deeply again, on what we have discovered. None of this is happening, generally speaking, in terms of what is our present norm, although there are exceptions – neither in the realms of the political-mandarin elite, the academics and the intellectuals, or the business elite; nor among the general public. The elite are, in general, of one mind, slavishly conforming in action, speech and thought to the neoliberal globalization orthodoxy of the ruling elite. The power elite, despite frequently vicious in-fighting, in general behave as a pack, and think as a pack. The public, in general, is behaving little better. We have become virtual zombies, sleep-walkers, in our misplaced and malformed, distorted social instinct, which, in its positive side, expresses itself in the instinct toward compassion and mutual aid, and in its dark side, expresses itself as docile conformity to the herd, and an equally disastrous and unthinking deference and obedience to authority. This is the most critical task, if we want a better future, or any future at all: disconnect from the chronic addiction to infotainment, entertainment and distraction; take some breaks, to pause, reflect, research, discuss, and reflect some more. Nothing good will come of a befuddled mind – and that is the norm, for both the ruling elite, and for the masses. That is priority one: clear your mind, disconnect from the noise, in order to reconnect with your own intuition and common sense. If we fail in that, we fail in everything.
Reclaiming our democracy is task number one, because without that, we have no hope of success with regard to any issue, be it justice, equality, the environment, or anything else. This should be plainly obvious to all. But clearly, we cannot accomplish even that most fundamental and urgent of tasks, if we lack the sufficient and necessary clarity of mind. Unplug. Get clear. This is vital.
But there is more that is necessary if we are to address, or even seriously face and contend with, the very serious problems our country, our communities, our families and our world are facing. We need, above all, to regain a basic clarity of mind, which can only come by reconnecting with ourselves. Question authority, question the norm, question the milling, drifting flock. Question everything. Think for yourself. Disconnect, in order to reconnect. Then only will clarity be attained. And only through a regained clarity, confidence, dignity and perspective, is any positive future possible at all. Yet, there is more that is required from us than this most essential first step.
What we also need, if we are to successfully navigate the stormy waters ahead, beyond a basic clarity of mind, confidence and sense of perspective, is resilience. Resilience comes primarily from within. It is a matter of character. And we do not have to be passively, meekly, foolishly fatalistic about it. We can cultivate inner resourcefulness, inner strength, a quiet dignity, confidence, strength of character, courage, tenacity, resolve – all of the things that create inner resilience.
But resilience, of course, although it primarily comes from within, also has an outer component. I am not inclined toward personal anecdotes, but every rule has its exception. Here is a short, relevant story, and an example. When an ice storm hit East-Central Canada, some 25 years ago, in Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec, where I was living, most people had to leave their homes, because their homes had no heat, because the power grid went down, and stayed down, in some areas for two weeks. We were fortunate to have a wood-stove for heat, and a year’s supply of well-dried firewood, and a propane cook-stove, and we stayed in our home, without any problems, using candles for light. The environmental emergency which we have now entered – which, even with our best efforts, will in all likelihood continue to produce increasing waves of disruptions and disasters, until we can finally heal the Earth – makes it a matter of basic intelligence and common sense to be prepared for emergencies and for possible disruptions in the distribution of necessities, such as heat, energy, food and water.
I can scarcely believe that I have to explain this most obvious fact, which our grandparents understood viscerally, as a matter of common sense; but, that is, sadly, the unfortunate case. People who exercise forethought tend to fare better in emergencies, hard times, or in almost any kind of change or disruption to their normal way of life. Not exercising forethought is simply childish, irresponsible, and foolish. Being prepared for contingencies, disruptions or emergencies is simply intelligent risk management.
Being prepared for possible emergencies or hard times doesn’t make you are insane – not being prepared for emergencies or hard times, is insane. Creating, or, that is, re-creating, a culture which exercises forethought and foresight, as the norm, is not only prudent, but simply a matter of basic intelligence, and even basic sanity.
My parents’ generation, who were born during World War II, grew up with the habits of frugality with regard to oneself, and generosity and cheerful, willing mutual aid towards others, along with forethought, savings, self-reliance, resilience, and preparedness in case of hard times, as the norm. We have surely progressed culturally in some ways since the 1940s, of course – racism, sexism, xenophobia and intolerance have all declined, violent crime has declined for fifty years, according to police statistics, a healthy questioning of authority and of social norms has increased, broad-mindedness and open-mindedness has increased, activism and volunteerism have increased, and support for war has declined sharply. But on the other hand, we have in some ways regressed. Nobody saves anymore; in fact, the great majority are going ever deeper into debt. Canadians on average spend $1.7 for every dollar of income. Clearly this is a recipe for mass servitude through debt bondage, followed by mass bankruptcy. Thinking about the future, planning beyond a few weeks, is now the exception, rather than the rule. Likewise, forethought and foresight are virtually obliterated in 21st century industrial society, along with memory, any sense of history, perspective, or self-reliance. All of these things must be reclaimed and rebuilt, if we have any sense at all.
In some ways, the Depression-era and war-time era had the better thinking: be frugal with regards to spending on yourself; be generous with others, especially in terms of being cheerfully ready and willing to lend a hand; avoid debt like the plague, and save what you can for the future and for future generations; think about the long term, and plan ahead; exercise foresight and forethought, and always be prepared, in case of hard times; keep a strong measure of self-reliance; and strive to be calm, confident, humble, hard-working and cheerful, even in the midst of difficult times – especially in the midst of difficult times. Not everything that comes later is better. We need to reclaim the best from our past, and combine that with the best of the present. To do otherwise would simply be nonsensical.
Build back better? What I am presenting here is something I have not seen anywhere from the left, the liberal centre, the conservatives or libertarians, or anywhere else: it is a plan that not only has heart, but also, a brain, a spine, and legs – not empty platitudes hanging in the air.
Build back better? The left is focused on pleading with the government for a few more crumbs for the 99%. After the wholesale gutting and evisceration of the middle class, this is not remotely adequate, nor even sensible, nor just. It is feeble-minded, superficial, and represents a mere skittering across the surface of things. Our sense of perspective is shot – completely gone.
Let’s not obsess with changing windows dressings, while our sills are all rotted, and while our foundations are either crumbling, or being actively ripped away. First things first: we must reclaim our democracy, or we will have no hope whatsoever of attaining anything, on any issue whatsoever. And in order to do that, in order to reclaim our democracy, our freedom, and our future, we must first regain and begin to rebuild our mental clarity, confidence, dignity, sense of perspective, inner resilience, forethought – and a strong element of self-reliance. That, of course, does not mean that we should not help one another. Of course we should. But mutual aid does not preclude rational, responsible, adult behaviour and adult attitudes, such as foresight and self-reliance.
On the level of the individual, the family, the community, and our nations, we cannot expect to have a good future, or even to retain our freedom, our sovereignty, or our democracy, if we do not have some measure of self-reliance. If we are dependent, we are vassals, or worse. Let that sink in. That is critical for us to understand.
Again, during WWII, most families had vegetable gardens – either in their yards, in town or cities, or in the countryside outside of the city or town. What we need to cultivate and rebuild, is a strong measure of self-reliance at all levels – not rugged individualism, not “me-first” hyper-individualism, not isolationism, not clannishness, but a degree of self-reliance. Better yet, is community self-reliance. At least in terms of food, water and energy, communities should make it a priority to be self-reliant. Without self-reliance in at least these three critical areas, there can be no true resilience, and we will be leaves in the wind, blown about, in whatever direction, by any storm or strong gust of wind.
On a national level, again, it is clarity of mind, confidence, dignity, perspective, forethought, and resilience – among the people, and not just the mandarins and talking head pundits – which is the highest and most critical priority. But beyond that most essential constellation of national resources, there are certain things which would only be intelligent policy choices and policy priorities. Shipping all of our manufacturing offshore to China and other lower wage countries, was tremendously beneficial to the multi-national corporations and the billionaires who control them, but neoliberal corporate globalization has, of course, de-industrialized Canada, the US and most of the Western world, with the obvious and predictable result that the middle class has been eviscerated, disemboweled and thrown to the gutter to die; while the nations of the once wealthy and prosperous West are now fragile shells of their former selves, unable to weather even a strong gale, much less the coming super-storm which we are likely to face. A little regaining and rebuilding of resilience – or a lot – is now in order. And to do that, we must become much more adaptable, and above all, much more self-reliant: as individuals, families, communities, and nations.
Self-reliance is not the same as isolationism, it must be repeated, and stressed. Isolationism is a legitimate choice, but I do not think it is a wise one. Self-reliance, however, means resilience – and building resilience in uncertain times, is simply a matter of basic sanity, and common sense.
Why do we have, for example, in Canada, one of the most popular furniture stores, Ikea, shipping our furniture from Sweden? Ikea may be “Swedish for common sense”, but the fact that we have no Canadian-owned, Canadian-made furniture store of equal or greater presence, is a sign that Canadians have lost their own common sense. We have some of the largest remaining forests in the world. Through sustainable forestry, we can be building our own furniture, and exporting well-made, sustainably-built, Canadian wood furniture to the world. Instead, we ship raw logs to China and Japan, and are busy clear-cutting our forests to ship raw wood pulp in vast quantities to the US, where US corporations will make the much bigger margins and profits, by turning raw pulp into paper products. Are we mad? We have lived as a colony, first to Britain, then to the United States; and now, Justin “Beiber” Trudeau wants us to become a colony of Beijing. We need to stop and think, and think deeply on this. A little more self-reliance means a lot more resilience. It also means a better ecological footprint. And it means more jobs, and a better economy, for the people and the country.
We could do even better. We could be, and should be, growing vast quantities of industrial hemp and bamboo, to replace wood as the primary building material, paper product source, and source of our textiles, clothing and furniture, preserving our forests, the lungs of the Earth, for use only by selective logging for high-value products, such as veneers and musical instruments; and in doing so, radically reduce our ecological impact, and sequestering carbon, removing enormous quantities of carbon from the atmosphere every year, while also cleaning our atmosphere of pollution, and thus healing our planet – saving ourselves from extinction, and creating a thriving, full employment green economy in the process: bringing high quality furniture, building materials, paper products, clothing and textiles to the world. Are we to remain exporters of raw wood, wood pulp, water and uranium, with a gutted manufacturing base, and a “service economy” primarily based on low-wage, part-time, insecure McJobs, at Wendy’s/Tim Hortons and WalMart? That would be madness. We need to rebuild our economy, our resilience and self-reliance, and our manufacturing base, and do so in ecologically sound ways that benefit all Canadians, and not just the rich. The principles and concrete ideas such as I have outlined here, and elsewhere, show us a clear and workable way to do that, and to do that in very short order. What on Earth are we waiting for?
Here is another example of policies gone wrong, versus policies that make sense. Bombardier, a Canadian company from Quebec, originally a snow-mobile maker, established in 1946, is a now leading manufacturer of trains, trams, subways, and aircraft – or it was, until January of 2021. Bombardier built the subway system for the world’s biggest city, Mexico City, with a population the size of Canada, 35 million. The Bombardier subway system in Mexico city runs reliably, fast, and has 50 lines, connecting every part of the city. In Mexico City, you can get anywhere in the city by subway or bus in 30 minutes. Toronto, the biggest city in Canada, with a population the size of Finland, seven million, has a subway system that routinely breaks down and is disrupted, may or may not get you to work on time, has only three lines, and connects only narrow slivers of the sprawling city. In Toronto, it takes an hour by car to get halfway across the city – three hours or more in rush-hour. Taking the VIA train into or out of the city would be perfect for commuters and travelers, but with regular service interruptions, due to the tar sands bitumen clogging the rail lines, VIA Rail, Canada’s pride in 1951, should now be rebranded as, Very Indeterminate Arrivals. Furthermore, the nations biggest city has a transit system is so grossly inadequate, that millions of people living in the city, commuting to the city, or visiting the city, feel compelled to drive a car, because the trains, buses and transit system are so grossly inadequate – thus causing ever increasing traffic congestion, smog, and planet-killing pollution. What is wrong with this picture? If Bombardier, a Canadian company, can build a world-class, fast, convenient, reliable transit system for the world’s biggest city, why do we have clogged arteries, smog-belching car-centric transportation, and transit and transportation systems in Canada that are, in general, and with few exceptions, as sad, backwards, 60-year out-dated, tragic joke?
Subways are now proven to be an extravagently expensive boondoggle, and they should no longer be built. State of the art bus systems (BRTs) outperform subways, and at a fraction of the cost, and can be made to pay for themselves, in terms of operating costs. The South American city of Curitiba showed the world that a Bus Rapid Transit system (BRT), which they developed and created – and then built the local manufacturing base to manufacture and export to the world – showed the world the most cost-efficient and effective way to provide affordable, fast, reliable, comfortable mobility for a city’s people. The point here was not to promote subways, but to promote intelligently planned mass transportation – to replace the era of the private automobile, which clearly now must draw to an end. We either replace the private automobile as our primary transportation mode, or we die of smog and planet-killing pollution. Reality is calling. We cannot avoid taking the call, any longer.
Bombardier, who until recently, made world-class trains, trams, light rail and Guided Light Transit, was permitted to sell a controlling share of 50.1% to the giant European consortium, Airbus – that was the first mistake of the Canadian government, with regards to Bombardier, which is, our should be viewed as, a strategically important partner in the coming decades ahead. Further, Bombardier announced in January of 2021 that it would no longer build trains, or any ground transportation systems, but would focus instead on building luxury private jets, which it said is more profitable. Sure, selling planet-killing luxury jets to the super-rich is probably more profitable – if you consider the death of the planet and the extinction of humanity an acceptable “externality”, as it is called in business, and in that most dismal “science” that is professional economics. What we need, is a federal government with a spine, and some basic principles which it upholds, and does not waiver from: including the principles of freedom, democracy, sovereignty, constitutional rule and human rights, justice, equality, non-aggression and peace, and a true commitment to creating a resilient and robust, prosperous, sustainable and regenerative economy and society. Those principles would necessitate that the Canadian government, for example, buy 1% of the shares of Bombardier, to make the company Canadian-owned and Canadian-controlled once again; and it would further require and necessitate that the Canadian government simply say to Bombardier, you must help us to rebuild our train system – which used to connect every city and virtually every town in Canada – and help us to build a robust and resilient national transportation infrastructure that places trains, light rail, Guided Light Transit, bus rapid transit systems, along with bicycle lanes, walking paths and walkable cities, as the centre-pieces of a low-ecological impact 21st century transportation system. Why would Bombardier comply? Because if they do – or rather, when they do – they will receive some degree of leniency in terms of the heavy pollution taxes they will be forced to pay for making luxury private jets for the super-rich.
We have, in Canada, an advanced technology sector, a cosmopolitan, highly literate and highly educated society and workforce, a well-developed transportation, communication and energy infrastructure, excellent designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, scientists and technologists, as well as artists, writers, musicians, actors, health care professionals, teachers, professors, thinkers and scholars. We could have, for example, self-reliance in essential, generic pharmaceutical drugs, available at low cost to all Canadians – even without a pharma-care plan for the nation, which is also achievable, and also a matter of simple justice. We could do this, if we valued self-reliance, if we valued justice, if we valued compassion, or if we truly valued public health. But all of these values must be sacrificed, and are sacrificed, so that the global drug cartel of Big Pharma, led by the sociopath Bill Gates, can continue to make trillions of dollars a year in drug profits. The corporate world, it should be noted, does not even use the term “health care” anymore. They use, internally at least, the term, “disease management”. And Goldman Sachs recently told its investors that curing illness and healing people is no longer profitable – or at least, is not profitable enough; therefore, we do not aim for that: we aim instead, for the more profitable approach, not of curing the sick, but of profiting from disease management. If that strikes you as vampiric, then congratulations, your common sense is intact. It is vampiric. And we can do better.
These are just three examples – from the forest and resource industry, the transportation and manufacturing sector, and the health and pharmaceutical industry – but the lessons and the principles apply broadly, of course, and they can easily be elaborated – and have been, in my previous books and essays. For now, three examples will suffice to show that there is a better way.
At the level of the individual and the family, the level of the community, and at the national level, it would simply be prudent, and intelligent, to have some significant degree of self-reliance, particularly in terms of the basic necessities for life: food, water, energy and health care. Self-reliance in these areas of course becomes much easier when we cooperate, and invoke the basic human principle and impulse of mutual aid – which is humanity’s greatest strength, and not merely our opposable thumbs.
(See Kropotkin’s, Mutual Aid, which in truth, is a much more important, landmark text in evolutionary biology, than Darwin’s, Origin of Species. Darwin merely told us about our physical-biological ancestry and evolution. Kropotkin told us the history of our social and psychological evolution, and highlighted the traits which makes us exceptionally strong.)
A much higher degree of self-reliance can be achieved, and much more readily and easily, at the level of the community than at the level of the family. And at the regional and national levels, we can achieve even higher degrees of self-reliance in the essentials of life. And doing so not only increases our resilience and security, while strengthening our independence, and thus our sovereignty, our democracy, and our freedom, but it will have positive and powerful benefits in terms of jobs and employment – including full employment, with shortened workweeks and better pay; in terms of creating both prosperity and economic stability; and in terms of thriving and stable, strong communities.
Read, or re-read, Emerson: Self-Reliance. Then read Thoreau’s, Walden, and, On Civil Disobedience. These three pieces of literature are among the most important things we can import from the US, or any nation, or that we can read from any source. Skip the “news” tonight. Read something that is actually worthy of your time. Self-reliance, simplicity, and conscience over obedience, are three principles that we need to embrace, and now, without delay.
After reading Emerson and Thoreau, it would be wise to read, or re-read, Margaret Atwood’s, Payback, and, A Handmaid’s Tale, along with Canadian anthropologist Ronald Wright’s, A Short History of Progress; then, set aside whatever preferences of taste you might have, and listen carefully to two songs by the British heavy metal band, Black Sabbath: Into The Void, and, Children of The Grave, which tells our current story plainly, in no uncertain terms:
“Pollution kills the air, the land, the sea Man prepares to meet his destiny.“
“Show the world that love is still alive, you must be brave; Or you children of today are children of the grave.“
The stakes could not be higher, and the message can scarcely be given in any clearer form.
*
Two other important points should be included here, as an addendum. If we value freedom and democracy, as we absolutely and profoundly should, then we must ban electronic voting, because it is is virtually guaranteed to lead to election fraud; and require paper ballots strictly, with international grassroots bodies monitoring elections closely to ensure free and fair elections. Secondly, we must ban usury. Usury will wreck any nation, by hyper-concentrating power over time, leading to soaring inequality, and the death of freedom and democracy. That means fractional reserve banking must be banned; and, if we allow interest charges on money lent at all, which is a highly dangerous choice, then at least it must be capped at a very low rate, say 1.5% above the real inflation rate. Credit card companies charging 18% interest for the masses to access money, while billionaires get 1.5%, zero, or even negative interest rates to acess money, is a rigged system of economic predation, that is driving us rapidly into neofeudalism. Let the richest and the poorest access loans at the same low rate, and legally compel it to be so. If we refuse either of these actions, or the others outlined above, then we are not serious about freedom and democracy – that, or we have no understanding of what we are doing.
And while we are adding addenda, I should mention another critical point that I had previously forgotten to add. After serious election finance reform is instituted, and immediately instituted, any elected representative or political candidate shown to have received large sums of money from multinational corporations, billionaire-run “foundations”, or foreign governments (Joe Biden, for example), should be immediately banned for life from all elected offices, and charged with election fraud, punishable by a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison without parole. Then we will see the revolving door of corruption close, and not before. Accepting large sums of money, or lucrative positions on corporate boards of directors, after leaving political office, should likewise be treated as a grave breach of the public trust, punishable by an automatic 20 year prison sentence without parole, for the corrupting and eroding the integrity of the democratic process. We either get tough on corruption at the top, or we will live with systemic corruption, and the death of democracy and freedom, until we do so. And to make certain everyone is honest in the political arena, we invoke a forensic audit of the candidate’s or elected politician’s personal finances, both before any election campaign, and after leaving office. The billions saved on corruption will more than pay for such universal audits. Only the honest will dare go into politics then.
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Continuity and Change: A Bifurcation Point Is At Hand
It is important for us to realize that the great majority of people in Canada, like the great majority of people everywhere, are, in general, averse to change. The majority of people want a peaceful life, with few troubles. Chomsky is right: “The great majority of people have basically decent impulses.” That is true: the great majority of people are basically peaceable, and inclined naturally toward empathy, compassion and mutual aid, as Kropotkin demonstrated in his monumentally important work Mutual Aid, and as Jeremy Rifkin documented has been further proven and confirmed by recent science, in his important book, The Empathic Civilization. However, the great majority of people also want comfort and stability, and they tend to value comfort and stability above all. That means, among other things, that the great majority are (small-c) conservatives by nature, and they dislike change. They don’t like anyone rocking their boat.
This tendency to go along peacefully with whatever the present status quo happens to be, explains a great deal. It explains how fascism arose in Italy and Germany, and it explains how totalitarianism arose in Russia. It also explains how the great majority of people have gone along with neoliberal corporate globalization, with barely a whimper – even though polls show repeatedly that they have no confidence, faith or trust in it, they are increasingly angry about it, and they are fully aware they are getting a bad deal, and are in fact being eaten alive by the richest few and the big corporations. But most people would rather put up with almost anything, than rock the boat. There is a limit, however, to this great tolerance of the people, and we are rapidly approaching that limit now.
The majority of people want stability, but they should realize that what we have now, is institutionalized instability; and that instability is growing rapidly, and will continue to grow – until our civilization collapses, and the chaos is fully let loose; unless, and until, the people reject this newest of empires, which is the global corporate oligarchy. How much illusory security, how much illusory stability, how much illusory safety must we endure, before we set our course right, and end the growing instability which now threatens the very existence of humanity, as well as our freedom, our democracy, and our rights?
We should remember that no one predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it happened. After decades of growing discontent, and a slowly deepening crisis of legitimacy, a tipping point was finally reached, and the people shook off the totalitarian regime, like a dog shaking water off its back. The entire house of cards collapsed, virtually overnight – in the span of just 18 months. The Western neoliberal corporate empire is now facing exactly this kind of crisis of legitimacy, and the clock is fast running out.
Revolution is brewing. And it is none too soon.
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The Crisis of Democracy: On Reform and Revolution
Millions of people world-wide are busy trying to get mild reforms accomplished, that will slightly lessen the disastrous effects on nature which we causing, and will slightly lessen the brutality and the suffering caused by the global corporate empire. This is laudable, important work, but it is not remotely sufficient, and it is not remotely enough. Despite the dedication of millions of activists around the world, making millions of small victories, we must admit the truth – we are losing ground, on virtually every front. In terms of equality: we have skyrocketing inequality. World-wide, the working class lost roughly $3 trillion in the past 18 months, since the Covid lockdowns were invoked. The richest 1% gained roughly $3 trillion in the same period. Do the math. This is not complicated to understand. We, the 99%, are being devoured. We are being eaten alive.
In terms of equality, justice, freedom, democracy, constitutional rights, human rights, and the environment, we are losing ground. Our methods are failing, and have failed. We are fighting a rear-guard action, and we are losing ground. Any sane general or strategist would look at that, and say: Clearly, our methods and our strategies have failed – it is time for another plan. Sixty years of reformism, since the 1960s – six decades of trying to sway the governments to do the right thing, have utterly failed. In fact, we keep losing ground. We are not even holding our ground. We are fighting an advancing wildfire with a garden sprinkler, and running backwards as fast as we can. Clearly, this will not do. This is not an intelligent strategy. This is a failed strategy.
Let us admit it, reformism has failed. It is time for Plan B. It is time for a revolution.
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What is a revolution? A revolution is a fundamental shift in the structures or patterns of a society, especially a fundamental shift in relations of power. Well, what is it that we need now? We need to remove the global plutocrats, and their political minions, from power. The majority of the people want environmental protection, strong social programs such as universal health care, pensions and education, and a society that is based in freedom, human rights, constitutional rule and democracy. In order to achieve those modest goals, which are far from utopian, we now need a revolution – a democratic, non-violent, grassroots revolution, to restore power to the people, where it belongs.
I don’t know how much clearer it can be said than that. We are now up against a wall. We are racing toward our collective suicide, and all that stands in the way to the kinds of changes we need, to preserve the planet for human and other species habitation, and to bring about some semblance of justice, and true freedom and democracy, requires that we remove the business elite and their political friends from power. That, by now, requires nothing short of a revolution.
You could say, as a venerable scholar friend said to me, that there is no time for building a successful movement for revolution, even though it is a principled stance to take. But I say, we do not have time for another sixty years of failed reformist methods, and another sixty years of failed efforts to petition, and sway, and persuade the governments to do the right thing.
The business elite have taken over, and they are sociopaths. They are concerned, above all else, with profits and power – and all else is expendable. That means democracy, human rights, freedom, the planet, and the people, the 99%, are also expendable. That is sociopathic. It is also fascist, genocidal, ecocidal, and suicidal. We now must replace the currently ruling oligarchy of billionaires and big corporations, with something at least similar to, or resembling, freedom and democracy. And I would say, of course, we must seek to bring about a rebirth of real, meaningful democracy, strongly upheld constitutional rule, and real freedom. It is that, or it is collective suicide, after a brief stint spent in a darkly Orwellian dystopia, of nightmarish nature, as the Earth slowly dies, and the human race goes slowly, painfully, fitfully, extinct.
Revolution now. It is that, or slow death. Only fantasy presents a third option.
Stand.
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Remember, I must say again, in 1775 nobody in the United States wanted revolution. Not Jefferson, Washington or Benjamin Franklin. Nobody expected a revolution in America, in 1775. Nobody even wanted it. Nobody but one man. Yet, in January of 1776, Thomas Paine published his slim little book, Common Sense, and by July 4th of that same year, the revolution was born.
As the Scottish philosopher, David Hume said, the people always have the greater power – as Etienne de La Boite, Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, also knew. This is what we need to realize now: we, the people, always have the greater power.
The second thing that we must realize now, is that:
Tax the rich. That would be a good start. Close the loopholes, implement capital flight controls, tax financial speculation, tax the richest 1% and the large, profitable corporations, along with the heavy polluting industries, and put a reasonable royalty fee on oil, gas, water and forestry product exports. That would fund value-added industries and green business development, boosting jobs and creating full employment, while creating a thriving economy, protecting the environment, and fully funding social programs, such as health care, education, pensions, elder care, affordable housing, child care and pharma care. This is not rocket science. We just need the will, and the courage, to do it.
See the David Suzuki Foundation, the Council of Canadians, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Broadbent Institute, and my first three books, for a roadmap, and all the tools and workable ideas we need to retool, reboot and renew our Canadian society, and to transition to a just and free, sovereign and democratic, clean, green and sustainable, regenerative society.
My first three books can be found on Barnes & Noble or Amazon:
“The greatest philosophers have found answers to life’s problems,
not just in theory, but in practice.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Never doubt that a small group of dedicated individuals can change the world.
In fact, it is all that ever has.”
– Margaret Meade
Thomas Jefferson understood that democracy is rooted, not only in a truly free press and freedom of speech, and in face to face town hall democracy, but equally critically, in tens of thousands of yeoman farmers, each with a small plot of land. Our land, and our food system, have now been taken over by giant corporations, by billionaires, and increasingly, by China. We now either reclaim the land, or we will lose our demcracy, and along with it, our freedom, our rights, and also our sovereignty and security. These are the central facts we must realize now. Land is the key: to our freedom, to our democracy, to our rights, to our food security and our health, and to the healing of our planet.
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Relocalization, community-building and regenerative agriculture are the keys to weathering the growing storm that we are facing now, as a confluence of crises come to a head. We can feed humanity and heal the planet with regenerative agriculture. We either make relocalization, community self-reliance and regenerative agriculture our foundation, or we have no foundation. That is most important to understand. That requires land reform, and land redistribution, and now. Not in 10 or 20 years, but now. If you want to understand the key elements in any sane or workable plan for mitigation and adaptation, this is it. Understand this, or wait for the tsunami to hit.
In the longer term, but nevertheless very soon, if we want either a stable society, a just society, or a free and democratic society, we will have to ban fractional reserve banking and usury, along with fiat currency. This unholy trinity impels and requires infinite growth on a finite planet, which makes it utterly unsustainable; and it also produces accelerating hyper-concentration of wealth and power, which undermines justice and equality, and which will furthermore be the death knell to freedom and democracy, if we let it. But I am not talking here about longer term actions that we must take, but instead, what we must do immediately, if we are to survive the onslaught we have created for ourselves, in terms of the confluence of the growing financial/economic, food and environmental crises.
In the immediate term, we must reclaim and renew democracy and freedom, and make a bold move to relocalization, combined with intelligent mutual aid and cooperation, and most critically, with regenerative agriculture, as our primary strategy, to avoid global cataclysm. All of that will require a very large investment in making the transition to a truly green, sustainable, just and regenerative society. That will require that we tax the richest 1% and the large profitable corporations, tax pollution (collected by municipalities, not global elites), and put a tax on great concentrations of wealth. We need to redesign our infrastructure, and with all speed, or we will race off the cliff we are fast approaching. These actions will be necessary to fund that shift. They are by now immediately required and unavoidable. But what is even more fundamental and more urgent is the low-tech solutions offered by small-scale regenerative agriculture. And that requires land reform, and a redistribution of land. That is priority one, as I will explain and make clear.
Many people will say, these changes you propose may make sense, and may even be critically and urgently needed, but they are impossible. But I say to them, we have done the impossible many times before. Defeating the fascists in WWII seemed impossible, but we did it. Surviving the last ice age was very nearly impossible, and must have seemed impossible to our ancestors, but we did it. We do well in a pinch. It is when we are challenged the most, that we rise to our greatness. And we will rise to the challenge once again.
We simply have no choice. We either rise to the occasion, or we admit that we are cowards, and morally bankrupt at that. There is no time left for fatalism. We either rise to the occasion now, and take the necessary actions now, or we admit that our humanity is forfeit, and we have become the hollow men.
We rise now. There is no other way.
We can no longer wait on governments, corporations and business elites to take the necessary actions. In fact, they are the major roadblocks to change. We must take the necessary steps ourselves. We start small, and build exponentially – and that, fortunately, is what is already happening now.
As Geoff Lawton puts it, “Nail it. Then scale it.”
Exactly.
As Alice Walker said,
“We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
*
Covid in perspective
In 2020, the peak year, to date, of the covid crisis, just under two million people died from covid world-wide, by official figures. Every preventable death is tragic, but we also need to put things into perspective. Every year, 1.3 million people die globally from auto accidents, seven million people die from air pollution, 25 million die from hunger, and 25 million die from obesity and unhealthful diets. If we truly want to reduce preventable deaths, and we are willing to invoke authoritarian measures – which I would argue are never justified, and always cause more harm than good in the end – we would save many more lives, a total of 10-20 million a year, by banning private automobiles, fast food and junk food. If we were truly serious about health and reducing preventable deaths, we would immediately invoke a 90% wealth tax on the richest 0.1%, and take $18 trillion from the $ 20 trillion that sits in the offshore bank accounts of the super-rich, and with it, use $1 trillion to end world hunger and poverty world-wide, and use the other $17 trillion to usher in a great transition to a truly sustainable and regenerative society. If we continue doing what we are doing now, we will not have only have two million people dying a year from covid: we will have a 90-98% die-off of humanity, and the death of 6-7 billion people – within this century, and possibly in less than 30 years. Covid is serious enough. The environmental crisis dwarfs it in scale. And so far, we have no seriousness about it at all. Nor do we have the slightest seriousness about ending world poverty or world hunger – despite the fact that five billion people now live in poverty, and 20,000 children die every day of hunger. Land reform and regenerative agriculture are the primary solutions to both the environmental crisis, and to global poverty and hunger. It is time we got serious, and now.
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The big picture
There are now more than five billion people in the world living in poverty, and hundreds of millions more living precarious existences on the edge of poverty. We have the power to heal and regenerate our world, and quickly, in a matter of a few years, as well as the power to end poverty and to feed the world; but, we must be aware, we are going to be facing global crop failure due to global warming in less than 20 years if we fail to act. Clearly, there is zero time for hesitation, avoidance, denial or delay. That is the context, and that is our timeline.
Dmitry Orlov, Richard Heinberg and James Howard Kunstler are generally excellent in terms of analyzing what peak oil and the energy cliff we are now passing, combined with economic/financial and ecological crises, when interwoven, as they are, entails for our very near future. Note that we passed peak oil globally between 2005-2008. Plummeting oil industry profits confirm the other industry figures clearly and undeniably – Big Oil is now insolvent. Oil shocks are coming fast, and the decline will not be smooth, as previously believed, but very sharp and steep.
However, most people analyzing peak oil and fossil fuel dependency implications do not realize that, as Vandana Shiva says, small-scale, locally-based, regenerative agriculture can produce ten times more food per acre, or square, meter than the collapsing system of petrochemical industrial agriculture – not less food, but ten times more food.
Thus, the global famine and global die-off of human populations that have been predicted are only inevitable if we fail to take the right steps immediately, which are: abandon petrochemical industrial agriculture, slash our fossil fuel use, decentralize and relocalize economies, and especially food production, and shift to community-based regenerative agriculture en mass.
The bad news is, many nations, communities and regions will likely remain in denial, and will suffer terribly for it. The good news is that millions of communities are already making this shift, and the relocalization and regenerative agriculture movements are growing exponentially.
What does it all mean? It means some communities, regions and nations will fare relatively well, while others are hit by a perfect storm, of unprecedented magnitude, that was to a great extent perfectly avoidable. This is what Tainter, the great historian, calls the runaway train scenario – where we stubbornly refuse to make a change – combined with the suicidal behaviour of elites who erroneously believe their wealth will protect them, and therefore prop up the existing system rather than supporting or leading positive change.
The other misunderstanding is that we will all be slavish peasant farmers in the near future. But Dmitry Orlov is right here, when he says that if you want endless gadgets and a society that produces a growing number of billionaires, then you have to work 40 hours plus per week; but if you want a community that simply meets its basic needs, we can work just 15-20 hours a week.
The benefits post-collapse will be sizable. It is the transition that will be painful. And of course, we should do everything we can to mitigate the destruction and the suffering, lest we lose our very humanity and our sanity in the bargain.
Relocalization, community self-reliance in food, water and energy, along with mutual aid and cooperation, regenerative agriculture, and a redistribution of land, will be critical – and are critical, not in the future, but right now. This is in stark contrast to the publicly-announced plans of the Davos set of global billionaire elites, however. Their plan is 180 degrees in the wrong direction, as well as being frankly fascist. We need to be perfectly clear about this. The one thing above all that we can no longer afford, is comforting delusions.
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Global economic apartheid must end now – or we are doomed
It is not widely recognized, and in fact, there is nearly universal denial about it, but we now live under a global system of economic apartheid. There are of course major elements of race, gender and xenophobia, along with negative forms of nationalism (there are also positive forms of nationalism, of course) mixed into this global regime; but it is class division which primarily holds it in place. And there is a separation between humans and nature which is also foundational to this deeply destructive and mutually degrading wealth-extraction machine. Either we end the system of apartheid, and restore a more integrated and equitable balance within human society, and between humans and the rest of nature, of which we are an inseparable part, or our future will be a nightmare beyond our imaginings.
From Thomas Hobbes to Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates, the elite always want to convince us that they are indispensable, that they are our protectors, benefactors, and saviours. We are taught not to trust ourselves or one another, but to look to the state and the elite for our safety, our protection, our guidance and our well-being. But there is another view. People like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., taught us to trust ourselves, to trust that freedom works better than elitism or authoritarianism, and to be wary of great powers. Furthermore, we have seen from the work of Nobel Prize winning economist Elinor Ostrom that the management of the commons is better done, and with better results, by local communities, than by distant elites. The answer to our social and ecological crises is not more elite rule, more authoritarianism, more colonialism, imperialism and technocracy, and more centralization and hyper-concentration of power and wealth, but a rebirth of freedom and democracy. The positive changes will come from below, as they always have, and not from above. And that means, among other things, that land, and the redistribution of land, is the key.
Malcolm X was right: revolution is about land – it is about the landed and the landless. (He was wrong about violence being necessary, but he was right about land being central. And he later renounced violence, it should be noted as well. Violent revolution now would result, not only in a bloodbath, but in a long and bloody stalemate. We have no time to waste on a long and protracted stalemate, therefore we have no time for violent digressions.) It is increasingly undeniable that what we now need and cannot avoid, is a new wave of non-violent, grassroots democratic revolutions to sweep the planet, and to sweep away the decaying and collapsing, socially and ecologically destructive system of predatory and vampiric, global crypto-fascist corporate oligarchy. That revolution hinges upon land.
Climate change is real, accelerating, and will spell global crop failure and mass famine in less than 20 years if we do not greatly and immediately intensify our efforts to halt and reverse it. The majority of people globally now know the issue is real, urgent and severe. What most people do not know is this:
If we stopped all burning of fossil fuels tomorrow, 100% globally, climate change would continue – because of soil degradation and desertification. That means the we must immediately abandon petrochemical industrial agriculture and factory farming, which together are degrading the world’s soils, leading to desertification, and massively fuelling climate change. Industrial agriculture is the primary cause of soil degradation, desertification and climate change. The 75 year old experiment in petrochemical industrial agriculture has been a catastrophic failure – in terms of human health, in terms of social impact, in terms of global destabilization, and in terms of environmental destruction and climate change. That is by now an undeniable fact. That means we need to shift, not only off of fossil fuels, but even more importantly and more urgently, we must shift to regenerative, organic, holistic agriculture. And we cannot afford to take another 50 years, or even 20, or 10, to accept the fact, and make the transition.
Regenerative agriculture is priority one for halting climate change, since it is the most effective and fastest way known to sequester and remove carbon from the atmosphere, in addition to being the number one way to cut greenhouse gas and carbon emissions. Of course we need to plant trees and new forests, stop deforestation and factory farming, and get off of our fossil fossil fuel addiction; but regenerative agriculture is also a priority, and an even more urgent one. That also means land, and land reform, are the central issues of our time, as I will presently explain.
Small scale, local, community based, regenerative organic agriculture, permaculture, and holistic management and systems design – built from the bottom up, based in freedom and radical democracy – are the primary tools that will heal our world, because, among other reasons, this is the most effective and fastest way to remove carbon from the atmosphere – and together, they form a global movement that is growing fast, and at an exponential rate. There are now over 100,000 ecovillages in more than 167 countries, and there are millions of small scale regenerative organic farms. These are the working models that we need to build upon, and scale up globally, with all speed.
(See Vandana Shiva, Murray Bookchin, Peter Kropotkin, Rianne Eisler, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Michael Albert, Allan Savory, Geoff Lawton, Gar Alperovitz, Helena Norberg-Hodge, and the Global Ecovillage Network, for vision, strategy, tools, methods and systems design – and for proven, working models and inspiring examples.)
Petrochemical industrial agriculture and our addiction to fossil fuels have been a Faustian bargain. It is a deal with the devil. It has been nothing less than a catastrophe, and it is destroying us. It is time for a new deal: a Green New Deal, based in democracy and freedom, not technocracy; and based in land reform and regenerative agriculture, as its foundation.
There is definitely hope. We have the power now, to either renew the world, or to destroy it. And the next 20 years will be the critical, deciding moment for humanity. We have no time to lose, and no time left for avoidance, denial, apathy, complacency, half measures, or the succumbing to numbness, cynicism or despair. Moral courage, sheer survival, common sense and basic sanity, all require that we act now, with boldness and speed.
We have a choice now as human beings: either to continue with a system and a culture of global apartheid, based in domination, exploitation, extraction, extreme and growing inequality, degradation and destruction – a system which is racing towards ecological holocaust, fascism and collapse; or to abolish and transcend that system, to re-integrate and reconnect, to find a new balance, and to become the guardians and healers of nature, ourselves, and one another, and of our world. That shift hinges upon two things above all: attitude, vision, or our view of the world; and land.
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The greatest of dangers
The greatest dangers facing humanity in the 21st century are five: nuclear, chemical or biological warfare; the rapidly growing environmental crisis, which threatens food system collapse and global famine within 20 years; corporate fascism, which is already well advanced; economic collapse, due to money printing addiction; and the peak oil energy crisis, which has the power to grind our fossil fuel dependent industrial civilization to a halt in short order. All of these immediate grave dangers require: 1. a rebirth of democracy and freedom, 2. a global shift to decentralization, and 3. a redistribution, not only of wealth and power, but most critically, of land. We can rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic all we like, but if we do not swiftly and boldly take all three of these steps, it is systems collapse ahead, and it is coming soon.
People should be concerned about geopolitics, economics and ecology, and about the extremely fragile state of our energy and food distribution systems, among other pressing concerns; but while truly existential threats loom near on the horizon, the majority have lost their minds over the latest variant of the flu.
We are succeeding valiantly in one thing, at least: training in unthinking, irrational obedience to authority – we are succeeding marvelously in that. But if that trend continues, our species is finished.
A little more critical thought, and a little less blind obedience, are the only things that can save us now.
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The real solutions
Half of the world’s people live in the countryside. Three quarters of the people living in poverty live in the countryside. Two-thirds of the income of the rural poor comes from small-scale farms and peasant agriculture. Meanwhile, peasant farmers and the rural poor produce two-thirds of the world’s food. Something is deeply wrong with this picture, and it is getting worse, not better. And we have not even mentioned the issue of indigenous land rights, which have profound implications, and which it is our moral obligation to address, and speedily, honestly, ethically and forthrightly, without hesitation, obfuscation, evasion or delay.
The richest few, the new landed aristocracy of billionaires, are taking over. Bill Gates alone has bought up over a quarter million acres, and the billionaire/corporate land-grab is accelerating. This is the enclosure of the commons, and the theft of the commons, on a new, global scale. This is the issue which will determine the fate of humanity and the Earth. Land is the key issue, above all: who has access to it, who does not, how it is used, and how is it shared – or not shared, but horded by the richest few. This is the pivotal issue of our time, and it is the fight of our lives.
The billionaires who meet annually at Davos, at the World Economic Forum, have made their plan clear. They want to drive the people off the land, and into “smart cities”, where total surveillance and authoritarianism are proclaimed as “the new normal”. But this is the opposite of what justice, freedom, democracy, human well-being, and ecological regeneration require.
Global inequality continues to soar to historically unprecedented levels, while the concentration of wealth, power, and control of land, becomes ever greater. The the ruling 1% – the billionaire class and their loyal minions – are devouring humanity and the Earth, and are vying to gather all wealth, land ownership, and power in their hands.
While roughly three and a half billion people live in rural poverty or are struggling to survive, another billion and a half people, at very conservative estimates, are part of the rapidly growing sea of the urban poor, or are economically struggling. Land reform and agrarian reform is thus essential and urgently needed, if we care about justice, health, poverty reduction, or humanity, in the least.
What will help the five billion rural and urban poor or struggling the most, is a combination of four things: land and freedom, above all, along with organic, non-hybridized heritage seeds, and micro-capital – micro-credit, or small loans of under $5,000.
We need a new wave of land reform and agrarian reform now, and urgently. That will end poverty, greatly reduce inequality, end hunger and greatly improve human health (far more than experimental genetic engineering drugs labelled as vaccines), and greatly increase world peace and stability. We need to bring the people back to the land in large numbers, in millions of small communities, and we need to boldly redistribute the land to make that possible en mass. Furthermore, as Vandana Shiva, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Allan Savory and Geoff Lawton have shown: through organic, holistic, decentralized, small-holding, locally-based regenerative agriculture, mass scale land reform and land redistribution, putting people as well as animals back on the land, is the only thing now that will heal the Earth – and feed humanity.
Not GMOs, not petrochemical industrial agriculture, not factory farms or lab grown meat – it is permaculture, regenerative, holistic, organic, small-scale agriculture, and putting people and animals back on the land, which are the key ingredients needed, to both heal our world, and feed the people.
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Everything in nature is an ebb and flow, a balanced flow between gathering and dispersion. Every empire, however, seeks to concentrate power and wealth in a few hands: they seek to gather, and to withold from dispersion. But you cannot have day without night, arising without falling, or gathering without dispersion.
This attempt to concentrate and hold onto all power and wealth, which all empires try to do – to gather without dispersion – upsets the natural balance of life, until the extreme is reached, and we have, as the Taoists have pointed out, the “inversion of opposites”, and the dispersion must then come, and the empire collapses – either suddenly, through revolution, or slowly, through decay.
In either case, the empire falls due to over-concentration of power and wealth, if not due to ecological collapse. And in either case, the balance was lost, through hubris, power-lust and greed, which are the driving forces of all empires.
The extremes of imbalance and inequality, both social and ecological, are reaching their maximum limits. Collapse is imminent – that means, of course, in historical time, which could be decades until collapse, or less, but quite possibly, very soon. This newest of empires, the global corporate empire, will fall. Whether it is through ecological collapse, or through social collapse and revolution, the fall is inevitable now, because no system based on extreme imbalance can last in nature, or in history.
Wealth and power have been vastly over-concentrated, and the hyper-concentration of wealth and power continues to accelerate. The dispersion, or redistribution, of wealth and power, and a more equal, or at least more equitable, sharing of wealth and power, both socially and ecologically, is not only imperative, and essential for justice, human health, and human well-being, along with ecological sustainability and regeneration – by now, it is a necessity, if we are not going to have systems failure, and the collapse of modern civilization.
*
Land is, and has always been, the primary basis of wealth, and of power. Justice, sustainability, stability, peace and regeneration, and the healing of our world, require that land be shared more widely and more equitably now. It is going to happen one way or another, as it must. Let’s get on with it.
Tax the rich? That is a good idea. Invoke a wealth tax on the richest 1%? Also a good idea. In fact, these two steps are critical and absolutely necessary if we are to solve humanity’s two greatest challenges: to eliminate poverty, and to fund the transition to a truly green, sustainable, regenerative, thriving and stable society. But it is the redistribution of power that is most critical. That means two further steps are essential, at a minimum: democracy and freedom must be reborn; and the land must be shared more widely, more equitably, and more fairly.
As the ancient Greeks knew, hubris precedes a fall; and gluttony, including gorging oneself on power and wealth, always comes at a price. The party’s over. It is time to pay the bar tab. The orgy of extraction and hording of wealth and power by the super-rich cannot, and will not last. The reversal – the dispersion – has begun.
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A few of the most important facts about our 21st century world are these – and they are proven and well understood, at least by the few who have either dug deep enough in research, or have stepped back enough to reflect, to gain a clear perspective; however, the level of denial is deep and pervasive, including among environmentalists, labour, NGOs, most academics, social justice activists, business and political elites, and the general public.
The single best way to reduce and eliminate poverty is to give the people the primary source of wealth and empowerment – which is, and has always been, land. With over five billion people living in poverty and many more living precariously, this alone makes land reform an urgent moral imperative. And if we value peace over violence, chaos or civil war, it is also a pragmatic imperative.
The single most powerful way to slow, then halt, then reverse climate change and global warming, is to heal and regenerate the soil – particularly on the grasslands and dry lands which cover two thirds of the Earth’s landmass – since only healthy soils can sequester enough carbon now to avert a cataclysm. And the only way to accomplish that effectively and at the rapid pace we need, is with small scale, local, community-based, holistic, regenerative organic agriculture and permaculture. That requires large numbers of both people and animals working with the land and living on the land, in carefully designed regenerative agriculture systems. That makes land reform a survival imperative for humanity. It is that, or it is runaway global warming, followed rapidly by global crop failure, famine, civilization collapse, and extinction.
Urbanization is not inevitable, just as globalization and corporate rule are not inevitable. Over the past 100 years we went from 12% urbanization of human population globally, to over 50% – and over 80% in the “developed” world. But big cities require long supply chains. Long supply chains mean food and other necessities and consumer items travel thousands of miles, requiring vast amounts of energy, almost all of it fossil fuels, and emitting vast amounts of carbon and other greenhouse gases. Long supply chains are therefore utterly unsustainable. (They are also increasingly fragile and unreliable.) That means large cities are utterly unsustainable. Getting serious about climate change or the environmental crisis more broadly requires that we get serious about buying local, and slashing shipping miles by 90% or more. (It is the next logical steps which elude the vast majority of people, including most environmentalists, academics, NGOs and elites.) That means we must produce most of what we need at the local level. That means economic decentralization is a survival imperative. *And economic decentralization necessitates demographic and population decentralization.* That means that relocalization, re-ruralization, demographic and population decentralization, and an enormous shift toward small-scale, sustainable and regenerative communities, is a survival imperative. Again, that means land reform is, quite simply, a survival imperative.
These are the unassailable facts. We ignore them at our peril.
Fortunately, the necessary awakening has begun, and is accelerating rapidly.
*
We now need an alliance between the environmental movement – or at least, the majority part of it which is not crypto-fascist – and indigenous movements the world over, along with peasants movements, the more alert elements among the labour movement, ethical business leaders and entrepreneurs, the organic, permaculture and regenerative agriculture movements, small scale farmers, and yes, an alliance that includes both the grassroots right and the left: anyone and everyone who values freedom and democracy and the regeneration of the Earth, as the three principle pillars of any decent or even viable society, and who prefers this to the increasingly authoritarian rule by corporate oligarchs, and to the collective suicide, fascism and ecocide which it entails and is driving us towards. This unity amidst diversity is building and growing now. An awakening, and a new renaissance, is emerging now and being born. And it hinges upon a shift in consciousness; it hinges upon our unity – across, and despite, and within our rich diversity; and it hinges upon land.
Know your enemy. The enemy of the people and the Earth is the wealth-extracting, killing machine, which is the corporate industrial empire. We have been grinded on the wine press much too long. Rebel. We either abandon and transcend the global apartheid system of neoliberal and neofeudal corporate rule, or we will not only be serfs and slaves – we will have no future at all.
As I argued in my recent book, it is indeed, now, a matter of The People vs The Elite. The 99%, or the greater majority of us, at least, must unite to defeat and dethrone this latest, and last of empires, and to restore and renew both freedom and democracy, and equally critically, to heal and regenerate our world. And once again, I would argue, that hinges upon land.
A new renaissance has already begun. And sharing the land more equitably will be at the very centre of it.
Vive Zapata!
Tierra y libertad! Land and freedom!
It is time.
Let this mark the beginning of a new global movement: for land and freedom for all, and for the healing of our world.
*
We now have fire tornadoes in Australia. Fire tornadoes. The wildfires have been so severe and so intense, that the massive updrafts of rising hot air creates tornadoes in the midst of the wildfire, creating fire tornadoes. If that’s not apocalyptic-sounding, I don’t know what is. How many alarm bells do we need? Are we all collectively deaf?
The entire Southern US will be uninhabitable due to severe heat, while the mid-west has dust storms and severe drought, forcing people to abandon it en mass; the western and northern US states will burn with uncontrollable wildfires, making them uninhabitable, and the Eastern seaboard will be unlivable due to the frequency and severity of storms and hurricanes, that make Sandy and Katrina look mild by comparison. That is just one nation. And that is the future if we do not immediately increase our seriousness, and our effectiveness, in battling climate change.
Activism is high and rising, but a deadly complacency still grips our politicians, business “leaders”, and the majority of the people on Earth. And complacency, in this case, means we are playing Russian roulette. Do we really want to play that game?
Action is urgently needed – and not just from governments and business, but from all of us.
Building soil and healing the soil is the key, along with transitioning rapidly off of fossil fuels, and halting deforestation and factory farming. Ban the sale of flush toilets, which effectively flush our topsoil down the drain, give every family an odourless composting toilet, and, give every family at least one acre of land for gardening (roughly 1,000 square meters) – as family garden plots and building lots, or in community gardens, or collectively shared in land trusts, in ecovillages of 15-150 people, or in rural or rural organic co-op farms, and with these simple steps, we will more than double the effectiveness of our efforts to combat climate change. The solutions are in truth quite simple – but we human beings have a very self-defeating habit of over-complicating everything. And you can bet that almost every instance of human beings over-complicating things is profit driven. Simplicity will save the world, not grandiose over-complexity. Remember Tainter. Civilizations fall, in large, by becoming overly complex, to the point of accidental suicide. And we are headstrong, and racing full bore along that same track, yet again.
Nature thrives based on mutual reciprocity, interdependence, diversity, and simplicity. Modern civilization is steeped in models of behaviour and attitudes of short-term, narrow self-interest, illusions of separateness, homogeneity and monocrops – of our minds, culture, and farming practices, and in vast over-complication. Guess which party must change. It’s us. Nature bats last.
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The Earth has 36 billion acres of total landmass. Grasslands and deserts make up roughly two thirds of that total land area, or roughly 20 billion acres. These are the lands that must be healed with greatest speed, through regenerative agriculture and permaculture. Of that 20+ billion acres, I am urging that we give at least two billion acres back to the people, to radically intensify our efforts to halt climate change and heal our world. That should be seen, not as a radical proposal, nor an impossible one, but a modest proposal, considering our very survival is at stake, and one we simply must implement, and immediately, if we are to survive.
The one requirement for families to receive and retain the usufructory rights to their allotment of land (the only kind of land rights that should exist, and the only ones that truly exist in practice) is they regenerate and improve the fertility, health and diversity of the land and the soil, or else pay someone or some group to do it, or entrust the land to a person or group, to ensure the land and soil are healed. The results would be – will be – a rapid greening, cleaning, and healing of the Earth, along with a sharp drop in poverty and hunger, and a radical increase in our effectiveness in dealing with species loss, desertification, and climate change.
20% of the Earth’s land is snow-covered, 20% is mountains, 20% is good land for farming – though this is shrinking and being degraded rapidly; 10% is desert or lands without soil – and this is rising fast; and 30% is marginal or degraded land. It is the marginal, degraded farmlands and grasslands (and vacant urban wasted land) which we must focus on first, and heal and regenerate as our top priority. This is something only regenerative agriculture, combined with serious and bold land reform, can accomplish.
We need to preserve and regenerate wetlands, and protect and preserve old growth forests and mature forests. It is the marginal and degraded lands that we need to farm with regenerative agriculture, in order to most rapidly heal our world.
If, and only if, we very quickly abandon petrochemical industrial agriculture, and make a giant leap into regenerative, holistic, organic agriculture and permaculture, while slashing carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions, can we avert catastrophic, runaway global warming. We need to do both, and now, immediately. That requires land reform, if we are at all serious, and a redistribution of land – not from the poorest half of humanity to the richest 1%, as is happening now, but the other way around.
Remember that all great changes have started small. The American Revolution was launched by just a handful of people. At Valley Forge there were just 77 men. And yet, the revolution succeeded. We have many more than a handful who are actively regenerating the soil, right now, and millions more who are dedicated to actively protecting and healing the Earth. Surely we can accomplish this task of reclaiming a fairer share of the land, so that the healing of our world can begin in earnest. We can, and we must, and so we will.
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Regenerative, holistic, organic agriculture and permaculture, which necessitates putting large numbers of people and animals back on the land to repair and heal the soil, can sequester and remove 100 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere. Nothing else that we can do can match the ability of healthy, healed soils, to draw down carbon out of the atmosphere. Carbon reductions are not enough. Reducing our carbon footprint is not enough. Carbon sequestration, the removal of carbon from the atmosphere, is now equally critical, if not even more urgent. And only healthy soil can do that.
We are at 420ppm of carbon in the atmosphere now, in June of 2021, and rising. We need to bring that down to 350ppm as rapidly as possible, and within ten years, or else the carbon and methane released from melting permafrost will trigger a positive feedback loop, causing out of control global warming, resulting in global crop failure, and the extinction of humanity and many other species. This is our time to shine, or to wither and die, with a collective whimper. Let us hope that we are not that foolish as to allow the latter option to be our fate.
The race is on. Get gardening.
Stop driving. Go organic. And plant.
Plant like your life depends upon it. It does.
*
“I’ve always been impressed that we’re here surviving because of the indomitable courage of quite small people against impossible odds.”
– JRR Tolkien
40% of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by industrial agriculture – and that is without fully considering the degradation and destruction of soils by industrial agriculture, which are turning two thirds of the Earth’s land into desert, and in the process, blocking and precluding our ability to heal the soils, in order to sequester the carbon, which is absolutely essential and urgently needed if we are to halt climate change. In addition to killing the planet’s ecosystems, industrial agriculture is poisoning humanity and wiping out the farmers. Giant corporate industrial farms are taking over. The big four agribusiness giants receive a billion dollars a day in subsidies globally, so that they can accelerate the mass extinction that is underway, accelerate climate change, desertification, species loss, and the global bankruptcy of small scale farmers, and accelerate our race to human extinction. The game is rigged, and the money machine, is a killing machine. We need to understand this, or we are finished as a species. But we also need to realize that the greater power is in the hands of the people.
What we are battling is simply the newest, and if we are wise, the last empire: the empire of corporate billionaire power lust and greed. The people, not technology or the ruling power elite, are the answer.
Small farms, based in biodiversity, have been proven to be ten times more productive than large, monocrop industrial agriculture farms – and small farms are shown by the Food and Agriculture Organization to be currently providing 80% of the world’s food. Why then are we massively subsidizing giant petrochemical industrial agriculture? A single word explains it. Profit. Actually, a better word is control. Power. Food has been weaponized, starting in the Vietnam War. Control the world’s food, and you can rule the world. The industrial agriculture system is designed for corporate elites’ profit, and more importantly, for billionaire elites’ power and control, not to feed humanity. It is the small scale farmers and gardeners who feed humanity, and who will heal the Earth. This is absolutely critical for us to understand now.
250,000 farmers in India recently went on strike, in the biggest strike in human history, to protest the neoliberal deregulation, corporate globalization, and petrochemical industrial agriculture policies that are literally killing the farmers, while poisoning humanity and destroying the planet. This is the power of the people, and we have only seen the beginning.
What ended the Great Depression in the 1930s? It was massive public works projects which gave jobs to millions of people and rebooted the economy. That is, it was millions of hands that saved us from a dire economic situation. What stopped the fascists would were literally trying to take over the world in the 1930s? (And remember, the big chemical and pharmaceutical giants all have their roots in Nazi Germany.) Again, it was millions of hands joined together to defend freedom and democracy, and to defeat the (first wave) of fascists. What ended the Dust Bowl of the 1930s? Once again, it was millions of hands, working with the land, to heal the land, that rescued us from that great calamity. And so too, today, it will not be the billionaires, the giant corporations, the political elite, the bureaucrats or technocrats, nor Big Tech or high technology which will save us from global warming, species loss, poverty, global hunger or mass extinction. It will be the people, once again. Once again, it will be millions of hands that save us. We truly are the answer we have been waiting for.
If, and only if, we abandon the failed experiments in petrochemical industrial agriculture and fossil fuel addiction, and we put enough hands, people, and animals, back on the land, with the right knowledge of regenerative agriculture, which anyone can quickly learn to understand, then we can heal our lands and soils and ecosystems, and halt and reverse climate change, in as little as five years. If we fail to do that, then we are all dead.
We need a Green New Deal alright, as I outlined in my first published book in 2014, Enlightened Democracy, before the term “Green New Deal” was coined. But the Green New Deal must not be based in technocracy and crypto-fascist, neofeudal, global corporate rule, which of course is the agenda of the Davos billionaire elite. It must be based in freedom, democracy, constitutional rule, justice, and, equally critically, in regenerative agriculture, and a fairer redistribution, not just of wealth, but of power, and of land.
The environmental crisis, the global health crisis, and the global food crisis, are all rooted in a viscious class war. Vandana Shiva is right: it is a matter now of Oneness vs The 1%, or as I titled my last book, it is now, above all, The People vs The Elite. And land – its use or misuse, and its distribution – is at the very heart of all of these deeply interconnected crises. We either share the land more equitably, and heal the soil and the planet by that means, and that means only, or we will be driven rapidly into a darkly Orwellian world of neo-feudalism and global corporate rule that results in the death of the human species.
Our choices are clear. It is revolution or death.
Land and freedom now!
J. Todd Ring, May 28, 2021
Post-Script:
Imagine a world that is clean, green, sustainable, regenerative, resilient, equitable, fair, inclusive, stable and abundant – and that is furthermore fire-resistant, flood-proof and drought-proof, with food security for all. That is now proven to be attainable. Regenerative, holistic, organic agriculture and permaculture is a major part of how we do it. Democracy, freedom, unity in diversity, cooperation, and land reform, are some of the other vital, key components.
Order these three books today from your local independent bookstore, I would urge:
Oneness vs The 1%, by Vandana Shiva
Biodiversity, Agroecology, Regenerative Organic Agriculture: Sustainable Solutions For World Hunger, Poverty and Climate Change, by Vandana Shiva and Andre Leu
And my own recent book,
The People vs The Elite: A Manifesto For Democratic Revolution, Or, Survival In The 21st Century & Beyond
Further resources:
If you watch only one thing this year, or for the rest of your life, make it this. Vandana Shiva perfectly summarizes the big picture in under 30 minutes.
Vandana Shiva: We Must Fight Back Against the 1 Percent to Stop the Sixth Mass Extinction
And watch this. The shift to organic food and community-managed organic agriculture is accelerating. Our health, our planet’s health and our future depend on us all supporting that shift, and growing and eating organic.
Poison on our Plate | Ramanjaneyulu GV | TEDxHyderabad
The most important environmental film yet – and the most empowering and inspiring. Kiss The Ground https://youtu.be/39akrHEIDBM via @YouTube
Dmitry Orlov on collapse:
And note my comments near the top of this essay: famine is inevitable only if we fail to take the right steps now. Otherwise Orlov is perfectly lucid, and right.
David C. Korten on The Great Turning:
And here is something small and concrete that we can do immediately: plant a garden – either on your own land or back yard, or in a community garden.
Here is leading permaculture teacher and designer Geoff Lawton on how to make an instant garden. Well not quite instant – it will take you 45 minutes. Yes, it matters, and it matters greatly. Every journey begins with a single step. This is one of the most important.
“It’s not hard to do things right; it’s much harder to do things wrong.” – Jane Jacobs
“Years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense.” – Jane Jacobs
“For a city to thrive, it has to be forever young.” – Jane Jacobs
There is a Chinese curse, which says, “May you be born in interesting times.” It is a curse, because in peaceful times, not much of interest or note is happening. And we are, most certainly, living in interesting times now. As Thomas Paine said, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
But there is also another Chinese saying, which is also relevant, and good to bear in mind: “A hard rain doesn’t last all day.” Or as George Harrison said, “All things must pass.”
All good things must come to an end – and all bad things too. The current shit storm which the world is now in, and which is heightening in intensity daily, will not last forever. It is good to keep that in mind.
Not that we should be complacent – that is the last thing we need, and one of the most foolish responses to life, particularly in troubled times, that we can possibly make. We must be much more proactive and much more engaged with the society, communities, nations and world we live in, or our future, both individually and collectively, will be decidedly dark.
There are times for yielding, times for waiting to see how things unfold, time to take a long mental vacation from the problems of life, times to be placid and quiescent. These are not such times.
It is always sound advice to keep our eyes and ears open, to be alert, although, yes, with as much inner calm as possible, and to pay attention to what you are doing, and what is going on, both inside yourself and around yourself, in the world at large. In such times as now, the imperative to keep our eyes open could not be greater.
Those who do choose to keep their eyes open, which, sadly, at the moment is a minority of the people, will in general weather the storm better, and moreover, will also be more empowered to help in the great task of our time, which is the rebuilding and healing of our world. Those who choose to continue to live with eyes closed, will not only rob their lives of meaning, depth, richness, satisfaction, fulfilment and joy, but will be in the greatest of danger, as well.
All that being said, consider this.
Imagine a world in the near future where there are millions of thriving communities experiencing a resurgence and a renaissance, along with a few cities that are also thriving and undergoing a rebirth, amidst a sea of rural poverty, and truly dystopian, authoritarian, technocratic, neo-feudal and neo-Dickensian cities, which are the great majority of cities on Earth. That is one probable future that lies ahead. We should be perfectly clear and honest with ourselves, in terms of both the positive trends which are taking place, and growing around the world, and the dark ones. The world is polarizing, and with increasing speed. While a growing minority are bringing forth a healing of themselves, their communities and the world we live in, the dominant trends at the moment are toward a global Orwellian dystopia. We should think clearly, and hard, about where we want to be, over the coming years and decades ahead; and what we want to be a party to, how we want to live, and what we want to create. Some communities will do well. Others, including the great majority of the big cities, are driving hard toward a dark age, as Jane Jacobs and many others have predicted, and they will be, if we don’t change course, truly hell on Earth.
Remember what America’s greatest philosopher, Henry David Thoreau said:
“All good things are wild and free.”
And,
“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”
We have become domesticated animals, and worse, cogs in a great machine. Wildness, therefore, is not only the true source of all innovation, adaptability, resilience and creativity, it is also imperative to both our freedom, and to our survival.
We face three great dangers above all, in the world of the 21st century: the escalating ecological crisis, the even more rapidly escalating war on democracy and freedom, and the risk of nuclear or biochemical warfare. What we need to know and to understand, is that while many factors are involved, all three are rooted in oligarchy, in empire: that is to say, in over-centralization, and in the greatly excessive concentrations of power that we have allowd to arise. Unless we come to understand that, and boldly address that most central and urgent of facts, all our talk, and all our efforts at healing our world and creating positive social change, are idle and futile – or worse, and more commonly, will actually aggravate, compound, and greatly worsen the underlying problem, and with truly gruesome and horrific results.
That is the sociological side which is absolutely imperative for us to now understand, and to face. But there is also the side of geology, ecology, and Earth’s finite life systems, which we must also address and come to terms with.
I should say here, that I studied philosophy, politics and environmental studies at Trent University, in my home country of Canada, three decades ago, and I have devoted over 50,000 hours to research, reading and studies in these and related fields since then. I am not talking off the cuff here. What I am presenting now is the most dense and concise summary possible of decades of research and reflection. I would urge people to consider it with an open mind, and reflect on it deeply, and well. The research and reading behind it is profoundly in-depth, and sweeping in its global and historical scope.
The other side of the equation to be considered here, along with the sociological, is the Earth’s finite life systems: namely, ecology and geology. And there are laws of nature there that cannot be violated, without seriously harming or destroying ourselves – as late industrial, modern civilization (sic) is beginning to realize and to find out.
There is a wonderful, brilliant talk that I heard on Ted Talks, on the best ideas for cities in the 21st century. It presented itself as being the cutting edge. And the presenter was affable and kindly, and the talk was truly brilliant – for 1971. Unfortunately, the talk was given in 2017. That’s how far behind the curve the “leading experts” are, in terms of urban planning and design, or macro-scale political-economic and environmental policy and planning. They are utterly lost. They are literally half a century, or more, behind the curve. And these are our “leading minds”. The big ideas that were presented in the talk are still generally good ones, but most of them were known in 1971 – we just disregarded them for fifty years. And beyond that, the ideas presented were far too timid, tepid and piecemeal for what we needed to do in 1971! By now, they are putting lipstick on the Titanic and calling that a bold and brilliant plan of action. Think again.
(The video is linked below the article you are reading now. I would urge everyone to finish reading the article first, however. Kindergarten will have to wait until after grad school in this case.)
What is not widely known, among other things, is that the planetary ecosystems which we are straining to the breaking point, will not be healed by renewable energy, by technocracy, by elite planning, by break-neck total urbanization, or by “smart grids” and “smart cities”, which together make up the Davos billionaire elites’ plan to save humanity and the Earth. That plan will bring tyranny, fascism, dystopia, and also ecological collapse and global systems failure.
The overwhelmingly greatest power that we have to heal the planet, and thus, the overwhelmingly greatest need, urgency and imperative, is to bring the people and animals back onto the land – contrary to what the scientists, economists, and even the environmentalists had previously believed – in order to heal the soil, which then sequesters and captures carbon in absolutely vast quantities, thereby slowing, then halting, then reversing climate change; and, healing the Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems, and ourselves, and our society and world, in the process. This, in turn, requires intelligent decentralization, revolving around small-scale, diverse, local organic, regenerative agriculture. If we fail to understand that now, the planet will recover on its own, in time, but we humans will be extinct.
We need local regenerative agriculture, combined with a radically re-localized economy, demographics, population distribution, and way of life, in order to: a) sequester carbon like there’s no time to spare, which there isn’t – through regenerative, small-scale local agriculture; and b) radically slash the shipping distances by 90-99%, for 90-99% of all the food, products and material goods that we consume or buy – by re-orienting our lives and economies to revolve around local communities. If we fail at either one, our species is finished.
Know these facts, or forget all hopes for humanity.
Please read on.
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“It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions. You take orders from above, and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.” – Noam Chomsky
“I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them. Unless a justification for them can be given – sometimes they are justified, but usually they are not – then they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled to increase the scope of human freedom.” – Noam Chomsky
In order to understand what is happening in the world today, in this, late-industrial phase of our globalized 21st century society, there are a few key, major patterns which we must understand. One of the biggest and most important, but almost universally overlooked, is this. The global power elite – a small group of fewer than 400 individuals, mainly banking and other corporate elites and their top level technocratic acolytes, defined very clearly and very well by sociologists C. Wright Mills, Peter Phillips and others – are facing a global crisis of legitimacy. They know their power is greater than ever, but more fragile than ever. So, their response is to consolidate power, through what can only be accurately or honestly called fascism – or technocracy, if you prefer that term – before they lose all power altogether. I warned of this for over 30 years. The trends have been clear for decades. Now it is here.
“The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.” – Noam Chomsky
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin
“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” – Patrick Henry
We have several options in the face of a growing global corporate technocracy, authoritarianism, or fascism, however you want to label it – at least, for those who are courageous enough to face the reality honestly, or at all, while the rest bury their minds and their conscience, their lost integrity and their souls, in the flight from reality that is cell phone culture, “social media”, and habitual, chronic escapism and denial: we can run, hide, submit, fawn and appease and grovel and lick boots, fight a civil war, launch a revolution; or, we can try to create resilient communities that can build a global movement, network, alliance or federation to replace the corporate oligarchy, when it inevitably collapses, as it sooner or later will, and more likely sooner than later, and as a way to build the movement for non-violent democratic revolution, in order to hasten the change and the transition, from ecocidal, genocidal, anti-democratic and tyrannical corporate oligarchy, to truly free and truly green democracies, which is clearly and urgently needed. The latter response, of building community, and building networks of communities, makes the most sense to me, in terms of a) strategies for social change, and in terms of b) helping people in the immediate and near term, through the troubles and the long emergency which is unfolding and in which we now live, and in terms of c) healing the planet we live on. And non-violent revolution, and the building of a network or federation of resilient communities – both of which are arising and gaining speed now; and by those means, working together to create both freedom and healing for our world, also makes sense, not only out of dire urgent need; but also, it makes sense in light of the fact that the power elite are acting in desperate ways, precisely because they are weak, not because they are strong – because they face a deep and growing crisis of legitimacy, which the people should recognize as a tremendous and rare opportunity for potentially decisive and major, truly world-shaping, tectonic scale, positive social change. Seize the day, I say. Seize the moment. The time is absolutely now.
Grow carrots, grow gardens, grow communities, grow in awareness, grow the new renaissance, grow the movement for a free and green society, grow the revolution. Grow it now. And remember, when the time is ripe for change, no force of nature, nor any force of human reactionary responses, can stop the coming change. I believe that time is now. And if I am wrong, then we will die with our boots on, and not die licking boots. If I am wrong, then we will go out by giving our best, and not by hiding like cowards under desks and corporate board room tables, or behind computer screens, isolated and alone, bored and banal, meekly peering out to watch our world slowly burn and collapse; but will have lived, and truly lived, and have given our all. But I do not think I am wrong. Nature has a time for everything. And the time for freedom and the healing of our world, is now.
“We shouldn’t be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.” – Noam Chomsky
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi
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At the same time, while we begin to deal with the realities of politics, economics and sociology, and the central issues of distribution of wealth, and far more importantly, the distribution of power – or whether we will live with freedom and democracy, or under oligarchy, technocracy and fascism; we must also be mindful and aware of the realities of ecology and geology on a finite planet, of course, and naturally so.
In the year 1500, Britain had fewer than twenty population centres of 1,000 people or more. Each was a major regional centre for culture and trade at the time. London had just 40,000 people. The population of Britain was not just rural – it was overwhelmingly rural. Life was centred around small villages, typically of 40 to 50 people. Life was centred around small rural villages – and moreover, life revolved around small scale, diverse, local organic agriculture. 80-90% of the people were farmers. Most of the rest were local artisans and trades persons: blacksmiths, weavers, spinners, shoe-makers, tailors, tinkers and tinsmiths, fish vendors, bakers, candlestick makers, potters, glass blowers, cheese makers and brewers, etc. (Corporate HR directors, CEOs and marketing executives might have a hard time finding employment in that scenario.) I am not trying to paint a romantic picture here, and I am not saying we should go back to that scenario – I am simply trying to portray the reality of life for the vast majority of human beings for thousands of years – from 10,000 years ago, until the last flicker of a moment, which we call the modern world. It is a soap bubble, and it is about to burst, whether we like it or not.
In 1640, at the outset of the English Revolution, there were 9,000 local parishes in England. Think of that number. That is the number of villages in just one average-sized (small, that is) country of the world – which is itself less than half the size of most US states. Bear that in mind as a reference point. Travel was possible and was done, but it was not something that most people did, or else they did it only rarely. Most people lived their lives in the shire, in the small village that was the heart of the local parish. Today, we have sprawling megacities that require vast, long supply chains to keep the people fed and warm (to say nothing of keeping them entertained, and to feed the ever-growing torrential rivers of disposable consumer products) – the extremely long supply chains that keep 3.9 billion urban inhabitants from starving to death, or from freezing to death in the winter. Those extremely long global supply chains are unequivocally: a) utterly unsustainable ecologically, due to their utter dependency on vast amounts of diesel fuel for shipping and transportation to keep them going on a daily basis; and b) are increasingly fragile, and are going to fray, and begin to crumble and collapse, due to a combination of soon to soar fuel prices, and escalating environmental disasters, disruptions and chaos. These are the realities we must now face, if we want to deal with reality at all. Decentralization, therefore, is not only necessary as a means to protect and safeguard, strengthen and renew freedom, democracy and human rights, but also for reasons of ecological sustainability, and for reasons of sheer necessity, brought on by both geological and ecological realities. Our experiment in hyper-urbanization is soon to be over – almost certainly in this century, likely within 20-30 years, and quite possibly, very, very soon – no matter whether we view that as a liberation or as a tragedy.
What this mean is , in order to slash the unsustainably long supply chains, which are needed to support vast sprawling metropolitan cities of millions of people each within a globalized economy, we would need, to begin with, a million villages globally, based in highly localized economies, with the majority of primary goods, including food, water and renewable energy, coming from the surrounding region, ideally within 100 miles; and we would have to quickly grow that number to 10 million ecologically sound villages, centred on local, diverse, regenerative, small scale organic farming and horticulture. That would be roughly 10,000 villages for every average-sized country, such as England or France, and 10,000 villages for every state or province of the 10 giant nations like the US, Canada, Brazil, India or Russia.
The Global South, it turns out, will in some ways have great advantages over the more urbanized and industrialized “leading” “developed” nations, because more than half their populations are already rural peasant farmers living in or around small villages; because the peasant cultures have retained the knowledge and skills needed for community self-reliance when the globalized industrial infrastructure, economy and supply chains fray and crack; because fewer people have received the virtual lobotomy and deep alienation from themselves, their common sense, nature and one another that has come from our mass pandemic of digital addiction, escapism, narcissism and consumerism in the more urbanized and “developed” Global North; and because the large indigenous populations in many of the nations retain valuable knowledge and skills for living without the global industrial giant vampire squid and its production and distribution network.
The off-grid movement, the re-ruralization, back to the country, re-localization, permaculture, regenerative and organic agriculture and farming, homesteading, and voluntary simplicity movements, along with the indigenous peoples’ movements, in the Global North and the Global South alike, will be invaluable, and will become leading pioneers and teachers; but it will likely be the Global South that, on the whole, fares better through the coming unavoidable transition back to decentralized, community-based rural life.
Obviously this is a giant undertaking, and cannot be done in a short time, unless catastrophe impels the people to move en mass voluntarily, out of economic necessity, or because the alternatives are simply too grim. But considering billions of people migrated from rural areas to cities over the past few decades, it is entirely possible for the people to reverse that flow over the coming decades. The one difference is, this time there may be more of a sense of urgency, once the emerging patterns grow beyond their inception state. That is to say, when the giant cities become Orwellian police states in themselves – Toronto, New York, Chicago, San Franscisco, LA, Berlin, Paris or London, for example, and we should picture it, because it is coming; and when, in addition, the supply chains supporting the great cities begin to crumble and break down, then, moving to cleaner, greener, quieter, more peaceful, vibrant and free, small ecovillages and communities in the countryside, will seem very attractive to millions of people.
But I can hear the false populists, the faux progressives, and the good-natured but naïve, all thumping tables and podiums with their fists and shouting into cameras and microphones, “We need…..This! And we need….That! And we demand…This! And we demand….That!” Well, good luck with that endeavour, I say. How well has that worked out for the people over the past 50 years? Not at all. Petitioning the government with prayers, requests, or “demands”, has been falling on deaf ears for more than four decades now. The governments of the Western world have been taken over by big business interests. Millions of valiant citizen activists have been waging a rear-guard action, fighting a raging wildfire with garden sprinklers, and running backwards as fast as they can. The politics of appeasement are not working, and even our more bold “progressive” efforts are all rear-guard actions now, and in general are losing ground every year, and virtually every day. I hate to rain on anybody’s parade, but this is the reality, in most nations today. We are rapidly losing ground on all fronts. Expecting help from the government now, borders on insanity.
Local communities, from neighbourhoods, to villages and towns, to cities, have the power to make major positive changes. The higher levels of government are almost universally in the sewer now, having been high-jacked by vested elite interests – that is, they have been taken over by the rats. I am not saying we should forget about state or national politics, but I am urging that, for the near term, some of us may want to re-focus on the local, where there is more power accessible to the people, and the possibilities for real change are greater.
The people have been abandoned by their governments, and worse, sold into bondage by the political elite, to be the serfs, peasants and slaves, of their corporate masters. I do not blame people for continuing to try to wring some small measures of aid or relief for the people from their governments, but I would say this: it would be futile and insane to make that our primary focus, or our primary strategy. That strategy has clearly failed. It is now one of two options that we have left to choose from: revolution, or helping ourselves. And since helping ourselves and one another precedes and prepares the ground for revolution, then we are doubly intelligent for choosing that path. Waiting on the government for help surely cannot be our Plan A… or Plan B, or C, or D.
Plan A must be, We, the people, help ourselves, and help one another. Plan B? See Plan A.
And if, in the process of the people helping themselves and helping one another, we in turn inspire, or more likely, embarrass the governments of the world to also take action, then that will be just swell. But don’t hold your breath. Our governments have betrayed the people. We can expect people’s trials, to try the business and political elite for treason, and for crimes against humanity and the Earth, before we can expect anything substantial or significant in the way of assistance to the people coming from the government, in most nations today. And if assistance does come, watch for the strings that will likely be attached. If you have to sell your freedom, or your basic, innate human rights, in order to receive what they are offering, then you are selling yourself into bondage, and into slavery.
So, we have the outline of a vision, and we have outlined a few of the bigger and more urgent reasons for a global tectonic shift in our society: from over-centralization, and greatly excessive concentrations of power and wealth, to clean, green societies, based in strong local roots, combined with constitutional democracy and freedom. But what about the nuts and bolts? I will be as brief and concise as possible here, because there are already many excellent books covering those subjects, and because I am a philosopher, above all, and I tend to work with the big picture view, not the finer details. But I will offer this.
In terms of small scale community and village modelling, there are literally hundreds of thousands of examples, and hundreds if not thousands of highly innovative models, along with a great many books, journals and documentaries, that we can look to for ideas. But the central thrust is this: truly resilient and Deep Green villages or communities must be diverse, to match our human diversity, and the diversity of climates and ecosystems; they must be human scale, and in fact, are best when very small scale, or tiny in scale; they must have short supply lines, meaning they must have bioregional, localized economies; they must be oriented around regenerative, organic agriculture, and/or permaculture, and diverse, local, small scale farming, gardening and horticulture; they must be highly energy efficient, and must have low ecological footprint, and low or closed-system resource use; they must be highly resilient communities, meaning, among other things, they should be self-reliant in terms of water, food and energy, at least; and there must be, as quickly as possible, millions of them globally.
I would offer this central idea, as well, in terms of resilient green village design. In many areas, and in fact, in most of the inhabited temperate areas on the planet, which is where the majority of the human population live, straw bale/adobe (or, *in areas that are moderate to warm year-round*, alternatively, cob, Earth Bag, sun-dried adobe block, rammed Earth, or low-cost 3-D printed or Earthship homes, depending on tastes, and on the local resources and climate) combined with passive solar, bermed Earth, or Earth Home design (bermed and buried on the East, West and North sides, in the Northern Hemisphere, where the sun is to the south) as the model; and in the form of tiny green townhomes of 200-700 square feet (roughly 20-70 square meters), would meet the needs of most families, with very low cost, very low ecological footprint, very high energy efficiency, low to ultra-low embedded energy, low to negative embedded carbon, excellent and healthy indoor air quality, excellent resistance to storms, pests, floods, fires and earthquakes, and with comfort and great charm, and with a truly Deep Green design for both homes and communities. Ten to twenty tiny green townhomes would make a small ecovillage, surrounded by shared greenspace, ponds, flower and herb and vegetable gardens, pastures, wind turbines, and fruit and nut trees. (Imagine the Shire, from Lord of the Rings – and yes, it can be that charming, as well as comfortable, and wired for the electronics we are addicted to, if we choose.) The image is not only idyllic – it is also a green community design model that can work for millions of people, and beautifully so. Around the tiny green townhomes in the centre of a ten acre village, could be scattered single family green homes, from tiny to moderate size. And the small scale, of 10-50 acres, with 10-30 green homes, and 30-100 people, makes for a potentially very cohesive sense of community, and a vibrant local democracy – and one that is both highly resilient, and actively healing for our families, communities, societies, ecosystems and world. And the speed of building dozens, thousands, and millions of green villages can be exponentially accelerated with the use of rent-to-own cooperative financing. However we do it though, it simply must be done: for environmental reasons; for social justice, affordable housing and humanitarian reasons; for the healing of the Earth, our society, our families and ourselves; for the strengthening and renewal of freedom, human rights and democracy – for reasons of simple, practical necessity.
Millions of people are already making an exodus out of the big cities – and out of the US, Canada and Europe – for reasons of quality of life, lower stress, closer connections to nature and to community, and for powerful economic reasons, as well. That trend is only going to increase exponentially over the coming years and decades ahead.
Among other things, this means that the brain drain, the artistic drain, and the talent drain, from the Global South to the (once) prosperous Global North, and from the rural areas to the big cities, is going to reverse as well. The thinkers, artists and rebels are already fleeing, and moving to better digs, so to speak. That river of migration is only going to swell as the years go by, as the city-scape grows more Orwellian, and more bleak.
Of course, a small minority of cities are forward-looking, and are making rapid progress, not only to become clean and green, but also more humane, democratic and free. But that is not the general trend of the world’s cities. The much bigger trend is toward fascism, instability, and decay.
Naturally, the richest 1% will have their walled enclaves, in this neo-feudal era, just as they did in medieval times, except that now they are much more exclusive and much more insular, and they have their armed private security forces to defend them, and air-lift helicopters at the ready, in case of any crisis or danger. This is already a well-established trend, and that trend is set to further explode. For the vast majority of people living in cities, however, there is no private army or air-lift helicopter waiting in the wings, if and when things go bad – as they almost surely will.
The majority of cities will face rising instability, crumbling infrastructure and supply lines, and a host of dark scenarios, combined with the rising authoritarianism. The countryside is looking better and better all the time, and the contrasts between the cities and the country will only grow more stark with time.
The baby boomers, along with the biggest landowners, who are the big corporations and the millionaires and billionaires of the world, are the new landed aristocracy – with the great majority of baby boomers being small scale land owners, or the lower ranks of the landed gentry, of course. This is another reality we should face, and with honesty and courage and compassion. Neo-feudalism is taking over, and it is radically unstable, as well as radically unethical, inhuman and unjust. Many baby boomers have no land; but many have 20, 50, 100 acres, or more. It would be both humane, ethical, moral and compassionate, as well as healing for the Earth, and far-sighted, prudent and wise, if anyone owning more than 10 acres of land, other than farmers; and all farmers who own 100 acres or more; would share, or lease at low cost, some portion of their land, in order to enable the creation of millions of land trusts, rural housing co-ops, and small scale organic, regenerative farming co-ops and communities. And if the millionaires and billionaires want something virtuous and ethical, and wise, to do with their money, seeding democratic ecovillages and small scale organic farming co-ops, would be an extremely good idea. Frankly, the alternative is pitchforks and torches, as the peasants begin to revolutionize and to rebel. Telling them to eat cake, or bugs, will not be a good idea. And even the private security forces will not be able to hold out and protect you forever, or for long.
Closing your eyes and hoping for the best would be a disastrously foolish strategy, though that is the unconscious strategy of the great majority of the people at present. And hoping or trusting that the government will help you if things get bad, is also dangerously naïve, and foolish in the extreme. The government, in most nations, is more likely to round the people up and incarcerate them in Orwellian prison cities, under the guise of public safety measures, than to actually help the people in a time of need – as they have already proven.
(Tolstoy wrote, “Better lean and free than fat and chained.” And we could extend that now to say, Better lean and free than being fattened in chains.)
Does anybody remember Hurricane Katrina? Imagine several ecological disasters a year on that magnitude or bigger. That is the harvest we have sown, sadly. And authoritarian governments will only make the situation more harsh and more horrible, not less.
I would implore people here: Do not succumb to the mesmerizing power of denial; don’t rely on the government or the media to guide or inform you, or Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or Twitter; and do not conform to the herd, who have no idea what is going on, and are sleep-walking together toward a cliff – cell phones clutched tightly in hand, heads bowed low, as they stare into the little screen, and walk toward the approaching edge.
Again, I have to say: Who predicted the 2008 global economic crisis – which, by the way, we still have not resolved, nor recovered from? I know of only three people who made that prediction. One was Gerald Celente, the world’s leading trend analyst, with a track record of trend forecasting that no one can beat. The second was myself. So, I would recommend that you take what you are reading here, not with a grain of salt, but with a mountain of sober reflection. You have been forewarned.
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It is important to note that it is a sociological analysis of power structures that is being presented here, and an institutional and class analysis, which is at play here, along with an ecological analysis, and a resource- and systems-analysis; and it cannot be poo-pooed or dismissed as mere “conspiracy theory” – whatever that foolish and meaningless, pejorative and dismissive, anti-intellectual and mind-numbing term may mean; not at least, by anyone who is both serious and reasonably empirical, or well-informed.
Remember that the American Revolution began with 77 men at Valley Forge. If the many are behaving as bewildered lemmings at the moment, with their heads buried firmly in the sand, or somewhere else, even more unfitting, that is fine: we will, as respectfully as possible, and as pointedly as need be, wake them.
Further, it is important to note, that while the global power elite, to use sociological terms, number less than 400 individuals, mainly banking elites and their loyal minions; that same power elite, the global corporate and financial elite, have most clearly and undeniably captured the institutions of state power, to use further terminology of sociological analysis.
How? Why should we believe the view of 80-90% of the people – whose common sense is in that sense at least, intact: that the billionaire corporate elite have effectively taken over the governments of the world? Must we spell it out? Ok, then. For the slow on the uptake, we can draw a picture. How do the billionaire transnational corporate elite dominate and effectively control the governments of the world? Well, first of all, they buy elections. We call it “political campaign contributions” or “political donations”. But as the world’s leading trend analyst, Gerald Celente has said, “Let’s be adults here. They’re called bribes.”
The moneyed aristocracy, as Thomas Jefferson called them, invest in all major parties and all major political candidates, then whoever gets elected, they are expected to return services to their investor/backers. We could call this political prostitution, and we should, but instead we call it, “democracy”.
In reality, in truth, if we were honest, we would call it a plutocracy: the super-rich, the one-tenth of a percent of the population, effectively rule over the rest, and rule both the nations, and by now, the world. It is not complicated, and it is not rocket science. An intelligent seven year old can understand it. Big money translates into big economic power, and also into big cultural power, big social power, and big political power. If we want democracy, if we want human rights, if we want constitutional rule, if we want a green society, a truly sustainable society, a peaceful society, a stable society, or if we want freedom, justice, or responsive or accountable government, if we want any of the above, then we must decentralize economic power, and remove big money, not only from politics, but from its position as the de facto ruler of the world. People will say, Oh, but that’s impossible. But in 1750, and even in 1775, democracy seemed impossible too. Monarchy, aristocracy and feudalism ruled the world, and nobody thought it would ever change, and few even thought that it should. Then the American Revolution happened, and what was considered to be impossible, quickly became a reality. In 1775, nobody wanted a revolution, other than Thomas Paine. Then in 1776, Thomas Paine wrote and published his seminal work, a little book called, Common Sense, and it convinced Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington, and a few others, that democracy and revolution were both justified and necessary. In the same year that that one small book was published and released, the Declaration of Independence was drafted and signed, and the American Revolution, and modern democracy and freedom, began. One single year, and one single book, turned the tides of history, and undid 10,000 years of empire and imperial rule. We were not thorough enough, however, not far-sighted or prescient enough, and that is the problem now, and has been the problem ever since; but the change which began in 1776 was tremendous, world-changing, and tectonic, nevertheless. And it is the same now as it was then. When the people are ready, nothing can stop them. The only remaining question is, What are we waiting for? A sign from God? Well consider this it. Get off your knees, and on your feet. And stand.
How do the global corporate elite control governments? Aside from outright bribery, which we euphemistically and evasively, dishonestly call election financing, there is also financial extortion: you hold the governments hostage by controlling their credit flow, their access to capital and loans, and the rates of interest charged on that capital, which can sustain or crush or break the will of any government; or you control their credit ratings, or threaten their credit ratings, which was enough to make the democratically elected government of Canada in 1991 immediately and completely abandon and reverse all its core election promises, for example, forcing them to back off completely from the promise to radically restructure the NAFTA “trade deal” that was destroying the middle class and the nation’s economy, with one single open letter in the Wall Street Journal published by Moody’s investment firm and directed to the government of Canada, threatening to slash Canada’s triple-A credit rating, thus spiking deeply costly interest payments and rates, and which is a simple but powerfully effective financial extortion strategy which works the same in any time and for any government of the world; or you manipulate their currencies, or attack and crash their currencies, as has been done many times, or threaten to devalue or crash their currencies, which is usually sufficient in itself to gain compliance and subservience; or you use the corporate media, which is deeply embedded in the same nexus of global corporate oligarchy, which shares certain obvious, common class interests, to attack and vilify or discredit any government, party or individual who threatens to create an actual outbreak of democracy – and the state media and “public media” are generally compliant and happy to serve the purpose just as well, since they tend to serve the same big business elites as the corporate media serve, as we saw with the recent BBC smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn, which turned what would have been a landslide victory for the Labour party (and not Tony Blair’s poodle party of elite boot-licking compliance and servitude, but a real labour victory for the 99%) into a win for the right wing Conservative party, in an impressive feat of psychological warfare, fear-mongering, utterly deceitful slurs and attacks, propaganda and social engineering; or you use clauses in “trade agreements”, which are, in reality, corporate rights agreements, and investors’ rights agreements, which give corporations the power to sue governments, and thereby over-ride all of their sovereignty and democratic powers, and eviscerate and nullify them completely.
The mechanisms by which the global power elite, who are the plutocratic big business elite, rule over the nations and control the democratic governments and the world, can and should be studied in depth and detail. But what is most important, again, is that we are able to see the big picture, and be able to see the forest for the trees.
In short, the concentration of wealth and economic power has become so staggeringly great over the past 250 years, and especially over the past 50 years, that big business is now simply more powerful than even the richest of governments – not singly, but when they act together. And business elites may be unscrupulous, but they are not stupid. They realize that they share certain common interests, certain class interests – though they also fight amongst themselves, like a band of cut-throats and thieves, they also know they must have some unity among them in order to individually succeed.
And so, the business elite, and their minions and collaborators among the political elite, academia and the media, form roundtables, and clubs: such as the order of Skull & Bones – the secretive Yale fraternity for rich white New England men that is deeply connected to the CIA and the Wall Street banking elite, which both John Kerry and George Bush Jr. were (and are) members of while they appeared as opponents running against each other in the US presidential election; the Council on Foreign Relations, which likes to portray itself as a scholarly think tank, but which is in reality another rich mens’ club, with a few intellectuals sprinkled in to make it look more legitimate, and less like a kleptocratic club for emperors and wound-be emperors, which it is; the Trilateral Commission, which was formed by David Rockefeller, scion of the most powerful family in the Americas (until the rise of the Silicon Valley new money plutocrats, and maybe afterward as well) and “Zbig” Brzezinski, as he likes to be called, the chief intellectual in residence for the Western elite, who in 1979 hatched and launched the plan to arm, fund and train Islamic militant extremists in Afghanistan, to lure the Soviet Union into a trap of a destabilizing war, “their own Vietnam”, and in the process created the Islamic terrorist network which the US and its vassals – sorry, allies – claims now to be fighting; and the Bilderberg group and the World Economic Forum, among other groups and clubs for the rich and powerful – and they meet to discuss their common interests, of course.
Do the global business elite fight amongst themselves? Certainly. Do they compete with one another? Selectively. Do they share common class interests? Indubitably, clearly and obviously. Do the business elite get together to talk about how to raise minimum wages world-wide, or how to abolish poverty, or how to radically reduce the staggering and exponentially growing inequality globally and within nations, which now threatens the societies of the world with chaos, instability, implosion or civil war? Not unless they are joking. No, they meet to discuss how to increase their wealth and power, and how to manage the nations and people and economies of the world to lessen the risks to them, and to increase their own, already stratospheric, wealth and power. I am sure the power elite, like all emperors and power elites before them, convince themselves that they are the great benefactors of humanity, but their actions show a different story: they seek power and wealth for themselves; and whenever the goals of ever more wealth and ever more power conflict with the goals and values of democracy, freedom, human rights, constitutional rule, environmental protection, human health, justice or peace, well, you can guess which set of goals and values wins out. Actually, we don’t have to guess, because the historical record and the documentary record spell it out clearly. The goals of wealth and power for the ruling class win out, almost invariably, and all else, and everyone else, is expendable. It is no different from Adam Smith’s time, when he wrote, in his major work, The Wealth of Nations, of what he called, “the vile maxim of the masters: all for us, nothing for anyone else”. I have quoted it before and I will quote it again, because it is the crux and core of the matter, which we need to understand most of all, and viscerally understand, as well as intellectually understand.
What has happened, therefore, is that big business has taken over the state; or more precisely said, big business and the state have formed an alliance, in which both parties benefit, but the business elite is the dominant party. China is the mirror opposite of the West. In China, big business and the state have merged, but the political elite are in the driver’s seat. In the West it’s the other way around, but either way, it is a merger.
What has happened is that the powers of big business and the state have merged – and that, again, as I have said before, and it bears repeating, is precisely what Mussolini himself, the inventor of modern fascism, defined as corporatism, which he said is the proper term for fascism.
So yes, it is a state-corporate complex, a global corporate oligarchy, or plutocracy, which is the newest ruling empire of the world. That must be born in mind. This is not some vague abstraction. There are very real and tangible centres, institutions, organizations, networks, alliances and groups, which form the global power elite, and the new global corporate oligarchy – and which form what could be called the Deep State of the world, or the new Global Deep State; though it is hardly hidden, and is now brazenly open to public view, in many, though not all, of its actions and agendas. In general, I use Davos as the short-hand term of reference to designate the global plutocratic oligarchy; since, as the leading business journal in the world, the Financial Times, itself calls Davos, “the de facto world government”, and it is, as the eminent Canadian philosopher and former Governor-General of Canada, John Ralston Saul has said, “The new Palace of Versailles”, and “the new royal court”. But Davos is only one of the centres of power in the new global fascist corporate state, and that should be born in mind.
But that is enough of fine-tuning of definitions and terminology for the moment. We can get lost in the weeds. Detail and depth are important, and precision is important, but again, what we need most is perspective, above all.
What is most important is that we can see the big picture, and that we can see the forest for the trees. And in order to do that, we must also have freedom of thought, and freedom of speech, naturally, or we are, in all likelihood, doomed to the tunnel vision of our narrow preconceptions, social conditioning and indoctrination. It is through discourse, as well as reading, reflection, and experience, that we learn, we see through our temporary illusions, and we become more alive, more aware, and more free.
“With regard to freedom of speech there are basically two positions: you defend it vigorously for views you hate, or you reject it and prefer Stalinist/fascist standards. It is unfortunate that it remains necessary to stress these simple truths.” – Noam Chomsky
“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.” – Noam Chomsky
I think Chomsky is using the term intellectual in the broad sense: that is, people who choose to have a life of the mind, have a responsibility to seek the truth and to speak the truth. Ideally, that means all of us. But if someone is being paid to do intellectual work, or their vocation or life path is academic, scholarly or intellectual, or they are lawyers, doctors, journalists, writers or film-makers, priests or ministers, artists, actors, producers or directors, or are attending or teaching school, college or university, then I think it is true that they, public intellectuals in the broad sense, have an added responsibility to seek the truth and to speak the truth. I think of Oliver Stone, Joel Bakan, Michael Moore, Rocco Galati, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn here, and people like Gerald Celente, James Corbett, Michel Chossudovsky, Anthony J. Hall, Paul Craig Roberts, Maude Barlow, David Suzuki, Vandana Shiva, Arundhati Roy, Jeremy Corbyn, Yanis Varoufakis, Russell Brand, Abbey Martin, Aaron Mate, Jimmy Dore and Matt Taibbi, and brave whistle-blowers and publishers like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, as prime examples of honourable, virtuous, truly noble integrity with intelligence and courage, and I tip my hat to them, and to others like them. But I think the important part to realize is that it is a responsibility of everyone in society, and especially in a democratic society, or a society that wants to be free or democratic, for all of the people, or as many of the people as possible, to actively seek the truth, and to speak the truth, to the best of our ability and understanding.
Many people get querulous, fastidious and nitpicking over the most insignificant things, while their eyes glaze over if you try to talk to them about the most important things – or they will pick out the most unimportant, trivial, minor detail when being presented with an important subject, and want to focus entirely on that. I think it’s a habitual, unconscious fear response, of intellectual flight from reality. It is absolutely insane. It’s like you’re asking them, urging them, to get into the lifeboat, because the ship is sinking, and they want to discuss whether they have the straps on correctly, or whether we have the right strapping procedure, or what colour the life vests are. Just get in the fucking boat!
Once you get your ass into the boat, then you can discuss whether we should have purchased a different colour of life preservers, or whether our straps are properly fastened in the correct way, or who gets to sit where, or how many sandwiches do we dole out to each person, or whether the pregnant mothers get an extra sandwich or not. Just get your fucking ass into the fucking boat!
But people will actually quibble about all sorts of irrelevant or trivial, minor things – such as how to define an intellectual. Is that not like asking how to define a cloud, a horse, a tree? You don’t define it, you just know it. Do you like to read, and read for knowledge as well as pleasure? Then you’re an intellectual. Do you like to watch documentaries and learn about the world? Then you’re an intellectual. Do you like to question what you hear or read or see on TV? Then you’re an intellectual. It’s not complicated. Do you like to think, or would you rather avoid it? If you like to think about things, and not just go through life like a robot, a zombie, or a cog in a machine, but actually think and reflect, and maybe once in a while discuss things above and beyond mere trivia, gossip and entertainment, then you’re an intellectual. It can be helpful to define things, but to define persons is complicated, and a bit dangerous. We are not, and never should be, one-dimensional beings. Nor are we static or fixed. Life is change. Our thoughts should change too. Life is for learning, not stagnation, hence life is to be lived, not merely survived, and that means learning and change and experimentation are also an inherent part of life, which means that we are not static and fixed creatures, but are always evolving, always changing, always being born, and always dying to the past. And in all things, our definitions of things can be clarifying, or simply blinding. In fact, the act of defining people, events, phenomena or things, can clarify, illuminate or reveal, or more often, cloud, conceal and occlude – and almost always, our mental labels hide and conceal the truth and the reality far more than they reveal it. It’s like affixing labels to people: Oh, well, he’s a brick-layer – he wouldn’t know anything about that; or, she’s a stock broker, she must know about small business entrepreneurship; or, he waits tables, he must not know anything; or, she’s an anarchist – you can’t trust them… and on and on it goes. How about we just take people, as people – at least first, and foremost, and above all. Then we can get to know them as individuals. And when it comes to ideas, let’s get to know them as individuals as well, and not lump them prematurely into groups of categories and labels, whereby we can sufficiently park our intellect so as to never have to use our intelligence at all. That is what most people do, and it is a prison of the mind.
“In every cry of every man, In every infant’s cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forged manacles I hear.“ – William Blake
“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.” – Noam Chomsky
“If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you’re doing something wrong.” – Noam Chomsky
For example:
“The police can go to downtown Harlem and pick up a kid with a joint in the streets. But they can’t go into the elegant apartments and get a stockbroker who’s sniffing cocaine.” – Noam Chomsky
But we’re not supposed to say such things.
Nor do the police go and arrest the real criminals, the greatest criminals, sitting in the board rooms of companies like Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, Exxon-Mobil and Monsanto/Bayer, and who sit around tables in Washington, Ottawa, London, Paris, Brussels, Basel, Davos and Berlin – and the people aren’t supposed to talk about such things either. But we should be talking about the fact that the business elite, who are considered “too big to fail”, are also considered to be too big to jail. Why are they? In the US, Bush and then Obama bailed out the bankers who caused an $8 trillion housing market crash, and committed massive fraud, giving them over $20 trillion as a reward for criminal behaviour. In Iceland, the people put the bankers in jail, and threw out the government that aided and abetted the crooks, and replaced it with a new and more democratic and accountable government. The Nuremberg Trials tried people for war crimes and crimes against humanity. We need such public trials again today – for the new set of criminals in high places among the business and political elite, along with their criminal collaborators in the media. We should be saying these things, talking about these things, and yes, doing these things. We need a people’s court. And we need to start by speaking the uncomfortable truths.
There are teachers of various kinds, and writers of various kinds, journalists, scholars, scientists, lawyers, doctors, engineers, counsellors, psychologists, priests and thinkers and poets, and they and other groups are public intellectuals, whose vocation includes thinking, or the life of the mind. Why we would feel the need to narrowly define this, I don’t know, but I’ve seen strange responses to simple, straight-forward things, many, many times. I would say that an intellectual is simply someone who has a life of the mind. Ideally that would be everyone. But it certainly is a wide swath of people, from all walks of life; and it is not the same as being “educated”, which can mean well-informed, or simply well-indoctrinated. In fact, it is the rare individual who is strong enough in mind and heart and spirit to withstand the trials of higher education and come out with all three intact, and most especially his or her mind, or ability to think. College and university are usually akin to the function of a contraceptive sponge: they soak up the most creative, spirited and intelligent individuals, or as many of them as they can, and neutralize them. Fortunately, they are only somewhere between 60-80% effective, so a lot of minds and hearts and spirits survive the ordeal.
“Education is a system of imposed ignorance.” – Noam Chomsky
The analogy is flawed, since gender does not indicate intelligence, creativity or strength of character, of course, but you get the idea. Actually, I think I am greatly underestimating the school systems, both public and private, and the colleges and universities. I think their effectiveness is probably closer to 85-99%, depending on the subject, the department or the field. It’s pretty hard to screw up math. Geography is hard to mess with, too. Mumbai is where Mumbai is. It is in India, not Nebraska or the South Pacific. It is not up for serious debate. Everything else, outside of math and geography, is deeply questionable and radically in question. In the humanities, the social sciences, and the life sciences, and almost everywhere in the colleges, universities and schools, aside from math, geography and phys-ed, literature, dance, theatre, music and visual arts, it is probably closer to 99.5%. In civics, politics and economics, the success is stupendous. Almost no functioning brain cells, or moral conscience, survives or gets through.
“The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they’re being objective.” – Noam Chomsky
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We should remember, too, that corporate-driven globalization – which is very different from and diametrically opposed to free and fair trade (the business elite want cartels, monopolies, and a nanny state), and is very different and diametrically opposed to international cooperation and alliances to address and resolve the pressing issues of democracy, freedom, human rights, sovereignty, fair trade, social justice, equitability, sustainability and peace – corporate-driven globalization, which is a very specific form of internationalism, a form specifically crafted by the elite for the benefit of the elite, has been, for its nearly 50 year history, one the one hand a race to the bottom, and on the other, which is merely the other side of the coin, a brutal and escalating class war, as working people, labour markets and communities around the world are pitted against each other, and a race to the bottom in the sense of the accelerating war on democracy, freedom, constitutional rule and human rights, which is the heart of the class war, and the shift from corporate-dominated liberal democracies with a large middle class, to what Chomsky called the Third-Worldization of the wealthiest nations, pushing them into the Third World model which was enforced and imposed by the colonial and neo-colonial powers of Europe, the United States and their satellite vassal states such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with the help of the IMF, World Bank, GATT, WTO and other “trade agreements”, in which the 1% effectively own and rule the nations of the world, while a small minority of the population are the more privileged servants of the ruling oligarchs – commonly called the professional class, ironically – and the remaining other, roughly 90% of the population form the permanent underclass, in a system which bears little resemblance to authentic democracy, but which is a business-run oligarchy, with a powerful nanny state to fund and protect it. The US has been in the lead in that race to the bottom, among the richest industrial nations, and shows us the way: toward kleptocracy, fascism, the looting and pillaging of the nation and the people by the business elite, and the very real danger of explosive civil war, revolution, or social, economic and/or ecological collapse. And by now, “We’re all in this together” – though not exactly in the way the propaganda narrative would have us believe.
Yes, we’re all peasants now – though some are clearly far worse off than others. And we’re all facing liquidation – spiritually, politically, psychologically and mentally, economically, ecologically, and quite possibly in more ways as well, considering the brutally ruthless game the corporate elite are now playing, which is simply an intensification of the class war, the war on the 99%, and the war on democracy, humanity and the Earth, which have been building in intensity for more than five decades, since the crisis of legitimacy for the ruling powers broke out in earnest with the popular democratic movements of the 1960s. We stand or fall now. And groveling appeasement will not serve us. Choose well.
We now live in an Orwellian technocracy, ruled by an unscrupulous and unaccountable, unelected, and frankly sociopathic, global business elite. Are we going to lay down and grovel, or lay down and die, or are we going to do something about it? That is the central question. All other social issues, as well as the paramount issues of the ecological crisis, and the survival of freedom and democracy, revolve around this.
But the immediate battle line, the key battle line, is between authoritarianism, and those who prefer and value, and choose, freedom, democracy, human rights and constitutional rule, and are willing to fight for them. That will unite the great majority of the people – both right and left, rich and poor, North and South, black, white, gay, straight, bi and trans, African, Asian, North America, Latin AmericanorEuropean – who do not want to live in a police state. We may have many disagreements, but we can agree on this. And this is our common ground, our common cause, and the basis of our unity – the only basis we need: we choose freedom, as well as compassion and solidarity, and we will be fooled no longer into believing that the one must be sacrificed for the other, because it is a lie.
One flash-point is the astronomical and historically unprecedented, extreme and still growing, vast inequality, both within nations, for example in the United States, Canada and Britain, and also globally and between nations. Here is a typical sound-byte, or sample, and it is righteous, truthful, and legitimate, and resonates deeply with the great majority of the population:
Robert Reich wrote on Twitter today, as I write this essay:
“So let me get this straight: 55 of the most profitable companies in America paid no federal income taxes, but Republicans in Congress still think corporate taxes are too high?” – Apr 4, 2021, via Twitter
The tax on the richest individuals and families in the US went from 94% in 1945, to 39.6% in 2017, according to public records, compiled by the Tax Policy Center of the Brookings Institute. That was before Obama’s tax cuts for the richest few kicked into their highest level, right before he left office, unsurprisingly, and before Trump’s further round of tax cuts, which, while they were presented as helping the middle class and the poor, as usual, went overwhelmingly to the richest 1%. Similar tax cuts for the richest 1% have been handed out by successive boot-licking and literally treasonous governments in Canada, Britain and elsewhere. Corporate tax rates have equally been slashed over the past four decades of globalization and neoliberalism – which means, governments serving the interests of the corporate oligarchy and the super-rich, and aiding their global looting spree and their rape and pillage policies, while systematically gutting the middle class, the poor and the Earth. But even these figures don’t convey the sheer magnitude of the feeding frenzy of the ruling elite upon the other 99.99%, who don’t show up in the census data, because they are such a tiny group in terms of the number of individuals and families who make up that ruling class. The 1% get tax cuts, but the giant corporations and the ruling tenth of a percent – the plutocrats who own and control the giant corporations, the central banks, the global economy, the financial system, the money supply, the six media empires that control 80% of the major media in the world, an increasing number of the scientific journals and much of academia, the major international organizations, the central banks, the EU, and the formerly democratic governments, don’t pay tax. When the loopholes and tax avoidance schemes are factored in, along with the on-going massive corporate subsidies, in this giant, global welfare state for the rich that we now live under, the richest few receive far more from the government, from the public treasuries and the people, than they give back. The people and the planet are being systematically devoured. And as George Bush Jr. said, “Taxes are for little people.” But not everyone is happy about that.
The revolutions of England, in the 17th century, and America and France in the 18th century, had a mix of both causes and results. In the US, the revolution was democratic and republican, with a strong constitutional framework to protect and defend freedom, human rights and democracy. But the American Revolution was led by the wealthy landowners predominantly, and so, only 4% of the people of the new democracy could vote: the landless, the poor, women, blacks and native peoples could not vote and had few or no rights, and little to no voice or power. The rich, white, landowning men had virtually all of the power, or at least the lion’s share of it. In that sense, it was a bourgeois revolution, to a considerable extent, even though it was a radical breakthrough, and a beautiful, liberating new model for the world, compared to what came before, and compared to what was the global norm of the time. In the English and French Revolutions, the spirit of freedom and constitutional democracy, or republican democracy, was certainly present and very, very strong; but again, in both cases, the revolutions were quickly taken over by the wealthy and the landowning elite. That was the weakness of the first round of modern democratic revolutions, which began with the English Revolution and included the American and French Revolutions. It is that oversight that we must address and correct now. We allowed landowning elites and business elites to be exempt from the checks and balances, and limits on concentrations of power, which we rightfully insisted on applying to the political powers and the church. That blind spot has now cost us our freedom, our democracy, our constitutions and our rights, and will cost us much more if we do not quickly and very soon correct it.
The richest 1% now have $32 trillion in private offshore bank accounts, thanks to the accelerating upward transfer of wealth over the past five decades – read, class warfare and economic predation – along with repeated rounds of tax cuts for the wealthiest few and the biggest corporations. Meanwhile, the middle class has been devoured in the richest nations of the world – disemboweled and left dead by the side of the road; a billion people and rising live in extreme poverty; and five billion live in increasingly precarious lives, with the bottom falling out from beneath them. This is a recipe for disaster – for civil unrest, for civil war, for demagoguery and fascism – or alternately, and equally possible, for revolution.
But while poverty and inequality alone could bring down the house of cards which is the new, pseudo-democratic corporate oligarchy, and likely if not certainly will, if other flash-points don’t do the job first; it is not the growing and extreme inequality of wealth which is the greatest or most urgent issue, the central issue, or the issue which is the most volatile – it is the vast and extreme, and ever widening gap, in terms of power. That is the key, that is the crux, and that is also the central flash-point of the coming democratic revolutions. The question is, in essence, and at the very core, whether we will live as free and equal women and men, in a society governed by laws and constitutions, with human rights for all which are both inalienable and innate, and also deeply respected and protected, in actual, authentic, functioning constitutional democracies and republics; or whether we will live under a police state, under the imperial rule of a global corporate oligarchy which is flatly genocidal, ecocidal, and fascist. That is the key issue, the core issue, the central issue, the most pressing and most fundamental issue, which is at the heart and the centre of all other issues that need to be addressed; and that, is how and why the next waveof democratic revolutions will begin, and are beginning now, as we speak.
And as I write this essay, news breaks from England, and I have to interject it here, because it is precisely what I am talking about, and precisely what I am urging: unite the people to resist and to reject authoritarianism, and to restore freedom and constitutional democracy. And that battle has just begun to explode in Britain now.
This is the spark that will light the fuse that will begin the next democratic revolution in Britain: Prime Minster Boris Johnson tries to pass a bill banning protests, in the spring of 2021. Mark this date. The US, Canada, and the rest of the world, will not be far behind, or may even take the lead. Things are about to get exciting.
Jeremy Corbyn wrote:
“We will always defend the right to demonstrate against injustice. Proud to address today’s #KillTheBill demonstration – together we will stop Boris Johnson’s protest ban.” Apr 3, 2021, Twitter
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“If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.”– Noam Chomsky
“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.” – Noam Chomsky
“You can’t have meaningful political democracy without functioning economic democracy.” – Noam Chomsky
When a society has political democracy, but not economic democracy, and furthermore, has a history of allowing vast concentrations of economic power to arise, and even allows its government or state to support and sponsor the continued upward transfer of wealth and power to an economic elite, which it subsidizes and protects, then you get the inevitable, predictable result: big business eventually takes over the government, and hollows out democracy from the inside, as well as strong-arming and extorting it into submission from without. That is the kind of oligarchic government Chomsky is talking about when he made this other, more chilling remark, which the documentary record and the historical record both support very clearly: “Governments will use whatever technology is available to combat their primary enemy – their own population.”
Two broad visions for society are emerging. One is the vision or agenda being aggressively pushed by the Davos bankers and corporate elite. It is authoritarian, elitist, anti-democratic, dystopian and anti-ecological. The other is based, not in robbing the people of their power, but empowering the people. That is the key battle line now.
The key question, therefore, is whether we want to be pushed further along our current path, which is the hyper-concentration of all wealth and power in the hands of the few, which will spell fascism, and we must be perfectly clear and honest about that, combined with even more excessive centralization and globalization, which not only disempowers, and systematically robs and disenfranchises the great majority, for the increasing power and wealth of the few, and all of this leading to inevitable social and ecological collapse in a barren and toxic dystopian world, marked by barbed wire and walled enclaves of the rich, defended by robot soldiers and private armies, and surrounded by a sea of poverty and desperation; or whether we feel we have tried the experiment in empires long enough, and will choose to dethrone the oligarchs, and empower the people instead.
An important contextualization is critically essential to understand here, for perspective. Currently, modern industrial civilization (sic) is racing toward collapse. We may avoid it, and it would be smart to avert it, to make an enormous understatement, but collapse is certainly our current trajectory. Ironically, the oligarchy is pushing hard for collapse – because they plan to be the ruling god-kings, afterward. This is endgame.
We most definitely and urgently need a Green New Deal, but not the deal that is being aggressively pushed by the Davos set of corporate plutocrats. They want a Global Reset, as they have openly announced, and it is clear that their grand plan for restructuring the world is deeply authoritarian, rabidly ant-democratic, absolutely crushing of freedom, constitutional rule and human rights, and ecologically disastrous and insane, in addition. That is a bad deal. That is a deal with the devil.
We need a Green New Deal that will invest heavily in decentralized, community-based, local economies, high speed electric rail, powered by wind energy (not solar, which has a much bigger environmental footprint than wind, and certainly not fossil fuels or nuclear, which must be phased out immediately), and energy efficient communities that are centred around regenerative organic agriculture, with millions of clusters of small organic farms and small villages and towns, and a revenue neutral plan that is based on taxes on resource extraction, along with serious taxes on financial speculation, great profits and great wealth. And we need a Green New Deal that deeply, and not just in rhetoric, respects and honours and defends human rights, constitutional rule, democracy and freedom – not a faux green deal from Davos that undermines and destroys all of the above.
A universal basic income is another valuable idea, and one that is supported by conservatives such as Milton Friedman and libertarian socialists such as Bertrand Russell. But again, the Great Reset agenda of the super-rich oligarchs is antithetical to what we need. They want universal dependency, so that they have universal wealth and universal power. If you accept their electronic passports and the digital currencies they control, then you can have a hovel and some gruel, but you will have to give up these silly antiquated notions of freedom, mobility, privacy, human rights, constitutions and democracy in order to get them. As Klauss Schwabe, founder of the Davos-based World Economic Forum said, “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.” Dr. Evil is saying there, in effect, that all wealth and all power will be in the hands of the new “masters of the universe”, as they like to call themselves. Again, that is a deal with the devil. That is universal human bondage, not justice or humanitarianism. We could greatly benefit from a universal basic income (UBI) that deeply and in practice respects human rights, freedom and constitutional democracy, but not the Davos plan which annihilates all three.
As I argued in my first published book, Enlightened Democracy, there are two extremes to be avoided. They are: dogmatism on the one hand, which is always a kind of fundamentalism, whether it be secular or religious; and nihilism on the other. The power elite are paradoxically both nihilists and fundamentalists. They are nihilists in that they believe in nothing but money, power, and their own grandiose, inflated egos. And they are fundamentalists in the sense that they believe, quite self-servingly, that whatever ideology they happen to think will serve them best in the moment, is the gospel truth, set down in stone, as though Moses himself were delivering it in the hand-writing of God. Their fanatical dogmatism was neoliberalism, from 1970 until roughly 2019, but now that neoliberalism has obviously failed, and is about to fail even more spectacularly than it already has, they have already moved on to their next pet ideology, which is equally set in stone, and believed in as if it were the very word of God. And that is technocracy: the view that a messianic elite – themselves – are going to save the word through a re-packaging of fascism, prettied up with the garb of “inclusivity” and “sustainability”, and wedded to advanced technology. That is a hideous ideology, which any sane man or woman should vehemently and totally reject. But the problem is, most of the people, who are not among the ruling elite, have been so frightened and terrified of dogmatism and fanaticism, after the experiences of World War II, that they don’t really have any beliefs or values at all, and so, have fallen into a vacuous state of drifting, which always plays into the hands of a cynical and manipulative, Machiavellian elite, and they have fallen into nihilism. That, among other things, is exactly what we have to overcome. And so, again in this essay, as in my first two books, I will lay out, and in a bit further detail, some common ground which can unite the people, or at least unite the great majority, in a vision which is neither nihilistic nor fanatical, but which is based in shared cause and common sense, or what can maybe be better described as our innate human intelligence.
I would suggest people watch the films 300 and V for Vendetta again. Those films present a pretty accurate picture, in broad strokes, of what we are up against. This is simply a new form of empire that we are living under, and it is morphing rapidly into a very darkly Orwellian global police state. We have seen these patterns before. But to continue…
The crux: If anthropogenic global warming is real, then we should immediately slash fossil fuel use. If it is not, we should slash fossil fuel use for other major health and environmental reasons. But, it can be done in authoritarian or non-authoritarian ways. Guess which the elite prefer?
The key battle lines globally now are not left versus right, but authoritarianism versus democratic freedom. This is absolutely crucial to understand.
We need to unite the people, and we also need to better understand what is actually going on, and what must be done. When the Soviet Union and the entire Eastern Bloc fell, nobody saw it coming, and it happened virtually overnight. A tipping point came after a long and deepening crisis of legitimacy. Exactly the same pattern is emerging in the West, as the Western corporate oligarchy faces a deep and growing, global crisis of legitimacy. The people must now recognize the opportunity, and seize it. But they must also be clear about what they want instead of authoritarian corporate rule. I would argue for decentralization, and for a plurality of models and approaches. It would be tyranny as well as foolishness if we only have one monolithic world model. But in any case, we do need some basic clarity of vision for the road ahead.
In the Soviet Union, the people became clear in their minds that they were sick of authoritarianism. They rejected it, and it fell like a house of cards. But they were not clear about what they wanted to replace it, seemingly having only vague ideas of democracy and freedom. What resulted was a Wild West period of gangster capitalism, which decimated the country. A little more clarity of forethought might possibly have averted that dark period of the 1990s. And certainly now, across the West and around the world, when we are facing the slow-motion collapse of the Western oligarchy, we need, most critically, three things: to unite the people; to embrace our power and reject the ruling corporate empire of pseudo-democracy; and to have at least a broad outline of what kind of society we want to replace this increasingly fascist corporate oligarchy which is now teetering on collapse.
Democrats and Republicans have equally lost all remaining trace of credibility or legitimacy. Both are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Wall St., plutocratic elite. And now that independents outnumber both Republicans and Democrats, it is clear the majority know it. Now, what comes next, when, not if, the old order collapses?
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To halt the decline of our civilization and stop our race toward ecological, economic and social collapse, we must sow and create a paradigm shift, a shift in the dominant world view, a shift in consciousness. That requires consciousness raising, media activism, and education. But we also need a fundamental change, not only in consciousness, but in our social systems. The most urgent task is to dethrone the business elite and restore constitutional democracy. But we need major changes to our systems of doing things, as well, clearly and undeniably.
That, in turn, requires decentralization: economic, above all, but also demographic, political, and in terms of media, culture, the arts, science, health care, and education. Corporate globalization has harmed and degraded all of these areas of life, and above all, is destroying the planet, democracy, and freedom, and is degrading or destroying life for the poorest 90% or more of humanity. International cooperation is urgently needed, but that is very different from corporate globalism, which is gathering all power in Davos and Beijing, while undermining humanity and the prospects for life on Earth.
Freedom and democracy are fundamental Enlightenment values that are worth preserving, and worth fighting for. And they need to be more than slogans. They need to be lived, and applied. The reality is, any form of hyper-concentration or excessive centralization of power, whether political or economic, breeds tyranny, and undermines and eventually destroys both freedom and democracy. We have allowed political centralization to become far to great, and economic centralization to become staggering, and simply neo-feudal. This must be reversed, or we are doomed to an Orwellian dark age, followed by collapse.
The central problem of late-industrial capitalist society is, quite simply, that the business elite were allowed to amass exponentially greater and greater wealth and power, over the span of 200 years and more, to the point where they have effectively taken over the national democracies, and by now effectively rule the world. It is the global corporate take-over that is at the heart of the environmental crisis, the crisis of democracy, and virtually every major social crisis, as well. We either remove the billionaire elite from power, or we face a dystopia, and a slow-motion death cycle, until we reach ecological and civilizational collapse. That is, we face a crisis that is rooted in a vast over-centralization of power, in the hands of the global corporate elite. We either correct that error, or we watch our world die slowly, and with increasing speed.
Chomsky was right: despite being a self-proclaimed anarchist and a libertarian socialist, he argued that we need to temporarily strengthen the nation-state, and strengthen national democracies – so that we can wrest power back from the global corporate elite, who have vastly over-stepped their proper bounds, and have turned democracies into oligarchy, and are turning the world into a labour camp.
That means, we need political decentralization in the long term, so as to safeguard and protect liberty and democracy, and to take them to a higher level; but in the short term, and in the immediate present, we need to rescue the nation-state from its institutional capture by big business, and restore the powers of national democracies, to counterbalance the unelected and unaccountable powers of big business and the international corporate elite.
What that means, is that we need long term political decentralization, but with an immediate strengthening of national democracies; combined with what is most urgent and essential, which is an economic decentralization: break up the corporate giants, and put firm checks and and balances, and strict limits, on all great concentrations of wealth and economic power.
Economic decentralization and re-localization are both the means and the ends we must now pursue, with all urgency, if either democracy, human rights, constitutional rule or freedom are to survive, or if we are to build a clean, green, just and peaceful, truly sustainable, or even viable, society for the 21st century.
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In terms of the environmental crisis, it is clear we urgently need economic decentralization. We cannot be shipping consumer goods halfway around the planet, from China to the US, for example, and shipping parts and commodities from all over the world to China to manufacture them. That is a completely unsustainable system. We need to eat local and buy local, and re-orient our economies toward local production and consumption, or else watch our ecosystems collapse, and our economies and societies along with them.
We don’t have to be isolationist, and should not be, but we need to be buying, and producing, 80-90% of what we need or consume from the local bioregion, from within 100 miles, or not much more.
That means we need to re-industrialize across the Western world, but in a decentralized way, oriented around smaller population centres that are much more self-reliant, based in energy efficient, clean, wind powered, small scale manufacturing for the local region, combined with a resurgence of local artisan production.
Economists are of course insane secular fundamentalists, and they and the business and political elite, and the media they control, along with many trained seals from academia, will howl with horror and derision, saying it is impractical, inefficient or impossible. But what is impractical and grossly inefficient is sending parts and commodities from all over the world to China and then sending the manufactured products from China to consumers around the world. Further, that is a system headed for inevitable collapse. It may be challenging to replace this system, but it is impossible to sustain it. It will end whether we like it or not.
Decentralized, small scale local production is vastly more efficient in terms of total energy consumed for production, since parts, commodities and finished products are shipped less than 200 miles, compared to our present norm, which is often 40,000 miles or more. It may generate less profit, but it is an economic system designed not for maximum profit, but for maximum human benefit, within the bounds of respecting the earth, human beings, and freedom.
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As an important side note, which needs to be touched upon briefly, so as to wipe away another mountain of confusion, delusion and corporate PR we must say this: We can forget the idea of driverless cars – they are suitable only for mindless citizens of mindless nations. The last thing we need is to extend the shelf life of a disastrous transportation system, based around the private automobile.
We need to shift to cities and communities that are designed so that work, school, shopping, entertainment, spirituality, greenspace, leisure space, intellectual life and social life, are all accessible within a walking radius of 20 minutes; and to compliment that, add in networks of cycling lanes, and walking and bicycling paths; supported finally by highly efficient, public mass transportation, primarily utilizing buses of various sizes from mini-van size to bi-articulating buses carrying 225 people each.
Private automobiles have no place in an ecological city, village or town, or if they do, they are at the margins, and not the centre of our land use or transportation planning. If we continue to allow them, and we should for a time, maybe a few decades at most, we should tax them heavily with pollution taxes, and on top of it, charge them $50 a day to enter the city at all, as they do in London – after the public transportation systems are built and operating, which we should and must do immediately, and there are no more excuses left.
If we tax pollution, as we should and must, then two things are necessary, if it is to be just, or intelligent, or at all compatible with a free and democratic society: a) pollution taxes should be collected at the local municipal level, in order to further empower local communities and grassroots democracy, and to rescue them from encroaching bankruptcy, and not imposed or collected at the level of the state, province or nation, and absolutely not at the supra-national or global level, which would only result in tyranny and outright fascism – and this is an absolutely critical point that we need to be clear on, and steadfastly insist upon; and secondly, if we are going to tax pollution, as we must, then we must also, and simultaneously, cut taxes for the poor, the middle class, small and medium businesses and farmers, who are already struggling to survive, and are sinking, and being eaten alive, due to class warfare being waged by the corporate elite and the ruling 1%, and also due to excessively a greatly excessive tax burden on these same groups. All of them need their taxes slashed – and I do mean slashed.
Tax all personal income over $1 million per year at 90%; tax all private wealth over $10 million at 90%; tax profitable large corporations at 90% on all profits over $1 billion a year; and tax all financial speculation and financial exchanges at 1% – and as a result of these measures, the treasuries will be full to overflowing, and there will be room for social and environmental programs, as well as great and urgently needed tax cuts for small and medium business, farmers, and the bottom 90% of the population. Pollution taxes, and resource extraction taxes and royalties paid to the people, will simply incentivize the shift to cleaner modes and means, habits and technologies, and will further fund the much needed People’s Green New Deal – which rejects the faux green deal being presented by Davos, which is a deal with the devil.
But even with these measures, automobiles should, ideally, in the longer term, and as soon as possible, be in community car co-ops, not private driveways and private garages. You sign out a Lamborghini, a Porsche, a Cadillac or a Tesla, like you would take out a library book – except at a very high premium price. And you can sign out a mini-van or cargo van, or a truck, a Prius, a Bolt or a Smart Car, for a more modest price. What we most definitely do not need is millions of private automobiles, of any description, being the basis of our transportation. We tried that – it was a catastrophe. Make the roads 70-90% devoted to buses, bicycle lanes and pedestrian streets, open air markets and public greenspaces and gardens. Automobiles of any description, whether electric or fossil fuel burning, driverless or not, have to be squeezed to the margins, and removed from their current status as a primary mode of transportation and mobility, or our civilization is going down the tubes fast. In 1901, driverless electric cars would have been a terribly short-sighted and stupid idea to base a transportation system around, for the reasons described vividly and clearly in this article. To think, in 2021, over a century later, that any form of private automobile use could be the centre-piece of our transportation infrastructure for the future, is absolutely insane.
Even in terms of land use and transportation, which are two separate but closely intertwined issues, the century-old habit of planning cities and communities around a transportation system that is centred on the private automobile, has been a disaster in multiple ways. Firstly, every time a city builds a new highway or widens a highway to increase traffic flow capacity and reduce traffic congestion, more people drive and people drive more often, resulting in more roads and highways being clogged with more cars and more congestion. The model has been a dismal failure for decades, yet we keep doing the same thing and keep repeating the same strategy, expecting different results. As Einstein said, this is the very definition of insanity.
Then there are the mass deaths and injuries from an automobile-centred transportation system. In the US over 40,000 people are killed in automobile accidents, including pedestrians being hit by cars in cities and towns, many of them children. The same number of people, in rough figures, are killed by cars in the US as are killed by opiods. There is a great hew and cry about opioid addiction, and rightfully so, and yet there is a deathly silence about our far more disastrous addiction to private automobiles, because that would be like criticizing the holy sacraments. Worse, it is fashionable and even held to be praiseworthy to criticize the churches, even in the most scathing of ways, but to question the sanctity and centrality of the private automobile as the centre-piece of all urban and transportation planning, invokes screaches and howls akin to the witch burnings of the Inquisition. We must re-think our presumptions, especially those that are most cherished and deeply held.
I am speaking, by the way, as an inveterate car lover. But while I love cars, I do not think it makes any slightest sense to make them the central focus of transportation or urban planning.
Another disastrous effect of that dismal model is of course smog. While the people and governments lost their minds over what is in reality, a new variant of the flu, in 2020 roughly 1.5 million people died globally from Covid, roughly the same number that have died, tragically, every year from the flu for centuries, but in the same year, as every year, though it is climbing exponentially, several million died from air pollution and smog. As I have written about before, our threat assessment capacities are completely shot, and utterly disconnected from reality. (See, Reality Check.)
Further, there is the issue of wasted land. Roughly 70% of Las Angeles is now covered with highways, streets and parking lots. Clearly, the sacred car is more important to us than either human life, or ecology and the rest of nature. If we were serious about public health in the slightest, which we are not, we would rip up half the streets and parking lots and turn them into pedestrian malls, greenspace and community gardens to create food for all and food self-reliance for all cities towns and villages, and turn half of the highway lanes into (wind-powered) electric bus lanes. But we have no slightest concern for human health, or human life or death. Our pretenses are all hollow, and as Thoreau said, “Our sills are all rotted.” Our founding assumptions and dogmas are killing millions of human beings, young and old, every year, and billions of other living creatures, and destroying ecosystems, and pushing us fast toward civilizational collapse and extinction. And yet, we cry loudly and with wringing hands about our deep and abiding, profound humanitarianism, and our commitment towards public health and the ending of needless deaths. The hypocrisy and self-deceit could scarcely be more extreme.
This should also be said, in brief: I warned people since 1991, thirty years ago, that the rising trend was not only ecological disaster, but also, and more chilling, fascism. Now it is here. But what I did not expect was for the great majority to respond to the “new normal” of authoritarianism with a yawn, and with a cheerful obedience and total complacency, as their human rights, constitutions, democracy and freedom are shredded and destroyed. And I certainly did not expect ordinarily sane people to be cheerleading for the new corporate fascist police state. But it is clear, the majority are no longer sane. They are dissociated from reality, which is the most precise definition of insanity that is possible.
Here I must say a word to the politically correct lemmings who feel that censorship and neo-Maoist thought control are legitimate and justified. Taking care with our words and speech, being thoughtful and sensitive and compassionate, and avoiding and transcending bigotry, prejudice, callousness, discrimination and hate, are obviously positive things. But political correctness can turn into a witch hunt, and another form of authoritarianism and collective group-think. That, it has done. While I can and do sympathize with people having mental health issues, especially since I lived with severe anxiety and depression for 17 years, between the ages of 18 and 35, it is nevertheless important that we can speak plainly about reality and the world we live in. When someone, or some policy or habit of our collective, supremely abnormal norm, is not just bad, but far beyond bad, we need stronger terms to convey the gravity of it. Sometimes the word evil is the only appropriate term, such as in regards to the Holocaust, or with regards to the global fascist coup being carried out as we speak. Other times, saying something is “a bad idea”, is simply far too weak and evasive a description. Sometimes we must state the truth plainly, no matter who may be offended: the policy, behaviour, or norm, is not just bad – it is patently insane. Let us not become so enfeebled of mind that we cannot talk openly and plainly about reality and the world we live in, or we will be simply doomed, by way of our own self-imposed virtual lobotomy.
But to continue…
If we were to get serious about stopping toxic pollution and smog, and got serious about ensuring all people have access to healthy food in sufficient quantities, neither of which we are remotely serious about now, then our self-image of being deeply concerned with human health and human life could begin to be taken seriously. As it stands, we ignore the biggest issues of human health and human deaths, while screaming our support for utterly counterproductive authoritarian measures. That is not only morally bankrupt, it is positively insane.
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Among the most urgent and compelling reasons, and areas, for decentralization is in regards to food, agriculture and global warming. The Davos billionaire’s club wants to convince us that they will solve the world’s hunger and environmental crises, both, among other messianic acts. But their plan involves removing the people from the land, and concetrating all control over food and agriculture in the hands of a few hundred globalist corporate elites. If that sounds safe to you, I suggest you think again.
It is the Land Enclosure Acts all over again – the giant land grab in Britain, which took place between 1235 and 1914, and particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries, whereby the landed aristocracy essentially stole the commons, with the aiding and abetting of the equally criminal government, unsurprisingly, especially considering parliament was largely made up of the wealthy land owning elite themselves, who were pushing for ever more land enclosures to increase their already great wealth and power; and which in turn drove the people off the land, because the landed aristocracy could make more money raising cattle, or sheep for valuable wool textiles, and forced the people to choose between dying of starvation, joining the ranks of the desperate urban poor, who filled the new sweat shops of the Industrial Revolution, or getting on a boat, risking all, and sailing to the New World. The trouble is, there is nowhere left to flee the robber barons: this time, the land grab is global, and it aims to be total and complete.
(I can hear the quibbling now from the ever-evasive and slippery Sophists who are the grim majority in the academy, who forever feel compelled to make apologetics and glosses for the crimes of whatever power elite happen to be in power at the time, as most academics throughout history have done – and they are a disgrace for it, and by no way scholarly in such actions. But yes, while the theft of the commons and the usurpation of land happened through various processes, it was by and large theft, and class warfare; and while there have been many drivers of urbanization throughout history, the single greatest driver has been and continues to be the loss of land by the rural peasantry and the poor, through one form or another of usurpation or theft by the rich. The same process is driving the peasants of the Global South into the shanty towns and slums of the cities around the world, and that has been going on for a very long time, though it has exponentially accelerated over the past few decades. When Adam Smith is correct, I would cite him; in instances where Marx is more correct, I would cite Marx. I am not a Marxist, but Marx was by and large correct when he identified the land enclosure movement as an act of theft and class warfare, creating the bulk of the workforce of what became the urban industrial labour pool or proletariat. And no, it is not relevant to cite that agriculture was “rationalized”, since theft remains theft, no matter the justification. “Well, you see, I am stealing your land in order to help you”, isn’t an argument that peasants, small scale farmers or the rural poor felt to be very convincing then, nor do they now, and nor should they. And yes, the land enclosures or theft of the commons was as much about power, or more, than it was about agriculture or food production – far more. Land is the primary source of wealth, and therefore of power, then as now, and always, as Malcolm X realized and clearly stated, as well. Then as now, controlling the land is the primary means of controlling the people. This has nothing to do with romanticizing the past, by the way, and everything to do with whether an aristocratic or business elite should run roughshod over the other 99%. So yes, while there are numerous dynamics in land use and urbanization, one of the biggest is theft of land by the rich, driving the rural poor into desperate actions, including the ugly choice of becoming urban wage slaves, as it was widely viewed to be.)
In fact, it is even worse and more dystopian than that, because the plutocrats want to not only own or control all of the land, but also, all productive assets or means of producing wealth, including the factories, businesses, shipping and transportation, real estate, along with the media, the mass communication system, the global economy and financial system, the private armies (yes, the military industrial complex is being systematically privatized), the new digital currencies, without which none shall buy or sell, and are seeking to enclose, own, patent or otherwise control all of life – seeds, animals, breeding stock, our data and personal records and habits, and effectively, our own bodies and minds, as well. Everything is a commodity to them, and they have modest desires: they simply want it all.
As Adam Smith said, it is, “The vile maxim of the masters: all for us, nothing for anybody else.”
Again, as Klaus Schwabe said, “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.”
Furthermore, the plan of the corporate elite is to use petrochemical industrial agriculture as their answer – a model which is now proven to be catastrophic for the environment, for soils and souls, in terms climate change, environmental degradation, soil depletion, food security, and in terms of the human and social costs. If we want to see the collapse of global food production, along with most ecosystems in the world, and the collapse of civilization as a result, as has happened to many civilizations in the past, following the elites’ plan will virtually ensure it.
Technology can be helpful or harmful, but as I concluded in my first year of university in environmental studies and philosophy, and as everything I have read, observed and experienced has confirmed, technology is not what will save us. It is a problem that is two-fold, which plagues us: attitudes or world view, and power structures and systems. If we do not address these two fundamental areas, then all our efforts to resolve the environmental crisis, or any of our myriad, interconnected social crises, will come to nothing, or worse. The ideology of the ruling Davos billionaire elite, is technocracy. That is worse than useless. That is the building of a dystopia. It would be better if the billionaires retired to their private islands, mansions and yachts, and left the world alone. And if they refuse, we may well have to put them under house arrest.
Remember, even if authoritarian measures are justified in an emergency – and I am not saying they are justified now, but even if you believe that they are – those authoritarian measures must be temporary and short-lived. If they are not, then we have been swindled and duped yet again, and instead of crisis management, we are being sold into a permanent state of authoritarianism; which, in more honest times, would be called what it is: fascism. Bear that in mind as the days and months roll by, in this “new normal”, as we have been told a thousand times that it is.
This is not a temporary set of emergency measures. This is endgame. And don’t run off screaming that this is a wild conspiracy theory. It has nothing to do with conspiracy or theory. It is simply class analysis, a sociological analysis, and an institutional analysis. Our social institutions, particularly the democratic nation-state, along with the media, the financial system and the economy, have been captured by powerful individuals and giant corporations. And what they want is what the power hungry and the greedy have always wanted throughout history: more power, and more money. Why is this so hard to fathom? Have the business elite or the state ever exploited a crisis to their advantage? Don’t answer that until you have read, The Shock Doctrine. Of course they have. And they are doing it again.
But don’t worry, Davos’ Eric Schmidt assures us that, “The Davos universe will be fine.” Ah, well that is reassuring. I was worried about the welfare of the super-rich and the excessively powerful. So long as they will be fine, why should we be worried? The billionaire class will be fine, and their loyal ass kissers among the political, media and technocratic elite will be fine (admitting of course that they too are expendable), and who really cares about the plebes? Let them eat cake. No, better, as our good friend and patron, Bill Gates said, “Let them eat bugs.”
But Erich Schmidt goes on to assure us that more “efficient” systems will benefit everyone. This is the standard trickle down theory nonsense, which we have seen is utterly hollow. The super-rich are swallowing up all the wealth on Earth that they can, and poverty and inequality are soaring as a result. So the technocratic utopia he is promising should strike us, properly, as nothing other than snake oil, as well as being a dystopian nightmare.
Of course, as Chomsky has said, every emperor and every dictator throughout history has convinced himself that he is the great benefactor and saviour of humanity. But that doesn’t mean that we should also believe in their delusions.
Remember that all social systems and institutions are human creations. That means, they are not immutable, they are not permanent, and they are not inevitable, and it means that if they do not truly serve human interests broadly, but only serve the interests of the powerful few, they can and should be discarded.
Another important note, which is often conflated, especially by propagandists and elite vested interests, is this. There are two very different sets of meanings to the word elite. In one sense, elite means someone who is particularly gifted or talented in a certain area. There are elite basketball players, elite pianists, elite chefs. Nobody discounts that human talents are diverse. That is not a problem. What is a problem is the other meaning of the term elite. That is the term in reference to a power elite. That means that a small group of people have a tremendous amount of power in society. That kind of elite, a power elite, always spells corruption, and always, in the end, spells tyranny. But the power elite always want to conflate the two meanings, and that is also their delusion. They tell themselves that they are not dominating usurpers of power, or power mongers, but that they are “leaders” or even messianic figures. That is elitism. And when enough people believe in the self-serving delusions of the elite, then you get fascism. And that is precisely what is happening now.
The billionaire elite want to effectively round the people up like cattle and corral them in sprawling, tightly controlled, total surveillance “smart cities”, with stark prospects for freedom or democracy, and lab grown meat as the daily menu. Aside from the horrific crimes against humanity involved in this plan of mass forced relocation, and the final destruction of freedom, human rights, constitutional rule and democracy, the billionaire’s Great Reset agenda, which the founder and president of the Davos World Economic Forum, Klaus Schawbe exlicitly and publicly announced, the plan of the corporate elite will aggravate, not alleviate, the world’s environmental crisis.
What the environmental movement has been slow to understand, but what people like Allan Savory, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Richard Heinberg and Vandana Shiva have proven beyond any doubt, is that small scale, decentralized, organic, regenerative agriculture, is not only the best, safest, least impact, and most secure way to feed humanity, but it is also the single most powerful method or tool we have for healing the planet, and reversing climate change. What that means, is that we have to bring the people back to the land, not drive them off it.
Through regenerative agriculture the soil is healed, and carbon is caputured in the healthy soils and rural landscape, which not only slows climate change, but can quickly reverse it. The business elite’s plan will possibly cut fossil fuel use, which is good, but will further hasten the global death of soils, meaning, the carbon capturing capacity of the Earth’s soils is killed, along with their ability to grow food or support any form of life, resulting in a net worsening of the climate crisis under the billionaire’s plan.
The corporate oligarchs have been investing like there is no tomorrow in the fossil fuel industry, while talking virtuously about the need for carbon reduction and sustainability. All three of the biggest hedge funds on Earth, who manage the money of the super-rich, are heavily invested in all of the top 100 carbon emitting corporations. The Great Reset is a lie. The corporate elite are interested in whatever brings them more money, more wealth, and more power, and humanity and the Earth be damned; along with freedom, human rights and democracy, naturally. That is what their actions prove beyond any doubt.
While Klauss Schawbe and his Davos coterie propound about sustainability, they want to take the existing petrochemical industrial model of agriculture, which is destroying the planet and poisoning our food, air, soil, water and bodies, and which is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, and essentially put it on steroids. There is no remote way any sane person can view that plan as being sustainable or ecologically sound, all human rights and social concerns aside. The Davos-driven Great Reset plan which is being aggressively pushed by the billionaire elite is therefore a recipe for systems failure and ecological catastrophe, mass human rights abuses, and a full-scale war on democracy and freedom, followed quickly by civilizational collapse.
The Davos Great Reset plan of the billionaire oligarchy is also premised on an abundance of cheap energy in the form of diesel fuel. But there too, the indicators are, that the era of cheap oil and diesel fuel is about to end, and end abruptly. World conventional oil production peaked in 2006. The fracking boon was a boondoggle that temporarily glutted the world with a brief extended flash of cheap oil, but fracking is a money losing scheme, made possible only by cheap money, as Max Keiser has repeatedly pointed out, and now the industry is dying as the fracking companies go bankrupt en mass. Total oil production has now also peaked, as of 2018. The return on investment numbers across the fossil fuel industry broadly, further show the case, as to the end of cheap energy, irrefutably. A century ago, it cost a dollar to extract $100 in profit margin of oil. By the 1990s it was $10 profit for the same investment, and falling fast. Every action, machine or system has built in inefficiencies that to some extent are unavoidable. This is the inviolable second law of thermodynamics. With fracking and tar sands, we are down to $3-4 profit per dollar invested, which is not enough to maintain the infrastructure costs to extract, refine and ship it. The energy cliff, therefore, is nearly upon us. The profits versus investment ratio of the biggest oil companies proves the point beyond all debate. The plan among environmentalists was always, primarily, to build a renewable energy infrastructure to replace fossil fuels. But that requires trillions of dollars in investment, and an abundance of cheap energy to build it. We had that chance in the 1970s and ’80s, but we passed it up. Now we will be severely constrained, not by money, but by soon to skyrocket energy costs. It means that ship has, in terms of the big picture, and aside from small local pockets, already sailed. Besides that ugly fact, is this: renewable energy produces electricity, but 80% of our global energy use is not electricity but fossil fuels – and particularly in terms of shipping and transportation, which runs on diesel. Even as late as 2000-2020, we still had abundant cheap energy to build a renewable energy and transportation infrastructure, but that window is rapidly closing now. It is still imperative to get off of fossil fuels swiftly and decisively, and to shift to renewable energy, and especially to build wind-powered, high speed electric light rail, and electric and bi-reticulated bus transportation grids; along with redesigning our communities, centred around pedestrian streets, public green spaces and gardens, public libraries, walking and cycling paths and mass transit. But the landscape is changing fast, and the energy costs are about to soar. The fact is, therefore, that we will experience a severe energy shortage, and a global economy that depends upon long supply chains is inevitably going to break. The only way we can make the transition to renewable energy now, and moreover to simply weather the coming storm, is to shift to decentralized, small-scale, regenerative agriculture-based communities, as well as to greatly reduce our energy consumption – and that means slashing shipping distances, which means decentralizing the economy, particularly food production. But the Davos elite want to push us in the opposite direction. Carbon farming, meaning, local regenerative agriculture, which requires decentralization, combined with major cuts to energy consumption, is now the only viable path to healing our planet. But again, that is 180 degrees opposite to where the Davos elite are driving us. Aside from deep and grave concerns over human rights, freedom and democracy, therefore, the elites’ plan to save the environment, is guaranteed to fail, and fail spectacularly, if we are foolish enough to go along with it, for reasons of both ecological collapse, and energy cost spikes.
But then again, the billionaire class is insulated from the disastrous effects of their actions. They all have expensive, ultra-premium insurance policies, so that if there is a severe storm, hurricane, tornado, food riots, or the county they live in goes up in flames from wildfires burning out of control, they will be air-lifted by private helicopter out of danger, and flown to a five-star resort of their choosing, or to one of their other mansions, country estates, yachts or private islands. This at least partially explains why they can be so giddy and aggressively pushing when it comes to plans and agendas that will dramatically increase their already stratospheric wealth and power, while further destabilizing the planet, and further degrading, poisoning, depleting and razing the natural world that supports us all. This is precisely how and why civilizations collapse: the elite are insulated from the problems, and so, continue to sip champagne on the top decks of the sinking ship, believing their wealth and power will protect them – and who cares about the lesser beings on the lower decks who are already drowning and under water.
What the billionaire elite are doing, therefore, and the evidence is clear from their actions, is gathering all wealth and power that they can – buying up farm land, driving the people off the land, taking the entire S&P private, setting themselves up as the rent collectors for every aspect of life and the real economy, and launching digital currencies that they will control, among other actions – prior to the systems failure that they know full well is coming. When it comes, they want to be left as the ruling landed aristocracy, in a neo-feudal era, where they will effectively live, and rule, as god-kings.
As Michael Moore’s recent film showed, we have been conned in more ways than one. Some of the biggest environmental groups have made a deal with the devil. They have joined forces with the corporate elite, presumably believing they could win benefits for the Earth, but have either been duped, bribed, or otherwise co-opted. Across the US, so-called “clean energy” and “renewable energy” projects have been passed by legislatures, and built. But what was secretly built in most cases was not wind turbines, but biofuel plants. That means any organic life form, living or dead, can be burned to make energy. Presently these biofuel plants are burning live trees and entire forests. That cannot last long. When they have finished burning the forests which are the lungs of the Earth, what will they burn next? Maybe the seven billion superfluous humans. It would not be the first time such things have happened. And prison labour can only utilize so many. Maybe we should think again about the Holocaust. Are we so sure it could not happen again? Maybe we should watch Soylent Green again as well.
The oceans are reaching their limit in terms of their ability to capture carbon, because we have radically altered and undermined their ecology. Now the billionaires want to cut the lungs out of the soil as well. That is not a good plan. That is suicide.
Are they stupid, or are they simply pathological and sociopathic? Probably both. But we can see by their actions that they are definitely pathological and sociopathic. A million dead Iraqis for the sake of oil money is simply a good investment to their minds. And they are invested up to their eyeballs in the very fossil fuel industry they claim we must get away from. “You shall know them by their fruits.” They are sociopathic liars, quite frankly, as we can see by the record of their actions. They make Dick Cheney look like a swell guy.
Mind you, of course, the few hundred billionaire elites who effectively rule the world have armies of technocrats, bureaucrats, spokespersons and other minions, most of whom are so deeply indoctrinated that they sincerely believe what they are doing is good for the people and the planet. But Stalin, Mussolini and Mao had their minions as well, and despite their good intentions, they were, in reality, paving a super-highway to hell on Earth.
The ideology of the global power elite is Machiavellian, neo-Malthusian technocracy, which is simply another way of saying ruthless power lust and genocidal fascism. But they support their goals of gathering all wealth and power into their hands through what used to be called propaganda, but what is maybe more accurately termed psychological warfare or social engineering. And the worldview they promote is both misanthropic and Hobbesian: they are actively indoctrinating people to mistrust themselves and one another, in a classic strategem of divide and conquer, while sowing the completely deceitful, or delusional, notion that the elite are the saviours of humanity and the Earth. Their guiding icons are Spencer, who corrupted Darwinism and created Social Darwinism, Machiavelli, who rationalized any means necessary as justifiable in order to gain, maintain, expand or consolidate power, and Plato and Hobbes, who argued, incoherently, that an elite of philosopher kings or technocrats are essential to human well-being, when in fact, history has abundantly proven, over and over again, that elitism, empire, and any form of authoritarianism, lead not to salvation, but to tyranny, and to great crimes against humanity. This is the web of deceit and delusion that we must cut through, to free ourselves and to heal the world.
The business elite want to urbanize 100% of the world’s population. The misinformed believe this will lessen pressure on the environment. The opposite is true. Urbanization creates vast chains of supply lines which are both increasingly fragile as well as completely unsustainable. Worse yet, it insulates people from the effects of their actions, by separating them from the land and alienating them from nature. It is that very alienation which is at the heart of the environmental crisis. Therefore, total urbanization will, in multiple ways, make the environmental crisis far worse, not better.
Remember that before WWII the vast majority of the world’s population, well over 80%, lived in rural areas. Encouraging people to move out of the big cities, into smaller, more ecologically sound communities, with closer relations and closer ties to the natural world, will be a great transformation, but it is simply reversing our error, created over the past 75 years. It is big, but it is achievable. The alternative is mass urbanization and mass dehumanization, in an Orwellian control grid which is really a kind of techno-fascism, and which is both genocidal and utterly unsustainable.
Again, we are presented with two very starkly opposed alternatives. We can allow all power to be concentrated in the hands of the global corporate elite, including all economic power, effectively all political power, as they over-ride every democratic government, and all power over food production and distribution; or we can decentralize economic power, renew and reaffirm national democracies, and create thriving communities that are actively healing the land and the world we live in. I think our choices are becoming starkly clear.
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Bear in mind that the original democratic theorists never expected or intended for democracy to be practiced on a vast scale, such as the present day US, Canada, Russia, China, India, Australia, Argentina or Brazil, which are geographically vast countries, many times the size of most nations in the world. (It will be surprising if these geographically giant nations can stay internally united, at least with any centralized power centres or centralized governments, although they could much more easily stay united as federations, with much more decentralized powers internally. Historically, no empire has ever lasted, and nations that are on the scale of empires, no matter how they behave or are structured, are unlikely to survive in the long term, unless they consciously decentralize and federate powers internally, as Thomas Jefferson advised and urged, for example). Rousseau himself intended democracy to be practiced on the scale of his home country of tiny Switzerland.
The US itself was originally a union of thirteen colonies, with 3.5 million people. And even that was a federation of semi-autonomous states in a federation of shared powers. Today the US has a landmass roughly five times bigger, and has nearly 100 times the population.
When power is over-centralized, the supposedly democratic governments become so removed and out of reach from the people that democracy withers and dies, and is gradually replaced by oligarchy. That has now occurred. Democracy is dead. Or rather, democracy is on life-support, and dying, and freedom, human rights and constitutional rule, along with it.
Worse yet, we placed checks and balances, and firm limits, on concentrations of political power, but left economic power unchecked. 200 years after the birth of modern democracy, economic power has become so staggeringly concentrated globally, that a new moneyed aristocracy, as Thomas Jefferson called them, have effectively taken over, and are now the de facto rulers of the world.
“I pray we shall crush the moneyed aristocracy in its infancy, for already it bids defiance to our laws and seeks a contest of strength with our democratic government.” – Thomas Jefferson
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I am not anti-business, but I am certainly anti-fascist. And if we are foolish enough to allow extreme concentrations of economic power, then those powers will inevitably come to overshadow, then dominate, and finally to eviscerate both freedom and democracy, and all human rights and constitutional rule along with them. And that, is exactly what we have allowed to happen. First, remove the plutocratic business elite from power. Only then can we have any serious discussion of other social or environmental issues. Until then, we are talking, prattling, hot-air-filled fools, and all talk of social justice or sustainability, freedom, democracy, human rights or peace, or any positive social change, are futile and meaningless.
As to political powers, I am and will be forever more on the side of freedom and constitutional democracy. Churchill was right: Democracy is the worst form of government ever invented, except for all the others. There are only two choices, ultimately, in political philosophy. As Chomsky said, “You’re either a democrat or an aristocrat.” We live in a dream world if we believe it otherwise. Either you believe in government of the people, by the people, for the people, or you believe in some form or other of elite rule, which means oligarchy, and which always spells, in the end, tyranny. So, therefore, you either choose constitutional democracy, or you chose one or another form of servitude, serfdom, or slavery. Can it be made any more clear than that? I hear people arguing for oligarchy, for technocracy, not knowing that is what they are doing. They may as well be forging their own shackles and chains, for that is precisely what they are doing.
As to human rights, they are innate and inalienable. They are not granted by constitutions, or governments, or the state. If the society is intelligent, just, or simply sane, then it will uphold human rights, but it does not grant them: it either honours our human rights which are innate, or it does not. But the rights remain innate, no matter whether the society or the government has the virtue and the good sense to honour them or not. Constitutions are important, and are the foundational and ultimate law of the land. But a culture which respects and honours human rights is more fundamental yet. Without such a culture and such a consciousness, constitutions are mere pieces of paper, to be ignored at whim, whenever it is convenient, profitable, or expedient to do so. That is why Thoreau’s short essay, On Civil Disobedience, is the most important political tract ever written. Unless the people stand up for their rights, even the Magna Carta is meaningless, and simply an inert piece of paper.
As to the powers of government, yes, a democratic government has the right and the obligation to enforce laws protecting the people, and also the land and the ecology of the land. But the fundamental rule of any just society, or any society that wishes to be stable, or sociologically sustainable in the long run, is that individual freedom can only be constrained when an individual is actively harming another individual, or the commons which supports us all.
I watched a biography on Oscar Wilde tonight, and at the end, the thought that dominated my mind was this. What sheer and utter arrogance it is that people feel they can tell other people how they should live! Again, unless someone is harming another person, or is causing ecological harm to the environment which we share, by dumping toxic waste into a river, or clear-cutting a forest, for example, neither the government, the state, nor any group or individual has the right to impose their notions of how someone should live upon another, and nor do they have the slightest right, in any way, to either tell another person how they should live, where they can or cannot go, who they can or cannot love, what clothes they can or cannot wear, what they must wear on their face, what they can say, or do, or not do, or to limit or constrain their freedom in any way. To impose our notions on another person as to how they should, and must, live, is the highest arrogance, and in fact the original sin, of false pride, and sheer hubris. It is tyranny, and it is abhorrent, in all its forms, no matter the justifications which are made.
Compassion, solidarity, or people helping one another, is the basis of a just society, a peaceful society, and a stable and sustainable society; but equally so is freedom. Without freedom being practiced, and honoured in practice, and not just espoused, our society cannot hope to be sustainable, much less just. It will be neither. It will be a boorish dystopian gulag of one sort or another, until it finally collapses and destroys itself. Freedom is fundamental. This, we must remember, and now. And over-centralization, both political and even more so economic, is at the very heart of the problem.
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In the longer term, and as soon as the people are ready for it and have the will, we must democratize the economy. In the immediate realm of urgently needed actions, right now, we must reverse the long term trend of hyper-concentration of wealth and economic power, dethrone the corporate oligarchs, and break up the biggest corporate giants, which have effectively taken over the elected governments of the world. We either face reality bravely and head on, or the new reality of global corporate empire will devour us, and the planet along with us. These are our two choices now.
The following is absolutely critical to understand. The corporate-state oligarchy is now in the midst of a deep and widespread, global crisis of legitimacy – the same phenomenon of crisis of legitimacy which, after decades of gradual loss of public confidence, trust, and patience with the system, led finally to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the entire Eastern Bloc, in just a year and a half, between 1989 and 1991. This is the biggest opportunity for real, positive social change that we will get. It is precisely because the crisis of legitimacy for the ruling powers is so deep, that the business and political elite are resorting to such desperate measures. Their increasingly desperate measures are not a sign of their strength, but of their weakness, and their fear. We must seize the moment, and press now, for real, fundamental, systemic change. The people must reclaim their power, and now.
Remember that the US spends a trillion dollars a year on the military and war, while 90% of its people are reduced to peasants, the infrastructure disintegrates and begins to collapse, and the people are told there is no money for public health care; and meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry is subsidized by $5 trillion a year globally, and the US alone wastes another trillion dollars a year on a private health care system that costs twice as much as the public health care systems of Canada and Europe. There is no shortage of money – the billionaire elite are awash in money. There is now over $30 trillion sitting in the offshore private bank accounts of the super-rich. The billionaire corporate elite keep demanding billions and trillions in bail-outs and “stimulus” money, and they get it. The problem is not lack of money or resources, but the mass systemic theft being carried out daily by the corporate elite, who feed at the bottomless public trough, and are feeding off the real economy, the people and the earth, and draining them all of wealth, and of life. And there are many things we can do about it, big and small. Remember that General Motors, one of the biggest companies in the US, was nationalized. But that is just one option among many. Remember, most importantly, nearly every major positive change in human society in history has come from below, from the people, and not from the government or the ruling elite.
The American and French Revolutions began with one single book, Common Sense, by Thomas Paine. The movement to end slavery began with just a handful of people. Great things almost always have small beginnings. The fact is, We, the people of the Earth, the 99%, have all the power we need, and a good many proven models, to take on the giants, and to win the world back, and to heal our world in the process.
Join a credit union, move your money out of the big banks, use local currencies and Bitcoin, or at least cash instead of credit cards and bank cards, whenever you can, and cut the banking elite out of the picture everywhere you can – stop feeding your slavers; switch to a co-op insurance company; support your local farmers, farmers’ markets and artisans; learn about the anti-trust movement led by Teddy Roosevelt, and also, the very successful experiments in local democratic budget making, land reform and agrarian reform movements, industrial and workplace democracy, Participatory Economics, social ecology, communitarianism, the Spanish Revolution, the Mondragon Co-op, Via Campesina, Transition Towns and the Transition Network, the organic food and agriculture movement, the permaculture and regenerative agriculture movements, the land trust movement, which makes owning land affordable, because the ownership is democratically shared, and the co-op movement of America, which now has 140 million members; join the localization movement (sometimes called the re-localization movement), the bioregional movement, the decentralization movement, the co-op movement, the public bank movement, the buy local, or local procurement movement, or the New Economy movement; start a community garden project, a community food self-reliance project, a community water harvesting, water protection and water self-reliance co-op, a community car co-op, child care co-op, a health care co-op, a community herbal medicine growers co-op, a co-op greenhouse, a co-op laundry, a co-op school, community-run radio, newspapers, magazines, podcasting, web tv or other media, a co-op legal action and lawyers group, or a community renewable energy co-op; switch to or at least embrace and support alternative media and alternative social media; consider an urban or rural housing co-op or a land trust; get involved in the boycott, divestment or shareholder activism movement; join a CSA, plant a garden, invest locally, eat local, buy local, and support local independent business, as an important start. Then, join with others to take the power back in even bigger ways.
As my mother used to say, If you don’t interest yourself in politics, politics will interest itself in you. In the US today, the three richest men, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, control more wealth than the poorest half of Americans. Globally, the eight richest individuals control more wealth than the poorest half of humanity.
We no longer have liberal democracy in the West. We now live under a global corporate oligarchy. We now have neo-feudalism, and it is morphing rapidly into fascism.
We had best deal with reality, or reality will deal with us.
“Historically, the real basis of power has always been wealth, in one form or another.” “Democracy? They control the action. Liberty? The numbers are pretty nasty.” “Either we probe much deeper to the institutional and systemic basis of the old order, or we lose.” “What does the next system look like, as the old order collapses?” – Gar Alperowitz
“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, as Lord Acton said. Remember that always. It is the excessive concentration or centralization of power which is the greatest danger. Nothing else comes even close. So long as a few dozen corporate giants, mainly banks, and the billionaires who control them, effectively control the global economy, as a recent Swiss systems analysis confirms, and essentially rule the world, there is zero chance of us resolving either our social crises or the environmental crisis. We need strong anti-trust action to break up the biggest corporate empires, especially in banking, finance and the media, redistribute their assets in the formation of a network of local democratic co-ops, and create legislative and constitutional checks and balances, and firm limits on great concentrations of economic power and wealth; otherwise, if we do not, then democracy, freedom, human rights, constitutional rule, the planet, and the great majority of the people, will continue to have the life sucked out of them, by this same giant vampire squid which is the global corporate empire. This is the stark reality that we must face, and now. You cannot have a strong economy, much less justice or sustainability, nor, most fundamentally, freedom, constitutional rule or functioning democracy, so long as the giant corporate cartels and oligarchs effectively rule the nations and the world. The conservative and libertarian right now understands this better than the left, which is by and large obsessed with getting a few more crumbs from the tables of the rich. The Neville Chamberlains, cowards and Quislings must be forcefully moved aside. The time for bold and decisive action against the rising corporate fascist powers, is now.
Remember, the American Revolution and the birth of modern democracy began with just 77 men at Valley Forge. In fact, it began with one person writing one book: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Before that, in the mid 1700s, the idea of democracy seemed radical, extremist, impractical, and impossible. But it happened.
Big changes do happen in history. And almost all of them begin with a handful of people: from the birth of modern democracy and the overthrow of feudalism, to the abolition of slavery, to the universal right to vote, the abolition of child labour, to the labour movement securing decent pay, basic workplace safety, and work weeks shortened from 100 hours, to 80, to 60, to 40, and lowering.
Big changes happen, and another major shift in the world is emerging now. Either it will be led by the corporate oligarchy, in which case it will be an Orwellian neo-feudalism, technocracy and fascism, or it will be led by the people, in which case, the power is in our hands to choose something better. This is the fork in the road. Let us choose wisely.
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Our present system cannot and will not continue, but will inevitably collapse. A decentralized economic system can sow community prosperity and resiliency, while respecting ecology and freedom. The present system is not only destroying the earth’s ecosystems, and the basis of all life, but has also created a global corporate oligarchy, which is destroying freedom and democracy, and creating a growing sea of poverty. We can do better than this broken system, and we must.
As it turns out, democracy, ecology, culture, the arts, economics, health care, science, philosophy, spirituality, education, and virtually every aspect of life, thrives best when we respect and embrace diversity, freedom, curiosity and creativity – and this, in turn, requires decentralization in all of these major areas of life.
The globalized economy, with its long supply chains and its fossil fuel dependency, and the global corporate oligarchy which controls it, is going to collapse. That is a good thing. We should hasten its demise, in every peaceful and non-violent way we can. And we should look to get out of the cities and into more resilient and life-affirming communities, before it comes crashing down around our ears.
We should bear in mind that in physics, mathematics, in science and in life, it is often the simplest solutions which are the best. Think of Enstein’s theory of relativity. Almost nobody can understand it, but it does come down to one simple equation: e=mc(squared). (My apologies that I can’t type that properly on my keyboard, but you get the picture.) Simplicity is not only the highest form of elegance, it is also generally the best solution in terms of freedom, democracy, human rights, quality of life, ecological stewardship and genuine sustainability, and for community and urban design.
Remember Tainter’s analysis of how civilizations collapse: they collapse, in large part, because they become excessively complex – because, while that complexity of systems brings certain advantages, it also exponentially increases the system’s fragility, and hence, the civilization’s fragility, until, in its rigidity, its fragility, and its inability to adapt, it begins to crumble and to collapse. We are experiencing that right now, and globally. We are witnessing the beginning of collapse. We are at the beginning of the end of corporate globalization, and of corporate-run industrial civilization.
It is over-centralization – of demographics and populations, of political powers and government, of media control, mass communications, energy and culture, and especially overcentralization in terms of globalized economics, and at the heart of it, a vastly over-centralization and hyper-concentration of economic power and wealth – that is causing the multiple, inter-connected social, economic, political and ecological crises, and is driving the decline, decay, disintegration and slow-motion collapse of modern industrial societies. But over-centralization is also linked to and gives rise to excessive levels of complexity, and to rising levels of systems fragility, and systems collapse. What we do not want to do, therefore, and must not do, is to respond to these interlocking crises with more of the same thinking, and the same habits and patterns and models, that created the crises in the first place – which is exactly what we are doing now.
“Hmm… Let’s see: Over-centralization, combined with extreme concentrations of power and wealth, has produced instability, fragility, disintegration, chaos and decay…. So…let’s redouble our efforts, and do more of that.” That is the Great Reset agenda in a nutshell. That is the agenda and the mind-set of the elite. And that, is madness.
As Eistein said, you cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created it. Moreover, as Eistein also said, Repeating the same behaviour and expecting different results is the very definition of insanity.
I think of something my great Swiss aunt used to say often: “Complicated works too.”
But then again, complicated works, only until it doesn’t. And complicated, is a strategy that is rapidly and systemically failing us now.
As Thoreau said, “Simplify, simplify.”
Remember what Aldous Huxley said, in his most important book, which is Brave New World Revisited: the central problem of society is over-organization. A certain level of organization is needed for any society, but when we adopt what Aldous Huxley called over-organization, we get bureaucracy, technocracy, unaccountable governments, and insulated, out of touch, self-serving and self-rationalizing elites, a stifling and claustrophobic, suffocating society, and a gulag society in the end, followed by collapse. The Soviet Union is the perfect textbook example. And the world is now racing to follow that same model, once again, into tyranny, a dark age, dystopia, and finally, collapse. We had best lift our heads and look around, because we are on the wrong track. This track leads to Auschwitz, and to the collapse of our civilization, for those who live long enough to see it.
We don’t need to be romantic primitivists, nor do we need to be anti-technology; but worshipping technology, and an endless line of consumer gadgets, as our salvation, is simply a form of madness. Technology is neutral, other than certain ones which should be banned, such as genetic engineering, industrial agriculture, factory farming, nuclear power and weapons of mass destruction. It depends on how we use technology, whether it improves life, or degrades and destroys it. Both technophilia, or the worship of technology as salvation, and technophobia (though to a far lesser extent) are unreasonable attitudes to take, but the former will almost invariably degrade, if not destroy our lives, our communities, and our world. (And yes, Elon Musk, Klaus Schwabe and Eric Schmidt are insane.)
Technology is neither the problem nor the solution. The problem is over-centralization, excessive concentrations of power and wealth, and the systems, institutions, mindsets, ideologies, policies, habits and norms that are founded upon over-centralization, and are based in extreme inequality of power and wealth. The solutions are in our nature, as David Suzuki wisely says, and the solutions are implicit and clear, once we clearly recognize the nature of the problem.
What is perhaps most urgent and imperative for us to realize, is this. Engineering is a marvellous set of skills and knowledge, but it must be guided and constrained by human values of solidarity, equitability, ecology, peace, democracy, human rights, and freedom. Left to their own devices, and infatuated by their powers and their worship of moulding and controlling all life, engineering becomes ecological destruction and ecological holocaust, and, simultaneously, technocracy and fascism.
That is what you get when you disconnect engineering from the core values of democracy, human rights, freedom and ecology. You get tyranny and you get destruction, masquerading as human progress and human liberation. You get an Orwellian dark age, followed by collapse.
If we are sane, we will firmly and passionately reject technocracy, which is a cult of social engineering, and root both engineering and government, and above all, the economy, in democracy, human rights and freedom, as well as ecology: and that requires and demands a fundamental rejection of over-centralization, a rejection of all excessive concentrations of power, whether political, cultural or economic, and a firm and unwaivering, categorical rejection of all forms of authoritarian rule, in favour of constitutional democracy, diversity and freedom, rooted in ecological awareness.
“Two roads diverged in the woods,
and I took the one less travelled by.
And that has made all the difference.”
The fork in the road is here. Nature will correct us in the end, if we are too stupid to correct ourselves. But over-centralization will end in either case, and soon.
We need to analize the problems, yes – as we have done here. But we also need to open our eyes and our minds to opportunities and potentials – as we have also done here. We need vision, not just analysis. Further: We must cease to forever be patching holes in the Titanic with ever more duct tape, bubblegum and bailing twine. We must begin to think big – and we often do that best by first thinking small, with a big mind view of unlimited possibilities.
We must now reject all theories, attitudes, philosophies, policies, parties, platforms, agendas and ideologies that are based in elitism, hubris, a command and control fetish, demagoguery, false messiahs, authoritarianism, and their inevitable concommitants of over-centralization, bureaucratization, technocracy, standardization, homogenization, uniformity and obedience. We must therefore reject figures such as Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Hegel, Spencer and Marx. Above all, we must refuse, at once, to be serfs or slaves, or to have our boot on anyone’s neck – and we must reject all dogmatism and monocultures of the mind.
We can and should have values, views, philosophies, preferences and opinions, but we must now hold them with a less feverish and desperate, clutching grip, and open our minds and our eyes, as well as our hearts and our ears. Diversity, creativity, imagination, experimentation, solidarity and freedom are not threats to be overcome, but values to ge embraced – and what’s more, they are our greatest of powers, and our greatest strengths.
Vision is good. Adaptability is better. But why settle for one, when we can just as easily embrace both?
We must now overcome, and firmly reject and jettison, our 2,000 year old + idolatry of ideology: our obession with our symbols, our pet theories and our cherished, preconceived notions, and presumptions about the way things must be. We must begin to deal more directly with reality. That will require a rejection of dogmatism, and a rejection of conformity, servility, submissiveness and submission, unthinking obedience to authority, a command and control fetish and mentality, the entire passive-aggressive split, the social model based on domination and submission, conquest and empire, along with all fixed and rigid habits of legalism, authoritarianism, and group-think; and a willingness to question and reflect, a willingness to try out new ideas, to freely discuss and debate, and to experiment. It will require, in short, and as a necessity, creativity and imagination, as well as adaptability and resilience. That, in turn, requires diversity, openess, and freedom. And that, requires decentralization, the rejection and overturning of excessive concentrations of power, and a reaffirmation of freedom, democracy, diversity, and the local. We now begin to understand these key dynamics, or we are doomed to a dark age ahead.
All the greatest thinkers, from Lao Tzu to Emerson, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Thoreau, Chomsky and Popper, Bookchin, Kropotkin, Vandana Shiva and Helena Norberg-Hodge, and many, many more, have realized these central truisms of life. Over-centralization, the excessive use of force, in any manner, great inequality and excessive concentrations of wealth and power, breed tyranny, decay, fragility, instability, rigidity, blindness, myopia, decline, and finally, collapse. It is now no longer a luxury to be so lucid, prescient and well-informed. It is now a necessity for survival.
Think networks, think federations, think alliances of mutual responsibility and mutual aid, think holistically, think in systems, think organically, think both micro and macro, long term and short; and think of a global network of communities, cities, villages and towns, and maybe a few sensible nations and states along with them, that leads the world to a renewal of democracy, freedom, the Earth, and Life. That is within our power to achieve. And we can and must build it now.
Build the alliance for a global renaissance, based in local communities, ecological sanity, diversity, democracy, freedom and peace. That is what the world needs now – not an Orwellian dystopia of global technocracy, ruled an egomaniacal and messianic elite, drunk with power.
What is going on in 2020/2021? The world has developed a pandemic case of Stockholm Syndrome. The Davos elite have decided it’s time to go totalitarian, and the political class are aiding and abetting the criminal global fascist coup. The majority of people remain stupified and petrified and virtually lobotomized by daily, continuous, all pervasive fear-monger, indoctrination, psychological warfare and propaganda, while a rapidly growing minority realize this is endgame: that we either stand up now, or become slaves forever.
Beware the military industrial complex, as Eisenhower so presciently, soberly, and ominously warned us, 60 years ago, and beware the now global Deep State which it controls. And know that it has now morphed into a global military industrial technotronic “Big Data” and financial complex. Beware above all, of the Big Tech, Pharma and banking elites, and their agenda – including Google, Amazon, Netflix, Uber, Facebook, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and Apple: they are now aggressively pushing and implementing a global technocracy, and they are quite literally crypto-fascists. Boycott and divest from them all, and reject their Orwellian vision – decisively, unflinchingly, and now.
Remember this always: While the dangers are stark, and very real, the global awakening of humanity, and the emerging resistance and renaissance, are also real, and are ultimately far more powerful than any system, empire, oligarchy, or elite powers, agendas and plans. Know what side you are on. And stand up for your rights, and those of others, as we join together, in unity amidst our great and wondrous, and essential diversity, to heal our world, our communities, and ourselves, and to liberate humanity and the Earth from the dying system of plutocracy, oligarchy and greed.
The question will be asked, however, who in their right mind would support such a vision and plan of action as I have outlined here? Well, let’s see. The libertarians, anarchists, libertarian socialists, communitarians and greens, if they have any sense, should emphatically and passionately support it – and they collectively make up at least 30% of the population, if not a good deal more. Sensible conservatives will support it, because it strengthens constitutional rights and freedoms, dislodges and dethrones the oligarchy, and rebuilds strong and free, prosperous local communities. Sensible liberals should support it, if there are any such creatures left, and I know that there are more than a few. Adding the liberals and conservatives we have at least another 30% of the population. And democratic socialists should support it, as well. That means, together, at least 60% of the people, and possibly as many as 80%, should support such a plan, and ardently. That leaves only the fascists, the authoritarians of various stripes, the fans of technocracy, and the people who have made a career or an ideology out of licking their boots, along with the die-hard ideologues. Together, that sordid lot make up no more than 40% of the populace, would be a reasonable estimate, or less. So yes, the question is not whether the people would support it, but whether the people simply have the nerve to make the kinds of changes and take the kinds of action which are clearly and urgently needed. They most certainly will at some point in the near future, if not immediately. The changes that are taking place now and rapidly gaining speed, will drive them to the conclusion that all else is sheer madness, or slavery, or both.
Tainter was at least in part right, and in our case, his warning is most definitely relevant. We have created such excessive complexity for ourselves, that it has resulted in a fragility in our systems and our entire society – worse, it has resulted in fetters, chains, blindness and tyranny. As Thoreau said, “Simplify, simplify.” But that is not where the elite are driving us. They are driving us in precisely the opposite, and wrong, direction.
I have thought, we should seek to keep our lives, and the places we live, clean, green, simple and harmonious. And that applies also to our communities. And to those four guiding principles or guiding values I would add three more, which apply to both our communities and our society in general: that is, we should strive to make them vital, resilient, and just. And in turn, these three also apply to our lives and our homes, our schools, and places of work or leisure. With these seven guiding principles, our communities can thrive, and our lives and our society can thrive. If, on top of this firm foundation, we add some well-chosen and thoughtful layers of complexity, that is fine; but we should make sure, as Thoreau also warned, that our “improvements”, our clever innovations, or our safety and security measures, do not become a burden and a bondage, instead of a blessing and a liberation.
As always, life is change, and the future is in our hands. That is what is perhaps most critical for us to realize, and to know – especially now.
Get ready for a more community-centred world. It is needed, and urgently so; and it is now inevitable, and also a sheer necessity, as well as a boon, and a rebirth. Nature will force us to make that change and others, if we don’t make them voluntarily. We would be smart to make them voluntarily, and now.
J. Todd Ring,
March 30, 2021
Post-Script:
Who are some of the guiding lights in terms of what must be done? I would suggest Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Thoreau, Chomsky, Vandana Shiva, Murray Bookchin, EF Schumacher, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, Erich Fromm, Anthony J. Hall, David Suzuki, Ronald Wright, Richard Heinberg, Gar Alperowitz, David C. Korten, Joanna Macy, Elinor Ostrom, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Gerald Celente, Max Keiser, Paul Craig Roberts, Michel Chossudovsky, Whitney Webb, Gary Null, Sayer Ji, Rocco Galati, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine are among them. And I would also humbly offer my own essays and books, as a summary and a synthesis of the best.
I am, for the record, perfectly comfortable with where and how I have positioned myself. I am passionately and steadfastly in favour of freedom, democracy, constitutional rule and human rights; liberty, equality and solidarity; and of course, as a result, I am passionately and steadfastly in favour of freedom of speech; and passionately, and steadfastly, opposed to any form of tyranny, elitism, censorship, or authoritarianism. To my last breath, I will defend these values, and advance them as much as I possibly can. That stance, I can and will, happily take to my grave.
“I swear before God an eternal vigilance against form of tyranny over the mind of man.” – Thomas Jefferson (My brother, and my kin)
Sensible people on the left, the right, and in the centre, sensible liberals, conservatives, democratic socialists, anarchists, communitarians and greens, need to know, and realize, that we have common ground, and we have a common enemy – and that enemy is fascism and authoritarianism, in all its forms. We need to unite the overwhelming majority who support freedom and democracy, and enlighten the misled many who have been duped into supporting the new authoritarianism, against their own interests and their own values, their own common sense; and above all, we must challenge, defeat, and remove from power, the truly fascist business elite, and their corrupt political servants in government. If we do not do this, and very, very soon; our lives, and our world, will be dark indeed. Unite the people, recognize that the enemy is authoritarianism, and we will see a new and better day, and a new and better world will be born. Fail in that, and we will have failed in everything.
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The central issue is not wealth – the central issue is power. This is where the left repeatedly gets confused.
It is not the distribution of wealth that is central; it is the distribution of power. Until and unless you address that, you can forget about social justice concerns, or ecological concerns, or “inclusivity” or sustainability, or any of the other buzz words or pet projects you may have, no matter how important or worthwhile they may be.
We either remove the plutocracy from power, or we will be groveling and begging for crumbs, and rapidly losing ground, forever more. And if we are going to win, if democracy and freedom are to be reborn, and the oligarchy and plutocracy overthrown, then the central issue, the most important issue, is freedom of speech. Unless we can break through the elite-controlled media blockade, and begin to discuss issues more freely and more widely (by pamphlets circulated by flash-drives, or even by hand if necessary, which was what started the American and French Revolutions) we will continue to be dead in the water, and we will be tilting at windmills, while the plutocracy rolls on.
Freedom of speech is fundamental. It is also critical to any path or means of success in creating positive change in the world. Those who do not understand that, are simply not dealing with the real world.
J. Todd Ring,
February 26, 2021
See also, an important and possibly critically important essay I recently wrote:
The government pretends to care deeply and profoundly about human health, using police state measures in a time of crisis, justified by their supposed great concern for health. Yet, the federal government has repeatedly slashed health care funding for the past 40 years.
The blatant and extreme hypocrisy and deceit should be obvious to all. Canada is one of the seven richest countries on Earth. There is no excuse for letting people live in poverty, letting children and the elderly live in poverty, or refusing to fully fund health care.
Further, while chronically refusing to fully fund health care, the federal government gives away billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks to Big Oil companies, most of them foreign-owned – and this, in the midst of a growing environmental and climate emergency.
There is no other word for this than sheer corruption, or crony capitalism. If we are at all serious about human health, then we must demand that Canada, and the Canadian federal government in particular, fully fund health care.
We must demand that a free and just society requires, first of all, freedom and constitutional rights for all, with freedom to choose which health care treatments we will accept or refuse; and secondly, we must demand that health care, education, pensions and public services take priority over corporate profits, especially with regard to the planet-destroying oil and gas industry.
If we cannot do these two things, then we cannot pretend to be a free and democratic society, or a just society, or to have any serious concern about human health at all. If we cannot do these two things, then we are a morally bankrupt nation, with a deeply corrupt government, and are headed rapidly toward a dark age of tyranny, at that.
Speak up now. Write a brief letter to your Member of Parliament, or copy this one to use, and modify it as you will; and send copies to your MPP, local council and mayor, the media, and to all your friends, family and colleagues.
In the midst of both a health crisis and an environmental crisis, as well as a deep and growing, ominous crisis of democracy, what we need above all is clarity of perspective, combined with boldness of action. Currently we are lacking in both. This must change this now.
It is not just in Canada, of course, where the hypocrisy, corruption and deceit are systemic and extreme. The richest nation in history, the US, refuses to fund public health care, saying it is unaffordable; yet, both Republican and Democratic governments continue to give trillions of dollars to Wall Street, whenever Big Business asks for it. The UK, meanwhile, is currently demolishing its public health care system, while pretending to care deeply about human health.
The pattern is global: create socialism and a welfare state for the super-rich, massively fund big business, give a bottomless feeding trough for the billionaires to feed on public funds, and demand austerity for the 99%.
When do we say, “Enough!”?
J. Todd Ring, Cobourg, Ontario, Canada
Author of Enlightened Democracy, and, The People vs The Elite
For further information see: Gary Null, GreenMedInfo, Naomi Wolf, Vandana Shiva, and Canadian constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati
What is the state of China and the West? Here is a brief synopsis and overview.
This much, at least, should be perfectly clear: switching off fossil fuels – with a full speed, WWII level effort – is urgently required, and renewables are the clear answer, along with the even greater urgency of energy efficiency conservation; massive government, business and collective individual investment – all three – will be required to build the new green infrastructure; the West is continuing the disastrous policy of giving out trillions of dollars in “stimulus” packages to the corporate elite, while insisting on austerity for the 99%, and while small and medium businesses en mass, along with the poor and the middle class, simply drown – that’s called crony capitalism, or simple corruption; and while the Western oligarchy foolishly is importing China’s totalitarian model in 2020, which every sane person should resist; and while China is no model in terms of government, being authoritarian and Orwellian; China’s current, massive investment in building green renewable energy and transportation infrastructure is one thing we *should* be importing and emulating here in the West. (See my previous essay, Importing From China)
In short, we need a Green New Deal, yes; but not a Chinese-style Orwellian police state. We have imported the wrong thing.
China is a police state that is seriously tackling the environmental crisis. The West, has simply become a police state. Revolution now is not only justified, but a moral imperative and an urgent necessity.
Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. showed the way. Are we ready? We had better become so, and fast.
Writings of J. Todd Ring 
What side are you on? And are you sure?
Posted in Uncategorized with tags 1%, Dante, democracy, elite, fascism, freedom, history, human rights, liberty, oligarchy, police state, policy, political economy, political philosophy, political science, political theory, politics, politics of illusion, social commentary, social philosophy, social psychology, social theory, sociology, technocracy on October 11, 2021 by jtoddringI have always been, and always will be, on the side of the anti-fascists and anti-authoritarians. At present, in 2021, that represents about 30% of the people. That may sound like a small minority, until you realize that represents more than 500 million people in the Western world, in North America, Latin America and Europe. And we are growing in number and in strength, and rapidly so. Further, and more important, we are on the moral side, the side of justice, democracy and freedom – and the winning side, as we will see in the end.
As to history, there are obvious parallels from WWII, when we defeated the fascists the first time, 75 years ago, as we will once again.
There are also interesting parallels from further back in time: the republic of Athens vs tyranny, the Roman Republic vs the Empire; and there are parallels in the Renaissance as well.
Ghibelline or Guelph? Blacks or Whites? Dante sided with the anti-imperialist, anti-elitist, and anti-papist, Guelph Whites, and was banished from Florence for it. I would choose the same, and not look back. You don’t sacrifice your principles for the sake of easy conformity, material gain, or illusions of security, unless you want to reap the bitter harvest you have sown. Ethics are non-negotiable – as Dante’s popes found out, when they found themselves in the bowels of the Inferno.
The central problem, and the central dynamic, globally now, is one of class warfare. The richest few hundred individuals among the global banking and corporate elite, are now in control, and their long-standing war on the people, the 99.99%, and on nature and the Earth, is being pushed to its final conclusion. The mechanism of that global class war is primarily three-fold. It is economic warfare; it is a propaganda war; and it is a vicious and ruthless campaign of global psychological warfare. And of course, if you are waging an imperial war, a class war, and a war on the people, then anything that empowers the people needs to be destroyed, including religion, freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of travel, freedom of conscience, thought and belief, freedom of the press, and including liberty, constitutional rule and democracy, themselves. This is what needs to be understood now – and resisted, fought, and defeated.
Remember, the people outnumber the elite, by a million to one. Furthermore, the elite are utterly dependent upon the people, and need the people, but the people do not need the elite. They are parasitic, as well as sociopathic, ecocidal, genocidal, and literally neo-fascist – and they are in no way necessary to the continuance of human life, or human well-being, or the health and future of the planet, but are, in fact, the primary obstacles, and the enemies, of all of these. That means that, we, the people, always have the greater power, as the great Scottish philosopher, David Hume also said. The empire must go, so that the people and the Earth may live. That is the plain and simple truth of it. But to accomplish that, we must defeat the elites’ propaganda war, above all.
Six corporations now control 80% of the major media of the world. And all of them are deeply invested in the Big Pharma criminal drug cartels, which is what they are. Anyone who watches, listens to, or reads the corporate-state “news”, or who thinks they have any remaining credibility, needs their head examined.
(See Chomsky’s, Necessary Illusions, and Manufacturing Consent. And yes, they are available in audiobook and film, for the intellectually lazy, who feel that “book” is a four-letter word. Question more, scroll less.)
As to the major political parties: They’re all neoliberals now. They have all accepted a de facto global government by the international banking and corporate elite, seated at Davos, as something that is either a good thing, or an inevitable thing, which cannot be fought. They have all, therefore, surrendered the sovereignty of their nations, and our democratic governments, to foreign powers, which makes them, by legal definition, guilty of treason. Worse, all the established parties are now cheer-leading for authoritarianism. The Davos corporate elite are in love with the totalitarian model of China, and are now importing it and imposing it upon the West and upon the entire world. The “leadership” of the established political parties, therefore, have either lost their souls, or lost their spines, in the face of a putsch by Davos, while the followers are gullible and docile as usual. Leadership will not come from that quarter.
Further: What’s the point of reading or listening to the faux left, is another good question, when they too have become clueless and befuddled, and can’t spot a fascist coup when it stares them in the face? Again, leadership will not come from that quarter, either.
The leadership must come from below, where, historically, it has always come from.
J. Todd Ring,
October 11, 2021
An interesting footnote: I stayed in a family hotel in Florence, which was a mansion during the Renaissance, where Dante himself stayed. I’d say I’m in good company. If the masses want to stampede across the river Styx into Hades, that’s their choice. It’s not mine.
Sometimes exile is the best option, as it was for Dante – if, that is, you want to preserve your integrity, and carry on the just fight, from stronger ground. Whether you relocate, go off-grid, or stay put, the fight is global, and it will not likely be over soon. This is the fight for the future of humanity. And you have to ask yourself: Are you on the side of the empire, or are you on the side of democracy and freedom? You cannot be on both sides at once.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5hkiEW7NrPNzjMxktjyRg9…
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