Tag Archives: activism

John Lennon Vs. The Deep State: One Man Against The “Monster”

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As Lennon shared in a 1968 interview:

“I think all our society is run by insane people for insane objectives… I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal means. If anybody can put on paper what our government and the American government and the Russian… Chinese… what they are actually trying to do, and what they think they’re doing, I’d be very pleased to know what they think they’re doing. I think they’re all insane. But I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.”

So what’s the answer?

Lennon had a multitude of suggestions.

“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”

“War is over if you want it.”

“Produce your own dream…. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders…. You have to do it yourself. That’s what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be. There’s nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can’t wake you up. You can wake you up. I can’t cure you. You can cure you.”

“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do, Something you are, And something you give away.”

“If you want peace, you won’t get it with violence.”

And my favorite advice of all:

“Say you want a revolution / We better get on right away / Well you get on your feet / And out on the street / Singing power to the people.”

Source: John Lennon Vs. The Deep State: One Man Against The “Monster” | Zero Hedge

Category: History, People | Tags: , ,

NATO At 70 Years Old… Time For The Zombie To Die | Zero Hedge

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For the sake of world peace, the citizens of North America and Europe should demand that NATO be liquidated. Thirty years too late.

Source: NATO At 70 Years Old… Time For The Zombie To Die | Zero Hedge

Category: History | Tags: , , ,

Saul Alinsky’s 13 Rules For ‘Have-Nots’ To Gain Power | Zero Hedge

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“WHAT FOLLOWS IS for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away”

The book goes on to give lessons on how to take power away from the “haves”. Naturally, it was heavily used by the counter-cultural movement in the 1970s, but has increasingly be used in mainstream political campaigns. Perhaps, the most enduring part of the book is Alinsky’s 13 rules for radicals. Here they are with some of his additional notes:

  1. “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood.
  2.  “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” the result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
  3. “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
  4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.
  5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.
  6. “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.
  1. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings. New issues and crises are always developing, and one’s reaction becomes, “Well, my heart bleeds for those people and I’m all for the boycott, but after all there are other important things in life”—and there it goes.
  1.  “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” [use] different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.
  1. “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”
  1. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign. It should be remembered not only that the action is in the reaction but that action is itself the consequence of reaction and of reaction to the reaction, ad infinitum. The pressure produces the reaction, and constant pressure sustains action.
  1.  “If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside [positive]” this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative. We have already seen the conversion of the negative into the positive, in Mahatma Gandhi’s development of the tactic of passive resistance.
  1.  “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying “You’re right—we don’t know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us.”
  1. “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” the opposition must be singled out as the target and “frozen.”…in a complex, interrelated, urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult to single out who is to blame for any particular evil. There is a constant…passing of the buck. …Obviously there is no point to tactics unless one has a target upon which to center the attacks… If an organization permits responsibility to be diffused and distributed in a number of areas, attack becomes impossible.

So the next time you see a political movement or campaign in action, compare their tactics to the list above and you’ll know how you are being manipulated!

Source: Saul Alinsky’s 13 Rules For ‘Have-Nots’ To Gain Power | Zero Hedge

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How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet | The New Yorker

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“Oh, yes. Definitely a forgery. Hope it didn’t cost you much.”

The possibility of swift change lies in people coming together in movements large enough to shift the Zeitgeist. In recent years, despairing at the slow progress, I’ve been one of many to protest pipelines and to call attention to Big Oil’s deceptions. The movement is growing. Since 2015, when four hundred thousand people marched in the streets of New York before the Paris climate talks, activists—often led by indigenous groups and communities living on the front lines of climate change—have blocked pipelines, forced the cancellation of new coal mines, helped keep the major oil companies out of the American Arctic, and persuaded dozens of cities to commit to one-hundred-per-cent renewable energy.

Each of these efforts has played out in the shadow of the industry’s unflagging campaign to maximize profits and prevent change. Voters in Washington State were initially supportive of a measure on last month’s ballot which would have imposed the nation’s first carbon tax—a modest fee that won support from such figures as Bill Gates. But the major oil companies spent record sums to defeat it. In Colorado, a similarly modest referendum that would have forced frackers to move their rigs away from houses and schools went down after the oil industry outspent citizen groups forty to one. This fall, California’s legislators committed to using only renewable energy by 2045, which was a great victory in the world’s fifth-largest economy. But the governor refused to stop signing new permits for oil wells, even in the middle of the state’s largest cities, where asthma rates are high.

New kinds of activism keep springing up. In Sweden this fall, a one-person school boycott by a fifteen-year-old girl named Greta Thunberg helped galvanize attention across Scandinavia. At the end of October, a new British group, Extinction Rebellion—its name both a reflection of the dire science and a potentially feisty response—announced plans for a campaign of civil disobedience. Last week, fifty-one young people were arrested in Nancy Pelosi’s office for staging a sit-in, demanding that the Democrats embrace a “Green New Deal” that would address the global climate crisis with policies to create jobs in renewable energy. They may have picked a winning issue: several polls have shown that even Republicans favor more government support for solar panels. This battle is epic and undecided. If we miss the two-degree target, we will fight to prevent a rise of three degrees, and then four. It’s a long escalator down to Hell.

Last June, I went to Cape Canaveral to watch Elon Musk’s Falcon 9 rocket lift off. When the moment came, it was as I’d always imagined: the clouds of steam

more @ Source: How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet | The New Yorker

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