Localization: An Alternative to the New Normal
Colin Todhunter
‘World Localization Day’ will be celebrated on 20 June. Organised by the non-profit Local Futures, this annual coming together of people from across the world began in 2020 and focuses on the need to localise supply-chains and recover our connection with nature and community.
The stated aim is to:
galvanize the worldwide localization movement into a force for systemic change”.
Local Futures, founded by Helena Norberg-Hodge, urges us to imagine a very different world, one in which most of our food comes from nearby farmers who ensure food security year round and where the money we spend on everyday goods continues to recirculate in the local economy.
We are asked to imagine local businesses providing ample, meaningful employment opportunities, instead of our hard-earned cash being immediately siphoned off to some distant corporate headquarters.
Small farms would be key in this respect. They are integral to local markets and networks, short supply chains, food sovereignty, more diverse cropping systems and healthier diets. And they tend to serve the food requirements of communities rather than the interests of big business, institutional investors and shareholders half a world away.
If the COVID lockdowns and war in Ukraine tell us anything about our food system, it is that decentralised, regional and local community-owned food systems based on short(er) supply chains that can cope with future shocks are now needed more than ever.
The report Towards a Food Revolution: Food Hubs and Cooperatives in the US and Italy offers some pointers for creating sustainable support systems for small food producers and food distribution. Alternative, resilient food models and community-supported agriculture are paramount.
Localization involves strengthening and rebuilding local economies and communities and restoring cultural and biological diversity. The ‘economics of happiness’ is central to this vision, rather than an endless quest for GDP growth and the alienation, conflict and misery this brings.
It is something we need to work towards because multi-billionaire globalists have a dystopian future mapped out for humanity which they want to impose on us all – and it is diametrically opposed to what is stated above.
The much-publicised ‘great reset’ is integral to this dystopia. It marks a shift away from ‘liberal democracy’ towards authoritarianism. At the same time, there is the relentless drive towards a distorted notion of a ‘green economy’, underpinned by the rhetoric of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘climate emergency’.
The great reset is really about capitalism’s end-game. Those promoting it realise the economic and social system must undergo a reset to a ‘new normal’, something that might no longer resemble ‘capitalism’.
End-game capitalism
Capital can no longer maintain its profitability by exploiting labour alone. This much has been clear for some time. There is only so much surplus value to be extracted before the surplus is insufficient.
Historian Luciana Bohne notes that the shutting down of parts of the economy was already happening pre-COVID as there was insufficient growth, well below the minimum tolerable 3% level to maintain the viability of capitalism. This, despite a decades-long attack on workers and corporate tax cuts.
The system had been on life support for some time. Credit markets had been expanded and personal debt facilitated to maintain consumer demand as workers’ wages were squeezed. Financial products (derivatives, equities, debt, etc) and speculative capitalism were boosted, affording the rich a place to park their profits and make money off money. We have also seen the growth of unproductive rentier capitalism and stock buy backs and massive bail outs courtesy of taxpayers.
Moreover, in capitalism, there is also a tendency for the general rate of profit to fall over time.
And this has certainly been the case according to writer Ted Reese, who notes it has trended downwards from an estimated 43% in the 1870s to 17% in the 2000s.
The 2008 financial crash was huge. But by late 2019, an even bigger meltdown was imminent. Many companies could not generate enough profit and falling turnover, squeezed margins, limited cashflows and highly leveraged balance sheets were prevalent. In effect, economic growth was already grinding to a halt prior to the massive stock market crash in February 2020.
Fabio Vighi, professor of critical theory, describes how, in late 2019, the Swiss Bank of International Settlements, BlackRock (the world’s most powerful investment fund), G7 central bankers, leading politicians and others worked behind closed doors to avert a massive impending financial meltdown.
The Fed soon began an emergency monetary programme, pumping hundreds of billions of dollars per week into financial markets. Not long after, COVID hit and lockdowns were imposed. The stock market did not collapse because lockdowns occurred. Vighi argues lockdowns were rolled out because financial markets were collapsing.
Closing down the global economy under the guise of fighting a pathogen that mainly posed a risk to the over 80s and the chronically ill seemed illogical to many, but lockdowns allowed the Fed to flood financial markets (COVID relief) with freshly printed money without causing hyperinflation. Vighi says that lockdowns curtailed economic activity, thereby removing demand for the newly printed money (credit) in the physical economy and preventing ‘contagion’.
Using lockdowns and restrictions, smaller enterprises were driven out of business and large sections of the pre-COVID economy were shut down. This amounted to a controlled demolition of parts of the economy while the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Meta (Facebook) and the online payment sector – platforms which are dictating what the ‘new normal’ will look like – were clear winners in all of this.
The rising inflation that we currently witness is being blamed on the wholly avoidable conflict in Ukraine. Although this tells only part of the story, the conflict and sanctions seem to be hitting Europe severely: if you wanted to demolish your own economy or impoverish large sections of the population, this might be a good way to go about it.
However, the massive ‘going direct’ helicopter money given to the financial sector and global conglomerates under the guise of COVID relief was always going to have an impact once the global economy reopened.
Similar extraordinary monetary policy (lockdowns) cannot be ruled out in the future: perhaps on the pretext of another ‘virus’ but possibly based on the notion of curtailing human activity due to ‘climate emergency’. This is because raising interest rates to manage inflation could rapidly disrupt the debt-bloated financial system (an inflated Ponzi scheme) and implode the entire economy.
Permanent austerity
But lockdowns, restrictions or creating mass unemployment and placing people on programmable digital currencies to micromanage spending and decrease inflationary pressures could help to manage the crisis. ‘Programmable’ means the government determining how much you can spend and what you can spend on.
How could governments legitimise such levels of control? By preaching about reduced consumption according to the creed of ‘sustainability’. This is how you would ‘own nothing and be happy’ if we are to believe this well-publicised slogan of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
But like neoliberal globalization in the 1980s – the great reset is being given a positive spin, something which supposedly symbolises a brave new techno-utopian future.
In the 1980s, to help legitimise the deregulated neoliberal globalisation agenda, government and media instigated an ideological onslaught, driving home the primacy of ‘free enterprise’, individual rights and responsibility and emphasising a shift away from the role of state, trade unions and the collective in society.
Today, we are seeing another ideological shift: individual rights (freedom to choose what is injected into your own body, for instance) are said to undermine the wider needs of society and – in a stark turnaround – individual freedom is now said to pose a threat to ‘national security’, ‘public health’ or ‘safety’.
A near-permanent state of ‘emergency’ due to public health threats, climate catastrophe or conflict (as with the situation in Ukraine) would conveniently place populations on an ongoing ‘war footing’. Notions of individual liberty and democratic principles would be usurped by placing the emphasis on the ‘public interest’ and protecting the population from ‘harm’. This would facilitate the march towards authoritarianism.
As in the 1980s, this messaging is being driven by economic impulses. Neoliberalism privatised, deregulated, exploited workers and optimised debt to the point whereby markets are now kept afloat by endless financial injections.
The WEF says the public will ‘rent’ everything they require: stripping the right of personal ownership under the guise of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘saving the planet’. Where the WEF is concerned, this is little more than code for permanent austerity to be imposed on the mass of the population.
Metaverse future
At the start of this article, readers were asked to imagine a future based on a certain set of principles associated with localization. For one moment, imagine another. The one being promoted by the WEF, the high-level talking shop and lobby group for elite interests headed by that avowed globalist and transhumanist Klaus Schwab.
As you sit all day unemployed in your high-rise, your ‘food’ will be delivered via an online platform bought courtesy of your programmable universal basic income digital money. Food courtesy of Gates-promoted farms manned by driverless machines, monitored by drones and doused with chemicals to produce crops from patented GM seeds for industrial ‘biomatter’ to be engineered, processed and constituted into something resembling food.
Enjoy and be happy eating your fake food, stripped of satisfying productive endeavour and genuine self-fulfilment. But really, it will not be a problem. You can sit all day and exist virtually in Zuckerberg’s fantasy metaverse. Property-less and happy in your open prison of mass unemployment, state dependency, track and chip health passports and financial exclusion via programmable currency.
A world also in which bodily integrity no longer exists courtesy of a mandatory vaccination agenda linked to emerging digital-biopharmaceutical technologies. The proposed World Health Organization pandemic treaty marks a worrying step in this direction.
This ‘new normal’ would be tyrannical, but the ‘old normal’ – which still thrives – was not something to be celebrated. Global inequality is severe and environmental devastation and human dislocation has been increasing. Dependency and dispossession remain at the core of the system, both on an individual level and at local, regional and national levels. New normal or old normal, these problems will persist and become worse.
Green imperialism
The ‘green economy’ being heavily promoted is based on the commodification of nature, through privatization, marketization and monetary valuation. Banks and corporations will set the agenda – dressed in the garb of ‘stakeholder capitalism’, a euphemism for governments facilitating the needs of powerful global interests. The fear is that the proposed system will weaken environmental protection laws and regulations to facilitate private capital.
The banking sector will engage in ‘green profiling’ and issue ‘green bonds’ and global corporations will be able to ‘offset’ (greenwash) their environment-degrading activities by, for example, protecting or planting a forest elsewhere (on indigenous people’s land) or perhaps even investing in (imposing) industrial agriculture which grows herbicide-resistant GMO commodity crop monocultures that are misleadingly portrayed as ‘climate friendly’. Imperialism wrapped in green.
Relying on the same thinking and the same interests that led the world to where it is now does not seem like a great idea. This type of ‘green’ is first and foremost a multi-trillion market opportunity for lining pockets and part of a strategy that may well be used to secure compliance required for the ‘new normal’.
The future needs to be rooted in the principles of localization.
For this, we need look no further than the economics and the social relations that underpin tribal societies (for example, India’s indigenous peoples). The knowledge and value systems of indigenous peoples promote long-term genuine sustainability by living within the boundaries of nature and emphasise equality, communality and sharing rather than separation, domination and competition.
Self-sufficiency, solidarity, localization and cooperation is the antidote to globalism and the top-down tyranny of programmable digital currencies and unaccountable, monopolistic AI-driven platforms which aim to monitor and dictate every aspect of life.
Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture and is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal. You can read his “mini e-book”, Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Cultivating Resistance, here.The author receives no payment from any media outlet or organisation for his writing and relies on the generosity of readers. If you appreciated this article, please consider sending a few coins his way: [email protected]
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Guess I’m late to the discussion, but as good as most of the comments are, I feel they miss the point. Localization, aka collaboration, aka community, cannot be coopted from above, which makes it effective for us, and a danger to our predators. Properly understood, a call for localization is the inverse of a top-down hierarchical scheme to impose some new arbitrary plan. Let’s not confuse a social movement with a political one. Yes, you are correct to sneer at any organization with the WEF’s endorsement. No, that changes nothing about the cogency, salience, or efficacy of the concept. First, no political movement will ever fix a social problem. Because it cannot. You cannot knit a sweater with a bulldozer. Political movements simply replace one set of bulldozer operators with another. No matter how idealistic the new gang is, once they take over the bulldozer, all they can do is… Read more »
What is this!?
Don’t take in Lama, Chomsky etc in a top down preplanned solution.
Can we have a free Christian society, please, and no ngo Rockefeller fake movements?
Indeed. This is WEF propaganda repackaged for the anti-Great Reset crowd. They got us coming and going.
See here about minute 30:00
https://dollarvigilante.tv/w/bpKeH91Kpq89puZMkhBjWN
“Man joined the eternal abyss
When food became a commodity”
– Paul Vonharnish –
January 2, 2020
Looked at the Localization Day website, and was dismayed to find it endorsed by the likes of WEF supporter Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, and (sigh) the Dalai Lama, covid coolaid drinkers all. Am pretty suspicious of this group, although localization would seem to be a good thing.
‘The future needs to be rooted in the principles of localization.’ If you knew the future, you would be more than some random blogger. History tells me to discount all hucksters selling a utopian version of the future. They usually end up similar to North Korea.
New world order coming in fast now. Seeing it in all streams of media, whether commercial or dramatic. Fascist Book is shutting down or restricting accounts that are posting anything against the ‘narrative’, mine included. Grateful you are here and still going, Off Guardian, and all the great peeps that post. Appreciating you all!
Face-Sucker Zuck! 😆
Three agendas collapsed together, it must be high-fives all round:
https://dumptheguardian.com/world/2022/apr/30/gas-was-like-our-drug-defiant-poland-vows-to-wean-itself-off-russian-energy
Not only the Ukraine and climate agendas but the shift into tele-education is here! Funny how this crisis requires the schools to be closed down (because Poland can’t heat them) – just like the last one.
A shift into tele-education is a big and somewhat neglected part of their plans. They seem to want a hybrid system where students spend much less time on a physical school site and much more “learning” on Big Tech created programmes. The ultimate goal is to get the tech inside students’ bodies. When they say education, they mean transhumanism. Blair’s “education, education, education” suddenly makes sense seen in this light.
What should be alternative to technocratic globalism? Try communism. The word and term communism was historically hijacked not as much by western propaganda but by big and small dictators who in their quest to hijack revolutionary power of the working class roughly followed what Lenin did against his previous political declarations and later regretted on his death bad. This fatal Lenin’s decision was allowing centralization of revolutionary institutions like Soviets of Workers and peasants by democratically or not taking them over by Bolsheviks supposedly in emergency of Civil war and foreign invasions and necessity of centralized military effort to defend revolution. In fact this fateful decision and that included forcing independent Donbas Workers republic into artificial association with Soviet republic of Ukraine echos today also with tragedy of Donbas. In fact this emergency was never lifted by Stalin after Lenin was eventually assassinated because Stalin killed real revolution, abandoned revolutionary… Read more »
Good point on the evasion. It is now a global trend.
There are many fables of death-bed confessions. Take them with a pinch of salt.
Lenin even before his assassination and long agony in his writings regretted placing Stalin, former Orthodox Catholic priest from Georgia, as chief security of NKWD and he did so only because Stalin was particularly ruthless attacking enemy of Bolsheviks amid civil war driven centralization of Bolshevik power. On death bed Lenin allegedly regretted his policies of centralization of power as it enabled people like Stalin to gain near total control even before he was dead.
Well, although “deathbed” may be, er, stretching the term, Lenin has certainly had plenty of time to posthumously reflect and repent.
It’s no secret that Soviet leaders decided to make every effort to preserve Lenin’s embalmed corpse and keep it on perpetual display.
FWIW, I thought I’d heard somewhere that in the post-Soviet era, Lenin’s body had finally been permanently removed from public display and “disposed of” privately. But I just did a quick search, and was surprised to find that my impression couldn’t be readily confirmed.
My superficial search gleaned the ambiguous information that Lenin’s remains had indeed been removed from public display, but may still be preserved behind the scenes. If the latter is true, ’tis a puzzlement.
Hello Kalen: Your statements suggesting that true and realistic functions of communism have been hijacked, is lost on an indoctrinated audience. Communistic (communal) systems were organic functions of pre-biblical societies for thousands of years. The establishment of top-down hierarchal cults followed closely upon the establishment of city states in early Mesopotamia.
When wealth morphed into privately held currency rather than a shared commodity, walls were built, mercenary armies were established, and man became unnaturalized. The rest is a parade of lies and empty excuses…
i get all this dude, and i generally skim a lot of your articles approvingly; saw you posted on unusual platform the ohter day too, welcome article it was : )
Colin, the average muppoid cannot comprehend this reality beyond barbeque table patter sloanoidjonesoid weekend behaviours… and their phone.
sadly so.
All Our Lands were stolen many generations ago, and outlawed dissent and muskets. Now patio owners still want slabs and plant protection products…..
smallholder world is an ideal, but we ain’t gonna get it the way most folk seem wired at present! (western world).
then we could entertain WEFdom lol
good article : )
All sounds nice in theory but most people will starve…
aye, that is the reality.
too unprepared, too vulnerable, too urbanised…too…..?
i sadly agree.
Under stress, most folk couldnae manage a shite, never mind a 1000 head communitty feeding project.
there it is.
i too am badly prepared!!!
Store enough to survive, hope you don’t get looted by the marauding mobs and grow a few veggies.
Hopefully enough will survive to form something new.
Can’t see the police being interested when they see their pension pots no longer exist…
20 selfish reaction depleted food markets chain stores all manner of material needs, that flipped to wants.
Ordering food on-line that put even more strain on the public sector.
Grow? By and large under 60’s that are not used to it, are new nominals better known as yuppies.
The ’80s yuppies are best known for all manner of in vogue habits. Bottle Water is one such example from the late 1980’s.
Unless a massive out of our control event destroys our current unbalanced and degenerate uman civilization none of these alternatives can survive or change anything at least at a global scale.
On a local level it does change a little bit but clearly all these MMS are still relying on many none-local sub-systems in order to live. So it is not as simple as stated.
Great article Colin. Thank you.
Syria after the American filth and their proxy armies have left…
The Syria The Media Won’t Show You https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/svg/1f1f8-1f1fe.svg – YouTube
Not only U$ filth have been driven out by the Axis of Resistance but the rest of the NATZO scum and dregs: British filth, French filth, Danish filth, Turkish filth, Israeli filth and their filthy ISIS mercenaries hired from the sweepings of 80 countries. But the same nations are welcome as tourists and friends. I still remember that wonderful thirty years after WW2, touring freely around a united, peaceful and prosperous Europe — before the Empire struck back with the installation of financier puppets Maggie Snatcher and Ronnie Raygun, when the EU became the EU$A, and the EU$A became the Western arms of a Global financial octopus.
The Imperial filth has not left. It is still plundering petroleum, destroying crops, etc.
The Turkish filth has not left. It bombs Syrian civilians and blames ISIS – that it has trained back home. It then conducts “humanitarian” missions to aid the victims, taking reporters along. It has sent an ISIS contingent to Ukraine.
Having failed to compete with the worlds growing economies, and having failed to control them, the US is now engaged in a programme of disruption and destruction of the worlds economy to deny China, Russia and the emerging economies the benefits of an interdigitated world economy, which has benefited the US so much during their imperial reign since the second world war.
The US is losing the game, so like a spoilt child, are smashing the board and all its pieces. Whilst isolationism sounds nice and rosy, it is really just nationalism dressed up, and with the illusions of national greatness and xenophobia that come with it, it inevitability leads to conflict and war. International inter-dependence is the route to world peace as we had discovered, up until the point the USA decided to go full Armageddon on the world, during their imperial collapse.
The US was and still is the flagship of the central banking cartel that rules the world. The USSR was under the control of the same cartel, as is the rest of the world. Most major US corporations contributed to Djugasvili’s (“Stalin’s”) five year plans. Likewise China especially after Mao’s “revolution”. It does appear that countries like China and India are now gaining at the expense of the West. Western de industrialisation got these countries, especially China, moving. They were of course required to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel. China was given the task of starting the scamdemic and the rest of the world was required to follow. The West built the world government on behalf of it’s masters the banksters.
https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/18-food-processing-plants-have-burned-down-in-the-last-several-months-wonder-what-is-going-on
So…
And all this is just the beginning.
Hey George Mc you do wonderful things on here.
indeed, this shit show clownworld is still in the adverts….
Isn’t it amazing how the “Right Wing” panic over conspiracy theories whereby there is an increasing worry over institutions being undermined has turned out to be legitimate. It’s as if these theories and their attribution to “the reactionaries” was all part of a psy-op to denigrate what turned out to be an underlying programme that was relatively easy to dismiss in the old affluent days. But now, with a new ferocious assault on the publics, and these “paranoid” fantasies become, if anything, understatements, the plastic Left leaps into place to perform its smear campaign to dismiss “the loonies”.
Perfect set up, isn’t it? I fell for it too for a long time, but now see it for the set up it was. Make any true dissent “right wing nut job” territory and no more need be said by the “liberals” who cling to that mess. Oh, sometimes they’ll admit the corruption isn’t all right wing lunacy, but only the surface corruption that their side is allowed to see. Ask them to ditch that paradigm and really look, and you’re a right wing nutter who should be ignored.
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/german-government-institute-refers?s=r
Another step in the ongoing destruction of all sense where the language itself is being broken down to instill an inability to communicate. And also a corresponding denigration of bodily functions and a lowering of sexuality to a pure freak show/circus of sadism in which the ruling vampires are prodding with a stick to vent their utter loathing of the masses.
Controlled Food System Is Now In Place And They Will Stop At Nothing To Accelerate Their Control
https://www.coreysdigs.com/?nltr=MjYwOzQ2MTc2O2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmNvcmV5c2RpZ3MuY29tL2dsb2JhbC9uZXctY29udHJvbGxlZC1mb29kLXN5c3RlbS1pcy1ub3ctaW4tcGxhY2UtYW5kLXRoZXktd2lsbC1zdG9wLWF0LW5vdGhpbmctdG8tYWNjZWxlcmF0ZS10aGVpci1jb250cm9sLzs7OTVmNjBmNTM2YjE2NWI5ZGUyMzkwOTZlODcwN2M2ZmQ%3D
Liverpool football club will win it all this year because this is the last year of football.Payback for us.All a massive shame scam.Football is going to end in Qatar this year.The alien invasion is on.Watch the SKY.The first in white is an imposter.The Leader.Red is second.Paz y amor x
Never walk alone and winning the scripted football league during Bs19 then the city was told they wasn’t allowed to celebrate. Getting the KOP.
Yes Bob.
Stay at home, don’t drive, don’t eat animal products – inflation’s not so bad!
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/04/how-some-americans-are-beating-inflation?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social_video&utm_term=1_1&utm_content=25876_4_things_inflation_US&utm_campaign=social_video_2022
This is the worldwide Skinner box in action – behave in ways we don’t favour and we’ll punish you; behave in ways we favour and… well, you won’t be rewarded but the punishment will be a bit less.
New Normal = Old Stupid [with picture of the POTU$A]:
“U.$. GDP Unexpectedly Turns Negative As Sanctions and $30Billion Handout to Ukraine Wreak Havoc”
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63057
Unexpectedly?
Exactly Colin, thank you! Localization was a movement in the SF Bay Area in the mid 2000’s and it was attacked with monied-aurthority destruction by infiltrating Dems. Power is authority and people with money always have the authority to decide in unregulated capitalist corporate society. There has been no democracy or genuine socialism/communism. All become reality only from well founded democracies, systems of voluntary consent. Until we find a way to keep monied-authority out of democratic self organizing societies, humanity will be terminated by their evolutionary path to exhaustion of everything around it.
Thanks for this, i too watched this happen in the SF Bay Area.
There is a prominent view among the anti-Great Reset/health freedom movement that we are finally experiencing the right wing Cold War shibboleth of a vast communist conspiracy to take over the world. Meanwhile this “communist conspiracy” is blatantly carried out by the most ideologically entrenched and powerful capitalists who control greatest concentration of wealth the world has ever seen. At the same time “Communist” China hasn’t had a communist economy since the 1970’s and is more or less fully integrated into the Great Reset capitalist denouement. I understand that some people see the term communism as interchangeable with the term totalitarianism. However, as Giorgio Agamben has said if a county can turn totalitarian on a dime, then it was already totalitarian. The West has been covertly totalitarian for a very long time. Now we have libertarian “patriots” who seem to be (quoting Colin Todhunter) “driving home the primacy of ‘free enterprise’,… Read more »
Great comment.
The notion that these past two years (and much more) has been brought on by the “commies” or the CCP or some other dog whistle fake terminology is preposterous as you lay out.
Bill Gates is a communist? Who knew.
Something just clicked in my head, thanks.
“However, as Giorgio Agamben has said if a county can turn totalitarian on a dime, then it was already totalitarian. The West has been covertly totalitarian for a very long time. “
There’s no “country” (incorporated municipality) that isn’t totalitarian because there are no “countries”. There are corporations that run “administrations” (legal fictions) that claim ownership of the people and the land mass they reside on. That’s how the money is printed and the goods manufactured and traded, under one global monetary and exchange mechanism.
The global debt based monetary system runs on the collateral of the HUMAN CAPITAL represented through the ALL CAPS name on people’s birth certificates, bank accounts, bills and government ID.
The cartel owners are the same group in every “country” on earth.
Exactly, the Unidroit system provides the ‘legal’ framework for the 194 UN-member Corporations posing as Nations, their citizens are ‘legal fictions’ that are the bonded surety for each bankrupt corporation’s ability to repay it’s debt to the private Central Banks.
Yes. Truth here gets ignored and lies rule. Five upvotes for essentially, Hegelian Dialectic drivel.
Hello Freecus, and everyone,
I leave this just in case. Nothing better to learn about Hegelian Dialectic than read Hegel himself, even though the concept of Dialectics is not Hegel’s invention; it goes back to Plato and even earlier to the Presocratics; but Hegel has become so famous these days in certain circles. Here it is:
The Logic of Hegel, translated by William Wallace (1892). The relevant part is at chapter VI, pages 143 – 155 (a short read then).
Don’t let anyone tell you what’s drivel and what’s not; judge for yourselves.
+1
Thank you, i was beginning to think that no one here gets this.
You were wrong 🙂.
Yeah, wrong but you can be forgiven as there are posters here who seem determined to muddy the water as far as these arguments go and elsewhere in digital world, my favourite is we are experiencing communist fascism; eh? Indeed. In fact I’m disappointed you’ve missed my posts, obviously if your post is to go on. Apple seeds can take around 8 years from seed to bear fruit but I’m warmed that others are making their understanding clear and correctly here about these academic debating topics, even if these concepts of political ideology are distant abstractions to our lived experience. I’m surprised Jeff, I am.
Well stated!
The words or terms “communism”, and for that matter “left”, have been perverted and dumbed-down– as you point out, typically used as if synonymous with “totalitarian” or “authoritarian”. So we see endless blithe references to Biden and the Democratic Party, corporate mass-media like The New York Times et al, and Big Tech venues as “communist” and “leftist”.
It’s exasperating and creepy to see this resurgence in classic Cold War red-baiting, especially in younger libertarian types, e.g. social satirist JP Sears. It’s obvious that they don’t see their perspective as red-baiting; they think they’re just telling it like it is. Bah! Humbug!
Indeed. BC1 (Before-Covid year 1, or 2019) I would have argued that the Democratic Party was not on the left, following (I believe) Upton Sinclair’s old saw that “the US political system is a bird of prey with two right wings.” However, it seems that the number of leftist organizations who are not attached to the coattails of the Democratic Party or are not controlled by the CIA in some form (at least controlled by the conspiracy theory meme, like the Grayzone) are so few in number that the left is indeed sheltered beneath the Dem Party/Liberal controlled Progressive/Socialist media umbrella that we might as well give up the term. Benedict Cryptoflash makes what for me is a convincing argument that the “left” has always been bourgeois (aligned with the interests of the capitalist class) when push comes to shove (recall the capitulation of the Second International supporting their capitalist… Read more »
aye +1
We’ve been living with this type of idealistic “Back to Nature” movement for a very long time. Its a product of middle class thinking where there’s no real understanding about infrastructure, how it was created and how it works. The goal is noble but the application is escapist. But, given that the goals are noble then there’s about a 100% chance that corporate (and, by extension, governmental) entities will either encourage (“neat new market there”) or oppose (“interfering with the status quo, so by extension a threat”) it. One unfortunate side effect of unbiqutous computing is that it allowed us to count — to inventory — everything, and once things can be counted they can be bought and sold, made commodities. Human ingenuity being what it is the ‘things’ that get counted extend to intangible, abstract, entities — if there’s a market there then it will be made. Counting also… Read more »
Easy to knock people who have been promoting the localisation/anti-globalisation alternative for decades, many of whom have been facilitating it with poor communities in the Global South – so you are wrong on that. But do you have anything positive to offer?
There have been Utopian movements for well over a hundred years. They’re tolerated so long as they’re ineffectual. As soon as they get large enough to challenge the system they’re dealt with. Which leaves us with the unpalatable notion that ultimately the only way to deal with the problem is political. Its more urgent now because there nowhere on Earth left you can hide away in, there’s no question of opening up your own commune/community unless you have title to the land, ownership of resources and the ability to pay the taxes (“protection money”) that will be levied against such property.
And what makes you assume that none of the above is political? The author has written on political agroecology in previous articles and the politics/policies of localisation vs globalisation which makes it clear that it is not about creating ‘utopian movements’ or ‘hiding away’ but a global struggle that challenges elite interests.
Martin being an IT expert, this is the first time (to my knowledge) that someone has pointed to the Computer as the Power Behind the Throne. “Counting makes taxation easier” — and much more. I still remember the feeling of shock and awe when someone told me 50 years ago that every cent anyone pays in a MacDonalds anywhere in the world is immediately registered at HQ. It conjured up a vision of endless coins trickling upward out of individual pockets into some empyrean of cash reserve (I think they call it “offshore”). The discrepancy between a PC and a mainframe reinforces the discrepancy between Localized Power and Globalized Power. I have heard a man who deciphers clay tablets from ancient Babylon say that most of them are administrative records and account books. And I have heard that an ancient Egyption inscription (or graffiti?) reads: “I am a tax collector.… Read more »
The money extortion/taxation/protection money racket is the ancient root of all exploitation that was foisted on us humans so long ago by our alien masters. Even our language reflects this exploitation (human resources, CIA assets, etc). They just want to perfect the extortion racket now via blockchain total digital control.
+1 One of the consequences of the prodigious development of lucrative property and the subsequent need to manage it is the obsession with counting, quantifying, classifying, analysing, coding, ranking, weighing, planning, calculating, measuring, safe-guarding, worrying, managing, buying and selling, and so on. It is the price paid for having the ownership of what is way beyond our needs in the foreseeable future, an aberration from the point of view of the laws of nature. Once upon a time, as hunter-gatherers, we owned only what we needed for our immediate production; we owned what we knew we would need; we lived the moment, and didn’t obsess about being meticulously exact. Even today, in some “primitive societies”, it is considered an offense to make a counter-gift exactly equal in quantity to a gift previously received: If you were given 3 fishes, you’ll be looked down at if you give back 3 cocos. There… Read more »
As any community set in nature grows, needs increase and become more complex. Planning, skills and records are a part of the response.
Thank goodness the so-called primitive societies is a living proof that indefinite progress is not a fatality.
The emails of transnational enterprises go through HQ “back home”. Even between 2 adjacent departments. That is the level of control and surveillance.
Sound advice from Colin (as always) on Localism as antidote to a Unipolar World.
Light relief on the psychology of trade between Unipolar EU$A and Multipolar Russia/China:
“The Five Stages of Grief by Kübler-Ross:
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Paying in Rubles/Yuan”
+1
Nina Jankowicz’s weird creepy singing video is another example of something I keep encountering: people who actually don’t seem to have any idea how they come across to others. This is all of us to some extent, of course (O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!)
But it seems oddly more prevalent than it used to be. You’d think the “profilicity” of social media, the constant self-curation, would have the reverse effect: people would be increasingly adept at manipulating others’ perceptions of them. But doing more of it seems to make a lot of people much, much worse at it. It’s weird.
hollow , soulless, or worse.
then of course we have social conditioning?
[Forwarded from CoviLeaks:] Mandatory Vaccination for the EU just went through under the radar • the European Council has amended resolution 2361 and no longer objects to compulsory vaccination. • As of July 1 2022 the EU has announced the legislation for the mandatory EU COVID 19 Certificates that deprive you of all freedoms if you do not have a QR covid certificate. If there is a majority of member states signing the legislation, compulsory vaccination will be introduced. • at the end of 2022/2023 there will be a digital currency. • The EU will impose a digital ID on every EU citizen. • All ATMs will be replaced by QR code ATMs in the near future, Belgium is already installing them full swing. • If these QR code machines are integrated, cash can no longer be withdrawn from banks. • The EU aims to make cash completely worthless within… Read more »
People are addicted to fear and are already enslaved.
Satan Rules The World.
====================
Can someone confirm this?
Lol no need
Satan is an astrotheological concept. So too, Jesus etc. It’s all astrological allegory, not literal beings. The creation of “evil” itself is a man made concept. Ordinary humans can’t recognize this because they can’t conceive that there are a group of humans who believe themselves above all others, who are also psychopaths with sociopathic traits, raised in a cult who are taught that the entirety of humanity exists to enrich and serve them and them only. That the general population is no more than chattel. We are no more relevant to this ancient ruling cartel than a herd of cattle headed for the slaughterhouse. That level of evil and sociopathy, is not understood by the general population who falsely believe that all humans are like themselves, so the fictional being of Satan (Saturn) and God (The sun) as an astrological allegory, was manufactured to excuse and explain the psychopathy of… Read more »
Nicely said!
(I just wanted to know if resolution 2361 has really been amended.)
The ANR article links directly to the source. I haven’t translated it, but feel free. 😉
aye, fine, okay….
actually i have a soul thingmie R, it promulgates me through a shitey world.
and it generally concurs with a lot of stuff on here, not everything,
there certainly exists good & evil, some deeper motivation (or lack of) at play.
Some are intent on creation, Life,… others, the opposite.
just indurated ancient perception??
I’m not implying we don’t have a soul. Just that evil isn’t other worldly. Its not external. It’s man made and within this realm. There’s no evil in the natural world. None.
But search on the following PDF, it has no hits for bank, cash, currency, Belgium:#, so what is the source for all the alarmism you mention?
EN ENE UROPEAN
COMMISSION
Brussels, 3.2.2022
COM(2022) 50 final
2022/0031 (COD)
Proposal for a
REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL
amending Regulation (EU) 2021/953 on a framework for the issuance, verification and
acceptance of interoperable COVID-19 vaccination, test and recovery certificates (EU
Digital COVID Certificate) to facilitate free movement during the COVID-19 pandemic
Had been forwarded to me via Telegram. I found the quoted part included on another website:
http://historyreviewed.best/index.php/mandatory-vaccination-for-the-eu-just-went-through-under-the-radar/
… with additional link at the end:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/mandatory-vaccination-eu-just-went-through-under-radar/5776115
Since when is some BS on Telegram the truth? I see it as reprehensible that you spread stuff without even using Edit and Find in Page to check its veracity. .
Because neither of the links you provide has any mention of the words: cash, Belgium, ATM. Check them and see.
The problem is laid out, with a solution that we’ve had for many years. We need a new world, but not an oligarchy controlled dystopia. If the 95% are not needed than it’s incumbent upon us to provide the vision and the fortitude to secede. A million self-sufficient villages! The test is ours.
Re-wild the garden!
https://dumptheguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/29/no-mow-may-gardeners-not-to-cut-lawns-wild-plants-insects
Probably should move some wolves in as well – just in case one feels tempted to go out. How about helping insects by getting rid of smart devices to cut down to microwave radiation? Or stopping the aerial spraying? Funny how those aren’t solutions….
(TBC I’m no fan of overly manicured lawns drenched in pesticides and herbicides either. Those are all about demonstrating a mastery of nature.)
In the growing greenwash hysteria about net carbon, etc, I notice the absence of simply reducing pollution and restoring soil fertility by natural methods.
We need to un-poison our minds and our world.
Far Too Late Irreversible forces moved us out of sustainable hunter gathering into domestic animalhood. The domestication of animals was the first step in the irreversible process that brought us to where we are today, on the brink of extinction. There were no cows in prehistory. The now extinct auroch was bred into cattle. Similarly with sheep, goats, chickens, dogs and cats. Milestones along the way were the invention of agriculture, the wheel, seafaring vessels, bronze, iron, paper, alphabets,monotheism, gunpowder, the magnetic compass, the decimal system,geometry, and others far to numerous to list. Columbus and colonialism resulted in the industrial revolution and our fate was sealed. Each advance promised more power and more security. Along the way we burned our boats. Made Faustian bargains.The forests and the oceanic fish stocks that sustained our ancestors are gone and there are vast numbers of us. There is no turning back. And forward… Read more »
“Faustian bargain”. PM presents a brilliant “abstract and chronicle of our time’\. I think the Faustian reference is apt if we consider Goethe’s modernized version. Mephistopheles came to collect the soul of Faust at a time when Goethe’s rejuvenated hero, having found a girl, seduced, impregnated and abandoned her, was rapturously engaged in a Mega Project for the Benefit of Humanity. Faust’s project had which already swept an old couple and their property into oblivion to make way for itself. Faust himself was blissfully unaware that his own workmen, directed by his own contractor Mephisto, were actually digging his own grave. Yet, curiously, the Devil does not catch Faust’s soul. It is saved by the Love of a Good Woman: “The eternal feminine / Draws us upward and onward”. Honestly, I find this version a comforting antidote to our Looming Unipolar Techno-Dystopia. Like Colin’s proposal of “Spreading Locality”. Or “Smtall… Read more »
Faucian bargains? no, edicts – I am Science! (Psyience), and I am in love with my own image. Sick fk.
And a cat would barely last a week end
Nature can revitalize quickly. Technology can be used wisely. However, the entities that are hellbent on destruction, exploitation, & misuse of technology, so they can re-establish order out of the chaos, first need to be identified then dealt with. Who are they? Bloodlines? Miles Mathis calls them the Phoenicians. Gary Peter Carlson calls them a soul group that lacks empathy. In my view, they are one & the same. They seem to me to be at the stage of consolidating power & control for full spectrum dominance. One way they seem to be doing this is standing down all peoples in all professions who will not comply with the agenda/mandates, in other words purging the military, educational, healthcare & other sectors of dissidents & troublemakers & making sure the public perceive them as threats, in order to be able to “round them up” at a later stage. Maybe they are… Read more »
“rentier capitalism”
Yes, and you mentioned since the 80s.
People think the price hikes/ inflation is now…. Forgetting that since the end of the 90s, housing and medical costs have skyrocketed. This includes the alt media.
Why is that?
Because the media didn’t say that was bad inflation. It’s an “investment”after all.
Stock markets exploded and finance and real estate became the biggest sectors. Dumb dumb dumb.
Dumb people fearing being priced out in the housing market, went and took loans to buy buy buy, driving up the prices.
And many call this is a communist takeover. Nope, it’s rentier capitalism failing into a fascist system.
“World Localization Day” sounds a bit oxymoronic, but I get it – I can imagine a world of local communities connected and cooperating at the horizontal level in which any motherfucker with ambitions to create a superstructure, any asshole wanting to stand above anyone else would get a prompt kick in the ass or some other form of suitable treatment. Being a city boy most of my life, I’m seeing one after another judicious urbanite to come to the conclusion that local is the way to go, as opposed to global. Having spent quite a bit of time in the countryside and having now moved to a semi-rural area, I have to say that lots of what these localists are saying is cutely naive. Paradoxically, they’re approaching localism with the same technocracy as the globalists approach globalism. Localism is the way to go, but it must come from the grass… Read more »
Act locally.
Think for yourself.
Shame most can’t be bothered.
“Small is Beautiful” thinking returns. M.A.S.A*… But if you’re not into The No-Dig Method there’s a small tractor you might consider (& usufruct amongst neighbouring small farmers might appeal > spread the costs):
Right to Repair: Open-source Tractors Offer An Alternative to Traditional small-scale farms:
https://healthimpactnews/2022/right-to-repair-open-source-tractors-offer-an-alternative-for-traditional-small-scale-farmers/
* MASA > Make Agriculture Sustainable Again flowed better than M.A.G.A.
https://healthimpactnews.com/2022/right-to-repair-open-source-tractors-offer-an-alternative-for-traditional-small-scale-farmers/
fyi your link is missing the .com in the address, correct link is
https://healthimpactnews.com/2022/right-to-repair-open-source-tractors-offer-an-alternative-for-traditional-small-scale-farmers/
Great article btw.
Todhunter’s Noble Savage, tribalist romantic gushing in his 2nd last para is touching. “Equality, communality and sharing” among gerontocratic, woman-bashing tribal Aust. aborigines or among my own Palaeolithic forager ancestors? Living with Nature? Only because they had not the tech to exploit it like we did after 1750, or think what the Romans did to Sicily or N Africa. NB: a tribe is a group of people who are genetically close to each other, i.e. kin. They hence have a strong ingroup loyalty only and outsiders are prey. So what sort of intentional tribe does Todhunter envisage? Because there may be cases where entire extended families refuse the jab and hence could go off and found Pureblood tribes in rural communes, but I am seeing much more internal division in families, Delusional Psychotics versus us Purebloods. There is by now a big literature on the topic of how intentional communities… Read more »
Colin could have gone into wants, needs, contentment and consumption. Instead, he dismissies that issue as the “rhetoric of sustainable consumption”.
Not so. He has addressed this issue of want, contentment and consumption in previous articles. He is dismissing the type of ‘sustainable consumption’ currently being thrown around by corporations which have co-opted and distorted the concept for their own ends.
You bring up the point which most – especially most who comment here – do not care to consider: that there is very little worthwhile to be said for the human animal.
Less may be more; more may be less; or even the twain shall meet – none of it changes the simple fact that as long as there are two human beings somewhere on the planet they will seek each other out and try to kill each other…to protect their territory.
People confuse utility with ownership. Just because someone has made something does not confer ownership of the resources used to make it.
Genuinely “going local” is easier said than done…
I tried the local farm shop – none of their food is organic. They care about plastics polluting the environment but not about glyphosate polluting the body. I then tried the local organic food project. They have a quote from Margaret Mead on the wall (at best a fraud who faked her findings and at worst a deep state operative – like most anthropologists). Their newsletters continually push causes like climate change and Ukraine.
There is a lot of sham localism around. Apparent grass roots are often astro-turf. Going local is the right idea but it isn’t straightforward.
Margaret Mead did not fake her research – that is slander. The Deep State exploits any research it can use to strengthen its control, including anthropologists research.
If every scientist whose work is exploited by the Control Freaks is ipso facto a deep state operative, we’re not only out-numbered, we’re DOOMED…
It’s much worse than you realize. If ANYONE is on tv, promoted in academia or the media you can safely bet your life, not just your life savings, that they are a cabal member and a tool of the globalist lying, Masonic psychopaths who run the world through the banking-merchant-military cartel. They control humanity using brainwashing techniques including indoctrination and constant repetition, people mistakenly call ”education”.
The entirety of Academia was created then funded specifically to run eugenics and behavioral control programs on populations.
And especially to reduce the power of women, often using public ridicule, non-publication of their work and many other devious means of suppression.
I’m thinking of the work of the brilliant Margaret Mead, Elaine Morgan (The Aquatic Ape), and many, many more.
I’m thinking the opposite. That Mead was a tool of the elite, most likely a cabal member. Her bio and family background says it all for me. Let alone the cabal’s and eugenicist plan to force women to work, break up families, promote divorce and inhibit population growth. Nobody gets to rise to the top in academia unless they are placed there and promoted. They can’t get published or funded unless they work on the eugenicist and behavioral scientist’s projects. Regardless of their findings or even if they are vilified later. Nature versus nature is a spurious dichotomy. Because there’s a third concept that’s assiduously avoided with regards to human behavior; the subliminal mind control of populations, which goes back countless generations, even hundreds of thousands of years. This causes epigenetic and genetic changes (through planned culling and human sacrifice, language, trauma, rituals, authoritarianism, occult knowledge and highly sophisticated mind… Read more »
That’s supposed to be *nurture versus nature.
Elaine Morgan tells Another Fish Story, Sounds fishy to me.
…and all the organic peeps who avoid GMOs at all costs, who took a shot with a blank insert, and did not do a bit of research, just trusted the TV that spread fear , and the Organics deep fear of death – Ironic that they themselves are now Modified Organisms.
Yes. Why would we assume the “Deep State” operatives have not infiltrated the “Local” movement as they have every other grass roots movement?
The ideal would be to get away from movements altogether – much easier said than done.
“It was never about a virus !
It was always about The Economy, stupid !”
The inequalities Capitalism inevitably produces are now so vast that those with the power to acquire more wealth are already so rich that the necessity to do so is totally lacking. The fact that they ruthlessly continue to do so, just so they can play dick-measuring contests with their billionaire rivals, is the apotheosis of a sick earth society. The profit motive is suitable for organisations under 50 employees, under £50m turnover a year. It is entirely disgusting for those managing a trillion in assets. What needs reconfiguring is the motivations for doing things. You don’t create philanthropists from the most brutally ruthless, avaricious psychopaths on the planet. It’s simply not possible. They lie about being philanthropists, and the media never corrects their lies. But the history of the world reveals their true motives all too clearly. Generosity generates reciprocity in the main. When it doesn’t, you have identified the… Read more »
I clearly remember that at the time that Bill Gates became the world’s richest person, somewhere in the 90s, he wanted to give it all away to ‘good causes’ and that for that reason he, together with his lovely wife, set up a foundation. Not all people liked Bill’s philanthropy, but they were crazy people right? 25 years later Bill Gates is still one of the richest persons in the world and his foundation, against all odds, happens to be involved in all sorts of manslaughter (supporting AIDS treatment, polio and covid vaccines, the Guardian, etc. – What went wrong? Maybe one should ask the Guardian. Now we have a similar nonsense story with Mr Elon Musk who wants to give the people a voice (try and understand it…) by buying a platform. Some people don’t trust Musk’s lofty words, but they are crazy people, right? One does not need… Read more »
I think the very word “philanthropist” was invented to disguise the parasite class.
– Here you are, son. Did you get that Ivy [Lee]?
He turned out not giving the money and had the kid executed so he wouldn’t talk… (bet I’m not so far off either)
It was cyanide laced candy. Just for fun. Heil BAAL.
Father of Allopathy, Ponerologist at core.
Can’t help being struck by how hard he’s clutching on that penny while being the only one posing for the camera… an idiot’s moment frozen in time
Hey wait a minute. Nice fabric on that kid’s pants, good polo shirt, great hair cut, is that on a Rockefeller’s lawn?… That little shit is a Rocky!
The kid may be acting, that’s what Public Relations is about.
I was kidding. Public relations are about many things… the relation they have with me is pretty spectacular
“Small farms” ??
The issue is not just “economics of happiness” but basic justice, which large-scale governments have proven incapable of providing.
Capitalism is also failing due to (a) a crunch in materials (b) a crunch in demand, the result of decades of deliberate impoverishment.
Anyway, if the covid nightmare did not demonstrate the insanity of globalism and Globocap to your satisfaction, nothing will.
I like the idea of local self-sufficiency. Personally, I’d like to see the country split where the followers of the current systems live in one half, and those who are critical thinkers live in another. As numbers are skewed towards the sheeple, the critical thinkers might manage with Yorkshire or the Isle of White. House swaps could be arranged – like for like.