Sunspots and Activist Strategy

    In the mid-1980s, writing in two small radical publications, I predicted the dissolution of the Soviet Union and freedom for eastern Europe for the exact month that it did in fact happen. I did not predict it specifically for November of 1989. I predicted it for the height of the next eleven year sunspot cycle. The height occurred in November of 1989. And, as this article argues, this was no coincidence. For sunspots give off solar flares that increase negative ionization on earth--and increased negative ionization during sunspot maximum periods increases human excitablity and activity.
Scientists have studied and quantified sunspots since the 1750s. They have noted that sunspot cycles will vary in length from 9 to 13 years and in number of sunspots, from half-a-dozen during minimum years to many hundreds during maximum years. Many scientists and analysts have admitted or claimed there is some impact on electrical grids, climate, weather, agriculture and commodity markets, economic cycles, etc. But few admit that human activity could be influenced by something as seemingly irrational -- and uncontrollable -- as sunspot activity.
       We are now at the end of sunspot cycle number 23 - numbered since the count began in the mid-1700s. This represents a bottoming out of human excitability and, if we are lucky, a period of relative peace.
Of course, people will always rebel against injustice, and as long as there are militarized states politicians will always scheme to launch new wars. However, both these phenomena peak with larger numbers of protests and wars, with greater numbers of participants, during the height of the sunspot cycle. Governmental leaders often respond to mass protests by starting wars to unite the people and suppress dissent; also they themselves may get caught up in the mania caused by negative ionization and launch irrational wars.
   We are near the beginning of the next sunspot cycle number 24. The next height of the cycle --and of mass demonstrations, riots, revolutions and wars -- will be around 2010 -2013.
Activists since the 1960s like myself have lived through several sunspot heights - the 1968-71, 1979-82, 1989-1992, 2000-2003 periods. We can think back at our own experiences of several years of frenzied activity, with big meetings and big protests, when the least indignity might lead to riots, rebellions, revolutions, civil wars. And we can remember other periods of years when once vital organizations declined or died, meetings and protests were fewer and smaller, and lethargic peoples seem willing to endure repression. Then, just when the few remaining activists were in deep despair - a magical resurgence of activity!
If governmental intelligence agencies are on their toes, they have bookmarked this page and have experts studying the effect of sunspots on activism so they can squelch or even re-direct such energies when they rise again. So it is hardly silly for activists also to look at the evidence that these cycles have influenced all of human history -- and to learn the implications of these cycles for activist organizing today and in the future.

Pundits Wonder About
"Wave of Protests"

     In an October 11, 1989 Washington Post editorial, “The Wave of Protests”, the author wrote wonderingly: “Yugoslavia, Algeria, Latvia and Armenia, Chile, Poland, Burma, South Korea: at an astounding number and range of places on either side of the weakened Iron Curtain, a stunning global pattern is taking shape. Great numbers of citizens previously atomized, intimidated or apathetic are coming into the streets to assert a collective consciousness and, mostly peacefully, to press their grievances and demand redress.”
      On January 1, 1990, in “The Year of Revolution” a Post editorial writer again wondered: “Why did it happen so fast? The great event of 1989 has been the revolution in Eastern Europe.” in a December 16, 1989 letter to the Washington Post retired professor of history Elizabeth L. Eisenstein noted "the sense of collective euphoria that the Western world is experiencing right now. Euphoria has almost always marked the early stages of modern revolutions.”
      At least one journalist had a half-witty intuition of what might be happening. In 1991 columnist Gwynne Dyer commented on some recent wacky political news by saying, "Either the sunspots are getting bad or they are putting something in the water."
  During the latest sunspot cycle height, 2000-2003, news and editorial writers first focused disprovingly on the big anti-globalization protests which marked the return of "street fighting." After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, protesters largely abandoned their passing fancy with street fighting and returned to nonviolent street protests. Then news and editorial writers were forced to report on the February 2002 and January and April 2003 worldwide protests that were the largest synchronized protests in world history, involving tens of millions of protesters in thousands of protests.
Even before those protests, a smart reporter, Elaine Caluso of FlashNews.Com took the sunspot cycle phenomena (as reported on this web site) seriously and reported on it twice, in relation to protests in Florida over Elian Gonzales and the Year 2000 Elections protests.
Now that we are at the bottom of that cycle, there is much despair among activists in many movements at the relatively low level of energy, the dissolution of activist groups and the lack of reaction to increasing government oppression. See one pundit's 2007 lament. However, even as governments continue to exchange threats, there is some hope for peace as leaders who refused to talk for the last few years, gear up to speak and negotiate again or for the first time.