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LF14 Keith Farnish – Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution to a Global Crisis

Following recent interviews with Joseph Tainter and John Michael Greer, the third instalment of our mini-series investigating the inevitable collapse of industrial civilization welcomes activist and author Keith Farnish to discuss some of the key issues raised in his book Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution to a Global Crisis.
Keith is a father, a writer, a thinker, a grower, a baker, a maker, a talker and a listener who is learning to once again connect with the real world. He lives in a village in the Scottish Borders with a wife, two children and six chickens. Time’s Up! is his first book and was published in March 2009. He recently completed the follow-up, Underminers. Some of his other writings can be read at The Earth Blog and The Unsuitablog.
Time’s Up is not an environmental book, even though it is concerned with the environment. It is not a book to save the world, even though the world is clearly in trouble. Ultimately, Time’s Up is a book about survival; about ensuring that every individual human has the means to save herself or himself from the global crisis that is unfolding.
People know that the climate is changing, that species are being removed from the Earth at a rapidly increasing rate, that entire ecosystems are becoming shadows of their former richness; they know, but they do not understand. The global environmental crisis is closing in on humanity from all directions, yet the crisis barely registers on this culture’s list of problems.
As we stand, humanity is doomed to a collapse that will leave only a few nomads, and a toxic, barely survivable Earth in its wake. So why is nothing being done beyond changing light bulbs, recycling and buying organic food? It’s certainly not for a lack of good reasons.
Humans have no motivation stronger than survival, yet the culture that dominates – the culture we call Industrial Civilization – has created a set of priorities that value financial wealth, the possession of superfluous goods and short, cheap thrills, above that most basic need. In short, we are prepared to die in order to live a life that is killing us.
Time’s Up is all about changing this. It describes what our actions are doing to the very things on Earth that we depend on for survival, at scales that we rarely contemplate. It arms us with the tools to free us from the culture that has blinded us for centuries, and which will allow us to live lives that will give the Earth, and ourselves, a future. Time’s Up! proposes something radical, fundamental and frightening; something long-term, exhilarating and absolutely necessary; something totally uncivilized.
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Echo-ES ‘Pulse’

LF13 John Michael Greer – The Ecotechnic Future

John Michael Greer on the future of a World without oil. In response to the coming impact of peak oil, John’s 2009 book The Ecotechnic Future helps us envision the transition from an industrial society to a sustainable ecotechnic world – not returning to the past, but creating a society that supports relatively advanced technology on a sustainable resource base.
Topics discussed include: peak oil, the energy crisis, the myth of progress, the myth of apocalypse, societal collapse, abiotic oil, zero point energy, 2012 and political, economic and cultural disintegration.
Fusing human ecology and history, The Ecotechnic Future challenges assumptions held by mainstream and alternative thinkers about the evolution of human societies. Human societies, like ecosystems, evolve in complex and unpredictable ways, making it futile to try to impose rigid ideological forms on the patterns of evolutionary change. Instead, social change must explore many pathways over which we have no control.
The troubling and exhilarating prospect of an open-ended future, he proposes, requires dissensus – a deliberate acceptance of radical diversity that widens the range of potential approaches to infinity. For anyone concerned about peak oil and the future of industrial society, The Ecotechnic Future provides a solid analysis of how we got to where we are and offers a practical toolkit to prepare for the future.
John is a certified Master Conserver, organic gardener, and scholar of ecological history. The current Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA), his widely-cited blog, The Archdruid Report deals with peak oil, among other issues.
Previous interview: John Michael Greer – The Long Descent
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Klaus Schulze ‘Things to Come’

LF12 Joseph Tainter – The Energy Crisis and the End of The Industrial Age

The Energy Crisis and the end of The Industrial Age with Dr Joseph Tainter of Utah State University. Dr Tainter is perhaps best known as the author of The Collapse of Complex Societies and amongst various other publications he also co-authored Drilling Down: The Gulf Oil Debacle and Our Energy Dilemma. The discussion focusses on areas covered by both books, specifically the energy that industrial society depends on for its survival and continued growth and what happens when the supply of this energy begins to decline on the road to running out.
Topics discussed include: peak oil, the 2010 Gulf oil disaster, competition and conflict for resources, renewable energy, decline of technological innovation, the green movement and sustainable development, the energy/complexity spiral and the collapse of society.
Background:For more than a century, oil has been the engine of growth for a society that delivers an unprecedented standard of living to many. We now take for granted that economic growth is good, necessary, and even inevitable, but also feel a sense of unease about the simultaneous growth of complexity in the processes and institutions that generate and manage that growth. As societies grow more complex through the bounty of cheap energy, they also confront problems that seem to increase in number and severity. In this era of fossil fuels, cheap energy and increasing complexity have been in a mutually-reinforcing spiral. The more energy we have and the more problems our societies confront, the more we grow complex and require still more energy. Our demand for energy, our technological prowess, the resulting need for complex problem solving and the end of easy oil are now conspiring to make the end of the industrial age a certainty. It’s no longer a question of if, but when.
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Redshift ‘Redshift’

LF11 Helen Sewell - The Astrology of 2012

Helen Sewell on the astrology of 2012. Topics discussed include: 2012, astrology, astronomy, psychology, science Vs spirituality, 9/11, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the London Olympics, societal collapse, beyond 2012 and the mass awakening of human consciousness.
Helen is a fully qualified professional astrologer with 25 years experience. She first became interested in astrology through reading books on the Sun signs when she was a teenager and it was then that she realised there was a definite correlation between what she read and the characteristics she could recognise in the people she knew. As Helen’s astrological reading broadened, Liz Greene became her favourite author and she then decided to take the opportunity to train under her guidance at the Centre for Psychological Astrology at Regents College in London. After four years Helen attained the Diploma in Psychological Astrology and went on to set up a private practice.
After meeting Geoff Stray in 2002, and reading his book Beyond 2012, Helen has been looking at the astrological significance of this time and has reached some very interesting conclusions. In recent years Helen has also become interested in the bigger cycles of the outer planets and how they affect individual countries and society at large.
www.astrologicalinsights.co.uk
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Jean Michel Jarre ‘Waiting for Cousteau’

LF10 Thomas Sheridan – Consciousness Parasites and Psychopathic Society

Thomas Sheridan on the origins and development of psychopaths as individuals, the psychopathic nature of the institutions and systems which underpin our society, and ultimately how we can and will break free from both and evolve towards a truly humane and empathic world.
Topics discussed include:What is a psychopath? What makes a psychopath? Can psychopaths be cured? Are psychopaths here for a reason? Indigenous societies and psychopaths, government, corporations and religion – the unholy trinity, the role of mainstream education and media in shaping society, the distortion and destruction of the feminine, superficiality of society and culture, false ideals of perfection, psychotherapy, psychology and the mass awakening of human consciousness.
Born in Dublin, Thomas is an internationally renowned artist, author, musician, public speaker and independent researcher. His illustrations have appeared on the covers of newsstand magazines, books and websites worldwide. He is best known as the author of the book Puzzling People: the Labyrinth of the Psychopath. He has recently published the follow-up to Puzzling People, entitled Defeated Demons: Freedom from Consciousness Parasites in Psychopathic Society, as well as the DVD Breaking the Babylon Mind. Thomas continues to write, broadcast and tour internationally, bringing his message of consciousness empowerment, creative intention and transcendence beyond the Psychopathic Control Grid to the world at large.
www.thomassheridanarts.comwww.psychopathfree.com
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Ennio Morricone / John Carpenter ‘The Thing’ OST
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LF9 James Corbett - The Fukushima Cover Up and the Nuclear Nightmare

James Corbett on the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 2011 and the ongoing cover ups surrounding almost every aspect of this catastrophic event.
Topics covered include: Fukushima disaster timeline and subsequent cover-ups, manipulated media coverage, mass evacuations, political fallout, comparisons with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986, effects on human health and the environment, military origins of nuclear technology, the myth of cheap nuclear energy, renewable energy vs nuclear, the likelihood of further nuclear disasters in the future, the ongoing and serious global threat that the Fukushima facility still presents, and whether Fukushima and its aftermath represent the beginning of the end for the nuclear industry.
James Corbett is an independent journalist who has been living and working in Japan since 2004. He runs www.corbettreport.com, an independent, listener-supported alternative news source which operates on the principle of open source intelligence and provides podcasts, interviews, articles and videos about breaking news and important issues from 9/11 Truth and false flag terror to the Big Brother police state, eugenics, geopolitics, the central banking fraud and much more.
Fukushima updates at EneNewsJames’ Fukushima website www.fukushimaupdate.com
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Tangerine Dream ‘Sorcerer’

LF8 Scott Tips – Codex Alimentarius and the Threat to Health Freedom

National Health Federation president Scott Tips on Codex Alimentarius and the threat to health freedom. Increasingly draconian restrictions are being placed on vitamins and other food supplements at a time when a growing number of people are beginning to take health care and illness prevention into their own hands. Avoidance of institutionalized healthcare is likely to increase as long as corporate influence on government continues and the medical establishment holds the interests of pharmaceutical corporations and other related businesses over those of the individual.
BackgroundThe Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC), based inRome,Italy, is an international organization jointly created by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations. The Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Use (CCNFSDU) is responsible for Dietary Supplements and Medical Foods and is one of some 27 separate Codex committees. The CCNFSDU meets annually and the National Health Federation is a Codex-recognized organization with the right to attend and speak out at these meetings. Established in 1955, the National Health Federation is an international nonprofit, consumer-education, health-freedom organization working to protect individuals’ rights to choose to consume healthy food, take supplements and use alternative therapies without government restrictions.
The purpose of Codex is to provide a forum to facilitate global trade in foods and promote consumer food safety by developing science based standards and guidelines for use by member countries. Codex guidelines and standards are automatically implemented by the General Agreement on Trade & Tariffs (GATT) of the WHO and become binding for all international trade among GATT signatory countries.
The National Health Federation opposes the current Codex member states who wrongly believe that consumer health will be enhanced by: (1) denying that dietary supplements can benefit normal, healthy people; (2) incorrectly defining dietary supplements as only those vitamins and minerals that the body cannot manufacture itself; (3) restricting the upper-limit amounts of vitamins and minerals, particularly by referring to currently-crude and archaic medical beliefs about nutrients; (4) restricting any physiological benefit information for consumers; (5) restricting the lower-limit amounts of vitamins and minerals that may be consumed by individuals; and (6) creating ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ lists of dietary supplements.
The current direction of Codex is off course and is unfortunately driven by a statist and elitist mentality that thinks it knows what is best for consumer health and protection. This mindset comes from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s kind of ‘brave new world’ thinking that elevated central planners into a form of God on Earth. That kind of out-dated thinking has caused more misery, death and disease than can possibly be imagined.
With the doubling time of knowledge constantly accelerating, mankind cannot afford the ‘luxury’ of getting stuck in health standards established in the 20th Century while new health knowledge and products are discovered almost daily. The best way to ensure such progress and advancing health is to keep the planners and bureaucrats from straitjacketing dietary supplements with medievalist thinking and restrictions.
National Health Federation USNational Health Federation UK
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Tangerine Dream ‘Underwater Sunlight’

LF7 John Michael Greer – The Long Descent

John Michael Greer on peak oil and the end of the industrial age.
In his compelling book The Long Descent, John presents a challenging new vision of the future, traces the decline and fall of an industrial society fatally out of balance with planetary limits and shows how personal change and local action can shape a better tomorrow.
Topics discussed include: peak oil, the energy crisis, nuclear power, the myth of progress, the myth of apocalypse, the global financial crisis, population growth, technology, societal collapse, survivalism, getting rid of your TV and – the good news – beer.
BackgroundThe world is finally beginning to wake up to its critical dependence on oil and the vitally important issues associated with it such as rapidly rising energy prices and the threat of climate change. Unlike the energy crisis of the 1970s, however, there is a lurking fear that now the times are different and the crisis may not easily be resolved.
The Long Descent examines the basis of such fear through three core themes:
1. Industrial society is following the same well-worn path that has led other civilizations into decline, a path involving a much slower and more complex transformation than the sudden catastrophes imagined by so many social critics today.
2. The roots of the crisis lie in the cultural stories that shape the way we understand the world. Since problems cannot be solved with the same thinking that created them, these ways of thinking need to be replaced with others better suited to the needs of our time.
3. It is too late for massive programmes to implement top-down change; the change must come from individuals.
Hope exists in actions that range from taking up a handicraft or adopting an ‘obsolete’ technology, through planting an organic vegetable garden, taking charge of your own health care or spirituality, and building community.
John Michael Greer is a certified Master Conserver, organic gardener, and scholar of ecological history. The current Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA), his widely-cited blog, The Archdruid Report deals with peak oil, among other issues.
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Dead Can Dance ‘Spleen And Ideal’

LF6 Chris Cole - Drone Wars: The Future of Combat and Surveillance

Chris Cole of Drone Wars UK on the growing use of drones in combat and surveillance. As governments and military increasingly engage in warfare and spying by remote control, who – or what – is really in charge? Aerial drones and ground-based robots are becoming ever more intelligent and autonomous. Once they become self-aware, will humans finally be removed from split-second, life-and-death decisions?
Topics covered include the development and deployment of drones, risks and rewards of the technology, legal and ethical objections, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, terrorism, extrajudicial assassinations, autonomous and self-aware drones, non-military use of drones, robots and other land-based systems, and how drones are shaping the future of war and surveillance.
Background:Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS), also known as drones, are aircraft either controlled by ‘pilots’ from the ground or increasingly, autonomously following a pre-programmed mission. While there are dozens of different types of drones, they basically fall into two categories: those that are used for reconnaissance and surveillance purposes and those that are armed with missiles and bombs.
Use of drones has grown quickly in recent years because unlike manned aircraft they can stay aloft for many hours (Zephyr, a British drone under development, has just broken the world record by flying for over 82 hours non-stop), they are much cheaper than military aircraft and they are flown remotely so there is no danger to the flight crew.
While the British and US Reaper and Predator drones are physically in Afghanistan and Iraq, control is via satellite from Nellis and Creech USAF base outside Las Vegas, Nevada. Ground crews launch drones from the conflict zone, then operation is handed over to controllers at video screens in specially designed trailers in the Nevada desert. One person ‘flies’ the drone, another operates and monitors the cameras and sensors, while a third person is in contact with the ‘customers’, ground troops and commanders in the war zone. While armed drones were first used in the Balkans war, their use has dramatically escalated in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the CIA’s undeclared war in Pakistan.
The US has two separate ‘squadrons’ of armed drones – one run by the US Air Force and one run by the CIA. Using drones, the US Air Force has increased the number of combat air patrols it can fly by 600 per cent over the past six years; indeed at any time there are at least 36 American armed UAVS over Afghanistan and Iraq. CIA Director Leon Panetta has recently said that drones are ”’the only game in town.’ The CIA have been using drones in Pakistan and other countries to assassinate ”’terrorist leaders’. While this programme was initiated by the Bush Administration, it has increased under Obama and there have been 41 known drone strikes in Pakistan since Obama became President. Analysis by an American think tank The Brookings Institution on drone attacks in Pakistan has shown that for every militant leader killed, 10 civilians also have died.
Military drone manufacturers are looking for civilian uses for remote sensing drones to expand their markets and this includes the use of drones for domestic surveillance. Drones will make possible the dramatic expansion of the surveillance state. With the convergence of other technologies it may even make possible machine recognition of faces, behaviours, and the monitoring of individual conversations. The sky, so to speak, is the limit.
www.dronewars.net
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Brad Fiedel ‘Terminator 2’ OST

LF5 Andy Thomas – 2012: Destiny Or Disaster?

Andy Thomas on the predictions and prophecies surrounding 2012, a time rife with both danger and opportunity. Will this year bring disaster to our planet, or will some positive shift in the Earth’s energy or human consciousness take place? Topics covered include: ancient prophecies, apocalypse culture, astrology, astronomy and cosmic cycles, the sun and solar activity, individual and collective consciousness, terrorism, the police state, and the symbols and significance of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics.
Andy Thomas is one of England’s most prolific authors and lecturers on unexplained mysteries, and speaks widely in the UK and abroad.
Andy’s latest – and most major – investigation into the mystery realms, The Truth Agenda: Making Sense of Unexplained Mysteries, Global Cover-Ups and Prophecies for Our Times, was first published in 2009, and a revised and updated edition was issued in 2011. The book has been very successful in both alternative and mainstream circles, and has recently been adopted as a sociology textbook at Canada’s Vancouver Island University.
Andy is author of seven other books exploring the unexplained, including the acclaimed Vital Signs: A Complete Guide to the Crop Circle Mystery (1998, revised 2002), which has been described by many as the definitive guide to the subject and was nominated for Kindred Spirit magazine’s 2002 Best Book award.
Andy’s other books include Fields of Mystery: The Crop Circle Phenomenon in Sussex (1996), Quest For Contact: A True Story of Crop Circles, Psychics and UFOs (1997, with Paul Bura), Swirled Harvest: Views from the Crop Circle Frontline (2003), A Oneness of Mind: The Power of Collective Thought and Signs of Our Times (2003), and An Introduction to Crop Circles (2004, revised 2011). Andy has written for many other publications, including Kindred Spirit, and regularly contributes to the popular alternative journal Nexus Magazine.
Andy is the founder of Vital Signs Publishing, which in 2005 produced Geoff Stray’s greatly influential and acclaimed book Beyond 2012: Catastrophe or Ecstasy (which Andy edited), exploring the many prophecies, ancient and modern, predicted to follow the year 2012. Andy is also founder of the Changing Times organisation, which holds events to spread alternative views on important political and social issues.
A busy lecturer, Andy is renowned for his striking presentations on the unexplained and global cover-ups. He speaks extensively in England and has also lectured in many parts of the world, including America, Australia, Peru and several European countries. Andy is also co-presenter of The Glastonbury Symposium, one of the UK’s biggest and longest-running alternative events, which takes place across three days each summer.
Andy has made numerous radio and TV appearances, including major UK television spots on Richard and Judy, Esther, GMTV, The One Show and Sky’s hit series Pineapple Dance Studios. He has also featured in many programmes in countries around the globe, as well as in the US theatrically-released Crop Circles: Quest For Truth.
www.truthagenda.orgwww.vitalsignspublishing.co.uk
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Amber Asylum ‘Still Point’