Monthly Archives: December 2020

Candidate Emanuel Pastreich interviewed about the next administration: “Cannot accept this as an election”

Emmanuel Woo interviews Emanuel Pastreich, independent candidate for president in the 2020 election, about his views on the election and the prospects for the future.

December 24, 2020

“A fabulous show, but most certainly not an election” Emanuel’s speech, December 25, 2020

A fabulous show, but most certainly not an election

Emanuel Pastreich

December 25, 2020

By now you have heard a hundred times from the corporate media that the 2020 presidential election is over, that everyone accepts that Joseph Biden won in a fair and open election and that any comments from a peevish Donald Trump and his foolish followers about a “stolen election” are about to be swept away as a progressive and scientific new administration, with support across party lines, takes control from the chaos again, and brings us to the Kingdom Come.

But there is another candidate who refuses to recognize this corrupt and fixed election besides Donald Trump and who says that although Donald Trump’s statements about election fraud are not 100% accurate, they are also not entirely false.

That candidate is me, Emanuel Pastreich, the only qualified candidate for president whom you are not supposed to know exists.

We must have another election, and this time a fair and meaningful election in which big money, corporate power, the corrupt media and the various parasites that feed on them (whether they are colored red or blue, conservative or progressive) will not play a role.

We also have no choice but to clean house this time. There are always little lies in politics. We cannot expect too much from a sinful creature like man. But we can still hold up an ideal for what is possible, for what to strive for.

But the 9.11 incident was not something you can just sweep under the carpet. That incident, a horrific crime in our midst which we still cannot bare to look on, was like gangrene. We should have had the stamina and the determination to lop off that infected limb twenty years ago. But, instead, we just piled bandages on the wound, put blinders on our eyes, and, now, don masks on our mouths.

The rot spread through the blood until it reached every corner of the body politic, leaving a living corpse where once stood a government.  

That disease of the spirit has metastasized into COVID19, the fatal virus of spiritual blindness that will lay low not only the most powerful nation, but an entire global system. Yes, even as we sip lattes on the Upper West Side, we can sense that the Titanic is beginning to tilt.

The COVID19 offensive is at the heart of this post-election hangover. NO! I will not allow you to enjoy these few weeks of multicultural performance art and progressive rhetoric.

As Moderna and other corporate criminal syndicates prepare to employ the military in a campaign led by a multi-ethnic “COVID19 Task force” that empowers the US military to make every American receive this vaccine, we need to ask ourselves whether this is the enemy, and not the ballyhooed cyber-hacking by “Russia” or by “China.”   

Developing this vaccine “warp speed” has been a tremendous challenge that kept scientists up late at night.

How do you develop a vaccine for a bogus virus? It is like landing a man on the moon. An impossible task beyond any mortal man. Certainly Moderna has done well to develop vaccine mRNA-1273 that introduces gene-altering RNA into the human body and will leave you forever changed.

And the corrupt media, in bed with the corporations developing these vaccines, tells us that although they were developed overnight for a non-existent disease, that they are 95% effective, or 97% effective, and that the only thing to worry about is whether poor people, or those in the “Global South” will have access to this elixir of immortality.

Oh, how delightful!

Why don’t they just say the vaccine, the golden calf, is 100% effective? Or maybe 150% effective. The figures for the infected, the ill, the dead, for everything are made up. At this point, the sky is the limit. Verily, the Fauci Foundation has opened up the Gates of Hell.

I am not sure what word best describes the events of recent, but the word “election” is most certainly not one of them.

We can be sure of one thing, however: No one has a mandate after this election, and no one who has closed his or her eyes to this corrupt process deserves a mandate.

Let us start with Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the candidates forced on us by the Republican and Democratic parties. My heart went out for these two men as I watched them give endless speeches in the days leading up to the election.

Two worn-out, old hollow men, repeating hollow words for empty rooms, speeches that were broadcast to the world, over and over, until we were begging for this election to end.

We saw how Biden and Trump had their chains yanked and we saw how they suffered.

Now is the moment of truth that we have waited for.

We need to focus on reality. We need to focus, and to act, because the chaos that has been intentionally set off by the promotion of “civil war” scenarios by the super-rich ― abetted by the moral corruption that destroyed the government’s role as a moderator, as a regulator, and as an arbiter ― could set off a chain of crises in the following weeks, or days, that will spiral out of control locally, nationally and globally.

There are those, in their comfortable homes, behind tall gates, who ― shame on them! ― are hoping, foolishly, for exactly that outcome.

Trump and Biden talked a lot about issues at a terrible distance from what concerns you, or from the true threats to our country.

Neither candidate demanded an international investigation of the 9.11 incident.  


Neither candidate has demanded that the public know where those $10 trillion, or more, paid out by the Federal Government to bail out banks, to buy worthless stocks and bonds, and to help Wall Street out of the mess it intentionally created, have gone.

Neither of the candidates has demanded that the money be returned, that the internal documents related to those payments be declassified, or that those involved should be sent to jail for their felony crimes.

Both candidates blamed our financial woes on “COVID-19.” Such a response is not just bankrupt and irresponsible. It is, legally, malfeasance in public office to cover up a criminal conspiracy—a felony.

Neither of the candidates has made climate change the central issue for security or even touched on the catastrophic collapse of biodiversity.  


Neither candidate demanded that that the Department of Defense budget be subject to an audit, or that the efforts in the military and in intelligence to run domestic propaganda campaigns be stopped.


Both candidates set their agendas on the basis of what the corporate (bank-controlled) media will tolerate, and in many cases on what was dictated to them by political consulting firms that worship at the cruel feet of Mammon.


Our demand of Trump and Biden is simple. Both of them must pull out as candidates.


So, you ask, what do we do next?

Well, we already know what the powerful want: they want this election to slide into a massive division, much like the election of 1860. They are hoping to use their commercial media to pit the white man against the black man, the rural woman against the urban woman. They want to create as much chaos and confusion, to stir up enough muck, that they can distract us from the rape of our country by Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Bank of America and a host of the rich who hide behind those marble facades. Those rich see you, and your families, as a banquet waiting to be devoured.

 
First, we must have a legitimate election in which everyone is allowed to vote and in which none of these stunts are permitted that stop people from voting, invalidate their votes, or limit the opportunities for the citizen to vote.

When we do have a legitimate election next year, in accordance with the Constitution, we must make sure that anyone qualified to run is not blocked out of the media, or marginalized by the criminal corporations and their pawns in the political parties.

We must also make sure that every American has access to journalism that is objective and based on the scientific method, and is not subject to interference from the rich and the powerful. We must make sure that our precious citizens are not blinded to, or distracted from, how our country has been placed on the chopping block like a slab of meat.

I do not want to say what the process must be for establishing a fair and open election next year, or how I think the government should be administered until then. I am hesitant to make any declarations, not because I do not have any ideas, but rather because I want you, the citizen, to be involved in the process, to start to organize yourselves without any help from the rich and the powerful, to create institutions that will demand that the Constitution be adhered to, and to create truly independent media that addresses real issues.

We need to rip the masks off the politicians and to reveal that behind every virus lurks a parasite.

Let us come together now and work with each other to make this crisis into an opportunity, to make America great for the first time.

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为了更正确的外交安保 韩国应该再次重拾“实学”传统

为了更正确的外交安保 韩国应该再次重拾“实学”传统

贝一明

(Emanuel Pastreich)

韩国民众根本无法理解,他们曾经熟悉的各种美国政治与学术机构为何会变得面目全非。

哈佛大学的教授公然就新冠疫情发表荒谬观点,华府最高层政客贪赃枉法、无所不用其极……这一切都令韩国民众大惑不解。

许多韩国政客还心怀眷恋地记得在20世纪80、90年代于美国的顶级高校求学时,他们容身其中的知识圈是何样貌。如今他们仍然同曾经教导过自己、已经退休的各位教授保持着紧密的联系。

然而,现在美国文化正在加速崩溃,此情此景一定让韩国知识阶层愈发地难以接受。

他们接触到了源自于《纽约时报》和《华盛顿邮报》、随后经韩国媒体搬运的资讯。在目睹自己曾经敬重有加的美国人发布荒唐至极的言论时,他们要尽力克制当即喷涌而出的负面情绪。

一种以怀旧和抗拒为主调的文化席卷了首尔。就美国以及韩国的社会、政策等方面弊端展开讨论已经变成了几乎不可能之事。

昔日信赖的盟友发生道德体系崩溃,导致韩国国家管理与社会基本观念的核心受到撼动,大规模文化与政治危机因此而发——这在韩国并非首次。

早在17世纪,受万人称颂的大明王朝(1368——1644)开始衰落时,类似的文化乱象便曾在朝鲜半岛盛行。朝鲜无所适从,愈发地僵化孤立,失去了为自己未来的发展绘制愿景的能力。

当时朝鲜与明朝过从甚密,后者也曾于16世纪早期派遣军队保护朝鲜免遭日本的侵袭——正如今日美国庇护韩国一样。两国结成了血盟。

大明律与明朝的哲学思想、外交理念、知识和文化准则在朝鲜拥有绝对的权威性。

因此17世纪上半叶,大明王朝迅速土崩瓦解,陷入政治内斗的困局,一落千丈,财政破产时,朝鲜的知识阶层才会不知所措。

1644年,明朝被满族人推翻。之所以有此结果,并非因为满人兵强马壮,而是由于国内起义事件频发,国家四分五裂。而朝鲜人的反应甚为奇怪。他们非但没有重新评估本国文化与地缘政治地位,从而制订自己的策略,反而对不复存在的大明王朝念念不忘,无法自拔。

尽管大获全胜的满人让朝鲜不得不面对全新的王朝——清朝,但在明朝末代皇帝崇祯帝驾崩后,朝鲜人仍将其年号沿用了几个世纪之久。现在韩国的某些书院依然在使用崇桢年号纪年。

朝鲜人不思改革,而是自诩为“小中华”,以作为继承了“高贵”传统的唯一国家为荣。这一思潮的合法性,源自于其对已然失落的明朝传统的坚守。

尽管朝鲜人的这种做法情有可原,但其结果却是灾难性的:朝鲜就此同外界的影响隔绝,科技远远落后于他国。

如今,在韩国与美国大家交往中,同样的心态也有迹可循。

国务院等机构将专家驱逐出门外,被阿谀奉承之人占领;哈佛大学日渐成为跨国银行和制药公司的公共关系代理,研究水平却一路下滑;美国的政治自由度有减无增,经济被被超级富豪所把持——目睹这一切,韩国民众却只是愈发地怀念早已化为乌有的那个美国。

明末清初时,朝鲜的政坛人士也是如此。即使明朝已一去不返,朝鲜的政治与学术人物仍然对其推崇备至,用其传统来为狭隘短视的国内政策议程辩护。

“实学”模式

18世纪,曾有几位朝鲜知识分子为向民众提出了名为“实学”的愿景,立志通过“实学”遏制裹挟全国、了无活力、阻碍国内改革与国外创新成果传入的怀旧思潮。

洪大容、朴趾源、朴齐家, 等无畏的学者主张朝鲜人拥护自己的文化与知识机构,以自己的标准来评估当代外来文化的价值。

这些学者认为,倘若大清有朝鲜可以借鉴的技术、政策与体系,那么即使大清由满人统治、不再奉行明朝的传统,朝鲜也应当予以效仿;朝鲜人不应该被怀旧情绪蒙蔽双眼,拒绝面对技术与地缘政治方面的现实。

他们提出,至于清朝社会的弊端和不足之处,朝鲜则应弃而远之。他们对日本和西方国家也持同样态度。

今日韩国所需要的,正是这种精神。的确,美国在文化、技术、政策和公共机构等方面仍有别具价值、可供韩国利用的地方,美国的创新成果也不可小觑。一味反美、无视美国的优势并不明智。

然而,与此同时,美国显然已经辉煌不再,其国家管理水平与文化质量也每况愈下。

包括我在内的美国人都已接受这一现实。

韩国人要以自己的眼光来对美国社会的方方面面加以客观评估,取其精华,去其糟粕。

对于日本、德国、中国等国家也是如此。包括它们在内的许多国家都为韩国树立了榜样,但它们的传统之中也有不适于韩国学习之处。

至于要效仿他国的哪些方面,韩国人要自行决策,不能依赖于外国专家的建议。

韩国不仅需要对美国的体制展开客观评估,更要在重要问题上为自己提出明确而坚定的立场,不再对美国唯命是从。

可悲的是,如今针对政府政策的反对建议都是由推崇美国、在大多数情况下无法对美国的问题进行批判性评估的保守派团体提出的。同时韩国的进步势力也在同美国的权势阶层合作,往往针对美国的方方面面展开笼统批评,并不会考虑韩国是否能从美国获益。

此时此刻,韩国人必须重新发掘“实学”的真正意义:由韩国人自己根据科学原则对外国提供的各种范式进行客观的评估。

“The COVID19 pathology: An intersection of class and information warfare”

“The COVID19 pathology: An intersection of class and information warfare”

Speech

Emanuel Pastreich

Independent Candidate
President of the United States

(Part 1)

The COVID19 pathology: An intersection of class and information warfare

December 16, 2020

Emanuel Pastreich

Independent Candidate for President

USA

COVID19 is a cultural and institutional virus that eats away at the foundations of organized human action. The COVID19 campaign is best seen as a horrific coupling of two linked, but distinct, phenomenon: the emergence of full-scale class warfare as a result of the rapid concentration of wealth over the past ten years and the transformation of artificial intelligence  (which lurks behind automation, drones, media and the internet) into the primary weapon in the ruthless battle of the super-rich against the vast majority of humanity.

A critical factor in the effectiveness of this combination of class warfare and information warfare has been the willingness of the vast majority of public intellectuals and other authority figures to go along with the current false narrative, actively misleading and distracting the general public. As a result, few people understand what is going on in the United States behind the fear-mongering false reports in the news, with the exception of those at a high level who handle the classified planning, promulgation and enforcement of the COVID19 “great reset.”

An increasing number of people, however, are aware that something is profoundly wrong with the United States. Abandoned by a decadent establishment, they are forced to search for the truth in the trash produced by the corporate media, limited in their understanding by the primitive schemata for understanding economics and politics produced by consulting firms whose primary task is to frustrate understanding.

Class Warfare

A shift has taken place in American society over the last two years. The manipulation of digital currencies, bonds, derivatives and other financial products, combined with the radical privatization of the banking system has made it possible for a tiny handful of the super-rich, and the swarms of CEOs who buzz around them like flies, to create money out of nothing and to use that money to bribe everyone in a position of authority—or to threaten them.

This radical class fragmentation in American society has been festering for years, but it was only when the COVID19 crisis was hyped up as a means of calling attention away from the destruction of the economy resulting from the theft by super-rich of between 5 and 12 trillion dollars from the United States government through a series of loans to buy up stock, refinance and to transfer cash was successful. The rich decided that the time had come to implement their plan. .

The operation included a series of classified directives that forced all government officials, and many in media and academia, to lay all blame for the economic and political disruption on COVID19 and that prohibited the mention of this massive theft. This theft was the most important event of 2020 but was never mentioned in the US election.

Although this massive transfer of wealth dwarfed the quantitative easing scams of the last decade, and empowered a handful of multi-billionaires to run the economy without interference, their advisors warned them that the such a move was extremely dangerous and that they must take ruthless measures to destroy all opposition before a truly revolutionary movement could get off the ground.  

The term “class warfare” was popular in Marxist discourse and formed a central pillar of mass mobilization in the 1930s by communist movements. The term is not communist by nature, however. Today “class warfare” is not treated in a serious manner by the toothless left (who use the term as a colorful expression and not to describe this literal war). It is rather the far right that identifies the threat of class warfare, and describes it graphically, although not always in an accurate manner. 

It is clear that the current plan, well underway, is intended to reduce the entire population to slavery under the control of the 0.01%. The the progressives and the flaccid left, however, refuse to grapple with this reality, and, with rare exceptions, they refuse to speak honestly about COVID19.  

The best-known right-wing figure to describe class warfare was Alex Jones whose website Info Wars and news broadcast “Prison Planet” provided valuable analysis 15 years ago. Jones combined a systematic release of information about massive corporate and government conspiracies with trivia and some misleading material in a manner that allowed informed viewers to learn quite a bit. I suspect that he was forced to mix garbage in his reports because many of the materials he used were classified.

Today, Alex Jones has become a popular media figure in the Republican Party interested only in select crimes of the Democratic Party. There remain, however, plenty of other far right sources that are willing to take on the topic of class warfare.  

The progressives, however, are allergic to any serious consideration of class warfare. Bernie Sanders will talk about the unfair or selfish actions of the 1% but he refuses to mention the systematic efforts of the 0.01% to destroy the economic, educational and cultural foundations of life for the majority of Americans. He never mentions the criminal actions of Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Warren Buffet “progressive”-branded billionaires who are actively destroying the lives of citizens.

There are two critical components to the current strategy of class warfare.

First, the attacks are purposely audacious and extreme because it is assumed that this “shock and awe” approach will inhibit most intellectuals from engaging in a serious discussion or or engaging in political organization.

The “big lie” strategy is a core element in this campaign. This ancient political ruse, best known by Adolf Hitler’s characterization of a fiction “so colossal that no one can believe that someone would be so imprudent as to distort the truth so infamously” has played a critical role in the first stage of class warfare. Forcing government officials, academics and journalists to repeat obvious lies and to bombard the public with such lies quickly reduces the intellectual capacity of citizens to reflect on current events, and impedes collective action.

The scale of lie, of the deceipt, is so massive that is seems like an unbelievable fairytale.

There have been any number of lies perpetrated by the super-rich since the Kennedy assassination, but the two big lies that form the core of the current ideological preparation for class warfare are the 9.11 incident and COVID19. It is likely that the same groups were involved in organizing and implementing both and that the key planners came from around the world, not simply from the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The best analogy for the planning of these two big lies is Agatha Christie’s detective novel “Murder on the Orient Express.” In that novel, the American gangster Cassetti is murdered on a train by a group of his rivals who agree in advance to sedate him and then each of them, in turn, stabs him once. The manner in which the implementation of the crime is shared makes the case difficult to crack. Because all the major players are involved at some level in the crime, they all are driven to support the false narrative and they all stand to face persecution, and a  loss of face, if that narrative is not maintained.

The manner in which America’s most famous public intellectuals stick to the 9.11 and COVID19 narratives, even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, suggests that a similar process is at work.

Those few stupid enough to demand an investigation of the facts in these cases have been punished. Those who have displayed leadership skills have been isolated or destroyed. The rest have been bought off with ego-flattering media coverage, with funds for superficial research, or with “entrepreneurial” business opportunities. All these rewards come with strings that render potential leaders harmless.  

The other critical point to this preparation for full-spectrum class warfare can be found in the remarkable silence and calm before the storm. The media, academic experts, NGOs and global organizations like the United Nations, even the so-called radical left, give the public the impression that although there are serious problems in the United States, and the country is not as free as it could be, that, basically, things are normal.

Even as private militias roam the country, engaging in mayhem and killing, public intellectuals refuse to address the question of how Goldman Sachs and BlackRock manipulate the political process, or engage in domestic terrorism. The message repeated is that the situation will return to normal, perhaps under a Biden administration, is repeated ad nauseum until citizens have no choice but to embrace the fiction or lose the ability to interact with friends and family.

Citizens are encouraged by the media to take up meditation, spend time with family and read a book at a café. The implication of such advice, fed to us by corporate-sponsored self-help mavens, is that any tension our lives is the result of internal emotions, not of external forces.

There is a tendency in social animals like humans to try to define reality in response to social consensus, and to seek out traces of the normal in daily life, and to latch on to them as a means of avoiding the painful reality of radical political and economic shifts. The super-rich exploit this human weakness.

Thus, citizens are slowly dragged into a new reality of techno-totalitarian rule through a subtle dance, a gradual alternation between punctuated moments in which a feelings of danger and panic are encouraged cultivated and periods when citizens are told that things are slowly going back to normal. This melody that weaves between panic and relaxation without reflection means that citizens are convinced that they live in a normal society with occasional disruptions when in fact politics is becoming radically repressive with occasional moments of release.

This process is aided by efforts to frustrate understanding of who responsible for the crime.

The far left, groups like Socialist Equality Party (that run the WSWS report) or the Green Party, avoid any serious analysis of who owns what and how they own it. They speak of social justice, but they are silent (for the most part) about the specific machinations of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and George Soros.

The far right, by contrast, is willing to go after certain billionaires like Bill Gates and George Soros with the appropriate seriousness, but turns a blind eye to the billionaires Shelden Adelson, Robert Mercer and Charles Koch, the players who created the Trump phenomenon and have pushed for climate catastrophe and for a pro-Zionist policy.

The citizen is offered a baited gambit, a choice between 1) a right wing that addresses real class issues and describes massive conspiracies like the murderous vaccine regime that is being planned, but that is silent on climate change, and wants to end all government, and that does not provide a systemic analysis of the manner in which the Zionist and imperialist billionaires play a role in the destruction of our society, on the one hand and, on the other hand, 2) a “progressive” movement that promotes racial and ethnic diversity, talks about a more egalitarian society, makes plans for the response to climate change, but is silent on the crimes of Bill Gates and friends (even praising him for his takeover of the United Nations) and turns a blind eye to the COVID19 scam.

The unsavory choice is not an accident. It is forced on us by the super-rich who have been advised that their only hope for survival is to use their extreme wealth to fool us into fighting each other rather than confronting them.   

The advisors to the super-rich know that the concentration of wealth, and intentional impoverishment of the population, will reach a breaking point and citizens will start to organize. Their supercomputers have already presented them with detailed models for how revolutionary actions will unfold.

The super-rich want to steer those who see the criminal conspiracy, and the threat of world government for the few, towards the right which lacks the analytical framework to address class issues in a rigorous manner. That right wing is telling the truth, but the explanations for why do not include a systematic plan for reform. Instead, the right’s arguments fall back on simplistic narratives about threats from the Chinese Communist Party or from Jewish capital. Although there are, of course, serious financial conspiracies linked directly to China and to Israel, they are only part of the global integration of finance driven by AI that includes multiple players.

On the other hand, the super-rich want to steer those concerned with inequity and racism in society towards ineffective multiculturalism and feel-good ethnic identity rituals. The multiethnic new team of the Biden administration is typical of such identity politics. The ritual of appointing women, African Americans, Asians and Indians to prominent positions in government, business, the military, intelligence and academics signifies “progress” even if they are products of corporate finance and have deep stakes in private equity, or in the promotion of weapons systems.

The argument advanced by progressives is that there is no conspiracy but rather that the inequity we face is the product of a bad apples, of greedy and thoughtless men, who can be brought to their senses if they only have their photograph taken with Greta Thunberg.

Goldman Sachs could not be happier with the result.

As they say on the Upper Westside, “I like my fascism with a shot of progressive rhetoric and a thin layer of multicultural performance art on top.”

Consider how when Drew Faust retired as president of Harvard in 2018 she immediately joined the board of Goldman Sachs. There was total silence on the left concerning this blatant conflict of interest. Harvard, once famous for the quality its research, is now valued primarily for its 50 Billion USD endowment, and not for its academic achievements. The endowment, and increasingly the faculty (who chase after corporate funding) have been reduced to the toys of investment banks.

Intellectuals who might serve as leaders are marginalized by policies that force them to write tedious papers for obscure journals. Those in the NGO world are forced to run around begging for donations from the rich and powerful and are therefore incapable of articulating a message with broad appeal. None of this is an accident.

The COVID19 pathology: An intersection of class and information warfare

The COVID19 pathology: An intersection of class and information warfare

December 14, 2020

Emanuel Pastreich

Independent Candidate for President

USA

COVID19 is a cultural and institutional virus that eats away at the foundations of organized human action. The COVID19 campaign is best seen as a horrific coupling of two linked, but distinct, phenomenon: the emergence of full-scale class warfare as a result of the rapid concentration of wealth over the past ten years and the transformation of artificial intelligence  (which lurks behind automation, drones, media and the internet) into the primary weapon in the ruthless battle of the super-rich against the vast majority of humanity.

A critical factor in the effectiveness of this combination of class warfare and information warfare has been the willingness of the vast majority of public intellectuals and other authority figures to go along with the current false narrative, actively misleading and distracting the general public. As a result, few people understand what is going on in the United States behind the fear-mongering false reports in the news, with the exception of those at a high level who handle the classified planning, promulgation and enforcement of the COVID19 “great reset.”

An increasing number of people, however, are aware that something is profoundly wrong with the United States. Abandoned by a decadent establishment, they are forced to search for the truth in the trash produced by the corporate media, limited in their understanding by the primitive schemata for understanding economics and politics produced by consulting firms whose primary task is to frustrate understanding.

Class Warfare

A shift has taken place in American society over the last two years. The manipulation of digital currencies, bonds, derivatives and other financial products, combined with the radical privatization of the banking system has made it possible for a tiny handful of the super-rich, and the swarms of CEOs who buzz around them like flies, to create money out of nothing and to use that money to bribe everyone in a position of authority—or to threaten them.

This radical class fragmentation in American society has been festering for years, but it was only when the COVID19 crisis was hyped up as a means of calling attention away from the destruction of the economy resulting from the theft by super-rich of between 5 and 12 trillion dollars from the United States government through a series of loans to buy up stock, refinance and to transfer cash was successful. The rich decided that the time had come to implement their plan. .

The operation included a series of classified directives that forced all government officials, and many in media and academia, to lay all blame for the economic and political disruption on COVID19 and that prohibited the mention of this massive theft. This theft was the most important event of 2020 but was never mentioned in the US election.

Although this massive transfer of wealth dwarfed the quantitative easing scams of the last decade, and empowered a handful of multi-billionaires to run the economy without interference, their advisors warned them that the such a move was extremely dangerous and that they must take ruthless measures to destroy all opposition before a truly revolutionary movement could get off the ground.  

The term “class warfare” was popular in Marxist discourse and formed a central pillar of mass mobilization in the 1930s by communist movements. The term is not communist by nature, however. Today “class warfare” is not treated in a serious manner by the toothless left (who use the term as a colorful expression and not to describe this literal war). It is rather the far right that identifies the threat of class warfare, and describes it graphically, although not always in an accurate manner. 

It is clear that the current plan, well underway, is intended to reduce the entire population to slavery under the control of the 0.01%. The the progressives and the flaccid left, however, refuse to grapple with this reality, and, with rare exceptions, they refuse to speak honestly about COVID19.  

The best-known right-wing figure to describe class warfare was Alex Jones whose website Info Wars and news broadcast “Prison Planet” provided valuable analysis 15 years ago. Jones combined a systematic release of information about massive corporate and government conspiracies with trivia and some misleading material in a manner that allowed informed viewers to learn quite a bit. I suspect that he was forced to mix garbage in his reports because many of the materials he used were classified.

Today, Alex Jones has become a popular media figure in the Republican Party interested only in select crimes of the Democratic Party. There remain, however, plenty of other far right sources that are willing to take on the topic of class warfare.  

The progressives, however, are allergic to any serious consideration of class warfare. Bernie Sanders will talk about the unfair or selfish actions of the 1% but he refuses to mention the systematic efforts of the 0.01% to destroy the economic, educational and cultural foundations of life for the majority of Americans. He never mentions the criminal actions of Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Warren Buffet “progressive”-branded billionaires who are actively destroying the lives of citizens.

There are two critical components to the current strategy of class warfare.

First, the attacks are purposely audacious and extreme because it is assumed that this “shock and awe” approach will inhibit most intellectuals from engaging in a serious discussion or or engaging in political organization.

The “big lie” strategy is a core element in this campaign. This ancient political ruse, best known by Adolf Hitler’s characterization of a fiction “so colossal that no one can believe that someone would be so imprudent as to distort the truth so infamously” has played a critical role in the first stage of class warfare. Forcing government officials, academics and journalists to repeat obvious lies and to bombard the public with such lies quickly reduces the intellectual capacity of citizens to reflect on current events, and impedes collective action.

The scale of lie, of the deceipt, is so massive that is seems like an unbelievable fairytale.

There have been any number of lies perpetrated by the super-rich since the Kennedy assassination, but the two big lies that form the core of the current ideological preparation for class warfare are the 9.11 incident and COVID19. It is likely that the same groups were involved in organizing and implementing both and that the key planners came from around the world, not simply from the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The best analogy for the planning of these two big lies is Agatha Christie’s detective novel “Murder on the Orient Express.” In that novel, the American gangster Cassetti is murdered on a train by a group of his rivals who agree in advance to sedate him and then each of them, in turn, stabs him once. The manner in which the implementation of the crime is shared makes the case difficult to crack. Because all the major players are involved at some level in the crime, they all are driven to support the false narrative and they all stand to face persecution, and a  loss of face, if that narrative is not maintained.

The manner in which America’s most famous public intellectuals stick to the 9.11 and COVID19 narratives, even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, suggests that a similar process is at work.

Those few stupid enough to demand an investigation of the facts in these cases have been punished. Those who have displayed leadership skills have been isolated or destroyed. The rest have been bought off with ego-flattering media coverage, with funds for superficial research, or with “entrepreneurial” business opportunities. All these rewards come with strings that render potential leaders harmless.  

The other critical point to this preparation for full-spectrum class warfare can be found in the remarkable silence and calm before the storm. The media, academic experts, NGOs and global organizations like the United Nations, even the so-called radical left, give the public the impression that although there are serious problems in the United States, and the country is not as free as it could be, that, basically, things are normal.

Even as private militias roam the country, engaging in mayhem and killing, public intellectuals refuse to address the question of how Goldman Sachs and BlackRock manipulate the political process, or engage in domestic terrorism. The message repeated is that the situation will return to normal, perhaps under a Biden administration, is repeated ad nauseum until citizens have no choice but to embrace the fiction or lose the ability to interact with friends and family.

Citizens are encouraged by the media to take up meditation, spend time with family and read a book at a café. The implication of such advice, fed to us by corporate-sponsored self-help mavens, is that any tension our lives is the result of internal emotions, not of external forces.

There is a tendency in social animals like humans to try to define reality in response to social consensus, and to seek out traces of the normal in daily life, and to latch on to them as a means of avoiding the painful reality of radical political and economic shifts. The super-rich exploit this human weakness.

Thus, citizens are slowly dragged into a new reality of techno-totalitarian rule through a subtle dance, a gradual alternation between punctuated moments in which a feelings of danger and panic are encouraged cultivated and periods when citizens are told that things are slowly going back to normal. This melody that weaves between panic and relaxation without reflection means that citizens are convinced that they live in a normal society with occasional disruptions when in fact politics is becoming radically repressive with occasional moments of release.

This process is aided by efforts to frustrate understanding of who responsible for the crime.

The far left, groups like Socialist Equality Party (that run the WSWS report) or the Green Party, avoid any serious analysis of who owns what and how they own it. They speak of social justice, but they are silent (for the most part) about the specific machinations of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and George Soros.

The far right, by contrast, is willing to go after certain billionaires like Bill Gates and George Soros with the appropriate seriousness, but turns a blind eye to the billionaires Shelden Adelson, Robert Mercer and Charles Koch, the players who created the Trump phenomenon and have pushed for climate catastrophe and for a pro-Zionist policy.

The citizen is offered a baited gambit, a choice between 1) a right wing that addresses real class issues and describes massive conspiracies like the murderous vaccine regime that is being planned, but that is silent on climate change, and wants to end all government, and that does not provide a systemic analysis of the manner in which the Zionist and imperialist billionaires play a role in the destruction of our society, on the one hand and, on the other hand, 2) a “progressive” movement that promotes racial and ethnic diversity, talks about a more egalitarian society, makes plans for the response to climate change, but is silent on the crimes of Bill Gates and friends (even praising him for his takeover of the United Nations) and turns a blind eye to the COVID19 scam.

The unsavory choice is not an accident. It is forced on us by the super-rich who have been advised that their only hope for survival is to use their extreme wealth to fool us into fighting each other rather than confronting them.   

The advisors to the super-rich know that the concentration of wealth, and intentional impoverishment of the population, will reach a breaking point and citizens will start to organize. Their supercomputers have already presented them with detailed models for how revolutionary actions will unfold.

The super-rich want to steer those who see the criminal conspiracy, and the threat of world government for the few, towards the right which lacks the analytical framework to address class issues in a rigorous manner. That right wing is telling the truth, but the explanations for why do not include a systematic plan for reform. Instead, the right’s arguments fall back on simplistic narratives about threats from the Chinese Communist Party or from Jewish capital. Although there are, of course, serious financial conspiracies linked directly to China and to Israel, they are only part of the global integration of finance driven by AI that includes multiple players.

On the other hand, the super-rich want to steer those concerned with inequity and racism in society towards ineffective multiculturalism and feel-good ethnic identity rituals. The multiethnic new team of the Biden administration is typical of such identity politics. The ritual of appointing women, African Americans, Asians and Indians to prominent positions in government, business, the military, intelligence and academics signifies “progress” even if they are products of corporate finance and have deep stakes in private equity, or in the promotion of weapons systems.

The argument advanced by progressives is that there is no conspiracy but rather that the inequity we face is the product of a bad apples, of greedy and thoughtless men, who can be brought to their senses if they only have their photograph taken with Greta Thunberg.

Goldman Sachs could not be happier with the result.

As they say on the Upper Westside, “I like my fascism with a shot of progressive rhetoric and a thin layer of multicultural performance art on top.”

Consider how when Drew Faust retired as president of Harvard in 2018 she immediately joined the board of Goldman Sachs. There was total silence on the left concerning this blatant conflict of interest. Harvard, once famous for the quality its research, is now valued primarily for its 50 Billion USD endowment, and not for its academic achievements. The endowment, and increasingly the faculty (who chase after corporate funding) have been reduced to the toys of investment banks.

Intellectuals who might serve as leaders are marginalized by policies that force them to write tedious papers for obscure journals. Those in the NGO world are forced to run around begging for donations from the rich and powerful and are therefore incapable of articulating a message with broad appeal. None of this is an accident.

The use of AI

A key weapon in the battle to the death between a tiny handful of the super-rich and the rest of humanity is AI, or artificial intelligence.

The threat of AI is a common theme touched upon by the attention-craving billionaire Elon Musk. But his warnings are abstract, about some future amorphous danger beyond the horizon, and not presented as a threat to us right now.

If anything, AI is hyped as an inevitable development in human civilization, and never presented as the political strategy of the rich to marginalize and destroy the majority of humanity. AI is presented to us as a boon for human potential that will boost creativity in a bid to distract and mislead the citizen. Youth are encouraged to learn computer science with the assumption that they will somehow find a place to work in this alien new economy without people.  

Artificial Intelligence is capable of analyzing massive amounts of information and coming up with aggregate conclusions. AI is used to test airplanes in flight simulations, to model chemical reactions in organic compounds and to explore other complex phenomenon such as weather, or ocean currents.

But these are not the concerns that corporations think about when they invest billions in supercomputers.

AI has two fundamental uses today.

1) The calculation of potential profit from stock, bonds and other derivatives and the formulation of, and implementation of, strategies for maximizing that profit. In many cases, the supercomputers not only calculate the value of derivatives, they create those derivatives and thus create value out of nothing by alchemy.

2) The large-scale manipulation of the Earth’s population, starting with the United States, through a complex symphonic presentation of narratives in different gendres that serves to, in alternation, frighten and intimidate, cajole and berate, encourage and reassure, the population. These patterns of stimulation aimed at social manipulation take place locally, nationally and globally and they unfold on such a large scale, and with such complexity that, unless you are involved in the plan, you will have trouble keeping up, and you will join the billions of people persuaded by these AI coordinated campaigns to engage in acts, or support policies, that are not in the interest of anyone but a tiny handful of billionaires.

The propagandistic role of AI is perhaps one of the most poorly understood threats that mankind faces. That is not an accident.

The next stage of brutal class warfare will be starting soon, and as the vast majority of humanity is forced into poverty, and revolutionary action no longer seems unthinkable, we can be sure that AI will take on an aggressive new role in manipulating the thinking of citizens.

It is true that there is tremendous competition between China, Japan, the United States, Germany, Russia, Israel and other countries to develop the next generation of super computers as quickly as possible. The details of this competition, however, are classified (or subject to non-disclosure agreements). Most information released in the media is intentionally misleading.  

The competition between nations to develop AI is increasingly secondary to the competition between corporations, or even between individual billionaires, to set up banks of  supercomputers that enable them to engage in the calculation of profit, and the manipulation of the public, for themselves.  

National boundaries are not important in the competition.

The popular rhetoric of a “new Cold War” between China and the United States is used to obscure the degree of cooperation in the calculation of profit between Google and Tencent, between Microsoft and Alibaba. How much cooperation in supercomputing takes place? I doubt anyone really knows. What we know is that super-rich in both the United States and China have a similar interest in preempting any effort to organize opposition.

We know from the case of the First World War that it is possible to wage a brutal total war while the cooperation at a higher level between financial oligarchs continued.

The nature of AI warfare is unlikely to be a Pearl Harbor-like attack on the United States by a nation state like China or Russia, but rather the systematic manipulation of all the citizens of the world that grinds them down and disempowers them economically and intellectually.

How is AI used in war:

The capacity of AI is understated in the media intentionally. The application of AI in business is to create algorithms for the manipulation of the information culled from surveillance and transmissions that assure that almost no citizens are aware of how the information collected is used against them. It is not that hard for supercomputers to outsmart and trick entire populations, especially if those populations are engrossed in playing video games, watching pornography or wasting their time on images of food or fashion.

The primary directive in this information war is that it must be conducted in a friendly and sensitive manner so that almost no one grasps what is taking place until they are locked up permanently in their homes.

Extremely detailed information about all aspects of the lives of most humans on the Earth is already available and programs exist that calculate possible responses to future changes on the part of individuals, groups, nations and the entire world. The detail of the information available, and the ability to calculate responses at multiple levels, grows increasingly sophisticated.

We can assume that there is a core group of say five million people globally who are carefully tracked and whose actions are anticipated because they are potential political leaders or opinion makers. At the same time, all significant groups (leftists of different flavors, Christian or libertarian conservatives, Jews, African Americans, or Hispanics) are tracked individually, in small groups and in aggregate and projections for their responses to political shifts are calculated.   

Each individual, and each population group, is targeted and then slowly frightened, and/or seduced, into accepting dangerous shifts in governance (for businesses, schools, NGOs and local, state and federal government) through a complex back and forth, an alternation of rewards and punishments, the creation of moments of crisis and uncertainty.   

Those who find Fox News convincing require different presentations of information from those who read the Washington Post or the Atlantic, and also different approaches are required for those who read the New York Review of Books or Common Dreams. The arguments advanced are subtly varied with the help of AI computations of the fluid state of public opinion with minute attention to each small audience.   

The citizen gets the impression from this calibrated process that politics are a steady state, alternating between crisis and progress. The reality, however, is that society is becoming rapidly more authoritarian, serving as a tool for multinational corporations.

These algorithms determine what news stories, or dramas and commercials, should be placed in which media sources, over what period of time so as to modify behavior and thinking patterns for each population group (Chinese Americans interested in science, conservative Christians invested in real estate, African Americans interested to sports). Because the messaging is spread out in waves over months and years. The process resembles it is like drawings of birds in the Peruvian Nazca desert that are only visible from the sky and not to people on the ground. Even the smartest mind at MIT is unable to perceive the patterns for manipulation that have been worked out by supercomputers.

Several steps had to be taken before this program of information warfare could be launched. First, all scientists employing the scientific method were removed from the public discussion concerning COVID19 and authority figures like Anthony Fauci a man who senselessly calls for the universal use of masks, for social distancing and for vaccines, had to be held up by the media, including the progressives, as a model for science in opposition to the anti-science Trump. That required them to completely overlook how Bill Gates created Fauci as a corporate hack to push his for-profit healthcare agenda.

Once a stake was driven through the heart of the scientific method, it was then possible to manipulate this pandemic so as to advance the interests of financial elites.

A perfect example of the weaponization of the left for this covert war on science is the call for mobilization by 314 Action, an “NGO” that describes itself as a grassroots movement to “elect Democratic scientists who will use science and facts to address some of our most pressing issues like climate change and health care.”

The post describes the “incredible work” of Rebekah Jones, an expert who created a COVID database. She was fired, the post tells us, for refusing to follow orders from the Republican governor to “manipulate and falsify COVID numbers to downplay the number of cases and infections.”

Therefore, the posting declares, we should support a “COVID whistleblower being targeted ruthlessly.” But what if the entire COVID data was itself a fraud and what if the Republican governor is the one who is standing on the side of science?

The strategists behind this post are assuming that those accustomed to “progressive” politics will not be able to wrap their mind around such a scenario and will thus be seduced into embracing an anti-science agenda in the name of science.

The media today is filled with screaming articles peppered with scary photographs of people being carted away wrapped up in plastic in a blatant effort at systematic fear mongering. Many of those photographs, and the content, are most likely fabricated.

New statistics for how many people have become infected by COVID19 in each city or state are plastered everywhere in a manner that displaces all real news. None of the information about outbreaks, about treatment, about vaccines, or anything else is reliable or even believable.

That is to say that all aspects of journalism have been fully weaponized. Behind the headlines, supercomputers alternate stories of dramatic outbreaks and lulls in COVID 19 cases, breakthroughs and setbacks in developing vaccines. We read about experts who suggest there is hope just around the corner and then about others who foresee a “dark winter.”  The process makes sure that all debate is about process and personalities, not the fundamental question of why. The corporate media focuses on the personality of Trump or Biden, or on the weather, or on just about anything other than an analysis of what is taking place. 

This AI driven information warfare is best seen as the equivalent of a game of chess, or “go.” The supercomputers owned by Goldman Sachs, or by Jeff Bezos, work to calibrate precisely how to lull to sleep, or how to disorient and shock, individuals and specific population groups over months so that they will accept as normal an increasingly alien landscape.

The privatization of the control of information in government is also part of information warfare.

Imagine my surprise when a friend forwarded to me a job listing for “senior intelligence analyst for North Korea” at Microsoft. The trend of taking intelligence positions out of the government and giving them to private companies has increased over the last twenty years and reached a peak over the last year.

Multinational corporations, accountable to no one, can’t wait to drive the final nail in the coffin of government so that they can regulate all aspects of daily life for citizens in a reign of terror while using the innocuous term “service” to describe the process.

It was announced on November 21 that the CIA will give a massive cloud computing contract worth “tens of billions” to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM and Oracle. Perhaps it would be better to simply say that the CIA will be split up into the fiefdoms of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Larry Page, and Larry Ellison. And that is just the part that actually appears in the newspaper.

Strategies for manipulation

Data by itself is not so helpful. It must be combined with a strategy for manipulation. The current strategy can be traced back to the public relations and advertising strategies of corporations and government developed in the 1950s based on the principles of Sigmund Freud’s disciple Edward Bernays. Bernays developed concrete methods to manipulate the public through powerful images and simplistic slogans. He saw humans as irrational and inclined to seek out safe interpretations of events when they are presented by authority figures in accord with a “herd instinct.”

His classic books “Propaganda” (1928) and “The Engineering of Consent” (1955) form how-to manuals for political control.  

More recently, there was a dramatic shift in public discourse after the 9/11 incident that demolished rational and scientific thinking from left to right, from comic books to scientific journals. A horrific monster, spawned by the stimulation of instinct and of reactive thinking by technology, emerged to take the place of science in our society.  

How anybody could think that the crash of two airplanes could cause three buildings constructed out of reinforced steel to collapse into dust is beyond my understanding.

Yet the American public was subject to a long line of experts who said it happened like that and the icons of the supposed “radical left” like Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky were trotted out to convince us that this fairytale was beyond question.

Another important part of the preparation for class warfare can traced back classified programs for psychological manipulation that were undertaken by the CIA and other organizations. As far back as the 1960s, programs to employ drugs, isolation, and other forms of invasive stimulation (or sensory deprivation) as a means to modify behavior and thinking were undertaken with corporate backing.

It was the programs run at Guantanamo Bay after 9/11 to destroy the minds of prisoners using isolation, mind-altering drugs, masks and sadistic abuse (described in the book “Murder at Camp Delta” by a former guard Joseph Hickman) that directly inform current strategies for mass control. Such programs had nothing to do with gathering “intelligence.”  

I do not have access to the results of those experiments, but I can speculate as to what they were trying to determine. There are distinct flaws in the structure of the brain that make it possible to manipulate people without their knowledge or consent and those experiments helped to refine the specific methods.

The central weakness in the human mind derives from the contest for control between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. The prefrontal cortex makes decisions based on the rational analysis of the environment and a sophisticated calculation of the current situation in coordination with other parts of the brain. The amygdala, however, responds to threats with a sudden and irrational drive to flight, or to fight, that is not rational (and can be highly destructive). Although the amygdala traditionally played a critical role in allowing the human to drop everything and pursue self-preservation, its ability to override the decisions of the prefrontal cortex offers the manipulator a tremendous opportunity.

The results of the torture programs at Guantanamo Bay, combined with the work of Bernays’s modern disciples, provide the basis for sophisticated strategies to stimulate the amygdala so that its compulsive response and short-term irrationality overrides the prefrontal cortex. In addition, the pleasure centers (sexual arousal, appeals of food, or of other sensual pleasures) also help this campaign by inhibiting long-term rational planning in the individual and reinforcing an anti-intellectual agenda. This “softening up” operation is carried out in a slow and methodical manner globally to prepare for the next step in the conflict.   

In effect, highly educated and capable people are rendered harmless and passive through this process. The promotion of media and educational content full of advanced vocabulary but lacking logical argumentation, serves to lull the educated American to sleep. One need only read the Nation or the American Prospect to see the level of linguistic sophistication employed in articles that are mind-numbing and completely inaccurate in their description of reality.

The result of this process has been the founding of a nation of “sleepwalkers,” to borrow the title from the novel by the Austrian author Hermann Broch. Broch describes in that novel (1932) how educated Germans allowed themselves to be led into the catastrophe of World War One with eyes wide open. German intellectuals became sleepwalkers in the sense that they were functional in society, sophisticated in carrying out their jobs, even appreciative of music and art, but completely oblivious to the signs of institutional and cultural collapse. The current class-warfare strategy encourages such behavior.

The next stage in this horrific combination of information and class warfare may be launched by the COVID19 Task Force appointed by president-elect Joe Biden. Headed by Vivek Murthy (former surgeon general), David Kessler (former commissioner at the FDA) and Marcella Nunez-Smith (Yale Professor) the task force is positioned to play the role of judge, jury and executioner in the pursuit of a response to COVID19 that has no legal limits. Any scientific mandate is ruled out from the start because the virus itself is bogus. Biden’s statement that “I will spare no effort, none, or any commitment to end this pandemic” suggests that the door is open to massive repression of freedom of action and expression.

Biden vowed to establish a “pandemic testing board” modeled on the Wartime Production Panel of the Second World War and to empower the Federal government to fight COVID19 with the full authority of the Defense Production Act of the Korean War. The analogies to military mobilization to describe tracking down people supposedly suffering from COVID19, and their treatment with hundreds of millions of mandatory vaccines, is not random.    

Biden demands a national “mask mandate” that will force everyone to wear these masks 24/7. Such a move cannot be seen as a misunderstanding of medicine. It is a deliberate effort to force government officials, corporations and citizens to accept orders even if they have no logical or scientific basis.

The closest parallel to the mask mandate is the demand in Germany that everyone of Jewish ancestry wear a yellow star starting on September 1, 1941. This policy, which had no basis in science, was accepted by the vast majority of intellectuals and opinion makers of the time and it served to create distance between populations, to encourage hostility, and to accustom citizens to non-sensical and authoritarian policy. After a year of watching some Germans forced to wear yellow stars of the first time in history, it was easy for the population to play stupid when those people were sent off to settlements in Poland and never returned.

Similarly, we can imagine that Americas will be prepared to accept the development of corona camps for groups of thousands, or millions, who are suddenly reported to be suffering from this disease. Citizens fearing that they themselves may be subject to treatment will have no choice but to wear “smart masks” or to have CCTV cameras placed in their homes, or to be subject to any number of mandatory vaccines that allow corporations (posing as “government”) to inject into their bodies with poorly understood substances and sensors.

That is the frightening prospect that confronts us today.

The historian Hannah Arendt got it right when she wrote,

“Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”

AI is being used promote a “failure to think” at “warp speed” that will serve a critical role in inhibiting resistance in the next stage of class warfare.

“美国学者:‘中国威胁”是假,对华无知是真’” 观中国

观中国

“美国学者:‘中国威胁”是假,对华无知是真’”
2020 12 8

贝一明

近年来,美国对于中国的看法越来越负面。对一个日益具有“侵略性”的中国充满恐惧和仇视,已经成为美国政界高层的主流观点——虽然并没有什么证据表明这是事实。

不论是在共和党还是民主党内,这种焦虑情绪都正在蔓延开来。在他们看来,美国社会大大小小的任何问题,如果不能和新冠肺炎疫情挂上钩,那么一定是因为中国的“侵略性”导致的。

你可能会认为,在一些媒体全天24小时不间断地疯狂炒作“中国威胁”论的情况下,美国一定会下大气力去获取有关中国的真实信息,那些懂中文、了解中国文化和政治的人才一定会非常吃香。

那你就错了。

当前中国在世界上发挥的作用越来越重要,而美国对此是如何反应的呢?我们看到,美国军方和情报界通过大打“新冷战”牌,获得巨额预算,但美国对中国经济、政治和外交政策等的理解程度却不升反降。那些具有长期在华工作经验,或精通中文的专家,反而更难通过“安全审查”、获得提拔重用。

去年我在华盛顿惊讶地发现,在当前这场“中国威胁”闹剧中,许多真正的中国问题专家被完全忽视了。

在乔治·奥威尔的小说《1984》中,被称为“老大哥” (Big Brother) 的独裁政府有句著名口号:“无知就是力量”。而如今的现实就是,那些鼓吹“新冷战”的人们似乎正在把这一口号付诸实践。

这一现状如果抛开危险性不说的话,其实也是蛮有趣的:过去十年来,中国在全球科技领域的影响力日益增长,中国研究机构正在崛起成为全球领导者,在纳米技术、人工智能和生物技术等领域涌现出一大批论文专著,这些研究成果只以中文出版,不为英语国家的学者所熟知。随着这一趋势持续上升,未来美国科学家恐怕必须得把中文练得接近母语水平才行了。

目前美国之所以对中国的理解存在政治偏差,部分原因应归咎于对技术的过度依赖。许多人认为,只要把大量原始数据——比如卫星图像、相关文件、广播新闻等,输入超级计算机,那么中国的整体情况就自动生成了。但实际上并非这样简单,只有深刻理解了中国的历史文化背景,才能对美国制定对华战略产生真正意义。超级计算机只会把你埋没在一堆数据中,无法创造性地替你拿出解决方案。

所谓“国家战略”,应该始终基于这样的假设:“没有永远的朋友,也没有永远的敌人”。

中美关系当前确实可能处于比较紧张的阶段,但未来将如何发展我们并不知道。面对所谓的“中国威胁”,美国的反应过于情绪化,并且用“中国威胁”论来为美国上至政界精英下至平民百姓简单粗暴地处理中美关系辩护,这实在是一种战略上的愚蠢之举。

没有哪位白宫贸易顾问能够断言未来中美永远不可能紧密合作。这样的未来不仅可行,而且大有可能,但关键取决于美方是否能够抓住这一机遇。

具体来说,美国首先要在中国研究领域加大投资力度,在中国文化、历史和语言方面积累起专业知识。

其次,现在中国许多地方省市的经济和科技实力已经可以和世界上一些主要国家相提并论,因此未来美国需要将目光不仅集中在北京,也要关注西安、成都等地区,培养了解中国地方发展状况的相关人才。

最后,当前美国有一种观念正在发酵,那就是在同中国打交道时不需要制定一个长期深入的战略,也不需要了解中国的历史、文化和科技发展,只需要加大武力威慑——建造更多的航母、不断升级核打击力量就行了。这种观念极其危险,必须及时纠正。

中美利益冲突和观点分歧总是在所难免的,这时候我们需要的是真正了解中国的专家,来提出创造性的解决方案,向那些政客阐释政中国的世界观,指出一些矛盾冲突其实根本不是存在于中美两个国家之间,而是存在于不同的跨国集团之间。

如果美国缺乏这样的专家,甚至仅仅因为某人会讲中文就从一开始对他抱有偏见,那就危险了:美国政客由于手中没有足够的资源来与中国进行任何有意义的讨论,只会进一步加剧与中国的紧张关系。如果美国政界连一个能说出上海市市长的名字,或者知道中国最大的半导体生产商是谁的人都没有,那么处于战略劣势的将是美国,而不是中国。

“投资银行与人们对石油的隐性依赖”

多维新闻

“投资银行与人们对石油的隐性依赖”

2020年12月 2日

贝一明

我亲眼见到了如此可悲的一幕:格蕾塔·桑伯格所带领的高中生以及其他气候活动家们要求各位政治领导人调整政策,后者痛心地表达了歉意,且做出了令人欣慰的承诺;然而这群年轻人最后却惊讶地发现六个月,乃至一年后,什么都没有改变。

这场闹剧绝非偶然之事,而是推行某种系统性策略的结果:大众被媒体和教材误导,对国家如何决策、人们为何拿气候灾难无可奈何等问题缺乏正确的理解。其实为美国做出所有重大决策的,并非各个州与州政府,而是银行和企业财团。在电视上露面的政治领袖对经济政策的影响力并不比当红小丑对杂牌马戏团上演节目的决定作用大。

让我们从基本问题谈起:全球经济已被少数投资银行、主权财富基金机构以及超级富豪接管;其中超级富豪的作用最为重要。美国与其他国家的政策方向都是由上述机构与个人决定,再经由咨询公司和律师事务所传达给下层的政坛人士的。

冷战结束后,一种全球系统应时而生;在经济与政策问题上,严肃的意识形态和哲学分析在该系统中并无立锥之地。对于社会、经济和环境问题,媒体、课本和著名专家的文章不会提供任何批判性、甚至是与主流相悖的观点。对国家未来的深刻思考已经无迹可寻。

我们最多只能听到各方对政客们的抱怨。大家忽略了制度的弊病,认为全部问题都应归咎于特定人群的自私,与治理方面的缺陷无关。

在进入时局动荡的二十世纪九十年代之前,苏联和中国的体制并不完美,但它们起码拥有马克思经济学方面的专家,能够迫使西方学者对世界开展更具批判性的思考。正是这样的思想交锋让我们得以安不忘危。然而自那以后,我们却在关键时刻一睡不起。

各路新闻已经沦为耸人听闻的空洞报道。大多数新闻都视误导民众、蛊惑人心为己任,将传达事实、启发民智等职责弃之不顾。教育如出一辙,不再把道德、科学当做重中之重,放弃了对真相的追求。

参与政策制定过程的政坛人士已化身为艺人和小丑,他们灌输给公众的,都是毫无意义可言的垃圾。曾经挥斥方遒的知识阶层如今只能为不知所云的学术性期刊撰写文章,根本无法切实参与政策决策。

鸠占鹊巢的,是全球投资银行及其代理。

此外,科技的进步催生出大批超级计算机,它们才是投资银行真正的幕后主导,可以无情地精确计算出每一滴水、亚马孙雨林中每一棵树,以及世界上每一位工人的价值。所有长期计划的制定宗旨,只是最大限度地剥削劳动力、掠夺自然,同时利用人工智能和复杂算法来迷惑、误导民众,让他们对当下的困局一无所知。

对于超级计算机而言,哪怕地球在二十年后化作不毛的炼狱也无关紧要,只有暴利才举足轻重。

这些投资银行会在自己的权力范围内不择手段地确保世界上的每一位公民都为它们持有股份的跨国企业制造利润。它们不希望人们为自己生产食物、能源、文化内容,不希望人们创建自己的组织。同样地,它们还在尽力保证这一经济寄生系统不为人所知、不会在媒体和学术研究中得到严肃对待。

吃东西、喝水、旅行、接受教育、求医问药、葬于墓地——不论民众生活的哪一方面涉及到货币交易,银行家们都希望能从中分一杯羹。

诸位,银行家们不想让你们吃用自己的种子、在自己的土地上种植出来的食物,不想让你们使用自己双手创造的工具、家具和居所,不想让你们用自己家后院种出来的药草治病,不希望你们自行创作艺术品、写出小说、拍摄电影、编排戏剧,供自己和朋友们尽情欣赏、自娱自乐。

而他们最最反对的,是大家自己生产能源、降低能源的消耗。他们希望人们对石油欲罢不能。

石油是保证投资银行能够在人们每次需要使用能源时都可获利的主要工具——尽管它们也控制了煤矿和铀矿,且通过尽量推后可再生能源的普及来对这种能源加以限制。

银行家们不希望大家知道,曾经有那么一段时间,食物和人们所需的绝大多数物品都是自己产出的,无需往投资银行扔一美分。

投资银行四处撒钱,收买各个领域的专家为创造对石油依赖至深的世界造势。

是它们规划出大家所居住的城市,是它们规定了从幼儿到老人的生活之中一切事务的轻重缓急,是它们替由汽车飞机主宰、由浪费消耗定义的世界涂脂抹粉。它们这样做,只是为了让大家无法摆脱对石油的依赖、无法想象没有石油的世界是什么样子。

同时,各家投资银行及其旗下企业还会收买作家、顾问和政客,使消耗石油的可怕后果避人耳目,让大家绝不会将目前的环境危机与石油的使用联系在一起。政坛之中的政策讨论从来不允许任何人质问使用石油的长远代价为何。

如果想要使地球摆脱气候危机,我们首先必须让所有民众知道是谁以及为何要逼迫大家对石油产生依赖。一定要让他们了解有哪些银行和超级富豪参与其中,原因为何;要让他们知晓为使我们无法摆脱矿物燃料,这群规则的操纵者采用了何种手段。

一旦高盛、贝莱德、美国银行、摩根史丹利等投资银行秘而不宣的策略曝光,一旦沃伦·巴菲特、埃隆·马斯克、比尔·盖茨等公众面前的“正人君子”针对矿物燃料产业所做的巨额投资被公之于众,这些机构以及富豪的阴谋和真正企图便会大白于天下。

投资银行的企图

八十年来,国际投资银行一直在不遗余力地玩弄手段,以使各大产油国由自私的独裁者统治,令这些国家通过销售石油而创造的利润能够源源不断地流回这些银行操控的金融机构。它们想要建立的,是离开石油生产便无法生存的政治经济体,其结果是这些产油国也要花费数十亿美元来阻止石油消费受到限制。我们可能会对沙特阿拉伯严词苛责,但其背后的黑手却在华尔街毫发未损。

令产油国对石油收入产生依赖这一策略是通过削弱其经济多元性来实现的。势力强大的国际银行已经把沙特阿拉伯、科威特和尼日利亚变成了文化单一、缺乏自我意识的知识和文化废墟,而多元文化和自我意识恰恰是摆脱石油经济所必需的要素。

这些国家堪为可悲,其统治者也有名无实。它们在自己所知的唯一一项事业上埋头苦干,释放着有毒有害的污染物,为人类挖掘着坟墓。然而为这一切编写脚本的人不是它们自己,而是各位银行家。

当然,投资银行也在编造情节复杂的讹言谎语,说伦敦、纽约、莫斯科、北京等地的投资银行正在激烈交锋,让听众们相信各方正在为求变而斗争。然而它们之间的争斗不过是做做样子,根本不会触及整个系统。

石油与安全之惑

通过石油汲取财富的投资银行会出资协助研究机构和智库开展研究、制定政策建议。于是虚假报告纷纷出炉,称为石油生产与环球运输保驾护航是美国军队的基本职责。

换而言之,此类关于安全问题的讨论都阐述了一个观点:美国要依赖石油进口,应通过军事手段来保护石油产业。

至于通过全面普及可持续能源、大幅降低能源消耗来解决安全问题的可能性,这些报告却只字未提。

此类存在明显倾向的研究旨在完全从保护石油产业的角度来定义美国军队的职能。在跨国银行的资助下,研究机构做出了这样的安全分析:美国必须斥巨资开发制造轮船、飞机、导弹和卫星,为能源资源的全球运输提供保护。

此外,美国军方也已沦为石油的重要消费方,比起其他国家来,其石油使用量有过之而无不及。这样说毫不夸张:美国军队已经过暗中改造,一方面消耗着大量石油,一方面向各大银行输送着利润,而这些银行所资助的企业,正是战斗机、坦克以及其他军备的石油供应商。

军队职能遭到扭曲,意味着能够将气候变化作为严重威胁来讨论的国家安全负责人寥寥无几。如塞缪尔·洛克利尔上将一般敢于直言不讳的人,已经遭受了残酷打击。

美国军方的一切规划都为其想象中的、会耗费大量石油的未来战争而做。

货币与石油

石油的定价与销售会为控制相关过程的跨国投资银行带来丰厚利润。为使石油成为一切经济活动的核心要素,美国的金融系统已经过重组。投资银行有意将美国制造业外包出去,大大提高了石油控制权对国家经济健康的重要性。

美元不再由黄金储备支撑,美国债台高筑,美国资产的价值一落千丈,其结果是美国最重要的经济财富变成了以美元出售的石油。他国旨在停止以美元定价石油的动作被严厉抵制,甚至常常招致军事行动。

倘若全球的石油销售完全与美元脱钩,那么美国的恶性通胀即会随之而来——其实这一过程已经开始。

俄罗斯、中国和伊朗正在采取行动,令石油销售以其他货币结算。此举不仅增加了战争爆发的风险,而且迫使美国更加疯狂地使用危险的水力压裂法在境内开采石油和天然气。这种开采方法会对水源造成几代都无法消除的污染,而他们一心追求的,只是保持美元的石油结算货币地位。

石油与农业

投资银行早就发现食物的极端重要性,因此决意插手食物生产的每一环节,使民众无法消费不会给它们带来利润的食物。

美国农业的方方面面都已同石油紧缚在一起。受政府补贴的产业化农业需要大量使用从石油中提炼出来的杀虫剂和肥料。家庭农场已被摧毁殆尽,如今大片大片的土地都是为给跨国公司生产利润而耕种的。

为了提振石油消费,美国农业在非必要的情况下实现了自动化与机械化。农产品由卡车运往各州各市,由轮船载向各个国家,这一过程无疑会消耗大量石油。人们误以为石油是食物生产的必要物资;政客们在做农业生产力的相关论述时,也狡辩称地方农业太过落后、生产效率太过低下。

民众别无他法,只能消费利用石油生产出来的食物。即使人们为保护环境只吃蔬菜也无法摆脱石油的束缚:不谈其种植和运输,单单塑料包装便是石油工业的产物,会对环境造成极大破坏。

即使社会主义人士与马克思主义者都认为这一观点再正常不过:我们必须进出口食物、使用会耗费巨量煤炭石油的货轮来运输食物。无人开展国际合作来估算上述农产品国际贸易给环境造成的破坏;恰恰相反,大家普遍认为石油消耗量的增加是积极的信号。

奢侈品崇拜与“唯我独尊”的观念

我们之所以将过度消耗能源作为丰富生活的必需之举,是因为我们已经被电视、布告牌、报纸和网络上铺天盖地的广告裹挟。这些广告大肆宣扬中上层阶级与富豪的生活有多么光鲜,告诉受众过上大量浪费资源的生活是值得自豪之事。在我们被迫观看的商业广告中,人们住着一尘不染的豪宅,孑然独处,与邻隔绝,以豪车代步。

大家已经对电影中人们一边开车一边认真对话的场景司空见惯。

这些画面暗示我们,价值的创造与自我实现要通过浪费来达成。也就是说,它们在劝诱我们把这些荒诞的画面当做典范来顶礼膜拜。

它们鼓吹奢侈浪费,旨在为超级富豪们穷奢极欲的生活辩护,文过饰非。它们给我们灌输这样的观念:杰夫·贝佐斯和比尔盖茨之流是值得效仿的榜样,而非招摇过市的罪犯。

我们每每翻开杂志,时装、汽车和度假区的广告便会涌到面前。其实这些广告的发布宗旨不是推销某种商品或者服务,而是创造一种以浪费为荣、将种种乱象当做过眼云烟的浅薄文化。

以发布广告作为收入来源的报纸和杂志也在不断通过各种内容来提振消费,同时对质疑这种浪费现象的报道加以大肆贬斥。

对“自动化”和“第四次工业革命”的狂热迷信

为了使人们相信社会的迅速自动化是科学发展的必然结果,大量资金被注入了广告业、媒体和娱乐圈。相同的手段也被用于掩盖当前新型阶级斗争背后的经济与政治动向——这场斗争旨在摧毁工人手上的一切资源,却被广告商们极力粉饰、美其名曰“第四次工业革命”。

这是一场运动。它裹挟着无辜的年轻人,怂恿他们为一个由机器操控的世界努力学习、添砖加瓦,却从不鼓励他们深入思考这样的世界是否真的有益于人类、谁是这场巨变的真正受益方。他们告诉我们,一旦全面实现自动化,生活会变得更为便利、更为高端,更具创意。然而我们从未听说,坚持利用煤炭、石油和铀来为这样的世界提供能源,人类将会付出多么惨重的代价。

广告商和被投资银行收买的专家告诉人们,用以实现新时代全面自动化的能源完全免费,至于处处联网的世界在未来的几百年里需要多少能源,生产这些能源会对环境造成多么严重的破坏,这些话题则是不可触及的雷区。

将数据库和服务器机群转交给印度等国家的外包操作使富裕国家的人们得以利用由第三世界国家的煤和石油所产生的能源。然而气候的变化不分国界。

实际上,从保护环境的角度来看,“人造”才是更好的选择。然而这一事实同样是禁忌话题。

伪称人工智能革命是上帝不可违抗的旨意,要求人们必须用“智能化城市”来代替我们所居住的温馨社区——这一切都是一场会将我们的年轻人推向残酷黯淡未来的骗局。收受丰厚研究经费、为这场骗局背书的科学家如此之多,说明美国社会道德崩坏的程度已不亚于行将没落的罗马帝国。

缓兵之计

投资银行的爪牙们最为偏爱的手段之一,便是高调宣传针对气候变化所开展的讨论,使参与者们有机会放纵自我、得到媒体的赞誉,但并不会产生实质性的影响。《巴黎协定》便是一个绝佳的例子;然而民主党近日里表示,重返该协议将是极具意义的重要进步,这件事可谓讽刺至极。

主要工业化国家的领导人正在推动各种气候协议落地。这些协议透露出的观点是:到2050年——走运的话,便是到2030年,各国的能源使用模式即可神奇地实现可持续化。2030年和2050年如此遥远,而政府的长期规划职能已被私有化操作严重削弱,因此上述声明不过是一纸空谈。为石油产业相关利益方服务的公共关系公司也很乐意宣传这些看似重大的事件,给民众造成各方正在努力采取行动的假象。

关于增长和消费的弥天大谎

为了让民众只能看到股市指数、增长额、消费量等用于描述经济状况的统计数据,投资银行和企业财团简直使尽了浑身解数。这些指标其实同经济毫无关联,而且并没有将经济活动对环境的长期影响纳入考虑。

他们说为了保持经济增长,为了提振消费,我们必须耗费产品、抛弃旧物。

在这些扭曲观念诞生之前,人类便已生存了几百万年之久。在大多数情况下,经济学家们讨论的“增长”与“消费”都与能源的消费,尤其是煤炭和石油的消费有关。

所谓“增长”的逻辑扭曲至极:倘若人们建造能够居住五十年的房屋,穿五十年不破的衣服,真正地循环利用各种物品,“经济增长”便会受到影响。

如果民众回归简朴生活,通过读书、写作、绘画、音乐和深入交流来拓展灵魂,我们便可重建健康的可持续社会,同时还能降低污染。

然而从经济增长和消费的角度来看,这样的健康社会简直是灾祸之源:股市会一蹶不振,媒体会把血淋淋的事实呈现于人们眼前。

节俭、谦逊、自立、稳重等美德已无人强调。进步人士和保守派都在为不断拉低人类体验的“一次性”文化摇旗呐喊。

金钱、资产与石油

对于许多美国人来说,金钱关乎退休生活;他们在停止工作之后还需要一笔收入。早年间,雇主必须为员工支付养老金。然而自从华尔街接管美国经济以来,劳动人员便不得不将退休基金投入股市,依靠跨国企业产出的利润来维持生计。

金融机构令民众别无选择,只能为保障未来的退休生活购买股票和债券,而这些金融产品与能源的消费,尤其是石油的消费紧密相关。

现行经济系统要求民众将自己的钱投入资金池,为消费型经济助燃;妄图摆脱这种制度的人必须受到惩罚,于是纳税制度应运而生。即便那些自诩为“环保企业”的公司都会在没有必要的情况下耗费大量资源。

对国际贸易的宣传

国际贸易是气候变化相关讨论的一大禁忌话题。其实愿意挺身而出,呼吁终结当前交易与运输体系的气候活动人士寥寥无几。为了追求边际利润,人们通过现有体系在世界范围内运送原材料、各种组件与成品,对环境造成了残酷破坏。

人们认为鼓励贸易、以政府补贴来奖励贸易,对每个人都有百利而无一害,而像朝鲜一样限制贸易的国家则是人人唾弃的“隐士王国”。

谁质疑自由贸易观念,谁就会被贬斥为勒德分子乃至被时代抛弃之人。

然而,哪怕是人人都深信不疑的谎言,也永远不会成为真理。

远跨重洋运输产品会耗费巨量石油与煤炭,而进口目的地生产这些产品原本绝非难事。被投资银行豢养的专家当然会对跨洋运输的成本以及跨国生产给地方经济造成的破坏三缄其口。

于是,我们在一无所知、未曾同意的情况下,被抛入了一个专为石油生产商制造利润的体系。

当权者极采取了极为自私的手段,让美国民众陷入了两难的境地:要么准备同俄罗斯、中国、朝鲜和伊朗开战,要么接受与冷血跨国企业控制之下的国家开展经济交流——在很大程度上同石油的生产消费息息相关的经济交流。

这一腐败的体系永远不会指给我们第三条路走。在当前的政治制度之下,美国绝不可能同产油国结成和平友好、可持续发展的关系。美国与它们之间并不存在开展科学、文化和教育合作的空间。

城市规划与交通

投资银行及其旗下的企业会雇佣不计其数的说客、律师和前政府官员来给城市各方面规划的决策者施加压力。他们还为大批有名无实的非政府组织提供资金,让后者使联邦政府、州政府和地方政府相信民众急需高速公路、购物商城和崭新的主宅开发区——这些项目都是由税款来补贴的。民众的财产大多被房地产占压,倘若交通不便,房产价值会大幅缩水——这一切绝非偶然。

政客们就城市规划开展的游说颇有成效。交通便利与否成为了城市设计的中心问题;支出巨额高速公路维护费用被当做理所应当之事,即使存在资金问题时,这笔费用都无人提及。因此汽车尾气污染导致癌症频发、交通事故死亡人数居高不下、汹涌车流严重影响人们生活质量等问题被急于从矿物燃料企业提供的资金中获利的城市规划者、政客和专家们小心翼翼地遮挡在了公众的视线之外。

新建造的房屋窗子都很大,这种设计虽然浪费能源,却被奉为时尚。新冠疫情当前,政府告知我们应当戴上口罩;然而即使气候灾难迫在眉睫,各栋建筑却依然没有装上太阳能电池板。

以无车人士为主角的电视剧和电影寥寥无几。不论是电影还是新闻报道,都把住豪宅、过奢侈生活刻画为成功的象征。

这完全是一场阴谋。在人们离不开汽车的同时,美国制造行业中尚存的体面工作岗位都与汽车、飞机和依靠石油驱动的国防装备的生产有关。

国家制度已经被人操纵。在一个汽车起主导作用的社会中,人们一旦离开石油,不仅生活会受到影响,而且会丧失大量稳定的收入来源。

消费观念

在石油普及之前,对消费观念的宣扬便已持续千百年之久——即使这种做法有悖于人类社会的基本原则。其中的关窍显而易见:财阀斥巨资美化消费,令知识阶层沉浸其中,无暇考虑财产和消费以外的事,从而放弃对社会乃至对彼此的责任感。

蜂拥而至的广告告诉我们,对维持社会地位而言,形象、时装、化妆品、旅行、汽车和美食至关重要。在这种扭曲的文化中,对家人、社会、乃至全人类尊严的关怀,还有正直、节俭、谦逊、善良等美德被人不屑一顾,甚至当做笑柄。

塑料的广泛使用

投资银行正在暗中让塑料渗透美国社会的方方面面,同时掩盖微塑料毒害海洋、河流、土壤的相关信息——此为实现其提升石油使用量这一目的重要步骤。

许多人甚至不知道制造塑料的原料是由石油裂解而成的石脑油,不知道被弃置的塑料制品会对环境造成何种伤害。

超市、餐厅、百货店和我们冰箱中的一切都用塑料制品包装、以塑料制品储藏、或者含有塑料成分。毫不夸张地讲,在很多地区,人们如果坚持不碰塑料,最终恐怕会无以为食。

关于塑料的危害性,他们谎话连篇,还设置了所谓的“塑料回收箱”,而他们明明知道,塑料根本无法投入任何一种具有真正意义的循环利用。他们永远不会告诉我们使用塑料的后果无异于向大海中倾倒原油,不会告诉我们用塑料瓶、塑料盒储藏液体和食物存在健康隐患。

对飞机的大力宣传

每一部动作电影都是一支大型飞机广告,而飞机恰恰是目前所知的最大能源浪费源。我们被媒体和电影洗脑,相信乘飞机出行不仅毫无害处,而且可以彰显社会地位。

说客们告诉民众,拥有机场的城市才会被人重视。

飞机对气候造成的可怕影响却被隐而不宣。

尽管乘坐风力船、火车甚至齐柏林飞艇成本更为低廉,碳排放更少,但这一话题却甚少有人提及。给飞机装上太阳能电池板便可大幅减少汽油的使用量,但这一手段也从未投入使用。

外交官们乘着飞机来往于世界各地探讨气候问题的解决之道,而他们要解决的问题正因为他们自己的行动而愈演愈烈。

能源教育的失真

从幼儿园到研究生院的教育内容都已被人把持,目的是使其脱离科学分析与客观思考,保证气候变化不被人们当做亟待解决的问题。即使是难得地提到了气候变化的课本,也表示应当慢慢地将石油和煤炭移除出人们的生活。没有任何一门课、任何一版课本表示我们能够而且必须立即停止使用矿物燃料。

投资银行通过私有化操作削弱了政府,导致如今大学的科研和教育要依赖于企业、基金会和富豪的资助。在大多数情况下,上述资助方都对关于矿物燃料及其危害性的严肃讨论敏感至极。

资助方暗藏于心的意图是让研究人员避免就可能影响相关企业获利的争议性话题开展讨论——查尔斯·科赫基金会甚至已经堂而皇之地承认了这一点。这便意味着学术机构根本不会组织气候变化问题的相关讨论。

美国各个院校一群无耻的学者绞尽脑汁地为主流期刊撰写文章,暗示即使等到2050年将美国变为“碳平衡”国家也没有任何问题,根本没有必要改变当前以消费、浪费为荣的文化。

他们毫无价值的文章描述了在未来几十年内普及太阳能和风能的缓慢过程,对只是用无形能源替代矿物燃料的混合动力汽车和电动汽车大加赞扬。这样的研究可以得到众多企业的资助,广受大众杂志和学术期刊的好评,其结果是有关气候变化危险性的真正科学研究被排挤在外,无人问津。

经济学圈是最令人作呕的领域。所谓专家只重视短期增长,且将股市状况作为经济健康的晴雨表。在未来五十年、一百年乃至二百年内汽车及工厂排放、煤炭石油生产以及微塑料在海洋中扩散的不良后果,还有水力压裂开采和掘矿对水源的破坏等内容绝不会出现在任何一堂经济学课上。

为什么?因为倘若从长远角度来评估石油的收益性,人们肯定会得出这样的结论:为了人类的经济福祉,应当马上停止使用它。如今科学研究已被从经济伪科学中剔除,即使是自诩为进步人士的学者也绝不涉足其中。

新闻业的堕落

新闻业是教育业的直接延伸;新闻是大多数民众了解世界、解读周遭动向的唯一渠道。企业和投资银行对新闻业界严防死守,让民众失去了接触重大问题相关资讯的机会。

二十年来为民众提供免费与廉价信息的报纸、电视台和广播站都已被企业收买。

上述媒体为获利而进行的活动并非展示真相,而是为取悦企业客户误导公众。企业支付大笔广告费不是为了销售商品,而是要奖励媒体培养出了温驯的民众。

过去的三年中,企业财团变本加厉,将媒体用作削弱民众智识、粉饰残酷真相的的武器和工具,以此来造成一种各方已就经济与环境破坏问题达成共识的假象。

推广石油并非主流媒体给全国民众洗脑的唯一议程,但仍然是表象背后的势在必行之事。

气候变化问题并没有得到媒体的重视。在大多数情况下,天气的变化都被媒体诠释为与当前经济体系无关的“非正常现象”。

媒体从来不拿每日气温同十年、五十年之前的温度相比较。新闻节目的受众被肤浅的资讯接连轰炸,最后失去了集中精力思考和理解复杂问题的能力。

对无能领导人的推崇

投资银行和企业对只求升官发财、无心改善社会的政坛及非政府组织领袖有一种偏爱。这样的领导人会培养出一群自我感觉良好的拥趸,同时又无法建立能够自给自足、不依靠企业资助也可运营、致力于解决真正问题的组织。

民主、共和两党也培育出许多寄生性的非政府组织用作各种民众行动的墓地。

为了确保有能力集合民众成立独立组织,不受企业豢养的媒体、智库大学内专家左右,自行设立目标的团体领袖无法进入政坛,投资银行简直不择手段。

于是政治场上“领导能力”的意义变成了能否直接或者间接地从投资银行筹到资金,而非是否可以组织、启迪民众。

对冒牌环保运动的资助

投资银行会确保任何一场旨在遏制石油使用、普及气候危机相关知识的运动都以最为无效的方式、由组织不力的团体开展;这些团体只向民众讨要捐助,却不允许捐助人参与决策过程、主动出击。这些非政府组织将真正的决策权交给了绝不会越过强势的投资银行擅自做主的华盛顿内部人士。

在他们的刻意操控之下,绿色和平组织、350.org等非官方环保组织对富豪或企业的捐助依赖至深,以致于将普通捐赠者的意见弃之不顾。稍为激进、更为合理的政策,即使能够得到其成员的广泛支持,最终也不会被采纳。

让人们了解气候变化与矿物燃料的危害根本无需花费巨资,只要挨家挨户地告知他们真相即可。随后便能够邀请他们建立自己的组织,并将其发展成为富有行动力和影响力的社团。

然而为了使上述运动无人组织、不被关注、无法持续,投资银行在幕后投入的资金有数十亿美元之多。

非官方环保组织知道,除非表示矿物燃料的淘汰可慢慢进行,强调替代性能源可以同煤炭石油媲美,否则自己将永远不会受到腐败媒体的关注。

在资金的制约下,这些组织无力对污染环境、推广危险物质的企业提出刑事指控,更不用说提议没收它们的资产。

非但如此,这些接受了资助的组织还误导公众,让他们以为只需改变日常生活方式(比如驾驶混合动力汽车、成为素食主义者)便足以阻止气候变化。这些所谓的环保组织在刻意避免讨论推广危险能源的最终受益者是谁。

所谓的环保运动一般会通过媒体捧出几位名人,却不屑于在地方建立强大的组织;这便意味着所谓的非官方环保团体常常是空壳组织。它们会告诉大家做这做那,但我们想召唤它们、同组织负责人接触时,听到的只会是预先录好的语音提示。

这些环保组织不会告诉我们增长、消费、股市和贸易并非衡量幸福的指标,只是权贵阶层为自己的利益捏造、宣扬的概念。

投资银行与人们对石油的隐性依赖

贝一明

(Emanuel Pastreich)

我亲眼见到了如此可悲的一幕:格蕾塔·桑伯格所带领的高中生以及其他气候活动家们要求各位政治领导人调整政策,后者痛心地表达了歉意,且做出了令人欣慰的承诺;然而这群年轻人最后却惊讶地发现六个月,乃至一年后,什么都没有改变。

这场闹剧绝非偶然之事,而是推行某种系统性策略的结果:大众被媒体和教材误导,对国家如何决策、人们为何拿气候灾难无可奈何等问题缺乏正确的理解。其实为美国做出所有重大决策的,并非各个州与州政府,而是银行和企业财团。在电视上露面的政治领袖对经济政策的影响力并不比当红小丑对杂牌马戏团上演节目的决定作用大。

让我们从基本问题谈起:全球经济已被少数投资银行、主权财富基金机构以及超级富豪接管;其中超级富豪的作用最为重要。美国与其他国家的政策方向都是由上述机构与个人决定,再经由咨询公司和律师事务所传达给下层的政坛人士的。

冷战结束后,一种全球系统应时而生;在经济与政策问题上,严肃的意识形态和哲学分析在该系统中并无立锥之地。对于社会、经济和环境问题,媒体、课本和著名专家的文章不会提供任何批判性、甚至是与主流相悖的观点。对国家未来的深刻思考已经无迹可寻。

我们最多只能听到各方对政客们的抱怨。大家忽略了制度的弊病,认为全部问题都应归咎于特定人群的自私,与治理方面的缺陷无关。

在进入时局动荡的二十世纪九十年代之前,苏联和中国的体制并不完美,但它们起码拥有马克思经济学方面的专家,能够迫使西方学者对世界开展更具批判性的思考。正是这样的思想交锋让我们得以安不忘危。然而自那以后,我们却在关键时刻一睡不起。

各路新闻已经沦为耸人听闻的空洞报道。大多数新闻都视误导民众、蛊惑人心为己任,将传达事实、启发民智等职责弃之不顾。教育如出一辙,不再把道德、科学当做重中之重,放弃了对真相的追求。

参与政策制定过程的政坛人士已化身为艺人和小丑,他们灌输给公众的,都是毫无意义可言的垃圾。曾经挥斥方遒的知识阶层如今只能为不知所云的学术性期刊撰写文章,根本无法切实参与政策决策。

鸠占鹊巢的,是全球投资银行及其代理。

此外,科技的进步催生出大批超级计算机,它们才是投资银行真正的幕后主导,可以无情地精确计算出每一滴水、亚马孙雨林中每一棵树,以及世界上每一位工人的价值。所有长期计划的制定宗旨,只是最大限度地剥削劳动力、掠夺自然,同时利用人工智能和复杂算法来迷惑、误导民众,让他们对当下的困局一无所知。

对于超级计算机而言,哪怕地球在二十年后化作不毛的炼狱也无关紧要,只有暴利才举足轻重。

这些投资银行会在自己的权力范围内不择手段地确保世界上的每一位公民都为它们持有股份的跨国企业制造利润。它们不希望人们为自己生产食物、能源、文化内容,不希望人们创建自己的组织。同样地,它们还在尽力保证这一经济寄生系统不为人所知、不会在媒体和学术研究中得到严肃对待。

吃东西、喝水、旅行、接受教育、求医问药、葬于墓地——不论民众生活的哪一方面涉及到货币交易,银行家们都希望能从中分一杯羹。

诸位,银行家们不想让你们吃用自己的种子、在自己的土地上种植出来的食物,不想让你们使用自己双手创造的工具、家具和居所,不想让你们用自己家后院种出来的药草治病,不希望你们自行创作艺术品、写出小说、拍摄电影、编排戏剧,供自己和朋友们尽情欣赏、自娱自乐。

而他们最最反对的,是大家自己生产能源、降低能源的消耗。他们希望人们对石油欲罢不能。

石油是保证投资银行能够在人们每次需要使用能源时都可获利的主要工具——尽管它们也控制了煤矿和铀矿,且通过尽量推后可再生能源的普及来对这种能源加以限制。

银行家们不希望大家知道,曾经有那么一段时间,食物和人们所需的绝大多数物品都是自己产出的,无需往投资银行扔一美分。

投资银行四处撒钱,收买各个领域的专家为创造对石油依赖至深的世界造势。

是它们规划出大家所居住的城市,是它们规定了从幼儿到老人的生活之中一切事务的轻重缓急,是它们替由汽车飞机主宰、由浪费消耗定义的世界涂脂抹粉。它们这样做,只是为了让大家无法摆脱对石油的依赖、无法想象没有石油的世界是什么样子。

同时,各家投资银行及其旗下企业还会收买作家、顾问和政客,使消耗石油的可怕后果避人耳目,让大家绝不会将目前的环境危机与石油的使用联系在一起。政坛之中的政策讨论从来不允许任何人质问使用石油的长远代价为何。

如果想要使地球摆脱气候危机,我们首先必须让所有民众知道是谁以及为何要逼迫大家对石油产生依赖。一定要让他们了解有哪些银行和超级富豪参与其中,原因为何;要让他们知晓为使我们无法摆脱矿物燃料,这群规则的操纵者采用了何种手段。

一旦高盛、贝莱德、美国银行、摩根史丹利等投资银行秘而不宣的策略曝光,一旦沃伦·巴菲特、埃隆·马斯克、比尔·盖茨等公众面前的“正人君子”针对矿物燃料产业所做的巨额投资被公之于众,这些机构以及富豪的阴谋和真正企图便会大白于天下。

投资银行的企图

八十年来,国际投资银行一直在不遗余力地玩弄手段,以使各大产油国由自私的独裁者统治,令这些国家通过销售石油而创造的利润能够源源不断地流回这些银行操控的金融机构。它们想要建立的,是离开石油生产便无法生存的政治经济体,其结果是这些产油国也要花费数十亿美元来阻止石油消费受到限制。我们可能会对沙特阿拉伯严词苛责,但其背后的黑手却在华尔街毫发未损。

令产油国对石油收入产生依赖这一策略是通过削弱其经济多元性来实现的。势力强大的国际银行已经把沙特阿拉伯、科威特和尼日利亚变成了文化单一、缺乏自我意识的知识和文化废墟,而多元文化和自我意识恰恰是摆脱石油经济所必需的要素。

这些国家堪为可悲,其统治者也有名无实。它们在自己所知的唯一一项事业上埋头苦干,释放着有毒有害的污染物,为人类挖掘着坟墓。然而为这一切编写脚本的人不是它们自己,而是各位银行家。

当然,投资银行也在编造情节复杂的讹言谎语,说伦敦、纽约、莫斯科、北京等地的投资银行正在激烈交锋,让听众们相信各方正在为求变而斗争。然而它们之间的争斗不过是做做样子,根本不会触及整个系统。

石油与安全之惑

通过石油汲取财富的投资银行会出资协助研究机构和智库开展研究、制定政策建议。于是虚假报告纷纷出炉,称为石油生产与环球运输保驾护航是美国军队的基本职责。

换而言之,此类关于安全问题的讨论都阐述了一个观点:美国要依赖石油进口,应通过军事手段来保护石油产业。

至于通过全面普及可持续能源、大幅降低能源消耗来解决安全问题的可能性,这些报告却只字未提。

此类存在明显倾向的研究旨在完全从保护石油产业的角度来定义美国军队的职能。在跨国银行的资助下,研究机构做出了这样的安全分析:美国必须斥巨资开发制造轮船、飞机、导弹和卫星,为能源资源的全球运输提供保护。

此外,美国军方也已沦为石油的重要消费方,比起其他国家来,其石油使用量有过之而无不及。这样说毫不夸张:美国军队已经过暗中改造,一方面消耗着大量石油,一方面向各大银行输送着利润,而这些银行所资助的企业,正是战斗机、坦克以及其他军备的石油供应商。

军队职能遭到扭曲,意味着能够将气候变化作为严重威胁来讨论的国家安全负责人寥寥无几。如塞缪尔·洛克利尔上将一般敢于直言不讳的人,已经遭受了残酷打击。

美国军方的一切规划都为其想象中的、会耗费大量石油的未来战争而做。

货币与石油

石油的定价与销售会为控制相关过程的跨国投资银行带来丰厚利润。为使石油成为一切经济活动的核心要素,美国的金融系统已经过重组。投资银行有意将美国制造业外包出去,大大提高了石油控制权对国家经济健康的重要性。

美元不再由黄金储备支撑,美国债台高筑,美国资产的价值一落千丈,其结果是美国最重要的经济财富变成了以美元出售的石油。他国旨在停止以美元定价石油的动作被严厉抵制,甚至常常招致军事行动。

倘若全球的石油销售完全与美元脱钩,那么美国的恶性通胀即会随之而来——其实这一过程已经开始。

俄罗斯、中国和伊朗正在采取行动,令石油销售以其他货币结算。此举不仅增加了战争爆发的风险,而且迫使美国更加疯狂地使用危险的水力压裂法在境内开采石油和天然气。这种开采方法会对水源造成几代都无法消除的污染,而他们一心追求的,只是保持美元的石油结算货币地位。

石油与农业

投资银行早就发现食物的极端重要性,因此决意插手食物生产的每一环节,使民众无法消费不会给它们带来利润的食物。

美国农业的方方面面都已同石油紧缚在一起。受政府补贴的产业化农业需要大量使用从石油中提炼出来的杀虫剂和肥料。家庭农场已被摧毁殆尽,如今大片大片的土地都是为给跨国公司生产利润而耕种的。

为了提振石油消费,美国农业在非必要的情况下实现了自动化与机械化。农产品由卡车运往各州各市,由轮船载向各个国家,这一过程无疑会消耗大量石油。人们误以为石油是食物生产的必要物资;政客们在做农业生产力的相关论述时,也狡辩称地方农业太过落后、生产效率太过低下。

民众别无他法,只能消费利用石油生产出来的食物。即使人们为保护环境只吃蔬菜也无法摆脱石油的束缚:不谈其种植和运输,单单塑料包装便是石油工业的产物,会对环境造成极大破坏。

即使社会主义人士与马克思主义者都认为这一观点再正常不过:我们必须进出口食物、使用会耗费巨量煤炭石油的货轮来运输食物。无人开展国际合作来估算上述农产品国际贸易给环境造成的破坏;恰恰相反,大家普遍认为石油消耗量的增加是积极的信号。

奢侈品崇拜与“唯我独尊”的观念

我们之所以将过度消耗能源作为丰富生活的必需之举,是因为我们已经被电视、布告牌、报纸和网络上铺天盖地的广告裹挟。这些广告大肆宣扬中上层阶级与富豪的生活有多么光鲜,告诉受众过上大量浪费资源的生活是值得自豪之事。在我们被迫观看的商业广告中,人们住着一尘不染的豪宅,孑然独处,与邻隔绝,以豪车代步。

大家已经对电影中人们一边开车一边认真对话的场景司空见惯。

这些画面暗示我们,价值的创造与自我实现要通过浪费来达成。也就是说,它们在劝诱我们把这些荒诞的画面当做典范来顶礼膜拜。

它们鼓吹奢侈浪费,旨在为超级富豪们穷奢极欲的生活辩护,文过饰非。它们给我们灌输这样的观念:杰夫·贝佐斯和比尔盖茨之流是值得效仿的榜样,而非招摇过市的罪犯。

我们每每翻开杂志,时装、汽车和度假区的广告便会涌到面前。其实这些广告的发布宗旨不是推销某种商品或者服务,而是创造一种以浪费为荣、将种种乱象当做过眼云烟的浅薄文化。

以发布广告作为收入来源的报纸和杂志也在不断通过各种内容来提振消费,同时对质疑这种浪费现象的报道加以大肆贬斥。

对“自动化”和“第四次工业革命”的狂热迷信

为了使人们相信社会的迅速自动化是科学发展的必然结果,大量资金被注入了广告业、媒体和娱乐圈。相同的手段也被用于掩盖当前新型阶级斗争背后的经济与政治动向——这场斗争旨在摧毁工人手上的一切资源,却被广告商们极力粉饰、美其名曰“第四次工业革命”。

这是一场运动。它裹挟着无辜的年轻人,怂恿他们为一个由机器操控的世界努力学习、添砖加瓦,却从不鼓励他们深入思考这样的世界是否真的有益于人类、谁是这场巨变的真正受益方。他们告诉我们,一旦全面实现自动化,生活会变得更为便利、更为高端,更具创意。然而我们从未听说,坚持利用煤炭、石油和铀来为这样的世界提供能源,人类将会付出多么惨重的代价。

广告商和被投资银行收买的专家告诉人们,用以实现新时代全面自动化的能源完全免费,至于处处联网的世界在未来的几百年里需要多少能源,生产这些能源会对环境造成多么严重的破坏,这些话题则是不可触及的雷区。

将数据库和服务器机群转交给印度等国家的外包操作使富裕国家的人们得以利用由第三世界国家的煤和石油所产生的能源。然而气候的变化不分国界。

实际上,从保护环境的角度来看,“人造”才是更好的选择。然而这一事实同样是禁忌话题。

伪称人工智能革命是上帝不可违抗的旨意,要求人们必须用“智能化城市”来代替我们所居住的温馨社区——这一切都是一场会将我们的年轻人推向残酷黯淡未来的骗局。收受丰厚研究经费、为这场骗局背书的科学家如此之多,说明美国社会道德崩坏的程度已不亚于行将没落的罗马帝国。

缓兵之计

投资银行的爪牙们最为偏爱的手段之一,便是高调宣传针对气候变化所开展的讨论,使参与者们有机会放纵自我、得到媒体的赞誉,但并不会产生实质性的影响。《巴黎协定》便是一个绝佳的例子;然而民主党近日里表示,重返该协议将是极具意义的重要进步,这件事可谓讽刺至极。

主要工业化国家的领导人正在推动各种气候协议落地。这些协议透露出的观点是:到2050年——走运的话,便是到2030年,各国的能源使用模式即可神奇地实现可持续化。2030年和2050年如此遥远,而政府的长期规划职能已被私有化操作严重削弱,因此上述声明不过是一纸空谈。为石油产业相关利益方服务的公共关系公司也很乐意宣传这些看似重大的事件,给民众造成各方正在努力采取行动的假象。

关于增长和消费的弥天大谎

为了让民众只能看到股市指数、增长额、消费量等用于描述经济状况的统计数据,投资银行和企业财团简直使尽了浑身解数。这些指标其实同经济毫无关联,而且并没有将经济活动对环境的长期影响纳入考虑。

他们说为了保持经济增长,为了提振消费,我们必须耗费产品、抛弃旧物。

在这些扭曲观念诞生之前,人类便已生存了几百万年之久。在大多数情况下,经济学家们讨论的“增长”与“消费”都与能源的消费,尤其是煤炭和石油的消费有关。

所谓“增长”的逻辑扭曲至极:倘若人们建造能够居住五十年的房屋,穿五十年不破的衣服,真正地循环利用各种物品,“经济增长”便会受到影响。

如果民众回归简朴生活,通过读书、写作、绘画、音乐和深入交流来拓展灵魂,我们便可重建健康的可持续社会,同时还能降低污染。

然而从经济增长和消费的角度来看,这样的健康社会简直是灾祸之源:股市会一蹶不振,媒体会把血淋淋的事实呈现于人们眼前。

节俭、谦逊、自立、稳重等美德已无人强调。进步人士和保守派都在为不断拉低人类体验的“一次性”文化摇旗呐喊。

金钱、资产与石油

对于许多美国人来说,金钱关乎退休生活;他们在停止工作之后还需要一笔收入。早年间,雇主必须为员工支付养老金。然而自从华尔街接管美国经济以来,劳动人员便不得不将退休基金投入股市,依靠跨国企业产出的利润来维持生计。

金融机构令民众别无选择,只能为保障未来的退休生活购买股票和债券,而这些金融产品与能源的消费,尤其是石油的消费紧密相关。

现行经济系统要求民众将自己的钱投入资金池,为消费型经济助燃;妄图摆脱这种制度的人必须受到惩罚,于是纳税制度应运而生。即便那些自诩为“环保企业”的公司都会在没有必要的情况下耗费大量资源。

对国际贸易的宣传

国际贸易是气候变化相关讨论的一大禁忌话题。其实愿意挺身而出,呼吁终结当前交易与运输体系的气候活动人士寥寥无几。为了追求边际利润,人们通过现有体系在世界范围内运送原材料、各种组件与成品,对环境造成了残酷破坏。

人们认为鼓励贸易、以政府补贴来奖励贸易,对每个人都有百利而无一害,而像朝鲜一样限制贸易的国家则是人人唾弃的“隐士王国”。

谁质疑自由贸易观念,谁就会被贬斥为勒德分子乃至被时代抛弃之人。

然而,哪怕是人人都深信不疑的谎言,也永远不会成为真理。

远跨重洋运输产品会耗费巨量石油与煤炭,而进口目的地生产这些产品原本绝非难事。被投资银行豢养的专家当然会对跨洋运输的成本以及跨国生产给地方经济造成的破坏三缄其口。

于是,我们在一无所知、未曾同意的情况下,被抛入了一个专为石油生产商制造利润的体系。

当权者极采取了极为自私的手段,让美国民众陷入了两难的境地:要么准备同俄罗斯、中国、朝鲜和伊朗开战,要么接受与冷血跨国企业控制之下的国家开展经济交流——在很大程度上同石油的生产消费息息相关的经济交流。

这一腐败的体系永远不会指给我们第三条路走。在当前的政治制度之下,美国绝不可能同产油国结成和平友好、可持续发展的关系。美国与它们之间并不存在开展科学、文化和教育合作的空间。

城市规划与交通

投资银行及其旗下的企业会雇佣不计其数的说客、律师和前政府官员来给城市各方面规划的决策者施加压力。他们还为大批有名无实的非政府组织提供资金,让后者使联邦政府、州政府和地方政府相信民众急需高速公路、购物商城和崭新的主宅开发区——这些项目都是由税款来补贴的。民众的财产大多被房地产占压,倘若交通不便,房产价值会大幅缩水——这一切绝非偶然。

政客们就城市规划开展的游说颇有成效。交通便利与否成为了城市设计的中心问题;支出巨额高速公路维护费用被当做理所应当之事,即使存在资金问题时,这笔费用都无人提及。因此汽车尾气污染导致癌症频发、交通事故死亡人数居高不下、汹涌车流严重影响人们生活质量等问题被急于从矿物燃料企业提供的资金中获利的城市规划者、政客和专家们小心翼翼地遮挡在了公众的视线之外。

新建造的房屋窗子都很大,这种设计虽然浪费能源,却被奉为时尚。新冠疫情当前,政府告知我们应当戴上口罩;然而即使气候灾难迫在眉睫,各栋建筑却依然没有装上太阳能电池板。

以无车人士为主角的电视剧和电影寥寥无几。不论是电影还是新闻报道,都把住豪宅、过奢侈生活刻画为成功的象征。

这完全是一场阴谋。在人们离不开汽车的同时,美国制造行业中尚存的体面工作岗位都与汽车、飞机和依靠石油驱动的国防装备的生产有关。

国家制度已经被人操纵。在一个汽车起主导作用的社会中,人们一旦离开石油,不仅生活会受到影响,而且会丧失大量稳定的收入来源。

消费观念

在石油普及之前,对消费观念的宣扬便已持续千百年之久——即使这种做法有悖于人类社会的基本原则。其中的关窍显而易见:财阀斥巨资美化消费,令知识阶层沉浸其中,无暇考虑财产和消费以外的事,从而放弃对社会乃至对彼此的责任感。

蜂拥而至的广告告诉我们,对维持社会地位而言,形象、时装、化妆品、旅行、汽车和美食至关重要。在这种扭曲的文化中,对家人、社会、乃至全人类尊严的关怀,还有正直、节俭、谦逊、善良等美德被人不屑一顾,甚至当做笑柄。

塑料的广泛使用

投资银行正在暗中让塑料渗透美国社会的方方面面,同时掩盖微塑料毒害海洋、河流、土壤的相关信息——此为实现其提升石油使用量这一目的重要步骤。

许多人甚至不知道制造塑料的原料是由石油裂解而成的石脑油,不知道被弃置的塑料制品会对环境造成何种伤害。

超市、餐厅、百货店和我们冰箱中的一切都用塑料制品包装、以塑料制品储藏、或者含有塑料成分。毫不夸张地讲,在很多地区,人们如果坚持不碰塑料,最终恐怕会无以为食。

关于塑料的危害性,他们谎话连篇,还设置了所谓的“塑料回收箱”,而他们明明知道,塑料根本无法投入任何一种具有真正意义的循环利用。他们永远不会告诉我们使用塑料的后果无异于向大海中倾倒原油,不会告诉我们用塑料瓶、塑料盒储藏液体和食物存在健康隐患。

对飞机的大力宣传

每一部动作电影都是一支大型飞机广告,而飞机恰恰是目前所知的最大能源浪费源。我们被媒体和电影洗脑,相信乘飞机出行不仅毫无害处,而且可以彰显社会地位。

说客们告诉民众,拥有机场的城市才会被人重视。

飞机对气候造成的可怕影响却被隐而不宣。

尽管乘坐风力船、火车甚至齐柏林飞艇成本更为低廉,碳排放更少,但这一话题却甚少有人提及。给飞机装上太阳能电池板便可大幅减少汽油的使用量,但这一手段也从未投入使用。

外交官们乘着飞机来往于世界各地探讨气候问题的解决之道,而他们要解决的问题正因为他们自己的行动而愈演愈烈。

能源教育的失真

从幼儿园到研究生院的教育内容都已被人把持,目的是使其脱离科学分析与客观思考,保证气候变化不被人们当做亟待解决的问题。即使是难得地提到了气候变化的课本,也表示应当慢慢地将石油和煤炭移除出人们的生活。没有任何一门课、任何一版课本表示我们能够而且必须立即停止使用矿物燃料。

投资银行通过私有化操作削弱了政府,导致如今大学的科研和教育要依赖于企业、基金会和富豪的资助。在大多数情况下,上述资助方都对关于矿物燃料及其危害性的严肃讨论敏感至极。

资助方暗藏于心的意图是让研究人员避免就可能影响相关企业获利的争议性话题开展讨论——查尔斯·科赫基金会甚至已经堂而皇之地承认了这一点。这便意味着学术机构根本不会组织气候变化问题的相关讨论。

美国各个院校一群无耻的学者绞尽脑汁地为主流期刊撰写文章,暗示即使等到2050年将美国变为“碳平衡”国家也没有任何问题,根本没有必要改变当前以消费、浪费为荣的文化。

他们毫无价值的文章描述了在未来几十年内普及太阳能和风能的缓慢过程,对只是用无形能源替代矿物燃料的混合动力汽车和电动汽车大加赞扬。这样的研究可以得到众多企业的资助,广受大众杂志和学术期刊的好评,其结果是有关气候变化危险性的真正科学研究被排挤在外,无人问津。

经济学圈是最令人作呕的领域。所谓专家只重视短期增长,且将股市状况作为经济健康的晴雨表。在未来五十年、一百年乃至二百年内汽车及工厂排放、煤炭石油生产以及微塑料在海洋中扩散的不良后果,还有水力压裂开采和掘矿对水源的破坏等内容绝不会出现在任何一堂经济学课上。

为什么?因为倘若从长远角度来评估石油的收益性,人们肯定会得出这样的结论:为了人类的经济福祉,应当马上停止使用它。如今科学研究已被从经济伪科学中剔除,即使是自诩为进步人士的学者也绝不涉足其中。

新闻业的堕落

新闻业是教育业的直接延伸;新闻是大多数民众了解世界、解读周遭动向的唯一渠道。企业和投资银行对新闻业界严防死守,让民众失去了接触重大问题相关资讯的机会。

二十年来为民众提供免费与廉价信息的报纸、电视台和广播站都已被企业收买。

上述媒体为获利而进行的活动并非展示真相,而是为取悦企业客户误导公众。企业支付大笔广告费不是为了销售商品,而是要奖励媒体培养出了温驯的民众。

过去的三年中,企业财团变本加厉,将媒体用作削弱民众智识、粉饰残酷真相的的武器和工具,以此来造成一种各方已就经济与环境破坏问题达成共识的假象。

推广石油并非主流媒体给全国民众洗脑的唯一议程,但仍然是表象背后的势在必行之事。

气候变化问题并没有得到媒体的重视。在大多数情况下,天气的变化都被媒体诠释为与当前经济体系无关的“非正常现象”。

媒体从来不拿每日气温同十年、五十年之前的温度相比较。新闻节目的受众被肤浅的资讯接连轰炸,最后失去了集中精力思考和理解复杂问题的能力。

对无能领导人的推崇

投资银行和企业对只求升官发财、无心改善社会的政坛及非政府组织领袖有一种偏爱。这样的领导人会培养出一群自我感觉良好的拥趸,同时又无法建立能够自给自足、不依靠企业资助也可运营、致力于解决真正问题的组织。

民主、共和两党也培育出许多寄生性的非政府组织用作各种民众行动的墓地。

为了确保有能力集合民众成立独立组织,不受企业豢养的媒体、智库大学内专家左右,自行设立目标的团体领袖无法进入政坛,投资银行简直不择手段。

于是政治场上“领导能力”的意义变成了能否直接或者间接地从投资银行筹到资金,而非是否可以组织、启迪民众。

对冒牌环保运动的资助

投资银行会确保任何一场旨在遏制石油使用、普及气候危机相关知识的运动都以最为无效的方式、由组织不力的团体开展;这些团体只向民众讨要捐助,却不允许捐助人参与决策过程、主动出击。这些非政府组织将真正的决策权交给了绝不会越过强势的投资银行擅自做主的华盛顿内部人士。

在他们的刻意操控之下,绿色和平组织、350.org等非官方环保组织对富豪或企业的捐助依赖至深,以致于将普通捐赠者的意见弃之不顾。稍为激进、更为合理的政策,即使能够得到其成员的广泛支持,最终也不会被采纳。

让人们了解气候变化与矿物燃料的危害根本无需花费巨资,只要挨家挨户地告知他们真相即可。随后便能够邀请他们建立自己的组织,并将其发展成为富有行动力和影响力的社团。

然而为了使上述运动无人组织、不被关注、无法持续,投资银行在幕后投入的资金有数十亿美元之多。

非官方环保组织知道,除非表示矿物燃料的淘汰可慢慢进行,强调替代性能源可以同煤炭石油媲美,否则自己将永远不会受到腐败媒体的关注。

在资金的制约下,这些组织无力对污染环境、推广危险物质的企业提出刑事指控,更不用说提议没收它们的资产。

非但如此,这些接受了资助的组织还误导公众,让他们以为只需改变日常生活方式(比如驾驶混合动力汽车、成为素食主义者)便足以阻止气候变化。这些所谓的环保组织在刻意避免讨论推广危险能源的最终受益者是谁。

所谓的环保运动一般会通过媒体捧出几位名人,却不屑于在地方建立强大的组织;这便意味着所谓的非官方环保团体常常是空壳组织。它们会告诉大家做这做那,但我们想召唤它们、同组织负责人接触时,听到的只会是预先录好的语音提示。

这些环保组织不会告诉我们增长、消费、股市和贸易并非衡量幸福的指标,只是权贵阶层为自己的利益捏造、宣扬的概念。