All of these revolutionary actions represent people interacting directly with each other in ways that cannot be interfered with, regulated or proscribed by the globalist institutions that are seeking to bring about their New World Order.
Henry Ford famously remarked about the Model T: “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” No one likes the idea of a false choice or a rigged game, but the thought is even more egregious when it comes to politics.
When a fake political choice is offered it's not the color of the car we drive that hangs in the balance but whether or not the banks get bailed out or the future of the health care system or whether or not the country will go to war. It is literally a matter of life and death. This is why the oligarchs go to such lengths to make it look like we have a choice. No one wants to hear “Tails we win, heads you lose” from a slick-talking, fancy-suit-wearing corporate or political millionaire (or billionaire), even if that's what it really boils down to.
Occasionally, the false nature of our political “choice” is highlighted in a funny or interesting way. Take George Carlin's famous bit about political choice in America: “The things that matter in this country have been reduced in choice: there are two political parties, there are a handful of insurance companies, there are six or seven information sources...but if you want a bagel there are 23 flavors. Because you have the illusion of choice!”
Or take the recent election in Japan. In the prefecture of Hokkaido, a registered party named “Shiji Seito Nashi” (No Party to Support) ended up garnering nearly 105,000 proportional representation votes last week as people registered their disgust with the political status quo. The party seeks to give voice to the sizable proportion of the public that recognizes that there is no real difference between the establishment political parties. Generally these people would not vote at all or would cast blank or spoiled ballots whose numbers are generally not publicized, but in this case we know that there were more people who wanted to vote for no one than wanted to vote for major opposition parties like the Social Democrats (53,605 votes).
By now, the idea that the choice between “right” and “left,” “blue” and “red,” Democrat and Republican, Bush and Clinton, is no choice at all is fairly commonly held in the alternative media. But for some reason, many of those independent thinkers who reject the false choice at the national political level seem to be only too happy to buy into it at the international level. Those very same political misleaders that we so mistrust when they're pretending to oppose each other's ideas at the national level are now increasingly telling us that there's a new battle shaping up. This is an economic and political battle that could have military implications. It's the battle that will shape the 21st century in the way that its counterpart shaped the 20th century. It's the “New Cold War” and, depending who you ask, it involves something like a NATO power bloc against a Russia/China/Iran/Syria resistance bloc. Or perhaps an IMF/World Bank bloc against a BRICS bloc. Or even a US dollar bloc against a yuan bloc.
This is the topic we tackled last week. In that article (“US and China: Frenemies With Benefits”) we explored the phony nature of at least one of those conflicts, namely the supposed economic and political rivalry of the US and China. Despite the heated rhetoric (and the real belief in that rhetoric from many earnest politicians, businessmen and military brass), there is a real attempt at (and incentive for) cooperation between the oligarchs who control Western finance and politics and their Chinese counterparts. While there may be infighting and backstabbing that goes on in an attempt to jockey for control of the emerging global financial order, the fact that both sides of this “conflict” are aiming at an oligarch-controlled world order should not be controversial. And yet it is. Many in the alt media are buying into the notion that if we don't want a NATO/IMF/US dollar hegemony then we must rely on Moscow or Beijing or Tehran to stand up to it.
But what if the supposed “enemies” of these globalists are themselves avowed globalists? What if Vladimir Putin has repeatedly called for the establishment of a New World Order that furthers the ideals embedded in the “creation of the United Nations,” or is working to create a Eurasian Union that is explicitly modeled on the European Union's completely unaccountable and tyrannical framework? What if China's mouthpiece Xinhua routinely runs editorials calling for a New World Order that doesn't dismantle the current World Bank/IMF global financial infrastructure, but merely begs for a Chinese seat at the table? What if all of these nations on both sides of the divide are members of organizations like the G20 that just rubber stamped a white paper from the bankster-run Financial Stability Board that will institutionalize the practice of banking bail-ins and put depositors' money on the line in the wake of the next “Too Big To Fail” failure? Or what if they all have just become signatories to a global tax treaty that will begin sharing everyone's bank balances, interests, proceeds from asset sales and other key financial information between nearly 100 nations beginning in 2017? Because all of these things (and many more like them) are true.
It is clear that the “choice” offered us at the international level, like the “choice” at the national level, is a false one. A choice between American/NATO/Western globalization and Chinese/Russian/Iranian globalization is no choice at all if one doesn't want to sign on to an international order administered by international bureacracies and run by bankster-appointed technocrats. But if these geopolitical “choices” are phony, then what is the solution?
As always, in order to understand the solution, we must understand the problem. The problem, of course, is not that the “world order” proposed by the US/NATO technocrats is less friendly or fuzzy than the kumbaya-hand-holding vision offered by the cuddlier BRICS technocrats; it's that both sides want a centralized, unaccountable technocracy to administer the global economy through explicitly bankster-led institutions like the Bank for International Settlements and the Financial Stability Board. If we want to truly counteract the globalists, we have to offer the opposite vision; namely, that of a decentralized non-order of free individuals acting in voluntary association.
This is still a tough sell to wide swathes of the public. For a public that can't even contemplate the idea of voluntary association at the local level without asking a knee-jerk non-sequitur about “Who will build the roads?” getting these same people to understand the concept of spontaneous order or the ideology of agorism is next to impossible. “These are your rulers; support them” is always an easier sell than “You are your own leader; act wisely.” But this is precisely what we need to realize in order to divert the world from its current path and move it toward a path of peaceful, voluntary cooperation.
The process of removing ourselves from the current system is one that in its totality is overwhelming, perhaps even impossible to contemplate. The economic and financial structures that underpin our political reality impinge on literally every part of our daily lives. They determine the job market from which we select our livelihood, the forms of money that we use to interact with others in the economy, the types of products that are available for us to purchase, the rules and regulations we have to abide by for the privilege of living in one or another area of the earth, and almost everything else that we do, think, or choose on a daily basis. Thus, to truly remove ourselves from the pincers of the globalist trap would involve a wholesale uprooting of everything we do. It would involve changing our bank, divesting ourselves of government-issued fiat currencies, participating in tax revolt, letting go of the belief in the (phony and controlled) political system, getting to know our neighbors, getting off the grid, and, for many, changing our job.
Given the width of the gulf between here and there, it's tempting to say that the chasm is just too wide and thus that such a change is impossible. But this is to give in to the mentality that change is an all-or-nothing proposition. “Unless the entire New World Order system is deconstructed overnight and all at once,” this argument goes, “then it doesn't matter and resistance is useless.”
Such thinking is hogwash, of course. No systemic change happens all at once and overnight. This “New World Order” system of United Nations / WTO / IMF / G20 / BIS / OECD control over international relations did not spring up overnight. These are the outgrowths of ideologies and institutions that have been around for at least a century now and carefully worked toward by a bright and dedicated (if psychopathic) bankster-funded technocratic elite. Deconstructing these institutions is not going to take any less effort, time or dedication than it took to construct them. Instead, we have to see every action of ours that goes around this system, no matter how small it might appear at first glance, as a revolutionary act. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and the creation of a new concept for global non-order begins with a single act.
What that act is, precisely, will differ from person to person, but there are as many different ways to begin side-stepping this system as there are people on the planet. It may be something as simple as booking a shared ride through Uber or renting a place to stay on your next vacation via airbnb. What, sharing a ride or booking a place don't seem like revolutionary acts? Then why are country after country cracking down on or even banning these services? What's so scary about the idea of people finding ways to rent a seat in their car or rent out their apartment directly to willing customers via the internet? Why do governments feel threatened by these services?
Is it because they offer that toe-in-the-water introduction to the wider idea of the sharing economy? For those who don't know, services like Uber and airbnb are only the surface of a vast and growing network of services that aim to bring people together in communities (virtual or real) that encourage people to trade, barter or sell their own unused goods or services directly with each other. These communities are so far arranging everything from online barter exchanges to free gift exchanges to labor markets to makerspaces and even communities of self-insured healthcare cooperatives that bypass the government-mandated corporate healthcare system. There truly is no limit to what is possible for people to share, sell, or exchange with each other when left to their own devices...except for those limits set by government, of course.
The technological realm has provided us with the metaphor for this new type of community-led economy that is in direct opposition to the top-down control of the New World Order crowd: open source. In computer terms, an “open source” program is one in which the source code is open to access and inspection by anyone, and which can be freely distributed to others. The open source revolution in the computer world was not some minor movement by fringe characters. As Daniel Lemire notes on his blog, open source software like the Linux operating system is woven into the fabric of our modern world:
“The entire Internet is held together by open source software. The cheap router that powers your Wifi network at home uses the Linux kernel. Your android phone is based on the Linux kernel. Google servers run Linux. In 2014, almost everyone is a Linux user.”
So how do we extend this idea out into the wider world? Believe it or not, this is already being done. As 3D printing technology advances, the idea of open source blueprints for the fabrication of 3D printed objects will obviously become more important, but there are already websites online where these designs are being given away, traded or sold. To put this in concrete terms: there are places online where you can go to download the blueprints for, say, a life-sized bust of Stephen Colbert. Sound silly? Well, it is, but it doesn't take much imagination to see how this will begin to transform our current model of production and distribution, where household items are created en masse in factories hundreds or thousands of miles away and shipped to stores all around the world in the hopes that a customer might be walking by the shelf and decide to buy it. The madness of a world in which production is geared toward such massive inefficiency will be ended and the potential of humanity will be unlocked when designers can interact directly with those who will use their products. The international corporate slave-labor factory production middleman will seem as quaint and irrelevant to the late 21st century economy as the ironmonger or the chimney sweep seems today, and the vast bureaucracies of WTO and OECD and G20 middlemen creating tax, tariff and regulatory hurdles in that economy will be equally irrelevant and useless as people interact directly and instantaneously across town or around the world.
This ethos extends to the food supply, as well. Community gardening is a revolutionary act. Buying fresh produce from the local farmer's market is a revolutionary act. Sourcing raw milk from a local cow share is a revolutionary act. Why else would the government send armed SWAT teams to raid those communities that do it?
Of course, the idea of truly liberating the economy is a pipe dream if that economy is still tied to government-issued fiat currencies that allow those in positions of political (and financial) power to fundamentally manipulate and control the economy itself. In this context, every time we interact with those around us in dollars, yen, euros, pounds or rubles has to be seen as a bolstering of the status quo. On the other hand, every time we engage in barter, make use of a Local Exchange Trading System, support a community business with local alternative currency, purchase goods online with a currency enabled by a decentralized, peer-to-peer, distributed database (like bitcoin), or participate in the gifting economy, we engage in a revolutionary act.
In order to be truly effective, this has to be extended to the banking sector, as well, of course, and here again people are overwhelmed by the monumental undertaking that will be required to take ourselves completely off the current banking system. But once again, baby steps toward freedom are still steps in the right direction. Closing your account at one of the Big Five “too big to jail” banks and opening an account at a local credit union is a step in the right direction. If it's a local credit union that accepts local alternative currency, so much the better. Such options exist in many places today. Why do you think it is that most people don't know about them, and those that do are seen as weirdos who are trying to buck a trend that can never be bucked? Isn't this precisely what an oligarchical elite that relies on our voluntary participation in their economy, buying their products and using their banks, wants us to believe?
All of these “revolutionary” actions represent people interacting directly with each other (whether across the street or around the globe) in ways that cannot be interfered with, regulated or proscribed by the globalist institutions that are seeking to bring about their New World Order. This is why these options are never held up as the answer to our concerns. It is always a question of “supporting the government” or putting our faith in multinational institutions. And this is why the propaganda of these institutions relies on getting you to give in to the idea that resistance is futile. Because the true power of humanity can be unlocked by each and every one of us, and it can start with something as simple as reading, sharing, and discussing this article with your friends.
To modify Orwell: in a time of globalist world order, thinking differently is a revolutionary act.
It's time for us to put our own ultimatum to the globalists: Tails we win, heads you lose.