Not So Fast About Russel Brand: Larken Rose Ain't Having It

People nagged Rose about this interview, so here's his response:

Not So Fast About Russel Brand: The Red Ice Radio Commentary

By now the Jeremy Paxman interview with Russell Brand has gone viral. The alternative community picked up this interview and spread the word, and some took the opportunity to respond to it. (I will continue posting and linking to them as I find them over the week.) Below is the commentary from one of my favorite alternative media outlets, Red Ice Radio, specifically by a Swedish national--someone who's grown up under a system much like what Brand claims to favor--by name of Henrik Palmgren. Much like Brand's interview, this critical commentary is worthy of your time and full attention.

Online Resources: Trivium Education

The people who founded and continue to run the Tragedy & Hope community have, over its brief history, spun off a lot of things into associated entities or resources for the benefit of Mankind. The Peace Revolution, Gnostic Media, School Sucks and Corbett Report podcasts are all tied into Tragedy & Hope in such a manner. There are others. One of these offshoots is a free resource known as Trivium Education.

This is a curated collection of found materials and podcast archives that address this long-established and proven method for transforming the mind of a child into a fully-actualized adult capable of critical thinking, and therefore of swiftly assimilating and mastering any knowledge that he pursues- and this does include the discovery of entirely new knowledge. The study materials alone are of great value; the curators went to some effort to find free online versions of the documents often referred to, and then (for those wanting to pay for copies) linked to other outlets (chiefly Amazon) for those capable and willing to put down some money on their improvement. As the capacity for critical analysis, skeptical inquiry and effective communication is a vital skillset for any serious endeavor, I'm linking to it today as something I recommend for you and yours in your own efforts towards freedom and autonomy in the most fundamental way: towards a free and independent mind, armed and armored against Empire and its forked, silvered and poisoned tongue.

However, the best resource offered is that many podcasts--audio and video versions where available--focused on the matter of the Trivium and Quadrivium are collected and readily available for a user's benefit. This makes up much of the site's content, which is a fantastic thing in itself; instead of hunting and searching through the contributing podcasts, websites, articles, etc. it's all there arranged by the curators to ensure that you can use it to your best benefit. The definitions, while seemingly obvious and even trite, are very likely to be the first time that you've ever seen them; even if you have some experience with some of the offered knowledge, you haven't seen it put into its proper historical and ontological context before. This is the nail that your inner kingdom, your true state of which you alone are sovereign, has long been in want of; take it, use it, and never again fear losing it.

How to Deal With a Non-Standard Claim of Knowledge

Good morning!

Today we're going to weave some threads together, as an example of how to arrive at a non-standard claim of knowledge and why these things are so damned difficult.

By now you should have finished Mark Passio's presentation, posted two days ago. If you haven't, go catch up now; you need to grok what he's talking about for this post to do you a damn bit of good. You also should have read my post about non-standard knowledge claims; back up and read that if you haven't. This post will be here when you're done.

The key problem with non-standard claims of knowledge is that the source for the claim is internal to the claimant, so the audience cannot readily seek out that source and verify independently that the claimant's statement is correct. That does not mean that the audience cannot investigate the claim, but rather that the claimant must understand what the nature of the process for his claim of knowledge actually is and how this process works before relying upon such things when making an argument. Using a recent example, I shall illustrate what's going on.

Why am I insisting upon your familiarity with Passio's presentation? Because the points that he makes in his presentation are going to be thrust before you in the video embedded below, and they're going to come at you hard and fast because the video is less than five minutes long from start to finish, so you need to pay close attention when you watch it- and you will watch it.

Now, the meat of this matter:

• Non-Linear Expressions of Ideas: The use of the Fine Arts, as extensions of the Liberal Arts, allows competent users to efficiently communicate very complex ideas with very little effort. We acknowledge this as true through the saying "A picture is worth a thousand words." Each medium of Fine Art has particular and unique qualities--strengths and weaknesses--that favor some forms of expression over others, such that the same subject matter can communicate significantly different complex ideas merely by changing the medium wherein that subject matter is used. When used in concert, the synergy between them is so powerful that ideas that otherwise take years to communicate by way of standard academic practices can be had in minutes. The mechanics for this phenomenon stems in the ability to think in non-linear ways, taking otherwise disconnected thoughts and thought patterns and weave them together into a cohesive and coherent whole. This is what "great art", of any kind, is meant--and intended--to do.
  
• Emotionally-Powered Cognition: The mechanics of non-linear cognition comes from intuition, and intuition roots itself in emotion. It is the melding of Thinking and Feeling, each informing and guiding the other, covering each other's gaps and reinforcing each other's strengths. Non-standard knowledge claims, therefore, have a root in the emotions of the claimant at the time of discovery and are therefore specific to the individual that has such a claim. This does not make the claim false, or disallow transmission. What it does do is require that the recepient experience the same emotional state that the claimant had, or--in other words--the former individual must replicate the experience wherein that non-linear expression event occurred. This is, by the way, is what an Initiation Rite--properly comprehended and executed--is and does; by extension, we are talking about claims of knowledge that stem from an individual's ecstatic encounters with the vast portion of the universe that is beyond Mankind's sense-perception.
  
• Symbolism as Shortcut: The mechanics of this method for claiming knowledge rely greatly on symbolism for its efficiency. This is not just the visual symbol, but also the symbolism found in sound--music especially--as well as in the means of their use by the transmitter. For example, the video embedded below uses clips from a variety of recent major motion pictures over which one tune from one soundtrack plays. The transmitter--in this example, the individual that arranged the clips and matched them to the music--chosen with great care and deliberation what clips to use, when to use them in the sequence and how to match them to the time of the music employed. That not only transforms the components--symbols themselves, all of them--into something with different (sometimes very different) symbolic representations than originally presented, but also allows the creation of an entirely new symbol in the aggregate.
  
• Culture as Language: It is no accident that a vast array of Man's literature rests upon the narratives of individuals (themselves symbols) who undergo initiatory rites in pursuit of some goal, however great or small, and are transformed into what they must become to achieve those objectives. This is the basis for the formation and transference of culture across generations, of the assimilation of cultures when encountered, and adjustment of cultures as they adapt to pressures put upon them by other forces. It is also no accident that the decline of a culture coincides with the abandonment or usurpation of initiatory rites and the disdain of their power for discovery and transmission of knowledge by those now unfamiliar with them. Whatever else may be said of Joseph Campbell, this element--the power of myth as a means of initiation--and his recognition of its power as an element of Natural Law (for it is not created by Man; Man merely discovered it, and it is both universal and immutable) is sufficient to put him up as a great hero for generations to come- and he got from here to there through experiencing that initiation himself via his studies.
  
  The effect of this method for non-standard knowledge claims increases as the culture connecting transmitter to recipient strengthens. Even a period of short-term preparation, as I have ask of you above, can greatly increase the efficiency of the process. By using multiple media, and multiple events, a transmitter can prepare the recipient for the ecstatic experience that the transmitter encountered previously; the recipient already comprehends the component symbols in the experience, becomes familiar with the circumstances wherein the encounter occurs (vital to achieving the emotional state that is necessary for successful transmission), and therefore has the vocabulary necessary to properly comprehend the experience. This is why preservation of a nation's--a people's culture--is something worth fighting for, literally so, and if necessary worth killing and dying for.
  
• And This Relates How?: Long before the academic world arose and imposed the now-standard criteria for claims of knowledge, this is the way it was done. Your elders, your teachers, etc. guided you through a process of preparation leading to a culmination that was an initiatory rite, past which you were expected to take on a new role and become a wholly different individual within the community. We still have remnants in the Western of this in our marriage traditions, but other elements that together comprised a very efficient system that guided newborns through the process that would create young adults have steadily been snatched out of our hands or cut away altogether- and we've suffered for it. This is Empire in action, abusing lawful systems where it can and cutting off access (but not destroying them; Empire cannot circumvent Natural Law anymore than Mankind can) where it can't; we see this in a more comprehensible manner through religious and political cults of all sorts, through the practices of culture-shaping seen in totalitarian regimes of all sorts, and in the influence of centralized media over the population.
  
  We need to make use of this method once more, and if we don't know how to deal with it then we can't--and won't--benefit from sources of knowledge that don't come from centralized institutions that are easily corralled by powerful interests (Thralls of Empire) and suborned to their will. Part of what we have to do to save ourselves is to learn how to directly discover knowledge by way of encountering it directly, and then transmitting it through the means we once took as standard practice. This is not to discount critical thought; that way lies cults and all the madness therein. Rather, what I'm saying is that we must reclaim this as a valid basis for knowledge to be used as a full and equal partner to the externally-focused standards of academia- and that includes full and equal subjectivity to interrogation by means of the Trivium and Quadrivium. Logic and Intuition are partners, not enemies, and should be treated as such.

So, now that you've spent 15-20 minutes reading all of that, take another five to watch this music video. Can you see how it efficiently communicates all of Passio's points in a fraction of the time, but only if you already have the language to comprehend what's been said here? If so, then you grok what non-standard knowledge claims are, how they work, and why they are not inherently invalid- but instead fully and equally valid ways to knowing the universe. With this dimension restored, making Empire fall will come much faster.

Meet Noam Chomsky, Academic Gatekeeper

This is Corbett's own description of this episode of the podcast: "On this special edition of The Corbett Report, James sits down with Broc West of APPerspective.net to discuss how to make your own media. In this wide-ranging conversation, James and Broc answer your questions on matters technical (software and equipment) and non-technical (processes and concepts) on the subject of creating media. Join us this week on The Corbett Report as we demonstrate the fact that making your own media is easier than you think."

Rather than link to the podcast, I'm embedding it below. Enjoy, and direct all commentary to Mr. Corbett himself at The Corbett Report.

And You Can Do What With This?

This is a question that we don't talk about enough, not as I'm about to.

We're not dealing with a problem that can be solved in a way that fits with instant gratification. It's going to take more time than we're conditioned to tolerate, and it's going to take more effort than that either. We're doing what Empire did, which is culture shaping. That's a slow process, and if you can't change your perspective to a long-term one where you may not even see the benefits accrue to yourself--e.g. planting a tree that won't mature until well after you're dead and gone--then you're going to fail. If you're here for the destination, you're doing it wrong.

That's because the destination IS the journey; the process IS the result. A life without Empire is a life of continuous change, and therefore of regular development, in accord to the rhythm of the real--natural--world. It is a life where the changes you make in yourself are developments in reaction to the changes in the natural world, ensuring that Man's development is part of the natural world and thus Nature benefits from Man's actions; the natural world improves, becoming stronger and more resilient as a direct result of Man and Nature's equal and mutually beneficial partnership of co-creation. To live in this manner is not to abandon science, or technology, but instead to see how to use what we learn and create to benefit reality and ensure that all of us enjoy the new state of reality that our journey--and thus our process--inspired and generated.

So, what does this mean? We must act, and we must act on multiple levels of scale and scope--time, space, etc.--so that we can stave off threats arrayed by Empire and its Thralls in the short-term long enough for medium-term and long-term efforts to begin to manifest in the real world and shape emergent creations to our benefit. We must take what we know, and use our skills and knowledges to communicate this to others so that our knowledge spreads.

Yeah, that means that I'm already on this by operating this 'blog, both in writing my own posts as well as linking to the work of others. This sort of thing is typical in the course of action, but that is NOT the only way to go. Here's some others, rarely discussed but very powerful and should be ideas that we take up:

• Fiction Writing: I write fiction, specifically genre fiction. At this time I'm just an amateur story-teller who writes genre fiction as a hobby, but I have one friend and a few acquaintances who write genre fiction professionally (and I plan on joining them, taking steps to this end). I have no problem with doing as generations of authors did before me, which is to use literature to communicate values to audiences present and future, for one good reason- IT WORKS VERY FUCKING WELL! This does not mean that you get to skimp on the development of one's craft as a fiction writer, a novelist, a short-story writer, a film/TV/comic scriptwriter and so on; you still have to deliver the goods or you won't get read, and that's where I'm at now- putting in the time to develop my craft.
  
• Poetry & Music: I have a lot of respect for musicians and poets who embrace the Bardic tradition and use their talents, and I do attempt to write verse now and again. I live in a place where outfits like Rhymesaysers Entertainment base themselves, so getting exposed to musicians such as Brother Ali is not that hard, and Amanda Palmer--regardless of what you think of her--is a woman whose talents are used in this manner (which makes sense, as her husband uses his talents as a fiction writer in the same way). Again, you have to know your shit and master your craft, but if you do you can tap into something very powerful; there's a reason that Empire always wants control over such things, and that's due to its awareness of the threat it presents to it.
  
• Scholars & Journalists: We need a surge of independent investigators in both the academic and the journalism worlds. We're seeing now a new vanguard of independent operators such as Ben Swann, and this is an encouraging sign because by breaking the chains that commonly keep people from any useful action we can create our own communication channels and circumvent gatekeepers whose gainsaying is not about sound scholarship and instead all about maintaining Empire's Matrix via orthodoxy. We need our own academic journals, our own media outlets, and we need to network amongst them so that we can create wholesale replacements for corrupt institutions that no longer serve Mankind.

There's more, and I may return to this topic another day when I can find or invent other ways that aren't often considered to get the word out and then to organize--in the holarchic manner that we are meant for--to cut off Empire and instead handle our affairs ourselves. Empire must fall.

Mark Passio - New Age Bullshit And The Suppression Of The Sacred Masculine

Don't say that I never gave you the straight dope.

Below I embed Mark Passio's expanded 7+ hour video podcast of his presentation from the second Free Your Mind conference from April of this year (2013). This is Passio telling it straight, letting his frustrations show, and I recommend that you take this one hour at a time. Don't do what I did and spend one entire day doing this in one lump; you will need the time to process what you see and hear, follow up on the points and claims that he makes, and bookmark things that you find when you do that diligence. This is a big contribution by Passio bring an end to Empire, reunifying people into healthy and fully-actualized mature adults and putting an end to the toxic memes that contribute to both toxic manhood and toxic womanhood in our afflicted cultures world-wide.



If you want more, then head over to Passio's website (What On Earth Is Happening) and dig into his massive podcast and article archive.

Wong is Wrong: 6 Kind Corrections to "6 Harsh Truths"

On December 17th of 2012, David Wong published an article at Cracked titled 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person. Read it for yourself if you haven't; he makes a valid argument underneath a lot of less-than-polished writing, and it deserves to be heard. I originally posted this response to my personal journal, but decided to repost it here as it does deal with an aspect of this 'blog's mission: to counter the toxic memology that Empire uses to keep us enslaved.

Caught up? Good. Now, on with it:

• #6: The World Only Cares About What It Can Get From You
  
  So. Fucking. What.
  
  What Wong does not address is that this is a two-way street. If the rest of the world only cares about what you can do for it, then there's no fucking reason to give a shit about a world that has nothing for you either. This, therefore, a completely toxic meme that cannot help but to demonstrate its own fallacious nature- and we are indeed seeing this come to pass now, again, as it has several times before in acknowledged history.
  
  Wong's half-right in that what matters is the relationship between you and the world you live in, but gets it wrong in that it is not an abusive co-dependency affair where you're only together due to being unable to fulfill your own needs independently (and yes, that's what "...only cares about what it can get from you." means; it's exploitation, in the same way that slavery is exploitation, and therefore inherently an act of wrong-doing that never ends well).
  
  No, the world is not a heartless soul-sucking beast that's concerned (because this is not any reasonable form of caring) only with what it can gain from you. It wants you to show that you can participate as a full, equal and competent partner in the creative collaboration that is a healthy and vital civilization. (Which, I must clarify, is NOT what we have now- not yet.) As it is for the world in general, so it is with individual relationships, as we'll get to below.
  
  
• #5: The Hippies Were Wrong
  
  Wong's actual point--that what matters is what others see that you do for them (not necessarily your job), and not what you say that you are--has merit. If it weren't buried under references to Glengary Glen Ross, and his false claim that the world is a sociopathic entity (no, it isn't; nature is not a sociopath, and our environment is not the world), then I doubt that I would be making this post because there would be no error to correct here.
  
  That didn't happen. What did happen is that he made the claim that your worth is equal to your total useful skills, and then doubled-down on the inherent sociopathic world claim. This isn't correct.
  
  What is correct is that this is (a) a matter of perception and (b) a moving target. "Useful skills" varies by time and place, and that variation can happen instantaneously, and the definition of "useful" is NOT synonymous with "increases your income, wealth, prestige or other sign of desirability or respect in the community" because that is a moving target. The needs of others, quite frankly, does not define what is or is not useful; the circumstances do, and those ALONE do so. Since this is not reliably predictable, it is fallacious to claim (as Wong does) that what matters is what you can do to meet others' demands (not "needs", because "needs" are rather easy to handle oneself; he means "wants", and those are demands).
  
  This comes down to "you are nothing more than what economic provisions you provide", and as we all know through first-hand experience this is utter bullshit; true needs are not those of economic demands, but existential requirements, and if one seeks "useful skills" then those which satisfy such requirements are actually the ones that you ought to master- and, as noted below, this is NOT what Wong thinks that they are.
  
  
• #4: What You Produce Does Not Have to Make Money, But It Does Have to Benefit People
  
  The summary is useful. It's unfortunate that Wong then goes on to make this about Nice Guys failing to find girlfriends, because by doing so Wong loses the plot.
  
  Wong argues that by being someone that a woman would want to be with, by being able to show a talent or skill that marks a man as interesting and therefore a concrete demonstration of any claimed qualities, this is proof that (a) one has to produce and (b) it has to benefit people.
  
  This is, quite frankly, utter bullshit.
  
  This is a confused section, and the other way to tackle it--by going after the Nice Guy thing--is worthy of a post to itself so I won't do that here. Instead, I'm going to go after what Wong should have done, but didn't: actually building on his summary.
  
  First: due to the accelerating rate of automation in all sectors of society, more and more people don't need to produce a god-damned thing anymore. It's hard to quantify "useful skills" in an environment when what those skills are changes frequently, and often in the way of reduction as well as complexity; today's well-educated, well-trained profession is tommorow's McJob due to de-skilling and the day thereafter is turned over to a self-replicating machine with self-coding software. Talk of "what do you have to offer", in such terms, is thus a complete waste of time and so is talk of "producing". By extension and consequence, so is all talk of "benefiting other people" in such terms. Again, the correct response focuses on the existential requirements of life and not on economic demands (that are already yanked out of most of the population).
  
  Second: define "benefit" in terms other than retail economics, and preferably without referring to economics at all, and you'll actually hit upon the answer to what that word actually means in terms all can comprehend. The engineer who works to replace our current system of burning fuel for power is someone that provides a benefit to others; the engineer who just makes a new way to burn fuel does not, and will soon find out just how not-useful he is when the technology becomes both technically obsolete and politically untouchable.
  
  In the personal sphere, the "jerk" (because that too is a misleading label when talking about the Nice Guy matter) also has a short shelf life because he too thinks in too small a frame of time- he's the guy who becomes the engineer focused on how to burn fuel instead of replacing all need to burn fuel entirely. In other words, what he "offers" is nothing of actual worth; there's no "there" there, and like a foolish pro athlete he soon squanders his true wealth and find himself penniless on fields he once strode through as a conquerer. Compared to that, the one who avoided doing harm but otherwise stayed out of the way is the superior man (i.e. did "nothing").
  
  Now, Wong's not entirely wrong; as said above, it is useful to cultivate masteries that show your quality as an individual, but not because they benefit others alone. Rather it is useful because it benefits you first and foremost as a way to develop yourself into a fully-actualized and mature adult; by doing this internal development, what others see--the external--transforms their opinion of you and what you once sought will become drawn to you without effort on your part. This, in truth, is what "having something to offer" really means; you made yourself into a quality individual, for reasons that are purely internal to you, and the external thus becomes a reflection of your inner quality. They want to be with you because of who you are, not because of what you do.
  
  
• #3: You Hate Yourself Because You Don't Do Anything
  
  Not true. You don't do anything because no one bothered to explain to you, in no uncertain words, why you should do anything. If the world offers you nothing, and there's nothing internal driving you to act, then why do anything?
  
  The answer is to find something--anything--specific to you that will drive you to act, to do something and then to keep at it until you master it. Wong's missing this critical point and again using economic arguments that don't win people over; anything that requires the falsification of one's self is not worth doing, and that's what his argument here is actually pushing for. No wonder he gets so much crap for it; he's Doing It Wrong. He's so focused on the external that he doesn't perceive the relationship between the internal and the external; people don't need things the way that he claims. People have existential requirements, and no about of fakery--and that is what he's pushing for here--can fulfill those requirements. It's fraud, and he ought to know better.
  
  No, the proper response is to sit down with that individual and start finding out what internal processes are fulfilled by his pursuits. There's no point is trying to turn a duck into a platypus; you're doing serious harm to him, making yourself a criminal, and doing damage to the community when the faking inevitably comes out (because you will be thrown under the bus for it). Instead, you help that individual become the best damned duck that he can be; once he's got a reason, something true to who he is, to act then he won't need to be pushed to do it and he sure won't resent you for it either. Get inside his head, find what drives him, show it to him, show him how this can get him from here to there (CRITICAL ELEMENT!), and then point him in the right direction. The rest resolves itself.
  
  
• #2. What You Are Inside Only Matters Because of What It Makes You Do
  
  He's got this backwards. What you do matters only because of what you are inside. He's so fixed on the external--his "fruit" point--that he again loses the plot. If you're not driven to do it, if what inside is irrelevant, that shows up in what you do and all competent employers know this; this is why the best workplaces are holarchic in nature, staffed one and all by people who want to be there because they believe in the work and enjoy total fulfillment in it. Having witnessed the difference many times, I cannot believe that someone who claims to be an example of it gets it so completely backwards; it makes me doubt Wong's sincerity in writing this article as it undermines his credibility to be so wrong about such a load-bearing pillar of his argument. If you don't want it, then what you do is irrelevant as it is not inside you.
  
  
• #1: Everything Inside You Will Fight Improvement
  
  Almost correct. He's got the point about needing to modify your social environment to remove toxic connections and other obstacles, especially the internal ones, but that again misses the real point: if you want it, then inside and outside will become in accord and you will WANT to remove all obstacles to your improvement.
  
  The other error here is that, as he did above, he dismisses the possibility that the world has nothing to offer to you. If there is nothing out there to get, then there is no need to make improvements; what you have is enough, and all you need to do is ensure that the logistics will endure. He makes no allowance for contentment; for most people, "good enough" really is good enough. This is not a bad thing.
  
  His position presumes that status-seeking is healthy, that exploitation is normative as well as sustainable and desirable, and that the only benefits are those that feed into a short-term sort of economic thinking. None of this is true, as those of us who've been paying attention see quite clearly. Wong's so close so often that I'm a bit dismayed at how wrong he is with this article; had he paid greater respect to the spiritual dimensions of this matter, he would have nailed it time and again.

So, a summary: the real truth is that this life seeks competent co-creators, and therefore what you need to bring to the table is an array of demonstrations of that competency; these can only come from an honest assessment of who you are, fueled by an earnest and honest passion that can be mistaken for naivety by the damaged and predatory out there, and that results in masteries of a sort that mere economic thought can never achieve. If these are present, difficulties will melt like butter; if not, you can never be more than a shadow of your true self, unable to participate fully in what this life has to offer. Ignore this spiritual core of existence at your peril.

It Can't Rain All The Time: Stay Connected

Keeping your perspective means not spending every waking moment (and as many sleeping ones as you can) dealing with Empire. Even the best machines need downtime, preventative maintenance and periodic overhauls; even the best racers, pilots, fighters, and other athletes need to pace themselves and watch for over-extension. You're not a machine, and chances are pretty good that you're not a top-tier athlete either, so you certainly are NOT exempt from all of this stuff. You need to eat properly, sleep well, get around and mind your balance- not just for this matter, but for all of them. You're no good if you're run-down, ill, injured, distracted or otherwise unable to get that energy up and give it the focus it needs to let you get what you need to do done.

If you stay in the trenches 24/7/365, you'll end up overwhelmed by fatigue and burn yourself out (and no, cheeky chum, taking Leap Day off doesn't count) and that makes you useless to yourself as well as everyone else. Do the smart thing and rotate out on a regular basis, get away and recover someplace far from the line of battle. I mean this metaphorically as much as literally, because you will need the former (and be able to achieve the former) far more than the latter; being able to keep your head straight is a big deal, and being able to do it away from the holiday destinations most people resort to in order to get their head straight makes you a far stronger individual than most right there.

So find something that brings you joy, makes you laugh, or otherwise reconnect with reality in a way that reminds you why you're doing this: play with the kids, read some good fiction, date night with your special one, get your records on and dive deep into the music (or go attend a concert), head out to the museum and get lost in the best damn art you can find, paint, draw, shoot, meditate, write some music of your own, pick up an instrument and play, sing your heart out, run until you can't, cook a meal that people will talk about for years afterwords, whatever. Find that thing (or things) and get into them when you need to go recharge, rest and recuperate. This is work, and it will take a lot out of you (as if your day job didn't, of course), and if you let yourself become obsessed then you're going to have a bad time and end up in a bad way.

Love is why you're here. Don't for get that. It can't rain all the time, so make the time to get out and stay connected to what you love and that will keep you going until Empire falls.

Is Martial Law Imminent? - Questions For Corbett #010

James Corbett took time out of his family's visit to him in Japan to put out this podcast episode. This is one of his "Questions For Corbett" episodes, and it covers concerns and issues that many of you reading this have on your mind- including finding solutions. At his YouTube page, you can search for and view the previous nine "Questions For Corbett" episodes at you leisure.

Seven Days In Place: The First Step to Prep

Where I live, Winter is coming.

As I'm not a Stark, this is not a Game of Thrones reference.

What it is--as that meme points out--is a reminder that a lean time, a mean time, a time of adversity and difficulty is coming and you should be making ready for it.

As I noted in my previous post on this topic, preparing is not about the fucking zombie apocalypse. There will not be a zombie apocalypse, and what does go down will not be the utter shitfest that is too typical of zombie media. Again, you should be preparing for the collapse of the grid as a result of a natural weather phenomenon. The fear-mongering of certain alternative media outlets and figures should not be heeded; instead, you should be examining your specific location and circumstances, looking up weather patterns (especially severe weather patterns) and checking up on the ability of your local agencies to respond to such events. With this information in mind, it's time to start making a basic plan.

This is best done in steps, and for now the first scenario is the one to square yourself away for: a grid failure lasting seven full days (seven days and nights) due to some storm pattern knocking something offline. You will need to acquire and maintain a store of food, water (drinking/washing/cooking), energy (generations and fuel) and applicable medication to hold out in place for that duration. You will need to adjust this for your income, for your location, and for what you can do with your neighbors and not just on your own; my circumstances in a small household in the center of North America is not that of several friends of mine who live in the heart of the nearby city, or several relatives who live outstate in various rural communities so adjusting to conform to specific needs and difficulties is a thing that you'll have to do.

For food, I recommend staples that keep well without a freezer or refrigerator (dry and canned goods) and can easily produce satisfactory nutrition for pennies on the dollar (and aren't crap). If you have a Winter season, as I do, season rotation of goods that need to keep cool or cold is viable if you have the means to heat and then cook them. You WILL need to rotate through your food supply; it will go bad eventually, so some means of keeping track will be required of you. If you don't know how to cook, learn now; this is basic self-sufficiency skills that you should already know.

For water, you need to remember that it's not just drinking water. You need to supply the water you use to keep yourself clean, keep your clothes clean and clean as well as cook your food. That bulk pack of bottled water won't cut it; you need to have the means to collect rainwater--fuck everyone that gainsays this--and then purify it (at the very least by boiling it) before either using it or storing it in airtight sterile containers. Yes, this too needs to be rotated, but the rate is not as it is with your food stores.

For power you should have a generator. If you have the means and the ability to acquire a reliable human-powered generator, and it can satisfy all of your household's needs, go for it. I say the same for solar panels and other alternatives to the stand-by that is the fuel-powered generator; yes, you should have one of these also--and the fuel to run it for the duration--for the simple reason of redundancy, which contributes to resiliency and thus to your overcoming the disaster faster and transitioning to clean-up/rebuild mode sooner (which itself transitions to a return of normalcy sooner). If the panels break, or you're all too sick/injured to crank that thing, then revving up that engine will be the thing that allows you to convalesce and not risk dying before help arrives.

If you can square your household away for a seven-day disaster, then you're likely to be able to hold out just fine until external aide arrives for the most common reasons for the grid to go down. Once you've got this down, build up those stores gradually until you're able to do this for six months or more; this is the most severe set-up for a disaster scenario, as it means that the agencies are themselves so screwed up that they can't intervene at all for over a season at a time, and the purpose for having that long-term a store prepared is not to await rescue (it won't get there before things go from bad to worse, depending upon where you are; city dwellers will be compelled to flee into the countryside), but to weather the immediate aftermath and then prepare your household to relocate to a location far better suited for a long-term scenario. That's a post for another day.

Remember: This is Boy Scout stuff. The neighbors will not crash through your walls to devour you and take your stuff; they will be checking on you to see if you're okay and need any help, so don't worry about them- worry instead about making sure that you, yours and your community get through this in one piece.

Larken Rose: If Not For Goverment

Laughter is Poison to Empire

Did you ever notice just how laughter--the pure, healthy and joyful stuff--seemed to make a villain in the story recoil as if burned? It's not used as often now and it was a generation or so ago, but the presence of a comedic character--in addition to relieving the tension of the audience--often means that mockery is one of the ways that the villain's true nature becomes known to one and all. It's as if laughter itself was poison to the character.

Sure, there's cruelty in comedy--far more than there used to be, making it not funny for a lot of us--but that doesn't make the legacy of the Bard any less a tool against Empire. The way to use comedy to bring down the illusion of importance for a wrong-doer is for the performer to see the wrong-doer as a fool, as but a man and not something more than that, and use his own follies to disenchant the glamor of authority and legitimacy that shrouds such an offender. Once that illusion is shattered, then the fear that often grips the people and prevents them from doing away with the villain fades away; all that's left is to take out Empire's Thrall and the hard step is done. What remains is just a bothersome clean-up job.

As I allude to above, Empire has its fraud of comedy. It promotes cruelty and predation by making the audience see itself as predators, and the objects of those crap comedians' routines--ordinary people much like the audience, doing the same things that the audience does--are the ones viciously mocked as one would see a lion kill a gazelle, in a way that is uncomfortably akin to the psychology of bullying. The lawful comedy targets those whom are claimed to be powerful, elite, superior and then exposed for what they are: just like everyone else, but deluded through malice or incompetence into thinking otherwise. It is, in effect, a check against unwarranted influence; the corruption of this ancient art is a warning sign of Empire's influence waxing in a community or culture.

Because the Bard's art is such a powerful thing, as it uses charisma to sway the opinion of the nation, it is often attacked when it cannot be corrupted and made to serve Empire's interests. Be it in song, in literature, in drama and comedy or any other of the fine arts of the Bard the use of laughter to bring down the screen of awe and render vulnerable Empire and its Thralls cannot be dismissed. (Just look at wartime cartoons from World War II.) Once we see how necessary the arts are, we can see a clear motivation in denying the use of these arts for lawful ends by way of seizing control over passing on this acumen via centralized school and then using the commercial systems to softly sell Empire's knock-off and suppress the real deal. (Notice, for example, how George Carlin and Bill Hicks all but disappeared from the mainstream media world after their deaths? Not accidental, and neither Hicks nor Carlin was by no means lacking in a paying audience, so pure commercial gain is not the deciding factor.) In a world where maintaining passive awareness is vital to maintaining popular relevance--to be "above the fold" in newspaper parlance, or "on the front page" for those used to search results--it is so very easy to bury unwanted elements, and you can't deal with anything of which you are unaware.

So, bring on the bardic revival, and make the people remember who and what they are--as well as who and what the predators are--by making them laugh as the would-be colossi striding forth like beasts out of time, because in a very real sense they are just that (and thus overdue to go extinct). Before the man, make the ego fall.

The Real World is the Natural World.

Empire, at its heart, is a toxic idea that cannot persist by itself in the real world--in the natural world--and it seeks to protect itself from the force that Nature uses to destroy Empire whenever exposed. Empire cannot survive in the natural environment; it dies, and it dies in a most pathetic manner. To prevent this, Empire seeks to shape itself a barrier wherein it can not only survive, but thrive. This is one of the roots for the long-running animosity between urban and rural populations; the urban environment, being artificial and--since the beginning--long associated with Empire and its many forms of cosmic con-job over Mankind via its Thralls, is a perfect place for Empire to shape an environment that shields it from Nature and its supreme law.

The city, being artificial, is a virtual world with systems meant to dissociate those that dwell within it from reality and brainwash them into thinking that the city is the real world- and, by extension, that Empire is reality. This delusion results in disaster whenever Nature overcomes the barriers that Empire's Thralls erect and Nature's law once more destroys Empire's frauds. This hostility to Nature and to the natural world is one of the oldest, and surest, signs of Empire's presence within a nation. This hostility, if not put down, spreads beyond the urban centers and starts ruining the rural base upon which all nations rely upon to not only survive, but thrive; part of it is the attitude that Man must conquer and dominate Nature (a folly in and of itself) instead of being Nature's partner and protector, and just as destructive is the system wherein Man must pay to stay alive.

This is not an appeal for primitivism. The way out of the Matrix is not to abandon knowledge or technology; it is the opposite, and we will need to not only master what knowledge and technology currently exist--to stop being "end users" that barely know how to use what we've got--but to discover entirely new things and create new tools to transition from this parasitic and destructive paradigm that Empire created, destroy said paradigm, and move towards a return to the harmonious partnership between Nature and Mankind. We can, and we should, use our science and technology help Nature to help itself; not only can we co-exist, we can thrive together. This is the alternative to Empire, and it is superior to what Empire offers. Empire knows this, so now we have a reason for its Thralls' constant fear-mongering and demonization; it's trying to stop Mankind from breaking the barriers keeping Nature from destroying it forever. This is why Empire must fall.

New World Next Week: ASEAN Union, Petition Shutdown, Monsanto's Nobel

This video is the new episode of New World Next Week, the collaboration by James Evan Pilato and James Corbett, which they recorded the day before and got uploaded to YouTube earlier today. The links for all three of the stories and their supporting elements are in the Description field at the video's YouTube page.



These are news stories that the mainstream media either outright ignored or manipulated into illusory insignificance, whose consequences do impact your life (especially all things Monsanto), and therefore demand your attention. Do take the time to watch, take notes, and follow up on their sources for your own benefit.

The Rationality of Prepping

I don't get the issue that people have with preppers.

Sure, some of them have a relationship with reality that can be described as "casual", but that's not sufficient to discredit the concept altogether. It is wise to consider the basic claim behind the argument for preparing, which I shall do below.

Disasters happen. These disasters routinely sever the infrastructure that delivers fresh water, electricity, natural gas and other utilities embedded into that thing we call "The Grid". When one or more of these utilities goes down, we expect to be able to contact the provider(s), report the outage and get an estimate on when that outage will be restored. When this happens as part of a disaster, even if we can do that we have no expectation that service restoration will occur in the less-than-a-week timeframe that our current physical economy is built around. Food that requires refrigeration soon thaws and either must be consumed or must be discarded. Basic hygiene practices--showering/bathing, etc.--get cut back to conserve on available potable water, and climate controls are eliminated when air conditioning and heating technologies (that require electricity) shut down. This disrupts the everyday pace of life that most of us are long accustomed to in the world. There's nothing good about such episodes, episodes that--I repeat--are predictable and therefore can be prepared for.

While hurricanes/typhoons/earthquakes/tsumanis are certainly part of this matter, what I'm thinking about are far more frequent: floods, thunderstorms, blizzards, droughts, tornadoes, unseasonable deep freezes, and similar weather patterns. Where I live my primary concerns are storms and blizzards; your location will have other known patterns that can inflict disasters to account for. Therefore I suggest that you tailor your preparations for the specific environment wherein you dwell. These things happen, they can and do reach severe levels, and they can reach such extremes that the Grid can be knocked out for weeks or months at a time. Even more moderate outages, if they persist long enough, can become very dangerous.

Yes, most governments will come forth to intervene, but--regardless of that agency's benevolence or malevolence--they must secure themselves first and foremost; an agency cannot fulfill the mandate expected of them until they are certain that they can reliably act in that capacity, so they always take care of themselves and their own first. In and of itself, this is not some horrific conspiracy meant to do wrong to the population; it is nothing more than a necessary precondition for getting anything useful done in a timely manner. Even under the best circumstances, responding agencies take time to get from their base of operations to wherever you happen to be, and that time can be more than you can afford to wait if you have no means to take care of you and yours. Would you not be better off being able to care for a stricken individual until the ambulance arrives than just standing there doing nothing other than hope that they can tough it out? If so, then you believe in prepping.

So, what--at the minimum--should you prepare for? As above, first and foremost, weather and climate related disasters. You should be able to reliably fulfill your water, power and climate control needs for a period of at least one month. You should have food stores capable of feeding your household for the same length of time, at least one member of your household capable of handling injuries (including traumatic ones, due to accidents) and have a medical tool supply (not just a first aid kit) able to handle such matters. Household members on a medication regime should stockpile at least a one month supply of dosage. Extending this out to a full season (three or four months) is a good idea.

After that, you should consider that our global financial system is actually very weak and so close to collapse that one more major disaster could push it over the brink. A financial collapse will lead to political instability in short order, and--as I noted above--government agencies take care of their own first. You need to be able to protect yourself, your dependents and your property ON YOUR OWN. This is why you should acquire the means and the skills necessary to do so; in the U.S. (to varying degrees) this means firearms, ammunition and training in using them in a defensive way (because using a rifle to take game is not using a rifle to defend your house). While the popular image has preppers gearing up to take on the State, this is deceptive; the immediate threat are desperate and opportunist individuals or small groups operating as bandits, hoping to raid a store and take away the goods. In other words, common criminals and gang members. (After that comes paramilitaries--rogue agencies and militias--and then the State; the fantasy is the opposite of the most likely reality.)

(It is important to emphasize "defensive" here. The objective is to stop the attack, not to punish the aggressor(s); as soon as they disengage, let go and get out of there (if not at home) or batten down the hatches (if you are) and start fixing the damage. You are no good to your household if you're dead or otherwise unable to fight, so constrain yourself accordingly. I won't recommend what firearms you should get, or what substitutes you should go for if you can't or won't get firearms; that's something specific to where and how you live, and you know that better than I do, but I can refer you to others who focus on such matters if you want to know.)

I'm not, at this point, pushing for total detachment from the Grid. I'm telling you that the Grid can and does go down, in predictable and therefore knowable manners. I'm telling you that even the most well-intentioned and capable agencies of the State still have to see to themselves first before they can come to your aid. Because of these facts, I'm saying that you should be capable of securing yourself for long enough to easily handle those episodes when they occur- and, once you get that far, you should go a few steps further because there is an even worse--yet foreseeable--disaster on the horizon. Therefore, I conclude that prepping is a rational course of action that everyone should follow. The benefits of creating a far more resilient and self-sufficient community, composed of far more resilient and self-sufficient individuals, would far outweigh the costs in making ourselves so capable.

Which, in turn, leads me to a question: why does the Establishment want to convince the population that preppers are criminals-in-waiting and should be destroyed by the State?

The Problem With Non-Standard Knowledge Claims

There are plenty of well-intentioned people in and around the independent and alternative media communities who deal in subjects where claims of knowledge stem from sources that cannot be independently verified. They're making knowledge claims, by and large, through very personal experiences that cannot be externally validated. Many of these claims are due to ecstatic experiences--visions, voices, inspiration, shamanic journeys, ceremonial acts, etc.--that observers cannot follow, save by the exact replication of the experience, and that is unreliable due to individual differentiation. While I don't dismiss out of hand such sources, I avoid them because it is very difficult to construct a valid argument when you cannot cite a source other than these. (Not impossible, just difficult; you need to know what you're doing.)

By comparison, if I make an argument using sources that I can link to or otherwise cite, then you can easily follow up on that link or citation and see the evidence for yourself. The source of my knowledge claim is external to me, does not rely on an experience that is--for all intents and purposes--one that is unique to the individual, and therefore does not rely on my specific perspective to show my claim to be valid or not. This is one of the many, many reasons for why I prefer to present others who stick to the usual standard knowledge claim sources and do so myself as much as I can. That said, I again remind you that out here in the frontier you can, and will, need to become familiar with non-standard sources. If you don't know anything about meditation, get familiar with that. If you don't know the basics of shamanism, get familiar with that. Various forms of magical practice? Get familiar with that. You don't have to practice it yourself, but you should know what's being talked about when the subjects come up; it's one of the good ways to discern a sincere speaker with a fake.

That's the other big problem with non-standard sources for knowledge claims: falsifiability. If I cite a paper or a book, but I misrepresent what that sources says--out of incompetence or malice--then you can rebut that claim by proving that the source I cite doesn't say what I claim it says- you can prove my claim to be false. Try that with a vision experienced while in a meditative trance. When arguing that the global financial system is now what we're told that it is, claiming that your knowledge came through a channeling session with an entity from a distant world just won't cut it with most of the people whom you want to convince with your argument. Getting it in prayer, or while in a sweat lodge experience, or during an Ayahuasca experience, or performing a ritual magic ceremony, or any other non-standard source just won't cut it either. Like it or not, you're playing the game of Convince The Audience, and the audience is made up of James Randi clones.

What this means, in practice, is that this is a pursuit where your store of value--your money--is your credibility. The standard knowledge claims build up credibility by ensuring that their sources are falsifiable, and then by encouraging (via making those sources easy to independently verify) others to do just that. The non-standard knowledge claim makes this difficult at best because repeating the experience as exact as possible still fails to account (because it's not possible to do so) for the differences between individuals and their unique perspectives, and when such difficulties are made so much more difficult due to the claimant willfully obscuring their sources then that is when a cynic and a skeptic come into accord about suspicions of the claimant being a fraud.

It is wise, therefore, to make certain that the sources for our knowledge claims be as easy for others to investigate as possible. If you seek to use non-standard sources, then you would be wise to lay the groundwork for the reliability and integrity of those sources so that others can investigate as you did; if not possible, then you would be wise to limit that source to what can be independently verified (and omitted if not viable at all). To do otherwise is to fall under the sway of Empire, and Empire must fall.

About that Joseph Atwill and his Christianity Thesis

Joseph Atwill is about to present, for the first time in the United Kingdom, his thesis that Christianity was an invention of Flavian-era Roman elites as a means to tame the nascent threat of rebellion coming out of Judea and subvert that movement into a state-sponsored cult whose purpose is to continually apologize and propagandize for the obedience of the people to the state- and thus to its head, the Emperor. I have no opinion, at this time, regarding whether or not this thesis is valid. What I want to do is give you some idea as to where he's coming from, and let you decide for yourselves if this is a valid inquiry or not. The embedded playlist includes recent and older videos and radio recordings uploaded to YouTube. The full video production is embedded below that playlist.





All that's missing for your consideration is the book itself, and the sources used to make that and the film version of it. Have at it.

Max Igan Points Out The Obvious

Max Igan is the founder and maintainer of The Crowhouse. He's based out of Australia, and sees through that perspective, but what he sees is hardly so specific to Australia that it is not easy to see how this is happening everywhere else. What's going on there is also going on, to greater or lesser degrees, everywhere else. (Yes, everywhere, because the system he talks about also exists everywhere.)

I have my differences with his proposed solutions--he's talking Total Pacifism, which doesn't work against Empire and its Thralls anymore--but he lives in a land where the sureshot solution is already countered by Empire and its Thralls through a combination of learned helplessness, propaganda and some statutes removing the means to use it from enough of the population to make its usage fruitless.

This is why I talk about walking away from Omelas. The psychology of Empire has a clear flaw, in that it is obsessed with enemies attempting to take it down in manners like those that it used to seize and keep power itself; it is like Sauron's inability to conceive that anyone would choose to destroy the One Ring instead of using it against him. This is also why I direct you to Thomas Sheridan and his work on psychopaths; he's coming at the same issue from another direction, and his "no contact" solution is what we need to heed.

What we need to do is to break away and build anew, casting off Empire and its Thralls. In time, once the energy (and other revenue) drops off enough to be noticed they'll come with their guns and their rules, and that will expose Empire for what it is: a parasite that cannot live without a host to keep it shielded from the natural world, which would otherwise obliterate it utterly. (Compare this with the Archons as described by John Lash; I find them to be one and the same concept.) Break away, never again contact them, and when they come be ready to defend against their violence. They can't keep going if they have not enough slaves feeding them, so their system will run down and collapse; keep them away, at bay, and this will happen for certain. Empire must fall.

Recommended: The School Sucks Project

Another great project to come out of the Tragedy & Hope community is The School Sucks Project, which has its own podcast that you can listen to here. While other outlets focus on things that seem far away or out of one's control, what your children (and you, for that matter) deal with when it comes to the schooling system of your community (wherever that is) is both right at hand and well within your capacities to handle. Nonetheless, a lot of our problems arise out of a paradigm for transforming children into adults that arose in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. The Project addresses these problems, and seeks out solutions for various folks from how to make the system not fuck over your child to ditching out entirely and homeschooling or unschooling instead.

Yes, they have a YouTube channel. Below is a sample, uploaded on Monday of this week--the 7th of October--and gives you some idea as to the fundamental issue that the project deals with.

The Ultimate History Lesson Hours 1-5 (Official Playlist)

Above is another of the Peace Revolution productions that makes Richard Grove and his associates so damned good and reliable. This is a five-hour interview with John Taylor Gatto, the well-known teacher and advocate regarding education and schooling (not the same thing). In addition, Grove took the time to curate from his footage additional material that adds value to the documentary interview. Sources are cited, so you will want to hit the pause button and take notes while you watch; again, this ain't something to veg out to, or use as background noise.

Black Sites, Designer Babies, FDA Shutdown - New World Next Week

This week's episode of the collaboration between James Corbett and James Evan Pilato is below. This will be posted each week that they release a new episode (as there are weeks off) for your convenience.

State of Mind: The Psychology of Control (+Extras)

Richard Grove put together the film in the title. This embedded playlist has that film as its #3 item, which I recommend that you watch first and then go back to the rest of the playlist. Grove went to some length to add value to the documentary by putting as many related videos together as he could find (amongst those he had the rights to use), and he even managed to get Alex Jones to show the better part of his character (not easy). (Why Jones? Because Jones has clout and reach that Grove alone does not have, and this is acknowledged as such by Grove.)

We're talking psychology here, things that were known over a century ago and applied against we the people--American and otherwise--through a variety of means, most of which had nothing to do with drugs or torture (i.e. not 1984) and far more to do with advertising and propaganda (i.e. Brave New World). It's worth your time to watch them all, though I advise you to not watch them all in one sitting, or even one day; watch them one or two at a time, letting what you see sink in and think it over before continuing on. Take notes, dammit. This is not veg-out video time; this is stuff you watch when you want to learn something that helps you make better sense of what's going on, what went down before, and what's on deck for tomorrow- and beat it.

It's Dangerous To Start Alone. Read This.

So, maybe you'd like to do your own digging. Where should you start?

Let me start with whom you should avoid until you get your bearings instead.

• Alex Jones: Jones is a shock jock, first and foremost. He is a fear-monger and a panic-peddler. I can't watch him anymore, and watching his employees fill in for him isn't that much of an improvement. He hates the comparison, but he's really so much like Bill O'Reilly that it's disheartening; whatever his actual commitment--not his presentation, but what he's like when the cameras and microphones are off--his relentless shilling for the stuff at sale via his online retail outlets makes him someone to avoid until you've checked with more reliable and responsible sources. Why? Because it's far too easy to let commercial concerns trump journalistic integrity- it's also why you should avoid others like him include Pete Santilli; avoid all of them, for the same reason.
  
• Coast to Coast AM: Art's old show is great entertainment, but it is primarily an entertainment show and you're looking for information that you can confirm. It was so when Art Bell was the host, and it remains the case with George Noory (and his fill-ins) now. Sometimes you'll hit, but often it's talk about Genesis 6 giants, UFOs and other stuff that can't be independently verified by you. That's not to say that they're wrong, or that they're lying, but that it's a waste of your time and efforts to seriously engage in any research that cannot--by its nature--be reproduced by others. It is a big reason for why I don't deal in these things on Empires. Instead, I recommend C2CAM as a jump-off point (much like how you should use the citiations in a Wiki article; don't rely on Wikipedia, but exploit the hell out of its source citations) for more useful work. Similar shows and outlets should also not be on the go-to short list until you get your bearings.
  
• Anyone Focused on the Whackado: You're going to find people who are focused on mysticism, ceremonial magic, counter-narrative philosophy and so on (Jordan Maxwell, Michael Tsarion, etc.) and focus on the Illuminati and such. Avoid all of them; their claims are difficult, if not impossible, to verify independently due to a lack of sources and citations as well as the very nature of their focus being involved with affairs that are internal to the individual and does not produce external effects that others can perceive and measure. Until you're up to speed, don't touch them; some of them are liars, some are fools, and some are sincere and honest people making a language that lacks vocabulary for such things work to do such frustrating things.
  Note: "Whackado" is my catch-all term for that part of the alternative and independent realm that's deeply ensconced in Crazytown, often used as entertainment, and just as often cynically exploited to sucker the unwary into forking over their cash, their time and their energy- i.e. cults and con men. If you don't want to find yourself so exploited, then you need to watch your step until you get a firm mastery of the territory. This is why I'm warning you away from such individuals, and especially groups, so focused.
  

So, do I have recommendations? Yes.

• The Corbett Report: As I noted previously, James Corbett is very, very good at citing his sources for his material. You can look that up on your own, read what he read, see what he saw and hear what he heard. He doesn't deal in the whackadoo end of Crazytown, and he rarely deals with others who do.
  
• Media Monarchy: James Evan Pilato's series of sites is not updated much now due to working for Ground Zero Media as his day job, and what he does do is his music-oriented output, but what's there at his various sites (Media Monarchy, Food World Order, Holy Hexes) is still freely available for you to read and his continuing collaboration with Corbett on New World Next Week shows that he's keeping his hand in while working that day job.
  
• Peace Revolution: The best damned outlet out there. Richard Grove sets the gold standard for ethics, competence and media savvy. None of the whackdo, all of the citations needed and sources cited that proper scholarship requires. Bookmark his podcast, subscribe to his YouTube channel, and if you can afford it take out a subscription to the Tragedy & Hope community.
  
• Gnostic Media: The second-best damned outlet out there, Jan Irvin's investigation into all sorts of esoterica is something that's an outgrowth of his association with Grove. He's very good at delving into matters that were deliberately lost, obscured or otherwise hidden from us and sifting through the bullshit to bring back--like Prometheus--the fire of knowledge to a world that badly needs it. No whackado; all verifiable.

You are moving into a new frontier. You are exploring an unknown territory. You need to be cautious, be ready for danger, and be prepared to adapt rapidly to changing circumstances. There is no one to do your thinking, your reasoning or your analysis for you: coming out here means doing it all for yourself. If you fuck that up, you could end up manning a literature table or passing out copies of a shitty book on the street in order to keep your "guru" or "teacher" happy- if not wearing a uniform or singing opera in a creepy manner for no pay and little compensation.

Welcome to the adult swim.

Discretion: Yes, I Do Exercise It

Notice the lack of David Icke posts? Notice the dearth of Ancient Aliens discussion? Little in the way of UFOs and so on? Well, I have a good reason for this.

I don't buy it, not when there's simpler explanations with far better documentation and evidence that can be independently verified. It's that simple.

It's not for a lack of a presence in the independent media. David Icke is a very media-savvy man these days, selling out major stadiums and huge theaters for the privilege of watching him talk for upwards of eight hours about everything he feels sufficiently comfortable sharing with the audience. If you think that the Ancient Alien stuff isn't making History major revenues, equal to a lot of their shows like American Pickers and Pawn Stars, you would be very, very wrong; it's HUGE, and there is no better example of this than the rise of Giorgio Tsukolous (the guy on the "Aliens" meme poster) in the scene. That man's well aware of how fortunate he is to travel the world and film stuff for this show, all on History's dime, and he's got a sense of humor and humility about it; he knows it could all end at any time, and acting accordingly.

UFOs? Still good stuff for basic cable networks, and so on with a lot of stuff one often hears on Coast to Coast AM. That doesn't mean that I'm convinced that it is what they say it is, when reading the work of Carroll Quigley, Edward Bernays and Saul Alinsky provide plenty of more reasonable explanations for what's going on, how and why. Remember: "Empire" is an IDEA, a MEME, often used by me as a metaphor- it's not like Icke's more out there positions.

That's not to say that I ignore spirituality. The ancient world's expression of Empire has its roots in religion and spirituality, so I will post about the matter from those perspectives when I deem it necessary. (An upcoming post about John Lash will go this route.) If I come across someone whose argument, however, doesn't stand up to scrutiny I won't give that someone exposure here. I choose to filter out those who, on the whole, cannot back up what they say with sources that I can't double-check on my own. That said, I find Thomas Sheridan's argument that we have a psychopath problem--not a lizard problem, not an alien problem, not a UFO problem, etc.--far more reasonable and compelling for producing useful stop-gaps as well as a permanent solution. Once the psychopaths--whom, I believe, comprise the majority of Empire's Thralls--are gone, fixing the remaining problems will become much easier.

In short, while many of you may think me deep into Crazytown, I'm quite sane- and you don't know Crazytown. Ask for examples at your own risk.

(Oh, and October 7th is my birthday. Happy Birthday to me.)

Well, That Escalated Quickly: Peter Joseph vs. Stefan Molyneux

Oh dear.

This post will have a lot of embedded YouTube videos. These videos document an encounter between Peter Joseph and Stefan Molyneux, one that began with a debate and then exploded into a series of response videos that--starting with Molyneux's response video--escalated into character assassination, which got Joseph irked and prompted a second response video that went up today. Rather than spend words on it, I decided to embed the videos for your convenience and let you see for yourself how this derailed.

First, we have the debate itself:



Second, we have Peter's first response video:



Third, Stefan's response video:



Finally, Peter's second response video:

*sigh*

I, like Thomas Sheridan, am rather annoyed with the drama of such situations. Like Sheridan, I see that this incident is the result of someone thinking like a psychopath dealing with someone that does not. Peter Joseph's assessment of Stefan Molyneux's behavior is accurate, and I regret my previous support of Molyneux; that post will be amended to reflect this incident and the exposure of Molyneux's less-than-ethical behavior.

More James Corbett: The Corbett Report

Finishing this week's supplemental posts is James Corbett's primary pursuit itself: The Corbett Report. All of Corbett's reports, interviews, essays, collaborations and other productions all find themselves posted at the Corbett Report first (or after agreed exclusivity periods expire) before going elsewhere, such as to Corbett's YouTube account. Some of what I embedded earlier this week is from one of the episodes of this podcast. Instead of a representative video, I will below embedded the entire YouTube playlist of podcast episodes so that you can see what you want as you please; each episode has a corresponding entry at the Corbett Report, where links to sources and citations can be found for each and every episode.

By now I hope to show you that James Corbett, moreso than damn near everyone else out there--he's associated with the Tragedy & Hope community, so their standards should show in his work--is a cut above the shock jocks like Alex Jones and the other fear-traders in the independent media as well as far more respectable than some of the shifty people who keep getting sucked into teapot tempests due to his methodology. While no independent media outlet should be trusted blindly, some are very much superior to others in reliability and Corbett qualifies as being such a better thing. By his deeds he shows that he wants Empire to fall.

More James Corbett: Finding Solutions

There's a lot of complaints made in the alternative and independent media about how things are. There is little talk about how to fix things, and even less about how the individual can fix those things that are within their grasp. Corbett does talk solutions now and again, increasingly so since his own life and work has brought him to conclusions similar to my own: that relying on the System (i.e. Empire) is a sucker's game, and so is putting hope in any individual but oneself. Below I embedded a video regarding Stockholm Syndrome, and Corbett's discussion about this matter, for your to consider. It is this attempt to make positive use of his media presence that keeps me thinking well of Corbett; he's finding ways to kill the beast, and not just fight it.

More James Corbett: New World Next Week

James Corbett has a long-standing partnership with James Evan Pilato (of Media Monarchy, whose own work is greatly reduced due to his current day-job at Ground Zero Media working for Clive Lewis). Together they produce New World Next Week, a weekly recap of news and views that either didn't get proper media attention or got none at all- but should have. This show needs no further introduction so I will let this week's video speak for itself.

More James Corbett: Corbett's Eyeopener Reports

One of Corbett's partnerships is with Boiling Frogs Post, founded by Sibel Edmonds. Corbett presents a feature for Edmonds's subscribers, the Eyeopener report. The version embedded below is typical of a new upload; this is a brief version, meant to whet a viewer's appetite to see and hear the full video, which remains behind the subscriber paywall for three weeks or more (often more) before being released to the public at-large. The transcript is at a corresponding page at the Corbett Report, with citations and links for those willing to put forth the effort to read all of the materials used to compose the report.

More James Corbett: The Last Word on Overpopulation

Corbett's "Last Word" series is no longer in production, but when he did he produced a series of short position videos--with support linked in the pages hosting a video, and a link to that page in each YouTube upload--on a variety of topics that are not what the mainstream media and the Establishment want us to believe. This is the last in the series, on overpopulation.