Always Attack the Wrong Country

Chor Boogie

There are numerous tactics available to those who aim to make problems worse while pretending to solve them, but misdirection is always a favorite. The reason to want to make problems worse is that problems are profitable—for someone. And the reason to pretend to be solving them is that causing problems, then making them worse, makes those who profit from them look bad.

In the international arena, this type of misdirection tends to take on a farcical aspect. The ones profiting from the world's problems are the members of the US foreign policy and military establishments, the defense contractors and the politicians around the world, and especially in the EU, who have been bought off by them. Their tactic of misdirection is conditioned by a certain quirk of the American public, which is that it doesn't concern itself too much with the rest of the world. The average member of the American public has no idea where various countries are, can't tell Sweden from Switzerland, thinks that Iran is full of Arabs and can't distinguish any of the countries that end in -stan. And so a handy trick has evolved, which amounts to the following dictum: “Always attack the wrong country.”

The Color Counterrevolution Cometh

Alex Podesta

Had Sun Tsu co-authored a treatise on the art of sports with Capt. Obvious, a quote from that seminal work would probably read as follows:

If your team keeps playing an offensive game and keeps losing, eventually it will end up playing a defensive game, and will lose that too.

Stands to reason, doesn't it? The team I have in mind is the neocon-infested Washington régime, which is by now almost universally hated, both within the US and outside of its borders, and the offensive game is the game that has been played by the Color Revolution Syndicate, with George Soros writing the checks and calling the shots. Having lost ground around the world, it is now turning its attention to trying to hold on to its home turf, which is the US.

QUIDNON: Deck Arches

QUIDNON has a large, flush deck, unencumbered by cabin tops, hand rails, vents and various other features that often makes sailboat decks far less useful. It can be used for lounging around in a chaise-longue or a hammock, for stacking bales of hay or cords of firewood, or for mounting various bits of equipment, such as plastic incinerators, digesters that produce gas for cooking or for running the engine, and biochar kilns. It can even be used to keep a few cages of chickens (for eggs and meat) and some small livestock (goats, for milk) tethered to the foremast. It is covered with aluminum diamond plate, for good traction, excellent wear resistance and to keep the boat cool by reflecting most of the sunlight.

The large expanse of QUIDNON's deck (measuring close to 550 square feet) is interrupted by two masts stepped in mast tabernacles, a large hatch in the center of the deck, and the dodger and cockpit aft. These elements are quite traditional; but there are also two more elements that are somewhat peculiar: there are two deck arches. They bear resemblance to boom gallows, but they are much more than that. In keeping with QUIDNON's overall design philosophy, they fulfill as many different functions as possible, to save space and to minimize costs.

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The wrong kind of victory

John Hayes

One often hears of the fact that the US spends more on its military than most other nations combined. This is usually presented as evidence that the US is more powerful militarily—perhaps so powerful that it could take on the rest of the planet, and prevail. I find this attitude highly questionable. If we look at what sort of “defense” the US actually spends money on, and what it gets in return in terms of military capabilities, an entirely different picture emerges: of a corruption-riddled blundering leviathan that is thwarting its own purpose at every turn.

To start with, assessing relative military strength based on relative levels of military spending is a lot like betting on a race horse based on how much the horse eats. Sure, horses have to eat, but a horse that eats ten times more than all the other horses is probably not going to come out ahead because there is something seriously wrong with it.

Harm/Benefit Analysis

[Technologies : analyse préjudices / bénéfices]

According to Kaczynski, we need to reject organization-dependent technologies that tie us into the technosphere, and cultivate organization-independent ones:

Small-scale technology is technology that can be used by small-scale communities without outside assistance. Organization-dependent technology is technology that depends on large-scale social organization. We are aware of no significant cases of regression in small-scale technology. But organization-dependent technology does regress when the social organization on which it depends breaks down.

Easier said than done! It implies eliminating just about everything that makes it possible for people to survive. It implies living without electricity—not even off-grid systems that use batteries, photovoltaic cells and small-scale wind generators. It means living without pumped water, because demand pumps, pipes and valves are all manufactured products. It means living without electronics of any kind, since the electronics industry is globally integrated. No internet; no vaccinations; no cosmetic dentistry; no eyeglasses; no antibiotics or painkillers... Nothing that's mass-produced... It means living off the land using crude tools you can fashion yourself in a primitive smithy using salvaged metal. Very few people would ever settle for that!

So much for politics...

[Voilà pour la politique…]

During the past week, since I had published the excerpt from the manuscript for my next book, Shrinking the Technosphere, I received a number of responses that were somewhat disconcerting. Some people couldn't approach the concept of the technosphere without having a dictionary definition at their disposal. Others thought that I was just presenting some warmed-over version of a concept that's already been fully expounded by Jacques Ellul, Teilhard de Chardin and others. A few more thought my task hopeless because hardly anyone would be capable of grasping the concept.

I think I can guess the reason for this negative attitude. It has two main causes: intellectualism and denial.

Intellectualism is a sort of psychological disorder whose main symptom is an inability to combine one's intellectualizing with the work of one's emotional and physical centers. The result is a hollow being who uses big words and fancy concepts to camouflage a profound fecklessness. We can only be whole beings if we find ways to combine the work of our three centers—intellectual, emotional and physical—in a harmonious way. Ignore any one of them, and what you have is a slightly crippled being; ignore two, and what you have is an invalid.

The Technospheratu Hypothesis

[ L'hypothèse Technosferatu]
[Die Technosphäratu-Hypothese]
[L'Ipotese Tecnosferatu]

My next book, Shrinking the Technosphere: Getting a grip on the technologies that limit our autonomy, self-sufficiency and freedom, is due out from New Society Publishers this fall. I am about halfway through writing the first draft of the manuscript. Here is an excerpt.

It can sometimes seem that the technosphere thwarts its own purpose. What sense is there in wasting resources on weapons, when there is already enough war materiel to kill all of us several times over? What sense is there in contaminating the environment with long-lived chemical toxins and radioactive radionuclides, producing high rates of cancer in the technosphere's human servants? What purpose is there in fostering extreme levels of corruption in government and in banking, or in creating conditions for extreme social inequality? How does it help the technosphere grow stronger and more controlling to provoke international conflicts and split up the world into warring sides? Are these all failings, or are they just little problems that are too small to matter? Or—here's a shocking thought—maybe they are all perfectly on strategy as far as the technosphere is concerned.

If we look closely, we will discover that all of these manifestations of the technosphere, although on a superficial level they appear to be problems, are, in fact, helpful to the technosphere in many interrelated ways. They help the technosphere to grow, to become more complex, and to more fully dominate the biosphere. There are far too many of them to trace out all of them, so let's just examine a few of the more important ones—the ones I alluded to above.

Os cinco estágios do colapso

COMPRAR

A Editora Revan lança o livro Os cinco estágios do colapso, do escritor russo Dmitry Orlov. Nesta obra, o autor mostra como a crise profunda que atravessa o capitalismo em escala mundial torna iminente e inevitável um colapso, uma crise sistêmica – econômica, política, social e cultural. Diante da impotência da população no tocante à paralisia política, às crescentes escassezes de recursos e ao rápido aquecimento global, ele propõe que se realize uma radical mudança cultural, a fim de que nos preparemos para o colapso aparentemente inevitável.

What Are We Smelling?

[Qu’est-ce qui pue comme ça ?]

So far I have mostly tried to ignore the US presidential race. It's a distraction from doing things that are either pleasant or useful—of which it is neither. I haven't always tried to completely ignore these torrents of nonsense that erupt every four years like a gushing sewer, but, in general, I was never interested in the outcome, because in all but one case I genuinely disliked all of the candidates. Jimmy Carter is the only one whose hand I would shake. I wouldn't want to breathe the same air with any of the others—all lizard-brained miscreants who have left a slimy trail through the White House.

As I understand it, the way this system is supposed to work is as follows. There is just one good, solid reason to vote for the Democratic candidate: to keep out the Republicans, who are so much worse than the Democrats. And there is just one good, solid reason to vote for the Republican candidate: to keep out the Democrats, who are so much worse than the Republicans. Now, you may ask yourself, How is it possible for both sides to be worse at the same time? Well, you are right, that's not possible. Obviously, they have to take turns at becoming the worst. Whoever happens to be in office adds another turn to the downward spiral.

QUIDNON Eye Candy

Many thanks to Helder Silva of Lisbon for making these 3D models in Sketchup.

Life on board is much too hard!

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