By Pepe Escobar with permission and first posted at Asia Times
The political economy of the Digital Age remains virtually terra incognita. In Techno-Feudalism , published three months ago in France (no English translation yet), Cedric Durand, an economist at the Sorbonne, provides a crucial, global public service as he sifts through the new Matrix that controls all our lives.
Durand places the Digital Age in the larger context of the historical evolution of capitalism to show how the Washington consensus ended up metastasized into the Silicon Valley consensus. In a delightful twist, he brands the new grove as the “Californian ideology”.
We’re far away from Jefferson Airplane and the Beach Boys; it’s more like Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” on steroids, complete with IMF-style “structural reforms” emphasizing “flexibilization” of work and outright marketization/financialization of everyday life.
The Digital Age was crucially associated with right-wing ideology from the very start. The incubation was provided by the Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF), active from 1993 to 2010 and conveniently funded, among others, by Microsoft, At&T, Disney, Sony, Oracle, Google, and Yahoo.
In 1994, PFF held a ground-breaking conference in Atlanta that eventually led to a seminal Magna Carta: literally, Cyberspace and the American Dream: a Magna Carta for the Knowledge Era, published in 1996, during the first Clinton term.
Not by accident the magazine Wired was founded, just like PFF, in 1993, instantly becoming the house organ of the “Californian ideology”.
Among the authors of the Magna Carta we find futurist Alvin “Future Shock” Toffler and Reagan’s former scientific counselor George Keyworth. Before anyone else, they were already conceptualizing how “cyberspace is a bioelectronic environment which is literally universal”. Their Magna Carta was the privileged road map to explore the new frontier.
Those Randian heroes
Also not by accident the intellectual guru of the new frontier was Ayn Rand and her quite primitive dichotomy between “pioneers” and the mob. Rand declared that egotism is good, altruism is evil, and empathy is irrational.
When it comes to the new property rights of the new Eldorado, all power should be exercised by the Silicon Valley “pioneers”, a Narcissus bunch in love with their mirror image as superior Randian heroes. In the name of innovation they should be allowed to destroy any established rules, in a Schumpeterian “creative destruction” rampage.
That has led to our current environment, where Google, Facebook, Uber, and co. can overstep any legal framework, imposing their innovations like a fait accompli.
Durand goes to the heart of the matter when it comes to the true nature of “digital domination”: US leadership was never achieved because of spontaneous market forces.
On the contrary. The history of Silicon Valley is absolutely dependent on state intervention – especially via the industrial-military complex and the aero-spatial complex. The Ames Research Center, one of NASA’s top labs, is in Mountain View. Stanford was always awarded juicy military research contracts. During WWII, Hewlett Packard, for instance, was flourishing thanks to their electronics being used to manufacture radars. Throughout the 1960s, the US military bought the bulk of the still infant semiconductor production.
The Rise of Data Capital, a 2016 MIT Technological Review report produced “in partnership” with Oracle, showed how digital networks open access to a new, virgin underground brimming with resources: “Those that arrive first and take control obtain the resources they’re seeking” – in the form of data.
So everything from video-surveillance images and electronic banking to DNA samples and supermarket tickets implies some form of territorial appropriation. Here we see in all its glory the extractivist logic inbuilt in the development of Big Data.
Durand gives us the example of Android to illustrate the extractivist logic in action. Google made Android free for all smartphones so it would acquire a strategic market position, beating the Apple ecosystem and thus becoming the default internet entry point for virtually the whole planet. That’s how a de facto, immensely valuable, online real estate empire is built.
The key point is that whatever the original business – Google, Amazon, Uber – strategies of conquering cyberspace all point to the same target: take control of “spaces of observation and capture” of data.
About the Chinese credit system…
Durand offers a finely balanced analysis of the Chinese credit system – a public/private hybrid system launched in 2013 during the 3rd plenum of the 18th Congress of the CCP, under the motto “to value sincerity and punish insincerity”.
For the State Council, the supreme government authority in China, what really mattered was to encourage behavior deemed responsible in the financial, economic and socio-political spheres, and sanction what is not. It’s all about trust. Beijing defines it as “a method of perfecting the socialist market economy system that improves social governance”.
The Chinese term – shehui xinyong – is totally lost in translation in the West. Way more complex than “social credit”, it’s more about “trustworthiness”, in the sense of integrity. Instead of the pedestrian Western accusations of being an Orwellian system, priorities include the fight against fraud and corruption at the national, regional and local levels, violations of environmental rules, disrespect of food security norms.
Cybernetic management of social life is being seriously discussed in China since the 1980s. In fact, since the 1940s, as we see in Mao’s Little Red Book. It could be seen as inspired by the Maoist principle of “mass lines”, as in “start with the masses to come back to the masses: to amass the ideas of the masses (which are dispersed, non-systematic), concentrate them (in general ideas and systematic), then come back to the masses to diffuse and explain them, make sure the masses assimilate them and translate them into action, and verify in the action of the masses the pertinence of these ideas”.
Durand’s analysis goes one step beyond Soshana Zuboff’s
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism when he finally reaches the core of his thesis, showing how digital platforms become “fiefdoms”: they live out of, and profit from, their vast “digital territory” peopled with data even as they lock in power over their services, which are deemed indispensable.
And just as in feudalism, fiefdoms dominate territory by attaching serfs. Masters made their living profiting from the social power derived from the exploitation of their domain, and that implied unlimited power over the serfs.
It all spells out total concentration. Silicon Valley stalwart Peter Thiel has always stressed the target of the digital entrepreneur is exactly to bypass competition. As quoted in Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, Thiel declared, “Capitalism and competition are antagonistic. Competition is for losers.”
So now we are facing not a mere clash between Silicon Valley capitalism and finance capital, but actually a new mode of production: a turbo-capitalist survival as rentier capitalism, where Silicon giants take the place of estates, and also the State. That is the “techno-feudal” option, as defined by Durand.
Blake meets Burroughs
Durand’s book is extremely relevant to show how the theoretical and political critique of the Digital Age is still rarified. There is no precise cartography of all those dodgy circuits of revenue extraction. No analysis of how do they profit from the financial casino – especially mega investment funds that facilitate hyper-concentration. Or how do they profit from the hardcore exploitation of workers in the gig economy.
The total concentration of the digital globe is leading to a scenario, as Durand recalls, already dreamed up by Stuart Mill, where every land in a country belonged to a single master. Our generalized dependency on the digital masters seems to be “the cannibal future of liberalism in the age of algorithms”.
Is there a possible way out? The temptation is to go radical – a Blake/Burroughs crossover. We have to expand our scope of comprehension – and stop confusing the map (as shown in the Magna Carta) with the territory (our perception).
William Blake, in his proto-psychedelic visions, was all about liberation and subordination – depicting an authoritarian deity imposing conformity via a sort of source code of mass influence. Looks like a proto-analysis of the Digital Age.
William Burroughs conceptualized Control – an array of manipulations including mass media (he would be horrified by social media). To break down Control, we must be able to hack into and disrupt its core programs. Burroughs showed how all forms of Control must be rejected – and defeated: “Authority figures are seen for what they are: dead empty masks manipulated by computers”.
Here’s our future: hackers or slaves.
Here is the original 1995 essay titled “The Californian Ideology”. There are certainly flaws with its analysis, but it is prescient for its time: http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/17/the-californian-ideology-2/
And certainly there is much to learn in the 25 years since then, many such threads outlined in Pepe’s article and Durand’s book.
“Here’s our future: hackers or slaves.”
I think this is the plain truth. Informatics is no longer just a career path, it is the new literacy. And the West is largely illiterate. By some accounts China is including computer sciences in their core primary curriculum for all children. A nation of hackers. If the West is to ever have another social revolution, it will have a significant digital component (for example, everyone abandoning their orthodox social media profiles would be a start…).
I could not agree more. Informatics being the study of natural and engineered computational systems. It studies the representation, processing, and communication of information in natural and engineered systems.
In other words it is an element of science and not a factor of the present where educational emphasis is on ‘social revolution’
Do these dwarves (SJW’s) not have any idea where they would be without real scientists or mathematicians to take care of them? They would be sitting in grass huts picking lice out of each other’s hair. Do they know how much math and physics go into a smartphon>,
And remember nothing more than satire destroys the seriousness of stupidity.
The Chinese cannot defeat a people who are visionary. Are your people visionary?
Who do you think the Chinese want to defeat? They certainly do not need to defeat thier own people, as they ARE their people — one united nation like no other. All they want is for th west to mind its own business…
The irony is that any discussion on this subject will be adding to the data flow being used to control us.
As a discussion on radio yesterday stated, if we want secure conversation now we might have to go back to carrier pigeon.
https://www.rt.com/business/454135-pigeon-sold-record-auction/
People are buying carrier pigeons. This one: 1.6 million dollars.
Ham radios making a comeback. https://www.dispatch.com/entertainmentlife/20200526/ham-radio-fans-catch-chat-wave-during-coronavirus-pandemic
Like the ‘intelligent’ computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the ‘intelligence’ of our digital management is being instructed, by the Lords of Silicon Valley, to tell lies. The current lie is that ‘there was no fraud in the election’.
What other lies will it tell us? And is a similar outcome ‘baked in’ by now?
What truths has come from the Lords of Silicon Valley?
The slimeballs of Google haven’t told the truth since their inception.
Wikipedia is all but useless as a resource, festooned with “edits”.
Microsoft? Steve Jobs told Gates sitting three feet away that what Gates produced was shit. And Bill didn’t protest. His foundational work was a lie and continues to use its applications as siphons of data.
And on and on with FB and Amazon, sucking up data from everyone who touches them and those who don’t know the siphon is on in the background of every device.
Good article, but bad title.
“Is there a way out?”
Of course there is!
Necessity is the Mother of Invention and it Is necessary for Humanity to have some Freedom, somewhere…..or else all creativity upon which the medium and long term survival of the human species depends…..is either severely constrained …….or it DIES all together.
However, freedom hardly comes from ONLY rolling out of bed in the morning, grabbing your Alter-Ego-Phone and having it do all your thinking, planning, scheduling, socializing for you for the rest of your day……OR life.
That’s the New Feudal Matrix.
Admire your New Lords of The Chip Valley too much…..and they will gladly enslave you…with their opinions that you only imagine are your own.
Therefore, it is the WILL to Freedom and whether it is in sufficient supply…or can be developed…..in the individual, first, and then in the aggregate of society………… that is decisive.
This is what a great many people miss in the long overdue current exposure of the Empire Matrix DOMINION of the Serfs through their already decades long digital manipulation of “the popular vote”…..first overseas in Empire-rigged elections by the CIA and MI-6 and the families and not nations, but Empire they serve………….. and now blatantly, sloppily, mostly in the wee hours, especially of Nov 4, 2020.
You can “get it” through your head now….or maybe you might get it later. And give credit where credit is due…IF you ever do “get” the significance of these past 4 weeks…and the next several ones to come before Jan 20, 2021
The first thing to “get” is that digitization, like any other tool, even non-cutting tools like knives, plows and such…….is a two edged sword.
It HAS led to plenty of machine rigged elections …but it COULD also ensure honesty in counting and verifying (by EACH voter of their vote) and privacy …once enough of the public is educated what THE ONE controlled by NO ONE even in Silicon Valley………… global, immutable public ledger of time-stamped data (blockchain) can do for honesty in money, voting…and very much else besides.
So, digitization of data could isolate and brainwash people in lockdown by censorship of all competing narratives as TWITLER is now deployed to accomplish …….OR …for the moment …it can still connect actual creative .problem solving thinking provoked by Pepe’s article…and shared competing points of view…………… right here on this digital Vineyard of the Saker platform…as I have already outlined to another set of writers (Ghassan and Intibah) since the American debut and unintended exposure of the Grand Theft Voto Game now in process.
/the-great-reset-no-pasaran/#comment-878158
Because Trump is not nearly as stupid as you think he is..has military intel HACKERS who have the proof……and IS actually going for a much bigger and more universal accomplishment than 1 or 2 terms ………………….and a presidential library.
Like it or lump it, folks: He’s far more of a potential threat to Silicon Valley …to be realized 2nd term than very many here have yet chosen to “get”. Because many egos simply don’t want to “get” a lot of things
Moreover this fact IS possible………….. for even a British subject in the Digital Space to comprehend………….. quite deeply and quite competently, so “You can do it too, if you try.”
OR……………… you can Learn to Love Your Chains.
Listen carefully to another Michael Hudson most of you have no doubt never heard of…or from…before:
https://youtu.be/cO3kWMqLR1U?t=14228
Decide if his intention is to Serve the Digital Matrix of Control OR the very opposite.
As I assert in the comment linked above this newer one, the actual inventor of Bitcoin (which will be proven in a court of law in the coming year, I have a hunch, in a libel lawsuit where the defendant (who has already given up his defense effort and asked what sum is required to have the action dropped.)…………. will, I predict be refused any settlement, be defeated in court as he is already defeated in pretrial, by his lawyers’ pleas for settlement, will be shown mercy by the inventor of Bitcoin plaintiff in terms of that Peter McCormack defendant being buried, broken and bankrupted…in return for having facilitated THE TRUTH proven in court as opposed to BS “proof of social media” and shared delusional social mere false opinion. misleading millions of crypto-suckers.
This issue isn’t going away guys.
Time to scratch deeper, below the surface and discover where the positively cutting edge of the Double-Edged Digital Sword ….is to be found.
Honest Votes and Honest Money ARE possible.
HOW??? To be continued.
Because this subject is way too important to merely “deal with it” by not dealing with it, ie by just quivering in dread and fear, quaking in some corner with terminal, resigned submission to Technocratic EMPIRE Psychopathy.
And @15 -20 minutes after Michael finishes y’all get an insiders’ peak into this power struggle in the Crypto-Sphere years ago…..playing out separately from Grand Theft Voto……but VERY related to the “Great EVIL Reset” and everything else currently of any consequence:
https://youtu.be/cO3kWMqLR1U?t=15346
Kurt has the right stuff to show “the way out”.
Prove me wrong.
Cheers!
“Tell that to Houdini. Pepe. “Is there a way out?” Of course there is! ”
Houdini, too, was a JMafia asset…
The proof lies in the ring around the collar and the mirror, I’ll bet Kurt missed that way out.
Hi Bro- I listened! Thanks for the the stamp to hear some remarkable people attempting the very nearly impossible feat of staying out of the closed circle of the serpent. I will appreciate anything else like this you pass along in the cafe.
Cheers k
Prophetically, William Burroughs was also obsessed by the idea of the virus.
“The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.”
“Prophetically, William Burroughs was also obsessed by the idea of the virus.”
Burroughs, too, was a JMafia asset…
I have to respectfully disagree with you, Pepe. If it wasn’t for the internet, many of us would still be thinking that 9/11 was done by a bunch of Arabs led by some crazy dude in Afghanistan. That’s what most Americans thought until the actual truth started coming out that the Twin Towers coming down from airplanes flying into them was physically impossible. The “official” narrative of that awful event was broadcast on the MSM within hours of the attack, way before any actual investigation could possibly have been done. That should have been a clue.
The internet is our only lifeline to the truth, Pepe. It presents objective reality that we would be foolish to ignore. The MSM is not going there, as they are totally in control of the Zionists, even Fox News. Trump knows that 9/11 was an inside job, but even he has to watch what he says being as how he has taken “thirty pieces of silver” from Sheldon Adelson and is duty-bound to protect the real perp of 9/11, Israel. This will all end badly because the real perps are not going away anytime soon. They will drive us into another horrible war, this time with Iran, just to keep their boy Trump in power. May Heaven help us all.
There you go again, Tommy, with your lower vibrational fear state….in your second paragraph.
A perfect example of compliance with the objective of Empire Mind Control.
Which is why you simply cannot comprehend that Adelson may not rule Trump.
Fear paralyzes your higher faculties of problem solving…..while you cry out for the clear blue sky to do all the work (hacking the Slave System and disabling it, in Pepe’s unfortunately veiled but also presented option) that is needed to be done.
However I do like your first paragraph…before you start to “go under”. Glub glub, calling for SOS rescue.
Go back in the archives on 911 articles here and you will discover how and why I knew that very morning of September 11, 2001….as soon as the second tower was hit….that it was a deep State False Flag.
That’s why I am optimistic and you are not. There’s been a phenomenal amount of awakening since 2001 on a LOT of things ….besides just 911.
Because anyone with half a brain knows it is ALL…related.
Cheers and cheer up, mate.
The “poor little me” routine is getting absurd. Become a hacker of Fake News and Even Faker “Reality”.
Like the one that goes: Joe & Ho will take office.
NO, they won’t. Despite many here absurdly wishing they would…so they can at least feel “smarter” than the guy that got more votes in American history……despite viciously lying MSM and Fake Polls trying in vain to discourage that Red Tsunami Base.
Yeah! Any village idiot can pull THAT off.
LOL & sarc….both richly deserved, BTW.
Snap out of it, mate! I’m pulling for you.
When you take out the ad hominem attacks from this screed, it’s hard to make out what you are actually saying, Bro 93. Are you offended by my pointing out the Sheldon Adelson is the single biggest donor to Republican election campaigns since forever? Do you think that was just an act of charity and that he wasn’t expecting something in return? Are you saying that the vast majority of Americans weren’t taken in by the “official” narrative of 9/11 and are you denying that Israel had anything to do with that awful event? Like I said, it’s hard to make out what you’re actually saying amid your ad hominem attacks that somehow always make it past the moderators.
My thoughts exactly Tommy.
Hang in there boys, and work to dispel the cloud of fear and dread that drags you down into the error of dark pessimism with no solutions……very similar to most comments here…………….there are notable exceptions by bone and HDan ……..maybe 1 or 2 others I’ve missed……… and you may arrive at your moment of discovery of my intended meaning.
Let me make it very plain for you in nutshell form in one paragraph…..for the passing moment of this thread:
Adelson is no good and neither was Roy Cohn. But the Presto Connecto Over-Simplify Everything Theory of History is not competency…it’s just the barest skeleton of a start for understanding a complex person like Donald Trump………that may flesh out in some rigor and non-contradiction to what is living and acting TODAY……in the presidency …..or may fall down in a heap of tendonless, muscle-less nerveless bones that are of little OR nearly negligible effect on the ongoing making of history …………….compared to newer, far , larger and more ideas, identities, dynamics and realities that your Presto-Connecto Method choses to ignore……which are far, far more DETERMINANT.
You don’t have to “believe” that such things exist. But don’t automatically preclude the possibility ….that they might. THAT is a grave error of judgment.
Just as Putin was misjudged by most of the world …as a meek yes-man that would continue the selling out of Russia.
Like I have said many times…just the plain fact of DJT assisting 80 million Americans to finally realize that MSM is FAKE NEWS….and to vote accordingly .32 days ago …………as incomplete and messy as that process is………….is infinitely more determinant of the potential for some good happening going forward….in terms of stopping the Neo-Feudal Hell Pepe’s article is about...than all the posturing complainers here there and everywhere ……put together……most of whom have NO SOLUTIONS whatsoever…..if you stop and notice…and just ask them:
“So what is YOUR solution???”
A Pity Party, Perhaps???
Typically they have NONE: Except to imagine that if they get some “likes” and a few people sharing the same “feelings” that somehow “helps”.
Helps WHAT??
Simply reinforcing feelings make may the holder of those feelings “feel” better for the brief moment of their affirmation by someone else…but advances cognition, competency, creative potency…… that the crisis urgently calls out for……..not one whit.
OKAY???
Comprehend???
Or take the example of Rudy Giulani.
Using the Presto Connecto My Grasp of 3 or 4 Facts out of THOUSANDS That Actually May Be More Determinant one could…………………. (and most fools DO!)……………… simply write Rudy off for not singlehandedly blowing the cover of the Whole 911 False Flag during the remainder of September 2001
How many more days do you imagine he would have lived if he had done what these silly children demand of him, by their silly standards of “reality”…which are simply ridiculous????
WHO should he have gone to?? Some with less of a platform a megaphone than the Mayor of New York City, the NWO Neocon conspirators could and did ignore. Others, with too big a voice, too many people listening …..like ALL New Yorkers….PLUS…..they couldn’t allow THAT!
Obviously he would have to have been overcome with grief and despair…..and “taken his own life”.
Well, I’m glad he didn’t. And I am very glad at the progress he is making at blowing up THE Greatest Vote Fraud in World History……right now.
That’s pretty damned good for a Final Act………..of Redemption.
Cheers!
@Bro93
What I discovered through the happenings lately is the very real possibility that the movement voting for Trump – a non movement – in the strict Empire – cosmos sense, IS the deciding moment now anyway, the CUT has to be made in order to move on, and ONLY the ‘movement’ + Trump can carry it through it’s first stages, there is no other way left it’s the “Check” moment before “Mate” in Chess, the opponent is forced to move without gain other than time, but in the real world such a move creates ripples of gigantic proportions in final effect.
The ‘CUT’ are the steps necessary to proceed from the ‘here now’ to the ‘next’ – beyond the ‘Election’ – which was a total scam, to the after (Bidon-Ho IS NOT an after, but rather a within !), the after is to reinstate the order – first – and thus the DOJ and the FBI and proceeding from there – no way leads around this – NONE, because no order without legality, no legaility without investigation of the wrong ! The sole orderly bodies left are the people and the Constitution !
It’s a universal problem, solveable only in starting from the core, and the US IS the core, because of it’s power (good or bad), nothing can move without changing echoes within the core – that is how it is (irrespective of any qualifications beyond) – it’s fundamental !
There was an interesting hearing in the Senate about Operation Crossfire Hurricane:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAwMWPzzNgw
highlighting the complete and total impasse ! One simply cannot proceed !
If George Orwell was alive today, he’d say: If you want a vision of the future, imagine a Facebook stamping on a human face – forever.
“If George Orwell was alive today, he’d say”
George Orwell, too, was a JMafia asset…
_smr please tell me if chuck d is JMafia asset and if dr dre ever went to medical school :) :) thank you
to HACK or SLAVE.,ok right ,but most slaves don’t even know they are slaves for that matter.,they work 9 to 5 to put food on the table .,and if one is not into relationship than wholly to please oneself constantly in egotism ,conditioned to think that that is all there to in life..,in the present that humans find themselves in ,enough is always wanting more ., to fullfill no matter who you are takes all the energy ,never mind having the perception to see that one is in a gilded prison.Plato’s sermon on the caves that we dewelve in has not wakened us from the slumber.
The young prince Buddha left everything cause he found nothing in anything as long as not everyone had everything that he had.Not that am a buddhist, but a pot calling a kettle black is not going to help anyone the least.
hollywood has shown us the inevitable future if humanity don’t free themselves , in the movie 2001 ,the AI takes over where buddha & plato lost.,we can’t say we were not warned.,it has nothing to do with the P.C ,as the late K said ,”the crisis is in the consciousness it is not outside”.
I think the real frightening thing about the techno-feudal world are the words from Luke 8:17
“There is nothing hidden, which shall not be openly seen; nor anything secret, which shall not be known and come into the light of day.”
Just imagine a Stalin being in possession of todays technological marvels. One wouldn’t be able to use a washroom without you being videotaped.
As for 9/11 there were hundreds if not thousands of camera’s throughout those buildings that needed hacking or something as well as what about the suspicions surrounding what the murderers were not aware of and possibly worried about?
Beyond that think about Nixon tapes lol? Or for that matter taking your wife on a trip only to find you have been secretly recorded by strangers in your 500.00 a night hotel room? Or horrifyingly no by your brother or sister or even parents in ones own home!
When one truly grasps the shocking, horrifying nature of life around us today best to carry your own electronic devices to pick up these intruders.
Has this really what life has come down to today?
And is this then why we have this written for us?
Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. Mathew 10:21-23
all recorded I might add for posterity!!!! Something your grandchildren can look forward to.
Just let your imagine run wild at all the antics of children with new toys?
I’m very optimistic. The vast majority or nerds and hackers and all the other hyper intelligent aspies that are in abundance today want a bright future and not a dystopian one. The creaky old power structures are too slow to keep up.
Pharmocratic feudalism backed up by the technocratic machine.
Here is some news regarding what is planned for you are you family.
https://healthandmoneynews.wordpress.com/2020/12/02/head-of-pfizer-research-covid-vaccine-is-female-sterilization/
Regarding Moderna: “Three of the 15 human guinea pigs in the high-dose cohort – 250MG – reportedly suffered a “serious adverse event” within 43 days of receiving Moderna’s jab.”
Not one word about who owns this whole technological construct. But the idea of a “Techno-Feudal World” nevertheless implies a separation of the citizenry between owners and serfs. Here is a short quote from “A first blow to Late-Modernity” that addresses this particular aspect. (4.2.3.3. a radical Restructuring of US society)
“””
In may of 2019 a little known organization, under the federal government, called the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), published an interesting document about how to overhaul the American way of life and the economy in order to ensure that the USA is not being left in the dust technologically by China.
In summary this restructuring strategy is meant to divide the US and its client societies into 3 parallel worlds :
● the corporations, owned by the biggest capital holders, will be supplied with free money for as long as the eyes can see (fiat money creation) and they will also be freed from the application of national protection laws (two tier implementation of the law). The big capital holders themselves will be living in foreign sanctuaries that are completely detached from the obligations imposed by national laws (taxes, housing, education, health, and so on).
● the servants of big capital holders will act as a TINA kind of technocracy that will have full power to re-engineer society technologically in order to maximize the returns on the investments of big capital holders while ensuring that the rest of the world becomes captive of these new technologies.
● the majority of citizens will be made captive of ‘the reason that is at work within capital’ and will thus be forced to labor against low remunerations while being imposed high interest rates on their loans and being subjected to strict national laws that govern their daily lives. A sizable chunk of society will be constituted of ‘deplorables’ that live in misery on the margins and they will opportunistically be proposed part-time jobs to remember the majority that “there is a reserve army ready to take over … “
“””
The engine that powers societies, in the age of Modernity, is capital or better “the reason that is at work within capital”. From science, peoples’ incomes, to popular culture everything of substance is indeed fostered by the investments realized by big capital holders. Expanding our scope of comprehension implies stopping confusing the map (the technological forms) for the territory (the nature of power).
Notes
— “ Chinese Tech Landscape overview. NSCIA presentation “. May 2019
— “Techno-Tyranny: How The US National Security State Is Using Coronavirus To Fulfill An Orwellian Vision “ by Whitney Webb. 2020-04-20.
“Also not by accident the intellectual guru of the new frontier was Ayn Rand and her quite primitive dichotomy between “pioneers” and the mob. Rand declared that egotism is good, altruism is evil, and empathy is irrational.”
I make examples of this statement in two short videos. The first being how the former elements of ‘the ascetics of the material, of morality and good’ have been abused to become their opposites and eventually where that leads. The second is the fierce reality of that journey and consequences which unhappily is ongoing.
The first: http://www.cowdisley.com/videos/artfuture.mp4 or https://youtu.be/A2drSzBXYg0
The consequences: https://youtu.be/TKwofXANYWU or http://www.cowdisley.com/videos/vice.mp4
Thanks for the links to these videos.
Understanding where we are today implies getting a grip on where we come from. And more generally the history of art prefigures the history of men. Since the advent of power-societies some 5000 years ago art has navigated along the path of the conflict between “the (wo)men of knowledge” and “the men of power”. So art has taken multiple forms along the whole span of history :
— tribes were a non-power model of society that were navigating under the radar of the animist (wo)men of knowledge who were also the artists. This means that, for tens of thousands of years, there was no separation between art and knowledge…
— early-kingdoms and empires succeeded to stabilize their institutions over the generations only after their chieftains called upon the men of knowledge of the day to glue the minds of their subjects around a religious or philosophic narrative. This is when the artist separated from the (wo)men of knowledge and became an image maker craftsman illustrating the narrative of the (wo)men of knowledge. In the process the image maker landed at the bottom of the social ladder…
— in early-Modernity the new rich long distance merchants called upon the religious image craftsmen to illustrate their changing paradigm that turned around individualism and material possessions. To allay their fears of being burnt at the stake by their church commissioners religious image craftsmen were being paid royally and established themselves as successful models of social mobility.
— in High-Modernity the avant-garde went its own way denigrating past creations as superficial and rejecting their uni-dimensional propagating of ideology. After 2 decades of trials and errors Modernism had fallen prey to tricksters and by the end of the 2nd world war New York political propagandists with the help of art merchants took control of the art market.
— by the end of the sixties to ensure their continued hegemony big capital and its servants financed a monopolization of ideation by thinkers pushing neoliberalism and postmodernism. The result came in by the eighties. Neoliberalism was spreading to the whole world de-funding all state protection institutions and eliminating all foundational religious and political grand narratives (Christianity, Marxism, etc…). Postmodernism was pushing formalism and limited causes (tree huggers, sex identity, technologism, and whatever … this is when ugliness was given a pass.
So here we are. “Whatever” can now be called art and commandeer 6 or more figures at the hands of merchants. But this was only made possible by the men of power in their manipulation of societies to ensure their continued hegemony.
What a wonderful and intelligent summation. As a craftsman/painter and unlike Rubens (a revered diplomat) my comments are somewhat below the rigors of the academic.
Your comment “High-Modernity the avant-garde went its own way denigrating past creations as superficial and rejecting their uni-dimensional propagating of ideology.” is in my mind so much striking the target at its bullseye.
Many thanks.
The most telling part of this essay is the phrase from Peter Thiel “ ……competition is for losers”. A phrase that John D Rockefeller said in a very similar way over a century ago “ competition is a sin.” . Moreover, just like the old robber barons from the gilded age, the present robber barons from the reincarnation of the gilded age believed that the state should work for them. Professor Antony C Sutton wrote about this in his trilogy of books about Wall Street and the economist Professor Michael Hudson has also wrote books plus producing lectures on the new financial feudalism. Both the new robber barons from Silicon Valley and the old robber barons from Wall. Street, who are one and the same in reality through cross shareholdings. They are working towards the same goal “ The Great Reset “ translated into its real meaning a New World Order and this Scamdemic is but one more piece in the jigsaw of a very long planned strategy to achieve this.
https://www.anti-empire.com/we-know-the-covid-19-vaccine-is-safe-because-because-its-called-a-vaccine/
It is not a scamdemic. The virus is real and it can destroy immunocompromised individuals like diabetics and others already sufferimg systemic inflammation.
Take milk thistle seed extract to control inflammatory response and find yourself some Cnicus benedictus or Onopordum acanthium because these plants, these ancient medicine herb plants, these plants will protect you from the ravages of this virus.
Take a look in google scholar and search for herbs and Covid-19.
Lonicera japonica
Rheum emodi
Uncaria tomentosa
Seek and you will find. Take a mRNA vaccine and surely die.
Wendy,
You are right. The virus is real, and it can make life hell for a few weeks, even for a healthy person.
I also agree that there are plants out there for every ailment. Plants are nature’s pharmacy, in my opinion.
Your comment here is very helpful. Milk thistle has some powerful health benefits. And some of the other plants you listed also grow in Iran. I will definitely give them a try next time I catch covid. I have had covid at least half a dozen times since the year started. I’ve found codeine to be very helpful, as it has immunosuppressant effects, which strangely seems to attenuate the severity of covid, whereas it makes the flu worse.
Your “Iran will be nuked because the bible says so” hysteria was quite insensitive, and not helpful at all. I am glad you have stopped pushing that line.
Cheers
Jamshyd,
Why don’t you take some homeopathic remedies, after consulting a good practitioner. Next time you have SARS II or any other influenza, bronchitis, dry cough, cold or similar infection give homeopathic medicines a try.
I’ve found it quite effective 👍
Jamshyd,
The medical tyranny is being perpeyrated in an information black out scrubbing any notion of the scale of threat posed by the virus so that it ‘appears’ the only thing that can ‘save’ us is some high technology ftom the highest alters of the allopathic medicine cult.
By continuing that paradigm in utterances herein you only add more rods to everyone’s back. What is called for is open dialog and amplification of basic truths regarding the fact that phytochemicals from plants ate able to inhibit viral reproduction machinery and attenuate harm sufficient to carry a person unfortunate to be challenged by this virus.
As for Iran and the nukes only time will tell. I am not hysterical. I am simply putting down what the true vine is. Iran will be attacked and will fall. Believe whatever you like as I will too but beyond our ken and beyond our control others with genuine power and restless fingers hovering over go buttons are the ones whose ideologies will call those final shots.
Licorice root, green tea, cats claw, Artemisia, Ferula, green beans, asparagus racemosa, rosa rugosa, take a look online, discover the chemistry of these plants and those mentioned in earlier comments above and then combine those flavonoids with sars-cov-2 or simply covid-19 into a search on say google scholar and you will find that the media and governments and chief scientists and indeed virtually the entire medical profession cannot admit the truth, simply cannot do it, just cannot admit that nature already has this viruses measure.
Because that confrontation with the truth is being avoided we are placed in a position as entire society’s of penetants. We are being kept on the dark and for bad reasons. You can have your dna altered by way of transfecrion by messenger rna if you like but in doung so you will cease to be a creature of the creator and instead become a figment of copyright. Break with the creator if you wish but don’t expect me or anyone else to divorce themself for the source of all life and live and forgiveness.
Licorice root, green tea, and green beans do absolutely nothing for covid. “The sickest I have ever been in my life” is how everyone around me who has had covid describes it. And I concur.
Now, I don’t know if what we have in Iran is a different strain, or what. But I don’t think you have had covid, Wendy.
To suggest licorice root, green tea and green beans for covid-19 is like suggesting a band aid for a tumor, in my opinion. Covid-19 is the most major illness I have ever had in my life. It is the only time I have ever thought I was going to die from a disease.
After you recover from covid, you will likely have some kind of lung damage, liver damage or damage to your eyes. I have all three. The conjunctivitis caused by covid left my vision blurry for weeks after I had recovered.
I have been taking Milk thistle to help with liver issues brought on by covid for a couple of months now. Milk thistle is very good for liver repair, but does nothing for covid symptoms. As I said before, covid is a very major illness. It does not respond to mild plant medicines in the slightest.
The only plant based medicine which has helped me has been the weak opioid, codeine phosphate, which has immunosuppressant effects, which counteracts the overactive immune response which causes the covid symptoms.
And also, you mention Artemisia and Ferula, without specifying the species, which makes me think you don’t know anything about plants.
“As for Iran and the nukes only time will tell. I am not hysterical. I am simply putting down what the true vine is. Iran will be attacked and will fall. Believe whatever you like as I will too but beyond our ken and beyond our control others with genuine power and restless fingers hovering over go buttons are the ones whose ideologies will call those final shots.”
Do you know how many people have been quoting the book of revelation and claiming that the end of the world is “coming soon”, these past two millenia? That is the very definition of hysterical, mate.
And as long as we are believing what we will, you should know that the bible was falsified ages ago. The book which you take to be the word of God, is the word of Satan, in my humble opinion. Look around you. Look at the history of Christianity. How many dead in the pointless Crusades? How many Africans enslaved? How many natives dead in America? How many in Australia?
Many of those natives were true worshippers of God, mind you. And the Satanist Christians had to eliminate them, just like the Arabs had to eliminate the Persians; for fear of being exposed as frauds themselves.
And how many innocent Muslims dead at the hands of the so called Christian West, in the last couple of decades? You have some nerve constantly threatening Iran with nukes and attacks, you know. Completely outrageous, discourteous, and as insensitive as can possibly be.
Iran will not fall. Not until the entire world falls. Mark my words.
Dear Jamshyd,
I was very sorry to know that you suffered from Covid 2019. Human antibodies, resisting this particular virus, are present for several months and a person contracting the disease also develops long term immunity through their T immune cells.
I believe that this virus was extant in Iran from the beginning of this year. Surprisingly, given the contagiousness of this virus, Iranians continue to contract and succumb to this disease. It may be as you suggest a different strain.
You mentioned using codeine phosphate as a immunosuppressive, however, since you also have liver damage, this medicine is strictly inadvisable –
https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-1937/codeine-antitussive-cough-oral/details
I too suffered from many symptoms of this disease.
Some common Homoeopathic medicines used in India –
for fever – Arsenicum album 30; three times a day for three days
for dry dry cough – Bryonia alba 30
for stomach ache – Belladonna 200
for lack of oxygen – Aspidosperma Q
for unease and restlessness post fever – Gelsemium 30
Iran being a cold weather Country – Camphora can be helpful initially.
Please consult a good Homeopathic Doctor prior to taking any medicine.
Also, high doses of Vitamin C during the cytokine storm is very helpful.
Vitamin D should be taken.
Steam inhalation and warm water gargle should be practiced regularly.
Indeed, Iran had suffered tremendously this year with it’s most prominent General as well as it’s eminent Scientist brutally assassinated. After the death of General Soleimani, in an interesting essay, I read that this year would bring forth the true nature and character of not only every Nation but also every individual. There no need to be dejected, we are certainly in trying or ‘interesting’ times.
God help us all 🙏
Thank you, gavishti.
Immunity does not always last months. It can last as little as a week or two.
The first time I caught covid, my mother, who is a medical professional, kept insisting that it’s just a flu. She was in covid-denial, like the rest of the medical establishment here. Then, when I caught covid twice in one month, again she just knee-jerk denied that such a thing even was possible, claiming that immunity should last much longer than a week or two. She was starting to think I was a hypochondriac.
That was all before she started having upwards of twenty covid positive patients showing up at her office every day. By the time covid became widespread here, I had already been through it multiple times.
My last bout was just last month, which, as luck would have it, came together with a flu. If you think covid is brutal, wait till you see covid coupled with an autumn flu in the mountains of Iran.
The worst symptoms of covid, in my opinion, are the headache and extreme body aches, the fatigue and lack of energy, the depression and feelings of hopelessness, the agonizing heartburn sensation, and the horrendous coughing.
I had a little patch of poppies growing last year, and I made a tea with a couple of pods one day in the late spring, when I was going through a mild bout of covid. I was not surprised when the headache, body aches, coughing, and psychological symptoms all but disappeared. But when I woke up the next day still feeling much better than I was the day before, I knew I was on to something. I only wish I had planted more.
As you have rightly said, codeine phosphate is not good for people with liver problems. And pharmaceutical opioids, like oxycodone, are crap, and apparently don’t even have the immune suppressing effects anyway. Morphine is a no-no because the withdrawals are hell. So, unless one has their own poppies which one has grown with the intent of healing, codeine is the safest option, and it OTC here.
But for the severest cases, or for a covid-flu combo, nothing works. My best friend had a full-blown covid infection for exactly four weeks. The most severe case I have seen yet. And absolutely nothing could bring him full symptom relief. He is a martial artist, endurance runner, mountain climber, and an all around impressive athlete, in my opinion.
He lost something like 15kg of body mass from covid, and his vision was impaired for a month. He came out of it with mild kidney and lung damage. There have been cases of young Iranian athletes, with no pre-existing health conditions, dying from covid. So, my friend was lucky to get out with his life.
In my opinion, the biggest danger from covid is catching it again before you have fully recovered from a previous bout. The damage becomes cumulative, and if you are over 40-45 and not in superb physical shape, your body cannot repair itself fast enough.
We do live in interesting times, mate. And I am not in the least dejected or dispirited by a joke of a bio-engineered disease like covid, or by Zionist assassinations. It is all unimportant.
I just found it intolerable listening to some Western person who has never known anything except white privilege her whole life, repeatedly threaten Iran with a nuclear attack. So, I called it out for what it was: vicious hate. I was rebuffed by the mods. So, I thought I’d give Wendy a second chance, that perhaps I had misjudged her. But I don’t think I had misjudged her. Like everyone else threatening Iran with nuclear annihilation, especially the bible-thumpers threatening Iran with nuclear annihilation, she is not a friend of Iranians or the Iranian cause. Very few people in the world are friendly to us now.
In my opinion, it takes true venom to go to a public forum, over a period of months, and repeatedly scream that Iran is going to be nuked.
Jewish Zionist: “The bible says all Iranians must die in a nuclear holocaust before the Messiah can return to save the world.”
Christian Zionist: “Please, dear friends, friends of Christ, friends of Christendom, please nuke Iran so that the Messiah can come save us. Surely if we just kill another few million Muslims, Jesus will smile upon us.”
Righto.
My dear Friend,
In our texts it has been said that it only takes seven steps together to become friends, and so, you are my friend. I have always appreciated your vast knowledge and spiritual nature.
I suppose you are about thirty five years old and, given that your mother is a Doctor, you would be unappreciative of Homeopathic remedies. Still, my suggestion is that you immediately take the Homeopathic medicine Gelsemium sempervirens 30 three times a day for two days as a guarantee for not contracting SARS II again. ( Gelsemium sempervirens -yellow jessamine or jasmine)
In India, especially in the provinces, life has almost come back to normal, that is, apart from the unnecessary beurocratic interferences. Therefore, given the vast difference of the population in India and Iran, there seems to be an anomaly in the spread of this disease. This may be explained by the strain of the virus, variance in temperatures or (even though I’m not in favour of vaccination) because Indian’s have received BCG vaccine for the past seventy years.
Iran is a very old civilization and, under the present circumstances of all round sanctions, it should not be needlessly threatened by nuclear annihilation even if its because of religious indoctrination. As an Iranian, most certainly your feelings would have been hurt.
Take care and give homeopathic medicines a shot. If you become interested in Homeopathy you can read – ” Homeopathic Drug Pictures ” by Dr. M.L. Tyler.
Hmm, the CDC, The NHS have both admitted that between 94-95% of the fatalities from Covid 19 had one or more comorbities. In plain English, they did not die from Covid-19, therefore, solely 5% died from Covid -19. In addition, the median age of death as measured by West European and North America is between 80-86. The average life span in most West European and North is about 80- 84 years of age. The vast majority of the fatalities occur in the 79- 90+ age group, the chances of young people dying of Covid -19 are about the same as something falling on their head. To date no medical institution anywhere in the world has isolated the SARS Cov 2 virus. Also the PCR tests which are used to test for Covid 19 infections were designed as a laboratory analytical tool, have to amplify virus particles up to 45 cycles, below 15-20 they register nothing and have documented failures of 80-97% false positives. In the U.K, the population is approximately 66,500,000. The chances of dying from Covid -19 are about 0.09% which is approximately the average for many West European countries. Meanwhile, the chances of dying from cancer, which on average has about 166,000 deaths EVERY YEAR, is about 0.25%. Yet, because of the insane policies of lockdown, postponement of treatment and operations as reported by the BMA, Lancet ( UK medical doctors associations plus journal) the fatalities from cancer will rise by about 20% and cancer is not even the largest cause of death Dementia is which will also increase exponentially because of the hyperbole, hysteria to Covid -19. Yes, it’s a Scamdemic and it’s being used as a ploy for the Great Reset ( New World Order) .
Google are part and parcel of the same Silicon Valley robber barons that Pepe was writing about in this article !!!
China uses machines to help them ban religion, while the West uses machines to ban global resistance to the West. Clearly the West is the lesser evil. The ascendancy of China marks the further descent of man into the abyss of heartless materialism and godless ignorance.
The West and China have the same dogma of the unstoppability, boundless power, manageability, and inherent usefulness of new technology and science. They have mistaken violence and convenience for lasting prosperity. China is more successful in the pursuit of godless materialism because they don’t believe in God. So they can take their rightful place at the bottom of the abyss, and any Westerners who aren’t in the same boat as them will end up somewhere nicer. It’s the difference between short-term and long-term planning: materialists totally lack the latter. They see something in front of them, like the internet, and they can’t imagine that it might be gone soon.
“The Chinese term – shehui xinyong – is totally lost in translation in the West. Way more complex than “social credit”, it’s more about “trustworthiness”, in the sense of integrity. Instead of the pedestrian Western accusations of being an Orwellian system, priorities include the fight against fraud and corruption at the national, regional and local levels, violations of environmental rules, disrespect of food security norms.”
Cool, just like ‘Great Reset’ propaganda. In the west, it looks like hell; but in China, it’s a marvel of advance. Sure, the non-orwellian CCP let anyone disagree with their policies, right?
Meanwhile, a word about mass vaccination and some “DNA editing per mRNA” experiments is a viper’s nest that few dare to touch.
The concept of nation comes from the end of the 18th century and most were born in the 19th . Before that was kingdoms, thus feudalism.
The digital aspect is the vessel of power and control of our times. Feudalism means princes and barons, queens and ducs fighting for their share, courting for favors from the king – we see that with the oligarchs and heads of the gafam and their relationship to the deep state.
There might be a “californian ideology” but it sure resembles feudalism.
We cycle between the absolute and the infinite. The nodes of order flowing to the center, versus the network of raw energy radiating toward infinity. By the time you get to the center, the order is flatlined, while the energy is radiated back out. Galaxies are energy radiating out, as information coalesces in.
People are the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, the raw appetites, while the central nervous system sorts and orders the signals precipitating out. Society as the social energies driving it, versus the civil and cultural forms it congeals into.
The anarchies of desire, versus the tyrannies of judgement. The heart and the head. Liberal and conservative.
Occasionally the storms rumble though, sweeping all up in their path, but the bigger they come, the harder they fall.
We need to learn to ride the waves, not march off the highest cliffs.
The bull is power. The matador is art.
And the human being is the unified field that binds the micro and the macro. The “inert” dna is the dark matter required in some speculations to account for the missing “stuff.”
Ever been to Arkansas.
This shit ain’t gonna fly bro’.
Portuguese translation at
https://www.resistir.info/p_escobar/no_escape_03dez20.html
Here’s the 20th anniversary edition of The Californian Ideology with my new introduction:
https://issuu.com/instituteofnetworkcultures/docs/0585_inc_nn_10_totaal_rgb