Jun 28, 2013 | Empire
How bad is it? According to Ron Tice, who worked as an offensive NSA agent from 2002 to 2005, before becoming a source for this Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times article exposing NSA domestic spying, in the summer of 2004 he saw orders to spy on Hillary Clinton, Senators John McCain and Diane Feinstein, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Gen. David Petraeus, and a current Supreme Court Justice. In 2007, the NSA wiretapped a bunch of numbers associated with a forty-some-year-old senator from Illinois. You wouldn’t happen to know where that guy lives now would you? It’s a big White House in Washington D.C. That’s who the NSA went after. That’s the President of the United States now.” Tice went on to say: “The abuse is rampant and everyone is pretending that it’s never happened, and it couldn’t happen. … I know [there was abuse] because I had my hands on the papers for these sorts of things : They went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of congress — Senate and the House — especially on the intelligence committees and the armed services committees, lawyers, law firms, judges, State Department officials, part of the White House, multinational companies, financial firms, NGOs, civil rights groups …”
Jun 28, 2013 | Emotional/Spiritual
Whatever our tradition—Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or indigenous, we are now being called to participate in the “unveiling” and pierce the veil of old paradigms. We are being compelled to live and love in new and unfamiliar ways that stretch the heart, perhaps even to the breaking point. This end/beginning invites us to move beyond sectarian labels and elevated piety into the territory of becoming not only a more compassionate human being, but members of a new species of human that fully experiences and lives its divinity.
Jun 27, 2013 | Collapse of Industrial Civilization
What does the near future look like? I’d put my bets on a strange and unworldly combination of ongoing collapse, which will continue to fragment both nature and culture, and a new wave of techno-green “solutions” being unveiled in a doomed attempt to prevent it. I don’t believe now that anything can break this cycle, barring some kind of reset: the kind that we have seen many times before in human history. Some kind of fall back down to a lower level of civilizational complexity. Something like the storm that is now visibly brewing all around us.
Jun 24, 2013 | Collapse of Industrial Civilization
Didja think we were all going to just transform the present world into a new dimension, a parallel universe, Heaven on earth, or experience The Rapture, Ascension, move into our light bodies, or whatever new age, magical, or mythical belief we might hold? I’m not saying that any one – or more – if these things can’t happen. However, if history is any indication, disruption and transformation are inseparable.
Jun 17, 2013 | Tyranny
‘Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped’ ‘Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American’
Jun 13, 2013 | Emotional/Spiritual
Science is, after all, nothing more than the creation of approximate, limited and ever-changing models and metaphors of some aspects of reality, that are often interesting and sometimes (enormously) useful. As such, scientism makes a pathetic religion. But in the 21st century, we want to believe, and the promise of mathematical certainty and absolute knowledge of everything, which underlies the new cult of scientism and feeds off the intolerance (even loathing) we humans have for complexity and for the unknowability of most of reality, is as comforting to the bewildered and anxious minds of today as the old absolutist religions were to those who couldn’t fathom or accept the terrible new, seemingly-unarguable ‘knowledge’ of previous centuries.
Jun 12, 2013 | Tyranny
With the continuing release of secret files on the NSA’s spying programs on American citizens, spying programs supported in their entirety by the Obama Administration, it appears that the false illusion of Barack Obama as the reincarnation of Jack Kennedy is finally coming to an abrupt and rude end. It’s being assisted by the multiple stress fractures of the economy, joblessness, divisive politics and the growing distrust of government at all levels, ironically called forth by that very government. There’s also the environment and energy, when combined with the above, provides an opportunity to see the administration’s ineptitude at best, and their callous disregard for the constitution at the worst. Now it’s going to get ugly. It’s already getting ugly.
Jun 9, 2013 | community
As I reflect on my travels and interactions during the past year, one theme persists in my conversations with folks about collapse. Whereas the most burning questions used to relate to timelines and the speed of collapse, what I now hear more about these days is a nearly bottomless pit of longing so many people have to be held in some kind of community where one need not face the unraveling alone. When people ask me about options for intentional or unintentional communities, I have little to offer other than websites of various ecovillages and the more abundant options of informal community structures centered around food, alternative healing, Occupy Movement projects, spirituality, or other action-based endeavors. Little is yet available for those seeking residence in a community of collapse-aware individuals who are preparing to navigate the future together while at the same time attempting to maintain a cordial relationship with the world outside the community.
Jun 7, 2013 | Climate Change/Environment
“One thing that you really need to be able to do is look inwards and look in at your life, and that’s very hard sometimes, you’re so wrapped up in yourself,” he says. “The one place where self indulgence is utterly impossible is grizzly country because there’s something out there that’s big, and if it chooses it can kill and eat your ass.”
Jun 6, 2013 | Tyranny
The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian. The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.