Max Igan, Surviving the Matrix - S02/E12: The Power of Possibility

It Is Time To Make Changes At This Place

Now that we are past the midway point of 2014, I think it is time to pause and consider what I want to do with this 'blog.

By now I have a short list of go-to people whose videos, articles, etc. consistently meet my standards for reliability, quality, and usefulness. I find it interesting to see that most of the content originating elsewhere that I curate and connect to during the week and on Saturdays comes from those sources. While useful to me, I think that I should reconsider making outright posts of this stuff instead of just adding the regulars to a 'blog roll on the side, and instead focus my curation efforts on connecting you readers to all of the good stuff that I find- but yet is not popular or has not yet found itself an audience.

The other thing I think I need to reconsider is that, at this time, there is little formal structure to the content that I post here. This is, I think, doing more harm than good for the 'blog at this time and I should institute some form of structure to the content. At the very least, I should impose a schedule and use that to focus my attention (therefore, my efforts, and in turn your attention) on a far more manageable range of topics. This, I think, is a good way to resolve an issue that I have right now.

That issue is a lack of perceptible impact. Audience size, scale, scope, etc. are consistent- and consistently low and shallow. I think that I can solve this problem through a review of what I choose to curate, what I choose to exclude, and find within those niches a place for myself. This will not happen within a week; I have plenty to do that has nothing to do with this 'blog coming up this week, and I have other things competing for my attention through the first two weeks in July. So, while you can expect things to change they will not happen immediately or immanently.

The goal, however, is the same- to make Empire fall.

Gnostic Media #203: An Interview w/ Kristov Atlas on Anonymous Bitcoin, Cryptography and Online Safety

Down The Rabbit Hole w/ Popeye of Federal Jack: ISIS & The Current Chaos In Iraq Explained

(From the June 17th broadcast): "On this edition of DTRH Popeye covers the current chaos in Iraq with ISIS taking control of major cities in the country. He goes over the history of the US involvement in the country since the first gulf war up to present day in order for the listener to have a better understanding of the bigger picture. He also covers ISIS, and how they are being propped up as the new bogey man in order to continue the endless war on (OF) terror, and push their police state agenda"

The Corbett Report: Questions for Corbett #14 - Where's the Fed Documentary?

Gnostic Media #202: Interview w/ Bill Joslin, "Meditation: Deconstructing Nonsense"

Max Igan: Surviving the Matrix, S2/E11 - Collective Individuality

Iron Man and The Rocketeer - ClandesTime 032

Secker's back for more: "In this edition I look at two very similar films made about 15 years apart – The Rocketeer and Iron Man. Both are military-assisted productions and after outlining their connections to the DOD and USAF I analyse their storylines to explain what they are saying about technological innovation and development in the real world. I compare sequences from both movies to illustrate how in some ways they are identical, before reflecting on the reality of technological innovation and how it is deployed."

Reflections At High Sun

Midsummer just happened. Now's the point to pause for a bit. This week's post will not be an essay. It will instead be a series of reflections on events, most of them recent, and relevant conclusions drawn from them. Consider this an Administration post if you must, but I intend for this to be more introspection than commentary or argumentation.

I do take advantage of the fact that this 'blog is at Blogger, and therefore tied into Google's analytics mechanisms, when I check to see how things work in terms of reach and audience. To no one's surprise, most of the audience is from the United States. It's the #2 and following entries that are telling: Russia, Ukraine, Australia, United Kingdom, Ireland, Bulgaria, Germany, Malaysia. I conclude from this that my weekday and Saturday posts, where I link to the works of others that I find relevant to this 'blog and seek to promote it by presenting it to you, greatly influence this result. Max Igan is out of Australia, Thomas Sheridan is out of Ireland, I curate a significant amount of stuff originating from RT (out of Russia) or addressing Russia and Ukraine, and most of the traffic comes in from a Google or Networkedblogs source. In addition, a lot of what I curate focuses on an Anglophonic audience, and assumes an American perspective- which could explain the negligible Canadian audience, despite being right next door.

Going forward, I will continue this 'blog. This is something of a passion project, so I'm not likely to close up shop anytime soon; therefore, I want to see its influence spread. I already have Twitter and Facebook linked into this 'blog, so posts automatically send out Tweets and Facebook posts. Additional reach, therefore, means resuming links posted in my personal journal and cultivating more people to add Empires to their Blog Roll; it could also mean establishing pages for Empires at Facebook and Google Plus (and I much prefer G+ over Facebook), but that's something I want to keep in reserve. If these stats persist into the Autumn, and there is neither a drop off nor an increase, then I will reconsider- especially if I commit to transitioning into the addition of an audio podcast version of this 'blog.

Some time ago, The Lip ended Buzzsaw. Tyrel Ventura and Tabitha Wallace got cut loose and are now doing something else; the interesting thing is that Sean Stone is still there, and Buzzsaw is revived with him alone doing the interviews that he did previously. When the cancellation occurred, I already had some suspicions that there was a problem; Tyrel and Tabitha focused on verifiable, real-world issues and criminality of a conspiratorial sort while Sean veered into the whackado. Now that Sean alone is there, the whackado is damn near all that's left and I find this to hurt Buzzsaw's credibility greatly.

Until I see a shift away from the whackado, I will no longer post or embed anything from Buzzsaw in this venue; the common man can act usefully to oppose attempts to screw over Net Neutrality, impose bullshit agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, analyze information secreted out of the Bilderberg Group's meetings (and those of similar groups)- the whacky stuff that folks like Icke are infamous for, regardless of validity, cannot be effectively acted upon by you readers. I want to see Empire fall; regardless of the realms beyond Man's sense-perceptions, the real fight is here in the physical world of everyday life and all talk of philosophy and the mind--while important--is impotent and meaningless without action out in the physical. As Mark Passio points out, it is not enough to clean out the crap between your ears; freedom in the world depends upon free minds taking action in the physical world. Talk of aliens, demons, etc. that does not contribute to the translation of freedom from the mind to the physical is--at best--useless entertainment; I will not give it a venue here.

Finally: As part of my own efforts, I am about to start the draft phase for my third novel. Unlike the first two I wrote (neither of which are published; be grateful, for they are that bad), I've spent far more time working out the crafty bits of structure, outline, etc. this time than previously. One of the goals of this novel is to show, in literary terms, what Empire is and how it works. I plan to finish the first draft before the Autumn, and by the end of the year I plan to have something I am ready to either finish for self-publication or find an agent and go the traditional route; due to some connections, the latter is not entirely a pipe dream (mostly, but not entirely; it's like making a roll of the dice with a slight edge in your favor). This is one way that I aim to translate freedom in my mind to freedom in this world; if this novel succeeds, then I will have a series ready to go. It turns out that I am very good with words, so then I will use this to advance my goals.

And that is enough for now. Empire must fall.

Red Ice Radio: Jon Rappoport - Snowden, Self-Censorship & Friendly Fascism

This is the first hour out of a two hour interview; the second is behind a paywall, and thus only available to subscribers.

Description: "Returning guest, Jon Rappoport is an investigative journalist, author and publisher of the website nomorefakenews.com. He has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health. Although his main focus over these years has been the power of the imagination and creativity, he is most often cited and interviewed on conspiracies and global elites. In this program, we’ll explore Snowden. Who is he and what’s really going on? We’ll also take a closer look at his favored journalists and talk about what he’s doing in Russia. Jon also discusses how the NSA wants to know how their spying is affecting us and in what ways. The thought police is here. Facebook has admitted to saving everything you type, even if you don’t publish it. They want to know what you are self-censoring. We’ll discuss how people have been conditioned to self censor. In the second hour, we’ll discuss the L.A. Clippers’ Donald Sterling controversy and how this was a possible psyop. Jon explains how our language is “shrinking” and we are being taught to police ourselves. We’ll talk about how political correctness is creating wimps in a society of “friendly fascism.” Later, we talk about the power of comedy to rid of the social stigma associated with certain words."

StormCloudsGathering: The Fall of Iraq - What You're Not Being Told

(Transcription is here.)

Porkins Policy Radio, Episode 21: Four Lions, w/ Tom Secker of ClandesTime

This is Tom Secker's description of the podcast: "Pearse Redmond invited me back on his show again to talk about the black comedy film Four Lions, a British satire about jihadis. It is a very funny film about a very serious topic that is recommended viewing for anyone and everyone. It is by far the best War on Terror comedy ever made, and will probably remain so.

From PPR: 'This week we are joined once again by our good friend Tom Secker to discuss one of Tom’s favorite movies, the black comedy Four Lions, which revolves around of group of young men living in Sheffield England who decide to become suicide bombers . If you have not seen the film than please go to the show notes and click on the link and watch it. It will blow you away and will make this conversation much more enjoyable. Me and Tom discuss the way the film deconstructs many of the familiar terrorism memes and cliches, and presents us with a side that we never ever see. We explore the many similarities between Four Lions and the 7/7 terror attacks, including the notion that the whole movie may be revolving around an MI5 operation. We round off the conversation by looking at how this film humanizes people who we would generally write off as fanatical murders.'"

The Corbett Report: Interview 902 - Power Hour: Iraq Falling Apart is the Real “Mission Accomplished”

As he puts it: "James joins Joyce and J.D. on The Power Hour every other week to discuss economics, world events, geopolitics and everything else. This time they discuss the latest developments in Iraq as the US/GCC backed terror boogeyman organization threatens to complete the Neocon/Israeli agenda of splitting the country into three parts. We also discuss Fukushima, bitcoin, patriot demonization and more."

This is audio-only. Podcast and show notes are here.

Max Igan - Surviving the Matrix, S2/E10: Freedom is a Choice

BoilingFrogsPost Roundtable: Why Are Americans So Apathetic? (And what can be done about it?)

Description: "The BFP Roundtable takes on the public apathy surrounding the illegal wars of aggression, the extrajudicial drone assassinations, the illegal warrantless wiretapping, and other outrages of our era. Why is the public so passive in the face of such abuses? And what can be done about it? Find out more in this must-see BFP Roundtable discussion."

Learning From the Old Man, Still

In the United States, today is Father's Day.

My father's dead. Been dead for 14 years now. No, he died of rather ordinary causes; no conspiracy at work here, and nothing unusual or extraordinary to say about it. Foolish ways of former days caught up to him, and at last took their due. Nothing more, nothing less; it comes to all of us sooner or later, depending on how foolish we are.

Rather, I wish to use this day to reflect on what my father did--and attempted--and how it squares with what I know now. If I may yet learn from him, though so long gone, and improve upon it then that is enough. Remembering the best, and improving the rest, is how I choose to make what I can of this occasion.

My father, after a foolish youth, settled down and got involved the labor movement. He worked for the railroad, became a union man, and then joined the American Legion and got into veteran's affairs. Later he became involved in the church I grew up in, and kept it up after his stroke even though he had to let go his union and Legion activities. During this time, my father became quite an Organization Man despite his own youthful rebellion; some combination of marriage and fatherhood somehow changed him, and now I am not certain it was entirely for his benefit. He became politically active and aware; ours was a Democratic household, and I grew up hating Reagan (and, by extension, Thatcher) and all that stuff.

Now, as I also approach middle age, he wasn't entirely wrong. The core of union activity preserved the standard of living that I enjoyed in the 1980s and 1990s; as union power declined, so did our family fortunes- and my father's stroke in 1990 accelerated all of that. However, his faith in the union was misplaced; the loyalty my father showed to it was not reciprocated, mirroring what I witnessed out of the Veteran's Administration, Railroad Retirement, and other institutions that my father believed would be there for him- and for us (especially my mother) after he died. The church stepped up, but could only do so much; my mother compensated by workaholism, my sister by cutting and running, and I (though I did not realize it at the time) by withdrawl.

To this day, I see the result of all of my father's hard work and sacrifice: sweet fuck all. The future he believed in never manifested. The very people and powers he despised won, and continue to win, despite small victories and temporary setbacks. The very groups he sided with betrayed him when it counted most; they got their value from him, and now that he went from asset to liability they tossed him aside in favor of a new cog to fulfill those functions. My father never comprehended that he was fungible. My sister and I learned this the hard way, and reacted differently; she, like my mother, threw herself into some combination of work and pointless social (not-)climbing. I reacted by further withdrawl.

I see now what my father wanted with the cabin we once had. He looked forward to getting out, to relocating north out of the Cities permanently, and living there full-time (or as close as circumstances allowed); either my sister or I would get the house in the Cities, and maybe Mom & Dad would crash there during the winter or when about to go out of state by air (like some of my relatives do now). He saw that this was all a raw deal, and he figured that if he held out long enough he could withstand the bullshit and escape with enough to make the last years worthwhile.

It's telling that he wished that he was Ernest Hemingway, his favorite writer. He knew that this world was bullshit. I didn't quite get it then; I can't unsee it now, and I remain withdrawn as a consequence. While I don't follow his Hemingway fandom, I get the appeal as he likely understood it back in the 1950s or 1960s: the 1920s, even then, was romanticized as a Time of High Adventure for those who--even if born ordinary--had the will, the skill, and the luck to take advantage of it. This was the wish fulfillment, the popular fantasy, for the men of his era.

Aside: The Boomers, as a generation, got sold a load of bullshit by the Greatest Generation and their parents (the Lost Generation)- and if you think this isn't true, remember who made Raiders of the Lost Ark and when it was first released: 1981, at the time when the Boomers emerged into full maturity as a generation, lining up to start taking power a decade or so later. (i.e. when those born in the late '40s and early '50s turned 30 years of age) Their nostalgia and unironic love of that stuff is present in that franchise and Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy (yes, including the Ewoks), and that's how we who are now in our 30s and 40s had it passed down to us (and why we, in turn, look so fondly on those films; it's filtered Hero Pulp love.) We are now passing that same thing down to our successors, the Milenials and our own children, and I think it's time that we stop and take a good look at this thing we've had passed down to us from them; it may not be for our benefit, and it certainly is not our thing.

The world that my father was born into is gone. The world he came of age in is gone. The world he assumed would be here now never came to pass. Many of the things my father taught to me presumed that these things would exist, would persist, and now that they have proven to be passing things those lessons proved dysfunctional; only the most fundamental ones remain useful, and therefore valid. These are also the ones that, when I studied worlds long gone as well as worlds far away, also featured the same ideas and practices built upon them; these are also interpersonal teachings, intended for everyday man-to-man interactions that nonetheless scale up (and those who do so become the very rich and powerful folks that my father came to oppose). I need not bore you with details; Greene's 48 Laws of Power covers them, and many more that my father missed, quite well.

But the biggest lesson I learned from him, without realizing it (because he didn't either), was about value and its true application in all parts of life. My mother remained steadfastly loyal to my father because she recognized the value that he brought to their marriage, value that my mother could not get otherwise, and despite his failings he kept up that value until he literally could so do no longer; the true fissures appeared after his stroke and disabling, but they stuck together until he died- they were married for just over 30 years when he died. My father recognized value in terms of work and effort, both for his employer as well as for the other groups he got involved with, but it was only one way; he recognized the value that they gave to him, and he returned it. He never figured that these relationships ceased to exist when the value exchanged ceased to flow; I think now that this finally dawned on him when his relationship with my mother changed after his stroke.

Put simply, my father consistently underestimated his own worth--his value--and this showed up both in his past behaviors as well as his mature career and social engagements. It damaged his ability to succeed, to form associations that would actually work to his benefit, and only at the end--when he planned out a transition to a new career as a labor lobbyist--did he perceive that he held greater value than he thought he did. He passed this flawed perspective down to me, and now that I am aware of just how badly it has damaged me and impaired my efforts (including my relationships), I am at last repairing this flaw and correcting my perception of what I have to offer, what I bring to the table, and this reassessment means that I view my decision to withdraw all those years ago was both correct as well as necessary: I could not prevail in my ambitions because I did not know what value I offered to those I dealt with. However, the critical breakthrough was this: figuring out what the true value that others brought to me, and acting accordingly. Remember, a healthy relationship stems from a consistent and regular exchange--a flow--of value between all parties concerned; I found that a lot of people I encountered did not offer me value equal to what I offered, so I started cutting people out and focusing on improving myself instead.

Now? Still a long ways to go, but rather than demanding that others be shaped to conform to my requirements I find that it is both easier (belief it or not) and more effective to shape myself into the thing that attracts what I want from others instead. I have full and total control over myself; and despite the fact that I learned this lesson far, far later than the folks who do reach the heights of human achievement at the prime of their lives, knowing it and applying it now means that the back end of my life can only mean that it will be better than would otherwise be the case.

To put this in the terms I coined for this blog early on, I found the source of Empire within myself, and I am ripping it up and tearing it out to replace it with new, healthy growth that creates the true Sovereign Individual: the self-governed man, because he knows that his true value stems from within himself and not from powers and places external to him- that is how children see value. Value creates Wealth, and Wealth powers Sovereignty; Empire cannot create Value- all it does is steal, extort, destroy value created by those it afflicts. This is why Empire is a thing that must be destroyed, and with it all its worldly forms; to make Empire fall, it starts by breaking its chains on your mind and you work your way outward. This is how Empire falls.

Thanks to you, Dad. Your failures shall become my successes.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and The East - ClandesTime 030

Secker's 30th episode (posted here because the first upload had botched audio): "I am joined by Adam of CerebralRevolt.com who returned to the show to talk about two recent spy films that he recommended to me -- Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit and The East. Both of these films were produced by people whose names appear on the DOD film list, and yet they paint very different pictures of the great game that is espionage. The new Jack Ryan reboot is an obvious piece of Cold War style military-intelligence-entertainment complex propaganda, whereas The East is a sensitive, intelligent and subtle portrayal of the infiltration of a radical anarchist group. Adam and I analysed both films, looking at the DOD list connections, the stark contrast in the portraits of spying, the even starker contrast in overall moral values and political sympathies, and much more."

Global Austerity and the US War Agenda

Corbett's Backgrounder for Global Research: "In this stage of advanced globalization, banks earnings and corporate profits continue to soar even as real wages continue to plummet. This does not just lead to mass poverty and unrest, but it sows the seeds for geopolitical conflict and military confrontation. Find out more about this relationship in this week's GRTV Backgrounder on Global Research TV."

Tomorrow Never Dies - ClandesTime 031

Secker's back: "Inspired by a recent video project I decided to take on a Bond film this week and picked Tomorrow Never Dies. I provided a quick commentary on some of the themes and ideas in the film, from the gadgetry to the geopolitical implications, before rounding off looking at the overt, confirmed links between British and American military agencies and the production of the film. I pose the question whether this film was aimed at conspiracy theorists, and if so then why?"

Max Igan: Surviving The Matrix, Season 2/Episode 9 - You Walk In Two Realities

Thomas Sheridan: Tuam is a Warcrime, Not a Tragedy

The Eyeopener Report - The Answer to Common Core: Alternative Models of Education

As James Corbett says: "For those who are opposed to a conception of schooling centered on rote memorization and endless standardized testing, the introduction of biosensors and other devices into the classroom to monitor students' behaviour, the prolongation of childhood and arbitrary grouping of individuals by age, the unquestioning obedience to authority that is inherent in the classroom dynamic, the training for the workforce implicit in the segregation of tasks into arbitrary work periods, the Pavlovian conditioning of the bell, what is the alternative? What can be positively proposed as a counterbalance to this palpably destructive form of modern day schooling? Find out the alternative education models that are being implemented in classrooms around the world in this week's edition of The Eyeopener."

Terminator For Us, Elysium For Them: The Aim of Empire's Current Ambitions & Why It's Uncertain

Over at Truth-Out, an interview with Henry A. Giroux on the future of the Left vis-a-vis Authoritarianism went live today. (Yes, go read it, with filters up and running; it's worth your time.) What he emphasizes in that interview is that we're increasingly noticing that the current world state of politics and economics creates a paradigm wherein the super-majority of the population, world-wide, is utterly fucking disposable.

Go figure.

What many reading that article will find a big deal is that, surprise-surprise, the major institutions of our global culture (and their lesser component parts)--held by Thralls of Empire--are being turned to serve Empire through reshaping the cultures of these entities into ones that mold an individual passing through into being a drone serving Empire's interests. A combination of debt, brain-washing/indoctrination, and restriction of allowed range of action/thought will serve to ensure that individual efforts which could threaten to undermine Empire's desires are eliminated; this includes automating skilled labor out of existence, automating unskilled labor out of existence, gutting all forms of higher education into nothing more than glorified training into management and office drones for most and leaving a servile professional class (for now; they too will be automated out of existence) left for the time being.

In short, the article obliquely acknowledges that Technological Unemployement is being used to render increasingly larger sections of the population utterly disposable because they cannot provide ANY value to the corporate meta-state that Empire wants to impose via its Thralls. What, therefore, do you do with bothersome useless trash? You get rid of it; you dispose of it; you destroy it. That's what is coming, and no one--not even Giroux--want to call it what it is: the preparation for a genocide the likes of which we've never before seen.

The Thralls do not need us anymore, and as soon as we're no longer needed even as the most mindless of fodder or lubrication for their machines (literal or otherwise), we go from asset to liabilty and therefore must be expunged--deleted, EXTERMINATED--as we are naught but pests.

The Thralls, in their usual oblique manner, have told us their intentions for two generations now; this is what all of the culture industry is about- using popular media to disseminate intended actions before they do it, as a form of trial balloon, with what the reaction to those trails are being the gauge for when certain plans are implemented in forms we see. This is "predictive programming", and there's plenty of video presentations on YouTube that get into it; go watch them to get up to speed.

The increasing militarization, use of surveilence, "anti-terror" measures, and other means to violently quash dissent that can't be discredited in the media point to a future where most of us are living like common people do in Elysium when they're not outright hunted by Expert AI drones in areas designated as "free fire zones". (That's the Terminator element; we live like the Resistance, and they live like the orbitals do, until we're wiped out or they're brought to heel.) Once the drone AI is sorted out, excuses will be used to arm them and deploy them everywhere, and soon thereafter it's a matter of time before massive swaths are outright slaughtered as part of a larger depopulation scheme; deprivation, overwork, denial of resources, and other "soft" measures will all those who are not killed by state agents (and, of course, armed drones).

That's the aim. I don't think it will go that smoothly.

First, the big fight over the Internet will not end in Empire's favor. It will remain free, and increasingly be seen as vital to functioning in Civilization so access will become dirt-cheap and then free at point of use; not everyone in technology is a total shitheel who thinks that people are crap, and the same Technological Unemployment that threatens to turn most of us into fodder for Soylent Green is also what allows us to stop wasting time doing shit we don't want to do to get paper to stay alive and put that time into doing what we want to do instead- and some of us are incorrigable tinkers who cannot help but to fix and improve stuff. That, spread through the Internet, is what will allow rapid dissemination of useful ideas to the population.

Second, the material issue is about to become quite easily managed through the dissemination of new and improved technologies of recycling, manufacturing, and education thereof; decentralization of formerly-centralized economic activities is possible now, and it is in our interests to foster this decentralization in every way possible. Most notable, for me, is the "Earthhouse" movement whereby people--on their own--are repurposing otherwise-trashed items like tired and bottles to build houses that have all the amenities we're used to on a fraction of the budget as well as a fraction of the footprint. (Think of a combination of hobbit holes and retro-sci-fi architecture.) Disentangling ourselves from Empire's economic system is paramount to making it fall.

Third, Empire can't stop repeating its mistakes. As soon as it becomes clear to a critical mass of the population what's going on, the persistent pattern will manifest and the wisest amongst us will exploit it and use it to defeat the Terminator/Elysium scheme. On YouTube, in the blogosphere, and elsewhere the seeds of defeat are already sown--and redundantly so, many times over--so that, despite initial success, the final fall of Empire will inevitably occur. The escalation in scope and scale has reached its limit; there is no recovering from this defeat, because the destruction required is so total that nothing left will be there after its over. There won't even be a memetic corpse; everyone that's alive when it comes will be so overwhelmed with how toxic Empire is that its memetic presence will be purged from Mankind's psyche thereafter- future generations will be immune, forever.

Let the machines come. We already know that this is going to end badly for them, so fear not and carry on. Empire will fall.

Interview With a Bilderberger! - Julia Tourianski on The Corbett Report

From StormCloudsGathering: Snowden, The NSA and a Crime of High Treason

Thomas Sheridan: From the Swastika to Savile, The Royal Scams

The Geneva Business Insider: Voters Give EU the Thumbs Down

Max Igan: Surviving the Matrix, Season 2/Episode 8 - Reality is a Double Edged Sword

The Corbett Report Podcast: Why We Must Oppose Bilderberg

The System Will Not Save You Because You Are Fungible

What I find interesting is that whenever one of Empire's systems--its governments, its empires, etc.--collapses or otherwise comes into crisis, there is one thing that consistently occurs: the system abandons its subjects in favor of saving itself. So, in the very moment when these Thralls' claim that they are there to intervene to save the people, they--at best--turn tail and run; most of the time, they turn upon and openly prey upon the people instead. The situation, in reality, is akin to being caught between two undead threats: a pack of ravenous vampires (Thralls of Empire) and the zombie horde (the desperate victims of Empire's infantilism). It is not surprising, therefore, to see that reality reasserts itself forcefully in such situations- only to return to the illusions when the crisis abates.

The reality is that we are on our own. For Americans, the examples of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy are very instructive: people get abandoned for days or weeks at a time, and then treated as criminals or animals when the government bothers to respond, and respond incompetently or ineffectively when they do. Meanwhile, true voluntary responses such as Occupy Sandy show up how incompetent the government is by doing the same job better and more efficiently. The process is similar elsewhere in the world, and many examples of prior history demonstrate the same truth.

Let me remind you that the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 2005, again, that the police have no obligation to protect you. This follows a trend going back to 1980 in terms of explicit denial of responsibility, and an even longer indirectly one. Furthermore, they enjoy legal immunity in the form of indemnification; they don't have to save you, and you can't sue them if they don't. That done, now to some whys.

At heart, it's because you--the individual--are fungible in Empire's eyes. You are interchangeable, and therefore replaceable, so you have little or no value to Empire other than as a consumable human resources; you are just another can of soda on the shelf, so you have value only as one very small part of a infinitesimally larger whole- you're barely a Redshirt. So what if you die? There are plenty more just like you, who can do your job/fulfill your function, so it's waste of resources to bother with you more than that; you are to be herded until your time comes to be slaughtered, because you are just human cattle to Empire. That, folks, is a big reason for the legal justification behind the system's routine abandonment of its promises to be as a substitute father for you.

All governments are like this; the example of the United States is neither atypical nor particularly egregious, and somewhat more open and honest than other examples. The purpose for governments wanting disengaged, disarmed, distressed populations have far, far more to do with making people easier to herd and corral than any promises of benefits, protection, or other things that resemble the treatment of fathers to their children. (Because that's the dynamic at work here: Empire and its Thralls as abusive fathers, infantilizing people by enabling cowardice and dependency--by making you weak--instead of fostering strength by way of teaching courage and competency necessary to independently survive and thrive.) This is why no government can be truly freeing; they are corrupt at their core, and inevitably turn towards totalitarianism and authoritarianism--towards being Empire's latest manifestation--in an attempt to satisfy the unnatural and unlawful existence that Empire insists upon contrary to Creation's will.

When the shit hits the fan, the system cuts and runs first and maybe--when the threat is over--it comes back to do something for its human resources. Maybe. The experiences of Hurrincanes Katrina and Sandy show what's far more likely to happen instead, and for that reason I recommend that individuals and households don't expect government intervention for the good and instead prepare to be on their own in all respects- and to refuse government interference in their ability to do so. Severe weather alone is all the reason you need to do this; economic collapses, political unrest, etc. are merely additional reasons to be as ready as one can for such occasions. Empire needs its dependent, fearful, infantilized addicts--its abused lovers/children--to wield its power; get out from under that, get as independent as you can, and you will survive and thrive because you will adhere to Natural Law and thereby enjoy its blessings because you will make yourself into someone of value. Empire must fall.