Extinction Rebellion and the Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism

This is part 4 of a series of articles entitled ‘Astroturfing the way for the Fourth Industrial Revolution’.
Here are the links to the other parts:

Previous:
0) Introduction:­ Some Inconvenient Truths about Extinction Rebellion and the Climate Mobilisation movement
1) Dr Gail Marie Bradbrook: Compassionate Revolutionary… for hire?
2) Political Charities and the Brave New World of Professional Activism
3) Green Gail and the Technocratic Industrialists: Citizens Online’s Digitopian Nightmare
Next:
5) #XRSpaceJunk 5G & Citizens Online: Industry Agents, Digital Acolytes and State Agitators

For a current update on our research, read our latest article here:
6) UN-Extinction: A Guide for the Perplexed

Exactly a month on from the beginning of Extinction Rebellion’s demonstrations in London, the British Parliament has approved Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s motion to declare a national ‘climate emergency’ – being one of the group’s three demands. This comes two days after pro-Corbyn campaign group Momentum declared its ‘union’ with Extinction Rebellion in the Guardian [1]. The rallying of the climate movement under the Labour party is an entirely predictable affair. And already we have cardboard cut-out [2] ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband declaring that “Politics needs to be on a war footing to deal with this enemy.”

Meanwhile on the 30th of April, a group of Extinction Rebellion activists are reported [3] to have met with assorted members of the UK’s political establishment – hot on the heels of insta-climate celebrity Greta Thunberg (who has now received a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize). This from the Daily Mirror [4]:

“Five members of the group met with Mr Gove and ministers from other departments, including the Treasury, in Westminster to discuss demands for change. (…) Earlier in the day, another meeting took place, with Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell at Portcullis House, which resulted in Extinction Rebellion being asked to address the shadow cabinet.”

According to the article, aside from the usual subjects, they also raised the small matter of our debt-based economy with Gove, and supposedly even secured an admission from him that it’s a problem. Lest you disbelieve it, here’s a testimony from one of the XR attendees:

“I was surprised to hear a radical reflection on our economic paradigm from Michael Gove when he talked about how our model is extractive and destructive – and that we need to move to a circular model. And that similarly a debt based economy doesn’t do right by young people, that it is creating a huge debt for them and that it has to change.”

This is something to pay careful attention to, as it’s a subject that never gets to be broached in any meaningful way in public discourse – so when it does make an appearance, the context in which it’s presented is a hint as to the direction in which the financial elites plan to spin it.

Quite possibly such words serve as smoke and mirrors for the new system they plan to bring in with the ‘economic reset’ they’re preparing. Or perhaps even the beginnings of an endorsement of Positive Money’s reiteration of the bankster-friendly Chicago Plan. Postive Money’s founder Ben Dyson now works on the Digital Currencies team at the Bank of England; for more on why their proposed reforms pose no real threat to the money power, see this article [5] (in a nutshell: it fails to address usury, or ‘wealth transfer through the system’).

Farhana Yamin, who is described in XR’s blurb as ‘climate change lawyer and former lead author of the IPCC, coordinator of the Political Strategy Team and experienced UN negotiator’ appears to be playing a prominent role in the meetings. As Cory Morningstar has pointed out [6], Yamin has “spent 27 years in UN climate negotiations”, “helped midwife the 2015 Paris Agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions”, serves Greenpeace as a board member/trustee, will soon take up an advisory role at the World Wildlife Fund, and wants to build a bridge with existing organisations to forge a much bigger “movement of movements”. Let’s take a look at what kinds of organisations she might have in mind.

“Yamin is the founder and CEO of Track 0: ” Track 0 is an independent, not-for-profit organization serving as a hub to support all those transitioning to a clean, fair and bright future for future generations around the world compatible with the goals set out in the Paris Agreement.” Partners of Track 0 include GCCA (TckTckTck), CAN (Climate Action Network), Avaaz, ClimateWorks (The Climate Group, We Mean Business), The Rockefeller Foundation, E3G (founder of GCCA), The Prince of Wales Corporate Leaders Group, European Climate Foundation and Chatham House.”

“In addition to founding Track 0, Yamin is an associate fellow at Chatham House and a member of the Global Agenda Council on Climate Change at the World Economic Forum. Yamin served as an adviser to the European Commission on emissions trading directive from 1998-2002, later serving as special adviser to Connie Hedegaard, EU commissioner for climate action. She is lead author for three assessment reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on adaptation and mitigation issues. She continues to provide legal, strategy and policy advice to NGOs, foundations and developing nations on international climate change negotiations under the UNFCCC.”

Well, how about that: Yamin’s CV constitutes a fairly comprehensive constellation of globalist institutions. And the cherry on the top is undoubtedly the fact that she is an Associate Fellow of Chatham House, a.k.a. the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Here’s a link to her profile on their website. Chatham House is a think-tank founded by members of the Round Table Group (a.k.a. the Rhodes-Milner Group) founded by Lord Milner in 1909 to enact the vision of the by then deceased arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes. His warmongering followers were the architects of, among other things, both the Second Boer and First World wars [7], and yet precious few people have ever heard of them. We’ll be looking at this group in more detail below, but for now, let’s take a moment to understand their significance within our current context.

“In place of the costly military occupation of the colonies of the British Empire, (the Round Table Group) argued for a more repressive tolerance, calling for the creation of a British ‘Commonwealth of Nations.’ Member nations were to be given the illusion of independence, enabling Britain to reduce the high costs of far-flung armies of occupation from India to Egypt, and now across Africa and the Middle East as well. The term ‘informal empire’ was sometimes used to describe the shift.

The Round Table Group was organised in relation to a number of key elite institutional instruments such as All Souls, Balliol and New Colleges at Oxford University and also The Times (of London) newspaper and the publisher Faber & Faber. Associated with the Group were, besides its architect and inspiration Alfred Lord Milner, prominent individuals such as the Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, the Secretary of State for War, Richard Haldane, the proponent of the new field of geopolitics, Halford J. Mackinder, of the London School of Economics, the banker Lord Robert Brand, the novelist H. G. Wells, the South African General and Prime Minister, Jan Smuts, UK Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour (of the Balfour Declaration), Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times, Lord Robert Cecil of the powerful aristocratic Cecil family, and later, the historian Arnold J. Toynbee. Its two key ideologues, propagandists and globe-trotting ‘missionaries’ were Lionel Curtis and Philip Kerr (later, Lord Lothian). In May 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference negotiations, its members, especially Curtis and Kerr, created the organisation that in 1920 became the British, later the Royal, Institute for International Affairs (a.k.a. Chatham House). This influential think-tank would become the Group’s principal ideological offspring.”

– Adapted from William Engdahl’s ‘A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order’.

One might find it rather curious that a grassroots movement such as Extinction Rebellion should have chosen a person so deeply embedded with elite institutions as its representative for negotiations with politicians. That is, unless one has understood that it isn’t a grassroots movement at all, and that the leadership of the contemporary climate movement is being choreographed from backstage by bankster interests. It doesn’t matter how many well-intentioned people fill the ranks of XR if these are the people calling the shots.

Yamin is also the author of a tome entitled ‘The International Climate Change Regime’ [8] and sits on the UNFCCC’s ‘Momentum for Change Advisory Panel’ [9].

In her article ‘Word to the Wise: Beware the Green New Deal!’ [10], Geraldine Perry has the following to say about the UNFCCC:

“Inasmuch as Sustainable Goal 13 is about Climate Action, it is worth noting that in 2009 the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) set up an unelected international climate regime with authority to dictate land use, relocate “human settlements” and directly intervene in the financial, economic, health care, education, tax and environmental affairs of all nations signing the treaty.”

Perry has many unique insights into the subject of the Green New Deal, and we’d strongly recommend reading her article. She has also produced a book entitled ‘Climate Change, Land Use and Monetary Policy’ [11], which provides a far more comprehensive view of our ecological predicament than any of the controlled opposition idealogues ever will. It seems, alas, that she too supports the Chicago Plan. Nonetheless, with that caveat, the lens through which she examines these subjects should serve as a wake-up call, alerting us to just how narrowly restricted the mainstream environmentalist narrative is.

Returning to the article, Perry likewise names an important aspect of the elites’ effort to rebrand capitalism as something benign:

“This plan is anchored by the political philosophy of Communitarianism [12] which effectively establishes a new legal system used by regional and local governments affiliated with the emerging global government, circumventing national law via a program of “balancing.”  Implemented by a relatively small self-appointed group of decision-makers and influencers who achieve “consensus” among themselves rather than through the public voting process, this philosophy holds that the individual’s rights are a threat to the global community. In practice, the consistent rallying cry “for the greater good” is defined any way that suits those in power.”

The research of Niki Raapana of the Anti-Communitarian League shows how a pernicious strain of so-called ‘communitarianism’, espoused by the likes of Amitai Etzioni [13], has quietly wormed its way into the ethos of a good many governmental bodies, and increasingly become the basis of their decisionmaking process. Raapana experienced first-hand the demographic cleansing it inspired whilst she was living in Seattle – her account of her experiences and the research it led her to do [14] is essential reading.

The financial elites are well aware that the current system is rapidly falling out of favour (see for example the Yellow Vests), and are as a result desparate to window-dress their planned replacement in such a way that it can be portrayed through the media and other propaganda outlets as something benign – hence the present charm offensive centred around the theme of climate change and ‘saving the planet’. Using a 16 year old girl with Asperger’s syndrome to promote it clearly has its advantages – after all, anyone criticising her campaign would surely have to be a monster.

At the same time, they’re taking care that their real agendas are kept well away from public discourse. However, one doesn’t have to look very far to see the direction in which this is all heading. China is already well along the road of implementing its so-called ‘social credit’ / ‘national reputation system’, where technology has been harnessed to the cause of mass societal control.

In this system, citizens are given points according to how compliant or disobedient they’ve been within the parameters laid down by the Chinese state; should one’s score fall below a certain number, then one is placed on a public blacklist and denied access to services and employment. One can then ‘redeem’ oneself by purchasing credits or doing ‘community service’. As service provision becomes increasingly centralised thanks to the ‘smart grid’, and more and more people find themselves living in ‘smart cities’, it will become entirely feasible for people to be denied access to basic services at the touch of a button. Very smart indeed.

It comes as no surprise therefore that Chinese President Xi Jinping has aligned himself to the UN ‘Sustainable Development’ programme. The ‘big data service platform’ that he refers to in this quote forms the very basis for the sickening system that his country has created – here, however, he lauds its virtues for use in ‘ecological and environmental protection’. Sound at all familiar? Also, let’s not forget that Huawei have likewise been enthusiastically promoting [15] the Sustainable Development Goals.

Subsequently it’s not especially difficult to imagine how the ‘transgressions’ currently being defined by the fake green lobby, and then broadcast all over the mainstream media, could be incorporated into such a system – in combination with a carbon-based digital currency and carbon rationing/ taxation, perhaps with a universal basic income as bait for accepting an embedded microchip or other technological debt-slave identification method. All to be centrally monitored through a 5G network.

XR and their friends in Greenpeace have recently been trumpeting a great deal about the need for people to drastically reduce their meat consumption – despite the fact that the vegan diet they’re apparently so keen on is based on soil-eroding annual grain and seed crops, requiring an industrial infrastructure to grow and process (incidentally creating huge profit margins for agribusiness), lacks numerous essential nutrients, and according to a 2017 study that modelled the greenhouse gas effects of a livestock-free US food system, would only remove a negligible quantity (2.6% in the case of the US) of emissions as compared to the present state of affairs. This is out of all proportion to the weight currently being given to the subject.

Furthermore, and despite the protracted efforts of the likes of George Monbiot to discredit them, as new studies continue to emerge [16], it’s becoming increasingly hard to deny that the properly managed grazing of ruminants is net-carbon sequestering and hence could be playing an enormous role in restoring degraded soils and water tables – were it not for the fact that this conflicts with the industrialists’ desired narrative. It should also be remembered that integrated small-scale mixed farming systems, which are by far the most efficient and sustainable form of land use in existence for meeting human needs, are very much dependent on animals for nutrient cycling, draft and of course all manner of products. XR have themselves been employing the buzzword of ‘regenerative agriculture’ in their propaganda; however as with many of their talking points, their reductionistic rhetoric seemingly betrays its leadership’s true intentions.

The key to facilitating sane land use, ecological restoration, and perhaps even the rebalancing of climate [17] lies in equitable land distribution and the rebirth of cultures rooted to place, but most crucially of all – the ending of institutionalised usury, which is the demonic engine that forces an economic system based on infinite growth. These however are changes that none of the supposed environmentalist groups’ policies do anything to bring about. Instead they seem to want to create a race of sterile, unthinking technopeasants, who will love their irradiated ‘smart city’ servitude.

In Huxley’s Brave New World, the different castes are created by varying degrees of malnutrition and poisoning. And this seems little different. One wonders, in the future they’re attempting to bring about, whether the upper castes and ‘world controllers’ would be eating the same diet that their propaganda implores their minions to consume.

The manner in which the ruling classes manipulate dissent is perhaps best expressed in a couple of extracts of a letter from John Dove to Robert Brand, two prominent figures in the Round Table Group we mentioned earlier in connection with Chatham House. They were written in 1919 and are quoted in Carroll Quigley’s ‘The Anglo-American Establishment’, p.136 :

“Lionel is right. [Referring to Lionel Curtis – the founder of Chatham House] You can’t dam a world current. There is, I am convinced, ‘purpose’ under such things. All we can do is try to turn the flood into the best channel.”

“Unity will in the end have to be got in some other way…. Love – call it, if you like, by some other name – is the only thing that can make our post-war world go round, and it has, I believe, something to say here too. The future of our Empire seems to me to depend on how far we are able to recognise this.”

Today there is quite understandably a growing concern, particularly among the young, as to the direction that the industrial civilisation we find ourselves beholden to is taking us in. This concern constitutes what they refer to as ‘the world current’ – in other words, questions that at various points in history, begin to burn with great intensity in people’s hearts. What is being articulated here is that this is something which must be attended to by the elites if they are to successfully manage the masses. Once the nature of the ‘world current’ has been understood, they must then find a way to direct it into the ‘best channel’ for it not to interfere with their plans or hegemony.

Extinction Rebellion has certainly widened the acceptable frame of discourse on the subject of ecological destruction – and this is the point on which many who have a great deal of reservations about the group often nonetheless defend them on. It is essential to recognise however that the master stroke of the social engineers lies in immediately harnessing the new awareness to their own ends. Over the last 150 years, from mass newspapers to social media, they have always moved swiftly to turn changes in popular consciousness (e.g. the demand for universal suffrage) and new developments in technology to their advantage.

In the second extract, taken from the same letter, we find the nature of one such ‘world current’ being discussed. These words were written in the context of Dove discussing the nature of the Imperial government in India, and he appears to be advocating a change of tack on the part of the governors. Which is to say that rather than inspiring fear in the governed, he suggests that the British Empire (which Lionel Curtis strove to have re-Christened as ‘the Commonwealth of Nations’) should seek to cultivate an attitude of ‘love’ in its subjects.

Professor Carroll Quigley, who was hired as the group’s ‘court historian’ and was hence permitted access to its archives (from which the above letters were drawn) is one of the main sources on their activities. As it happens, he ended up revealing a little too much, and the original edition of his magnum opus ‘Tragedy and Hope’ was pulled from the presses, bookshop and library shelves and replaced with a less incriminating version [18].

His ‘Anglo-American Establishment’ was written in 1949 and published posthumously in 1981, and goes into far more detail on the character of the group. What his work reveals very clearly is their proficiency in social engineering through various channels of media. Its members were in control of The Times newspaper, and in this extract from that book, he describes how they leveraged this fact to further their goals:

“The Times was to be a paper for the people who are influential, and not for the masses. The Times was influential, but the degree of its influence would never be realized by anyone who examined only the paper itself. The greater part of its influence arose from its position as one of several branches of a single group, the Milner Group. By the interaction of these various branches on one another, under the pretense that each branch was an autonomous power, the influence of each branch was increased through a process of mutual reinforcement. The unanimity among the various branches was believed by the outside world to be the result of the influence of a single Truth, while really it was the result of the existence of a single group. Thus, a statesman (a member of the Group) announces a policy. About the same time, the Royal Institute of International Affairs publishes a study on the subject, and an Oxford don, a Fellow of All Souls (and a member of the Group) also publishes a volume on the subject (probably through a publishing house, like G. Bell and Sons or Faber and Faber, allied to the Group). The statesman’s policy is subjected to critical analysis and final approval in a “leader” in The Times, while the two books are reviewed (in a single review) in The Times Literary Supplement. Both the “leader” and the review are anonymous but are written by members of the Group. And finally, at about the same time, an anonymous article in The Round Table strongly advocates the same policy. The cumulative effect of such tactics as this, even if each tactical move influences only a small number of important people, is bound to be great. If necessary, the strategy can be carried further, by arranging for the secretary to the Rhodes Trustees to go to America for a series of “informal discussions” with former Rhodes Scholars, while a prominent retired statesman (possibly a former Viceroy of India) is persuaded to say a few words at the unveiling of a plaque in All Souls or New College in honor of some deceased Warden. By a curious coincidence, both the “informal discussions” in America and the unveiling speech at Oxford touch on the same topical subject.

An analogous procedure in reverse could be used for policies or books which the group did not approve. A cutting editorial or an unfriendly book review, followed by a suffocating blanket of silence and neglect, was the best that such an offering could expect from the instruments of the Milner Group.”

The Round Table’s Institute of International Affairs was but the first of a multitude of groups, presented to the public as ‘think-tanks’, and devoting themselves singly to the goal of the ever-increasing centralisation of power through the kinds of methods Quigley described. Paralleling the founding of Chatham House was the creation of the American Council for Foreign Relations in 1921, with many of its members drawn from the American delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The banksters had recently secured major victories in America through the passing of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913 and the breaking of American isolationism in WWI, thanks to their pawn Woodrow Wilson; having well and truly taken over the economic reigns of the emerging superpower, their next priority was to consolidate their influence over its foreign policy.

The CFR was initially established as something ostensibly independent from Chatham House, partly as a result of American anti-British sentiment and the Senate’s rejection of the League of Nations (whose covenant was written by close Milner Group associates Jan Smuts and Robert Cecil), and likewise due to friction over British and American oil interests. However, by the 1930s these tensions had started to ease, and the two institutions have continued collaborating closely ever since. Beginning at around the same time, we find those perennial advocates for world government and its maximal interference in the affairs of its subjects, the Rockefeller clan, beginning to channel ever-increasing amounts of money to both CFR and the RIIA by way of their Rockefeller Foundation.

This foundation, since its creation in 1913 as a means of protecting the family’s oil and banking fortune from inheritance tax, was subsequently employed to influence the trajectory of a great many areas of public life, most notably in the areas of education, medicine, and scientific research – with a particular emphasis on the ‘science’ of eugenics, among other things sponsoring the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute which created the academic foundation for Nazi racial doctrine. This is not the place to go into detail on the egregious activities of the foundation, but one important point to understand is the following, from John D. Rockefeller Sr.’s Wikipedia entry [19]:

“Rockefeller and his advisers invented the conditional grant, which required the recipient to “root the institution in the affections of as many people as possible who, as contributors, become personally concerned, and thereafter may be counted on to give to the institution their watchful interest and cooperation.””

What this meant in practice was that in exchange for receiving funds, institutions would be expected to appoint foundation members to their boards, and heed their advice in their decisionmaking. Together with the Ford and Carnegie Foundations, the rigorous application of this method ensured that interwar America’s development progressed along the scientific-materialistic lines that were favourable to the banking and industrialist interests. After the Second World War, we again saw a flurry of globalist institution-building to further consolidate their dominance; the structure of these institutions having been planned out well in advance. Here we turn to Inderjeet Parmar’s paper ‘Foundation Networks and American Hegemony [20]‘:

“During the Second World War – the high point of the CFR-RIIA’s cooperation – the two groups’ leaders together and with their respective governments planned the postwar international institutional architecture that became known as the Bretton Woods system: the International Monetary Fund (IMF), International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, or World Bank) and the United Nations.

In regard to the latter, the role of the CFR as an organisation, and of Isaiah Bowman, is well-documented. It is clear that, for Bowman and the CFR, the UN was for the maintenance of national security and international organisation would be the route to avoiding “conventional forms of imperialism.” American power would be exercised through an American-led “international” system.”

In other words, the United Nations is a CFR brainchild. As James Perloff explains in ‘The Shadow of Power’:

“In January 1943, Secretary of State Cordell Hull formed a steering committee composed of himself, Leo Pasvolsky, Isaiah Bowman, Sumner Welles, Norman Davis, and Myron Taylor. All of these men with the exception of Hull – were in the CFR. Later known as the Informal Agenda Group, they drafted the original proposal for the United Nations. It was Bowman – a founder of the CFR and member of Colonel House’s old “Inquiry” – who first put forward the concept. They called in three attorneys, all CFR men, who ruled that it was constitutional. They then discussed it with FDR on June 15,1944. The President approved the plan, and announced it to the public that same day.”

Here meanwhile is a telling paragraph from the Wikipedia entry for the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City [21]:

“The Headquarters occupies a site beside the East River, on between 17 and 18 acres of land purchased from the real estate developer, William Zeckendorf, Sr. Nelson Rockefeller arranged this purchase, after an initial offer to locate it on the Rockefeller family estate of Kykuit was rejected as being too isolated from Manhattan. The US$8.5 million (adjusted by inflation US$83.7 million) purchase was then funded by his father, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who donated it to the city. (…)

Wallace Harrison, the personal architectural adviser for the Rockefeller family and brother-in-law to a Rockefeller daughter, served as the Director of Planning for the United Nations Headquarters. His firm, Harrison and Abramovitz, oversaw the execution of the design.”

Were one ignorant of the story we’ve been tracing, one might find it curious that one family should have so great an influence over the founding of an institution that purports to work on behalf of all humanity. It should also be noted that Chase (now JP Morgan Chase), the bank most closely associated with the family, “handles most of the accounts and money transfers of the United Nations and its agencies.”

The Club of Rome is a continental European think joint-founded in 1968 by David Rockefeller, describing itself as “an organisation of individuals who share a common concern for the future of humanity and strive to make a difference”. It is somewhat infamous in certain circles for being the authors of ‘The First Global Revolution’ report, published in 1991 (the sequel to their 1972 ‘Limits to Growth’) which prescribed “pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like” as the new common enemy against which western societies were to unite in the absence of the ‘Communist threat’. We are now starting to see very clearly how their script is being played out.

Within these people’s logic, the harnessing of the global governance and surveillance aganda to the vehicle of widespread concern for the state of our planet makes perfect sense: our feelings of care towards our home are precisely what John Dove referred to as ‘love’ when a hundred years ago he wrote to Robert Brand that “unity will in the end have to be got in some other way”. In our own time, let us consider which supranational institution is most widely associated with benevolence in the popular mind, and which same institution wields influence over as wide a part of the world as the British Empire once did (though not yet overtly): it is of course the United Nations. The climate / Sustainable Development agenda, it seems, constitutes a attempted power grab by this world government-in-wating.

To reiterate, do we, the inhabitants of this planet, have a major ecological crisis on our hands? Yes, we most certainly do. Should we be taking advice from these criminals as to what to do about it? Not for one instant. In case you need reminding, these are the people whose group interests promote the institutionalised usury that has been sucking up all of the world’s wealth for the last couple of centuries, turning life on this planet into a complete travesty in the process.

The oligarchy is currently attempting its biggest coup yet, with the intended goal of inducing the ultimate case of Stockholm Syndrome in the populace: that we would come to look upon those who’ve been robbing us as the world’s saviours. Having the ability to monitor the effects of their chessboard moves through social media puts the decisionmakers at a considerable advantage, as the popular response enables decisionmakers to determine the best pace at which to act. The stage has been being set for a long time, as many people tiresomely slandered as ‘consipiracy theorists’ have been attempting to point out.

One of course finds plenty of disinformation and nonsense when endeavouring to learn the truth regarding these groups’ activities. Does it follow then, that all we can learn about them is unreliable? It certainly doesn’t. But what it does mean is that the onus is on the investigator to separate the wheat from the chaff, and that is something that few have the commitment to do. Indeed, there many who would rather hurl insults at those attempting the task.

This is a discipline in which proficiency is not attained overnight – one must not only absorb a vast body of knowledge, but likewise develop a surgical fluency that facilitates the assessment of conflicting claims. In such times it seems prudent never to accept a narrative without having done one’s own prior study, and even then to treat all narratives with a light touch. Above all, one should steer well clear of storytellers who work at outfits like Chatham House! Alas, the significance of such facts is seemingly not something to be found within the environmentalist syllabus.

Should you need to fill in some gaps yourself, the Corbett Report archive [22] is likely one of the best places to start; in particular his ‘Big Oil’ documentaries [23], as well as his recent films [24] documenting the Milner Group’s role in bringing about the First World War.

The question is, will we accept such a state of affairs or will we fight back? The ‘architects’ constitute only a tiny segment of the world population, with a larger subset of lackeys whose loyalty is by no means a given. Those of us who are likewise coming to understand the art of scientific manipulation must take it upon ourselves to reveal it to others. The first step is dia-gnosis – this means analysing the web of lies that the oligarchy have spun all around us; the next is beginning the process of healing, meaning taking personal responsibility for creating solutions to the problems we’re facing on the ground.

This will necessitate both serious self-discipline and collaboration with other independent actors (not jumping onto seductive bandwagons) – working to build autonomous infrastructures that are independent from the usury system, and moving away from the areas most under its heel. It’s a fine mess we’ve been constructing while under this spell, and there’s a good chance that many will be caught unawares when the house of cards begins to topple. Hence, we need to regroup now, while there’s still time.