A Revolutionary's Toolkit

What I've learned in a lifetime about humanity's needless predicament, its causes, and cures 

What is your employment? To wander about like vagabonds from land to land, to rob the poor, to betray the confiding, to murder in cold blood the defenseless. No!  With such a people I want no peace—no friendship. . . . I have sworn to maintain an unsparing conflict . . . Not only in battle. . . but by stratagem, ambush, and midnight surprise. . . . Vile and pusillanimous is he who will submit to the yoke of another when he may be free. As for me and my people, we choose death—yes! a hundred deaths—before the loss of our liberty and the subjugation of our country. — Chief Acuera (backup link) of Florida (circa 1540)

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. . . . If you built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." — Henry David Thoreau (1854)

Interviewer: "What are you committed to, education or revolution?” /     Helen Keller: “Revolution.” (1916)

This site has been created by Moti Nissani, professor emeritus, Wayne State University, Michigan.

Almost all dissident publications are content to catalog the daily crimes of our rulers.  By contrast, this site assembles a wide-ranging toolkit for would-be revolutionaries, doing so through a series of links.  Besides documenting and analyzing the present world order, this site: 

• Provides vital intellectual tools and action recommendations for a successful revolution.

• Provides a holistic exploration of the human prospect.

• Answers the question: How can we make our world more free, equal, peaceful, spiritual, rational, and sustainable?    

• Answers the question: What kind of a political system should humanity strive for?

• Explores a variety of revolutionary strategies. 

• Calls a spade a spade. 

This page and associated links will never see the light on most "dissident" websites.  So, if you like some features of this page, please post or share them in any way you like: Nothing I have written in the last 25 years is copyrighted.   

As you visit the various links, bear in mind Huxley's admonition: 

It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free—to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel, and act. . . .  The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free.

And Peter Elbow's:  

The main hindrance for the search for truth is probably the inability to abandon a present belief and adopt a better one when it comes along.

 

Yes, you and I are victims of vicious cradle-to-grave indoctrination.  And yes, if we wish to prevail, we must continuously struggle against our tendency to shut out alternative views of the world and to cling to discredited convictions.

This site is not for the faint-hearted:  It might take weeks, perhaps months, to assimilate its many interconnected threads, separate the wheat from the chaff, let go of preconceived notions, and build your own revolutionary strategy.

A revolution, it must be underscored, cannot be won simply by the justice of one's cause, by the belief that the truth will out, nor by a helter-skelter of intuitive actions.  A revolution must be planned more carefully than a scientific experiment or a chess game, and revolutionary strategists must educate themselves and transcend or tame their own failings. They must understand the present system in all its complexity, grasp its weaknesses and strengths, set their goal on a superior political system, and develop a comprehensive strategy to defeat our present rulers.  Once fully convinced that the system is vicious and self-destructive, they must cease to pay attention to its daily crimes against humanity and the biosphere, cease hoping that the almost equally corrupt Russian (backup link here) or Chinese governments will come to the rescue.  They must let go of the hope that the system will ever reform itself, resolutely dedicating themselves to its overthrow. 

The Insanity, Needlessness, and Criminality of the Present World Order

Author Jack Finney asks: “We live on a planet well able to provide a decent life for every soul on it, which is all ninety-nine of a hundred human beings ask.  Why in the world can’t we have it?”  

Why indeed can't we have peace at long last?  Why do we permit a system where 62 heartless crooks possess as much wealth as half of humanity (in reality, they might possess a great deal more)?  Why can't we live more comfortably than we do now—and yet more sustainably?  In fact, 

We are living on abundant planet where each of us can have all that we want and need without taking from another. Thus, war and the politics of competition are obsolete. We just need to wake up to the reality of cooperation in which we are all rich beyond our wildest dreams, and everyone can focus his or her time and energy on the things we love so that we may each make our full contribution to others.

Of all our predicaments, environmental decline is the most frightening.  Writing in 1992, and echoing the warnings of earlier environmental writers, some 1,700 of the world's leading scholars, including the majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences, issued a Warning to Humanity. They were convinced that "human beings and the natural world are on a collision course."  As incredible as this sounds, we could readily reverse course. We could save our species, billions of lives, and trillions of dollars.  See: 1. Looking for Synergy in All the Wrong Places. 2. The human experiment is probably coming to an end  (originally appeared here).  3. The Greenhouse Effect: An Interdisciplinary Perspective.

<Photo caption: How far would our rulers go to achieve their stated goal of "full spectrum dominance," using the USA as their primary tool?  1. Neither the USA nor any of its allies is under the remotest threat of being invaded or encroached on by anyone.  2. Our rulers  plan to enrich and empower themselves by investing $10,000 dollars of each American household's money on  weapons of mass destruction (like the one shown nearby).  Couldn't the average American put that money to better use elsewhere?  3. Our rulers probably have underground cities to wait out the aftermath of multiple explosions.  Do you have a similar hiding place?  4. Does their striving for power justify the killing of billions and the possible extinction—accidental or deliberate—of humanity?  5. Why, in heaven's name, do ordinary people take such irresponsible brinkmanship lying down?>

The Controllers

This site takes it for granted that the five major countries of the Anglosphere—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US—are governed behind the scenes by a small group of people.  This group in turn shapes historical events, accounts for the near-uniformity of these five countries’ politicies, and enjoys partial or full control of most countries of the world. As far as we can guess, this group is comprised of a few banking families and their allies in the information, corporate, military, intelligence, royal, and "religious" worlds.  This group goes by such names as the deep state, invisible government, bankers, oligarchy, or Bilderbergers.  In this site, following Aldous Huxley, I shall refer to the members of this group as the Controllers.

                <Mural caption:  Juan O'Gorman, Enemies of the Mexican People>

In the UK, in particular, the Controllers enjoy near-total oversight of every aspect of that nation’s life—an oversight  which is not as carefully hidden as in the other four countries of the Anglosphere.  An article in one of the Controllers’ chief propaganda organs clearly underscores the reality of power:

Governed either by or on behalf of the people who fleece us, we cannot be surprised to discover that all public services are being re-engineered for the benefit of private capital. . . . The financial sector exploits an astonishing political privilege: the City of London [London’s financial district] is the only jurisdiction in the UK not fully subject to the authority of parliament. In fact, the relationship seems to work the other way. Behind the Speaker’s chair in the House of Commons sits the Remembrancer, whose job is to ensure that the interests of the City of London are recognised by the elected members.

What is it that the Controllers are after?  Why aren't  they content with what they already have?  The best guess is that they are just as sick as the fictional Eddorians: 

While not essentially bloodthirsty—that is, not loving bloodshed for its own sweet sake—they were no more averse to blood-letting than they were in favor of it. Any amount of killing which would or which might advance an Eddorian toward his goal was commendable; useless slaughter was frowned upon, not because it was slaughter, but because it was useless—and hence inefficient.  And, instead of the multiplicity of goals sought by the various entities of any race of Civilization, each and every Eddorian had only one. The same one: power. Power! P-O-W-E-R!! (Doc Smith, Triplanetary, 1948)

Pillars of Western "Democracies"

The Controllers seek to increase their disproportionate share of power and riches, doing so by gradually robbing the vast majority of the world’s people of their possessions and liberties, submerging them in never-ending streams of lies, poisons, and wars, and destroying the biological foundations of life itself.  The Controllers' Machiavellian edifice rests on massive, overlapping, pillars:

Sunshine bribery.  Eric Margolis’ witticism captures the sleaze of global politics:  “It’s often cheaper to buy a legislator than a second-hand car.”  See: Pillars of American “Democracy:” Sunshine Bribery.

Information.  From the movie, music, book, and school “industries,” to radio, TV, and newspapers, to online and offline encyclopedias, to bought experts and fake dissidents, to online search engines and social media—the Controllers manage most of our sources of information.  As a result, all of us are, in varying degrees, denizens of Huxley’s Brave New World.  See: 1.  The Brass Check   2. An illustrative case study:  Media Coverage of the Greenhouse Effect.

Education. American education in the 18^th century resembled Athenian education in the 4^th century B.C.: private, decentralized, vibrant, and highly successful. In 18^th century America:

More citizens were literate under a system where schooling was voluntary and of short duration, than ever they have been under the long-term compulsion. . . . From its beginnings, forced schooling represented a big step backwards from the exciting free market in learning offered by the bazaar of American life, a market well-illustrated in the lives of Franklin, Jefferson, Farragut, and many others. This asystematic system of learning put the nation on a road to unparalleled power and wealth. And America’s [and Athens’] young responded brilliantly to it, out-inventing and out-trading every . . . world competitor by a country mile. (Gatto, John Taylor, 2010, Weapons Of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through The Dark World Of Compulsory Schooling)

That great system of education has been deliberately subverted by the Rockefellers and their allies. In 1924, the transformation into compulsory, standardized, dumbing-down education was nearly complete, leading H.L. Mencken to the view that the aim of public education is not

to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim. . . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States . . . and that is its aim everywhere else. (Cited in Gatto, ibid)

American oligarchs--like their counterparts everywhere in the world--need obedient factory workers, bureaucrats, mercenaries, and CIA operatives, not people who can think for themselves. Slave owners in the USA understood that an educated slave posed a threat to them and to the entire system. Likewise, American oligarchs understood that free thinkers posed a threat to their privileged position, and so they created an “educational” system that methodically undermined creativity and non-conformity. What we have then is

an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens — all in order to render the populace “manageable.” . . . Under the new system, the goals of good moral values, good citizenship skills, and good personal development were exchanged for a novel fourth purpose — becoming a human resource to be spent by businessmen and politicians. . . . the chief end of the project was “to impose on the young the ideal of subordination. . . . School has no choice but to limit free thought and speech to such a profound degree a gulf is opened between the sanctimonious homilies of pedagogy (‘searching for truth’, ‘leveling the playing field’, etc.) and the ugly reality of its practices. (Gatto, ibid)

Controlled, manipulated, trivialized, rigged, and meaningless elections.  “If voting made any difference,” Mark Twain observed, “they wouldn’t let us do it.”

In the United States, moreover, elections are meaningless.  Both major parties are controlled behind the scenes by bankers and their allies, and hence serve the interests of these bankers, not the public interest. Democrats and Republicans might disagree on such comparatively minor points as transgender competition in sports, but they do wholeheartedly support every key aspect of the present corrupt system--such things as endless wars, the propping up of fascist regimes in the Third World, police brutality, biospheric destruction, or the gradual transfer of wealth from the vast majority to the bankers and their billionaire lackeys.

<Laura Gray’s 1945 depiction of American “democracy.”>

Broken electoral promises.  In the absence of real democracy, there is a vast gap between what politicians and parties pledge before elections and what they deliver after elections.  Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Barack Obama's handlers, Donald Trump, for instance, promised peace.  Once elected, they relied on guile, false-flag operations, and propaganda, to drag their compatriots into catastrophic wars.  

Total control of the banking system and of the issuing and coining of money.  The critical importance of this aspect is captured in John Acton’s aphorism: “The issue which has swept down the centuries, and which will have to be fought sooner or later, is the people versus the banks.”  Thomas Jefferson felt that "banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." Franklin Delano Roosevelt remarked that "a financial  element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson."  To remove the danger and dethrone the bankers, we must understand how these producers of nothing are gradually becoming the owners of everything.  See:  1. People versus the Banks.  2. The Mystery of the One Bank: Its Owners?

Cloak and dagger.  To secure more power and riches, the Controllers often resort to smears, blackmail, bribes, incarcerations, and murders.  They do not only silence or murder their influential opponents, but also target any innocent bystander who might pose a threat to their power and goals.  Also, when this serves their interests, the Controllers are perfectly willing to destroy junior members of their own cabal.  Download (PDF): Encyclopedia of Domestic Assassinations: The US/Uk Smear, Harass, Blackmail, Bribe, Incarcerate, or Murder all Influential Dissidents

Reign of the psychopaths and of unchecked power. Apart from marginal, small-scale, instances of real democracies, all current political and economic systems on earth are conducive to the rise to power of conscience-less, irresponsible, self-seeking, villains.  In almost all countries and major organizations, the moral scum rises to the top:  The willingness of bad people to do anything to gain riches and power gives them a tremendous competitive advantage.  "In order to get power and retain it," says Lev Tolstoy, "it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning and cruelty."  “We must admit to ourselves,” says Mike Krieger, “that there are truly evil geniuses out there, and in most cases these characters have taken control of the power structure.”

Moreover, possession of unchecked power poses a threat to all of us, as Acton’s famous aphorism suggests: Power tends to corrupt. This applies to many ordinary people, not just to psychopaths. 

Chemical and radiological assaults on our bodies.  A. In his Dark Alliance, soon-to-be-assassinated Gary Webb proved that the CIA imported drugs to America's inner cities, thereby converting these cities into gang-infested war zones, creating debilitating drug dependencies, sending thousands to America's Gulag, and reducing the capacity of inner-city residents to fight back.  B. Since it was forcibly taken over by the CIA, Afghanistan exports most of the heroin consumed in the world.  C. A sensational Harvard study confirms numerous earlier claims that children in cities where fluoride is added to the water supply have lower I.Q. than children whose water is free of this neurotoxin.  D. The citizens of Flint, Michigan—and of many other cities—have been deliberately and deviously poisoned by lead and other toxins in their drinking water.  E. Mind-altering psychotropic drugs are prescribed to millions.  F. Mercury is prevalent in our teeth and, for a long time, in our  vaccines.  G. The Controllers' conquest of any disobedient nation not only involves genocides, but the poisoning for centuries to come vast areas of the conquered nation by such agents as depleted uranium and Agent Orange.  These isolated examples are just the tip of this toxiberg.  There is no question that such a massive attack on our bodies and especially on our nervous system, weakens our capacity to understand the world around us—let alone meaningfully struggle to make it better.  Read:  Genocide by prescription.  Moreover, it is almost certain that the attack is deliberate, aimed to physically and mentally weakened would-be revolutionaries.

In Lisbon, where heretics were publicly burned, it sometimes happened that one of them, by particularly edifying recantation, would be granted a boon of being strangled before being put into the flames. This would make the spectators so furious that he authorities had great difficulty preventing them from lynching the penitent and burning him on their own account. The spectacle of the writhing torments of the victims was, in fact, one of the principal pleasures to which the populace looked forward to.

<Painting caption: Zi Jian Li's The Great Nanjing Massacre>

An illustrative case study of one key failing:  Belief Perseverance: An Understated Variable in Human Affairs?

Leading, infiltrating, and co-opting the opposition.  This strategy incorporates Lenin’s alleged dictum that “the best way to control the opposition is to lead it.”  Indeed, case-by-case studies show that most so-called reform organizations, alternative media outlets, and leading dissidents, serve the interests of the Controllers.  This strategy confers many advantages: See Why Subvert the Opposition?

This strategy can be best seen as comprised of concentric circles. The Controllers are clearly in charge of the center: Government, schools, media, publishing industry, organized religion, spooks, and the military.

The next level is comprised of a variety of non-governmental organizations with such fancy names as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, or "Foundations," operated by lower-level Controllers such as Soros, Gates, or Koch.  It doesn't take much to figure out that such funds and movements serve the Controllers' goals.  Whatever philanthropy they are engaged in merely serves as cover for their real goal: Orwell's 1984. 

The next layer consists of organizations like Amnesty International, Sierra Club, Common Cause, Tea Party, or the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  Some of these organizations were created to deceive.  Others started as genuine movements for progress, but were gradually corrupted by the money boys and by the tendency of psychopaths to rise to the top in any organization where real democracy is absent.  Most supporters and even insiders of such organizations genuinely seek reform and have no idea that their beloved organization has been subverted.  Even some leaders of such organizations might mistakenly believe that the only way to repair the system is to work within it.  Several signs betray their subverted condition: Moderate goals and views, compartmentalization, sources of funding, salaries of their top officers, bureaucratic stagnation, their commitment to working within the system, and their steadfast adherence to strategies that are obviously failing.  

Fake media organizations play a particularly important role in this macabre scenario, as we noted in the Information section above.  It doesn't take much to figure out that the Guardian or Nation or Mother Jones have been co-opted for the longest time.  But as you move along, some of the co-opted and paid for media outlets appear genuinely radical.  They are promoted by the Controllers in an effort to keep the lid on the opposition.  Their task is to daily expose the crimes of governments and corporations, but to avoid the real burning questions:  Which specific individuals control Western governments?  What goals should the reform movement set for itself?  How can the Controllers and the entire vicious structure they created be overthrown?

The last concentric circle consists of individual dissidents. As in the case of co-opted organizations, there are many tell-tale signs that betray such sell-outs or compartmentalized fools:  Where do they get their money?  Are they leading a life of luxury?  Do the corporate media acknowledge or ignore them?  Did they die prematurely or spend much time in jail?  Do they scoff at precisely the things that might wake the people up, e.g., suggestions to abolish the Federal Reserve, re-investigate 9/11, or assassinations of well-known figures such at least five members of the Kennedy clan, Martin Luther King, and John Lennon.  Do these "dissidents" subscribe to the fiction of three branches of government or do they explicitly recognize the existence of the Controllers?  Do they talk about the Obamas, Clintons, Mays, or Merkels as the center of real power—or about the Rockefellers and Rothschilds?  Do they see that the present system, by its very nature, undermines morality, freedom, justice, peace, and human survival?  Do they urge people to vote or revolt?  Do they ever come forward with practical ways of overthrowing the bankers, or do they confine themselves to such palliatives as organizing and working within the system?  

To embark upon this disquieting journey of co-opted betrayals or obtuseness, read David Helvarg's War on the Greens (the focus of that book is co-option of environmental organizations, but the same general corrupting influences are observed in almost all major reform organizations, from Human Rights Watch to the American Medical Association, from Columbia University to Caltech, from the FDA to the SEC).  For an introduction to the subject of compromised or compartmentalized dissidents, watch James Corbet's Meet Noam Chomsky, Academic Gatekeeper.  

Contrived terror and false-flag operations.  Thomas Jefferson commented on the adverse effects of wars on liberty and prosperity: “Having seen the people of all other nations bowed down to the earth under the wars and prodigalities of their rulers, I have cherished their opposites, peace, economy, and riddance of public debt, believing that these were the high road to public as well as private prosperity and happiness.”  See a 6-part series on contrived terror, starting here.

Compartmentalization.  Our entire system is geared towards creating specialists, men and women who might be competent in one or two fields, but ignorant of all the others.  Such narrow specialists cannot possibly understand the world in all its complexity and can be readily manipulated.  The economist Herman Daly puts it this way:

Probably the major disservice that experts provide in confronting the problems of mankind is dividing the problem in little pieces and parceling them out to specialists. . . .  Although it is undeniable that each specialty has much of importance to say, it is very doubtful that the sum of all these specialized utterances will ever add to a coherent solution, because the problems are not independent and sequential but highly interrelated and simultaneous. Someone has to look at the whole, even if it means foregoing full knowledge of all of the parts.

See: Ten Cheers for Interdisciplinarity (a condensed version is available here).  

The conspiracy theory bogeyman.  Most people have been taught what to think, not how to think.  They rely on authority figures to tell them what quality is—in movies, books, food, wine—or politics.  Hence, and thanks to the CIA's ingenious invention of the “conspiracy theory” mumbo jumbo, the vast majority cannot readily emerge from the cave of political illiteracy.  When told, for instance, that the USA could have knew beforehand and could easily prevented the attack on Pearly Harbor, or that it was the American government itself that murdered the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, such brainwashed individual refuse to consider the evidence because such conspiracies cannot possibly take place. See: Confessions of a Conspiracy Theorist.

Masters of strategy.  The astounding success of the Controllers in achieving their goals, such ingenious exploits of theirs as the 1694 creation of the private Bank of England and the 1913 creation of the private Federal Reserve, the daring false flags that led to the Mexican-American or Spanish-American wars, the audacious sinking of the Maine, Titanic, and the World Trade Center, the murder or impeachments of presidents and ministers, their tenacity, their massive assassination program, their patience and habit of  long-term planning, their utter ruthlessness, provide perhaps the sturdiest pillar in the Controllers' arsenal.  Sadly, not one of their opponents, not one of the movements opposing them, has ever been their strategic equal.  See: Mush for Brains?

These Controllers likewise understand the vital importance of operating in the shadows: You can't fight or kill your enemy if you don't know who your enemy is. 

The Non-Violence Myth. The men in the shadows likewise understand that the only real threat to their rule is a strategically-executed violent uprising, an uprising that, among other things, targets them personally. So they cynically convinced the majority of decent people everywhere that it's OK for them, the Controllers, to murder and poison millions and destroy the very foundations of life on earth, but that it is immoral for their victims to own guns and save billions of lives, to save freedom and decency and justice, to save life itself, by giving these psychopaths a tiny bit of their own violent medicine. This is a fantastic brain-washing achievement — and empirically false.  The historical record clearly shows that Jesus of Nazareth, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. were wrong, and that their nonviolence got them killed and accomplished less than nothing. For millennia, hunter-gatherers dealt effectively — and violently — with psychopaths and freeloaders. Athenian and Theban democracies were restored precisely because their public-minded citizens were willing to exile, condemn to death, or assassinate, forever-scheming, power-hungry, oligarchs. 

The myth that pacifists can save the world has many well-meaning adherents, especially among truth-seekers. Consequently, the few dissidents (like myself) who advocate a violent overthrow of the Controllers are shunned by both the mainstream and the so-called alternative media. Besides the clearcut verdict of history, numerous lovers of peace, justice, and freedom, reluctantly endorsed violent revolutions. Here is Thomas Jefferson:

What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. . . . What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer likewise felt that there were situations where “guilt” becomes unavoidable and to elude it was synonymous with narcissistic attachment to one’s own putative purity and a cowardly flight from personal responsibility. "On the basis of this conviction, the great Christian theologian conspired in organizing an assassination attempt on Hitler (and then faced hanging)." (See: Domenico Losurdo, 2015, Non-Violence: A History Beyond the Myth.)

Reinhold Niebuhr, another theologian, wrote:

The middle classes and the rational moralists, who have a natural abhorrence of violence, may be right in their general thesis; but they are wrong in their assumption that violence is intrinsically immoral.

Holistic thinking.  One of the most striking flaws of the humanitarian camp is fragmentation.  There are thousands of reform movements, each more often than not dedicated to one ill or another of the present system but ignorant of the tapestry as a whole. Yes, freedom is important, but so is the freedom to live without glyphosate in our bodies.  Yes, the environment is important, but so is the right, in a world of plenty, of every human being to shelter, nutrition, education, dignity, and safety.  And yes, social justice is important, but so are critical thinking, rationality, and spirituality.  To succeed, revolutionaries must strive to see the whole picture.  This article will get you started (this is the second appearance of this link on this page): Ten Cheers for Interdisciplinarity (a condensed version is available here).

Systemic thinking.  Most analysts center their attention on one or another rotten aspect of the political, social, and moral landscape, not on the landscape itself. As I write, some of these good people focus on the Fukushima nuclear disaster; others focus on the blood-soaked neo-colonization of Ukraine and Yemen; others are preoccupied with growing income inequality in America; while still others focus on diminishing civil liberties. A few focus on one or another broader aspects of sustainability, peace, social justice, freedom, compassion, rationality, and spirituality. Fewer still pay attention to all these inter-related aspirations. And precious few realize that all these aspirations are impeded by a putrid system of governance and production—a system which sustains and strengthens itself via an interconnected set of pillars (see above). Here are two examples of a systemic view of reality:  A Terrible Normality; The Enemy Within.

The strategy of fighting directly against the environmental ill one cares most about—despite its intuitive appeal, sporadic victories, and millions of well-meaning and dedicated practitioners—is counterproductive. In a political system that institutionalizes bribes, the struggles of grass-roots and mainstream environmentalists resemble wrestling matches in which one fighter must tie both hands behind her back. Environmentalists should focus their scarce energies and resources on, once and for all, untying one of their hands. Along with other humanitarians, they must launch an all-out campaign whose sole goal is this: Eradicating the scourge of private money from American politics.  

See: 1. A Surgical Reform Strategy.  2. Brass-Tacks Ecology (backup link here).

What Kind of Political System Should we Strive for? 

Whatever strategies we choose, our final goal must be real democracy. To begin with, we must organize the non-clandestine part of our own revolutionary movement in a true democratic fashion. We must then let go of the illusion that the present system can be tweaked into compassion and rationality or that it has anything to do with real democracy (=rule of the people).  No, it must be overhauled—in the direction that has proven itself since our hunter-gatherer days as the only political system worth dying for.  In a real democracy, every major decision is made by the people, without the intermediation of self-serving judges, legislators, presidents, governors, mayors, apparatchiks, clergymen, or tribal chiefs. Although far from perfect, it is the only political configuration that resolves the ascendancy of the psychopaths problem.  Besides, both history and logic show that it is the political configuration that is most likely to sustain freedom, justice, peace, cultural excellence, individual happiness, and stewardship of the biosphere.  In my view, a forcible removal of the oligarchs from power can only be justified if—as happened in Athens in 403 B.C.— their rule is replaced by real democracy.  Download for free my 2023 book: Eight Billion Cheers for Direct Democracy (resumen en castellano).

 

 <Photo caption: “Compared to the better known surviving monuments of ancient Athens, such as the Parthenon, the Pnyx is unspectacular. It is a small hill surrounded by parkland, with a large flat platform of eroded stone set into its side. But it is one of the most significant sites in the city, and indeed in the world. For the Pnyx was the meeting place of the world’s first democratic legislature, the Athenian ekklesia (assembly), and the flat stone is the bema or speaker’s platform."> 

 

Future Scenarios 

1. Humanity's most likely fate is extinction.  In 2015, I tried to calculate the odds and concluded that, within the next 200 years, the chances of human extinction are over 90%.  See (this is the second appearance of this link in this page):  The human experiment is probably coming to an end (backup link).

2. If we escape extinction, the next most probable outcome is environmental and human degradation, enslavement, extreme inequalities, and constant warfare.  Unlike the extinction scenario, if the biosphere eventually recovers, humanity itself might recover and turn the page.  

4. Meager reason for hope: The Controllers are vanquished by their own internal contradictions, hubris, or an uncharacteristic false move.  For example, internecine warfare among bankers, tycoons, generals, spooks, or clerics might erupt and loosen their grip on humanity. 

The Pelopidas Brigade: A Prediction

In such times it is a simple act of bad faith to claim that politics-as-we-now-know-it can miraculously cure the evils which are essential to its existence.--Sheldon Wolin

An Pelopidas-type uprising is a possible future projection that deserves its own, separate, heading.

Sooner or later it might dawn on a few people who are aware and who care that elections, starting new parties, civil disobedience, disorganized revolts, frontal assaults, strikes, endlessly trying to wake up the televised and mercurized masses, all have been tried over and over again — and have brought us to this "perfect" day.  They might realize at long last that you can't fight vampires with paper swords.  They might realize that since the Controllers make peaceful revolution impossible, a violent revolution is morally justified. 

They might see that they are outnumbered and outgunned by the enemies of humanity, and will therefore resort to a special type of asymmetrical warfare: The Pelopidas Brigade.

These new revolutionaries might see that a handful, or perhaps a few hundred, Controllers are attacking everything worth living for.  They might see that these psychopaths are routinely killing millions, needlessly impoverishing billions, and placing the lives of billions — and perhaps even the survival of humanity — at risk.   They might remember that these enemies of the world's people achieve their goals in part through assassinations (see above).  They might recall Pelopidas' astoundingly successful decapitation strategy.  They might see that this strategy is immune to the Controllers' subversion, co-option, and assassination routines, for with this strategy each revolutionary can act alone or with one or two other trusted companions — and make a difference. They perhaps will see that the Pelopidas approach targets the few architects of genocide directly, instead of targeting their many brainwashed, self-serving, or reluctant surrogates. They might see that, if you must resort to violence, the Pelopidas strategy involves the least amount of bloodshed and the fewest post-revolutionary upheavals.

Whether those of us who shun violence (like myself) like it or not, the Pelopidas Brigade may rise again.  Its practitioners might give the Controllers a tiny bit of their own medicine, targeting, scaring the daylights out of, and routing, them.  Read: 1. Restoration of Democracy in Thebes  2. The Al-Sabbah Brigade.

The interesting thing about this future scenario is that it only requires a few hundreds skilled and self-sacrificing practitioners — each working in total secrecy on her/his own or with up to two other trusted collaborators — to save the world.  Also, once adopted, the chances of success of this proven least-cost revolution are extremely high — perhaps exceeding 25%.

<Painting caption: Hassan Al-Sabbah, a brilliant Iranian polymath and military strategist, was the founder of the Order of the Assassins.  The Order flourished for about 200 years, mostly in Iran and Syria, starting in the late 11th century.  The Order followed a strict code of honor, never hurting common people.  It only went after powerful Sunni and Christian policy makers who launched pogroms against the Order's Isamaili (the second largest Shi'a sect) co-religionists.  Al-Sabbah's strategy of asymmetrical warfare was astoundingly effective, minimizing bloodshed and bringing to heel such powerful figures as the Sultan Salah A'din.>

Revolutionary Rules

Here are a few rules that the failure of past revolutionary movements teach us:

1. Don’t expect to wake up the vast majority from its media-induced stupor. This cannot be done. Two centuries of vicious indoctrination have done their work. Moreover, some of the people that you try to drag from the cave of political illiteracy will betray you. The future of freedom, justice, peace, spirituality, and human survival, depends on the actions of a few hundred people who are aware, who care, who are committed to the utmost secrecy, and who are willing to risk their lives.

2. The only way to truly emancipate ourselves from mental slavery is to altogether cease our dependence on mainstream sources of information -- public schools, mainstream media, best-sellers, government pronouncements. In 1838, J. Fenimore Cooper wrote: "The people that has overturned the throne of a monarch, and set up a government of opinion in its stead, and which blindly yields its interests to the designs of those who would rule through the instrumentality of newspapers, has only exchanged one form of despotism for another." If you let go of mainstream propaganda, by and by you'd develop the skills of distinguishing truth-seekers from bought journalists, academics, and novelists.

3. If they know that you wish to overthrow the system, your usefulness as a revolutionary will be severely compromised. If it’s not too late and if you wish to overthrow the fascists, do everything you can to remain invisible. Always pretend that you belong to the brainwashed masses. Do not write dissident articles, do not try to wake up your friends and associates, do not establish contact with any known dissident. Stay permanently under the radar of the FBI / CIA / NSA / MI5/ MI6 / Mossad / DGSE / BND . . . Never say or write anything incriminating on your phone, computer, or anywhere else. If you keep dissident files on a computer, make sure that computer is never connected to the internet. If you read dissident literature, do not do so at home. Do not buy dissident books in a way that can be traced to you. Do not join, or contribute to, any dissident organization. If you need to download or buy dissident literature, make sure that the Controllers cannot trace this to you. Always remember: Big Brother is always watching you.

4. Become a master of figurative and literal disguise.

5. It is best not to trust anyone, not even your sister or mother. You are on your own. Act alone, hoping that some like-minded people would follow your example once your actions become front-page news.

6. If you must establish a revolutionary cell, that cell must never exceed, under any circumstance, three people.

7. Regardless of all these precautions, be ready at all times for the Gestapo to come knocking on your door and giving you the Joe Hill / Eugene Debs / Fred Thompson / the Kennedy Clan / Bill Cooper / Julian Assange / treatment. Have a complete getaway plan, including firearms, other supplies, cash, and a secret hiding place.

Every reform movement, every revolutionary uprising, that disobeys these rules, will surely fail. This is the unequivocal lesson of history.

1. Lessons in Living From the Stone Age.  2. The Founding Sachems.  3.  I Hate to Bother You.  4. Life without Chiefs.  5. I Ain't Flying Anymore.  6. Confessions of an Economic Hitman.  7. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.  8..  The People vs. the United States.  9.  The Four Just Men.  10. The Dispossessed. 11. Rouble Nationalization.  12. I hate to bother you (Galeano). 13. Revolutionary Lessons from Ira Levin’s “This Perfect Day. 14. Who Rules the Anglosphere?  15. History and Economics as if Truth Mattered. 16. Who Killed Aaron Swartz? 17. Brave New World Revisited. 18. The Folly of Electoral Politics and the Imperative Merger of the Humanitarian Camp (PDF). 19. Churchill, Ward, 2005, “To disrupt, discredit and destroy: The FBI’s secretwar against the Black Panther Party.” 20. Encyclopedia of Domestic Assassinations: The US/UK Smear, Harass, Blackmail, Bribe, Incarcerate, or Murder all Influential Dissidents.

Epilogue

“They’ll talk about change, about politics, about reform, about corruption, but they will never talk about war unless they mean something happening far away. Because to admit the existence of the war waged against us is to admit that we are combatants, and if we see that we are not fighting back, then we would have to admit that we have surrendered. That we have already been defeated.”—The Arctic Circle Collective

 

“At this point in history, the capacity to doubt, to criticize, and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the end of civilization.”—Erich Fromm

 

“God offers to everyone his choice between truth and repose. Take which you please—you can never have both.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing I have written in the last 25 years is copyrighted or serves as a source of financial gain.  Feel free to copy, reproduce, share, post, steal, and tamper with, the material herein in any way you like.  Attribution is neither requested nor required.