That commons, ordinary household morals, religions and regional cultures themselves, have been a thorn in the foot of the oil state, is apparent in its wars and propagandas – witnessed in the once-stable and beautiful cultures of Syria, Iran and Lebanon; in Latin America; in any region, where a native moral, such as socialism, or native religion, such as Ancestorism, Islam, or Christianity might undermine a universal vision of oil-fed progress – a progress towards the destruction of so-called archaic cultures and ways of life.
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Puppet governments are sought, or created, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, or as we currently witness in process – Venezuela. They are armed and encouraged to wreak havoc – usually in the name of Liberal Democracy that is – to create a dependant society, sans loved terrains, sans festivals, sans parochial knowledge, sans ecological connections, sans past and sans future. Liberal Democracy has become a cult of the present. In that cult, puppet parties are manufactured for slightly differing shades of that present (consumer choice). It is a form of catering. Tory, Liberal, or New Labour parties lay out menus in which, neither past, nor future must intrude in the cuisine. Its most potent political slogan is “Don’t deny the present!” (that is the menu in front of us). It leads to conversation-stopping “Let’s be realistic.” It is no coincidence that the companies which advertise pot noodles, similarly compete to advertise those political parties. Their art is to create illusions that the ephemeral and amoral are substantial and durable things. “Let’s be realistic,” they say, “How can we deny that the super market aisle is laden with pot noodles?”
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So, that’s our task – not to improve the Cult of the Now by green market signals for greener pot noodles, but to assert our loves; festivals; terrains; skills; religions; philosophies – honouring both ancestors (who created the present) and descendants (who must face what we’ve made) – otherwise we remain as puppet people, much as the states of Israel and Saudi Arabia remain as puppet states. We and they, also remain as agents of dispossession, war, famine, death, migration, economic pillage, ecologic pillage and catastrophic climate change. Of course, nearly all of us here in the UK, are personally creating flood, drought, storm and famine. They are properties of our current behaviour. The current mutations of nearly every species on Earth is facing what we’ve done and no mutations can be fast enough to catch those climatic changes. However, if we live in the present – which we have before us in our menu of consumer choices, we can see that future catastrophe is but an idea, while what we have before us is real. Let’s be realistic, we say. Well, if we listened to the voices of parents and looked into the eyes of children, we’d know another reality.
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Yes. It is no accident that the seven Labour MPs who resigned from the Labour Party yesterday, did so primarily in support of the State of Israel and with no doubt, some very wealthy and powerful backers – in support of realism, the Cult of the Now and pot noodles. For them, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party speaks too much of the future – of inequality and climate change – and shockingly of the deeply traumatic lives of Palestinians – of their futures disappearing into the mouths of a protected puppet state of the present.
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Meanwhile, our children are rebelling against the Cult, in which their coming reality is not included. The School Strike for Climate also calls for the rebellion of every household, because every household must budget for the future. The future for which we all make plans, is also not included in the published Liberal Democratic manifestos – at any rate, none have escape the censors of the BBC, Guardian and so on, whose purpose is focused exclusively on promoting the temporal reality of the menu…
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