Interview 1115 – New World Next Week with James Evan Pilato

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1. kabouit says:

   11/27/2015 at 3:11 am

   You guys are the best. Just sayin’

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2. rockshot says:

   11/27/2015 at 9:50 am

   I feel remiss that I haven’t read most of the mentioned articles alluded to, so it was good to hear Corbet admit it too.

   At the end, I thought Pilato could at least says something honest and heartfelt like Corbet did. But it looked like Pilato got a little chocked up and could not say anything. Sorry, but that was a good Thanksgiving show not to forget the cats, but the end was priceless.

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3. vumxmx says:

   11/27/2015 at 1:37 pm

   I find all this anti-government sentiment to be completely beside the point. The problem isn’t “government,” it is those interests which capture the government and use it to further their interests. In our country it is almost entirely a problem of excessive corporate power, monopoly power. The real power isn’t “government,” it is the handful of banks, corporations like Monsanto, Cargill, Lockheed, etc.They have the money to effectively buy the gov’t and in effect constitute it and then use it for their own narrow purposes without any regard for the public weal. It becomes a series of revolving doors between gov’t and corporate power. This is what the libertarians don’t seem to grasp, in my view, and in doing so become in effect accomplices–“useful idiots”–for these monopolistic powers owned by a very tiny number of people–private interests in the most narrow sense of the term. The idea of “free markets” is another notion which completely obscures what is its true meaning and intention–namely carte blanche for corporate interests. Next, “government” will be blamed for the TPP and other trade “agreements,” which actually elimanate true government for total corporate control.
   A complete “non-starter” is the foolish idealism of anarchy. As if a complex industrial society (with all that implies, involving enormous industrial enterprises) comprising urban conglomerations numbering in the millions, could really function. Like the bugbear “democracy,” it doesn’t really exist and cannot really exist except in possibly idyllic or quasi-idyllic circumstances, such small tribal groups in virgin nature. “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” has done unimaginable damage. It is demagogy, nothing less.

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   • Terraset says:

     12/03/2015 at 5:54 am

     Wrong. Real power is a multifactoral measure combining skills and resources applied with willpower within an external context. Said context being the ultimate moderating factor as it determines how effective said application will be by changing the value of individual skills and resources. Willpower is the ultimate factor overall however because it doesn’t matter what skills and resources you have if you’re unwilling to even attempt to apply them. Context can be adapted to.

     Saying that anarchism is a foolish ideal explicitly states that people do not have free will and are thus incapable of making decisions.

     “As if a complex industrial society (with all that implies, involving enormous industrial enterprises) comprising urban conglomerations numbering in the millions, could really function.” ~vumxmx

     So I guess that means you were programmed with your current view of reality. You were programmed to write your comment word for word the way you did. You were programmed and never had any say? Or is it just everyone else who is programmed and you’re just a special, exempt case?

     People’s lives are 100% the result of their choices. Applying their power to get what they want as best as they can. Sure there is an ever changing external context that they exist in but that context too is largely the result of other peoples choices. Life is anarchism already. So if anarchism is such a foolish ideal then explain why we DO have giant conglomerates and multinational corporations and governments and shadow governments and the like? I thought none of that stuff could function?

     Oh wait, or do you just mean these people aren’t using their power to please /you./ And why the fuck would they care about you or any of the rest of the “public weal”? What have you done for them lately? Why are you so deserving of such prostration that you believe people have to wait on you hand and foot? All these people, regardless of how small their group is, who put in the effort to get the resources, to attain the skill should put it all towards YOU and what YOU want? How fucking narcissistic.

     They did the work, they reap the rewards. I don’t care if they were born into power because someone along the way still had to do the work to attain that power so that their loved ones could enjoy the benefits. If you don’t like it then get off your fucking ass and get to work and attain your own power instead of complaining that few hard working families wanted to build a global empire.

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   • margaret.bartley says:

     12/18/2015 at 3:23 am

     ALL governments are based on military conquest. All governments were designed to extract booty and slaves from the conquered people. Over the millenia, the conquerors have learned to minimize the cost of extraction (governance or oversight) by learning how to manipulate their people, but the original purpose remains. The officers become the lords and aristocracy, until a new war, when they loose.

     That’s why the upper crust and the masses often have different vocabularies and accents – language tends to stick around far longer than other cultural traces, and the ruling elite are an invading culture, bringing a new language with them. Over the centuries, or millenia, that history tends to get lost, but traces are still there.

     “Democracy”, “free-market”, “capitalism”, “human rights” etc are just propaganda memes that happen to catch attention and short-circuit the brains of the the plebes at a specific time and place. Over time and in differend locations, different ideas (God, patriotism, altruism, freedom, fighting slavery, ending war, etc) will be a catch-phrase that makes it easier for the overlords to extract maximum value with minimum effort from their holdings.

     What’s going on now is that the wars are now becoming more economic than fire-power.

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4. meighenrussell says:

   11/28/2015 at 5:18 am

   I am very thankful to have access to the research that you two, and others of your colleagues, do and share. I appreciate your integrity, and authenticity.

   I will continue to listen, and learn, and contribute.

   Thank you!

   Meighen

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5. john says:

   11/28/2015 at 7:07 am

   It’s difficult to take heart in statistics like “1 in 4 Americans know the government is the enemy” once you realize that 29% of Americans can’t find the Pacific Ocean on a map and a similar number believe the Bible is the literal word of God. A slightly greater proportion believes that evolution is a lie. In short, somewhere between a quarter and a third of Americans are just unbelievably dumbfuck ignorant. Hopefully *our* 1 in 4 is a *different* quarter of the population…

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6. vumxmx says:

   11/28/2015 at 7:41 am

   Carlin gets it. Not government,the owners.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guQw3nSkXMYhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guQw3nSkXMY

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7. Terraset says:

   11/29/2015 at 9:06 am

   Great info as usual. I can’t help but think that a lot of people don’t understand the characteristics of “leading with love” and how it does in fact have cons to back up its pros. What I typically see with the LWL types is almost complete aversion to confrontation of any type. What this leads too is a lack of wasted effort on one hand, creating meaningful change without getting tangled in other peoples bullshit. However they also give up immense territory and resources by simply allowing their enemy to waltz in and take it unopposed.

   Examples include making gains in open source development but losing ground in mass open source implementation. Gaining ground in encryption techniques then losing it again to NSA surveillance laws and powers.

   I refuse to lead with love because I know that without direct ideological opposition this cycle will just continue until we eventually lose because we were unwilling to go to the lengths of our enemies. What is ultimately required to fight tyranny is not freedom, love and acceptance but anti-tyranny. An equal and opposite force, ideology, and implementation.

   If a tyrant pours all their resources into trying to control everything an anti-tyrant pours all of their resources into trying to control nothing. If a tyrant goes out and strips power and control from others, an anti-tyrant goes out and hands power and control to as many people as possible. If a tyrant has laws and mercenaries to enact their will, then an anti-tyrant has a personal code of honor and a well honed body, mind and skillset to enact theirs. If tyrants seek to consume and become everything until there is only themselves, anti-tyrants seek to diversify and become nothing in a sea of infinite people.

   Naturally conflict between such forces should be expected and even encouraged. Just as a tyrant will roll in to attack people, take their freedom, and eliminate any who defend themselves anti-tyrants should roll in to defend people, remove barriers, and eliminate any who attack the people. Take that as literally or metaphorically as you want.

   Leading with love is at best half the solution. We also need people to lead with anti-hate.

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   • VoltaicDude says:

     12/03/2015 at 10:21 pm

     Hi Terraset,

     The idea, the courage here, is to “lead” with love.

     It doesn’t displace anything else, which I suppose might seem counter-intuitive, but it is also pretty observably true.

     If you lead with love every and any course or ideology you choose will be more balanced.

     It’s not a trap. “Ideologies” in themselves can be traps. My own path is a bit of a hedged bet, based on pragmatism – but all that can fall apart quite quickly into a semantic bottomless pit.

     And then, if you’re lucky, you’re left with love.

     Remember the Beatles song, “All You Need is Love”? I like what the author Stephen Vizinczey said, “All Love Needs is You.”

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     • Terraset says:

       12/04/2015 at 6:40 am

       If one thing is being propped up as being better than the alternative let alone “all you need” it is by definition not balanced. What it creates is mental assumptions that remove tools from your tool box. After awhile if the only tool you have is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail.

       Logically the only real way to have a balanced approach is to have an all inclusive approach. One that includes the most “loving” things alongside the most “hateful” ones and everything in between. The only thing that makes one tool better than another is context. Specifically the internal context of what you want to achieve combined with the external context you are operating in.

       Otherwise you will quickly fall into “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” territory. Believing and telling yourself you’re doing the right thing but in reality simply forcing your will onto others while telling them they’re just thinking wrong or “unbalancedly”.

       At the end of the day we’re all just trying to force our will on others and create the world we personally want to see. Some people like myself recognize that. Others delude themselves that somehow it’s actually because of some universal, external morality or ruleset that they can’t help but follow. The love rhetoric implies that “good” people lead with “love” and therefore anyone not doing that must be “bad.” Then the cycle goes round and round again. this is kindergartner level stuff. There is no good or bad.

       Feelings lead to opinions
       Opinions lead to morals
       Morals lead to traditions
       Traditions lead to laws
       Laws lead to facts
       Facts lead to the Dark Side.

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       • VoltaicDude says:

         12/10/2015 at 10:55 pm

         My original reply in this string did not sufficiently acknowledge the importance of your summating line: “Leading with love is at best half the solution. We also need to lead with anti-hate.”

         And I say the above fully committed to it, regardless if the first sentence in the two-sentence quote selected is a bit stingy, and expresses a “half-empty” kind of attitude, and the second sentence could be accused of being…is, “tautological in conception,” the right phrase?

         In my original reply I was swept up by the generally contrarian tone of your comment, and so I replied to that without…perhaps, a proper sense of “balance” in my own tone – “balance” for lack of a better word that doesn’t ring of an obnoxious and mendacious FOX News jingle.

         The problem I was trying to point out is that this type of conversation is itself potentially laden with a downward spiral of traps presenting us with ever-diminishing returns. One could nit-pick your two-sentence line, which I quote above, to smithereens, dissecting it to a point of contrarian meaninglessness, but to what useful end.

         While I appreciate the Nietzsche-inspired imperative you present in various places of your commentary, I don’t see it as a contra-indication that a pragmatic approach could be significantly useful.

         “Love” in the sense we’re using it here, at least for me, means a sustained and focused well-being based on good intention and good will.

         “Good intention” and “good will” – “choices” that are demonstrably constructive even in promoting good health! Two things each of us can “choose” to pursue with a great sense of independence and personal commitment, even in the face of great malice when it may confront us.

         I’m also pleasantly humored at feeling as though you lump me into a “confrontation-phobic” category (perhaps you didn’t imply that?), as it’s rarely a pleasure I have the satisfaction of experiencing – I’m guessing most “911 Truthers” (ugh) can say the same.

         Certainly when I hear James speak of “leading with love” I don’t have a knee-jerk reaction that perhaps he’s too prone to mamby-pamby, la-di-da nonsense. It just doesn’t fit the greater context.

         On the other hand I am very aware of how these two divergent strategies – artificially separating good intention from good analysis and process – is a corrupting influence in almost every congregation of political activity.

         There are those traditionally (at least nominally) committed to “the logic” – Bolsheviks, Maoists, Austrian School, Friedman-ites, Democrats, Republicans, etc. (all seemingly simplistic in their pursuit of strategies, campaigns and “ideological fixations”) – and those committed to “the love” – often religious traditions (utilizing hard or soft authoritarianism), that discourage questioning and analysis by the flock in favor of faithful loyalty.

         My experience is that practically speaking these “divided-self” paths lead to Strelnikov’s or provocateur-charlatans.

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8. Oscar40 says:

   11/30/2015 at 7:48 am

   Hi James,

   I saw a news-article dated 29 november pass by today with the following headline:
   “Wyden hails end to ‘needless’ NSA phone dragnet”.

   The first sentence of the news-article is:
   “Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., hailed the end of the National Security Agency’s phone records dragnet, which was officially shut down Sunday, as the result of the USA Freedom Act.”

   See link:
   http://www.ktvz.com/news/wyden-hails-end-to-needless-nsa-phone-dragnet/36705752

   I was wondering:
   Is this actually good news and does this actually amount to something in terms of pushing back the security-state, or is this just hollow rhetoric?

   I mean, I know the MSM spreads disinformation all the time, but an announcement like this has to mean something, right?

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   • Terraset says:

     12/03/2015 at 4:14 am

     It’s likely hollow, they can /say/ they’ve shut it down all they want, but until the /physical/ infrastructure that allows them to surveil phones and the like is /physically/ removed then it’s still happening.

     Likely if anything they’d either just never talk about it and we’d find out later from some whistleblower that they’re still doing it or they’d just rename the program and stupid people would believe that it’s different.

     Stupid people look at words and stop, smart people look at follow-up actions. That’s how it’s always been and that’s likely what they’re still banking on.

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   • Terraset says:

     12/03/2015 at 4:42 am

     I suppose it’s good in the fact that it’s gotten enough resistance that politicians will at least act like they care though.

     It’s funny, in the scientific method it is implicit that a scientific theory must be right 100% of the time or it’s wrong. Even one single instance of the theory not working negates the entire theory. In terms of scientific philosophy and especially mathematical logic this happens because you can never have /all/ of the data and thus can never /know/ anything for a fact.

     By definition therefore just that one article you posted should negate the entire theory of government. After all here’s a single instance that showed that the government, an institution that allegedly is there to enact the will of the people and nothing else, deliberately did things against the people. Therefore the idea that government is good for people is automatically and thoroughly falsified.

     since this happens in incredibly overt ways repeatedly as well there’s no sympathy to be had for the people who both compain about government but continue to support it. a la the people who believe government is the enemy but like its programs. Such people are simply lazy and willfully ignorant and such behavior should not be tolerated or excused.

     If you tolerate stupidity you’ll just end up with a world full of idiots.

     If you tolerate hatred you’ll just end up with a world full of prejudice.

     If you tolerate violence you’ll just end up with a world full of murderers.

     If you tolerate intolerance you’ll just end up with a world full of intolerance. Because intolerant people will not tolerate you.

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     • VoltaicDude says:

       12/11/2015 at 11:47 pm

       If one paints everything in pure black and white, not only will one not experience the varied definition that full spectrum color offers, even the subtleties of shade, the grays-tones, will be lost (that’s lost – willfully ignored? – “information,” “data,” etc.).

       Sometimes stark contrast is useful in revealing certain types of definition (e.g. barium contrast e-rays). But generally full-spectrum vision offers “definition” and “explanation” way beyond a binary contrast. Of course one has to be able to handle all that beautiful Technicolor, because it can become a big sloppy mess (although maybe some people are into big sloppy messes – I used to eat at a taco joint with “Big Sloppy Mess” as one of the menu items – actually gave it a try once and it wasn’t half-bad).

       We perceive facts as they present themselves according to the faculties we allow ourselves or just have available. Simplifying everything beyond reason delivers only simplistic reactions, which in turn demonstrably create the conflicts of meaningless self-contradiction (as opposed to constructive/corrective self-contradiction).

       (“If you tolerate intolerance you’ll just end up with a world full of intolerance. Because intolerant people will not tolerate you.”)

       But you know, there’s a possibility I might be mistaken about some of this.

       Also, regarding “government,” what is it exactly?

       What are the ramifications of all the ways we apply the word “government.” It’s not a neat and well-defined term – to the point that we often do not even recognize the variability of usage as we’re using it.

       It’s a matter of DEFINING TERMS (which is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL if we’re trying to artificially reduce our conversation down to a list of supposedly “black-and-white,” unimpeachable syllogisms).

       e.g. The rules of the English language “govern” our communication here. That’s not an indulgence into the realm of Ignoratio Elenchi – ask any Québécoise.

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9. graviv says:

   12/03/2015 at 6:38 am

   http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ This researcher determined that
   25% of people will follow an authoritarian leader. They are not going away, just part of the weird human family.
   Joy

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10. swr02 says:

    12/11/2015 at 1:52 am

    I’m worried that all this asteroid mining is going to adversely affect space climate! 😉

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