Tough getting old…just went to post tonight’s offering without entering either a link or an intro.
Of all the things I’ve lost I miss my mind the most!
Um, no irony should be lost on the fact that the author of tonight’s piece probably shares my lament…
On with the show!
Prognosis 2012 – a Neo Dark Age
2012 might not be the exact year, but it's difficult to see the endgame lasting much beyond that, and the masters of the universe love symbolism, as with 911 (both in Chile and in Manhattan), KLA 007, and others. 2012 is loaded with symbolism, eg. the Mayan Calendar, and the Internet is buzzing with various 2012-related prophecies, survival strategies, anticipated alien interventions, alignments with galactic radiation fields, etc. And then there is the Hollywood film, 2012, which explicitly portrays the demise of most of humanity, and the pre-planned salvation of a select few. One never knows with Hollywood productions, what is escapist fantasy, and what is aimed at preparing the public mind symbolically for what is to come.
Whatever the exact date, all the threads will come together, geopolitically and domestically, and the world will change. It will be a new era, just as capitalism was a new era after aristocracy, and the Dark Ages followed the era of the Roman Empire. Each era has its own structure, its own economics, its own social forms, and its own mythology. These things must relate to one another coherently, and their nature follows from the fundamental power relationships and economic circumstances of the system.
In our post-2012 world, we have for the first time one centralized global government, and one ruling elite clique, a kind of extended royal family, the lords of finance. As we can see with the IMF, WHO, and the WTO, and the other pieces of the embryonic world government, the institutions of governance will make no pretensions about popular representation or democratic responsiveness. Rule will be by means of autocratic global bureaucracies, who take their marching orders from the royal family. This model has already been operating for some time, within its various spheres of influence, as with the restructuring programs forced on the third world, as a condition for getting financing.
Whenever there is a change of era, the previous era is always demonized in mythology. In the Garden of Eden story the serpent is demonized – a revered symbol in paganism, the predecessor to Christianity. When republics came along, the demonization of monarchs was an important part of the process. In the post-2012 world, democracy and national sovereignty will be demonized. This will be very important, in getting people to accept totalitarian rule, and the mythology will contain much that is true...
In those terrible dark days, before the blessed unification of humanity, anarchy reigned in the world. One nation would attack another, no better than predators in the wild. Nations had no coherent policies; voters would swing from one party to another, keeping governments always in transition and confusion. How did they ever think that masses of semi-educated people could govern themselves, and run a complex society? Democracy was an ill-conceived experiment that led only to corruption and chaotic governance. How lucky we are to be in this well-ordered world, where humanity has finally grown up, and those with the best expertise make the decisions.
The economics of non-growth are radically different than capitalist economics. The unit of exchange is likely to be a carbon credit, entitling you to consume the equivalent of one kilogram of fuel. Everything will have a carbon value, allegedly based on how much energy it took to produce it and transport it to market. 'Green consciousness' will be a primary ethic, conditioned early into children. Getting by with less is a virtue; using energy is anti-social; austerity is a responsible and necessary condition. [Austerity for everyone BUT the elite, who are also the ‘elect of god’ and ‘deserve’ their ‘god granted’ privileges…just as God ‘blessed’ them with wealth (when the real story is they (with the assistance of their lawyers) stole it from you and me!)]
As with every currency, the bankers will want to manage the scarcity of carbon credits, and that's where global warming alarm-ism becomes important. Regardless of the availability of resources, carbon credits can be kept arbitrarily scarce simply by setting carbon budgets, based on directives from the IPCC, another of our emerging units of global bureaucratic governance. Such IPCC directives will be the equivalent of the Federal Reserve announcing a change in interest rates. Those budgets set the scale of economic activity.
Presumably nations will continue to exist, as official units of governance. However security and policing will be largely centralized and privatized. Like the Roman Legions, the security apparatus will be loyal to the center of empire, not to the place where someone happens to be stationed. We have seen this trend already in the US, as mercenaries have become big business, and police forces are increasingly federalized, militarized, and alienated from the general public. [Sadly, whoever cuts the paychecks will also get to hand down the orders.]
Just as airports have now been federalized, all transport systems will be under the jurisdiction of the security apparatus. Terrorism will continue as an ongoing bogey-man, justifying whatever security procedures are deemed desirable for social-control purposes. The whole security apparatus will have a monolithic quality to it, a similarity of character regardless of the specific security tasks or location. Everyone dressed in the same Evil Empire black outfits, with big florescent letters on the back of their flack jackets. In essence, the security apparatus will be an occupying army, the emperor's garrison in the provinces. [Can you imagine ‘adding a layer’ to an already unresponsive system of government? We have zero control over the people we send to Washington, what kind of control will we have over our representatives in, say, Brussels?]
On a daily basis, you will need to go through checkpoints of various kinds, with varying levels of security requirements. This is where biometrics becomes important. If people can be implanted with chips, then much of the security can be automated, and everyone can be tracked at all times, and their past activity retrieved. The chip links into your credit balance, so you've got all your currency always with you, along with your medical records and lots else that you don't know about. [Welcome to your worst nightmare, not mentioned here is the chips ability to ‘disable’ you if you stray into ‘unauthorized’ areas…this is purely a ‘security precaution’ and only a criminal would worry about it.]
There is very little left as regards national sovereignty. Nothing much in the way of foreign policy will have any meaning. With security marching to its own law and its distant drummer, the main role of so-called 'government' will be to allocate and administer the carbon-credit budget that it receives from the IPCC. The IPCC decides how much wealth a nation will receive in a given year, and the government then decides how to distribute that wealth in the form of public services and entitlements. Wealth being measured by the entitlement to expend energy.
In a fundamental sense, this is how things already are, following the collapse and the bailouts. Because governments are so deeply in debt, the bankers are able to dictate the terms of national budgets, as a condition of keeping credit lines open. [Bizarrely, with ‘our’ money!] The carbon economy, with its centrally determined budgets, provides a much simpler and more direct way of micromanaging economic activity and resource distribution throughout the globe.
In order to clear the way for the carbon-credit economy, it will be necessary for Western currencies to collapse, to become worthless, as nations become increasingly insolvent, and the global financial system continues to be systematically dismantled. The carbon currency will be introduced as an enlightened, progressive 'solution' to the crisis, a currency linked to something real, and to sustainability. The old monetary system will be demonized, and again the mythology will contain much that is true...
The pursuit of money is the root of all evil, and the capitalist system was inherently evil. It encouraged greed, and consumption, and it cared nothing about wasting resources. People thought the more money they had, the better off they were. How much wiser we are now, to live within our means, and to understand that a credit is a token of stewardship. [I’m ‘holding it back’ good citizen, I’m saving the ‘blast’ for the end.]
Culturally, the post-capitalist era will be a bit like the medieval era, with aristocrats and lords on top, and the rest peasants and serfs. A definite upper class and lower class. Just as only the old upper class had horses and carriages, only the new upper class will be entitled to access substantial carbon credits. Wealth will be measured by entitlements, more than by acquisitions or earnings. Those outside the bureaucratic hierarchies are the serfs, with subsistence entitlements. Within the bureaucracies, entitlements are related to rank in the hierarchy. Those who operate in the central global institutions are lords of empire, with unlimited access to credits.
But there is no sequestering of wealth, or building of economic empires, outside the structures of the designated bureaucracies. Entitlements are about access to resources and facilities, to be used or not used, but not to be saved and used as capital. The flow of entitlements comes downward, micromanaged from the top. It's a dole economy, at all levels, for people and governments alike – the global regimentation of consumption. As regards regimentation, the post-capitalist culture will also be a bit like the Soviet system. Here's your entitlement card, here's your job assignment, and here's where you'll be living.
With the pervasive security apparatus, and the micromanagement of economic activity, the scenario is clearly about fine-grained social control, according to centralized guidelines and directives. Presumably media will be carefully programmed, with escapist trivia, and a sophisticated version of 1984-style groupthink propaganda pseudo-news, which is pretty much what we already have today. The non-commercial Internet, if there is one, will be limited to monitored, officially-designated chat sites, and other kinds of sanitized forums.
With such a focus on social micromanagement, I do not expect the family unit to survive in the new era, and I expect child-abuse alarmism will be the lever used to destabilize the family. The stage has been set with all the revelations about church and institutional child sexual abuse. Such revelations could have been uncovered any time in the past century, but they came out at a certain time, just as all these other transitional things have been happening. People are now aware that widespread child abuse happens, and they have been conditioned to support strong measures to prevent it.
Whenever I turn on the TV, I see at least one public-service ad, with shocking images, about children who are physically or sexually abused, or criminally neglected, in their homes, and there's a hotline phone number that children can call. It is easy to see how the category of abuse can be expanded, to include parents who don't follow vaccination schedules, whose purchase records don't indicate healthy diets, who have dubious psychological profiles, etc. The state of poverty could be deemed abusive neglect. [Not that turning our children over to the state will result in their being ‘better cared for’ by ‘disinterested strangers’.]
With the right media presentation, abuse alarmism would be easy to stir up. Ultimately, a 'child rights' movement becomes an anti-family movement. The state must directly protect the child from birth. The family is demonized... [But how will the elite ‘justify’ keeping their own children? It is the children of the ‘paycheck peasants’, their future serfs, that they are seeking to crush the ‘family loyalty’ out of, they wouldn’t let that happen to their own privileged off-spring, would they?]
How scary were the old days, when unlicensed, untrained couples had total control over vulnerable children, behind closed doors, with whatever neuroses, addictions, or perversions the parents happened to possess. How did this vestige of patriarchal slavery, this safe-house den of abuse, continue so long to exist, and not be recognized for what it was? How much better off we are now, with children being raised scientifically, by trained staff, where they are taught healthy values. [Naturally, who will be watching the ‘watchers’ and what atrocities will remain ‘hidden’? I’m still ‘biting my tongue’ here…]
Ever since public education was introduced, the state and the family have competed to control childhood conditioning. In religious families, the church has made its own contribution to conditioning. In the micro-managed, post-capitalist future, with its Shock Doctrine birth scenario, it would make good sense to take that opportunity to implement the 'final solution' of social control, *which is for the state to monopolize child raising. This would eliminate from society the parent-child bond, and hence family-related bonds in general. No longer is there a concept of relatives. There's just worker bees, security bees, and queen bees, who dole out the honey. [* We are only a half a step from ‘cloning’ here good citizen, if they want subservient ‘slaves’, why not cut to the chase and only work with ‘the best of the best?’ Understandably, they can’t prevent people from ‘breeding’ but turning over your off-spring to a ‘dis-interested’ (I don’t care how ‘well-trained’ they are) caretaker is ‘repugnant’, even the worst parent on the planet would never admit their kids would be better off being raised by strangers! If YOU aren’t going to (here’s ‘fighting words’…be permitted to) raise YOUR children, you may as well end it right here and now! But wait, there’s more!]
Postscript
This has been an extensive and somewhat detailed prognosis, regarding the architecture of the post-capitalist regime, and the transition process required to bring it about. The term 'new world order' is too weak a term to characterize the radical nature of the social transformation anticipated in the prognosis. A more apt characterization would be a 'quantum leap in the domestication of the human species'. Micromanaged lives and microprogrammed beliefs and thoughts. A once wild primate species transformed into something resembling more a bee or ant culture. Needless to say, regular use of psychotropic drugs would be mandated, so that people could cope emotionally with such a sterile, inhuman environment. [How many of you guessed the author received some powerful ‘negative feedback’ from people who actually have kids? Cloning is looking mighty good now, isn’t it? But what do they do with the ‘surplus population’ that won’t lie down and die?, Um, I guess I’m not ‘biting my tongue anymore…but I can’t help it! This is beyond stupid!]
For such a profound transformation to be possible, it is easy to see that a very great shock is required, on the scale of collapse and social chaos, and possibly on the scale of a nuclear exchange. There needs to be an implicit mandate to 'do whatever is necessary to get society running again'. The shock needs to leave people in a condition of total helplessness comparable to the survivors in the bombed-out rubble of Germany and Japan after World War 2. Nothing less will do. [So, ‘roll the dice’ is it, um, how ‘survivable’ do you think ‘nuclear winter’ is? They must have really given him hell for this ‘ultimate solution’ to have surfaced. That said, the ‘unthinkable’ is a lot more likely than it used to be, people have deluded themselves into believing that with enough food and a deep enough shelter, they can ‘sail through’ a nuclear event. Oddly, there is a massive flaw in most of their plans…but we’ll save that for later.]
The accuracy of the prognosis, as prediction, is of course impossible to know in advance. [Here’s an ‘advance opinion’, how about downright ‘demented’?] However each part of the prognosis has been based on precedents that have been set, modus operandi that has been observed, trends that have been initiated, sentiments that have been expressed, signals that have been given, and actions that have been taken whose consequences can be confidently predicted. [It appears that the writer has picked up upon several long abandoned or unrelated social ills and tried to weave them into a workable narrative…that unfortunately requires a drug-induced, psychotic state to, er, ‘hold water’. Classic ‘over-reach’ if you ask me.]
In addition, in looking at all of these indicators together, one sees a certain mindset, an absolutist determination to implement the 'ideal solution', without compromise, using extreme means, and with unbridled audacity. World wars have been rehearsals for this historic moment. The police state infrastructure is in place and has been tested. The economy is in the process of collapse. The enemy is surrounded with missiles. Arbitrary powers have been assumed. If not now, the ultimate prize, then when will there be a better opportunity? [Honestly, I think the writer is being ‘too ambitious’. Gradualism is clearly in play and gradually the world is being, ‘transformed’. Will parenthood be abandoned? If we give it another hundred years although chances are far better that we’ll see Chinese style ‘one child’ policies adopted around the world. Without children, none of this ‘happy horseshit’ is worth swallowing…and we won’t.]
Our elite planners are backed up by competent think tanks [An ‘oxymoron’ if there ever was one!], and they know that the new society must have coherence of various kinds. [How about ‘relevance’?] They've had quite a bit of experience with social engineering, nurturing the rise of fascism, and then engineering the postwar regimes. They understand the importance of mythology. [They can’t ‘engineer away’ the ‘purpose of life’. Every being looks at itself and asks ‘why am I here’. If they can’t arrive at a reasonable answer, they’ll destroy themselves. ONLY the (extremely) weak-minded accept they exist to ‘serve god’ because ‘god’ has no use for them.]
For example there is the mythology of the holocaust, where the story is all about extermination per se, and the story is not told of the primary mission of the concentration camps, which was to provide slave labor for war production. And some of the companies using the slave labor were American owned, and were supplying the German war machine. Thus does mythology, though containing truth, succeed in hiding the tracks and the crimes of elite perps, leaving others to carry the whole burden of historical demonization.
So I think there is a sound basis for anticipating the kinds of mythology that would be designed for leaving behind and rejecting the old ways, and seeing the new as a salvation. There is a long historical precedent of era changes linked with mythology changes, often expressed in religious terms. There will be a familiar ring to the new mythology, a re-mixing and re-prioritizing of familiar values and assumptions, so as to resonate with the dynamics of the new regime. [Naturally, we encounter the identical ‘weak link’ here that we bump into with both the economy and politics…time. The assholes don’t have ‘forever’ to keep us ‘underfoot’ AND it all depends on maintaining the ‘upper hand’ in any revolts that their ‘predations’ ferment’.]
The nature of the carbon economy has been somewhat clearly signaled. Carbon budgets, and carbon credits, are clearly destined to become primary components of the economy. As we've seen with the elite and grassroots supported global warming movement, the arbitrary scarcity of carbon credits can be easily regulated on the pretext of environmentalism. And peak oil alarm-ism is always available as a backup. As elite spokespeople have often expressed, when the time comes, the masses will demand the new world order.
The focus on control over consumption, resources, and distribution is implicit in the emphasis on energy limits, is latent in the geopolitical situation, as regards depletion of global resources, and is indicated by the need for a new unifying paradigm, as the growth paradigm is no longer viable.
The nature of the security apparatus has been clearly signaled by the responses to demonstrations ever since 1998 in Seattle, by the increased use of hardened-killer mercenaries at home and abroad, by excessive and abusive police behavior, by airport security procedures, by Guantanamo and renditions, by the creation of a domestic branch of the army, dedicated to responding to civil emergencies, and by the way Katrina and Haiti have been handled.
It would be a major mistake to think of those last two as bungled operations. They were exercises in collapse management of a certain kind, to be applied to certain populations, where the training and equipment appropriate for combat in Afghanistan is seen as being appropriate for administering aid to civilian disaster victims. These selected disaster victims will be seen primarily as threats to civil order, or perhaps undesirables to be incarcerated or eliminated. They will be demonized as rioters and looters. Assistance will comes later, if at all. And it can all be broadcast on TV, and somehow be seen as the way things have to be. These two exercises were not bungled at all. They were alarmingly successful, most notably in the case of the realtime PR mythology.
The limited role of national governments, being primarily allocators of mandated budgets, has been clearly signaled by long-standing IMF policies in the third world, and by the way the bankers have been dictating to governments, in the wake of the over-extended bailout commitments. The carbon entitlement budgeting paradigm accomplishes the same micro-management in a much more direct way, and is the natural outcome of the push toward hard carbon limits.
Richard K. Moore is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Richard K. Moore
© Copyright Richard K. Moore , Global Research, 2010
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article. [Amen]
Wasn’t THAT fun? And you thought I was ‘out there’!
But seriously folks…we can’t completely ‘discount’ Mr. Moore’s message as total rubbish.
The John Galt’s among us have been ‘threatening’ to ‘leave us to our own devices’ for quite a while now…if only that ‘Shangri-La’ they’re going to create for themselves (with their ‘godlike powers’) would finally ‘pop up out of the ground’, good to go, like it’s supposed to.
Um, Mr. Moore points to some pretty disturbing developments (and draws some rather wildass conclusions from them.) Like the recent ‘resurgence’ of ‘mercenaries’ in our Imperial military structure…um, the funny thing about mercenaries is they are only as ‘loyal’ as the paychecks they signed up for. Once those paychecks, er, ‘falter’…the Merc’s quit. Historically, this has been ‘problematic’ for mercenary forces and even turned their name into a disparaging figure of speech. Being called ‘mercenary’ is NOT a compliment…
It is the same thing with the ‘carbon credit’ regime that is being set up in response to ‘global climate change’. At the moment this plan is nothing more than window dressing because it threatens to undermine the campaign to ‘gin-up’ an economic recovery out of whole cloth like they have done the last two times.
It is the ‘illusion’ of doing something while they are capable of doing nothing. But this doesn’t make him ‘wrong’. Eventually, the ‘carbon credit’ scheme could become the ‘governor’ of global commerce…although almost All commerce will be ‘local’ in the ‘energy challenged’ future.
You’ll either have the capability to move/produce goods and services or you won’t. If the energy to do either comes from ‘renewable’ sources, I don’t see where ‘carbon credits’ come into play…but then again goofy thinks we will surrender our children to perfect strangers to ‘protect’ them…yeah, right! “Don’t be alarmed at the sudden massive upsurge in kiddie porn on the net or the fact that all of the ‘caregivers’ have cam-corders swinging from their necks…”
No connection whatsoever!
Perhaps the most succinct thing we can take from this article is the admission that a calamity of epic proportions will be necessary in order to implement these ‘quasi-dictatorial’ new rules.
I mean, what makes you unhappy about today’s politics if not the lack of responsiveness/accountability of the current system? Installing a dictator addresses this how?
One might expect that the ‘illusion of democracy’/participation will be maintained at some level but adding another level to an already non-responsive system of government isn’t an encouraging idea…and is more likely to ferment revolt than acceptance.
I have to apologize because, as I have explained before, I select these pieces based on the headlines, not the content…and once again I have been bitten on the ass by a damn bizarre twist in the article!
Perhaps it is a positive sign that any ‘megalomaniac wannabes’ would have such an uphill battle in their quest for ‘global domination’…not that I believe this is the ultimate objective.
This isn’t about breaking ‘new ground’, it is more about maintaining what has become a very comfortable lifestyle for an exclusive group of self-serving predators.
The question is whether they want to sit back and watch while the demand for more energy causes civilization to destroy itself, ruining their posh set-up. Or do they prefer to take a more active role in reducing the threat to their continued rule?
How would you go about this if you were of a mind to?
You definitely don’t want to start lobbing nukes around…you don’t want to be messing with nuclear winter or causing irreparable damage to the ionosphere/radiation belts, thereby condemning your progeny to 10,000 years underground…which will likely become permanent.
Wouldn’t the ‘ideal’ solution be cost free and easy to remedy? You don’t want potentially valuable members of the gene pool wiped out by an indiscriminate plague, do you?
Last yardstick here…what do all ‘valuable people’ have in common? They’re employed! It’s the damned unemployed that needs to be stopped from sucking up all of those valuable resources! So, how do you, er, eliminate the unemployed without taking out too many ‘valuable people’?
First you crash the economy; then you crash the currency--which causes the supply chain to shut down. You don’t necessarily want to create ‘food riots’ but if that’s what it takes to get the unemployed bums into law enforcement’s line of fire…
Sure, a lot of storefronts are going to burn down…but if they don’t burn down, they’d eventually be torn down anyway. Sort of the ‘after effects’ of turning large swaths of the nation into an economic desert where people can’t live anymore.
So… the ‘plan’, if such a thing exists, is to starve the ‘surplus population’ out.
I mean think about it, they can’t keep mailing us unemployment checks forever…
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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