Consciousness Revolution

 

The Consciousness Revolution

By Graham Hancock

Consciousness is one of the great mysteries of science – perhaps the greatest mystery. We all know we have it, when we think, when we dream, when we savour tastes and aromas, when we hear a great symphony, when we fall in love, and it is surely the most intimate, the most sapient, the most personal part of ourselves. Yet no one can really claim to have understood and explained it completely. There’s no doubt it’s associated with the brain in some way but the nature of that association is far from clear. In particular how do these three pounds of material stuff inside our skulls allow us to have experiences?

Professor David Chalmers of the Australian National University has dubbed this the “hard problem” of consciousness; but many scientists, particularly those (still in the majority) who are philosophically inclined to believe that all phenomena can be reduced to material interactions, deny that any problem exists. To them it seems self-evident that physical processes within the stuff of the brain produce consciousness rather in the way that a generator produces electricity – i.e. consciousness is an “epiphenomenon” of brain activity. And they see it as equally obvious that there cannot be such things as conscious survival of death or out-of-body experiences since both consciousness and experience are confined to the brain and must die when the brain dies.

Yet other scientists with equally impressive credentials are not so sure and are increasingly willing to consider a very different analogy – namely that the relationship of consciousness to the brain may be less like the relationship of the generator to the electricity it produces and more like the relationship of the TV signal to the TV set. In that case when the TV set is destroyed – dead – the signal still continues. Nothing in the present state of knowledge of neuroscience rules this revolutionary possibility out. True, if you damage certain areas of the brain certain areas of

consciousness are compromised, but this does not prove that those areas of the brain generate the relevant areas of consciousness. If you were to damage certain areas of your TV set the picture would deteriorate or vanish but the TV signal would remain intact.

We are, in other words, confronted by at least as much mystery as fact around the subject of consciousness and this being the case we should remember that what seems obvious and self-evident to one generation may not seem at all obvious or self-evident to the next. For hundreds of years it was obvious and self-evident to the greatest human minds that the sun moved around the earth – one need only look to the sky, they said, to see the truth of this proposition. Indeed those who maintained the revolutionary view that the earth moved around the sun faced the Inquisition and death by burning at the stake. Yet as it turned out the revolutionaries were right and orthodoxy was terribly, ridiculously wrong.

The same may well prove to be true with the mystery of consciousness. Yes, it does seem obvious and self-evident that the brain produces it (the generator analogy), but this is a deduction from incomplete data and categorically NOT yet an established and irrefutable fact. New discoveries may force materialist science to rescind this theory in favour of something more like the TV analogy in which the brain comes to be understood as a transceiver rather than as a generator of consciousness and in which consciousness is recognized as fundamentally “non-local” in nature – perhaps even as one of the basic driving forces of the universe. At the very least we should withhold judgment on this “hard problem” until more evidence is in and view with suspicion those who hold dogmatic and ideological views about the nature of consciousness.

It’s at this point that the whole seemingly academic issue becomes intensely political and current because modern technological society idealises and is monopolistically focused on only one state of consciousness – the alert, problem-solving state of consciousness that makes us efficient producers and consumers of material goods and services. At the same time our society seeks to police and control a wide range of other “altered” states of consciousness on the basis of the unproven proposition that consciousness is generated by the brain.

I refer here to the so-called “war on drugs” which is really better understood as a war on consciousness and which maintains, supposedly in the interests of society, that we as adults do not have the right or maturity to make sovereign decisions about our own consciousness and about the states of consciousness we wish to explore and embrace. This extraordinary imposition on adult cognitive liberty is justified by the idea that our brain activity, disturbed by drugs, will adversely impact our behaviour towards others. Yet anyone who pauses to think seriously for even a moment must realize that we already have adequate laws that govern adverse behaviour towards others and that the real purpose of the “war on drugs” must therefore be to bear down on consciousness itself.

Confirmation that this is so came from the last British Labour government. It declared that its drug policy would be based on scientific evidence yet in 2009 it sacked Professor David Nutt, Chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, for stating the simple statistical fact that cannabis is less dangerous (in terms of measured “harms”) than tobacco and alcohol and that ecstasy is less dangerous than horse-riding. Clearly what was at play here were ideological issues of great importance to the powers that be. And this is an ideology that sticks stubbornly in place regardless of changes in the complexion of the government of the day. The present Conservative-Liberal coalition remains just as adamant in its enforcement of the so-called war on drugs as its Labour

predecessor, and continues in the name of this “war” to pour public money – our money – into large, armed, drug-enforcement bureaucracies which are entitled to break down our doors at dead of night, invade our homes, ruin our reputations and put us behind bars.

All of this, we have been persuaded, is in our own interests. Yet if we as adults are not free to make sovereign decisions – right or wrong – about our own consciousness, that most intimate, that most sapient, that most personal part of ourselves, then in what useful sense can we be said to be free at all? And how are we to begin to take real and meaningful responsibility for all the other aspects of our lives when our governments seek to disenfranchise us from this most fundamental of all human rights and responsibilities?

In this connection it is interesting to note that our society has no objection to altering consciousness per se. On the contrary many consciousness-altering drugs, such as Prozac, Seroxat, Ritalin and alcohol, are either massively over-prescribed or freely available today, and make huge fortunes for their manufacturers, but remain entirely legal despite causing obvious harms. Could this be because such legal drugs do not alter consciousness in ways that threaten the monopolistic dominance of the alert problem-solving state of consciousness, while a good number of illegal drugs, such as cannabis, LSD, DMT and psilocybin, do?

There is a revolution in the making here, and what is at stake transcends the case for cognitive liberty as an essential and inalienable adult human right. If it turns out that the brain is not a generator but a transceiver of consciousness then we must consider some little-known scientific research that points to a seemingly outlandish possibility, namely that a particular category of illegal drugs, the hallucinogens such as LSD, DMT and psilocybin, may alter the receiver wavelength of the brain and allow us to gain contact with intelligent non-material entities, “light beings”, “spirits”, “machine elves” (as Terence McKenna called them) – perhaps even the inhabitants of other dimensions. This possibility is regarded as plain fact by shamans in hunter-gatherer societies who for thousands of years have made use of visionary plants and fungi to enter and interact with what they construe as the “spirit world”. Intriguingly it was also specifically envisaged by Dr Rick Strassman, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico, following his ground-breaking research with human volunteers and DMT carried out in the 1990’s – a project that produced findings with shattering implications for our understanding of the nature of reality. For further information on Strassman’s revolutionary work see his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule.

wakingtimes.com

Flame of Revolt

Feeding the Flame of Revolt
By Chris Hedges

New York—I was in federal court here Friday for the sentencing of Jeremy Hammond to 10 years in prison for hacking into the computers of a private security firm that works on behalf of the government, including the Department of Homeland Security, and corporations such as Dow Chemical. In 2011 Hammond, now 28, released to the website WikiLeaks and Rolling Stone and other publications some 3 million emails from the Texas-based company Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor.
The sentence was one of the longest in U.S. history for hacking and the maximum the judge could impose under a plea agreement in the case. It was wildly disproportionate to the crime—an act of nonviolent civil disobedience that championed the public good by exposing abuses of power by the government and a security firm. But the excessive sentence was the point. The corporate state, rapidly losing credibility and legitimacy, is lashing out like a wounded animal. It is frightened. It feels the heat from a rising flame of revolt. It is especially afraid of those such as Hammond who have the technical skills to break down electronic walls and expose the corrupt workings of power.
 “People have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors,” Hammond told me when we met in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan about a week and a half before his sentencing.
I did not hope for justice from the court. Judge Loretta A. Preska is a member of the right-wing Federalist Society. And the hack into Stratfor gave the email address and disclosed the password of an account used for business by Preska’s husband, Thomas Kavaler, a partner at the law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel. Some emails of the firm’s corporate clients, including Merrill Lynch, also were exposed. The National Lawyers Guild, because the judge’s husband was a victim of the hack, filed a recusal motion that Preska, as chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, was able to deny. Her refusal to recuse herself allowed her to oversee a trial in which she had a huge conflict of interest.
The judge, who herself once was employed at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, fulminated from the bench about Hammond’s “total lack of respect for the law.” She read a laundry list of his arrests for acts of civil disobedience. She damned what she called his “unrepentant recidivism.” She said: “These are not the actions of Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela … or even Daniel Ellsberg; there’s nothing high-minded or public-spirited about causing mayhem”—an odd analogy given that Mandela founded the armed wing of the African National Congress, was considered by South Africa’s apartheid government and the United States government to be a terrorist and was vilified, along with King and Ellsberg, by the U.S. government. She said there was a “desperate need to promote respect for the law” and a “need for adequate public deterrence.” She read from transcripts of Hammond’s conversations in Anonymous chat rooms in which he described the goal of hacking into Stratfor as “destroying the target, hoping for bankruptcy, collapse” and called for “maximum mayhem.” She admonished him for releasing the unlisted phone number of a retired Arizona police official who allegedly received threatening phone calls afterward.
The judge imposed equally harsh measures that will take effect after Hammond’s release from prison. She ordered that he be placed under three years of supervised control, be forbidden to use encryption or aliases online and submit to random searches of his computer equipment, person and home by police and any internal security agency without the necessity of a warrant. The judge said he was legally banned from having any contact with “electronic civil disobedience websites or organizations.” By the time she had finished she had shredded all pretense of the rule of law.
The severe sentence—Hammond will serve more time than the combined sentences of four men who were convicted in Britain for hacking related to the U.S. case—was monumentally stupid for a judge seeking to protect the interest of the ruling class. The judicial lynching of Hammond required her to demonstrate a callous disregard for transparency and our right to privacy. It required her to ignore the disturbing information Hammond released showing that the government and Stratfor attempted to link nonviolent dissident groups, including some within Occupy, to terrorist organizations so peaceful dissidents could be prosecuted as terrorists. It required her to accept the frightening fact that intelligence agencies now work on behalf of corporations as well as the state. She also had to sidestep the fact that Hammond made no financial gain from the leak.
The sentencing converges with the state’s persecution of Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Barrett Brown, along with Glenn Greenwald, Jacob Appelbaum, Laura Poitras and Sarah

Harrison, four investigative journalists who are now in self-imposed exile from the United States. And as the numbers of our political prisoners and exiled dissidents mount, there is the unmistakable stench of tyranny.
This draconian sentence, like the draconian sentences of other whistle-blowers, will fan revolt. History bears this out. It will solidify the growing understanding that we must resort, if we want to effect real change, to unconventional tactics to thwart the mounting abuses by the corporate state. There is no hope, this sentencing shows, for redress from the judicial system, elected officials or the executive branch. Why should we respect a court system, or a governmental system, that shows no respect to us? Why should we abide by laws that serve only to protect criminals such as Wall Street thieves while leaving the rest of us exposed to abuse? Why should we continue to have faith in structures of power that deny us our most basic rights and civil liberties? Why should we be impoverished so the profits of big banks, corporations and hedge funds can swell?
No one will save us but ourselves. That was the real message sent out by the sentencing of Jeremy Hammond. And just as Hammond was inspired to act by the arrest of Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning, others will be inspired to act by Hammond and the actions taken against him. And we can thank Judge Preska for that.
Hammond is rooted in the Black Bloc. As he was escorted out of the courtroom on the ninth floor of the federal courthouse at 500 Pearl St. on Friday he shouted to roughly 100 people—including a class of prim West Point cadets in their blue uniforms—gathered there: “Long live Anonymous!  Hurrah for anarchy!”  In a statement he read in court he thanked “Free Anons, the Anonymous Solidarity Network [and] Anarchist Black Cross” for their roles in the fight against oppression. Hammond has abandoned faith not only in traditional institutions, such as the courts, but nonviolent mass protest and civil disobedience, a point on which he and I diverge. But his analysis of corporate tyranny is correct. And the longer the state ruthlessly persecutes dissidents, the more the state ensures that those who oppose it will resort to radical responses including violence. “Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable,” John F. Kennedy said. And the corporate state is not only making peaceful change impossible but condemning it as terrorism.
In late October I spent an afternoon with Hammond in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he had been held for 20 months. He said during our conversation, parts of which his lawyer requested be published only after his sentencing, that he believed that the sole way the people will now have any power is to rise up physically and seize it. My column last week was about that interview, and now I am including previously withheld parts of the conversation.
Hammond defines himself as “an anarchist communist.” He seeks to destroy capitalism and the centralized power of the corporate state. His revolutionary vision is “leaderless collectives based on free association, consensus, mutual aid, self-sufficiency and harmony with the environment.” He embraces the classic tools of revolt, including mass protests, general strikes and boycotts. And he sees hacking and leaking as part of this resistance, tools not only to reveal the truths about these systems of corporate power but to “disrupt/destroy these systems entirely.”
He participated in the Occupy movement in Chicago but found the politics of Occupy too vague and amorphous, a point on which I concur. He said Occupy lacked revolutionary vigor. He told me he did not support what he called the “dogmatic nonviolence doctrine” of many in the Occupy movement, calling it “needlessly limited and divisive.” He rejects the idea of acts of civil disobedience that protesters know will lead to their arrest. “The point,” he said, “is to carry out acts of resistance and not get caught.” He condemns “peace patrols,” units formed within the Occupy movement that sought to prohibit acts of vandalism and violence by other protesters—most often members of the Black Bloc—as “a secondary police force.” And he spurns the calls by many in Occupy not to antagonize the police, calling the police “the boot boys of the 1 percent, paid to protect the rich and powerful.” He said such a tactic of non-confrontation with the police ignored the long history of repression the police have carried out against popular movements, as well as the “profiling and imprisonment of our comrades.”
 “Because we were unprepared, or perhaps unwilling, to defend our occupations, police and mayors launched coordinated attacks, driving us out of our own parks,” he said of the state’s closure of the Occupy encampments.
 “I fully support and have participated in Black Bloc and other forms of militant direct action,” he said. “I do not believe that the ruling powers listen to the people’s peaceful protests. Black Bloc is an effective, fluid and dynamic form of protest. It causes disruption outside of predictable/controllable mass demonstrations through ‘unarrests,’ holding streets, barricades and property destruction. Smashing corporate windows is not violence, especially when compared to the everyday economic violence of sweatshops and ‘free trade.’ Black Bloc seeks to hit them where it hurts, through economic damage. But more than smashing windows they seek to break the spell of ‘law and order’ and the artificial limitations we impose on ourselves.”
I disagree with Hammond over tactics, but in the end this disagreement is moot. It will be the ruling elites who finally determine our

response. If the corporate elites employ the full force of the security and surveillance state against us, if corporate totalitarian rule is one of naked, escalating and brutal physical

repression, then the violence of the state will spawn a counter-violence. Judge Preska’s decision to judicially lynch Hammond has only added to the fury she and the state are trying to stamp out. An astute ruling class, one aware of the rage rippling across the American landscape, would have released Hammond on Friday and begun to address the crimes he exposed. But our ruling class, while adept at theft, looting, propaganda and repression, is blind to the growing discontent caused by the power imbalance and economic inequality that plague ordinary Americans at a time when half of the country lives in poverty or “near poverty.”
 “The acts of civil disobedience and direct action that I am being sentenced for today are in line with the principles of community and equality that have guided my life,” Hammond told the courtroom. “I hacked into dozens of high-profile corporations and government institutions, understanding very clearly that what I was doing was against the law, and that my actions could land me back in federal prison. But I felt that I had an obligation to use my skills to expose and confront injustice—and to bring the truth to light.”
 “Could I have achieved the same goals through legal means?” he said. “I have tried everything from voting petitions to peaceful protest and have found that those in power do not want the truth to be exposed. When we speak truth to power we are ignored at best and brutally suppressed at worst. We are confronting a power structure that does not respect its own system of checks and balances, never mind the rights of its own citizens or the international community.”
“My first memories of American politics was when Bush stole the election in 2000,” he told me at a metal table as we met at the prison in a small room reserved for attorney visits, “and then how Bush used the wave of nationalism after 9/11 to launch unprovoked pre-emptive wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. In high school I was involved in publishing ‘underground’ newsletters criticizing the Patriot Act, the wars, and other Bush-era policies. I attended many anti-war protests in the city [Chicago] and was introduced to other local struggles and the larger anti-corporate globalization movement. I began identifying as an anarchist, started to travel around the country to various mobilizations and conferences, and began getting arrested for various acts.”
He said that his experience of street protest, especially against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, was seminal, for he saw that the state had little interest in heeding the voices of protesters and others in the public. “Instead, we were labeled as traitors, beaten and arrested.”
 “I targeted law enforcement systems because of the racism and inequality with which the criminal law is enforced,” he admitted in court. “I targeted the manufacturers and distributors of military and police equipment who profit from weaponry used to advance U.S. political and economic interests abroad and to repress people at home. I targeted information security firms because they work in secret to protect government and corporate interests at the expense of individual rights, undermining and discrediting activists, journalists and other truth seekers, and spreading disinformation.”
An FBI informant, Hector Xavier Monsegur, posing as an Anonymous member and using the online name “Sabu,” prodded Hammond to break into Stratfor and informed him of technical  vulnerabilities in websites of the company.
“Why the FBI would introduce us to the hacker who found the initial vulnerability and allow this hack to continue remains a mystery,” Hammond said as he faced the judge.
 “As a result of the Stratfor hack, some of the dangers of the unregulated private intelligence industry are now known,” he said. “It has been revealed through WikiLeaks and other journalists around the world that Stratfor maintained a worldwide network of informants that they used to engage in intrusive and possibly illegal surveillance activities on behalf of large multinational corporations.”
At Sabu’s urging, Hammond broke into other websites, too. Hammond, at Sabu’s request, provided information to hackers enabling them to break into and deface official foreign government websites, including some of Turkey, Iran and Brazil. The names of these three countries are technically under a protective court order but have been reported widely in the press.
 “I broke into numerous sites and handed over passwords and backdoors that enabled Sabu—and by extension his FBI handlers—to control these targets,” Hammond said.
 “I don’t know how other information I provided to him may have been used, but I think the government’s collection and use of this data needs to be investigated,” he went on. “The government celebrates my conviction and imprisonment, hoping that it will close the door on the full story. I took responsibility for my actions, by pleading guilty, but when will the government be made to answer for its crimes?”
 “The hypocrisy of ‘law and order’ and the injustices caused by capitalism cannot be cured by institutional reform but through civil disobedience and direct action,” Hammond told the court. “Yes, I broke the law, but I believe that sometimes laws must be broken in order to make room for change.”
truthdig.com

Russell Brand

Russell Brand: An idle revolutionary?

In the grand scheme of things I know there are more important issues to write about than Russell Brand, but to use some Internet terminology, the man is "clickbait" so I'll certainly attract more traffic to my site by presenting discussion of some of these important issues in the context of Russell Brand's recent revolutionary musings. I feel justified in doing this because if Russell is now dabbling in my special field of interest (politics), then I feel entitled to dabble in Russel's special field of interest (Russell Brand).
I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of Russell's celebrity dandy act, although it is impossible to claim that he hasn't managed to capture the zeitgeist with his revolutionary musings. If he's managed to attract more than 3 million Youtube views of his interview with Jeremy Paxman and even had my Dad talking about him in a non-critical manner for a moment as a consequence of what he said to Paxman, he really has struck a chord with a large and unlikely cross-section of society. The sickening behavior of the political establishment (expenses scamming, inflation busting pay raises for MPs, countless broken manifesto pledges, corporate greed, lobbying, vested interests and dodgy political donations, all against a backdrop of harsh self-defeating austerity and wage repression for the masses) and our archaic and unrepresentative voting system have created a huge mass of angry and marginalised people.
The problem with Russel's naive political musings is that he presents nothing as a viable alternative to the cesspool of corruption and inequality that the United Kingdom is becoming. The two main threads to his stance (as outlined in his interview with Jeremy Paxman) were voter apathy and a loosely defined call for some kind of revolution.
Even if there is an element of sincerity behind his words, it seems to me that by calling for some kind of undefined revolution and telling people not to vote, Russell is making a move to establish himself a leading player in the largely untapped and potentially lucrative "pissed off and politically marginalised" market.
The ludicrous open letter riposte to his "revolutionary" comments from the ever irritating Robert Webb provoked Russell into further defining his call for revolution in order to defend himself against Webb's idle conjecture that all revolutions result in totalitarianism ("we know that it ends in death camps, gulags, repression and murder"). Here's Brand's retort:
    "Why didn't he just write me a normal letter? He don't know where I live, I suppose. And no, no death camps. Just for the record, in case anyone else from Peep Show is worried, I'm definitely against death camps ... Definitely no killing. I'm against that; I'm a vegetarian, I think we're all equal. I'm not saying smash people's stuff up, and definitely no killing."
If this is all he is capable of offering in defence of his calls for revolution, a harsher critic than myself would probably say that he should keep his lazy political cogitations to himself and leave politics to the grown-ups. I'm not as inclined to be so dismissive for one simple reason, his childlike dabbling in

important issues like apathy and revolution have resulted in countless thousands of people thinking and talking about these important subjects.
The worst thing about the quote I've selected is the absurd non sequiter that being a vegetarian somehow makes him a kind hearted egalitarian that opposes killing, which is about as far from a debate winning argument as it is possible to make. A vastly superior strategy would have been to point out some of the countless revolutions that led to positive social outcomes (the labour rights movement, universal suffrage, the US civil rights campaign, the anti-apartheid movement, gay rights, countless successful boycotts ...) in order to undermine Webb's lazy conjecture that any kind of revolution would necessarily end in some kind of brutal totalitarian dystopia.
The fact that Russell couldn't tear Robert Webb's smug liberal defence of our rotten political system to pieces illustrates that despite his impressive verbosity, and his ability to articulate the anger that millions of us are feeling, Russell isn't actually a very deep thinker. In my view it is absolutely crucial to carefully define what you are calling for before you go chucking important words like "revolution" about, because to use such words in an idle manner is to belittle them, and to abstract them from their true meaning. Another crucial thing is to remember that if someone comes at you with a glib liberal critique of your appeal for social justice, you need to ruthlessly tear their fatuous argument to shreds, rather than lazily invoking the fact that you're a vegetarian, as if that makes you some kind of inherently good person.
Aside from his lackadaisical attempts to actually define what it is that he wants (other than a revolution in which nobody is killed, people are treated as equals and nobody's stuff is smashed up) another problem with Russell's political ruminations is his appeal to apathy.
In my view there is already far too much apathy, so calling for even more will only make the situation worse. If non-votes were actually counted in the last two general elections then "nobody" would have won back to back landslide victories. In 2010 David Cameron became Prime Minister despite fewer than one in four eligible voters (23.5%) casting their ballots for Tory candidates, whilst 35% of people refused to vote at all. In the grand scheme of things David Cameron and the Tory party (and Tony Blair and his Iraq invasion supporting Neo-Labour party before them) were comprehensively trounced by political apathy.
It is quite clear from these figures that the disenfranchised would have more than enough clout to change the political landscape under a remotely fair voting system should they vote en masse, but under the archaic and grotesquely unrepresentative shambles we're lumbered with, a turnout of 5 million for one of the alternative parties probably wouldn't even return a single MP! Brand isn't calling for a fairer and more representative political system, he's calling for even greater numbers of people to refuse to vote in the futile hope that the establishment elite will see this lack of democratic mandate as some kind of impediment to their selfish objectives.
If the facts that 35% of people couldn't be bothered to vote at the last election, and that the Tories gained nothing like enough votes to form a majority government weren't enough to stop them carving up the NHS for their corporate mates, vandalising the justice system, flogging off Royal Mail for a fraction of its real value, imposing ideological lunacy on the education system, selling off what remains of the national silver and coddling corporations and the super-rich minority with generous tax cuts, whilst simultaneously imposing harsh austerity and relentless wage repression on the majority, then why on earth would an increased apathy rate of 45% or even 55% stop them?
The massive flaw in the political apathy stance is that if you refuse to vote out of disgust at the system, you're giving more political power to those that actually buy into it. You're actually empowering those that are too ill-informed to understand that all three of the establishment Westminster parties are wedded to the hopelessly discredited

right-wing pseudo-economic ideology of neoliberalism, and even worse, you're giving more power to those that understand exactly how bad the neoliberal orthodoxy is for the well being of the majority and for the health of the economy, but support it because it serves their own selfish self-interest. By refusing to play the game, you allow those that do play it to monopolise and subvert it in order to serve their own selfish instincts.
In 2014 we will have the European elections, which are conducted on a proportional basis, meaning that there is no such thing as a wasted vote. Given that just 34% of the electorate bothered to vote in the last European election in 2009, even a relatively small turnout for minor parties such as the Green Party or Left Unity would return several MEPs that would be actively opposed to the neoliberal orthodoxy. Marginally over 2% of the eligible vote was enough to return 2 candidates each for the Green Party and the fascist BNP in 2009, whilst the Liberal Democrats collected 11 seats with just 4.7% of the eligible vote. If just one in ten people voted for an alternative party next year, then they could conceivably fight Labour and the Tories for second place behind UKIP (a party that dresses itself up as an alternative to the establishment status quo, but which embraces the rotten neoliberal orthodoxy even more passionately than the three establishment parties do).
To not vote in a General Election when you live in an absolutely safe constituency, where the candidate for one particular party is guaranteed victory, is reasonably understandable, but to refuse to vote in an election where you actually have the chance to make your vote count is hopelessly apathetic. When you have a chance to make a difference, no matter how slight, you've got to take it, otherwise your criticisms of the system amount to little more than the petulant foot-stamping of a frustrated child.
My advice for those that are thoroughly pissed off with the self-serving political orthodoxy is that apathy is definitely not the solution. You've either got to get involved with one of the many alternative political parties and movements (Greens, Left Unity, UK Uncut, The National Health Action Party, the Socialist Party, the People's Assembly, Positive Money, The Pirate Party, 38 Degrees ...) or, if you really must attempt the seemingly futile, you could join the Labour party in order to try to influence the party leadership away from their adherence to right-wing neoliberal orthodoxy and back towards the left.
To do nothing at all is to let the bastards win without a fight, and to embrace your own subservience to a system that you despise. Even if you believe the system is hopelessly rigged against you, you've got to try to make a positive difference, if not for the greater good, then do it for your own state of mental wellbeing.
If society is going to change for the better than good people need to fight for that change because the ruthlessly self-serving political establishment won't give us anything unless we force their hand, or remove them from the equation entirely. Even if you believe that the political establishment is so powerful and entrenched that the chances of positive change are vanishingly small, you should still try to make a difference because it's just not healthy for people to meekly accept that they are subservient to a system that they are powerless to change. Is it not better to fight in vain for what we believe, than to meekly admit to ourselves that we are nothing more than inert collateral in a financial game that is being played for the benefit of a despised establishment minority?
I hope that, in some small way, the fact that I have come from nowhere to establish myself as one of the most visited political blogs in the country, is a demonstration that it is entirely possible for committed individuals to make a bit of a difference. Yes, in the grand scheme of things mine is only a small difference. However the fact that hundreds of thousands of people a week see my political views via the AAV Facebook page, tens of thousands a week read my blog posts and many hundreds of people have written to me to express their support for what I'm doing and to thank me for helping them to see through the mainstream media bullshit, shows me that I am capable of making a positive difference in people's lives, and that I am playing some small role in the

information war that is currently being utterly dominated by the misinformation campaigns bankrolled by adherents of the neoliberal orthodoxy.
As a darling of the media, Russell Brand has a much larger platform than I could ever dream of, and although his heart seems to be in the right place, I believe he's wasting the huge opportunity that he has to make a significant difference.
A powerful illustration of how  enormous Russell Brand's media power has become is the way in which the massive global November 5th 2013 (Guy Fawkes Night) protest was barely covered in the mainstream media, other than to note that Russell Brand was in attendance. To those of us that are familiar with media blackouts on coverage of large demonstrations, the fact that such a demonstration was discussed at all in the mainstream corporate press was a pleasant surprise, despite the fact that it was presented in the context of Russell Brand's attendance, rather than as a serious analysis of what the protest was actually about.
If Russell took the time to do some research and carefully define what it is that he actually wants to achieve, he has enough media power to significantly change things. Unlike Robert Webb I wouldn't be presumptuous enough to tell him which "fucking books" he should go and read, but there are a wealth of alternatives to neoliberal crony capitalism out there and if Brand actually set his mind to carefully defining some kind of viable alternative, I'm absolutely certain the public would vote for him in droves (especially the disenfranchised younger generations). I mean if Boris Johnson can get himself elected as Tory mayor of London on the strength of his "harmless buffoon" act, then it hardly seems like a stretch to imagine that, given some actual political ideas, Brand could re-invent himself as a serious political contender should he actually want to.
For those that think it sounds like an absurd proposition that an actor-comedian like Russell could make it in politics, I'd suggest that you take a look at the MoViemento Cinque Stella (Five Star Movement) in Italy, which was founded in 2009 by the actor-comedian Beppe Grillo and has already become the second most popular party in Italian politics, with 25.5% of the vote in the 2013 General Election. If you're not convinced by that, then perhaps you should consider the fact that throughout most of the 1980s the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth was a retired actor called Ronald Reagan.
I suppose it will become clear over the next few years whether Russell Brand has undergone some kind of profound political awakening that inspires him to put his mind to effecting real political change, or whether his political musings are nothing more than idle post-adolescent chatter, soon to be forgotten when he finds another more conventional (and more lucrative) bandwagon to board. I hope it is the former, because his undeniable magnetism and eloquence would be powerful assets in the fight for social justice should he chose to actively support one of the many political alternatives out there, or even to develop his own ideas and form his own political movement.
anotherangryvoice.blogspot

Our Invisible Revolution

Our Invisible Revolution

By Chris Hedges

“Did you ever ask yourself how it happens that government and capitalism continue to exist in spite of all the evil and trouble they are causing in the world?” the anarchist Alexander Berkman wrote in his essay “The Idea Is the Thing.” “If you did, then your answer must have been that it is because the people support those institutions, and that they support them because they believe in them.”

Berkman was right. As long as most citizens believe in the ideas that justify global capitalism, the private and state institutions that serve our corporate masters are unassailable. When these ideas are shattered, the institutions that buttress the ruling class deflate and collapse. The battle of ideas is percolating below the surface. It is a battle the corporate state is steadily losing. An increasing number of Americans are getting it. They know that we have been stripped of political power. They recognize that we have been shorn of our most basic and cherished civil liberties, and live under the gaze of the most intrusive security and surveillance apparatus in human history. Half the country lives in poverty. Many of the rest of us, if the corporate state is not overthrown, will join them. These truths are no longer hidden.

It appears that political ferment is dormant in the United States. This is incorrect. The ideas that sustain the corporate state are swiftly losing their efficacy across the political spectrum. The ideas that are rising to take their place, however, are inchoate. The right has retreated into Christian fascism and a celebration of the gun culture. The left, knocked off balance by decades of fierce state repression in the name of anti-communism, is struggling to rebuild and define itself. Popular revulsion for the ruling elite, however, is nearly universal. It is a question of which ideas will capture the public’s imagination.

Revolution usually erupts over events that would, in normal circumstances, be

considered meaningless or minor acts of injustice by the state. But once the tinder of revolt has piled up, as it has in the United States, an insignificant spark easily ignites popular rebellion. No person or movement can ignite this tinder. No one knows where or when the eruption will take place. No one knows the form it will take. But it is certain now that a popular revolt is coming. The refusal by the corporate state to address even the minimal grievances of the citizenry, along with the abject failure to remedy the mounting state repression, the chronic unemployment and underemployment, the massive debt peonage that is crippling more than half of Americans, and the loss of hope and widespread despair, means that blowback is inevitable.

 “Because revolution is evolution at its boiling point you cannot ‘make’ a real revolution any more than you can hasten the boiling of a tea kettle,” Berkman wrote. “It is the fire underneath that makes it boil: how quickly it will come to the boiling point will depend on how strong the fire is.”

Revolutions, when they erupt, appear to the elites and the establishment to be sudden and unexpected. This is because the real work of revolutionary ferment and consciousness is unseen by the mainstream society, noticed only after it has largely been completed. Throughout history, those who have sought radical change have always had to first discredit the ideas used to prop up ruling elites and construct alternative ideas for society, ideas often embodied in a utopian revolutionary myth. The articulation of a viable socialism as an alternative to corporate tyranny—as attempted by the book “Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA” and the website Popular Resistance—is, for me, paramount. Once ideas shift for a large portion of a population, once the vision of a new society grips the popular imagination, the old regime is finished.

An uprising that is devoid of ideas and vision is never a threat to ruling elites. Social upheaval without clear definition and direction, without ideas behind it, descends into nihilism, random violence and chaos. It consumes itself. This, at its core, is why I disagree with some elements of the Black Bloc anarchists. I believe in strategy. And so did many anarchists, including Berkman, Emma Goldman, Pyotr Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin.

By the time ruling elites are openly defied, there has already been a nearly total loss of faith in the ideas—in our case free market capitalism and globalization—that sustain the structures of the ruling elites. And once enough people get it, a process that can take years, “the slow, quiet, and peaceful social evolution becomes quick, militant, and violent,” as Berkman wrote. “Evolution becomes revolution.”

This is where we are headed. I do not say this because I am a supporter of revolution. I am not. I prefer the piecemeal and incremental reforms of a functioning democracy. I prefer a system in which our social institutions permit the citizenry to nonviolently dismiss those in authority. I prefer a system in which institutions are independent and not captive to corporate power. But we do not live in such a system. Revolt is the only option left. Ruling elites, once the ideas that justify their existence are dead, resort to force. It is their final clutch at power. If a nonviolent popular movement is able to ideologically disarm the bureaucrats, civil servants and police—to get them, in essence, to defect—nonviolent revolution is possible. But if the state can organize effective and prolonged violence against dissent, it spawns reactive revolutionary violence, or what the state calls terrorism. Violent revolutions usually give rise to revolutionaries as ruthless as their adversaries. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster,” Friedrich Nietzsche wrote. “And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

Violent revolutions are always tragic. I, and many other activists, seek to keep our uprising nonviolent. We seek to spare the country the savagery of domestic violence by both the state and its opponents. There is no guarantee that we will succeed, especially with the corporate state controlling a vast internal security apparatus and militarized police forces. But we must try.

Corporations, freed from all laws, government regulations and internal constraints, are stealing as much as they can, as fast as they can, on the way down. The managers of corporations no longer care about the effects of their pillage. Many expect the systems they are looting to fall apart. They are blinded by personal greed and hubris. They believe their obscene wealth can buy them security and protection. They should have spent a little less time studying management in business school and a little more time studying human nature and human history. They are digging their own graves.

Our shift to corporate totalitarianism, like the shift to all forms of totalitarianism, is incremental. Totalitarian systems ebb and flow, sometimes taking one step back before taking two steps forward, as they erode democratic liberalism. This process is now complete. The “consent of the governed” is a cruel joke. Barack Obama cannot defy corporate power any more than George W. Bush or Bill Clinton could. Unlike his two immediate predecessors, Bush, who is intellectually and probably emotionally impaired, did not understand the totalitarian process abetted by the presidency. Because Clinton and Obama, and their Democratic Party, understand the destructive roles they played and are playing, they must be seen as far more cynical and far more complicit in the ruination of the country. Democratic politicians speak in the familiar “I-feel-your-pain” language of the liberal class while allowing corporations to strip us of personal wealth and power. They are effective masks for corporate power.

The corporate state seeks to maintain the fiction of our personal agency in the political and economic process. As long as we believe we are participants, a lie sustained through massive propaganda campaigns, endless and absurd election cycles and the pageantry of empty political theater, our corporate oligarchs rest easy in their private jets, boardrooms, penthouses and mansions. As the bankruptcy of corporate capitalism and globalization is exposed, the ruling elite are increasingly nervous. They know that if the ideas that justify their power die, they are finished. This is why voices of dissent—as well as spontaneous uprisings such as the Occupy movement—are ruthlessly crushed by the corporate state.

 “... [M]any ideas, once held to be true, have come to be regarded as wrong and evil,” Berkman wrote in his essay. “Thus the ideas of the divine right of kings, of slavery and serfdom. There was a time when the whole world believed those institutions to be right, just, and unchangeable. In the measure that those superstitions and false beliefs were fought by advanced thinkers, they became discredited and lost their hold upon the people, and finally the institutions that incorporated those ideas were abolished. Highbrows will tell you that they had ‘outlived’ their ‘usefulness’ and therefore they ‘died.’ But how did they ‘outlive’ their ‘usefulness’? To whom were they useful, and how did they ‘die’? We know already that they were useful only to the master class, and they were done away with by popular uprisings and revolutions.”

truthdig.com

Garden Rebels

 10 Ways to Sow Revolution in Your Back Yard

Daisy Luther

Sometimes I think that the next Revolutionary War will take place in a vegetable garden.
Instead of bullets, there will be seeds. Instead of chemical warfare, there will be rainwater, carefully collected from the gutters of the house. Instead of soldiers in body armor and helmets, there will be back yard rebels, with bare feet, cut-off jean shorts, and wide-brimmed hats. Instead of death, there will be life, sustained by a harvest of home-grown produce. Children will be witness to these battles, but instead of being traumatized, they will be happy, grimy, and healthy, as they learn about the miracles that take place in a little plot of land or pot of dirt.
Every day, the United Nations and the Powers That Be take steps towards food totalitarianism. They do so flying a standard of “sustainability” but what they are actually trying to sustain is NOT our natural resources, but their control.
This morning I came across one of the most inspiring, beautifully written articles that I’ve had the pleasure of reading in a long time. Julian Rose, a farmer, actor, activist, and writer, wrote an article called Civil Disobedience or Death by Design and it is a “must read” for anyone who believes in the importance of natural food sources:
    From now on, unless we cut free of obeisance to the centralised, totalitarian regimes whose takeover of our planet is almost complete, we will have only ourselves to blame. For we are complicit in allowing ourselves to become slaves of the Corporate State and its cyborg enforcement army. That is, if we continue to remain hypnotized by their antics instead of taking our destinies into our own hands and blocking or refusing to comply with their death warrants. This ‘refusal’ is possible. But it will only have the desired effect when, and if, it is contemporaneous with the birthing of the Divine warrior who sleeps in us all. The warrior who sleeps-on, like the besotted Rip Van Winkle in the Catskill mountains.
Does it sound dramatic to state that if things continue on their current path of “sustainability” that we are all going to die? If you think I’m overstating this, read on. The case is clear that we are going to soon be “sustained” right into starvation via Agenda 21.
    The European Union is in the process of criminalizing all seeds that are not “registered”. This means that the centuries-old practice of saving seeds from one year to the next may soon be illegal.
    Collecting rainwater is illegal in many states, and regulated in other states. The United Nations, waving their overworked banner of “sustainability” is scheming to take over control of every drop of water on the globe. In some countries people who own wells are now being taxed and billed on the water coming from those sources. Nestle has admitted that they believe all water should be privatized so that everyone has to pay for the life-giving liquid.
    Codex Alimentarius (Latin for “food code”) is a global set of standards created by the CA Commission, a body established by a branch or the United Nations back in 1963. As with all globally stated agendas, however, CA’s darker purpose is shielded by the feel-good words. As the US begins to fall in line with the “standards” laid out by CA, healthful, nutritious food will be something that can only be purchased via some kind of black market of organically produced food.

    Regulations abound in the 1200-page Food Safety Modernization Act that will put many small farmers out of business, while leaving us reliant on irradiated, chemically treated, genetically-modified “food”.
In the face of this attack on the agrarian way of life, the single, most meaningful act of resistance that any individual can perform is to use the old methods and grow his or her own food.
Growing your own food wields many weapons.
    You are preserving your intelligence by refusing to ingest toxic ingredients. Many of these ingredients (and the pesticides sprayed on them) have been proven to lop off IQ points.
    You are nourishing your body by feeding yourself real food. Real food, unpasteurized, un-irradiated, with all of the nutrients intact, will provide you with a strong immune system and lower your risk of many chronic diseases. As well, you won’t be eating the toxic additives that affect your body detrimentally.
    You are not participating in funding Big Food, Big Agri, and Big Pharma when you grow your own food. Every bite of food that is NOT purchased via the grocery store is representative of money that does NOT go into the pockets of these companies who are interested only in their bottom lines. Those industries would be delighted if everyone was completely reliant on them.
    You are not susceptible to the control mechanisms and threats. If you are able to provide for yourself, you need give no quarter to those who would hold the specter of hunger over your head. You don’t have to rely on anyone else to feed your family.
Consider every bite of food that you grow for your family to be an act of rebellion.
    If you live in the suburbs, plant every square inch of your yard. Grow things vertically. Use square foot gardening methods. Make lovely beds of vegetables in the front yard. Extend your growing seasons by using greenhouses and coldframes. This way you can grow more than one crop per year in a limited amount of space. Use raised bed gardening techniques like lasagna gardening to create rich soil. If you have problems with your local government or HOA, go to the alternative media and plead your case in front of millions of readers. We’ve got your back!
    If you live in the city or in an apartment, look into ways to adapt to your situation. Grow a container garden on a sunny balcony, and don’t forget hanging baskets. Grow herbs and lettuce in a bright window. Set up a hydroponics system in a spare room (but look out for the SWAT team – they like to come after indoor tomato growers!) Go even further and look into aquaponics. Create a little greenhouse with a grow light for year round veggies. Sprout seeds and legumes for a healthy addition to salads.
    If you live in the country, go crazy. Don’t just plant a garden – plant fields! Grow vegetables and grains. Grow herbs, both culinary and medicinal. Learn to forage if you have forests nearby. Learn to use old-fashioned methods of composting, cover crops and natural amendments to create a thriving system.
    Raise micro-livestock. This option may not work for everyone, but if you can, provide for some of your protein needs this way. Raise chickens, small goats, and rabbits, for meat, eggs and dairy. If you are not a vegetarian, this is one of the most humane and ethical ways to provide these things for your family. Be sure to care well for your animals and allow them freedom and natural food sources – this is far better than the horrible, nightmare-inducing lives that they live on factory farms.

    Save your seeds. Learn the art of saving seeds from one season to the next. Different seeds have different harvesting and storage requirements.
    Go organic. Learn to use natural soil enhancers and non-toxic methods of getting rid of pests. Plan it so that your garden is inviting to natural pollinators like bees and butterflies. If you wouldn’t apply poison to your food while cooking it, don’t apply it to your food while growing it.
    Be prepared for backlash. The day may come when you face some issues from your municipal government. Be prepared for this by understanding your local laws and doing your best to work within that framework. If you cannot work within the framework, know what your rights are and refuse to be bullied. Call up on those in the alternative media who will sound the alarm. Every single garden that comes under siege is worth defending.
    Learn about permaculture. Instead of buying pretty flowering plants for your yard, landscape with fruit trees (espalliering is a technique that works will in small spaces), berry bushes, and nut trees. These can provide long-term food sources for your family.
    For the things you can’t grow yourself, buy local. Especially if space is limited, you may not be able to grow every bite you eat by yourself. For everything else, buy local! Buy shares in a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Visit your farmer’s market. Shop at roadside stands. Join a farming co-op. Support the agriculture in your region to help keep local farms in business. (One note about farmer’s markets: Some farmers markets allow people to sell produce that originates at the same wholesalers from which the grocery stores buy their produce. I always try to develop a relationship with the farmers from whom I buy, and I like to know that what I’m buying actually came from their fields and not a warehouse.)    Learn to preserve your food. Again, go back to the old ways and learn to save your harvest for the winter. Water bath canning, pressure canning, dehydrating, and root cellaring are all low-tech methods of feeding your family year round. Not only can you preserve your own harvest, but you can buy bushels of produce at the farmer’s market for a reduced price and preserve that too.
There is a food revolution brewing. People who are educating themselves about Big Food, Big Agri, and the food safety sell-outs at the FDA are disgusted by what is going on. We are refusing to tolerate these attacks on our health and our lifestyles. We are refusing to be held subject to Agenda 21′s version of “sustainability”.
Firing a volley in this war doesn’t have to be bloody. Resistance can begin as easily a planting one seed in a pot.

Daisy Luther is a freelance writer and editor. Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca
activistpost.com