parasite economics #1

IT IS a running joke among my friends that none of us does anything useful for society. Lawyers, bankers, chartered surveyors; all of them exist to advise other people who have created wealth. One of my friends was an engineer (he actually designed a railway bridge) but joined the useless brigade by becoming a consultant. Your blogger is the lowest of the low; a parasite on parasites. Financial journalists exist to comment on the habits of other people who simply shuffle pieces of paper (or rather rearrange digits on a computer screen) for a living.

But when you start to think along these lines, it becomes very hard to decide who is actually creating all the wealth. Farmers used to claim a kind of economic virtue; they produce the food that prevents all those factory workers from starving. And that virtue has been transfomed, in modern economic parlance, to the manufacturing sector which produces realstuff and not all those ephemeral service activities.

This virtue has always seemed overstated. Are all manufactured goods intrinsically superior to services? Would you rather have a wig or a haircut? Just as there is only so much food we can healthily consume, there is only so much physical stuff we need. We have service-dominated economies because people like to consume services from TV programmes through video games to leisure activities like eating out. When General Motors sells a car, the chances are that it is selling it to someone who works in the services sector; so who is the parasite in this situation?

At the national level, we can say that most countries cannot produce all the things they need (or at least desire). Britain, for example, needs food from abroad. So it needs industries that can export stuff in order to generate the earnings that pay for imports. Here the bankers start to look a lot more valuable; Britain's invisible earnings from financial services are highly valuable. Even your blogger looks less parasitical; The Economist makes most of its sales overseas, so makes a modest contribution to Britain's upkeep.

At the global level, however, the national accounts cancel each other out. The debate evokes the old saw about the island that prospers because everyone takes in each other's washing. Or as Burt Bacharach and Hal David put it more memorably in Lost Horizon "The world is a circle without a beginning and nobody knows where it really ends". One man's income is another man's expenditure.

All this explains why the current economic debate is so hard to resolve since as Messrs Bacharach and David added in the same song "everything depends on where you are in the circle that never begins." Take the public sector versus private sector trade-off. Some say that the public sector is a parasite that depends on the wealth generated by the private sector. And we can probably all agree that there is a point at which the public sector can overwhelm and crowd out the private sphere. But look at the problem from a different point in the circle. Who educates the private sector workers? Who keeps them healthy (in Europe at least)? Who provides the roads and public transport? Who provides the legal system that guarantees property rights or the police that patrol the streets? All functions provided by the public sector.

Every dollar borrowed to pay for stimulus is a dollar that must be repaid from future private sector taxes, say those on the right. The government has no money save that it confiscates from the voters. True enough. But every dollar cut from benefits or from the public sector wage bill is a dollar that will not be spent buying goods and services from the private sector. Those who want a balanced budget* immediately might not like the results.

Indeed, the huge public sector deficits seen in the western world are, in large part, the result of decisions made by the private sector to stop spending. At the aggregate global level, the deficits and surpluses of the private and public sectors must add up to zero (since the balances of individual countries cancel each other out). The public sector has acted as a giant backstop.

All this suggests that some humility is needed from both sides in the economic debate. We cannot run huge public sector deficits forever but that is not the same as saying that we should never run a deficit, nor that we should balance it now. We do not want "too much" government interference in the economy but there are plenty of vital services that the government provides. We are all of us economic parasites in a way, since we are dependent on the decisions and the well-being of others.

* Some people want an amendment that balances the budget only over several years. It is very hard to see how this would work. In Britain, Gordon Brown had a rule that balanced the budget "over the cycle"; when things got tough, he simply redefined the cycle.

farming fairytales

The way that meat, eggs and milk are produced is surrounded by one of our great silences, in which most people collaborate. We don’t want to know, because knowing would force anyone with a capacity for empathy to change their diet.

You break this silence at your peril. After I published an article on chicken farming last week, I had to re-read it to check that I hadn’t actually proposed the slaughter of the firstborn by terrorist devil worshippers – so outraged and vicious were some of the responses. And that was just the consumers.

The producers didn’t like it much either, though their trade associations responded in more measured tones. In letters to the Guardian on Saturday, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) and the British Poultry Council (BPC) angrily defended the industry. The NFU wrote:

In the UK 90% of all chicken is produced to Red Tractor standards and this demonstrates that the chicken has met production standards developed by experts on animal welfare, safety, hygiene and the environment. Farmers take the welfare of their birds extremely seriously, and therefore to accuse the sector of cruelty is absolutely unfounded.

The BPC maintained that chicken “provides a wholesome, nutritious, sustainable and affordable source of protein, produced by an industry unsubsidised by government.”

Let’s spend a moment examining these claims, before raising the issue of how they get away with it.

Take the key welfare issue, stocking density. Here’s what the government recommendations say:

The maximum stocking density for chickens kept to produce meat for the table should be 34 kg/m2, which should not be exceeded at any time during the growing period.

But the standard for broiler chickens set by the Red Tractor scheme is actually worse:

Planned stocking densities must not exceed 38kg/m2 for broilers

Incidentally, this stocking density – 38kg/m2 – gives each bird an area the size of a piece of A4 paper.

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This meets the legal requirement only because the UK uses a cruel derogation from European law, permitting a maximum stocking density of 39kg/m2. So much for the NFU’s statement about taking the welfare of chickens extremely seriously.

On almost every welfare indicator, and across all the main farm animals, including chickens, Red Tractor scored worse than any other certification scheme evaluated by the charity Compassion in World Farming. Amazingly, the Red Tractor label imposes no restrictions on the growth rates of chickens: it allows the most overbred varieties to be stuffed with high-protein feed, with the result that the birds often suffer from painful and crippling health problems, as their hearts, lungs and legs are overloaded.

As for the BPC’s sustainability claims, if chickens fed on soya – as the great majority in this country are – are sustainable, what does unsustainable look like? Soya production is one of the major agents of the destruction of rainforests, theCerrado and other threatened habitats in South America. The environmental impacts of chickenfeed are, well, anything but chickenfeed. The mass production of chickens has major consequences at the other end of the bird too: the mountains of excrement cause both water and air pollution.

Nor is the claim that this industry is unsubsidised correct. Many chicken growers barely break even on the sale of birds, and survive only as a result of the government’s renewable heat incentive (RHI). This is a remarkably generous scheme whose ostensible purpose is to reduce carbon emissions, but which functions as another subsidy for businesses, especially farms. Most new chicken units use biomass boilers subsidised by the RHI, and it is immensely profitable.

So now to the real question: how do they get away with it? How is it that we, who regard ourselves as a nation of animal lovers, accept such terrible standards of meat production? If dogs and cats were treated as pigs and chickens are, there would be a deafening outcry: in fact there are plenty of people in Britain who campaign against the raising of dogs and cats for food in Asia. But what’s the difference? Why is it acceptable to treat some animals – even creatures as intelligent and capable of suffering as pigs – so brutally, but not others?

In part, this reflects the deep disavowal in which we tend to engage when we eat meat. But I also believe that a major part of the problem is the fairytale view of farming implanted in our minds from the very onset of consciousness.

Many of the books produced for very young children are about farms; and most tell broadly the same story. The animals – generally just one or two of each species – live in perfect harmony with the rosy-cheeked farmer, roaming around freely and talking to each other, almost as if they were members of the farmer’s family. Understandably enough, none of the uncomfortable issues – slaughter, butchery, castration, tusking, separation, battery production, farrowing crates – ever feature.

So deeply embedded is this image that I believe many people go through life unable to dismiss it from their minds. It is not easy to unlearn what we are taught when we’re very young, and even the grim realities of industrial farming cannot displace the storybook images from our minds. At a deep, subconscious level, the farm remains a place of harmony and kindness – and this suits us very well if we want to keep eating meat.

Perhaps the starkest example of this myth-making I’ve come across is a children’s book distributed with Saturday’s Guardian called The Tale of City Sue. It tells the story of a herd of cows on an Irish farm.

“This friendly, Friesian family
were free to roam and browse
and eat the freshest, greenest grass
which made them happy cows.
“They belonged to farmer Finn
Who called them by their names
And when it was their birthday
He brought party hats and games.
“He played his violin for them
inside the milking shed,
and sung them soothing lullabies
when it was time for bed.”

Only after I had unthinkingly read it to my three-year-old then turned the back cover, did I discover that it wasn’t a book at all, but an extended advertisement for Kerrygold butter.

It wasn’t billed as such. The Guardian’s website marketed this publication as “A tale from the meadow of imagination: children’s author Jeanne Willis’s latest book captures the idyllic atmosphere of rural Ireland.” Following my questions to the Guardian, this has now been changed to make its provenance clearer.

I find disguised marketing of any kind objectionable, and disguised marketing to children even worse. I feel that this book misleads children about the nature of farming and milk production and sanitises the relationship between farmers and their animals, on behalf of a large corporation (Kerrygold’s parent company, Adams Foods). It exploits children’s credulity and natural sympathy with animals for corporate profits.

When I challenged the Guardian about this, its spokesperson told me:

All branded content should be clearly labelled for the benefit of our readers in line with our guidelines. On this occasion the insert was not correctly labelled and we apologise for this error.

I also wrote to the author, Jeanne Willis, who replied as follows: “I was commissioned by Kerrygold so it’s best they answer your questions. Xxxx Xxxx from Brazen PR will be in touch soon.”

Brazen PR. Hmmm.

I wrote back, asking her:

Do children’s authors not have a responsibility towards those they write for? Is there not an issue of conscience here for you? After all, if a children’s author is misleading children on behalf of a corporation, that’s a serious matter, surely? It has been done in your name, and promoted as your “latest book”, so simply shrugging off responsibility like this feels wrong to me. You must have a view about whether or not accepting this commission was the right thing to do, and whether you were justified in discharging it as you did.

She responded as follows:

... to the best of my knowledge, Kerrygold seem to be particularly strong on animal welfare so there wasn’t a question that what I created was going to be misleading. The brief was very simple: Kerrygold cows spend a lot of time outside feeding on grassy meadows so let’s tell some fun stories about our cows. I don’t feel it’s exploiting kids because the only take out is that it’s better to feed cows on grass and ensure they spend as much time outside as possible.

I’m very careful which brands I work with to avoid this exact situation – I wouldn’t have done this if I thought it was morally wrong. It’s a storybook for families to enjoy. There is no overt message to buy butter. It’s just about the cows. That said, it clearly says Kerrygold on the inside cover and on the back.

It seems to me that subliminal persuasion of this kind (“the cows are happy”) can be more insidious than overt marketing (“buy our butter”). To my mind, Kerrygold is seeking to persuade people of the inherent goodness of its products at a deeper level than merely flashing up the products.

As for the issue of animal welfare, Kerrygold’s website states “We work with small co-operative farms where small herds are free to graze on lush Irish meadows.” But it does not say “We work only with small co-operative farms ...”.

The parent website run by Adams puts it slightly differently: “Kerrygold is ... owned by Irish dairy farmers, many of their farms are small and family run”. Which could also mean that many of them are not. So I asked the company, “What is your milk buying policy? In other words, what specifications – on scale, feed, the treatment of animals, process etc – do you put in place that your suppliers have to adhere to?” I have not had a response.

From what I can glean, Kerrygold’s marketing seems to rely on the public perception that Irish dairy farms are small and mostly grass-fed. But they are changing fast.

Last summer, 3,000 dairy farmers visited the biggest dairy operation in the country (which has 820 milking animals) to discover how to increase the scale of their operations. This farm has made a major investment in indoor facilities, and supplements the grass they are fed with maize, barley and soya.

According to the former chair of the Irish Farmers’ Association, “scale must go up. ... The dairy farm of the future is going to have to be bigger.”

Could the current Kerrygold marketing blitz be an attempt to embed in our minds a bucolic, superannuated image of an industry that is now changing beyond recognition? If so, it might be an effective way of pre-empting criticism about the changing nature of its suppliers.

Dairy cows, like chickens and pigs, also get a rough deal, while the effluent from dairy farms creates major environmental problems. Imagine the response if children were exposed to such blatant sanitisation of a harsh and polluting industry in any other sector. But so prevalent is this mythologised view of farming, and so wilfully unaware do we remain of the realities of industrial agriculture, that it passes almost without challenge. My guess is that the Guardian made this error – a serious one in my view – partly because the themes Jeanne Willis and Kerrygold exploited are so familiar that they are almost background noise.

Isn’t it time that children’s authors showed a little more imagination and stopped repeatedly churning out the same basic story, even when they are not doing it on behalf of a large corporation?

Is it not time that adults weaned themselves off the fairytale version of farming and began to judge it by the same standards as we would judge other industries?

And is it not time for all of us to become a little more curious about where meat, milk and eggs come from, and how they are produced?

Written by George Monbiot - guardian

Poverty

 Poverty is not caused by men and women getting married; it's not caused by machinery; it's not caused by "over-production"; it's not caused by drink or laziness; and it's not caused by "over-population". It's caused by Private Monopoly. That is the present system. They have monopolized everything that it is possible to monopolize; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolized the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air - or of the money to buy it - even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessities of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless the had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think and say so. Even as you think at present that it's right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: "It's Their Land," "It's Their Water," "It's Their Coal," "It's Their Iron," so you would say "It's Their Air," "These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?" And even while he is doing this the air monopolist will be preaching sermons on the Brotherhood of Man; he will be dispensing advice on "Christian Duty" in the Sunday magazines; he will give utterance to numerous more or less moral maxims for the guidance of the young. And meantime, all around, people will be dying for want of some of the air that he will have bottled up in his gasometers. And when you are all dragging out a miserable existence, gasping for breath or dying for want of air, if one of your number suggests smashing a hole in the side of one of th gasometers, you will all fall upon him in the name of law and order, and after doing your best to tear him limb from limb, you'll drag him, covered with blood, in triumph to the nearest Police Station and deliver him up to "justice" in the hope of being given a few half-pounds of air for your trouble.” 
― Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

What school do you go to?

Land ownership is in fact the very basis of the British class system. It is also the fundamental basis of Andrew Mitchell's "pleb" outburst.

You see the core issue is that in Public Schoolboy parlance, a "pleb" was a pupil who was not a member of the "landed classes" i.e. the titled lot with big estates. If you didn't own a big chunk of the British countryside, then you were a "pleb", a nothing, in Public Schoolboy parlance, no matter how much money your family had.

This theme was continued in the English public schools of the 18th and 19th Centuries, Ian Brookes, consultant editor at Collins Language, said.

He said: "In public school parlance, a pleb was a pupil who was not a member of the landed classes."
line
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30191866

On 26 November I explained on a Hadley Freeman article on the Guardian, why landownership was the fundamental basis of the British Class System. Hadley who is an American who has lived in Britain for a long time, had expressed bafflement at the British obsession with class, and why what school a 60 year old man had been sent to, was so important. I explained it was all about land ownership.
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/44223585

You will then notice that I was viciously attacked by a Countryside Alliance astroturfer, who has been pursuing me for some time under various pseudonyms for pointing this out.

I had used an unlikely reference to explain this, Country Life magazine.

What we do know, however, is that the aristocracy and the Royal Family still play an important role in the ownership of our country. More than a third of land is still in the hands of aristocrats and traditional landed gentry. Indeed, the 36,000 members of the CLA own about 50% of the rural land in England and Wales.
http://www.countrylife.co.uk/articles/who-really-owns-britain

The CLA is the Country Landowner's Association. They run the annual "Game Fair", the biggest show of its type for the "Huntin, Shootin, Fishin" crowd in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_Land_and_Business_Association

Whilst the Wikipedia page says not to be confused with the Countryside Alliance, this is misleading and false. Exactly the same major figures are behind both organizations, Britain's wealthiest, and titled landowners. They maybe different organizations, but the same key figures are behind both.

Also the same key figures are behind the British Establishment, and the Conservative Party. Whilst these entities may look different, in fact the same key powerful figures are behind all of them. It is the very basis, the essence of the British Class System - and it is exactly the same clique running all of them. It is like one great big club. Everyone else is just a "Pleb" as far as they are concerned. We are simply a bunch of "plebs" to these people, who don't count, something they wipe of the bottom of their shoes.

All this democracy rubbish and everyone is equal under the law, is just one great big sham. It's just a con to deceive the "plebs", and to stop them revolting against the system, and overthrowing this "secret club" that has run Britain for the last 1000 years. I kid you not.

That is what the Domesday Book was about nearly 1000 years ago, who owns Britain. It was the obsession of William the Conqueror, and it has been the obsession of those that have ruled Britain for the last 1000 years or more.

Land is the fountain of youth. It belongs to your children's children..... not you. A major portion of your life should be dedicated to attaining it for them.

fuck money

six steps to fuck money

Wake up and get wise to your situation. money OWNS you..... and its time to tell it to FUCK OFF!

Find free food - grow or forage, hunt or fish if you must. know what you can eat that grows locally. know where your next meal is coming from.

Draw up your PCP (Personal Capitulation Plan) - disinvestment - no stocks, no shares, no bonds or certificates. 

Liquidate your possessions - second homes, second cars and all your useless leisure toys. turn it all into cash.

Foreclose on your life - cut up your cards, close your accounts and cancel your subscriptions. We don't need money to have a good time.

Spread the message - try to convince your family and friends to fuck money too!

Actions speak louder than money - the rich will buy gold... the wealthy will buy food and fuel.... while the poor go shoplifting.

Remember... politicians, lawyers, priests and bankers are all out to fuck you over

The reasons we fight

Throughout our lives and throughout our culture, we are conditioned to rally around concepts of false division. We are led to believe that Democrats and Republicans are separate and opposing parties, yet they are actually two branches of the same political-control mechanism. We are led to believe that two nations such as the United States and Russia are geopolitical enemies, when, in fact, they are two puppet governments under the dominance of the same international financiers. Finally, we are told that the international bankers themselves are somehow separated by borders and philosophies, when the reality is all central banks answer to a singular authority: the Bank Of International Settlements (BIS).

We are regaled with stories of constant conflict and division. Yet the truth is there is only one battle that matters, only one battle that has ever mattered: the battle between those people who seek to control others and those people who simply wish to be left alone.

The “New World Order” is a concept created not in the minds of “conspiracy theorists” but in the minds of those who seek to control others. These are the self-appointed elite who fancy themselves grandly qualified to determine the destiny of every man, woman and child at the expense of individual freedom and self-determination.  Such elites are often very open about their globalist intentions and ambitions, much like author H.G. Wells, a socialist member of the Fabian Society and friend to the internationalist establishment who put forth his blueprint for world governance in the book quoted above.  In this article, I would like to examine the nature of our war with the elite and why their theories on social engineering are illogical, inadequate and, in many cases, malicious and destructive.

The ‘Greater Good’

I have always found it fascinating that while elitists and NWO champions constantly proclaim that morality is relative and that conscience is not inherent, somehow they are the ones who possess the proper definition of the “greater good.” If “good” is in all cases relative, then wouldn’t the “greater good” also be entirely relative? This inconsistency in their reasoning does not seem to stop them from forcing the masses through propaganda or violence to accept their version of better judgment.

As many psychologists and anthropologists (including Carl Jung and Steven Pinker) have proven over decades of study, moral compass and conscience are not mere products of environment; they are inborn ideals outside of the realm of environmental influences. The greater good is inherently and intuitively felt by most people. Whether one listens to this voice of conscience is up to the individual.

It is no accident that NWO elites end up contradicting themselves by claiming morality to be meaningless while pronouncing THEIR personal morality to be pure. In order to obtain power over others, they must first convince members of the public that they are empty vessels without meaning or direction. They must convince the masses to ignore their inner voice of conscience. Only then will the public sacrifice freedoms to purchase answers they don’t really need from elites who don’t really have them.

Collectivism

I don’t claim to know what ideology would make a perfect society, and I certainly don’t know the exact solutions needed to get there. What I do know, though, is that no one else knows either. Whenever anyone takes a stage to announce that only he has the answers to the world’s problems, I cannot help but be suspicious of his motives. Rarely, if ever, do I hear these people suggest that more liberty and more individualism will make a better future. Instead, their solution always entails less freedom, more control, and more force in order to mold society towards their vision.

The utopia offered by the power elite invariably demands a collectivist mindset that the individual must give up his self-determination and independence so the group can survive and thrive. The problem is no society, culture or collective can exist without the efforts and contributions of individuals. Therefore, the liberty and prosperity of the individual is far more important than the safety or even existence of the group.

The elites understand this fact, which is why they do reserve some individuality (for their own tiny circle).

No matter the guise presented — whether it be socialism, communism, fascism or some amalgamation of each — the goal is always the same: collectivism and slavery for the masses and unrestrained gluttony for the oligarchs.

The Philosophy Of Force

If your idea of a better society is a good and rational one, you should not need to use force in order to get people to accept it. Only intrinsically destructive ideas require the use of force to frighten the public into compliance. The NWO is an idea that relies entirely on force.

Globalization has been consistently sold to us as part of the natural progression of mankind, yet this “natural progression” is always advanced through the use of lies, manipulation, fear and violence. The NWO concept is one of complete centralization, a centralization that cannot be achieved without the use of terror, for who would support the creation of a malicious global power authority unless he was terrorized into doing so?

The only morally acceptable use of force is the use of force to defend against attack. As the NWO relentlessly presses forward its attack on our freedoms, we, the defenders, are labeled “violent extremists” if we refuse to go along quietly. The NWO’s dependency on force to promote its values makes it an inherently flawed methodology derived from ignorance and psychopathy, rather than wisdom and truth.

Dishonesty As Policy

As with the use of violence, the use of lies to achieve success automatically poisons whatever good may have been had through one’s efforts. The elites commonly shrug off this logic by convincing each other that there is such a thing as a “noble lie” (both Saul Alinsky and Leo Strauss, the gatekeepers of the false left/right paradigm, promoted the use of “noble lies”) and that the masses need to be misled so that they can be fooled into doing what is best for themselves and the world. This is, of course, a sociopathic game of self-aggrandizement.

Lies are rarely, if ever, exploited by people who want to make the lives of other men better; lies are used by people who want to make their own lives better at the expense of others. Add to this the egomaniacal assertion that the elites are lying for “our own good” when they are actually only out to elevate their power, and what you get is a stereotypical abusive relationship on a global scale.

Methodologies that have legitimate benefits to mankind deliberately seek truth and do not need to hide behind a veil of misinformation and misdirection. If a methodology requires secrecy, occultism and deceit in order to establish itself in a culture, then it is most likely a negative influence on that culture, not a positive one.

The Hands Of The Few

Why does humanity need a select elite at all? What purpose does this oligarchy really serve? Is centralized power really as efficient and practical as it is painted to be? Or is it actually a hindrance to mankind and an obstacle in our quest to better ourselves? Champions of the NWO argue that global governance is inevitable and that sovereignty in any form is the cause of all our ills. However, I find when I look back at the finer points of history (the points they don’t teach you in college textbooks), the true cause of most of the world’s ills is obviously the existence of elitist groups.

The “efficiency” of centralization is useful only to those at the top of the pyramid, because it generally stands on a vast maze of impassable bureaucracy. It has to. No hyper-condensed authority structure can survive if the citizenry is not made dependent on it. Centralization makes life harder for everyone by removing our ability to provide our own essentials and make our own choices. That is to say, centralization removes all alternative options from the system, until the only easy path left is to bow down to the establishment.

I have never seen a solid example of centralization of power resulting in a better society or happier people. I have also never come across a select group of leaders intelligent enough and compassionate enough to oversee and micromanage the intricate workings of the whole of the Earth. There is no use for the elite, so one must ask why we keep them around?

The Opposite View

Arguing over what should be done about the state of the world is a fruitless endeavor until one considers what should be done about the state of his own life. As long as men are stricken by bias, selfish desire and lack of awareness, they will never be able to determine what is best for other people. The opposing philosophy to the NWO, the philosophy of the Liberty Movement, holds that no one has the right to impose his particular version of a perfect society on anyone else. As soon as someone does, he has committed a grievous attack against individual liberty — an attack that must be answered.

Our answer is simply that the people who want to control others be removed from positions of control and that the people who want to be left alone just be left alone. Association and participation should always be voluntary; otherwise, society loses value. This is not anarchy in the sense that consequence is removed. Rather, the rights of the individual become paramount; and the liberties of the one take precedence over the ever vaporous demands of some abstract group.

The most common retort to this principle of valuing the individual over collective fear is that “someone” must apply and enforce a structure of law and accountability, otherwise, society will “fall apart” into a vortex of madness and chaos.  And perhaps that is true, though self-governance has never been allowed to exist in the history of man without immediate interference from elitist groups, so no one really knows for certain what would happen.

Doing away with overt government control, however, does not mean we do away with “law”.  Natural law, as with conscience, exists in our very biological and spiritual being, and does not require a central authority in order to be defined.  Natural law supersedes the laws of men.  In fact, the only man-made laws worth following are derived from natural law.  The primary tenet of natural law is that no one has the right to impede or erode the inherent liberties of other individuals, as long as they also respect natural laws.  The second any person violates the inborn rights of another, he has committed a trespass against natural law.  His trespasses against government authority are secondary, if not meaningless.  When one understands the unassailable existence and preeminence of natural law, he quickly discovers how trivial governments really are.

The ONLY reason for any government to exist is to safeguard individual freedom. Period. The original intent of America’s Founding Fathers was to establish a Nation that fostered this ideal. When government or oligarchy steps outside the bounds of this mandate, it is no longer providing the service it was originally designed for; and it must be dismantled. Unfortunately, it is a universal rule that uncompromising tyranny must often be met with uncompromising revolution.

When a new system arises that cannibalizes the old, enslaves our future, uses aggression against us and mutilates our founding principles in the name of arbitrary progress, that new system must be defied and ultimately destroyed. The NWO ideology represents one of the most egregious crimes against humanity of all time, posing in drag as our greatest hope. It is based, fundamentally, on everything that makes life terrible for the common man and everything our inherent conscience fights against.

We would be far better served as a species if we were to turn our back on the NWO altogether and move swiftly in the opposite direction. Imagine what tomorrow would be like if there were no controllers, no statists, no despots and no philosopher kings. Imagine a tomorrow where people respect the natural-born rights of others. Imagine a tomorrow where people’s irrational fears are not allowed to inhibit other people’s freedoms. Imagine a tomorrow where interactions between citizens and government are rare or nonexistent. Imagine if we could live our days in peace, independently building our own destinies, in which our successes and failures are our own, rather than the property of the collective. It may not be a perfect world, or a utopia, but I suspect it would be a much better place than we live in today.

From here

Soil, Soul and Society

Many historical movements in the world have three key words that express their spirit. During the French Revolution the words were "liberté, égalité, fraternité", in the American Declaration of Independence they were "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

The implication of both phrases is very similar. It is human life, human liberty, human equality and human happiness. Even the words adopted by the New Age movement - "mind, body, spirit" - refer to the human mind, human body and human spirit. It's an anthropocentric worldview - the view that human beings are at the centre of the universe.

This worldview is no longer valid - we are utterly dependent on other species and we have to take care of them. We are members of one Earth community and need a new trinity that is holistic and inclusive, that embraces the entire planet and all species upon it. So I propose a new trinity of soil, soul, society. Soil represents the entire natural world. Without soil there is no food and without food there is no life, trees, forests, animals or people.

In our education systems, we have come to think that soil simply means dirt and that dirt means dirty. But dirt is not dirty; it is the source of life. Without it there is no life.

We are related to and dependent on the soil. If somebody grows food, we think: "Oh poor man, peasant, labourer - he is not educated so he has to grow food." If you are educated you don't grow food - you manufacture cars, televisions, computers or work in a bank or office. We sit at our computers and our food comes from somewhere.

The word peasant itself has become a term of an insult. I want to change that. I want to reinstate a respect for soil. We must touch the soil. How many times do we touch our mobile phone every day? Maybe 100 times. How many times do we touch the soil? Hardly ever. We must give dignity to peasants, farmers and gardeners.

We are all part of this healthy web of life maintained by soil. The Latin word humus means soil. The words human, humility and humus all come from the same root. When humans lose contact with soil, they are no longer humans.

Trees, animals, plants, rocks, mountains, rivers, worms, butterflies, honeybees – all have intrinsic value. They have the right to be as they are. We talk about human rights, and that's fine. But nature also has rights. The trees have a right to exist. We have no right to cut them down without proper purpose. When we recognise the rights of nature, then we have understood the meaning of the word soil.

The second word in my new trinity is soul. Soul is something we cannot see. The human body we can touch, hug, kiss and admire, but in order to touch soul I have to close my eyes. Everything – trees, animals, worms and humans – has a soul. Soil is the outer landscape and soul, the inner landscape.

We need to take care of the soul, as we take care of the soil. But we can only take care of the soul when we slow down. Take time for ourselves. Meditate on the fact that you represent the totality of the universe. There is nothing in the universe that is not in you, and there is nothing in you that is not in the universe. The universe is the macrocosm and you are the microcosm. You are earth, air, fire, water, imagination, creativity, consciousness, time and space – you have all this in your soul, in your genes and in your cells. You are billions of years old.

So if you want to take care of the universe, start with your soul. Care of the soul is for self-realisation. When you are at home within, you are at home in the universe. Taking care of yourself, being at ease with yourself, being happy within yourself, being fulfilled in yourself is a prerequisite, an imperative for self-realisation. Everything you truly need and want is within you. You are capable of solving every problem in the world with your inner wisdom.

If you want power, possessions and clutter, it is because you have lost touch with your soul. Then your soul is hungry or empty. But that emptiness will not be filled by computers, cars or mobile phones. Slow down and take care of your soul. Without spiritual fulfilment there is no happiness. Spiritual poverty is the greatest poverty, greater than any physical poverty. And as we take care of the soil, we take care of the soul. When we take care of both we achieve true wellbeing.

Caring for the soul has nothing to do with individualism or ego. This is why I include the word society in this trinity. We are members of the Earth community and we are also members of the human community.

If I think of myself as Indian then I will see others as Europeans or Africans. If I am a Hindu then I will see others as Christians or Muslims. But if I see myself as a human being, then I see everyone else as human beings. This way I can rise above my narrow identity and identify myself instead with all of human society.

We need to embrace all of society. We need to solve social problems of poverty and wars with imagination, compassion, creativity and forgiveness. All problems can be solved by negotiation, friendship, giving in, letting go of ego and going into eco. Let us make a shift from from self-interest to mutual-interest of whole human society. If we can have a holistic view of soil, soul and society, if we can understand the interdependence of all living beings, and understand that all living creatures – from trees to worms to humans – depend on each other, then we can live in harmony with ourselves, with other people and with nature.

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