A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.
Thomas Jefferson
If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.
Frank Herbert
"WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? You're not going to vote tomorrow, Jean-Luc?"OK John, you wanted to know what my view on the FOG is. It is really quite simple."That's right, Pierre. I don't sympathize with any of the parties, they all say the same things."
"But voting is important! You can influence society with your vote."
"Thanks, but I'd like to affect society all the time, not just on Election Day. On all other days the politicians don't care about my opinions. So why should I care about them tomorrow?"
"But it is your duty to vote! Without your vote democracy will fall!"
"Hmm, now it suddenly is my duty to vote. Listen up carefully, democracy is about being involved in society, not just legitimizing the state. If I vote for a party tomorrow, the politicians would interpret it as I have given my consent to everything they have done in the past, everything they do now, everything they would do in the future. I'm not prepared to give anyone such a degree of trust over my life. Democracy is more than just throwing a piece of paper in a box one time every few years. If we don't care about how the world is run at other times, then democracy will surely fall."
FOG is an obsolete system desperately holding on to power in the face of change, growing ever more ruthless the more it is threatened. It is not just Big Government and Big Business (although they are of course the most visible parts and easiest to hate), but the whole system of industrial age society. Once upon a time the industrial revolution overthrew the old agricultural society with its feudalism and monarchs, now it is the industrial society's turn -- it simply cannot work any longer, and more efficient and freer alternatives are appearing that are adapted to the new technologies.
But enormous amounts of money, work, thinking and faith has been invested in building the current system, and a lot of people seriously don't want to change -- not just because they might lose power, money or security from it or are afraid of change, but because they actually think the current society is good and see themselves as benevolent people trying to save everything that is good from the forces of chaos. To them the FOG is the one thing that stands between everyone and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, and they have to fight people like us no matter what. Even if it means they will destroy everything they are trying to save.
FOG isn't some kind of big organization run by evil men trying to rule the world, no matter what the conspiracy people like to think (it would be so simple and manageable if it was true). It is the system itself, that has emerged out of chance, well-meaning decisions, memetic competition and other fuzzy historical forces with nobody to blame. Most members of FOG doesn't even notice that they are a part of it, just like fishes not noticing the water they are swimming through. This is also why the InfoWar is mainly fought with ideas, information and technology rather than trying to kill the other side -- blowing up the Minister of Communications will only make FOG harden its grip in the name of protecting everyone from terrorism, but setting up an alternative, free communications network and giving people access to it undermines the FOG much more.
I have included another text below, from the lectures given by the UA on the topic, just to give another view. Mwalimu Johnson has a couple of good points buried in his neoliberal rant.
The welfare state does everything it can to prevent people from dying, but in that process it creates a society where people do not have anything to live for.What is the Fascist Over Government, is it some strange political group that has taken power in some inexplicable way after some kind of a coup d'etat? Worse, much worse, it is the so-called will of the people. Representative democracy that does what it is elected to do, oppress its citizens. FOG is the generic name used by the TU to describe the various governments across the globe. The worst enemies of the TU are the governments of the European Union, the United States of America and the People's Republic of China and, of course, their lackey the United Nations that is often used to justify their attacks on progress and the rights of the citizens.
Arved Lönnum, M.D.
We, in the Concordat have to learn as much as we can about the FOG. When I am speaking to you now, the InfoWar has been fought for a week, and if we want to win we better learn quickly. As some of you old- timers remember there was a transhumanist surge at the beginning of the century. In the first years of the '00s some tried to spread their message, but they didn't know what they were up against. They often accepted many of the FOG's main views, not knowing that they left themselves open for attack without a way of defending their views. You might still find some of these "we have to get accepted by mainstream society" transhumanists in political bodies. Don't trust them! Their existences consist of excusing themselves to the FOG for their opinions, and they will gladly sell you out to prove how "acceptable" they are.
We don't need no education,
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasms,
In the classrooms,
Hey teacher!
Leave them kids alone,
All in all,
You're just,
Another brick in the wall
Pink Floyd, The Wall
As long as capitalism and socialism exist side by side, we cannot live in peace. Eventually one of them will be victorious. A funeral anthem will be sung either for the Soviet Union or world capitalism.It might seem strange to start with explaining the FOG's philosophy. Few nowadays turn to philosophy to get answers on existential problems. Yet this science determines the course of history. It is the source of people's frame of reference and code of values, the root of people's character and culture, the fundamental cause shaping men's choices and decisions in every crucial area of their lives. Philosophy is the study of the nature of this world, of how we acquire knowledge, of morality, and how it should be applied in society. It is the science that had to be destroyed, if the catastrophes of our time were to be possible. In the universities today philosophers teach students that they cannot acquire real knowledge of the world. They discard reason and egoism. Yes, I said egoism, the fact that you care for yourself and don't sacrifice your own values for the sake of others. Reason isn't enough, they say! One must acquire knowledge of a higher kind. People must live for the sake of others than themselves, the principle of altruism. They have, in fact, gone so far as to discard values in life, as they say that individuals cannot understand what is important. Nihilism, kantianism, those are the creeds of this era. The disintegration has taken two forms in contemporary philosophy. One rejects any commitment to any ideas, even the idea of skepticism. Philosophy, in this view, has no distinctive subject matter and no practical (or theoretical) value. It is not a study of facts or of values; it cannot describe the world or define the good. It is a technical linguistic pastime based on arbitrary rules -- an academician's game. The other form, regards the first as the unavoidable, sterile expression of reason. They claim that philosophy must deal with reality and with the crucial problems of human life, by rejecting reason. They think that reality is an absurd torture chamber and that knowledge must come from irrational passion. Man is helpless, freedom is a "curse", and man's fate is fear, trembling, nausea -- from which the only exit is self-deception by making a blind, activist commitment to some course. We have seen these philosopher praise courses such as joining the Greens, fight for the Nazis, merging with a superior dimension, praise dictators or anything else that one chooses to feel.
Lenin
A cultural atmosphere is not a primary, it derives from the ideas that are propagated in society. Most do not consider such issues in explicit terms. They absorb the ideas -- implicitly, eclectically, and with many contradictions -- from the cultural atmosphere around them building into themselves, without identifying, the various ideological vibrations emanating from school, arts and media and mores. The ones that accept these ideas find themselves becoming victims of a deep fear; the fear of a living creature deprived of any means to deal with reality. The ones that accept these ideas find themselves becoming victims of a deep sense of guilt, a feeling that one is innately unworthy and immoral. Such men will obey anyone and anything that preys on their fear and guilt. They will become victims.
Simple dialectics tell us that man cannot live half free and half slave. One day, one of them will prevail over the other. Many unknowingly accept contemporary philosophy, not completely, and the world is definitely moving in the wrong direction.
Bureaucracy is not democracy, it is the dictatorship of the public sector
Norman Macrae, The 2024 Report: A Concise History of the Future 1974--2024
A state that steals from Peter to give to Paul can count on Paul's support.How does this manifest itself in the present's politics? Even the FOG know that something is fundamentally, terribly wrong with the world today, but none of the politicians knows what it is. They have never bothered with understanding from where their ideas derive, and all are pursuing a weary quest to find some piecemeal action or remedy that "works". The quest is weary because nobody believes anything will work. They are cynical pragmatists that discard ideas as irrelevant to life. Pragmatists not out of rebellion or reformism, but out of exhaustion -- such is the shape of today's leadership and of today's paralysis.
George Bernard Shaw
In the 20th century the world fought three world wars (the so- called Cold War was nothing but the first InfoWar) to defeat the idea of totalitarianism. But WW1 didn't result in a "world safe for democracy", but the emergence of modern totalitarianism. The result of WW2 was not the attainment of "four freedoms", but the surrender of half of the world to totalitarianism. And because people didn't know what philosophical values that were at stake, WW3 didn't end with the victory of freedom but in that the Soviet system was accepted worldwide.
Let me explain more. In the beginning of the 20th century governments were small, they accounted for about 10% of their nation's GNP. Today they are leviathans that control 50%--60% of the economy. They don't allow their citizens to choose for themselves, in a time where they could fend for themselves more than ever. Instead, they create a citizen that is dependent on the state in all vital aspects of his life.
A spirit of chronic crisis has spread over the world, a spirit that incites the politicians and the people to action, blind irrationalist action. The trends that shape our present tend to become self- fulfilling prophecies: by creating the conditions and setting the requirements of men's daily life, and becomes an unquestioned frame of reference in most people's minds. A society shaped by altruism, a society of chronic, politically enforced man-eat-man policies in the name of "the public welfare", leads many of its victims to feel that safety lies in flaunting public service, that selfishness (the "selfishness" of others, who are draining them) is a threat, and that the solution is to urge and practice greater selflessness. A society shaped by collectivism in which the only effective means of survival is the group or the state, leads many to feel that the ideas and the personal independence appropriate to a civilized era are no longer possible or relevant. A society shaped by irrationalism, a society dominated by incomprehensible crisis and inexplicable injustice, leads many to feel that the world cannot be understood, i.e., that their own mind is inadequate, and that they need guidance from some higher power.
Naturally, individuals aren't immune to these effects. They also succumb to them if they are not careful. So they become corrupt, hungry for power over other people's lives or cowed, numb husks of humans. The FOG's main weapon is to create dependency in people; in comparison to the social security office or the government funded hospitals the intelligence services fade. Another weapon is that people cannot control the product of their own work, and the FOG rewards lack. Lack of ambition, lack of moral are rewarded, not the creation of values. Those that are able to exploit the FOG are the big corporations, the big organizations that have built up bureaucracies of their own to match the FOG's. They can get government grants, subsidies and protection, not the small ones. The trend shows itself in the whole of society.
It is of utmost importance that we in the Concordat understand this. The FOG is structurally and philosophically wrong. It is inefficient, impractical and amoral. This goes for all functions, not just those we don't happen to like.
But there is also a growing trend in the world today, a new trend of change, one of hope, away from the paralysis. The new technologies are changing society in a completely different direction than the mainstream trend, so the FOG has to become more restrictive and authoritarian to stop the cumulative and accelerating technological development. We must be careful, technology is only a tool. This WW4 is about ideas, because without the ideas that make nanotechnology, global markets, infotech, biotech and other things possible men will not care for those things, and then we have lost. The new technologies are products of an independent way of thinking that breaks free from the FOG's power structures, and that is why they fight them.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming
"We don't need to steer from the middle road and go to extremes" is the mantra of the coward that is afraid to stand up for his own ideas.Strange as it may seem, the activists that plague our society are nearly as much part of the FOG as the FOG itself. The FOG's cynical pragmatism has alienated many people and started a rebellion against the present political and intellectual leadership. But the rebellion is based on the same main ideas as the FOG. Non- philosophical rebels cannot challenge the fundamental ideas they have been taught. All they can do by way of rebellion is to accept a series of false alternatives urged by their teachers, and then defiantly choose what they regard as the anti-establishment side. Thus the proliferation of groups that uphold anti-intellectuality as the only alternative to today's intellectuals, mindless activism as the alternative to nihilism; female weakness "affirmative action" as the alternative to Women's Lib; racism as the alternative to egalitarianism; sacrifice in behalf of a united nation, as the alternative to sacrifice in behalf of warring pressure groups; and government controls for the sake of the poor, the gays, the animals or whatever, as the alternative to flickering government controls for the sake of this weeks winner of the legalized civil war.
Luigi Peruzzi
My main fear is that the activists will win the InfoWar. They have a good chance of doing so. The activists are not removed from the present ideological mainstream, in fact the mainstream has moved more closely to them (just notice the enormous power of the consequence movement today). They appeal to many people because they are more idealistic than the FOG, they are ready to crush anything and anyone for their ideals. Too many in the mainstream regard this as a good thing, they seem to stand for their ideas. Compare this with the FOG that doesn't really practice its own ideas to the fullest extent. The FOG might look strong and powerful today, but it is a colossus on clay feet, and might well be replaced by eurofascism or an environmental dictatorship with the same methods as the Khmer rouge in Cambodia.
The WETF are also activists. They have sold out to cynical servility to violence. They are now convinced that all people, excluding themselves, are idiots and cannot be reasoned with, they must be ruled. In the end they are even worse than the FOG, because they had the ability to create a better world for themselves but chose to stick to the rules of the old.
To a centralized government, all changes are aggressions.
Alain Peyrefitte, Le Mal Français
The state is the great illusion, in which everybody thinks they could live on others' expense.Modernist art has dominated the mainstream for nearly a century now. Most artists share the nihilist and kantianist ideas of philosophy. In fact, they have given up on art. They are not interested in showing reality as it might be, they are not interested in inspiring humanity. They are interested in degrading humanity, depicting only the evil, the ugly, the revolting. Most have given up on art, as they have on philosophy so the artists are now completely in the clutches of the FOG and wouldn't be able to survive without it. They are unable to renew themselves and keep on rehashing rehashes of rehashed modernist art. Have you noticed that there haven't been any new trends in art, architecture, fashion, music etc since the '80s?
Frédéric Bastiat
The media has often been called the lapdog of the FOG, and in a way it is true. This is because the journalists of the mediacorporations often pride themselves to be objective. They claim to show the "truth", not their own opinions. In their role as inquirers they often try to show people that you have to compromise, even with those that are against you. This compromise is one of the reasons that the FOG stands strong today, most accept something they are against because it is "democratic" to consider the other side's view. Even the view of someone that is trying to enslave you? This, in turn leads to this era's horrible lack of heroes.
But of course, the media does its share of indoctrination with their socio-porn coverages, and their sassy scandals (never digging deeper). They cover those things because they have declared people to be irresponsive to reason, facts and logic. It is a dialectical process, people demand more crap, the media observes them demand more crap and gives them more crap. There isn't really anything wrong with wanting to view what someone thinks is crap, the problem starts when that crap begins to urge the further enslavement of others.
Should we really prolong the death struggle for those countries, whose ruling intellectual caste is dependent on the resources that the capitalist west provides for its socialist experiments?
Friedrich A. Hayek
That which generates war is the economic philosophy of nationalism: embargoes, trade -- and currency control, devaluing, etc. The philosophy of protectionism is the philosophy of war.Why has this horrible situation occurred in the underdeveloped countries? Most blame it on colonialism, and it is true that colonialism is a horrible politic (even now, when it is practiced for "humanitarian" reasons). But colonialism can't explain the horrors of the late 20th century and the early 21st century. Most of these countries should be rich countries, in terms of natural resources, agriculture etc. , their poverty seems strange. The reason of that poverty is that it is mainly self inflicted. The old colonial powers often prevented the emergence of a free market in their colonies, there wasn't any other way for the ambitious to make a career than in the administration or in the army. When they gained independence, the underdeveloped countries engaged in foolish experiments of planned economies (as advised by western intellectuals), and all resources were controlled by the state. Soon it was apparent that it was necessary to gain control of the administration in order to get what one desired. The best way was often to put someone of the same tribe on a bureaucratic post. A single tribe then controlled the government and it soon became impossible to change that situation other than by a military coup. Coup followed upon coup, and when the crazed dictators wasted the resources of the government the struggle became more, and more, desperate. Government totalitarianism created the present situation, the underdeveloped nations had less wealth to spend on this insanity than the blocks.
Ludwig von Mises
The slorks are really a relic from an earlier era, the robber-baron era. They have tried to adapt a bit to the 21st century in some areas, but they cannot adapt fully, if they did they would loose their power. I think that we will see an intensification of the InfoWar in the slork-controlled countries. They cannot become FOGs, they have delayed that step for too long to be able to make it. They must either pass through a cataclysm or fall back to the Dark Ages.
The blocks aren't helping the situation in these countries, on the contrary. They are isolating them, hindering them to trade freely, and stopping their citizens to move around in the world. The ecological imperialism of the UN is a new, terrifying mistake, and the blocks are starting to run out of possibilities to make such mistakes. Imagine what a crazed dictator with an MC could do if angered... The solution of that problem is of course to make the crazed dictator impossible, not banning nanotech.
Yesterday we had a king that thought he was the state. Today we have a state that thinks it is the king.
Alain Peyrefitte, Le Mal Français
They always use the power to through the majority, with decisions made "in good democratic order", oppress and exploit minorities in society.The InfoWar is not a tea party, as you can see. This goes beyond being some anti-government action. Our enemy, the Fascist Over Government, is not only a set of political bodies, a set of institutions, and a group of people. It is the current philosophical and political trend that is our enemy. It might be argued that this present state of society is a "democratic" decision, but society is bigger than the state. Democracy is much more than that the majority in society commands. If 51% of the voters vote for an option it doesn't deprive the minority of its rights. The numbers deciding on an action doesn't make it moral. The moral legitimacy of an action is independent of the legislative. If General Mbogo, the dictator of Cameroon makes a morally wrong decision, and then the parliament of the EU makes the same it is also wrong. That the EU claims to be "democratic" means nothing. And we haven't even spoken of the PRC, the slorks, and the crazed dictators...
Sven Rydenfelt
We are that minority. We have been deprived of our rights as human beings to develop ourselves as we see fit. The law should be for the citizens, not against them. And the only time when the law is on the side of the citizens is when it leaves them alone.
I hope that my lecture has not frightened you, but I think it is important to show as quick as possible what we are fighting for. Yes, it is complex! Yes, it is difficult! But humanity has time and time again shown that it can solve problems. If it uses the right ideas.
And never, ever try to deceive yourselves that you can escape this conflict just by ignoring it, and not choosing a side. Ideas matter, if you don't think so others will decide your future
Fight the Future!The existence of the TU is not a secret, it has even entered the public awareness that there are people using illegal and advanced technology out there who are against the government. But most people think of them as isolated crazies, nothing different from the other activists. Occasionally politicians and others warn against the "technological networks", but the warnings are about as convincing as warnings against the global communist conspiracy or the international pedophile network of the past.
X-files the movie
Most politicians are completely unaware of the TU and InfoWar. The exceptions are some politicians who want to make an issue of it (to further their own careers). They don't have any real information, and sprout plenty of nonsense that both helps and hurts; the overall effect is just noise.
Among the bureaucrats and administrators on different levels, some have pieces of the puzzle, but overall the need-to-know system makes them miss what is going on. The same goes for companies: even if one company has suffered from industrial espionage, they don't spread the news around and they don't connect it to the other stuff that is happening in society.
The police and other law enforcement groups know more -- they are sometimes investigating things related to the Concordat and its activities. Their problem is lack of overview: the tax evasion network in Turin doesn't have any obvious connection with the PKP pranksters or the encryption tools spread in Britain. Some agencies have put together some pieces, realizing that there is something going on beside the obvious TU activism, but they have little idea about what it is. They see the groups and individual actions, but miss the InfoWar.
It is the intelligence agencies that are the greatest threats to the Concordat. They have been working against the TU just like any other subversive movement, gathering information and of course placing some infiltrators inside. A few infiltrators have penetrated the Concordat and WETF. Several of the agencies know about the Concordat, but overall they have a rather slanted view of what it is. They consider it to be just another subversive activist network, and do not realize its full extent. One reason is that the agencies do not cooperate across block boundaries, so the information the PLA has doesn't get to the CIA -- which means they miss a lot, and can't see the whole picture.
Most agencies understand that there is an InfoWar going on, but they do not really see the true enemy -- from their perspective the FOG is surrounded by enemies, and the Concordat is just one among many. Often they have to prioritize where to put their resources: fighting eco-assassins and Age of Mayhem terrorists is much more urgent than tracing the spread of subversive information. In addition, they get official orders on what to deal with, and this diverts them even further into useless directions. The big problem for the agencies is that they haven't managed to keep up, they were originally aimed at hunting one enemy, not hundreds. And they are much better at controlling or attacking threats than eradicating them. In fact, some of the agents that know much about what is going on try to use the Concordat as a tool, instead of destroying it.
To further mess things up, the agencies spread desinformation within FOG and to competing agencies ("The Concordat is really a cover for the CIA") for various reasons. And the legendary infighting in the "alphabet soup" doesn't help.
The Concordat is subject to attacks from many directions, but it isn't that vulnerable. What worries the members the most is attacks against SubNet, either through some clever viruses or spamming (that can likely be dealt with, but it would hold the Concordat back at a possibly crucial time; some groups have been thinking of backup plans or have set up private communications links) or much worse, large-scale use of quantum computers to crack the codes. However, the greatest threat isn't against the Concordat as a whole, but attacks against individual cells -- this is an area where the agencies have a real advantage. Many Concordat cells are complete amateurs in this business.
In the future FOG will realize more, that much is certain. The only way for the TU to deal with it is to move fast and gain more power and ability -- if the Concordat can become strong, diverse and dispersed enough even a full scale attack might become unmanageable. If the Concordat can play out the blocks, agencies and groups against each other it will gain valuable time.
SI 1 -- Agricultural Fraud (including fishing and ecology) Monitors that farmers, fishermen, ecocorps and agricultural industries do not defraud the EU subsidy system, mostly through earth monitoring satellites that compare the claimed crops with the real result; SI1 also has a handful of field operatives, mostly agronomists and ecologists that visit suspected sites. Fraud is then reported to the local law enforcement, governments and the EU agricultural bureaucracy.
SI 2 -- Financial Fraud Similar to SI1, but deals with economics: money laundering, counterfeiting, financial crimes and corruption. Its members spend most of their time sifting through financial databases, looking for evidence that a crime has been committed and where the money went. They usually try to trace connections between discovered crimes across Europe, alerting the relevant agencies about the connections.
SI3 -- Technological transfer Technological transfer = industrial espionage. This unit acts both as a defense against attempted industrial espionage from the other blocks and to deal with high-tech crime. While most members are analysts and rely on their databases, there is 20--30 well trained field operatives that go out for physical investigation. This group is competent, well organized and knowledgeable -- a real danger for the Concordat. They do not have very far-reaching authorization in themselves, but local agencies are supposed to give them full cooperation and in practice this means a rather wide authorization.
SI4 -- Terrorism Federal anti-terrorist cooperation. Tries to coordinate the national anti-terrorist units and alert them to international terrorism. Similar in organization and style to SI3, although the field operatives (a rather small group) are not intended for anti-terrorist action, rather investigation.
