This famous neutrality and quality-led focus has made the BBC into an international resource. It is the largest broadcast news gathering organisation on the planet, and one of the most popular sources for current information worldwide.  It’s website is the 46th most popular in existence. Programs such as Dr. Who, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Planet Earth have swept the globe. The BBC World Service is widely considered to be the most important radio programme there is.

The BBC, then, is truly unbiased, informative, high-quality, and hugely popular around the world. So it’s no surprise that corporate broadcasters have always hated it. In the modern climate of politicians shamelessly grovelling at the feed of rich vested interests, the BBC has come under attack like never before.

In particular, Rupert and Kevin Murdoch’s News International, the vast media corporation behind Fox News (amonst many, many others) is particularly furious that the BBC exists. Because people can turn to it for good, unbiased news and programming, it cuts into the profits that father and son Murdoch can rake out of all of us. The BBC cannot interfere in politics, but no such restriction binds News International, and the thought of hostile Murdoch newspapers and TV broadcasts has British politicians panicking.

The price for News International’s smiling endorsement is the crippling — or better yet, destruction — of the BBC.

Planet Earth. Doctor Who. Monty Python. BBC News. All blown away, in favour of Glen Beck and Bill O’Reilly. To say that this would be a tragic victory of greed over public interest is a gross understatement.

The battle has already started. Today, cuts were proposed that would slash the BBC’s web presence by 50%, along with removing some of its most independent and important music stations, and cutting into multi-cultural material.

PLEASE. Don’t let this happen. Don’t let the BBC mutilate itself in a doomed attempt to reduce the heat from the sharks circling around it. Wherever you are, please take just a moment to sign the 38 Degrees petition against this crippling blow. Show the BBC’s overseers — and Britain’s politicians — that the BBC is important, and needs to be defended. Don’t turn one of the last bastions of independent, quality, mainstream media into yet another sickly corporate hate-monger. If you can, please spread word of the petition — twitter, blogs, email, whatever.

Please.

In a five to four decision, the Supreme Court decided that corporations (and unions) can freely spend their own treasury funds on advertisements for or against individual political candidates. Summarising, Justice Kennedy re-stated the concept of corporations having the same rights as individuals, saying “The First Amendment does not permit Congress to make these categorical distinctions based on the corporate identity of the speaker and the content of the political speech.”

The ruling itself is even more blunt. Referring to the 20-year ruling in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which prohibited corporations or labor unions from paying for campaign ads, it says “Austin is overruled, and thus provides no basis for allowing the Government to limit corporate independent expenditures.” The decision also removes spending limits for independent expenditure groups, as well as spending limits already established in 24 states. It also removes chunks of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that barred issue ads paid for by corporations or unions in the closing days of a campaign.

Ghastly Hill on a Black Day by Eagpic

It’s not quite a complete carte blanche. Corporations still cannot give give money directly to candidates. But given that the candidates chiefly want donations in order to pay for campaigning, this restriction is now broadly pointless.

The upshot is that candidates who agree to whole-heartedly serve huge corporate interests will be on the recieving end of a sea of funding that will allow them to sweep away any opposition. The political structure was already riddled with corruption of course, but it had to be mediated carefully in light of public opinion. That is no longer the case. Corruption has been boosted up from a sneaking presence behind the scenes to being the director of the entire show. Any politician agreeing to suckle at the corporate teat will recieve funds to guarantee near-certain election, and the idea of serving public interests will vanish entirely.

Horrified reactions have come from all parts of the American political establishment, including both John McCain and Barack Obama. But despite the concern of politicians, the ruling is effective immediately. Anyone wanting to fight this decision will find themselves up against a gigantic wall of money. The chances of any meaningful changes being made in time to stop corporate-backed shills from sweeping to power are very low indeed.

Mussolini famously described fascism as the union of business and state. Whether or not he was right is open to debate — it’s probably more accurate to describe it as corporatism, at least until pro-corruption grass-root movements appear amongst the populace — but either way, it is very definitely not democracy. And whatever you call it, that is what the Supreme Court has now created in the USA.

If you live in America, then whatever side of the political spectrum you lie on, you have been betrayed, and your democratic influence has been reduced to that of a sad whisper on the wind. Unless, of course, you happen to be one of the handful of Americans who runs a major corporation, in which case, Hail, Caesar. There are some petitions you can sign, here and here, but frankly, your last shreds of power rest in the right to bear arms.

And that is both tragic and terrifying.

This happened to me when I was fifteen years old, the spring before I left home for good. I grew up in Maine.  For those of you who think a trip to the Cascades is getting back to nature, Maine is the forest primeval.  There’s a reason Stephen King includes all those deep, dark, haunted forests in his books  (the town which became his model for ‘Salem’s Lot lay about 20 miles from my front door, as the crow flies;  the “Pet Semetary” was disturbingly close by).

Albion, Maine

Albion was the name of my home town, founded in 1754.  It’s only claim to fame is as the birthplace of Elijah Lovejoy, the first recorded American martyr for the press.  The inhabitants had long since forgotten the significance of the town’s namesake and had allowed the burg to fade into the kind of decaying, vapid decrepitude one expects from such tiny, isolated hamlets.  It was part H.P. Lovecraft and part “‘Salem’s Lot,” without the literary references and artistic punch of either. There were more cows than people in Albion, its economy based almost entirely on milk production.  Those few who were not dairy farmers comprised the tiny merchant class, the even tinier landed gentry and the backwoods homesteaders.

Most people think New England has four seasons, but Maine actually has two:  Winter and Several Weeks of Very Chilly Weather.  There is also a subseason, known to most locals as “Mud.”

Once, during the first week of Mud, some high school friends and I went off into the aforementioned forest primeval, engaged in our primary occupation:  Avoiding School.  We left town by way of an old logging trail that ran behind the general store (“H.L. Keay & Son, since 1850:  If we don’t have it, you don’t need it!”) and cut across thawing farmland and thickets until we reached the edge of Fowler’s Bog.  This was a vast expanse of dense marshland which stretched from Albion to the Unity town line, eight miles away.  In the winter, when the bog was frozen, you could walk, ski or snowmobile across its surface safely, but for the rest of the year it was as treacherous a piece of ground as you could wish.

We skirted the edge of the bog for several miles, admiring the first signs of spring (or Very Chilly Weather) in the forest around us. Finally, we reached our destination, an old, tumbledown hunting cabin along the edge of the bog, its boards weathered and gray in stark contrast to the emerging greenery of the woods. We remained there for several hours as the sun made its way quickly across the sky, talking, joking and speculating on the quality of existence outside Albion and Maine.  Dark came early at that time of year, and before too long the shadows were lengthening rapidly as the sun began to slide down behind the trees.

Albion Woods

Now, we’d literally grown up in those woods and knew them very well: Fowler’s Bog and the surrounding forest held no secrets for us.  More than once we’d navigated our way home well after dark without so much as a stubbed toe. But not this time. Somehow, our little group became separated.  Maybe the others left us behind intentionally, maybe we just weren’t paying attention for once, I don’t know.  But it was nearly full dark when my friend Matt and I realized the others were not to be seen.

We laughed about it, thinking they’d either gone ahead to lay in ambush and scare us as we made our way through the dark woods, or they’d taken a wrong turning somewhere up ahead and would no doubt catch us up later.  So we continued apace, talking and laughing, until Matt stopped and jerked his head up and asked “What the hell is that?!??”

I looked to where he pointed. I have seen bears, moose, wolves, coyotes, porcupines, foxes, deer, raccoons, coyotes and bobcats, all in their natural habitats. I have seen some weird things in those woods, things I cannot to this day adequately explain. This was one of them.  I can still recall the unfamiliar feeling of abject terror;  it was the first and only time in my life I’ve ever been utterly helpless with fear.

It was quite big.  It was very, very black.  And it made the most terrifying sound I have ever heard in my life as it made its way through the underbrush not twenty feet away from where we stood.  We didn’t see it clearly, thanks to the darkness and intervening foliage.  It crossed our path and went down into the bog, still making that noise.  Then we heard a muffled “splash;”  later we agreed it must have plunged into the bog at a deep spot.

I never told my parents, but Matt told his and, being members of the landed gentry, they called the local sheriff who took us out there a couple of days later. Matt’s parents came with us.  We found the place easily enough, and there was plenty of evidence of the thing’s passage: A swath of crushed forest underbrush crossed from the treeline down to the bog. Had we wished to, we could have easily followed it back into the forest. But the sheriff said it was a trail left by a couple of big bears and said we were lucky not to have been charged or even mauled.

Matt’s parents looked at the sheriff as though he’d just told them he was a space alien and would we mind joining him on Mars for tea?  Matt’s father called the sheriff every conceivable kind of ass, pointing out what we all knew: No bear or anything else we’d ever seen made that trail. But the sheriff just stood there calmly and took the verbal abuse, and after Matt’s father had finished he quietly said the matter was closed and asked us not to make too much of it.

That was the very last time my friends and I ever went near Fowler’s Bog.

For the record, yes, the phrase ‘Bigfoot encounter’ has crossed my mind. I wouldn’t call myself a believer in the Big Hairy, but I keep an open mind. I don’t want to put words into Jason’s mouth, though. It could well have been a shoggoth, after all…

“That is not dead which can eternal lie; and with strange aeons, even death may die.”
– the Necronomicon

A tome of the very darkest wisdom, invented for the Cthulhu mythos cycle by HP Lovecraft, the Necronomicon first appeared in “The Hound” (1922). The Necronomicon is a detailed treasury of information on the true nature of the universe, and mankind’s horribly precarious and brief place within it. The book goes into significant detail about the Great Old Ones – particularly Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth – and their minions, and the black arts required to summon and control these beings. It also has unpleasant spells for a variety of other purposes. The Necronomicon is extremely disturbing to read, and has driven lesser men stark raving mad. The wisdom it contains reveals things that mankind really wasn’t meant to know. Only the most evil can gain anything other than shattered peace of mind from perusing its horrible contents.

One of the more prominent passages reproduced from the book reads, in part:

“Nor is it to be thought that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen … As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They rule again.” (From “The Dunwich Horror” by HP Lovecraft, 1928)

The Necronomicon was written early in the 8th century AD by a crazed, decadent Arabic cultist, Abdual Alhazred. He titled the book “Al Azif” (with a supposed literal meaning close to ‘the nocturnal howling of the demons of the desert’). He died a short time later, ripped apart in a crowded Damascus bazaar by invisible demons, but the book was quietly copied and studied by Arab scholars. It was translated into Greek as the Necronomicon (possibly ‘The Book of Dead Names’) by the scholar Theodorus Philetas in 950AD. It was suppressed in 1050AD, but survived to be translated into Latin in 1228 by Olaus Wormius, and then into English around 1590AD by Queen Elizabeth’s magus, Dr. John Dee. Only five copies are known to remain for certain, in libraries and universities in Harvard, Buenos Airies, London, Paris and Arkham. Others crop up in private collections of the most horrible, decadent sort.

In the real world, there remain persistent rumours that Lovecraft did not actually invent the book, but instead was inspired by some real tome of horrors. He always flatly rejected those claims as flattering credulity and nonsense. Several hoaxers have worked the Necronomicon into library catalogues over the years, and librarians world-wide still get queries about it, although it’s difficult to imagine why anyone would actually want to risk read the thing.

There have been several real books produced that attempted to cash in on this interest, but none of them even begin to come close to capturing the spirit of the work.

The Necronomicake, also baked and (c) Milliput Mog

But I can’t keep my mouth shut any longer. If you’re one of the 20% of Americans who opposes universal health-care — and you’re on the US hard-line right-wing — then in the interests of your own blood pressure, you may want to stop reading this post now.

First of all, a definition from historian Robert Paxton:

“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

Paxton is one of the world’s leading authorities on the rise of fascism in otherwise sensible countries, and his definition of fascism now almost universally accepted by political scientists.  There are two key elements here I want to bring your attention to. First of all is the corporatization of the state — where the two elite power bases of corporate power and political power work together for mutual benefit, at the expense of the public. Sometimes, the elite are joined by the religious power base, too. The other is the recruitment of grass-roots militants working on behalf of this hybrid elite to stifle rational debate and fair democratic process.

The emblem of the (extinct) British Fascist Union

I suspect you can see where I’m heading.

There’s been a hell of a lot of hysteria, puff and self-aggrandizing toss over the last twenty years about how we’re all “Fascist, man”. That’s all it has been. Until, in America, this summer.

Paxton identified five clear stages that societies go through on the path of fascism.

Fascism becomes possible when a free democracy loses its way. There’s an implied social contract in society — we work to produce tax and consume goods so the rich can stay wealthy, in return for financial security and support when we need it. Health-care, support in old age, protection from foreign aggressors and domestic criminals, and fair treatment in return for all the hard work we put in. When a government loses focus on this contract, and puts the interests of the corporate world ahead of the social contract, the democracy becomes increasingly weak and shaky, and people get scared and angry. I’m going to tip my hat here to Fox News, banking, agribusiness and insurance for particularly blatant corporatization of government, but they really and truly are just the tip of the iceberg.

Public anger and resentment is the breeding ground.

Paxton’s first stage is when passionate rural interests begin to group together to promote a nationalist fix of the ‘broken’ society. This has the goal of restoring national greatness by restoring traditional (often religious) values, driving out ‘parasitic’ or ‘corruptive’ foreigners, and ignoring those damn fool intellectuals who caused all this mess.

In the second stage, these grass-roots interests spawn active militant bands in order to persecute disliked minorities. Historically, this has usually started by harassing minority agricultural workers on behalf of land-owners. When a weak liberal state arises, badly-battered right-wing political forces decide to deadlock the nation’s political process by refusing to engage with the government.

This is the moment where the third stage tips over. Because the right feels threatened by the rise of the left, it seeks reinforcement. Instead of fighting a long-term game to regain legitimate political capital, they turn to the grass-roots militant bands for support in further pressuring the government, with the aim of using them to regain power. The third stage is clearly marked by the open alliance between nationalist grass-roots militants and disenfranchised right-wing political interests.

I linked earlier to the New York Times piece on the Tea-Bag movement and the open acknowledgement of the power of the Birther conspiracy agenda by congressmen. The militants and the American political right have joined forces, and the militants are being taught how to harass, infiltrate, and disrupt democratic process. They’ve had a very genuine taste of power over the summer months, bonded together in adversity, learnt how to circumvent normal democratic flow, and enjoyed all the lovely, heady goodness of being part of a mob consumed with its own self-righteousness. All without any repercussions from police or state.

That is not an experience you forget about; it is an experience that you seek to repeat, and it is the last stop on the path.

“You must never imagine that just because something is funny, Messire Marquis, it is not also dangerous” — Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

The trouble with imagining that the USA is on the edge of a fascist precipice is that it seems so damn implausible. The Tea-baggers weren’t scary, they were hilarious, with their incoherent signs and their almost 19th-century scare-mongering. It could never happen here… But the stark truth, of course, is that every major civilization on Earth that has ever fallen — and that’s all of them, in case you weren’t counting — has done so with people thinking just that. To quote political futurist Sara Robinson:

This is the sign we were waiting for — the one that tells us that yes, kids: we are there now. America’s conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country’s legions of discontented far right thugs. They have explicitly deputized them and empowered them to act as their enforcement arm on America’s streets, sanctioning the physical harassment and intimidation of workers, liberals, and public officials who won’t do their political or economic bidding. This is the catalyzing moment at which honest-to-Hitler fascism begins.

From here, the path is bleak, and very, very difficult to avoid. As the third stage develops, the militants get more and more aggressive. Harassment becomes local thuggery — abuse, vandalism, beatings and even killings. The targets are minorities, people who challenge the group’s orthodoxies, and minor political opponents of the sponsoring elite.

“If we can only identify fascism in its mature form — the goose-stepping brownshirts, the full-fledged use of violence and intimidation tactics, the mass rallies — then it will be far too late to stop it.” — Dave Neiwert,The Eliminationists

Stage three matures as the elite/militant alliance racks up political victories. Each one increases their collective sense of power and rightness — as well as their experience — and makes the next one easier. From there, the rise is swift. Then all it takes is one catalytic event, a domestic disaster or threat of war. Usually, in the past, this has been stage-managed by the alliance, and used as an excuse to temporarily halt democratic and/or due legal process whilst the emergency is dealt with.

Pentagon police, 2007

In stage four, the alliance gains control of the country. The two sides of the alliance then slowly turn on each other. If the militants win, authoritarian police states generally follow. Street thuggery is all they really know. If the elites manage to win, then you may end up with a military junta or a theocracy, or some other version of dictatorship.

Stage five typically depends on a military victory. If the stage four state can enter and win a war (foreign or domestic), it can consolidate its power, and enter a period of violent expansion, savage domestic social engineering, or other activities which arise from being drunk on power. In the absence of a big binding victory like this, the stage four state will generally lose focus and disintegrate into the sort of totally corrupted banana-boat regime we all know and loathe.

In 2007, Naomi Wolf noted the Transportation Security Administration’s proposed “Secure Flight” plan. Under it, all passengers on American flights — both international and domestic — would have to get government clearance to travel. She described this in terms of the slide of Germany into fascism, saying:

“If this proposed regulation goes through, we will move from 1931 to about 1934 — when the borders started to close — with the stroke of a pen.”

As of October 15th — just over two weeks time — airlines will have to provide the TSA with your full name exactly as it appears on a piece of government-sanctioned ID, your date of birth, and your gender for all flights. Flight approval rests on criteria which are not available to you for scrutiny. I advise you to go have a look at the piece that Wolf wrote if you are in even the slightest doubt whether travel scrutiny powers are already being regularly misused.

I don’t know what the answer is. Sara Robinson suggests that if the state re-strengthens by making good on old promises and delivering a fair deal again, and if the media chip in and do their bit to avoid spreading corrosive propaganda, and the police take the side of the people to aggresively punish the militant bands, well, then the slide can be averted.

It would be nice to think that this were possible, but I’m far from convinced. I don’t even know if there is an answer. And like I said at the start, I’m not telling you what to believe. But it seems to me that Paxton’s first three stages can be clearly ticked off the list, and I’m getting very worried, both for America (and the people there I love), and for the rest of the world.

As a kid, I always wondered why the people who knew they’d be in the firing line — the jews and intellectuals and homosexuals and so on — didn’t get the hell out of Germany in the early 30s. I understand now, of course. But our understanding of the process is better now, too. If fascism does arise in America, it will be white and piously Christian and every bit as dumb and emotive as ever. So if you’re in America, and you’re not a dumb white Christian, you really, really might want to start looking for options.

Because when the walls slam shut, and the rallies start, and the boots are marching in the street, and there is no room left for doubt… why, then it will be too late.

I’ll leave the last word to Sara Robinson again:

We are now parked on the exact spot where our best experts tell us full-blown fascism is born. Every day that the conservatives in Congress, the right-wing talking heads, and their noisy minions are allowed to hold up our ability to govern the country is another day we’re slowly creeping across the final line beyond which, history tells us, no country has ever been able to return.

Further reading:
Sara Robinson, “Are we there yet?”
Klint Finley, “Is it to late to spot fascism in the US?”

]]> http://www.ghostwoods.com/2009/09/speaking-out-596/feed/ 8 http://www.ghostwoods.com/2009/09/cults-and-the-kabbalah-530/ http://www.ghostwoods.com/2009/09/cults-and-the-kabbalah-530/#comments Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:04:38 +0000 Ghostwoods http://www.ghostwoods.com/?p=530 Since writing my book on the Kabbalah, I have from time to time been asked how I feel about the two main English-speaking Kabbalah teaching organisations, Philip Berg’s Kabbalah Center and Michael Laitman’s Bnai Baruch. It is important for me to point out that I have never had any direct dealings with either the Kabbalah Centre or Bnai Baruch, so everything I know of them has come to me second hand.

Personally, I have concerns about both organisations. Both have a reputation for being undemocratic and controlling, for making financial demands, and for asserting unlikely claims. Bnai Baruch also has an unfortunate reputation for intolerance towards homosexuality.

If you want details, the best bet is to research what the media and interested commentators have to say about both organisations at the Rick A. Ross Institute, an Internet archive of information about controversial groups and movements.

They have a page dedicated to the Kabbalah Center:

http://www.rickross.com/groups/kabbalah.html

And several forum threads about Bnai Baruch:
http://forum.rickross.com/read.php?12,27491,page=1
http://forum.rickross.com/read.php?14,55046,73150

http://forum.rickross.com/read.php?12,34154,page=1

But in general, with any organisation, what is most important is your experience and how you feel. There are several points which I think are important for anyone getting involved with a spiritual organisation.

1. Are you getting a direct and immediate benefit from your membership of the group?
This is of course the most important question. All other considerations aside, if being part of an organisation is actually and genuinely making your life better right now, then that is a major positive point. No matter what the organisation teaches, there will be all sorts of other people with antagonistic belief systems — from fundamentalist religious zealots to hard-line mechanistic atheists — who claim that you are being taught a bunch of lies. Ignore them, and believe whatever makes most sense to you. Everyone claims to have proof that they’re the ones telling the truth, and everyone is wrong.

2. Are you being taught anything that most people would consider actively objectionable?
The first warning sign is being taught things that society would find offensive: that one group of people are worse, less human, weaker — or, conversely, superior — to others; that clearly criminal or malicious activities are OK; that you ought to do what you are told without asking questions; that you should do things which don’t feel right; that you’re condemned if you don’t follow this specific teacher; that bad things are the fault of the people to whom they happen; that you are weak, powerless, evil or otherwise guilty, particularly more so than other people; or that it is OK to hate certain types or groups of people. If you’re being taught toxic crap, run away immediately.

3. Are extraordinary claims backed up by extraordinary proof?
Any organisation which claims to be able to teach supernatural abilities, even if it takes a very long time, should be able to clearly demonstrate them in reasonably careful circumstances. If you are being offered a path to spiritual peace, lack of desire and freedom from money, are all the teachers calm, tranquil and living simply? If you are being taught to communicate with dead loved ones, is there a medium handy to give you a clear demonstration of it working? If an organisation does not offer good evidence right from the start, then whatever their reason for that lack, be wary of their claims. It often means that they are just lying.

You are a SPIRITUAL BEING by nicasaurusrex

4. Do they claim to have the one true path?
There are a huge range of spiritual paths and teachings, and all of them have things to offer. Almost all paths are taught by many different teachers. Any teacher who claims that they and they alone are the correct way — or who suggests that his followers are superior, chosen or special just because they follow him — should be treated with a lot of caution. It can be a sign that the group wants to control you.

5. How democratic and open is the group?
An open, democratic group has a democratically elected board who can discipline or even fire the leaders and teachers, and a constitution that makes members rights clearly visible. It also practises full financial transparency, with regular independently-assessed financial statements that clearly show how much money the organisation makes, and what it spends it on — including how much the leaders receive. If any of these aspects are missing, be careful, because it might indicate that the group is totalitarian, controlling or a flat-out scam.

6. Do they ask you to do anything which would be unreasonable if an acquaintance asked you to do it?
Imagine there is someone you know a little bit — just a friend of a friend, or a professional contact on the same sort of level as you are. What would you do for this person? Join them at a possibly interesting meeting? Go to the movies with them? Spend a week putting leaflets through a door to support their favourite politician? Give them 10% of your earnings? Stop talking to people you care about because they tell you to? Treat any spiritual organisation exactly as if it was just a friend of a friend. Be as friendly as you like with other members, but if the organisation asks you to do anything which you wouldn’t do for an office-mate, be very cautious. Particularly if you actually want to help the organisation by agreeing, because this might be evidence that you are becoming brain-washed. A true friend is your friend regardless of what you believe or what you do for the cause — if group members treat you differently because you dare to say no, then they’re not friends, they’re brainwashing you.

Never, under any circumstances, harm personal friendships or relationships because an organisation tells you that it would be better. Drop a friend because he is mean to you, or makes your life worse, or even because you have just moved on — but never, ever because someone else tells you to. This is the clearest sign available that the group wants to control your life.

Also look at what you are being asked for. Money is the most obvious unreasonable request, but it is not the only one. Other ways an unscrupulous organisation can exploit members include: using them as unpaid workers, using them to recruit other people, using them sexually, using their public prominence to give the group greater credibility, or controlling their lives to indulge the sick power fantasies of the leader/s. So even if you’re not being asked for money, keep a careful watch on what you’re being asked for. If it’s anything more than you might expect a chess club to require of you, then you might be being exploited.

Freedom

Note that all of this applies just as much to political parties or golf clubs or any other organisational structure. Sometimes the benefits outweigh the exploitation or control, and sometimes they do not. That is a decision you have to make — but you can only make it if you clearly know what both the benefits and costs are. Then you are truly free, to choose as you see fit.

If you liked this post, you should go and have a look at P. D. Jordan’s novel Ghost Patrol. It’s a story about brain-washing, deprogramming and what it means to be human. It’s a darn fine piece of sf, too. I think you’ll like it. 

The article is interesting on several levels. Both men foresee a near-unavoidable social crisis in the next mumblety decades, and their reasoning is worryingly well-founded, if perhaps a bit one-sided. They see the results in very different ways, however — Kingsnorth is something of a utopianist, Monbiot a dystopianist. Both assume that politicians are short-sighted, and that the will to save tomorrow at the expense of discomfort today is effectively non-existent. The debate really is worth reading, and I’d encourage you to go have a look, even if just as an interesting look at current ecological thought.

Signs of the Coming Apocalypse: The Sandwich of Knowledge

Dear George

On the desk in front of me is a set of graphs. The horizontal axis of each represents the years 1750 to 2000. The graphs show, variously, population levels, CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere, exploitation of fisheries, destruction of tropical forests, paper consumption, number of motor vehicles, water use, the rate of species extinction and the totality of the human economy’s gross domestic product.

What grips me about these graphs (and graphs don’t usually grip me) is that though they all show very different things, they have an almost identical shape. A line begins on the left of the page, rising gradually as it moves to the right. Then, in the last inch or so – around 1950 – it veers steeply upwards, like a pilot banking after a cliff has suddenly appeared from what he thought was an empty bank of cloud.

The root cause of all these trends is the same: a rapacious human economy bringing the world swiftly to the brink of chaos. We know this; some of us even attempt to stop it happening. Yet all of these trends continue to get rapidly worse, and there is no sign of that changing soon. What these graphs make clear better than anything else is the cold reality: there is a serious crash on the way.

The comments include the usual mad rantings of haters, evidence deniers, doomsayers and the perpetually bewildered, but in amongst them are some very interesting counterpoints, analyses and other little gems. You can normally see which are worth reading by how many recommendation points they have :)

My award for best post-article summation goes to ‘savage dave’, however:

savagedave: 17 Aug 09, 10:59pm

I for one welcome to coming apocalypse. We can have a world where all a man needs to make his way is some stubble, a mullet and a sawn off shotgun, and women are beautiful and deadly and clad entirely in fitted leather. One can live by your wits and your nerve, fending off hordes of mutants, cannibals and assorted beasts.

Much like Basingstoke on a saturday, in fact.

Thanks to the ever-awesome Mick Farren (yes, the Mick Farren *grin*) for the heads up.