I’m Chuck Fall, a media activist who believes in speaking truth to power, and I believe that the demand for truth should be at the center of all political action in the United States.
Today I am reaching out to Emanuel Pastreich, a fellow concerned citizen, to speak about truth politics.
I am active in the Green Party and familiar with the debates on policy that make up much of our politics. I have found myself to be, increasingly, a dissident voice.
When I deal with bread-and-butter issues, because of the influence of the deep State, because the corporate-government plutocracy has extended so deep into society, I feel we must address directly the criminality that is behind what we see on TV, we must pull back the curtain if we want to have meaningful politics in the United States.
Please allow me to introduce the project that I am advancing today. We have launched within the Green party a “Green Liberty Caucus” dedicated to making truth politics mainstream in America.
I want to highlight our website greenlibertycaucus.org, where you will find interesting posts from truth leaders. Among them, those of Cynthia McKinney have been inspirational for me, especially the appeal that she made to the “Lawyers Committee of 9/11 Truth” for the leadership necessary to engage in truth politics.
That is the motivation behind Emanuel Pastreich’s run for the presidency.
Let’s go straight to Emanuel. Give us an introduction; Why are you engaging in truth politics?
Emanuel Pastreich:
I thank you very much for the opportunity to join you and I am glad to have a chance to address everybody about the truth.
When I announced my candidacy, and started to campaign in United States in February, 2020, it was so clear then, and it’s even more bitterly clear now, that it was no longer possible to talk about the truth in American politics. Essentially all political discussion has been frozen.
We’re no longer able to address serious issues. Instead, we are caught up in trivialities. We need to change direction in the United States, to get back to a politics that addresses real issues. And real issues are not just about, what Robert Kennedy talks about in his campaign, “the destruction of the middle class.” That has become a standard line in politics, but it doesn’t go anywhere near far enough.
The reality is that we face a systemic effort by a tiny handful of the extremely rich to destroy the United States, and the global economy, and to reduce us to a form of serfdom or slavery. We have faced a series of trials, starting with the Kennedy assassination in 1963, picking up speed with the 9/11 incident in 2001, and this trend reached its crescendo with COVID-19. During COVID19, the important issues our nation faced could no longer be addressed by politicians, or by the media in the United States. So, we have been essentially flying blind since 2020.
Rather than do what most political figures would do, which is to focus on what we are allowed to talk about, I decided that it was critical to address the issues that no one’s allowed to talk about. Like where does money come from? How is it created? What actually happened with 9/11 and COVID-19?
I wanted to ask citizens, how have we gotten into this out-of-control secret governance, defined by borders within the United States? How did this small group of the super-rich, using their various mouthpieces and puppets, manage to create this politics of grand guignol, of puppetry?
This “politics” makes it impossible to address any issue seriously. So that’s what my campaign is about.
Obviously, I’m not a professional politician to start with, and obtaining power is not my dream. I will run this campaign as best I can, with help from people like you, Chuck.
If somebody else is better at kissing babies. giving rally speeches, and he or she will step in and take my place. Then I will have no attachment to the power of the presidency.
However, I will say this: I haven’t seen anyone like that yet. I haven’t seen anybody who’s willing to take this degree of risk, who’s willing to actually run for president and to argue that we must face, head on, what’s going on in the United States, and not indulge in a limited hangout discussion about secondary issues.
Chuck Fall:
You got my attention with your frankness, and your candor, about the nature of what’s happened to our society. From the Green Liberty Perspective this approach is important because we argue that history has been stolen from us.
We remember the historical possibilities represented by figures like John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Freddy Hampton, and others. We remember the warning from Dwight Eisenhower about the power of the military industrial complex, and
how, when Kennedy heeded that warning it cost him his life.
The sixties, in my opinion, was a blood bath. We witnessed a brutal counter-revolution.
Yet those possibilities remain with us. Imagine if all of those figures had survived. Imagine what could have been-how American society might have unfolded very differently. It might have been a much kinder nation. I want to explore that potential here, because you are entering into the competition of politics for truth.
We see this new politics today with Robert Kennedy Jr., another candidate for president. We have his materials up on the Green Liberty caucus website.
Kennedy’s statements are extraordinary in that he says flat out that the CIA was responsible for 9/11, and that they are behind Covid19.
Robert Kennedy is trying to break out and to take truth politics to the national level. And that is why there is no media attention for him. How will you address these issues from the outside, and what will you say?
Where do you see national conversation going?
We are all struggling for air time, struggling to get our words out there. So, if Robert Kennedy’s campaign is an insurgency, and you go even further, what can you do and what can you offer
the movement? Can your campaign, and presidency, be a bully pulpit?
Emanuel Pastreich:
Obviously, I support Robert Kennedy’s campaign for President, as I’ve written before. I think there are some issues that he has to address more directly, but I support him. I’m not good at kissing babies and I can see he is a much more professional politician.
However, sadly, he’s taken a path which is very difficult, I would say even impossible. I think it’s an impossible task for him to get the Democratic party nomination.
You mentioned Kennedy’s attack on the CIA. This is a topic we could spend a lot of time on.
I’ll just make a statement which might be controversial enough to wake up the audience.
I’m not a big fan of that old “blame the CIA” analysis. That approach is like blaming butchers or assassins.
Those guys do what they’re told to do by powerful people, by a small group of extremely wealthy families in the United States—those people are the ones making the decisions.
I think that we have to understand correctly that we are talking about class.
I do not want to align myself with the left, or the right, especially since the left in the United States has been possessed by this “gender identity” demon. That identity politics has distorted political discourse and made it almost impossible to talk about class.
Class, by the way, was not a leftist term. The philosopher John Stewart Mills used the term nineteenth century in his analysis without a word about Marx or socialism.
We need to be talking about class, not identity.
I am disappointed in Kennedy’s failure to take on class as an issue, but I am supportive of his campaign.
I’d love to have a debate between myself and Mr. Kennedy, to make truth politics part of the process. But what I really want the American people to understand is that if we follow along with mainstream politics, if we let Biden stay in office, or, God forbid, we have a zombie apocalypse, Biden vs. Trump, if we have these people at consulting firms run the show behind the scenes, then we’re finished.
Those guys are hard at work creating a class society, one in which you, as an ordinary citizen, will not be able to own anything, and will be under surveillance 24 hours a day.
You will be worn down slowly, whether it’s by using the immigration trick, the manipulation of currency, or the outsourcing of manufacturing overseas. They are using any number of tricks to destroy your lives.
We need politics that address real issues:
How is money controlled? Who makes the real decisions in government? Obviously, it’s not Biden, and it wasn’t Trump either.
How can we counter this false politics? We cannot do so just at the top level. Any solution that relies on increased dependence on the Federal Government is not an answer. We need to organize ourselves at the local level.
That means creating our own communities—that has to be at the center of politics.
My position is as follows, and maybe you think it is radical, but I think that in a legal sense it is the only legitimate position a politician can take.
“If you were one of these politicians who sat there twiddling your thumbs while the whole 9/11 comedy show was going on, while the United States was shut down between 2001 and 2004, if you are one of those politicians who spent all his or her time talking about vaccines and lockdowns during operation COVID-19, if you bought into this whole fraud, then how can you possibly be ready to hold office? Basically, you have been collaborating with a corporate fascistic system.”
My job is to take that position, to go one step further than Kennedy can. I am not dismissing him. Maybe he is a far better candidate.
But we are not going to make any progress unless we stake out the front line where we will make our stand.
I believe that our position should be to say that those who have gone along with this massive criminal conspiracy over the last 20 years—and I’d be happy to go into detail about what that conspiracy was—that such people do not have any qualifications to address the American people, to lecture us about anything, really.
And if the media is not reporting on people like you, Chuck, people who are speaking truth, and there’s a whole growing number of people like us, then that media also has no legitimacy.
We don’t need to pay any attention to it, and we have to take it all down it, to take the whole system down.
That doesn’t mean I’m not an anarchist, that I think there should not be a government. The opposite is true.
We have to go back and establish a democracy and a republic that follows the basic principles of the constitution. Being a republic means having an accountable government that is relatively transparent in its processes.
We do not want secret government, a government that is the plaything of private equity, a small handful of multi-billionaire families, and that is for sale to the Saudis and Israelis, to powerful players in Russia, Japan, China, etc.
These guys, at home and abroad, bought stock in the United States and they are essentially trying to sell our country off at fire-sale prices to their private equity friends.
Chuck Fall:
You covered a lot of terrain there!
One thing I have noticed is that you take an acerbic tone, in comparison with other politicians.
You really want to take on the billionaire class
Let me talk another truth candidate, Cynthia McKinney. She recently made a broad appeal at the “Rage against War” rally. We are closely aligned with her at the Green Liberty Caucus in terms of our opposition to war and resisting the military industrial, complex. You take a similar position.
My question for you is, what can we do that is going to rally the masses? What’s it going to take to get people to support a liberty coalition?
You speak frankly about the rot generated by this opaque plutocracy. Some have written about the families behind these developments, and the history of banks and power.
You and I recently spoke with Howard and Rita of the Banking Monitoring Committee at the Green Party on these issues, about how money is created, how the economy can be made democratic, about public ownership of money can be a central part of economic policy.
You touch on these issues in your book “How to take down the Billionaires.”
You are practical in your suggestions, but in terms of contemporary politics, many would say the expressions are incendiary.
You are talking about class, and that we need to face the fact that class is a political issue. There really is a problem with the concentration of wealth in itself. This has gotten much worse under Covid. We witness this huge transfer of wealth.
So please just talk to the American people directly. What do you think we need to do to take down the billionaire class? And why do you think your words are not hyperboles but realistic and practical?
Emanuel Pastreich:
The super-rich have assembled teams of strategy and intelligence advisors who come up with plans for how to control us, ordinary people. This project is not entirely secret, but you need to search around to find out how we are being herded.
Most citizens are unaware of the degree to which wealth has been concentrated over the last 15 years, especially the last 5 years, so much so that a tiny handful of people essentially control more assets than 90% of the entire population, and these super-rich are concerned about protecting their own interests at any cost.
They use state crimes like 9/11 or COVID-19 to consolidate their power.
What is ignored in all the crazy debate about gender, Trump, racism and identity is how the entire military, industrial complex, the police homeland security complex, the financial banking complex, have been taken over by this class and crafted into a super-state, with NATO, World Economic Forum, and private equity firms as its backbone, a super-state that is run to protect their investments and their wealth.
When they went as far as to engage in massive state crimes like 9/11 and COVID19, they were crossing the Rubicon. Obviously, if these crimes are exposed, if a real organized opposition emerges, then all of them can be branded as criminals, taken down, and their assets seized.
For this reason, they do not want these topics to be discussed in politics, but they will allow you to blow off steam in conspiracy website postings.
The strategies they employ together to dumb down the population and to prevent the organization of real opposition has its roots in research conducted at DARPA and RAND back in the 1970s. Research showed how deep trauma could be induced in the entire population through traumatic events, like the Kennedy assassination, 9/11 or COVID-19. That trauma, combined with boredom and low-level stimulation of subconscious desires, creates a psychological state wherein the citizen is not able to conceive of what’s going on, and not capable of organizing resistance.
Operation COVID-19 was above all an effort to traumatize the population so that no one discusses what is going on, no one organizes resistance, and those who are interested in the public good are dismissed, even ostracized.
What should we do?
We have to start to organize a new system of governance, starting with this small group here today. We are small but we are focused. If we reach out to our neighbors, form our own organizations for resistance that stand in opposition to the decadent collection of controlled opposition groups, we will get the ball rolling. We must say that we will not tolerate any of the current fictions, to say we won’t tolerate any of this.
This first step of setting ourselves apart from the compromised crowd requires a sharp cutting edge.
I apologize to those who may be offended by my harsh tone. I personally would prefer to speak in a polite manner.
I try to be as polite as I can towards all of you, the honorable citizens of the United States. But we have no choice, at this point, but to try to awaken the masses.
We have a large part of the population in the United States that is basically asleep. They cannot conceive of the scale the crisis, cannot imagine that a tiny group of the super-rich want to kill them off, destroy their ability to make money, to live independently, to be educated, to take care of their children, etc.
It is an enormous challenge for a politician like me to respond to the current takeover by the rich by organizing resistance to this class war—which many are not even aware of.
That is why, instead of trying to get the nomination of the Democratic Party, I have chosen rather this clarion call, wake up call, approach to politics.
It’s not my preference, but it’s necessary.
This approach has an impact on the larger political discourse. That is to say that if there is one person in the larger political discourse who is willing to start smashing the false idols, or, questioning candidates like Robert Kennedy, asking,
“Why don’t you talk about 9/11?”
“Why don’t you demand that the assets of Pfizer, Moderna, and Black Rock be seized to compensate the people who suffered from the vaccines?”
Those questions will push the envelope for mainstream politics. This is good for the country and is good for Robert Kennedy.
It might even be good for the Democratic party, although I’m not so sure that organization can be saved.
Talking about the Democratic Party, some have praised Robert Kennedy for seeking the Democratic Party nomination and taking on the CIA.
Personally, I had a lot of trouble swallowing this line of argument. If I had to compare the criminality of the CIA and the Democratic Party, I would be late at night. I mean the assumption that you can work with the Democratic Party and take on the CIA is not clear to me.
The Democratic party is one of the best organized criminal syndicates in the world today.
I do not know, but I would guess that if you are looking for someone who is willing to risk his or her life for truth, for good governance, you would be better off looking for that person in the CIA than in the Democratic party today.
So, I am a bit skeptical about any candidate working within the Democratic or Republican parties.
Moreover, let us face facts. We are in the midst of a massive institutional collapse in the United States. We need to go back to the Constitution to get our bearings. And there is not a single word in the Constitution about the Democratic and Republican Parties that govern us.
They have no legitimacy. They are pay-to-play criminal syndicates serving private equity, much of it outside the United States. As far as I am concerned, they belong in the trash.
What if that means that the entire Congress is engaged in criminal activities? Well, I’m really sorry to have to take the harsh position of saying that they’re all criminals. But saying something like that is not factually wrong.
I hope that it doesn’t hurt your feelings to at least get this story out on the table and to declare that if everybody in authority participated in covering up for operation COVID-19, then in a legal sense they’re all collaborators. They’re all co-conspirators. We should just start our political discourse there.
Chuck Fall:
I want to mention that on the Green Liberty Caucus website we have postings written by Sasha Latypova. Ms. Latypova is a retired businesswoman deeply familiar with the FDA approval process. When she looked at the approval process for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccinations, she discovered that this was a national security operation, not a normal public health approval process. It was launched as a national security operation.
I remember back in February, 2020, when I read what was written in the mainstream media, and saw references to a “national security operation” being kicked into gear, I smelled a rat.
In hindsight we can see that this was what happened at the end of January, 2020. Kennedy makes criticisms of the policies, which Sasha articulates more completely.
To put it simply, the Federal Covid response was an attack on the American people. You take a similar position.
This crisis is also linked to a real urgency to return to nature for our health, to restore nature in our nation, and to create supportive communities within our cities, in our neighborhoods, that create mutual aid associations for citizens.
Such mutual aid could be the organic expression of democracy in the community. In that vein, the writings of Murray Bookchin about libertarian municipalism are also featured on the website of the Green Liberty Caucus.
We want to put forth an alternative, but we recognize that one must be educated about what needs to be done.
We need a society that is authentic and human, rooted in the natural.
In your campaign you criticize the plutocracy, and talk about restoring integrity to a republic.
Tell us what that means for we the people in our lives, in our communities?
Emanuel Pastreich:
I speak in detail in my platform about how we can build a green society, a democratic economy, by returning to nature, returning to food, organic food, and by producing our own food after we take back all the land that has been bought up by multinational corporations and the super- rich from around the world.
We should actually own our own country. The best opportunity for creating jobs is a return to family farming. I that’s that should be a top priority for us. But farming is also about security, being food secure, and making sure that we’re healthy.
I would even go as far as to say that family farming is at the roots of the United States.
Let us look at where the United States came from: we signed the Constitution in 1787 that assumed a democratic society wherein the citizen would be engaged in the community that will be run democratically at the local level. The foundations for the democracy were to be agriculture. Citizens would produce their own food, and would not be dependent on corporations or banks.
But the Constitution is not where that vision of a participatory, democratic, agricultural society began.
The Constitution itself was inspired by another Constitution, the “Great Law of the Iroquois Nation” of 1722. That Great Law laid out a vision for a sustainable and democratic society, and a participatory government. It was the Great Law that inspired people like Benjamin Franklin to conceive of a constitution unlike anything in Europe.
The roots of our Constitution are in the sustainable tradition of the native Americans. That is not about the past, but about the future. That native tradition is about how we’re going to survive.
At this moment the Biden administration is working day and night to make bioengineered food a requirement for living. Corporations will be allowed to bioengineer basically everything and to sell it to you without any labels. This dark food revolution is being forced on people by corporations who are buying up farmland and controlling distribution and sales for agricultural products. They will force the American people to eat food which has been bioengineered—we will have no choice.
The latest step is bioengineering food, both plants and animals, to include mRNA proteins that will act as a vaccine.
That will be we will have multinational corporations forcing us to eat things that alter our own genes. I don’t think we have any choice but to go back to family farms.
That will require an enormous shift in our thinking. The commercial media that you’re forced to watch from childhood is telling you that we need the stock market to go up to help the economy.
I say, as candidate for president, America does not need a stock market. The stock market is one of the most parasitic and dangerous parts of the American economy.
I am not against the idea of using stock. Stock can be an effective way to raise money, but the system, as it stands today is essentially fraudulent. The bankers have created a bubble economy, a false economy in which multinational investment, banks and private equity are able to create money out of nothing through the Federal Reserve. They, Goldman Sachs or Vanguard, can use that fake money to buy up real farmland critical to national security, to the security of the American people.
And when they make up that money, that “money” comes out of your pocket because your money in the bank is reduced in value through inflation. Inflation is not like the weather. It is the result of the dilution of your money by printing up money to finance stock buybacks, derivatives and other obscure products of the imagination that serve to enrich the wealthy, the parasitic class.
Tom Rodman:
I hope that we can learn from your knowledge of Asia. Our news sources about China and Korea, or Kazakhstan and central Asia, is quite limited. Perhaps you can provide us some insights.
Mark Goldman:
China is so complicated. What do you think Americans should know about China?
If you are president, how are you going to lead the nation and handle our relationship with China?
Emanuel Pastreich:
Asia is critical to my view of the world. I was a Chinese major at Yale, and I spent time in in Taiwan; I also I speak Japanese and Korean, and I deliver talks in those languages. I think deep knowledge of Asia is an important part of the puzzle.
We want to say that America needs a president who’s fluent in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Today most people would say that is an impossible demand. But, in fact, it should be obvious.
Asia has become the central part of the world economy. Those countries are making decisions that affect Americans at home. And yet none of our American politicians have that ability in the languages, or even the sense that they need to know Asia that well.
But that sort of ignorance is not the case in China, Japan or Korea. In those countries the major political figures actually speak some English and can certainly read it.
They follow what is going on in the United States.
So, I want to say to the American people that I can read the languages and keep up on China, Japan, and Korea. I understand what is going on there.
I want to state clearly that China is going to be an enormous problem for us, a challenge for us both in terms of who we are and what we want to be.
China is one-sixth of the world population. Any efforts to demonize China using some sort of “yellow peril” ideology are not going to be successful.
China could be a military threat in the future, but the United States itself is the greatest threat to the United States today. We would be much better off focusing on trying to get the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and the intelligence community to follow the Constitution, to report to Congress, and to respect the rule of law. That task is much more critical issue than fighting with some imagined Chinese threat.
Whether we are talking about trade or the environment, US-China conflicts are ultimately class issues. We have this handful of the super-rich in China and in the United States who put together, for example, operation COVID-19, and they cooperate to push this agenda to destroy the lives of the people in both countries.
The response should not be to demonize China. But rather to say, let’s organize people in the United States and in China to resist this takeover.
If the top-level people of the criminal corporate world in China and the United States are cooperating with each other to destroy us, then we had better cooperate with our peers among working class people of China, or, for that matter, of Europe, or Turkey, or other countries around the world.
I am talking about a return to the politics existed in the 1920s and 1930s, organizing working people around the world.
There are limits to what you can achieve in such internationalist, as opposed to globalist, movements. But the problem is that such efforts are nonexistent today.
The so-called “left” is lost in identity politics. They’re not committed to trying to find some way to take down billionaire parasite class around the world.
I could say a lot about China, but let me stress that the number one priority is to understand China, not to demonize it. Americans need to understand the economy of Sichuan province, to understand how Shanghai is different from Beijing.
We need to understand the Chinese and what they are trying to do.
I was in China last year, and I met a lot of Chinese ordinary workers, as well as intellectuals.
They’re not idiots. They know they’re under attack from this globalist operation COVID-19. They’re suffering from its consequences. They also know how China has been infiltrated by Black Rock, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, the whole nine yards of international investment banks and private equity. They are squeezing the Chinese.
Mark Goldman:
It is wonderful that we have a candidate willing to speak his mind and to speech truth to power in a way that is powerful.
It gives me hope that you understand that what is happening today is no entirely new. You talk about 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination. These state crimes go way back.
What has changed is that the ruling elite have taken off their mask. We now know what their agenda is.
That gives us hope for the future because now we can respond to the threat.
The problem is that we are so divided as a country. Some understand what Emanuel is talking about. But there is an awful lot of people that have never heard these words before. That is the challenge for us is how to we reach out to them so that they can understand what has happened, what the real danger is that we face today.
How do we reach people? How do we break through?
Chuck Fall:
How to overcome this cognitive dissonance?
Emanuel Pastreich:
I appreciate Mark’s question and as I ran for president from 2020 on this truth platform, I have spent a lot of time on the pike, I have a lot experience trying to talk to ordinary people about truth issues and state crimes.
I’ve learned a lot from talking with Mark. Cynthia McKinney’s efforts to take on state crimes from within government have been critical. Her efforts at Rage against War, and Chuck’s efforts, help us move beyond the divisions in the population that have been planned out by the powerful to mislead and divide us.
Divide and conquer is working principle for them.
What we’re doing today, organizing and discussing the facts, is the most important thing that we can do.
Everyone has his or her role. We shouldn’t tell you what your role should be. We should say that you, as citizens who are concerned about your country, your children, your families, and your friends, must be active in your own way to create a political environment wherein we can address real issues and formulate real solutions.
That is what contemporary politics does not offer us now.
The process is not going to be easy. It’s going to require us to essentially take on everybody in the system because everyone is a collaborator.
I think the bottom line for the Green Liberty Caucus is that at the beginning it will seem like we are the oddballs. We are taking on everyone and we are doing what no one else is doing. That can give people the impression that we’re way out there. That is precisely what the billionaires want ordinary people to think.
But I have no doubt that there is an enormous number of people in the United States who are aware that there is something profoundly wrong, an enormous number of people don’t believe the 9/11 and COVID-19 narratives. They’re looking for some alternative.
Our narrative must be repeated enough times to get them to listen. It has to be articulated with enough authority, enough self-confidence, and enough bravery that people start to wake up and get themselves organized.
I’m not a fortune teller, so I can’t tell you exactly how things will unfold. If we look back at history, such political transformations have happened before.
In the 1920s, there were strikes organized against the ruthless automobile manufactures to demand basic rights for workers, and also in steel mills, and elsewhere. The strikes were crushed and most people looked the other way. But the presidential candidate Al Smith was forced to take labor seriously by those events and the foundations for the transformation of the backwards and racist Democratic Party were laid.
Later, in 1932, and especially in 1937, the truth about exploitation of workers, became mainstream politics.
Those years of struggle, when the politicians were out to lunch, was not a waste of time.
The foundations were laid for a massive shift in thinking.
That’s what we’re doing now. We’re laying the foundations for a truly new politics. Whether it will be me at the center, or somebody else, is not important.
Mark ran for president on a truth platform and paid a tremendous price. He passed the torch down to me and I will pass it down to others beyond me. We will reach the promised land. Whether it is in my lifetime is not the critical issue.
I think the vision for the United States should be grounded in the United States Constitution, based on universal principles of human dignity and sustainability, and must avoid those left- right, conservative-liberal rhetorical traps that have been set up for us by the advisors to the super-rich. If we do so, there will be hope for us going forward.
Chuck Fall:
Tell us why you’re running as an independent. Would you consider running navigating into the Green party and competing at their convention?
Where do you see yourself heading? You don’t have to make any hard decisions, now, but I would certainly champion you as a candidate in the Green party. I think you are a green party candidate as you value nature, you address environmental issues and you see technology as a moral issue, not just a scientific issue. I see in you the humanitarian spirit of Martin Luther King when he said,
“Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long but that it bends toward justice.”
You could be a solid Green Party candidate because you have established yourself as a leader in the truth movement.
How might you approach the Greens?
Emanuel Pastreich:
So, regarding my decision to run as an independent back in February, 2020, it was clear that if I had tried to jump through the hoops set out by any of the political parties, the Green Party included, that I would not have been able to address the important issues. I would not have been able to come out as the only candidate opposed to operation COVID 19 in February, 2020.
Now things are a little bit different. I feel that it would be meaningful to enter into a discussion with other candidates in the Green Party and even to become an active member of the Green party. I am happy to enter into that process, absolutely.
As I mentioned with regards to Robert Kennedy Jr., however, I think it’s a profound mistake to try to get the nomination from the Democratic party. The Democratic party is just too far gone; it’s beyond redemption.
The Green Party has also been compromised profoundly on multiple critical issues. Maybe they felt they had no choice. Maybe they were issued a series of classified directives limiting what they could talk about. Maybe Homeland Security has assigned them a detail that dictates what topics they can and cannot treat. I do not know.
I am sympathetic to the cause. But we need to create a Green Party that can actually win. We need a candidate who can actually win the Presidency.
There’s only one way to do that, and that is to seize the bulls by the horns, to go full throttle truth politics.
If the Green Party is willing to adopt truth politics, everything will be different. They can turn to the Democrats and Republicans and just say flatly:
“Get the hell off the stage! You guys have no legitimacy. You participated in all these criminal activities over the last twenty years. You took all that money and you worked with private equity and billionaires to secretly push their agenda. You have the blood of 9/11 and COVID 19 all over your dirty hands. You guys have nothing to say. Get out of here!”
If the Green Party can say that, then they are playing from a position of strength and from that moment on the Greens are on track to win the election.
The question will be where the Green Party wants to go.
I am completely open. If the Green Party is willing to include me in future debates, I would be deeply honored.
But I do not think I can tone down, moderate, my positions for a middle-of-the-road, “think left; live right” audience.
Chuck Fall:
I agree with you. We have an essay on our website declaring that the Green Party should lead, should be out in front by denouncing state crimes. I found the language for speaking out about state crimes in the speech that Cynthia McKinney delivered.
It would be wonderful to have a round table discussion with you and Cynthia.
Sasha is also a truth leader, and we had a conversation about truth. I just say frankly that was a state crime; that wasn’t. We’re just frank and honest. That means that we command the space. Sasha refers to it as “the language space.” We are fighting against this “condition of silence,” this taboo realm in the media.
Robert Kennedy is breaking with the taboo by speaking frankly. We can debate whether he is going far enough, or too far. Is he trying in your opinion?
Emanuel Pastreich:
The best analogies for this trauma that leaves behind silence are incest, rape, and child abuse.
The American people or citizens have been so traumatized by what was done to us over the last 50 years, and especially the last 20 years, that we’re incapable of even conceiving of how we’re being abused. Waking ourselves up out of that emotional trauma, being able to address and say this person raped me, that that that’s the first step.
When we get there, when the American people can admit, can recognize, that our government was run by this handful of the rich and that they were using our government to destroy us, demolish our lives, both intellectually and physically, then, and only then, can we move forward.
Chuck Fall:
I hear you. Spider and I have debated the impact of Edward Bernays’s ideas about social control on conditioning of the population via media propaganda.
There is a violence in those big lies. We are told big lies over and over again until we are conditioned.
World Trade Center Building Seven just collapses by itself and we’re told, “The fire did that.” That violence of language and thinking induces in us deep cognitive dissidence. That cognitive dissidence is how people cope. I have an article on our website entitled, “Navigating the Shoals of Cognitive Dissonance in a Sea of Big Lies” which was inspired by Fran Shur’s powerful essay, “Why do good people go silent – or worse – about 9/11?”
Mark, Spider and I are interested in the question of trauma. We are a traumatized nation, and people don’t even think about it. They don’t think they don’t consider that fact in politics. You’re willing to speak to that and acknowledge that. I think your analogy is a fair one.
We must call out state crimes, and other forbidden topics in politics like the fake money supply, and use these topics to galvanize the masses, giving us a rallying point.
Spider:
Let us go back to what you spoke about a few minutes ago, the history of fascist endeavors for mass control. You mentioned Edward Bernays.
I will refresh everyone’s memory. Joseph Goebbels, chief propagandist of the Nazi Party, idolized Bernays. American people were first exposed to his techniques when primed to swallow the United States entry into the First World War. Bernays went on to find ways to get women to start smoking, and so on.
Americans have no idea of the level of psychological manipulation that they are exposed to. Americans live in a fantasy that this is a country that’s beyond reproach, that would never do anything evil. Certainly not to their own people.
In order to hold such an opinion of America, you have to overlook a lot of stuff like the Tuskegee experiments in which African Americans were purposefully allowed to suffer from untreated syphilis, and many other incidents which most Americans probably do not even know about.
If someone brings up these unpleasant facts, many Americans will try to deny them, try to maintain a level of comfort by clinging to an image of America.
So let us dissect fascism. Why does it work? And why do we see it reemerging today? Granted all the warnings we have been given over the last fifty years, why do we see it raising its ugly head again?
Is there something in human nature that allows a person suffering from a certain level of stress accept fascism as a way to feel safe? I think that if we can crack that nut, understand the psychology behind fascistic politics, we can go a long way towards reaching people.
Chuck Fall:
I think that the truth movement speaks to this question, and that’s why there’s a yearning for an answer to the problem of fascism. There is a desire for unity, for building a liberation coalition. We are making efforts, but we do not have a unifying theme.
I think your candidacy for president as a truth leader, provides that theme. And I that’s why I’m on board, and delighted to be advancing this conversation.
Emanuel Pastreich:
So many people involved in the truth movement who come from the conservative side, whether we are talking about the JFK assassination, 9/11, or COVID19. But when they describe this phenomenon, they don’t say “fascism,” they say “communism.”
Yet they are describing the same totalitarian trends, whether they call it communist, or socialist, or leftist.
The super-rich intentionally promote different terms, fascism and communism, with different spins so as to have us fighting each other over ideological perceptions instead of combatting totalitarian rule by the few.
Chuck Fall:
There’s an emerging techno-totalitarianism that’s coming down the pike to get us, and I agree with those on the right that that’s happening. There is a unity that is growing across the board as we recognize global capitalist, totalitarianism.
Emanuel Pastreich:
I want to stress that this campaign is not about me and it’s not about elections. It’s about building substantial movements which are well organized,
I don’t care that much about elections. Elections aren’t all that meaningful these days. But rather I want to change the dialogue on politics and the way in which countries are run.
So, what would be the next step?
The next step is to organize ourselves, so we can make decisions and come to consensus among ourselves about where we stand. Then we can go forward, working with other groups, and put forth proposals for policy.
The failure to articulate concrete policies is one of our greatest weaknesses. There are thoughtful journalists like Whitney Webb, Stephen Corbett, or Caitlin Johnstone who do good work. Their numbers are increasing.
But they are not proposing policy. They are not risking their lives, or careers, standing up to say in person to the government, “you have no legitimacy.”
That is what our role should be. I imagine a future date when the Green Party’s Green Liberty Caucus goes to Homeland Security.
We say to them: “Give us all the information on what happened on 9/11.”
They will just be silent, not sure what to say. Or they will say, “Oh, well, we can’t talk about this. We’ll give you an answer in 5 years.”
Unlike the gutless progressives of the past who are willing to wait forever, until the entire nation is a fascist playground, for things to just get better, unlike them we will respond to Homeland Security thus, “Obviously you’re following classified directives that do not allow you to tell us what the Constitution guarantees us the right to. You have no legitimacy. Resign immediately, all of you!”
That’s when we start to get some action. They will have to decide what they’re going to do.
They can arrest us, or they can try to ignore us.
But if we keep knocking on the door. Keep repeating the same legitimate questions, at a certain point some of the people inside Homeland Security, or Department of Defense, or the White House, are going to start saying to themselves, “Actually, these guys have more legitimacy than Biden, or, Trump, or any of these pay-to-play clowns. Maybe we should start to talk to them.”
At that moment they will open the door a crack and then we will see real change.
It will not be the start of a dialogue, but a shift in the structure of power.
We are talking about how decisions are made, who makes decisions. It is not Biden or McCarthy, or anyone in Congress. All of them, without exception, are being fed material by consulting firms and lobbyists who work for the major financial players. First, we have to tell this truth to the people.
We need to form a very different kind of political party. I don’t like calling it a “party.” It has to be a movement. Large movements like this have been successful before in the United States. We had mass movements in the thirties that actually changed things. It’s totally possible and it’s not about supporting me.
Chuck Fall:
That is what we are doing here. We are having a conversation about how to build a movement and how to find the language that will build a cohesive, coherent program.
There are examples in Uruguay of such programs, and they are linked to the cooperative economies we are building.
So, this must be a multi-layered conversation, and this is our first.
We will meet up again to talk about planning a provisional government, taking down the billionaire class, and building relations across the ideological continuum, so that we can form a caucus that offers a coherent program for the nation.
I want to speak to you today about the grave situation we face, a crisis of the soul and of the nation that politicians fear to even mention as they bury us in talk about domestic programs.
When NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg traveled to Kiev, Ukraine, and declared to the world that “Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO” and then he announced the next day that “all NATO allies have agreed that Ukraine will become a member of NATO” he was essentially stating that the institutional groundwork for a world war has been all laid down for us and that a dictatorial institution, shrouded in secrecy, called NATO, will seize control of the entire operation and enforce “full interoperability” within the militaries of the countries that have had the misfortune to become members of NATO.
“Full interoperability” means, for those unfamiliar with such technical military terms, that decisions within the military will be made in secret by a cabal of select military officers reporting directly to the billionaires.
Under the rule of Stoltenberg, an unelected general, the way forward to world war can no longer be impeded by mere citizens who arrogantly pretend they have ideas that they are entitled to express, that they have a right to hold opinions other than those fed to them by the New York Times or Fox News.
This push to destroy the chain of command in the militaries and in the governments of NATO members, the nations of Europe, Turkey, and the United States, has been extended to Asia as well. The bureaucrats and politicians of Japan, of the Republic of Korea, and of Australia and New Zealand have been told, in unambiguous terms, that they also must turn over the chain of command for their countries to NATO, using the newly invented AP4 (Asia-Pacific Partners) system, and that their nations will be lassoed into a drive for war with China–against the will, and the interests, of their citizens, against the interests of every child on earth.
This silent coup d’état has been advanced through the promotion of intelligence sharing, interoperability, and military exercises.
Each of these words has a special meaning that you are entitled to understand.
“Intelligence sharing” means that the information required for a nation to make decisions on critical security issues is being farmed out to multinational corporations like Google, Facebook, Amazon and others, and that the nation state no longer controls its military, no longer can decide its response in a crisis.
“Interoperability” means that only certain weapon systems can be used, those built by Lockheed Martin or General Dynamics, and that those weapons cannot be serviced, or modified, by third parties.
“Military exercises” (which are increasing in frequency) means that the militaries of each country in NATO (and allies in Asia) must work within an opaque and oppressive chain of command wherein officers practice being told how to wage war by forces that are invisible to them.
That means that neither the politicians, nor even the high-ranking generals, will have any say in this planned rush towards death.
And what has been the response of my colleagues who would run for president, or for congressman, to this push for world war? What words of protest have we heard from our elected officials in Washington DC as they are rushed around in limousines to and from all-too-important meetings?
Well, although there have been a few controversial comments about vaccine safety, about the destruction of the middle class, a morbid silence hangs over Washington DC like a shroud; the silence of the lambs.
I remember when the Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia spoke out against the plans for a disastrous and unprovoked invasion of Iraq—which was nothing in comparison with a war between NATO and Russia, or between NATO and Russia and China.
Senator Byrd said then, and I say now,
“Today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned. Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination.”
I ask you politicians running for office why you have not condemned this rush to world war?
You have no legitimacy, and no right, to bamboozle the American people with your trinkets and your dribble.
But it is not enough to denounce our leaders as cowards and clowns, as prostitutes and lackeys. We must first recognize the truth, and at this moment, facing a world war that may well kill us all, we cannot wait for truth.
The truth will set us free, or as James Baldwin wrote,
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Or, as Frederick Douglass put it,
“Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get.”
Let us stop accepting half-truths. Let us stop assuming that we must accept certain lies in order to be allowed to speak about some truths.
Let me, for a change, speak the truth to you, honored citizens.
The reason why no politician can stand up against the rush for war being promoted by multinational investment banks, private equity, and a host of parasitic entities is NOT simply that the politicians are corrupt and cowardly, selfish and narcissistic—although they are all of those things too. No, the truth is that the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other parts of the federal government that have been largely privatized and rendered up as cat’s paws for the rich and powerful to use have issued classified directives that prohibit the discussion of critical issues like the drive for world war, the 9.11 incident, COVID19 and other operations—with serious consequences for anyone who violates those directives.
Such classified directives are accompanied by secret laws (whose existence is not secret). The Congress passes secret laws that prohibit certain actions by public figures.
Secret law is as binding as federal law—but disclosing its use is illegal and punishable by heavy fines.
The use of these unconstitutional secret directives and laws renders impossible the discussion of the most serious issues facing our country, even as our politicians boast of our democracy. All politicians recognize, and accept, this criminal and deadly deal with the devil, an arrangement resulting from years of corporate and bureaucratic power playing footsie.
It is not the first time in history that the control of government and of the military has been taken over by a hidden elite that are ready to kill millions in order to protect their wealth and power.
In the intolerable days of early summer, 1914, citizens across Europe watched in horror as the institutions of government embraced a suicidal march towards war without any space for discussion or for diplomacy. The leaders of France, Germany, England, Russia and Austro-Hungary appeared to be possessed by evil spirits forcing them to take steps that would leave millions of people dead, killing an entire generation of young men—young boys—for sport.
Later, however, it was revealed that these nations had signed numerous secret treaties between them that forced the hands of politicians and bureaucrats—and made it impossible for government to reflect the will of the people. The narrow interests of a handful of the rich, the Rothchilds, the Morgans, the Warburgs, and the Rockerfellers, were promoted at the expense of the rest of the world through such secret governance.
Such an unholy politics of secret governance is precisely what we face today. If any of us survive, no doubt those classified directives, and secret treaties between nations that are used to enforce the COVID19 operation, or to force the drive for war with Russia and China, will be released decades in the future.
What kind of a president do I want to be?
What kind of a president do I want to be? I want to be a president who serves the role of president, making decisions in accord with the law, and following the constitution in a manner that reflects the interests of the American people. I want to do so in a transparent and scientific manner, and I want to treat the people as rational thinking citizens, not consumers, who are entirely capable of understanding my speeches and of coming to their own conclusions without being manipulated by advertising and nefarious public relations campaigns.
I do not want to make money from secret bribes, or to give the veneer of legitimacy to criminal operations meant to destroy our world.
When the so-called progressive politician Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden’s bankrupt campaign for president immediately, we knew that the system was broken beyond repair. Joe Biden at 80, and Donald Trump at 76 make the confused and aged leaders who oversaw the fall of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev at 75 and Yuri Andropov at 68, seem young by comparison.
I ask that you pull pack for a moment from the steam of lies and manipulative images, that the powerful are drowning us in, and that you think seriously about how we can take back control of our minds, of our families, of our economy, and of our government, and that you do so before the rich and powerful have dragged us into wars that we cannot escape from.
Their goal, without any doubt, is to create a crisis wherein we will have no choice but to enter the dark prison cell that they have lovingly prepared for us in advance.
We need a real strong message about liberation going into the 2024 electoral season. For this reason I support Emanuel Pastreich’s strong anti-plutocracy and pro-democracy and pro-nature and pro-humankind messages. Emanuel Patreich advances truth politics – Green Liberty Caucus
1987年にエール大学で中国学学士号を取得、1992年に東京大学で比較文化学修士号、1997年にはハーバード大学で東アジア言語文化学博士号を取得。1997年より2005年までイリノイ大学（University of Illinois)において東アジア文学の助教授、他にもハーバード大学、ジョージワシントン大学、韓国外交安保研究院で講義を行う。
《人生は速度ではなく方向だ：ハーバード大学 博士の韓国漂流記》（人生은 速度 아니라 方向 이다: 하버드 博士의 韓國漂流記）
（２１世紀部 ﾌﾞｯｸｽ、 ソウル、２０１６年）
《韓国人しかしらない違う大韓民国：ハーバード博士がみた韓国の可能性》（한국인만 모르는 다른 대한민국: 하버드대 박사가 본 한국의 가능성）
（２１世紀 ﾌﾞｯｸｽ、ソウル、2013年）
Selected Publications of the Asia Institute
（Asia Institute Press、ソウル、2013年）
《世界の碩学が勧告のみ例を話す》（세계의 석학들 한국의미래를 말하다）
茶山ブックス、ソウル、２０１３年）
The Visible Mundane: Vernacular Chinese and the Emergence of a Literary Discourse on Popular Narrative in Edo Japan （目に見える世俗：中国白話小説の伝播と江戸時代の「通俗」に対する討論の成立）
（ソウル大学出版社、ソウル、２０１１年）
The Novels of Park Jiwon: Translations of Overlooked Worlds （朴趾源の小説：見過ごした世の中の翻訳）
（ソウル大学出版社、ソウル、２０１１年）
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The Asia Institute
INTRODUCTION
OUR GOAL
THE ASIA INSTITUTE COVERS ASIA NOT ONLY IN ITS SEMINARS AND REPORTS, BUT ENGAGES AT A MUCH MORE DEEPER LEVEL BY CONSTANT DISCUSSION WITH STAKEHOLDERS AT ALL LEVELS ACROSS ASIA ABOUT THE CRITICAL ISSUES OF OUR TIME: THE ENVIRONMENT, THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY ON SOCIETY, THE FUTURE THAT OUR YOUTH FACE AND THE CHANGING NATURE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. THE ASIA INSTITUTE IS INDEED A TRULY PAN-ASIAN THINK TANK.
THE ASIA INSTITUTE CONSIDERS MAINTAINING A BALANCED PERSPECTIVE ON CONTEMPORARY ISSUES AS ITS HIGHEST PRIORITY WHILE TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE CONCERNS OF THE ENTIRE REGION AND THE INTERESTS OF ALL THE STAKEHOLDERS WHICH SPANS ACROSS GENDER, CULTURAL BACKGROUNDS AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS. THESE INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO TECHNICAL EXPERTS, POLICY MAKERS, LOCAL AND REGIONAL COMMUNITIES AND EVEN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS.
WE PROVIDE AN OBJECTIVE SPACE WHEREIN A SIGNIFICANT DISCUSSION ON CURRENT TRENDS IN TECHNOLOGY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, THE ECONOMY AND THE ENVIRONMENT IS CARRIED OUT. THE ‘OBJECTIVE SPACE’ ACTS AS AN OPEN PLATFORM THAT ALLOWS ANY AND EVERY ONE TO PARTICIPATE.
THE ECONOMIC GROWTH AND INTEGRATION IN ASIA IS INCREASING AT A REMARKABLE PACE IN TERMS OF TRADE, TECHNOLOGY AND FINANCE. ASIA IS NO LONGER SIMPLY A HUB FOR MANUFACTURING, BUT ALSO A CULTURAL, INTELLECTUAL AND A STRATEGIC CENTER FOR THE WORLD. HOWEVER, DESPITE ASIA’S INCREASING ROLE IN ON THE GEOPOLITICAL STAGE, A SERIOUS GAP REMAINS BETWEEN THE STRIKING SPEED OF INTEGRATION IN TERMS OF LOGISTICS, ENERGY AND FINANCE AND THE MUCH RETARDED GROWTH OF INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITIES AND CULTURAL EXCHANGE THAT ADDRESS LONG-TERM COMMON PRIORITIES.
THE ASIA INSTITUTE IS DEDICATED TO INCREASING THE IN-DEPTH DISCUSSION BETWEEN THE CITIZENS OF ASIA ON THE IMPORTANT ISSUES OF OUR AGE SO THAT IT PARALLELS THE LEVEL OF PROMINENCE AND ATTENTION OF TRADE AND FINANCE. THERE IS A DESPERATE NEED FOR OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS AND RIGOROUS DEBATE THAT GOES BEYOND NATIONAL BORDERS AND INCLUDES ALL STAKEHOLDERS IN ASIA.
OUR PRINCIPLES
THE ASIA INSTITUTE FOCUSES ON THESE FOUR INTERRELATED ISSUES WHICH IMPACT THE ENTIRE WORLD. WE SEEK TO INTERPRET THEIR SIGNIFICANCE AND PLAN FOR A GLOBAL RESPONSE THROUGH A COLLABORATIVE DIALOG THAT INVOLVES A BROAD RANGE OF EXPERTS IN MANY COUNTRIES.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF OUR SOCIETY, AND OUR ECONOMY, BY THE UNPRECEDENTED RATE OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE.
ALTHOUGH THE BRICK AND MORTAR BUILDINGS AROUND US ARE UNCHANGED AND THE BORDERS OF COUNTRIES REMAIN ESSENTIALLY THE SAME, OUR WORLD HAS BEEN AND UTTERLY TRANSFORMED BY TECHNOLOGY. COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY BRINGS TOGETHER LIKES WITH LIKES ACROSS THE GLOBE IN UNPREDICTABLE COMBINATIONS. THE VERY PROCESS OF DETERMINING TRUTH FROM FICTION IS MADE ULTIMATELY MORE PROBLEMATIC AS TECHNOLOGY CHANGES HOW WE KNOW AND WHAT WE KNOW, OR DO NOT KNOW.
SO ALSO 3D PRINTING MAKES IT POSSIBLE TO CREATE VIRTUALLY ANYTHING WITHOUT ANY NEED FOR MANUFACTURING. RESPONDING TO THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE ON SOCIETY WILL BE THE MAJOR CHALLENGE FOR OUR AGE, MADE MORE DIFFICULT BECAUSE THE MANY TRANSFORMATIONS ARE INVISIBLE FOR MOST PEOPLE.
THE IMPACT OF THE NEW SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS ON OUR CLIMATE AT THE LOCAL, REGIONAL AND GLOBAL LEVELS.
CLIMATE CHANGE IS BY FAR THE GREATEST SECURITY THREAT THAT WE FACE TODAY. ALTHOUGH IT HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED AS A PROFOUND DANGER FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS, OUR ECONOMIC SYSTEM AND OUR SOCIAL AND CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS ARE INCAPABLE OF FORMULATING AND IMPLEMENTING A RESPONSE. WE MUST UNDERSTAND HOW OUR CURRENT GLOBAL ECONOMIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL REGIME CONTRIBUTES TO CLIMATE CHANGE AND FORMULATE CONCRETE STEPS FOR ADAPTATION TO, AND MITIGATION OF, CLIMATE CHANGE ON A GLOBAL SCALE.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS BY TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE, SPECIFICALLY CHANGES IN DIPLOMACY, SECURITY, EDUCATION, FINANCE AND TRADE.
ALTHOUGH WE USE THE SAME TERMS TO DESCRIBE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THAT WE EMPLOYED 100 YEARS AGO, THE NATURE OF DIPLOMACY, SECURITY AND TRADE HAVE BEEN ALTERED BEYOND RECOGNITION BY TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE. IMAGES, TEXTS AND VIDEOS CAN BE TRANSPORTED AROUND THE WORLD INSTANTANEOUSLY, AFFECTING A TRUE “DEATH OF DISTANCE,” AND INCREASINGLY THEY CAN BE FABRICATED JUST AS EASILY.
PEOPLE AND GOODS ARE TRANSPORTED WITH GREAT EASE AS WELL OVER VAST DISTANCES, AND GLOBALIZATION HAS CREATED ENORMOUS DISPLACED POPULATIONS. SO ALSO GOODS CAN BE PROCESSED AND SHIPPED AROUND THE WORLD IN AN ENTIRELY AUTOMATED MANNER—PART OF THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. WE MUST ENTIRELY RETHINK THE CONCEPT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN LIGHT OF THESE TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGES, MOVING BEYOND A VAGUE ANXIETY ABOUT GLOBALIZATION AND RATHER IDENTIFYING THE DISTINCT IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGIES ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS.
THE RISE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM AND THE DECLINE OF THE APPLICATION OF RIGOROUS SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES TO ANALYSIS AND PROBLEM SOLVING, EVEN IN THE MIDST OF RAPID TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION.
THE WORLD FACES A TERRIBLE WAVE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM, FROM CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL TO RACIST ESSENTIALISM, WHICH UNDERMINES OUR ABILITY TO RESPOND TO THE PRESSING ISSUES OF OUR AGE AND ENCOURAGES A SELF-INDULGENT ATTITUDE BORN OF IGNORANCE AND INDIFFERENCE. THIS DEVELOPMENT IS A PRODUCT OF THE DEBASEMENT OF EDUCATION INTO A COMMERCIAL PRODUCT AND THE RESULTING DECLINE IN THE INTELLECTUAL RIGOR IN THE MEDIA AND OTHER FORMS OF EXPRESSION. THIS NEW CULTURE IS INHERENTLY ANTI-SCIENCE, EVEN AS IT EMBRACES GLITZY TECHNOLOGIES.
WE MUST AVOID EMOTIONAL RESPONSES DRIVEN BY TECHNOLOGICAL BELLS AND WHISTLES, RATHER APPLYING A RATIONAL SCIENTIFIC APPROACH IN POLICY, IN TECHNOLOGY AND IN STRATEGY. WE MUST AVOID THE ANTI-SCIENCE, “BREAD AND CIRCUSES” APPROACH TO POLITICAL DISCOURSE THAT WE SEE SPREADING AROUND THE WORLD. ABOVE ALL, INTELLECTUALS MUST HAVE A STRONG SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND SHOULD BE TREATED AS ESSENTIAL FIGURES IN SOCIETY.
The problems we face today, from the environmental crisis to the increasing divide between the rich and poor, can only be solved by primarily initiating a profound contemplation within ourselves so as to cooperate for building more novel and sustainable solutions. Only when we have addressed the spiritual hunger and psychological insecurities that lead to unrestrained consumption, or ruthless conflict, can we begin find meaningful long-term answers. As Albert Einstein once remarked, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Our research and our endeavors take into account the underlying contradictions within ourselves that have brought about the crisis of this day.
Our Fukushima Initiative, for example, has built a global platform that brings together different forms of expertise from around the world so as to find a solution to the dangerous challenges posed by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In the process we have created new approaches to collaboration in policy, technology, analysis and implementation. This discussion has also touched on the philosophical and spiritual challenges for us and future generations posed by rapid and disruptive technological change.
Finally, the Asia Institute is engaged in a dialog with stakeholders from across Asia concerning the future of Asia itself. We always have been debating on how Asia can move beyond traditional geopolitical rivalries and envision an Asia as a peaceful totality in which current integration provides new horizons. We have written concrete proposals for a security architecture built around the response to climate change; for a “constitution of information” to respond to the current crisis we faced as a result of the rapid change in the technology for communication and massive scale surveillance and for new systems to promote international collaboration; and P2P (peer to peer) cooperation throughout Asia and around the world that would encourage free interaction of the stakeholders to jointly produce knowledge and other forms of goods/services primarily for its ‘use value’ instead of its ‘market value’ to temper the ever widening economic gap and promote empowerment at the grass roots level. We have been in debates and discussions on how to incorporate the perspectives of experts from the Middle East or Southeast Asia to the debate on the peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula. We have also discussed on how ecologists, artists and philosophers can contribute meaningfully in the debate about trade, finance and other forms of integration.
Circles and Squares 