Our Population Growth Totalitarian Future

As the world explodes in violence, war, riots, and uprisings, it is challenging to step back and examine the bigger picture. With airliners being shot down over the Ukraine, missiles flying between Israel and Gaza, ongoing civil war in Syria, Iraq falling apart as ISIS gains ground, dictatorship crackdown in Egypt, Turkey on the verge of revolution, Iran gaining control of Iraq, Saudi Arabia fomenting violence, Africa dissolving into chaos, South America imploding and sending their children across our purposely porous southern border, Mexico under the control of drug lords, China experiencing a slow motion real estate collapse, Japan experiencing their third decade of Keynesian failure, facing a demographic nightmare scenario while being slowly poisoned by radiation, and Chinese-Japanese relations moving towards World War II levels, it is easy to get lost in the day to day minutia of history in the making.

Why is this happening at this point in history? Why is the average American economically worse off today than they were at the height of the economic crisis in 2009? Why is the Cold War returning with a vengeance? Why is the Federal Reserve still employing emergency monetary policies when we are supposedly five years into a recovery and the stock market has attained record highs? Why do the ECB and European politicians continue to paper over the insolvency of their banks and governments? Why did the U.S. support the ouster of a dictator we supported for decades in Egypt and then support the elevation of a new dictator after we didn’t like the policies of the democratically elected president? Why did the U.S. eliminate the leader of Libya and allow the country to descend into anarchy and civil war? Why did the U.S. fund and provoke a revolutionary overthrow of a democratically elected leader in the Ukraine? Why did the U.S. fund and arm Al Qaeda associated rebels in Syria who are now fighting our supposed allies in Iraq? Why has the U.S. been occupying Afghanistan for the last thirteen years with the result being a Taliban that is stronger than ever? Why are the BRIC countries forming a monetary union to challenge USD domination? Why is the U.S. attempting to provoke Russia into a conflict with NATO?

Why is the U.S. government collecting every electronic communication made by every American? Why is the U.S. government spying on world leader allies? Why is the U.S. government providing military equipment to local police forces? Why is the U.S. military conducting training exercises within U.S. cities? Why is the U.S. government attempting to restrict Second Amendment rights? Why is the U.S. government attempting to control and lockdown the internet? Why has the U.S. government chosen to treat the Fourth Amendment as if it is obsolete? Why is the national debt still rising by $750 billion per year ($2 billion per day) if the economy is back to normal? Why have 12 million working age Americans left the workforce since the economic recovery began? How could the unemployment rate be back at 2008 levels when there are 14 million more working age Americans and the same number employed as in 2008? Why are there 13 million more people on food stamps today than there were at the start of the economic recovery in 2009? Why have home prices risen by 25% since 2012 when mortgage applications have been at fourteen year lows? Why are Wall Street profits and bonuses at record highs while the real median household income stagnates at 1998 levels?

Why do 98% of incumbent politicians get re-elected when congressional approval levels are lower than whale shit? Why are oil prices four times higher than they were in 2003 if the U.S. is supposedly on the verge of energy independence? Why do the corporate controlled mainstream media choose to entertain and regurgitate government propaganda rather than inform, investigate and seek the truth? Why do corporations and shadowy billionaires control the politicians, media, judges, and financial system in their ravenous quest for more riches? Why has the public allowed a privately owned bank to control our currency and inflate away 96% of its value in 100 years? Why have American parents allowed their children to be programmed and dumbed down by government run public schools? Why have Americans allowed themselves to be lured into debt in an effort to appear wealthy and successful? Why have Americans permitted their brains to atrophy through massive doses of social media, reality TV, iGadget addiction, and a cultural environment of techno-narcissism? Why have Americans lost their desire to read, think critically, question authority, act responsibly, defer gratification, and care about future generations? Why have Americans sacrificed their freedoms, liberties and rights for the false expectation of safety and security? Why will we pay dearly for our delusional, materialistic, debt financed idiocy? – Because we never learn the lessons of history.

There are so many questions and no truthful answers forthcoming from those who pass for leaders in this increasingly totalitarian world. Our willful ignorance, apathy, hubris and arrogance will have consequences. Just because it hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen. The cyclicality of history guarantees a further deepening of this Crisis. The world has evolved from totalitarian hegemony to republican liberty and regressed back to totalitarianism throughout the centuries. Anyone honestly assessing the current state of the world and our country would unequivocally conclude we have regressed back towards a totalitarian regime where a small cabal of powerful oligarchs believes they can control and manipulate the masses in their gluttonous desire for treasure. Aldous Huxley foretold all the indicators of a world descending into totalitarianism due to overpopulation, propaganda, brainwashing, consumerism, and dumbing down of a distracted populace in his 1958 reassessment of his 1931 novel Brave New World.

Is There a Limit?

“At the rate of increase prevailing between the birth of Christ and the death of Queen Elizabeth I, it took sixteen centuries for the population of the earth to double. At the present rate it will double in less than half a century. And this fantastically rapid doubling of our numbers will be taking place on a planet whose most desirable and pro­ductive areas are already densely populated, whose soils are being eroded by the frantic efforts of bad farmers to raise more food, and whose easily available mineral capital is being squandered with the reckless extravagance of a drunken sailor getting rid of his accumulated pay.” –Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958

Demographics are easy to extrapolate and arrive at an accurate prediction, as long as the existing conditions and trends remain relatively constant. Huxley was accurate in his doubling prediction. The world population was 2.9 billion in 1958. It only took 39 years to double again to 5.8 billion in 1997. It has grown by 24% in the last 17 years to the current level of 7.2 billion. According to United Nations projections, world population is projected to reach 9.6 billion in 2050. The fact that it would take approximately 70 years for the world’s population to double from the 1997 level reveals a slowing growth rate, as the death rate in many developed countries surpasses their birth rate. The population of the U.S. grew from 175 million in 1958 to 320 million today, an 83% increase in 56 years.

The rapid population growth over the last century from approximately 1.8 billion in 1914, despite two horrific world wars, is attributable to cheap, easy to access oil and advances in medical technology made possible by access to cheap oil. The projection of 9.6 billion in 2050 is based upon an assumption the world’s energy, food and water resources can sustain that many people, no world wars kill a few hundred million people, no incurable diseases spread across the globe and there is no catastrophic geologic, climate, or planetary events. I’ll take the under on the 9.6 billion.

Anyone viewing the increasingly violent world situation without bias can already see the strain that overpopulation has created. Today, six countries contain half the world’s population.

A cursory examination of population trends around the world provides a frightening glimpse into a totalitarian future marked by vicious resource wars, violent upheaval and starvation for millions. India, a country one third the size of the United States, has four times the population of the United States. A vast swath of the population lives in poverty and squalor. India contains the largest concentration (25%) of people living below the World Bank’s international poverty line of $1.25 per day. According to the U.N. India is expected to add 400 million people to its cities by 2050. Its capital city Delhi already ranks as the second largest in the world, with 25 million inhabitants. The city has more than doubled in size since 1990. The assumptions in these U.N. projections are flawed. Without rapidly expanding economic growth, capital formation and energy resources, the ability to employ, house, feed, clothe, transport, and sustain 400 million more people will be impossible. Disease, starvation, civil unrest, war and a totalitarian government would be the result. With its mortal enemy Pakistan, already the sixth most populated country in the world, jamming 182 million people into an area one quarter the size of India and one twelfth the size of the U.S. and growing faster than India, war over resources and space will be inevitable. And both countries have nuclear arms.

More than half the globe’s inhabitants now live in urban areas, with China, India and Nigeria forecast to see the most urban growth over the next 30 years. Twenty-four years ago, there were 10 megacities with populations pushing above the 10 million mark. Today, there are 28 megacities with areas of developing nations seeing faster growth: 16 in Asia, 4 in Latin America, 3 in Africa, 3 in Europe and 2 in North America. The world is expected to have 41 sprawling megacities over the next few decades with developing nations representing the majority of that growth. Today, Tokyo, with 38 million people, is the largest in the world, followed by New Delhi, Jakarta, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Manila, and Karachi – all exceeding 20 million people.

To highlight the rapid population growth of the developing world, the New York metropolitan area containing 18 million people was ranked as the third largest urban area in the world in 1990. Today it is ranked ninth and is expected to be ranked fourteenth by 2030. The U.S. had the fewest births since 1998 last year at 3.95 million. We also had the highest recorded deaths in history at 2.54 million.  The fertility rate for 20- to 24-year-olds is now 83.1 births per 1,000 women, a record low. That combination created a gap in births over deaths that is the lowest it has been in 35 years.

This is the plight of the developed world (U.S., Europe, Japan) and even China (due to one child policy). According to the U.N. report, the population of developed regions will remain largely unchanged at around 1.3 billion from now until 2050. In contrast, the 49 least developed countries are projected to double in size from around 900 million people in 2013 to 1.8 billion in 2050. The rapid growth of desperately poor third world countries like Nigeria, Afghanistan, Niger, Congo, Ethiopia, and Uganda will create tremendous strain on their economic, political, social, and infrastructural systems. Nigeria’s population is projected to surpass the U.S. by 2050. Japan, Europe and Russia are in demographic death spirals. China is neutral, and the U.S. is expected to grow by another 89 million people. I wonder how many of them the BLS will classify as not in the labor force.

What are the implications to mankind of the world adding another billion people in the next twelve years, primarily in the poorest countries of Asia, Africa and South America? What does the world think of the U.S., which constitutes 4.4% of the world’s population, but consumes 20% of the world’s oil production and 24% of the world’s food? Will there be consequences to having the 85 richest people on earth accumulating as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion, with 1.2 billion surviving on less than $1.25 per day? Can a planet with finite amount of easily accessible financially viable extractable resources support an ever increasing number of people? Is there a limit to growth? I believe these questions will be answered in the next fifteen years as the dire consequences play out in civil strife, resource wars, totalitarian regimes, and societal collapse.  cycles always sweep away the existing social order and replace it with something new. It could be better or far worse.

Impact of Over-Population

“The problem of rapidly increasing numbers in relation to natural resources, to social stability and to the well-being of individuals — this is now the central problem of mankind; and it will remain the central problem certainly for another century, and perhaps for several centuries thereafter. Unsolved, that problem will render insoluble all our other problems. Worse still, it will create conditions in which individual free­dom and the social decencies of the democratic way of life will become impossible, almost unthinkable. Not all dictatorships arise in the same way. There are many roads to Brave New World; but perhaps the straightest and the broadest of them is the road we are travel­ing today, the road that leads through gigantic num­bers and accelerating increases.” 

The turmoil roiling the world today is a function of Huxley’s supposition that over-population pushes societies towards centralization and ultimately totalitarianism. The relentless growth in the world’s population, not matched by growth in energy resources, water, food, and living space, results in increasing tension, anger, economic decline, government dependency, war and ultimately totalitarianism. Huxley believed politicians and governments would increasingly resort to propaganda and misinformation to mislead citizens as the problems worsened and freedoms were revoked. Could this recent statement by our commander and chief of propaganda have made Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels any prouder?

“The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed then it’s ever been. It is more educated than it’s ever been.”

I’m sure the people living in Gaza, the Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Thailand, Turkey, Africa and American urban ghettos would concur with Obama’s less violent than ever mantra. Disease (Cholera, Malaria, Hepatitis, Aids, Tuberculosis, Ebola, Plague, SARS) and malnutrition beset third world countries, while the U.S. obesity epidemic caused by consumption of corporate processed food peddled to the masses through diabolical marketing methods enriches the mega-corporate food companies, as well as the corporate sick care complex. Religious wars and culture wars rage across the world as intolerance for others beliefs reaches all-time highs. After three decades of government controlled public education they have succeeded in dumbing down the masses through social engineering, propaganda, and promoting equality over excellence. Obama should stop trying to think and stick to what he does best – golf and fundraising. After reading his drivel, I’m reminded of a far more pertinent quote from Huxley:

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

The chart below details the fact that 12% of the world’s population in countries producing 9% of the world’s oil are currently in a state of war. The violence, war, and civil unrest roiling the Ukraine, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan are a direct result of U.S. meddling, instigation, and provocation. The U.S. government funds dictators (Hussein, Mubarak, Assad, Gaddafi) until they no longer serve their interests, engineer the overthrow of democratically elected leaders in countries (Iran, Egypt, Ukraine) that don’t toe the line, and dole out billions in military aid and arms to countries around the world in an effort to make them do our dirty work and enrich the military industrial complex. The true motivation behind most of the violence, intrigue and war is the U.S. need to maintain the U.S. petro-dollar hegemony and to control the flow of oil and natural gas throughout the world. The ruling oligarchy’s power, influence, and wealth are dependent upon dictating currency valuations and flow of oil and gas from foreign fiefdoms.

In Huxley’s 1931 Brave New World fable the world’s population is maintained at an optimum level (just under 2 billion) calculated by those in control. This is done through technology and biological manipulation. Procreation through sexual intercourse is prohibited. Creation of the desired number of people in each class is scientifically determined and the classes are conditioned from birth to fulfill their roles in society. When Huxley reassessed his novel in 1958’s Brave New World Revisited he didn’t argue for an optimum level of population. He simply hypothesized a close correlation between too many people, multiplying too rapidly, and the formulation of authoritarian philosophies and rise of totalitarian sys­tems of government.

The introduction of penicillin, DDT, and clean water into even the poorest countries on the planet had the effect of rapidly decreasing death rates around the globe. Meanwhile, birth rates continued to increase due to religious, social and cultural taboos surrounding birth control and the illiteracy and ignorance of those in the poorest regions of the world. The ultimate result has been an explosion in population growth in the developing world, least able to sustain that growth. Huxley just uses common sense in concluding that as an ever growing population presses more heavily upon accessible resources, the economic position of the society undergoing this ordeal becomes ever more precarious.

It essentially comes down to the laws of economics. Most of the developing world is economic basket cases. They cannot produce food, consumer goods, housing, schools, infrastructure, teachers, managers, scientists or educated workers at the same rate as their population growth. Therefore, it is impossible to improve the wretched conditions of the vast majority, as they wallow in squalor. Unless a country can produce more than it consumes, it cannot generate the surplus capital needed to invest in machinery, agricultural production, manufacturing facilities, and education. The rapidly growing population sinks further into poverty and despair. Huxley grasps the nefarious implications for freedom and liberty as over-population wreaks havoc around the globe:

“Whenever the economic life of a nation becomes pre­carious, the central government is forced to assume additional responsibilities for the general welfare. It must work out elaborate plans for dealing with a criti­cal situation; it must impose ever greater restrictions upon the activities of its subjects; and if, as is very likely, worsening economic conditions result in polit­ical unrest, or open rebellion, the central government must intervene to preserve public order and its own authority. More and more power is thus concentrated in the hands of the executives and their bureaucratic managers.”– Aldous Huxley – Brave New World Revisited – 1958

Despots, dictators, and power hungry presidents arise in an atmosphere of fear, scarce resources, hopelessness, and misery. As the power of the central government grows the freedoms, liberties and rights of the people are diminished and ultimately relinquished.

Source: The Millennium Report

Avoiding WWIII

There Is A Great Risk of WWIII Over Ukraine / Crimea. But it could be avoided if Russia and China act fast, dumping their dollar reserves, breaking the US dollar, thereby breaking the US economy.They don’t need all of the BRICS for that.

Mr. Putin knows it, Mr. Xi knows it and Mr. Obama knows it – that Washington is holding the shorter stick.

What do the gentlemen Putin and Xi wait for?

For more brazen actions by Washington and its European lackeys and puppets?

It’s already widely known that the snipers in Kiev who killed almost 100 people were mercenaries paid for and were following US orders – straight from the US embassy in Kiev.

Blackwater and other US mercenaries – proxy armies – are roaming the streets of Kiev and other Ukrainian western cities who have indicated their desire to stay allied with Russia.

Mr. Putin knows it.

What else is needed to show the empire and its marionettes that they are naked? That they will be severely hurt if they follow Obama’s and the Pentagon’s unconscious war cries? – If they continue to allow the presstitute media to numb their brains?

Why doesn’t Russia start ‘sampling’ what it could do? Like cutting of gas supplies to Europe – for starters? That seems to be easy enough.

Of course, Washington needs wars not only to reach global hegemony, but also for its mickey-mouse economy to survive; this hell-bound military / security industrial economy that produces about 60% of the US GDP – plus the endless production of unbacked dollars not worth the paper they are printed on – debt that is bought the world over in the form of Treasury Bonds as reserve currency – which is the driver of the American economy’s (sic) senseless consumerism – accounting for almost the reminder of US economic output.

What would be easier than to cut the world lose from this strangling chain – and send Washington and its stooges down the drain of national bankruptcy?

And starting a new segment of civilization, a new currency, a basket of moneys from sound and healthy economies?

There are plenty of countries who would like to participate in such a new beginning, even if the BRICS cannot get their act together fast enough — Vietnam, Malaysia, Iran, Venezuela with the planet’s largest known hydrocarbon reserves – as well as Central Asian and other hydrocarbon producers.

The world populations may have to go through some dry stretches and trying periods – but would come out of it as winners – happy winners of a fairer global economy, where long-lost national sovereignties would be reinstated, with new partnerships and with of a new sense of human and societal solidarity.

Very likely, the presstitute, the propaganda whores of today’s linchpins would want to switch seats to side with the ‘winners’, as they imagine it’s with them that new lucre is waiting.

Wrong. These media criminals, who have millions of lives – or deaths – on their spineless backs, would be shed, floored, ignored annihilated.

New and truth journalism would flourish, instead.

Why is it so difficult to imagine such a new-born and healthy world? – And act on it fast? – Before our hapless humanity allows to be self-destroyed by a nuclear WWIII?

Peter Koenig is an economist and former World Bank staff. He worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources.

The Sharing Economy: An Introduction To Its Political Evolution

Can the sharing economy movement address the root causes of the world’s converging crises? Unless the sharing of resources is promoted in relation to human rights and concerns for equity, democracy, social justice and sustainability, then such claims are without substantiation – although there are many hopeful signs that the conversation is slowly moving in the right direction. 

In recent years, the concept and practice of sharing resources is fast becoming a mainstream phenomenon across North America, Western Europe and other world regions. The internet is awash with articles and websites that celebrate the vast potential of sharing human and physical assets, in everything from cars and bicycles to housing, workplaces, food, household items, and even time or expertise. According to most general definitions that are widely available online, the sharing economy leverages information technology to empower individuals or organisations to distribute, share and re-use excess capacity in goods and services. The business icons of the new sharing economy include the likes of Airbnb, Zipcar, Lyft, Taskrabbit and Poshmark, although  for-profit as well as non-profit organisations are associated with this burgeoning movement that is predicated, in one way or another, on the age-old principle of sharing.

As the sharing economy receives increasing attention from the media, a debate is beginning to emerge around its overall importance and future direction. There is no doubt that the emergent paradigm of sharing resources is set to expand and further flourish in coming years, especially in the face of continuing economic recession, government austerity and environmental concerns. As a result of the concerted advocacy work and mobilisation of sharing groups in the US, fifteen city mayors have now signed the  in which they officially recognise the importance of economic sharing for both the public and private sectors. Seoul in South Korea has also adopted a city-funded project called  in which it plans to expand its ‘sharing infrastructure’, promote existing sharing enterprises and incubate sharing economy start-ups as a partial solution to problems in housing, transportation, job creation and community cohesion. Furthermore, Medellin in Colombia is embracing transport-sharing schemes and reimagining the use of its shared public spaces, while Ecuador is the first country in the world to commit itself to becoming a ‘shared knowledge’-based society, under an  named ‘buen saber’.

Many proponents of the sharing economy therefore have  for a future based on sharing as the new modus operandi. Almost everyone recognises that drastic change is needed in the wake of a collapsed economy and an overstretched planet, and the old idea of the American dream – in which a culture that promotes excessive consumerism and commercialisation leads us to see the ‘good life’ as the ‘goods life’, as described by the  – is no longer tenable in a world of rising affluence among possibly 9.6 billion people by 2050. Hence more and more people are rejecting the materialistic attitudes that defined recent decades, and are gradually shifting towards a different way of living that is based on connectedness and sharing rather than ownership and conspicuous consumption. ‘Sharing more and owning less’ is the ethic that underlies a discernible change in attitudes among affluent society that is being led by today’s young, tech-savvy generation known as Generation Y or the Millennials.

However, many entrepreneurial sharing pioneers also profess a big picture vision of what sharing can achieve in relation to the world’s most pressing issues, such as population growth, environmental degradation and . As  posits, for example, a network of cities that embrace the sharing economy could mount up into a Sharing Regions Network, then Sharing Nations, and finally a Sharing World: “A globally networked sharing economy would be a whole new paradigm, a game-changer for humanity and the planet”. Neal Gorenflo, the co-founder and publisher of Shareable, also argues that peer-to-peer collaboration can form the basis of a new social contract, with an extensive sharing movement acting as the that can address the root causes of both poverty and climate change. Or to quote the words of Benita Matofska, founder of The People Who Share, we are going to have to “” if we want to face up to a sustainable future. In such a light, it behoves us all to investigate the potential of sharing to effect a social and economic transformation that is sufficient to meet the grave challenges of the 21st century.

Two sides of a debate on sharing

There is no doubt that sharing resources can contribute to the greater good in a number of ways, from economic as well as environmental and social perspectives. A number of studies show the environmental benefits that are common to many sharing schemes, such as the resource efficiency and potential energy savings that could result from  and  in cities. Almost all forms of localised sharing are economical, and can lead to  for individuals and enterprises. In terms of subjective well-being and social impacts, common experience demonstrates how sharing can also help us to feel connected to neighbours or co-workers, and even build community and .

Few could disagree on these beneficial aspects of sharing resources within communities or across municipalities, but some controversy surrounds the broader vision of how the sharing economy movement can contribute to a fair and sustainable world. For many advocates of the burgeoning trend towards economic sharing in modern cities, it is about much more than couch-surfing, car sharing or tool libraries, and holds the potential to disrupt the individualist and materialistic assumptions of neoliberal capitalism. For example, Juliet Schor in her book  perceives that a new economics based on sharing could be an antidote to the hyper-individualised, hyper-consumer culture of today, and could help rebuild the social ties that have been lost through market culture. Annie Leonard of the Story of Stuff project, in her  on how to move society in an environmentally sustainable and just direction, also considers sharing as a key ‘game changing’ solution that could help to transform the basic goals of the economy.

Many  see the sharing economy as a path towards achieving widespread prosperity within the earth’s natural limits, and an essential first step on the road to more localised economies and egalitarian societies. But far from everyone perceives that participating in the sharing economy, at least in its existing form and praxis, is a ‘political act’ that can realistically challenge consumption-driven economics and the culture of individualism – a question that is raised (although not yet comprehensively answered) in a  from Friends of the Earth, as discussed further below. Various commentators argue that the proliferation of new business ventures under the umbrella of sharing are nothing more than “supply and demand continuing its perpetual adjustment to new technologies and fresh opportunities”, and that the concept of the sharing economy is being  – a debate that was given impetus when the car sharing pioneers, Zipcar, were bought up by the established rental firm Avis.

Recently,  business and economics correspondent controversially reiterated the observation that making money from new modes of consumption is not really ‘sharing’ per se, asserting that the sharing economy is therefore a “dumb term” that “deserves to die”. Other journalists have criticised the superficial treatment that the sharing economy typically receives from financial pundits and tech reporters, especially the claims that small business start-ups based on monetised forms of sharing are a  – regardless of drastic cutbacks in welfare and public services, unprecedented rates of income inequality, and the . The author Evgeny Morozov, writing an , has gone as far as saying that the sharing economy is having a pernicious effect on equality and basic working conditions, in that it is fully compliant with market logic, is far from valuing human relationships over profit, and is even amplifying the worst excesses of the dominant economic model. In the context of the erosion of full-time employment, the assault on trade unions and the disappearance of healthcare and insurance benefits, he argues that the sharing economy is accelerating the transformation of workers into “always-on self-employed entrepreneurs who must think like brands”, leading him to dub it “neoliberalism on steroids”.

Problems of definition

Although it is impossible to reconcile these polarised views, part of the problem in assessing the true potential of economic sharing is one of vagueness in definition and wide differences in understanding. The conventional interpretation of the sharing economy is at present focused on its financial and commercial aspects, with continuous news reports proclaiming its  and potential as a “co-commerce revolution”. Rachel Botsman, a leading entrepreneurial thinker on the potential of collaboration and sharing through digital technologies to change our lives, has attempted to clarify what the sharing economy actually is in order to prevent further confusion over the different terms in general use. In her , she notes how the term ‘sharing economy’ is often muddled with other new ideas and is in fact a subset of ‘collaborative consumption’ within the entire ‘collaborative economy’ movement, and has a rather restricted meaning in terms of “sharing underutilized assets from spaces to skills to stuff for monetary or non-monetary benefits” [see  of the presentation]. This interpretation of changing consumer behaviours and lifestyles revolves around the “maximum utilization of assets through efficient models of redistribution and shared access”, which isn’t necessarily predicated on an ethic of ‘sharing’ by any strict definition.

Other interpretations of the sharing economy are far broader and less constrained by capitalistic assumptions, as demonstrated in the Friends of the Earth briefing paper on  written by Professor Julian Agyeman et al. In their estimation, what’s missing from most of these current definitions and categorisations of economic sharing is a consideration of “the communal, collective production that characterises the collective commons”. A broadened ‘sharing spectrum’ that they propose therefore not only focuses on goods and services within the mainstream economy (which is almost always considered in relation to affluent, middle-class lifestyles), but also includes the non-material or intangible aspects of sharing such as well-being and capability [see  of the brief]. From this wider perspective, they assert that the cutting edge of the sharing economy is often not commercial and includes informal behaviours like the unpaid care, support and nurturing that we provide for one another, as well as the shared use of infrastructure and shared public services.

This sheds a new light on governments as the “”, and suggests that the history of the welfare state in Europe and other forms of social protection is, in fact, also integral to the evolution of shared resources in cities and within different countries. Yet an understanding of sharing from this more holistic viewpoint doesn’t have to be limited to the state provision of healthcare, education, and other public services. As Agyeman et al elucidate, cooperatives of all kinds (from worker to housing to retailer and consumer co-ops) also offer alternative models for shared service provision and a different perspective on economic sharing, one in which equity and collective ownership is prioritised. Access to natural common resources such as air and water can also be understood in terms of sharing, which may then prioritise the common good of all people over commercial or private interests and market mechanisms. This would include controversial issues of land ownership and land use, raising questions over how best to share land and urban space more equitably – such as through community land trusts, or through new policies and incentives such as land value taxation.

The politics of sharing

Furthermore, Agyeman et al argue that an understanding of sharing in relation to the collective commons gives rise to explicitly political questions concerning the shared public realm and participatory democracy. This is central to the many countercultural movements of recent years (such as the Occupy movement and Middle East protests since 2011, and the Taksim Gezi Park protests in 2013) that have reclaimed public space to symbolically challenge unjust power dynamics and the increasing trend toward privatisation that is central to neoliberal hegemony. Sharing is also directly related to the functioning of a healthy democracy, the authors reason, in that a vibrant sharing economy (when interpreted in this light) can counter the political apathy that characterises modern consumer society. By reinforcing values of community and collaboration over the individualism and consumerism that defines our present-day cultures and identities, they argue that participation in sharing could ultimately be reflected in the political domain. They also argue that a shared public realm is essential for the expression of participatory democracy and the development of a good society, not least as this provides a necessary venue for popular debate and public reasoning that can influence political decisions. Indeed the “emerging shareability paradigm”, as they describe it, is said to reflect the basic tenets of the  (RTTC) – an international urban movement that fights for democracy, justice and sustainability in cities and mobilises against the privatisation of common goods and public spaces.

The intention in briefly outlining some of these differing interpretations of sharing is to demonstrate how considerations of politics, justice, ethics and sustainability are slowly being allied with the sharing economy concept. A paramount example is the Friends of the Earth briefing paper outlined above, which was written as part of FOEI’s  series on cities that promoted sharing as “a political force to be reckoned with” and a “”. Yet many further examples could also be mentioned, such as the New Economics Foundation’s ‘’ which promotes the old-fashioned ethic of sharing as part of a new way of living to replace the collapsed model of debt-fuelled overconsumption. There are also signs that many influential proponents of the sharing economy – as generally understood today in terms of new economic models driven by peer-to-peer technology that enable access to rather than ownership of resources – are beginning to query the commercial direction that the movement is taking, and are instead promoting more politicised forms of social change that are not merely based on micro-enterprise or the monetisation/branding of high-tech innovations.

Janelle Orsi, a California-based ‘sharing lawyer’ and author of , is particularly inspirational in this regard; for her, the sharing economy encompasses such a broad range of activities that it is hard to define, although she suggests that all its activities are tied together in how they harness the existing resources of a community and grow its wealth. This is in contradistinction to the mainstream economy that mostly generates wealth for people outside of people’s communities, and inherently generates extreme inequalities and ecological destruction – which Orsi contends that the sharing economy can help reverse. The problem she recognises is that the so-called sharing economy we usually hear about in the media is built upon a business-as-usual foundation, which is privately owned and often funded by venture capital (as is the case with Airbnb, Lyft, Zipcar, Taskrabbit et cetera). As a result, the same business structures that created the economic problems of today are buying up new sharing economy companies and turning them into ever larger, more centralised enterprises that are not concerned about people’s well-being, community cohesion, local economic diversity, sustainable job creation and so on (not to mention the risk of re-creating stock valuation bubbles that overshadowed the earlier generation of  enterprises). The only way to ensure that new sharing economy companies fulfil their potential to create economic empowerment for users and their communities, Orsi argues, is through cooperative conversion – and she makes a  for the democratic, non-exploitative, redistributive and truly ‘sharing’ potential of worker and consumer cooperatives in all their guises.

Sharing as a path to systemic change

There are important reasons to query which direction this emerging movement for sharing will take in the years ahead. As prominent supporters of the sharing economy recognise, like Janelle Orsi and Juliet Schor, it offers both opportunities and reasons for optimism as well as pitfalls and some serious concerns. On the one hand, it reflects a growing shift in our values and social identities as ‘citizens vs consumers’, and is helping us to rethink notions of ownership and prosperity in a world of finite resources, scandalous waste and massive wealth disparities. Perhaps its many proponents are right, and the sharing economy represents the first step towards transitioning away from the over-consumptive, materially-intense and hoarding lifestyles of North American, Western European and other rich societies. Perhaps sharing really is fast becoming a counter-cultural movement that can help us to value relationships more than things, and offer us the possibility of re-imagining politics and constructing a more participative democracy, which could ultimately pose a challenge to the global capitalist/consumerist model of development that is built on private interests and debt at the cost of shared interests and true wealth.

On the other hand, critics are right to point out that the sharing economy in its present form is hardly a threat to existing power structures or a movement that represents the kind of radical changes we need to make the world a better place. Far from reorienting the economy towards greater equity and a better quality of life, as proposed by writers such as Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, Tim Jackson, Herman Daly and John Cobb, it is arguable that most forms of sharing via peer-to-peer networks are at risk of being subverted by conventional business practices. There is a perverse irony in trying to imagine the logical conclusion of these trends: new models of collaborative consumption and co-production that are co-opted by private interests and venture capitalists, and increasingly geared towards affluent middle-class types or so-called bourgeois bohemians (the ‘bobos’), to the exclusion of those on low incomes and therefore to the detriment of a more equal society. Or new sharing technology platforms that enable governments and corporations to collaborate in pursuing more intrusive controls over and greater surveillance of citizens. Or new social relationships based on sharing in the context of increasingly privatised and enclosed public spaces, such as gated communities within which private facilities and resources are shared.

This is by no means an inevitable outcome, but what is clear from this brief analysis is that the commercialisation and depoliticisation of economic sharing poses risks and contradictions that call into question its potential to transform society for the benefit of everyone. Unless the sharing of resources is promoted in relation to human rights and concerns for equity, democracy, social justice and sound environmental stewardship, then the various claims that sharing is a new paradigm that can address the world’s interrelated crises is indeed empty rhetoric or utopian thinking without any substantiation. Sharing our skills through Hackerspaces, our unused stuff through GoodShuffle or a community potluck through mealshare is, in and of itself, a generally positive phenomenon that deserves to be enjoyed and fully participated in, but let’s not pretend that car shares, clothes swaps, co-housing, shared vacation homes and so on are going to seriously address economic and climate chaos, unjust power dynamics or inequitable wealth distribution.

Sharing from the local to the global

If we look at sharing through the lens of , however, as civil society organisations and others are now beginning to do, then the true possibilities of sharing resources within and among the world’s nations are vast and all-encompassing: to enhance equity, rebuild community, improve well-being, democratise national and global governance, defend and promote the global commons, even to point the way towards a  to replace the present stage of competitive neoliberal globalisation. We are not there yet, of course, and the popular understanding of economic sharing today is clearly focused on the more personal forms of giving and exchange among individuals or through online business ventures, which is mainly for the benefit of high-income groups in the world’s most economically advanced nations. But the fact that this conversation is now being broadened to include the role of governments in sharing public infrastructure, political power and economic resources within countries is a hopeful indication that the emerging sharing movement is slowly moving in the right direction.

Already, questions are being raised as to what sharing resources means for the poorest people in the developing world, and how a revival of economic sharing in the richest countries can be spread globally as a solution to converging crises. It may not be long until the idea of  – driven by an awareness of impending ecological catastrophe, life-threatening extremes of inequality, and escalating conflict over natural resources – is the subject of every dinner party and kitchen table conversation.

References:

Agyeman, Julian, Duncan McLaren and Adrianne Schaefer-Borrego, , Friends of the Earth briefing paper, September 2013.

Agyeman, Julian, , , 21st September 2012.

Bollier, David, , 20th September 2013, 

Botsman, Rachel, , , 21st November 2013.

Botsman, Rachel, , Collaborative Lab on , 19th November 2013.

Childs, Mike, , Shareable.net, 5th November 2013.

Collaborativeconsumption.com, , 26th June 2013.

Daly, Herman and John Cobb, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future, Beacon Press, 1991.

Eberlein, Sven, , Shareable.net, 20th February 2013.

Enright, Michael in interview with Benita Matofska and Aidan Enns, , CBC Radio, 16th December 2012.

Friends of the Earth, , 26th September 2013.

Gaskins, Kim, , Latitude, 1st June 2010.

Gorenflo, Neal, , Shareable.net, 31st July 2013.

Grahl, Jodi (trans.), , International Alliance of Inhabitants et al, May 2005.

Griffiths, Rachel, , Co-operatives UK, London UK, 2011.

Grigg, Kat, , The Solutions Journal, 20th September 2013.

Heinberg, Richard, , Post Carbon Institute, 12th November 2013.

Herbst, Moira, , The Guardian, 7th January 2014.

Jackson, Tim, Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet, Routeledge, 2011.

Johnson, Cat, , Shareable.net, 9th January 2014.

Kasser, Tim, The High Price of Materialism, MIT Press, 2003.

Kisner, Corinne, , National League of Cities, City Practice Brief, Washington D.C., 2011.

Leonard, Annie, , The Story of Stuff Project, October 2013, 

Martin, Elliot and Susan Shaheen, , Access (UCTC magazine), No. 38 Spring 2011.

Matofska, Benita, , Friends of the Earth blog, 4th January 2013.

Morozov, Evgeny, , Financial Times, 14th October 2013.

Olson. Michael J. and Andrew D. Connor, , Piper Jaffray, November 2013.

Opinium Research and Marke2ing, , 14th November 2012.

Orsi, Janelle and Doskow, Emily, The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life and Build Community, Nolo, May 2009.

Orsi, Janelle et al, , Shareable / The sustainable Economics Law Centre, September 2013.

Orsi, Janelle, , Shareable.net, 16th September 2013.

Quilligan, James B., , Kosmos Journal, Fall/Winter 2009.

Schifferes, Jonathan, , , 6th August 2013.

Schifferes, Jonathan, , , 6th August 2013.

Schor, Juliet, Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, Tantor Media, 2010.

Simms, Andrew and Ruth Potts, , New Economics Foundation, November 2012.

Standing, Guy, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, Bloomsbury Academic, 2011.

Tennant, Ian, , Friends of the Earth blog, 8th January 2014.

Wiesmann, Thorsten, , Oiushare.net, February 2013.

Wilkinson, Richard and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Penguin, 2010.

Yglesias, Matthew, , Slate.com, 26th December 2013.

The Retail Death Rattle

“I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest, to make money they don’t want, to buy things they don’t need, to impress people they don’t like.” ― 

If ever a chart provided unequivocal proof the economic recovery storyline is a fraud, the one below is the smoking gun. November and December retail sales account for 20% to 40% of annual retail sales for most retailers. The number of visits to retail stores has plummeted by 50% since 2010. Please note this was during a supposed economic recovery. Also note consumer spending accounts for 70% of GDP. Also note credit card debt outstanding is 7% lower than its level in 2010 and 16% below its peak in 2008. Retailers like J.C. Penney, Best Buy, Sears, Radio Shack and Barnes & Noble continue to report appalling sales and profit results, along with listings of store closings. Even the heavyweights like Wal-Mart and Target continue to report negative comp store sales. How can the government and mainstream media be reporting an economic recovery when the industry that accounts for 70% of GDP is in free fall? The answer is that 99% of America has not had an economic recovery. Only Bernanke’s 1% owner class have benefited from his QE/ZIRP induced stock market levitation.

The entire economic recovery storyline is a sham built upon easy money funneled by the Fed to the Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks so they can use their HFT supercomputers to drive the stock market higher, buy up the millions of homes they foreclosed upon to artificially drive up home prices, and generate profits through rigging commodity, currency, and bond markets, while reducing loan loss reserves because they are free to value their toxic assets at anything they please – compliments of the spineless nerds at the FASB. GDP has been artificially propped up by the Federal government through the magic of EBT cards, SSDI for the depressed and downtrodden, never ending extensions of unemployment benefits, billions in student loans to University of Phoenix prodigies, and subprime auto loans to deadbeats from the Government Motors financing arm – Ally Financial (85% owned by you the taxpayer). The country is being kept afloat on an ocean of debt and delusional belief in the power of central bankers to steer this ship through a sea of icebergs just below the surface.

The absolute collapse in retail visitor counts is the warning siren that this country is about to collide with the reality Americans have run out of time, money, jobs, and illusions. The most amazingly delusional aspect to the chart above is retailers continued to add 44 million square feet in 2013 to the almost 15 billion existing square feet of retail space in the U.S. That is approximately 47 square feet of retail space for every person in America. Retail CEOs are not the brightest bulbs in the sale bin, as exhibited by the CEO of Target and his gross malfeasance in protecting his customers’ personal financial information. Of course, the 44 million square feet added in 2013 is down 85% from the annual increases from 2000 through 2008. The exponential growth model, built upon a never ending flow of consumer credit and an endless supply of cheap fuel, has reached its limit of growth. The titans of Wall Street and their puppets in Washington D.C. have wrung every drop of faux wealth from the dying middle class. There are nothing left but withering carcasses and bleached bones.

The impact of this retail death spiral will be vast and far reaching. A few factoids will help you understand the coming calamity:

• There are approximately 109,500 shopping centers in the United States ranging in size from the small convenience centers to the large super-regional malls.
• There are in excess of 1 million retail establishments in the United States occupying 15 billion square feet of space and generating over $4.4 trillion of annual sales. This includes 8,700 department stores, 160,000 clothing & accessory stores, and 8,600 game stores.
• U.S. shopping-center retail sales total more than $2.26 trillion, accounting for over half of all retail sales.
• The U.S. shopping-center industry directly employed over 12 million people in 2010 and indirectly generated another 5.6 million jobs in support industries. Collectively, the industry accounted for 12.7% of total U.S. employment.
• Total retail employment in 2012 totaled 14.9 million, lower than the 15.1 million employed in 2002.
• For every 100 individuals directly employed at a U.S. regional shopping center, an additional 20 to 30 jobs are supported in the community due to multiplier effects.

The collapse in foot traffic to the 109,500 shopping centers that crisscross our suburban sprawl paradise of plenty is irreversible. No amount of marketing propaganda, 50% off sales, or hot new iGadgets is going to spur a dramatic turnaround. Quarter after quarter there will be more announcements of store closings. Macys just announced the closing of 5 stores and firing of 2,500 retail workers. JC Penney just announced the closing of 33 stores and firing of 2,000 retail workers. Announcements are imminent from Sears, Radio Shack and a slew of other retailers who are beginning to see the writing on the wall. The vacancy rate will be rising in strip malls, power malls and regional malls, with the largest growing sector being ghost malls. Before long it will appear that SPACE AVAILABLE is the fastest growing retailer in America.

The reason this death spiral cannot be reversed is simply a matter of arithmetic and demographics. While arrogant hubristic retail CEOs of public big box mega-retailers added 2.7 billion retail square feet to our already over saturated market, real median household income flat lined. The advancement in retail spending was attributable solely to the $1.1 trillion increase (68%) in consumer debt and the trillion dollars of home equity extracted from castles in the sky, that later crashed down to earth. Once the Wall Street created fraud collapsed and the waves of delusion subsided, retailers have been revealed to be swimming naked. Their relentless expansion, based on exponential growth, cannibalized itself, new store construction ground to a halt, sales and profits have declined, and the inevitable closing of thousands of stores has begun. With real median household income 8% lower than it was in 2008, the collapse in retail traffic is a rational reaction by the impoverished 99%. Americans are using their credit cards to pay their real estate taxes, income taxes, and monthly utilities, since their income is lower, and their living expenses rise relentlessly, thanks to Bernanke and his Fed created inflation.

The media mouthpieces for the establishment gloss over the fact average gasoline prices in 2013 were the second highest in history. The highest average price was in 2012 and the 3rd highest average price was in 2011. These prices are 150% higher than prices in the early 2000′s. This might not matter to the likes of Jamie Dimon and Jon Corzine, but for a middle class family with two parents working and making 7.5% less than they made in 2000, it has a dramatic impact on discretionary income. The fact oil prices have risen from $25 per barrel in 2003 to $100 per barrel today has not only impacted gas prices, but utility costs, food costs, and the price of any product that needs to be transported to your local Wally World. The outrageous rise in tuition prices has been aided and abetted by the Federal government and their doling out of loans so diploma mills like the University of Phoenix can bilk clueless dupes into thinking they are on their way to an exciting new career, while leaving them jobless in their parents’ basement with a loan payment for life.

The laughable jobs recovery touted by Obama, his sycophantic minions, paid off economist shills, and the discredited corporate legacy media can be viewed appropriately in the following two charts, that reveal the false storyline being peddled to the techno-narcissistic iGadget distracted masses. There are 247 million working age Americans between the ages of 18 and 64. Only 145 million of these people are employed. Of these employed, 19 million are working part-time and 9 million are self- employed. Another 20 million are employed by the government, producing nothing and being sustained by the few remaining producers with their tax dollars. The labor participation rate is the lowest it has been since women entered the workforce in large numbers during the 1980′s. We are back to levels seen during the booming Carter years. Those peddling the drivel about retiring Baby Boomers causing the decline in the labor participation rate are either math challenged or willfully ignorant because they are being paid to be so. Once you turn 65 you are no longer counted in the work force. The percentage of those over 55 in the workforce has risen dramatically to an all-time high, as the Me Generation never saved for retirement or saw their retirement savings obliterated in the Wall Street created 2008 financial implosion.

To understand the absolute idiocy of retail CEOs across the land one must parse the employment data back to 2000. In the year 2000 the working age population of the U.S. was 213 million and 136.9 million of them were working, a record level of 64.4% of the population. There were 70 million working age Americans not in the labor force. Fourteen years later the number of working age Americans is 247 million and only 144.6 million are working. The working age population has risen by 16% and the number of employed has risen by only 5.6%. That’s quite a success story. Of course, even though median household income is 7.5% lower than it was in 2000, the government expects you to believe that 22 million Americans voluntarily left the labor force because they no longer needed a job. While the number of employed grew by 5.6% over fourteen years, the number of people who left the workforce grew by 31.1%. Over this same time frame the mega-retailers that dominate the landscape added almost 3 billion square feet of selling space, a 25% increase. A critical thinking individual might wonder how this could possibly end well for the retail genius CEOs in glistening corporate office towers from coast to coast.

This entire materialistic orgy of consumerism has been sustained solely with debt peddled by the Wall Street banking syndicate. The average American consumer met their Waterloo in 2008. Bernanke’s mission was to save bankers, billionaires and politicians. It was not to save the working middle class. You’ve been sacrificed at the altar of the .1%. The 0% interest rates were for Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein. Your credit card interest rate remained between 13% and 21%. So, while you struggle to pay bills with your declining real income, the Wall Street bankers are again generating record profits and paying themselves record bonuses. Profits are so good, they can afford to pay tens of billions in fines for their criminal acts, and still be left with billions to divvy up among their non-prosecuted criminal executives.

Bernanke and his financial elite owners have been able to rig the markets to give the appearance of normalcy, but they cannot rig the demographic time bomb that will cause the death and destruction of our illusory retail paradigm. Demographics cannot be manipulated or altered by the government or mass media. The best they can do is ignore or lie about the facts. The life cycle of a human being is utterly predictable, along with their habits across time. Those under 25 years old have very little income, therefore they have very little spending. Once a job is attained and income levels rise, spending rises along with the increased income. As the person enters old age their income declines and spending on stuff declines rapidly. The media may be ignoring the fact that annual expenditures drop by 40% for those over 65 years old from the peak spending years of 45 to 54, but it doesn’t change the fact. They also cannot change the fact that 10,000 Americans will turn 65 every day for the next sixteen years. They also can’t change the fact the average Baby Boomer has less than $50,000 saved for retirement and is up to their grey eye brows in debt.

With over 15% of all 25 to 34 year olds living in their parents’ basement and those under 25 saddled with billions in student loan debt, the traditional increase in income and spending is DOA for the millennial generation. The hardest hit demographic on the job front during the 2008 through 2014 ongoing recession has been the 45 to 54 year olds in their peak earning and spending years. Combine these demographic developments and you’ve got a perfect storm for over-built retailers and their egotistical CEOs.

The media continues to peddle the storyline of on-line sales saving the ancient bricks and mortar retailers. Again, the talking head pundits are willfully ignoring basic math. On-line sales account for 6% of total retail sales. If a dying behemoth like JC Penney announces a 20% decline in same store sales and a 20% increase in on-line sales, their total change is still negative 17.6%. And they are still left with 1,100 decaying stores, 100,000 employees, lease payments, debt payments, maintenance costs, utility costs, inventory costs, and pension costs. Their future is so bright they gotta wear a toe tag.

The decades of mal-investment in retail stores was enabled by Greenspan, Bernanke, and their Federal Reserve brethren. Their easy money policies enabled Americans to live far beyond their true means through credit card debt, auto debt, mortgage debt, and home equity debt. This false illusion of wealth and foolish spending led mega-retailers to ignore facts and spread like locusts across the suburban countryside. The debt fueled orgy has run out of steam. All that is left is the largest mountain of debt in human history, a gutted and debt laden former middle class, and thousands of empty stores in future decaying ghost malls haunting the highways and byways of suburbia.

The implications of this long and winding road to ruin are far reaching. Store closings so far have only been a ripple compared to the tsunami coming to right size the industry for a future of declining spending. Over the next five to ten years, tens of thousands of stores will be shuttered. Companies like JC Penney, Sears and Radio Shack will go bankrupt and become historical footnotes. Considering retail employment is lower today than it was in 2002 before the massive retail expansion, the future will see in excess of 1 million retail workers lose their jobs. Bernanke and the Feds have allowed real estate mall owners to roll over non-performing loans and pretend they are generating enough rental income to cover their loan obligations. As more stores go dark, this little game of extend and pretend will come to an end. Real estate developers will be going belly-up and the banking sector will be taking huge losses again. I’m sure the remaining taxpayers will gladly bailout Wall Street again. The facts are not debatable. They can be ignored by the politicians, Ivy League economists, media talking heads, and the willfully ignorant masses, but they do not cease to exist.

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” – 

Source: The Burning Platform

The Dark-Side Psychology Behind Holiday Madness

“Men (people) are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions.” — Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928

The winter holidays are traditionally supposed to embody a certain ideal of that which is best in the hearts of human beings. As the world around us retreats into ice and snow and the Earth’s northern cycle returns to death once again, the holidays represent a time of contemplation, as well as an opportunity to shine a light in an otherwise dark and dreary period. This heritage is as old as history, dating back to an era in which agriculture was paramount and men garnered far more respect for the tides of nature. The parallel relationship between social “renewal” and seasonal renewal has served the collective psyche of Western society, in my view, for the better. Unfortunately, this process has all but vanished today, twisted and mutilated into something sinister and poisonous.

Those of us who pay attention are well aware of a trend of cultural decline within our nation, and this problem is disturbingly visible from Thanksgiving to Christmas. It’s not just the highly publicized Black Friday (now Black Thursday) riots over semi-cheap Chinese-made garbage. Those are certainly vile examples:

Rather, it’s the behavior of people throughout the season on a daily basis that is most disconcerting. I have personally witnessed, as I’m sure many people have, a magnified and astonishing disregard for conscience and basic decency growing worse each year for at least the past decade. That which is most unsettling about our society today is somehow unleashed with wild abandon every year at this time.

The idiocy and barbarism seems to span all economic “classes” — from the upper-middle-class snob screaming at bewildered cashiers over a coupon worth 50 cents, to the middle-class suburbanites brawling on the sticky floors of Wal-Mart over flat-screen TVs, to the part-time employee who sold her soul for minimum wage and who now yells at people on Thanksgiving eve to stop filming the mindless brawls that her corporate masters encourage because such videos might “reflect badly” on the company image. The dark side truly knows no social or financial bounds.

Every year, we see this behavior, shake our heads in dismay and look forward to the beginning of January, when Americans go back to being only moderately disdainful toward each other. This time, however, instead of merely gawking in disbelief at the circus sideshow, I would like to challenge people to explore more deeply the true motivations of the mob itself, as well as the motivations of the elitists who manipulate the mob for their own purposes. Let’s take a look at the fundamental dynamics of the psychology of mobs and the madness of crowds.

Filling The Emptiness

In my recent article ‘You Should Feel Sorry For Sheeple; Here’s Why’, I outline the inner life, or rather the lack of inner life, common to the average sheeple. Many of my compatriots find it increasingly difficult to muster any pity for the sheeple subculture, and I can see why. When given ample opportunity, sheeple always sink toward the worst humanity has to offer usually in an effort to aggrandize themselves.

But let’s set aside that sick feeling in our stomachs when thinking of sheeple and really consider what their existence is like. What does a sheeple’s daily life consist of?

In most cases I’ve observed, he lives what he believes to be the American dream. He wakes up in the morning swelling with superficial concerns of personal gain, scheming ways in which he can raise his perceived stature among the other sheeple around him. He then then travels to his place of employment, usually a job he hates, in order to accumulate enough wealth (scraps from the plates of government and corporate financiers) to buy all the “things” he assumes everyone else wants. In the process, he pawns off his children to state-run schools designed to crush their spirits; and he becomes estranged from his spouse, who begins to forget why they ever got married in the first place. He returns home physically and emotionally drained, knowing that he did nothing worthwhile with his time, only to sit apathetically in front of his television for a few hours being bombarded with cancerous marketing propaganda and barely talking with the family he tells himself he works so hard for.

Think about it. Think of the pitch-black void that his life has become. Think of all the abandoned dreams, all the missed opportunities for experience and joy, all the moments of reflection and self-education that were missed because he was “too busy” trying to elevate himself within the ranks of a heartless collective.

Now, for one frightening moment, imagine this is your life. No sense of legitimate pride or individualism. No understanding of the underlying events that affect your environment or the high-placed people who determine your future. No thoughts outside the mainstream box. No recognition of possible alternative ways to live or how to break free. No hope for tomorrow but the endless drudgery of today’s mediocrity. Think of the unconscious rage you would have brewing inside like a putrid ball of sulfur and magma.

This rage is what sheeple use to fill the emptiness inside themselves once they subconsciously realize that no amount of frivolous consumerism will make them whole. Typically, they are on constant lookout for opportunities to vent their anger at unsuspecting victims in drive-by fashion.

Somehow, the holidays appear to have become a prime period of opportunity during which society opens the door for the dark side to come out and for sheeple to passively or not-so-passively project their failings onto others. For now, we might presume that this behavior is somewhat contained and relegated to particular moments of seasonal insanity, but the consequences of the willfully ignorant strata of American culture could go far beyond what most morally conscious people want to predict.

The Psychopath Next Door

“If thirty years ago anyone had dared to predict that our psychological development was tending towards a revival of the medieval persecutions of the Jews, that Europe would again tremble before the Roman fasces and the tramp of legions, that people would once more give the Roman salute, as two thousand years ago, and that instead of the Christian Cross an archaic swastika would lure onward millions of warriors ready for death — why, that man would have been hooted at as a mystical fool.” — Carl Jung, Archetypes And The Collective Unconscious, 1938

In his book, The Undiscovered Self, one of the fathers of modern psychology, Carl Gustav Jung, discusses the tension-filled relationship between the individual versus the collective and the state. In particular, he studies how individuals become swallowed up in the actions of the collective mob and how this momentum invariably leads to mass atrocities that defy imagination. A point of primary importance in Jung’s work is his discovery that at least 10 percent of any population at any given time is made up of individuals with latent psychopathic or sociopathic tendencies. Meaning, at least one out of every 10 random people around you today was born with the capacity for psychopathic behavior, including the ability to completely ignore inherent conscience.

The idea that one out of every 10 people near you might suddenly burst into an overwhelming animalistic blood fever is, of course, terrifying to many people. But generally, latent psychopathy in a person does not surface in immediately recognizable ways; and many people with that potential live their entire lives without ever acting on it. Some even come to terms with it through self-awareness and dispel it altogether. Problems arise, though, as Jung warned, when a society creates an environment in which emotionally or physically violent psychopathic acts become “acceptable” to the collective. That is to say, individual latent psychopaths and sociopaths are not so much a danger on their own; but when they get together in an organization or mob, the terrible floodgates open.

During national crisis, or during great ideological shifts towards collectivism, the 10 percent are given ample opportunity to act out their inner impulses. The corrupt state will often give latent psychopaths free reign or seek them out for positions of petty authority, leaving the gates to hell ajar, as it were.

Another dangerous reality is that these same people tend to pursue positions of authority, or they unconsciously gravitate toward events and situations that allow them to act on their darker side without facing consequences. One might even suggest that there will always be a potential for despotic regimes exactly because the 10 percent will likely always be around to be used as a weapon by dictatorships.

The mass rage and self-absorption we witness during the holidays feels ominous to us because it is just a glimpse of the greater shadow side of the American public. It is a glimpse of the kind of mentality that makes all human catastrophe possible. Like the tip of a shark fin cutting the surface of the water, we swim fearing not the dorsal, but the monster we KNOW it is connected to.

The Magicians Of Manufactured Consent

Jung, once a favorite of Sigmund Freud’s, broke sharply with Freud’s analytical school when he realized Freud would not accept the idea of inherent psychological properties beyond base instincts. Freud believed that conscience, morality, artistic ability, reason, etc. were all extensions of environment and experience. Freud’s theories on psychology focused on the idea that man was driven by base animal urges at his core, that people have no complex inborn contents and that all one needed to do was manipulate his environment to make himself “healthy.” Jung’s studies proved otherwise, finding that there are vast layers of inborn knowledge and personality in every individual.

It was not until Freud was near death that he admitted the merit of Jung’s work. Jung was shunned by the mainstream and labeled everything from a “charlatan” to an “anti-Semite” because of his opposition to the Freudian method.

Some industrious elites did find Freud’s notions of environmental manipulation useful, though, including his nephew, Edward Bernays, who saw it not as a way to make people healthy, but rather, to make them unhealthy. Bernays wrote extensively on the use of propaganda to control what he called “herd instinct,” believing (as most elitists believe) that self-governance of common people was “dangerous” and that the irrational public had to be controlled for their own good and the good of the nation. His entire philosophy is summed up in this quote:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. … We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. … In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

Bernays was instrumental in promoting Freudian psychology in the United States, where it became the mainstay of universities across the country. He helped establish the Tavistock Institute, a globalist think-tank much like the Council On Foreign Relations, focused on molding public opinion. He was also instrumental in promoting psychological propaganda models in everyday corporate marketing and political campaigns. He called this “engineering consent.”

It was Bernays who taught the marketing world how to appeal to the basest instincts of human beings and to use those instinctual desires to covertly control them. Corporations used Bernays’ strategies to create an atmosphere of decadent consumption in America that has lasted since the end of World War II. The idea was simple: Convince the public that buying corporate products will satisfy their animal urges. All commercialism to this day revolves around this method (which is why almost every beer commercial for several decades has included scantily clad women or sexual innuendo, for example).

But Bernays was not only teaching corporations how to tap into existing human impulses, he was also teaching corporations and governments how to use psychological trickery to manipulate the citizenry to RELY on their basest impulses. Essentially, Bernays taught the establishment how to convince people, or shame people, into ignoring their greater selves and indulging their psychopathic and sociopathic urges. Bernays taught the establishment how to turn people into zombies.

We see the clear results today all around us as we enter into the absurdity that Christmas has become. The ramifications are dire. The holidays have come to represent not hope, but despair; not reflection, but callowness; not compassion, but narcissism and selfishness. They have become a yearly measure of our Nation’s sharp fall into something more or less horrific, something ironically inhuman.

The only solution is to strive with everything we have to remind others, and ourselves, that we are more than the sum of our darker instincts. That we have been living in the midst of a carefully crafted lie meant to make us impotent and non-threatening to the establishment. That there are greater and more meaningful contents at our core, and these elements of our being can only be satisfied by one thing: the truth.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

Tis The Season For Gratuitous Consumption

Recently I wrote a piece entitled Boycott Back Friday. Generally it was well received. Being fans of capitalism and the voluntary exchange of goods and services we made the point that it was entirely reasonable to opt out of the buying frenzy from a pro-market perspective. To value time (time is money) with one’s family and more than standing in line to buy things is the very essence of what a free market is all about.

Yet a few readers took us to task for daring to say that the gluttonous consumption of shiny trinkets on Black Friday was a bad thing. We were besmirching capitalism. That the act of not going shopping with the other credit lemmings was practically un-American. One guy basically equated us to socialists. (Which is pretty damn laughable if you’ve read us for any period of time.)

To be clear people should be able to spend their money anyway they like, and I mean any way. (So long as they are not hurting others.) If people want to descend on WalMart at midnight (now even earlier than that) they have every right to. If they want a hooker on Christmas Eve, so be it. But I think there is much to be said for just turning one’s back on the entire mess. (Or at least much of it. I will be surfing Amazon at some point next month.)

Governments like the gratuitous consumption of Christmas because it fills the tills. Sales taxes during the holiday season are very important to them. Add the multitude of other revenue streams which flow from the private sector to the state in December, and it’s no wonder there is so much concern in government about how much people are spending during December each year. In addition to the sales taxes, think about the gas taxes, the food taxes (a sales tax yes,) phone taxes, and God knows what other taxes which get a big boost at the end of the year. The bureaucracy needs to make its nut. So sell, sell, sell, buy, buy, buy.

Of course we engage in the whirlwind of consumerism each year not because the government tells us to. Most of us do it because it has become deeply ingrained in our culture. As the cold and darkness of winter creeps over the northern hemisphere we busy ourselves with racing from here to there, buying this and that. I am actually convinced that at least a small part of the winter consumption binge is a salve spread over Seasonal Affective Disorder. (I think that it would actually make sense to move Christmas to the end of February. People could anticipate Christmas all winter long, celebrate, then boom – here comes Spring. I would support a Congressional effort to make this happen.)

To be sure much of the buying is just a form of celebration. A splurging during Western society’s greatest festival. It can be fun to go shopping. It’s fun to give people things that they enjoy. It’s fun to think of people we know and love in distant places opening our gift on Christmas morning. All of the buying during Christmas isn’t bad.

But much of the buying is. Millions of people go into debt, or further into debt, each year trying to live up to the expectations of their family and friends. The kids must get this. My friends expect that. Where’s the Visa?

And the banks, the ones we bailed out 5 years ago supply the credit for all this buying. Easy money flows. Debtors buy more from the company store.

Again, if buying makes one happy I understand. Heck, one day I hope to put a 1985 Ferrari 288 GTO under the tree. But consider making your purchases more deliberate this year. Engage in “conscious capitalism” as John Mackey the founder of Whole Foods might say. I’m going to do my best to, but I’ll bet I still buy too much. Most of us will.

Source: Nick Sorrentino | Against Crony Capitalism

‘Shock Doctrine’ Americana: Endless War As The Ultimate Business Model

There is a new normal in America: our government may shut down, but our wars continue.  Congress may not be able to pass a budget, but the U.S. military can still launch commando raids in Libya and Somalia, the Afghan War can still be prosecuted, Italy can be garrisoned by American troops (putting the “empire” back in Rome), Africa can be used as an imperial playground (as in the late nineteenth century “,” but with the U.S. and China doing the scrambling this time around), and the military-industrial complex can still dominate the world’s arms trade.

In the halls of Congress and the Pentagon, it’s business as usual, if your definition of “business” is the power and profits you get from constantly preparing for and prosecuting wars around the world.  “War is a racket,” General Smedley Butler famously declared in 1935, and even now it’s hard to disagree with a man who had two Congressional Medals of Honor to his credit and was intimately familiar with American imperialism.

War Is Politics, Right?

Once upon a time, as a serving officer in the U.S. Air Force, I was taught that Carl von Clausewitz had defined war as a continuation of politics by other means.  This definition is, in fact, a simplification of his classic and complex book, On War, written after his experiences fighting Napoleon in the early nineteenth century.

“Forever war is forever profitable.”

The idea of war as a continuation of politics is both moderately interesting and dangerously misleading: interesting because it connects war to political processes and suggests that they should be fought for political goals; misleading because it suggests that war is essentially rational and so controllable.  The fault here is not Clausewitz’s, but the American military’s for misreading and oversimplifying him.

Perhaps another “Carl” might lend a hand when it comes to helping Americans understand what war is really all about.  I’m referring to Karl Marx, who admired Clausewitz, notably for his idea that combat is to war what a cash payment is to commerce.  However seldom combat (or such payments) may happen, they are the culmination and so the ultimate arbiters of the process.

War, in other words, is settled by killing, a bloody transaction that echoes the exploitative exchanges of capitalism.  Marx found this idea to be both suggestive and pregnant with meaning. So should we all.

Following Marx, Americans ought to think about war not just as an extreme exercise of politics, but also as a continuation of exploitative commerce by other means.  Combat as commerce: there’s more in that than simple alliteration.

In the history of war, such commercial transactions took many forms, whether as territory conquered, spoils carted away, raw materials appropriated, or market share gained.  Consider American wars.  The War of 1812 is sometimes portrayed as a minor dust-up with Britain, involving the temporary occupation and burning of our capital, but it really was about crushing Indians on the frontier and grabbing their land.  The Mexican-American War was another land grab, this time for the benefit of slaveholders.  The Spanish-American War was a land grab for those seeking an American empire overseas, while World War I was for making the world “safe for democracy” — and for American business interests globally.

Even World War II, a war necessary to stop Hitler and Imperial Japan, witnessed the emergence of the U.S. as the arsenal of democracy, the world’s dominant power, and the new imperial stand-in for a bankrupt British Empire.

Korea?  Vietnam?  Lots of profit for the military-industrial complex and plenty of power for the Pentagon establishment.  Iraq, the Middle East, current adventures in Africa?  Oil, markets, natural resources, global dominance.

In societal calamities like war, there will always be winners and losers.  But the clearest winners are often companies like Boeing and Dow Chemical, which provided B-52 bombers and Agent Orange, respectively, to the U.S. military in Vietnam.  Such “arms merchants” — an older, more honest term than today’s “defense contractor” — don’t have to pursue the hard sell, not when war and preparations for it have become so permanently, inseparably intertwined with the American economy, foreign policy, and our nation’s identity as a rugged land of “warriors” and “heroes” (more on that in a moment).

War as Disaster Capitalism

Consider one more definition of war: not as politics or even as commerce, but as societal catastrophe.  Thinking this way, we can apply Naomi Klein’s concepts of the “shock doctrine” and “disaster capitalism” to it.  When such disasters occur, there are always those who seek to turn a profit.

Most Americans are, however, discouraged from thinking about war this way thanks to the power of what we call “patriotism” or, at an extreme, “superpatriotism” when it applies to us, and the significantly more negative “nationalism” or “ultra-nationalism” when it appears in other countries.  During wars, we’re told to “support our troops,” to wave the flag, to put country first, to respect the patriotic ideal of selfless service and redemptive sacrifice (even if all but 1% of us are never expected to serve or sacrifice).

We’re discouraged from reflecting on the uncomfortable fact that, as “our” troops sacrifice and suffer, others in society are profiting big time.  Such thoughts are considered unseemly and unpatriotic.  Pay no attention to the war profiteers, who pass as perfectly respectable companies.  After all, any price is worth paying (or profits worth offering up) to contain the enemy — not so long ago, the red menace, but in the twenty-first century, the murderous terrorist.

Forever war is forever profitable.  Think of the Lockheed Martins of the world.  In their commerce with the Pentagon, as well as the militaries of other nations, they ultimately seek cash payment for their weapons and a world in which such weaponry will be eternally needed.  In the pursuit of security or victory, political leaders willingly pay their price.

Call it a Clausewitzian/Marxian feedback loop or the dialectic of Carl and Karl.  It also represents the eternal marriage of combat and commerce.  If it doesn’t catch all of what war is about, it should at least remind us of the degree to which war as disaster capitalism is driven by profit and power.

For a synthesis, we need only turn from Carl or Karl to Cal — President Calvin Coolidge, that is.  “The business of America is business,” he declared in the Roaring Twenties.  Almost a century later, the business of America is war, even if today’s presidents are too polite to mention that the business is booming.

America’s War Heroes as Commodities

Many young people today are, in fact, looking for a release from consumerism.  In seeking new identities, quite a few turn to the military.  And it provides.  Recruits are hailed as warriors and warfighters, as heroes, and not just within the military either, but by society at large.

Yet in joining the military and being celebrated for that act, our troops paradoxically become yet another commodity, another consumable of the state.  Indeed, they become consumed by war and its violence.  Their compensation?  To be packaged and marketed as the heroes of our militarized moment. Steven Gardiner, a cultural anthropologist and U.S. Army veteran, has written eloquently about what he calls the “heroic masochism” of militarized settings and their allure for America’s youth.  Put succinctly, in seeking to escape a consumerism that has lost its meaning and find a release from dead-end jobs, many volunteers are transformed into celebrants of violence, seekers and givers of pain, a harsh reality Americans ignore as long as that violence is acted out overseas against our enemies and local populations.

Such “heroic” identities, tied so closely to violence in war, often prove poorly suited to peacetime settings.  Frustration and demoralization devolve into domestic violence and suicide.  In an American society with ever fewer meaningful peacetime jobs, exhibiting greater and greater polarization of wealth and opportunity, the decisions of some veterans to turn to or return to mind-numbing drugs of various sorts and soul-stirring violence is tragically predictable.  That it stems from their exploitative commodification as so many heroic inflictors of violence in our name is a reality most Americans are content to forget.

You May Not Be Interested in War, but War Is Interested in You

As Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky pithily observed, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”  If war is combat and commerce, calamity and commodity, it cannot be left to our political leaders alone — and certainly not to our generals.  When it comes to war, however far from it we may seem to be, we’re all in our own ways customers and consumers.  Some pay a high price.  Many pay a little.  A few gain a lot.  Keep an eye on those few and you’ll end up with a keener appreciation of what war is actually all about.

No wonder our leaders tell us not to worry our little heads about our wars — just support those troops, go shopping, and keep waving that flag.  If patriotism is famously the last refuge of the scoundrel, it’s also the first recourse of those seeking to mobilize customers for the latest bloodletting exercise in combat as commerce.

Just remember: in the grand bargain that is war, it’s their product and their profit.  And that’s no bargain for America, or for that matter for the world.

Source: William Astore  |  Common Dreams

It Will Be Madness In America Soon, Out of Control

I bought a copy of USA Today Weekend at the supermarket and wanted to gag. A front-page lead story showing a picture of Edward Snowden’s Russian permit was titled: “Welcome, Comrade Snowden” (Is John McCain now writing their headlines?). To read American mainstream news is to collide with an illusory but impenetrable wall of rigid propaganda (rah, rah, America #1; rah, rah, S&P 1700; rah, rah, Washington vs. a world of enemies). In short, the paper’s almost one-million readers were encouraged. In so many words, “Don’t worry about NSA. Congress has heard the American people and is now moving to reform it. Sleep well tonight, Senator Patrick Leahy is awake.”

The mood is critically nervous among those who have written for years about America’s war atrocities, descent into post-democracy, vulture economics, systemic corruption and international lawlessness; they might be seeing their worst nightmares – the ones they wished to prevent – occurring, and ones worse becoming more probable.

Why write for a people who appear to have done nothing to preempt their current security (police) state and growing despotism? Why write (or be a whistle-blower) to be demonized, criminalized and decapitated by the very people you are trying to warn? On one hand, writers might pay a heavy price for what they commit to print; on the other hand, they fulfill themselves and fulfill the First Amendment – they speak the truth as they see it. At this juncture, however, the time for using words freely, casually and directly might be changing.

And the time for sustaining the juvenile notion of a world jealous of America’s wealth and liberty needs be long buried.

Writer Paul Craig Roberts is correct this week in his vitriol:

“The schizophrenic denizens of Washington have made Americans a hated people. Those with the foresight to know to escape from the growing tyranny also know that wherever they might seek refuge, they will be seen as vermin from the most hated nation and subjected to being scapegoated as spies and evil influences, and at risk of being decimated in reprisals against Washington’s latest atrocity.

“Washington has destroyed the prospects of Americans both at home and abroad.”

Not one person wants “the People” to share blame or wants to apply the word “fascism” to the American security-state. Yet, it is the majority of people in America who, for one reason or another, are responsible for their predicament, as the majority of German people during WWII were responsible for theirs and the Japanese people theirs. A democracy thrives from awake, alert individuals; an unbiased press; a tolerance of diverse opinions; and laws (the Constitution and international treaties). As it stands today, Americans have chosen authoritarianism over democracy; consumerism over citizenship; censorship over free-thought; militancy over diplomacy; financial oppression over equity. When they should have they didn’t force President Obama to close Gitmo; end the wars; constrain the FBI, CIA, NSA and Gen. Keith B. Alexander; indict financial CEOs and officers. They didn’t rebel over airport body scanners; RFID chips in passports; indefinite detentions; torture; state-sponsored assassinations; death squads; military war crimes; drones; Wall Street and corporate pillage of Main Street; or, for that matter, they didn’t criminalize anyone except those who “blew the whistle” or dissented. Mr. Obama’s constituents are “waking up” (after five years) if comments left at The New York Times over Snowden revelations are any indication. But I place much blame on “Obama people” who, on the one hand, voted for the president to reverse the tide of war and international disgrace generated by former President George W. Bush (or so they claimed); and on the other enabled if not cheered Mr. Obama as he perpetuated the same and worse practices. These are hypocrites.

What destruction and death has been and is propagated by the United States armed forces against the world will now be visited on “the People”. What economic exploitation has been waged against the third world countries by American banks and investors will now be waged against “the People”. What civil wars the Pentagon and CIA have engineered in the Mid-East will now be applied at home. And if it takes a regime change in Washington, it too will be done. It will be madness in America from this point forward; the world is in its cross hairs and knows it.

Some Americans will cheer a military coup, an assassination, a civil war, a de facto war against most of the planet. The world believed in a president who was never his own man; who sold out early; who relied on stage managers and PR to conceal his identity and conceal the identities of controllers from finance, the Pentagon and intelligence community. Since Snowden, the world has a clearer idea of the untrustworthiness of America’s leadership, its corporations and military.

(I believe Mr. Obama might not continue as President, and believe a financial-military coup might have already occurred.)

In this week’s Asia Times, Pepe Escobar concludes:

“For the moment, what we have is an Orwellian/Panopticon complex that will persist with its unchecked powers; an aphasic populace; a quiet, invisible man in a Moscow multitude; and a POTUS consumed with boundless rage. Watch out. He may be tempted to wag the (war) dog.”

It will be madness in America soon, out of control.

Source: Market Oracle

Michael T Bucci is a retired public relations executive from New Jersey presently residing in New England. His essays have appeared at The Market Oracle (UK). He is the author of nine books on practical spirituality including White Book: Cerithous.

5 Reasons Why More Americans Don’t Protest Against The System

Having recently celebrated their nation’s independence on July 4th, Americans were invited to recall the spirit of protest, rebellion, and revolution that marks the popular myth of the birth of the United States of America.

The Declaration of Independence still stands as an important example of how the tolerance of any man can be exceeded by the actions of an over-bearing and intrusive government. Yet, 237 years after the signing of this document, one has to wonder what has happened to the spirit of fearlessness and rugged self-determination that set the American experiment in motion.

As a form of redress of grievances by a people to it’s leadership, protest is as much of a historical part of democracy as voting is. A near-last resort when the populous is bereft of political power, publicly voicing dissent in an organized, peaceful, and constructive manner is a critical and vital sign of life for a society that wishes to be free. Yet, when a ruling elite and political class become too intrusive, parasitic or too dangerous to the population, protest is often a precursor to violence, therefore the outcome of rebellion and protest is never certain and often disastrous. However, the fate of a people without the will to resist the suffrages of an encroaching tyranny is just as foreboding.

While giving credit to the Occupy movement, those who engage in protest at global summits and party conventions, growing national actions like the Tar Sands Blockade and Idle No More, and growing localized activist movements, the nation has no formidable popular mass-movement for dissent. Apparently the American people have little interest in expressing dissatisfaction with the quality of leadership we have in America today.

Why are the American people so permissive of government abuse, intrusion, waste, corruption, cruelty, and stupidity?

Here are 5 reasons reasons why more Americans don’t protest.

1. Protest is Unwelcome in the Matrix

The matrix cannot function properly when people are in the streets speaking truth to power, therefore, protest is an unwanted inconvenience for the economy, the media and the government.

For this, the government is engaged in squashing domestic protest and the media makes every effort to marginalize and ignore popular dissent. Increasingly, protest and civil disobedience are also being viewed as security threats to be met with near-military force. ‘First amendment zones,’ event permits, and laws that equate protest with terrorism all assist in dissuading Americans from participating, while tricks like agent provocateurs, police intimidation, arrest and assault are used to shut protest events down.

The modern American protestor faces regulations, intimidation and physical threats from military crowd control technologies like flash-bang grenades, the LRAD acoustic weapon, pepper sprays, surveillance of all modern types, and even the prospect of microwave pain ray technologies.

All of this already makes protest and dissent seem rather unpalatable to the average American, but, the media further demonizes protest by highlighting and focusing in on any violence that may occur, while downplaying the peaceful moments where intelligent people come together to articulate valid grievances with an out of control system.

The media tarnishes the image of any protest movement to take advantage of the fact that most people are natural followers, not natural leaders, and that most people are watching the protest in relative isolation at home, separated from friends and neighbors. Creating the perception that protests are dangerous events involving un-American, un-patriotic and irresponsible people who are likely to get hurt, helps to prevent popular support on any single issue from reaching critical mass by convincing the average person that it is too complicated and too risky to get involved.

2. Conflict Consciousness – Divided We Fall

Are you a liberal or conservative? Democrat or Republican? Are you on this team, or that team?

It doesn’t matter at all really, but, we’ve been brainwashed into dividing ourselves into an inescapable prison of bi-polarized pigeon-holes.

We blame our neighbors, friends and families for the mismanagement in the world. We blame those different than us, those in different countries, those with different color skin. We trust in authority, those with matching uniform shirts and batman belts, while we distrust and fight amongst each other. We have become culturally programmed to argue, compete, fight, and win for no real purpose. Winning, and being on the winning team has become more valuable than learning, gaining wisdom or uniting.

In this climate, with a social atmosphere so rigidly divided and so pointlessly competitive, any energy for consensus and widespread concerted action is sapped in inter-personal and tribal-like conflict. We are missing great opportunities for compromise, reciprocity, healing and growth. The consciousness of conflict ensures our self-destruction.

3. Higher Priorities… Work and Play

The American Dream of personal freedom and the opportunity for prosperity as a reward for hard work has been transformed in recent decades, influenced by an ongoing sales pitch about what life should be like for the average person. Convenience, ease, comfort, entertainment, excess, escape, work, money, debt. These are the values most available today.

Americans are working harder than ever, if they’re working at all. The economy is in terrible shape and in decline, and the American lifestyle has become so heavily invested in consumerism and debt that the average person is too dependent on continuity of income to risk even a single paycheck. Protesting is at the bottom of the list of things to do on vacation day.

Outside of work, life for most people has become a screen. Television, movies, the internet, work, handheld devices, iPads, Kindle, whatever. A new version of reality has emerged in the delivery of media and the sophistication of entertainment. Our priorities have evolved to put entertainment and escapism at the top of the list, and increasingly less value on honest government, human rights and justice.

Life is also still very good in America for most in the middle class. Food is easy to come by, credit still widely available. Charity, welfare and government assistance in some form are available to most if sought.Drone strikes and IED‘s are not yet to be seen in the homeland.

Commitment to protest and social change requires personal sacrifice. In our social atmosphere of extreme busyness and dumbed-down priorities, participation in social causes is now too risky, too inconvenient, and insufficiently fun. Our natural and historical energies for rebellion and protest are effectively expired in the office, at the bar, or at the movies, or projected onto a character on a screen.

Life has become a hamster wheel of superfluous labor and deliberate distraction.

4. Mindset of Fear, Apathy, and Resignation

Mindset is everything in our quantum-world, and our emotional under current governs how we relate to and participate in the world. Regarding politics, participatory democracy, and protest, the typical American mindset generally falls into one of three categories:

Fear – We are heavily propagandized to approach life from fear-centered consciousness. Life is to be viewed as a threat. America has already become a police state, and is heavily invested in the combination of fear and security. To the average person, the prospect of facing militarized police and possibly being beaten, gassed, dispersed, arrested and perhaps even criminally charged for voicing dissent is certainly an adequate deterrent.

Brutal, violent oppression of dissent works famously well to stop a protest, and for this, people logically fear getting involved.

Apathy – Apathy is another symptom of our cultural decline, and a mindset that keeps most people from participating in civics or protest. Apathy is a nearly-conscious choice to remain ignorant and distracted about something while pursuing the path of least resistance. Apathy seems to be the number one byproduct of our culture of convenience. People don’t care about the quality of our world enough to become involved.

Resignation – Many Americans understand all too well what is happening to constitutional and lawful government and realize that until a much more massive awakening occurs and far more people take interest, there is little to be gained from protesting. This resignation has led many to focus instead on preparing for the worst, including for scenarios like economic collapse and social unrest. Storing food and developing emergency plans is now seen by many as a more productive use of energy than attempting to influence a by participating in politics or protest.

While there are signs that Americans may be slowly waking from the dream-like state that is preventing any unified form of mass protest, it appears that for now, the formerly American qualities of courage, independence and self-determination have been replaced with fear, apathy, and resignation.

5. People Approve of the Status Quo

Americans, by and large, are still happy to enjoy the lifestyle that the status quo delivers, even if it means further forfeitures of privacy and essential human rights. Additionally, the lack of public opposition in mass is also a de facto approval of the political and economic status quo.

‘It is better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission,’ goes the saying, and by not objecting to any scandal or violation, no matter how offensive, the majority of America consents to being governed by this domineering logic.

Whether actively or passively, the majority of America supports any and all actions by our government and the corporate status quo.

Conclusion

America is a wonderful place with a vast and breath-taking landscape and a rich culture of ingenuity and creativity. Americans are interesting and generous people. It is difficult to grasp the contradiction between the beautiful and comfortable aspects of American life and the troublesome developments emerging from our leadership. It not easy to understand the gap between the values extolled in still celebrated  and the lack of public will to hold the government accountable to even the simple Bill of Rights.

Why don’t more Americans protest things like government spying, endless wars, the fraudulent banking system, the growing police state, the destruction of the environment, genetically modified foods, the assault on natural health, or even torture?

While the above 5 reasons are merely one person’s observations and generalizations about American culture, the patterns that emerge here are useful in helping to recognize opportunities for our own personal and collective evolution.

Source: Waking Times

Swan Dive of the 2013 Economy

Hold your breath, the race to the bottom is ready to escalate. The consequence of the corporate consumerism economy has reached the tipping point. The old rules that mainstream spending will dig the way back to prosperity are permanently dead. The one sure implication that is indisputable is that taxes are set to rise at unprecedented levels. With Obamacare revenue obligations coming into effect, the latest phase of centralized medical socialism spreads like a virus. Under such circumstances, how can the patient regain their health?
The Rino Republicans have proven again their slimy deceit, as demonstrated inHighlights of Senate bill averting ‘fiscal cliff’. The bipartisan house is poised to make another deal with the devil. Such legislation that refuses to enact meaningful and significant spending cuts exemplifies the depth of the efforts to dismantle the economic wellbeing of the average taxpayer.

The only beneficiary out of the tax bill from hell will be the corporate/state axis. By setting aside the automatic sequestration program reductions for a typical irresponsible useless promise the McConnell, Biden reach tentative deal on sequester, con insults the intelligence of any rational taxpayer.

“The negotiating parties reached an agreement to delay it by two months with some spending cuts to offset the delay.”

Without a serious reduction in the rate of growth, much less a real shrinking in federal expenditures, deficit spending will shoot up higher than an addicted junkie. Examine the mess.

“ the Congressional Budget Office, the last-minute fiscal cliff deal reached by congressional leaders and President Barack Obama cuts only $15 billion in spending while increasing tax revenues by $620 billion—a 41:1 ratio of tax increases to spending cuts.”

This factor alone provides ample evidence that the economy will sustain another substantial hit. Treading water is no way to save yourself when you are swimming inside a whirlpool of spiraling intensity or diving into a pool drained of water.

2013 is likely to be another generous year for the financial vultures. Mergers and acquisitions may well come back ‘with a vengeance’, as international corporatists push hard for even greater consolidation. The suspect “Free Trade” cabal has enormous support and protection from the selected public officials that administer a plutocrat economy. Even under the distractions of higher taxes on the super affluent, their wealth will grow dramatically, as public subsistence becomes more dependent on government handouts.

Business is very good for the governing bureaucrat. This New Year provides immense promises for government expansion. The crowding out of the credit markets for private business will continue as an inevitable result of public sector borrowing hitting new highs.

Private firms will struggle as disposable funds become rarer. The consumer has shown remarkable restrains since the 2008 meltdown, but the internal built up demand for lifestyle replacement standards will not generate the economic activity that so many financial experts tout.

Prospects of an intensified reoccurrence of the persistent recession are far more likely. The sustainability of Federal Reserve monetization has limits. The crucial test of this desperate repurchase of debt created obligations will play out in the bond market.

Another down grade of the U.S. credit status over the next political battle of raising the borrowing limit is a major concern. The potential free fall of the Dollar and international abandonment of the reserve currency standing is probably the greatest risk to the economy.

Any credit-based economy is at the mercy of the central banksters. Disregarding the phony political rhetoric of the governance ideologues, the basic constructs of economic facts cannot be separated from the harsh reality of a credit crunch.

Inflation is embedded in the under reported consumer pricing statistics. Grocery prices will rise, while food stamps proliferate. This SNAP economy is a telltale gauge of the wellness of the basic consumer. How can anyone believe that the prospects for a healthy economy are in the cards for 2013?

The one unassailable conclusion that is born out with every turn of the financial page is that the rich become richer, while the middle class struggles even harder to make ends meet.

Many will fall into the trap that rich people are the cause of the problem. Such social envy misses a proper perspective on wealth creation. The real reason why the economy scrambles to democratize medium affluence is that the monopolists of politically protected conglomerates suppress initiative and originative employment entrepreneurial enterprises.

The entire political and tax system operates to diminish the chances of small business to compete against the virtual unrestricted capital access of major public companies. 2013 will be a watershed year that regretfully will see the systemic demise of privately held endeavors.

The replacement of free enterprise, with state/capitalism has produced a fascist economy.

When the establishment operates under the favoritism principle, the inevitable result is that crony capitalists dig the graves of independent business operators, with publicly funded shovels. How under this formula can the ordinary citizen expect to prosper when the supplanting of individual intuitive is intentionally marginalized?

The financial markets reflect uncertainty in the face of record corporate receipts. The balance sheets of companies have been rebuilt from the depth of the housing implosion, with much assistance from public indebtedness. The globalist banks practice distress acquisitions, deliberately designed to solidify interdependency at the price of personal autonomy.

With this acceleration of financial austerity for the average citizen, the gap between the corporate economy and the main street market grows exponentially. Whatever degree of cash flow that the country enjoys in this New Year, the price that will be paid to stretch out one last celebration of former fortune, will inescapably result in national poverty.

Just blaming the one percent ignores the institutional corruption that perpetrates the war against the middle class. Hoping for a thriving 2013 dismisses the abject State of the Nation. The only relevant question unanswered is whether the beleaguered taxpayer will revolt or just swallow another dose of Obama collectivism.

Gun Patriotism or Hypocrisy?

Puzzling me for a long time is the inconsistency between two claims by gun and Second Amendment supporters.  One is that what they worship is critically needed to defend themselves against a government that they would view as oppressive and unacceptable.  The other is their belief that the US government has already become awful, stealing their liberties.

Why then, I keep asking myself, have we not seen a violent uprising among the untold millions of Americans owning guns to take back their government?  Why do we not see what goes on in European nations, namely violent public uprisings against governments?

There is more private gun ownership in the US than any other nation.  We have a far right part of the population with considerable public presence and power.  FOX News, the Tea Party movement, and countless groups and think tanks angrily attacking the mainstream media, liberals, and leftist politicians as well as just about everything done by President Obama.

So, why hasn’t the massive number of gun lovers who worship the Second Amendment actually done what they claim is exactly needed, what the Second Amendment was created to give them the right to do, and what their massive gun power supposedly gives them the means to accomplish?  Especially when they lose major elections, when their Republican and conservative politicians fail to deliver to them?

Are the paranoid doom and gloom gun lovers waiting for things to get a whole lot worse before they actually implement the grand plan to use their guns to overthrow what they see as an evil, unconstitutional and oppressive government?  Or, do they just invoke the Second Amendment as a convenient rationale for fighting all attempts to better control guns?

From their perspective, how much worse does the government have to become before they finally get the courage to use their guns and restore American democracy and liberties?  Do they think elections will save their nation?

After all, on a number of recent occasions, such as the election and reelection of President Obama, gun and ammunition sales have skyrocketed, despite an already historic level of gun and ammunition ownership.  Yet still these millions of gun-happy constitutionalists do not act.  What is going on?

Is it rational to explain all this by seeing the gun crowd as being incredibly patient?

Is all their talk and high-minded claims to be the last hope to save the country just a bunch of empty rhetoric, camouflage for fighting better gun control?

Here is what I think explains this remarkable contradiction.  In truth, the gun crowd that see themselves as the ultimate patriots, like the original revolutionaries that fought the British and created the USA, is itself conflicted by self-interests.  That is, most gun owners are receiving so many economic benefits from the existing government and economy that they are unwilling to risk all of them by a massive disruption of the whole USsystem.  Just like we saw incredible numbers of protesting Tea Party people looking old enough to be collecting Social Security and Medicare benefits, the overwhelming majority of gun nuts are also feeding off of the national system they keep attacking.  They keep buying more expensive guns and ammunition, gold and hordes of long-lasting survival foods to satisfy their paranoid thoughts.  They keep giving money to right wing causes.  They listen all the time to right wing radio and TV pundits.  They have enough wealth to afford lots of things, especially expensive guns.  Yet they do not ACT.  They do not REVOLT.  Even when their favored politicians lose.

Most of us do not equate the gun crowd with the plutocracy run by the richest Americans and corporate interests that aligns itself with Republicans and conservatives.  The plutocrats, however, have no desire for a revolution that tears down the whole US political and economic system that they so benefit from.  What the plutocracy has accomplished, against all logic, is to manipulate the gun crowd into supporting political causes that maintain the status quo that allows the upper rich to get richer.  We have far more economic oppression than political oppression.

In other words, keep spending your discretionary money on guns and ammunition and all the other things so heavily marketed to the most paranoid people as evidenced by all the advertisements on right wing stations for gold and survival foods.  Keep thinking that you need guns to combat criminals, except there is no evidence that crime has actually been curbed by the massive gun ownership rather than other factors.

But by all means keep listening and spending rather than actually REVOLT and bring down the system.  Enjoy your guns.  Just don’t take any risks and use them as defensive political tools.  Don’t do what so many angry Europeans have always done; actually go to the streets to bring down governments.  Or what we see Egyptians doing.  Of course, all those angry citizens do not have guns.  Still, they put their lives on the line.

The bottom line is that the whole gun Second Amendment movement seems like just another aspect of conspicuous consumerism that keeps the US economy humming.  When I see millions of these right wing gun enthusiasts give up their Social Security and Medicare benefits I will start to take them more seriously.

CNN has recently reported important information, including: US gun owning population is on the decline with those gun owners stockpiling more firearms; 20 percent of the gun owners with the most firearms possessed about 65 percent of the nation’s guns; the US with 5 percent of the world’s population owns 50 percent of the world’s guns; the number of households owning guns has declined from almost 50 percent in 1973 to just over 32 percent in 2010.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation reported the economic impact of firearm sales — a figure that includes jobs. taxes and sales — hit $31 billion in 2011, up from $19 billion in 2008, an increase of 63 percent despite the economic recession.  Fighting gun control has paid off for the gun industry.

There are good reasons to support better gun control laws, but fearing political revolution and violent overthrow of the government because of massive gun ownership may not be relevant.  Democrats will likely keep fearing any emphasis on gun control even though the majority of their supporters favor gun control over gun ownership.  As pointed out this year before the election: “Figures provided by Michael Dimock, Pew’s associate research director, show that the biggest shifts toward opposition to gun control have come among the same blue-collar whites who have displayed the greatest alienation to Obama across the board.”  Also, note that Pew found 72 percent of Republicans said it is more important to protect the rights of gun owners, compared to just 27 percent of Democrats.

As to the roughly, at most, 100 million American gun owners, keep fighting more gun control laws.  Keep buying even more guns, keep the multibillion dollar gun industry thriving.  Keep screaming about your Second Amendment rights.  Keep voting for Republicans.  Keep listening to Limbaugh and Hannity and all the other idols that are among the richest Americans.  Keep deluding yourselves that you are the only hope for the nation.  Don’t face your hypocrisy.  Delusion is the opiate of the right.

I agree with Sanjay Sanghoee “The belief that we need to stockpile guns of every kind to protect us from our own government is a sign of deep paranoia and madness. And to the people who think that way, let me ask you this: do you really believe that if the U.S. government decided for some reason to direct all its military might against you, you would stand a chance against them?”  Of course not, this is why all the adoration of the Second Amendment is a smokescreen for fighting better gun control.  Gun lobbies protect their business, not freedom and liberty.

The key conclusion is this: Though we need a constitutional path to major political reforms other than elections, even a Second American Revolution, the best path is not through the Second Amendment but rather through what the Founders gave us in Article V, namely a convention of state delegates with the power to propose constitutional amendments.  The nation would benefit from transferring the passion for Second Amendment gun rights into support for using the Article V convention strategy.

How to Correct the Course of America

For every person, answering the question how to correct the course for America, there is a personal viewpoint that often varies upon circumstance. However, the underlying premise is that something is wrong that needs fixing. The couch potatoes drift through life voluntarily removing their involvement from the political process as much as possible. All one needs to upset this tranquility is to strike up a conversation with a stranger and dare bring up any political or social issue and ask for their opinion. Most seldom reflect upon specifics and even fewer are able to lay out a sound and cogent thought for righting the ship of state. Moreover, to the horror of any intelligent citizen, a very significant segment of the public is content with the status quo and sees no reason to change anything.

Those cretins of complacency will not be concerned with civic activism or communal discourse. They are the end product of a controlled culture of mind manipulation and consumerism docility. These dimwitted domestic Jacobins support and fly the flag of the imperial empire. Looking to this faction of the populace for solutions is as if asking a robber to make change, while he is stealing you blind.

Thankfully, the remnant of the old Republic understands the futility of the national electoral process and the phony political party system. The scars of pounding your head against a brick wall allow the luxury of going in a different direction. The country is vast and diverse. Consensus is rare, but not impossible. The secular dominate culture is not very sophisticated nor does the average person aspire to become an avid political prophet. Most, just want a decent chance of having a good life. Putting on the armor of a patriotic warrior is foreign to the majority.

So how can there be any possibility of positively affecting the course of America? Loyal readers of BATR know that its dialogues are a comprehensive view on the human condition. The underlying premise of any persuasive endeavor rests on the premise that change is possible, when the will is strong and a constructive direction is knowable.

The forces of the New World Order and the globalist cabal are powerful and worldwide. A universal frustration and a feeling of despair cry out for an alternative to the sins of the political class. Public opinion is important and can be decisive. Candidly, political revolutions are based upon ideas not voting blocks. America desperately needs a fundamental purging of the social order.

How can such a transformation be realized when the differences are so pronounced among citizens? Usually columns seldom offer solutions, since so very few exist. Nevertheless, the threat of the Globalist juggernaut is so immediate; a heroic attempt to forge a nationwide accord deserves a comprehensive dissecting.

The two greatest dangers that impact every American stems from the economic & banking system and the threats coming out of a foreign policy in a hostile world. For the purpose of evaluation, put aside all other differences and concentrate on the magnitude and scope of instituting truly meaning change.

Abolish Central Banking and the Federal Reserve

The enslavement precepts that are intrinsic in the evil central banking, debt created monetary system are the root cause of all the economic ills. A cultural revolt against legal tender laws that coerces every resident into a fatal spiral of currency devaluation is the intellectually dominant issue of our economic wellbeing. As the country verges on a disastrous acceleration of the ongoing depression, the prospects of hyperinflation loom with every influx of quantitative easing.

Careerist politicians will never stand-up to the Wall Street banksters and legislate the demise of the Federal Reserve System. In recent years, the powers of the Fed have been greatly expanded. The only alternative that the beleaguered taxpayer has to combat the nefarious scheme to keep the public in interminable debt is to withdraw from the banking system.

Until a nationwide consensus is built that forces critical mass for the elimination of debt created money obligations, none of the other financial offenses can be cured. Individual States need to develop financial instruments that replace the counterfeit Federal Reserve notes that sadly pass as the U.S. Dollar. States should use Nullification as a means to renounce unconstitutional money.

The federal government needs to be compelled to issue Treasury “Green Backs” as a successor to the current funny money that enriches the controllers of the Federal Reserve.

Pressure and non-compliance are the necessary methods, which must be used to collapse the debt-ridden behemoth of the central banksters. The current debt should be repudiated and written off the books of the Treasury. The ill-gotten treasure stolen from the American public by the usurpers of a genuine free enterprise economy, need to be clawed back as restitution.

The private Federal Reserve Central Bank must be forced into bankruptcy and the assets liquidated. Remember that these tactics can only be practically implemented after a national revolt against the fraudulent financial system is recognized as the reason for the collapse of the economy.

Abandon a Global Empire and Re-establish an American First Foreign Policy

The false and failed foreign policy of internationalism has resulted in a national captivity of insecurity and permanent and perpetual war. The waste of treasure and blood on foreign soil to expand an imperium that serves the corporatists and banksters is a negation of the founding principles of our nation.

Until the public confronts their childish version of supporting the troops, right or wrong; the vicious interventionists, will continue to export their hubris version, of American despotism abroad. The insecurity of domestic borders is a conscious result of global garrison intrusion.

The deceitful and faux “War on Terror” is based upon a false premise and rests upon lies, deception and fabrication. The notion that dissent, stops at the water’s edge, is nothing more than an excuse to allow the transnational corporatists to dictate where the military will next stomp their boots on the ground of a foreign country. The idealism of Wilsonian internationalist doctrine has become the dread of continuous body bags. Since the “Big Stick” of Teddy Roosevelt, the country speaks with dire intimidation, deadly threats and bombs from the sky. It comes as no surprise, when the blowback comes home, from overseas wounded, who are simple collateral damage to the State Department.

The decline of the American Republic can be traced directly to the sorry record of foreign involvements. The realm of repression originates in the dominance of alien lands. The seeds of globalism could not take hold, without mercenary troops deployed worldwide, to enforce the Free Trade hoax, which only benefits the same international thieves, who extort your wellbeing and pocketbook.

As long as the public tolerate the destruction of our true self-interest and allows the wasting of additional generations of youth for the advancement and maintenance of the military-industrial-security complex, the country is doomed. Only a total renunciation of the immoral Amerikan Empire can restore an authentic national defense that really protects the nation.

Can anything be done to correct the course of America?

No doubt, many will disagree with the brief description of the two most important revisions to the current failed system. The establishment goes to war against enemy combatants as a rule of course for much lesser transgressions. Domestically, the despotism that is the new normal – coerces compliance under the real consequence from the agencies of the federal government goon squads.

KISS (keep it simple stupid) is the standard that most citizens operate under. That is why only a tightly crafted national issue that incorporates a compendium of related and complimentary restructuring has even a modest chance for traction.

The political class will fight to their authoritarian death to prevent a massive uprising from the decaying city street or the rural backwaters. Yet without a national revolt against the establishment dictators and their corrupt institutions of command and control, is there any chance to correct the course of the country.

As any regular reader will attest, the prospects for the public to rally to this cause are minimal. Apathy is the national pastime. Simply blaming the “couch potato” culture for lack of will avoids the valid criticism that true national leadership to frame the essential debate, has been absent for decades. Notwithstanding, the Paulian message from this presidential election season is too frightening for the average consumer to get off their behind and get angry.

A critical mass of rebellion is the only chance for a profound confrontation with the governance hacks, which serve the interests of the elites that restrain the debate to meaningless subjects. Distraction from essential elements for reclamation of our birthrights is the master component used by the power cabal to keep people entertained in their self-induced stupor.

The will to engage in courageous action is the missing ingredient that the public needs to find within themselves. For most, adding to their waistline dimensions is more rewarding than to seek the dignity of an independent and honest citizen.

Interview with Peter Singer

Peter Singer is a world-renowned Australian philosopher and bio-ethicist. He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics atPrincetonUniversityand Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at theUniversityofMelbourne. Singer specializes in applied ethics and is known for his secular and preference utilitarian viewpoints. In 2004, he was recognized as the Australian Humanist of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies. Peter Singer holds controversial and widely contested viewpoints regarding abortion, infanticide and euthanasia and has written several articles and books on these subjects.

His 1975 book “Animal Liberation” is considered to be the hallmark of animal liberation movement. His other important books are “Rethinking Life and Death” and “Practical Ethics.”

To me as a Muslim journalist, Singer’s opinions and ideas have always seemed objectionable and irrational. According to the teachings of Islam, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia are unlawful and impermissible. Islam says that human fetus is a conscious being and does have the capacity to determine its future if given the opportunity, so it’s illegal to seize its life. Therefore, I conducted an interview with Prof. Singer to challenge his standpoints and ask some questions regarding the why-ness of holding such controversial and unconventional beliefs. What follows is the complete text of our conversation. Peter’s answers are rather brief as compared to my elaborate questions; however, I think it has become a readable debate.

Kourosh Ziabari: why do you advocate voluntary euthanasia and abortion? I think the traditionalists and religious thinkers are right in their position that killing a human fetus or a newborn or someone suffering from a terminal or incurable disease is immoral and contrary to the laws of creation and the will of the Creator. Does it provide a justification for killing a fetus or a newborn that they don’t possess the essential characteristics of personhood such as rationality, autonomy and self-consciousnesses? After all, they are living beings, even if they are unable to reason or determine their fate. If allowed to be born and grow, the fetus or the newborn will turn into complete, rational human beings. Do we have the permission to deprive them of the right which the God has bestowed upon them? To put it in other words, are we the ones who decide our birth that want to be the decider of our death?

Peter Singer: I think if we are to discuss such issues at all, I need to make it clear that I do not share your assumptions about God, or a Creator.  I do not believe that there is such a being.  I accept a scientific view of the origins of the world, and of life, so I do not think there is a god who has bestowed rights on any beings.

Given that, then it follows, indeed, that we are the ones who have to make decisions about life and death.  And if a person is terminally ill, and because of the poor quality of his or her life does not want to go on living for the last few days, or weeks or months that he or she could live for, who better to make that decision than the person whose life it is?  Why should the state interfere in this choice?

As for abortion, you write that the fetus is a living being.  I agree.  But so is a sheep, or a cow, or a chicken, or a dog.  Why should a fetus have more of a right to life than they do? After all, they are conscious beings, able to suffer, in ways that the fetus, at least early in pregnancy, cannot.

I know that some people will object that the fetus has a potential to become a rational human being, which the sheep or cow does not.  But the world already has 7 billion humans in it, and this is causing enormous environmental problems, especially with regard to climate change.  I do not think we need more human beings on this planet.

KZ: in a 2009 New York Times article, you raised the example of a patient suffering from advanced kidney cancer who is told that will be dying in the next year or two, but can be given an extra six months at the cost of a $54,000 medicine. Then you asked that “is a few more months worth that much?” Don’t you really believe that that few more months are really worth spending $54,000? Won’t the life of all of us become meaningless and hollow if we sit back and wait until our death comes and takes our life? It’s hopefulness that makes the life significant. Don’t you believe that the human being should do its best to live as much as possible and enjoy his life in the best way he can? Of course I’m not talking about mere pleasure and happiness, but alluding to the fact that the life of human being is the most precious gift he is endowed with. Don’t you think so?

PS: Yes, I agree that human beings should enjoy life as much as possible.  But my point is that there are limited resources, and even the richest nation cannot afford to do everything possible to extend the life of every person.  So if we spend $54,000 to extend the life of a person with advanced kidney cancer for six months, then there is something else we are not doing that would save the life of someone who could live longer, perhaps for years.    And if we were to give the money to an organization working to stop malaria in Africa, we could save someone’s life for much, much less – perhaps for just $1000, we could save the life of a child who will live for another 50 years.  So for $54,000 we might be able to save the lives of 54 children.  Isn’t that better than extending the life of one person for only 6 months?

When resources are limited – as they always are – we should try to get the best possible use from them.

KZ: with all due respect, I believe that the points which you raised in your book the “Animal Liberation” are contradictory to your viewpoints about physician-assisted suicide, infanticide and euthanasia. You associate a great value to the life of animals and hold that “the interests of all beings capable of suffering to be worthy of equal consideration, and that giving lesser consideration to beings based on their species is no more justified than discrimination based on skin color” while permitting abortion or euthanasia on grounds that people are entitled to determine the manner or time of their death. You have argued many times that animals will be more deserving of life than certain humans, including disabled babies and adults who are brain-injured or in vegetative comas. But don’t you think that this argument is unfair?

Your book converted many readers to lifelong vegetarianism and inspired reforms in humane treatment for laboratory animals and livestock. So, isn’t the life of human being as valuable as that of the animals? Shouldn’t we try our best to preserve the life of human beings as much as possible?

PS: No, there is no contradiction.  I think we should give equal consideration to the similar interests of all beings, whether they are human or nonhuman animals.  So yes, the life of a normal healthy human being is at least as valuable as that of a nonhuman animal.  In fact I think it is normally more valuable, because of the particular interest that a normal human has in the future – humans make plans for the future and hope to achieve things in the future, in ways that nonhuman animals cannot.

On the other hand, as I already said in answer to one of your earlier questions, if a person is very ill and wants to die, then it is in that person’s interest to die, and we should allow him to do so.

As for people who are so severely brain-damaged that they can never again be conscious, I don’t believe that they have any interest in continuing to live, for they can gain nothing from life any more.

KZ: you’re a bioethicist, but you don’t believe in the sanctity of life and refute religion. Even though you proposed some of your arguments regarding the uselessness of religion for morality in the article the “Godless Morality,” but it’s still astounding to me that why you don’t believe in the power of religion and its connection with morality. Let’s put aside the human religions such as Buddhism and Sikhism. All of the Abrahamic religions (Islam, Christianity and Judaism) have morality and ethics as their theoretical and ideological foundations. Islam, for example, says that all of the sins are kept in a room, and “lie” is the key of that closed room. So, why don’t you believe in the necessity of religion for morality?

PS: Long ago, Plato argued that there must be a basis for morality that is independent of religion.  For if someone who believes in the existence of God wants to say that God is good, what is he saying, if all ideas of morality come from God?  He seems to be saying that God is approved of by God.  But that is meaningless.  On the other hand, if there is a God who is not good, then that God is just a tyrant.  Why should we obey him?

Some of the most ethical people in the world have been atheists.  Even today, the two greatest philanthropists in the world, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, are not religious.  And many religious people commit terrible crimes.  So there is no necessary connection between religion and morality, neither in theory nor in practice.

KZ: why do you deny Thomas Hobbes’s viewpoint on the rule of law and adherence to codes of morality in presence of the state? At least in the developing countries such as Iran, people need the forceful presence of an authority to persuade them to follow the social laws and morality codes. Without the presence of police, for instance, the traffic laws and regulations are meaningless in a country like Iran. What’s your take on that?

PS: I am not sure what it is that you think I deny.  I certainly agree that the state needs to use force at times, to ensure adherence to the law.  But that does not mean that I think, as Hobbes does, that morality depends on a social contract, or that there can be no morality without a state.

KZ: in your article “Famine, Affluence and Morality” in 1971, you spoke of the suffering of Bengali people in India who were subject to severe famine, lack of food, shelter and medical care at that time. Your raised some arguments including the necessity of giving assistance to the subjugated people in dire need of help and the importance of preventing bad things from happening. You’re arguments are comprehensible and well-structured. But what is happening in practice is far from what it should be. For example, we can consider the example of this year’s drought and famine in Somalia. The U.S. and other Western states dispatched the least humanitarian convoys to Somalia and dedicated the lowest amounts of monetary assistance to the famine-stricken country. What’s the reason in your view? Isn’t it that morality is consigned to oblivion in the industrialized, developed world? Isn’t it that the citizens of prosperous and economically affluent societies such as the United States are inattentive to humanitarian affairs and morality?

PS: Why do you say that Western states donated the least assistance toSomalia?  What figures are you basing that claim on?  To the best of my knowledge, most of the aid that has gone toSomaliahas come from Western nations, just as most of the aid that goes to the global poor also comes from Western nations.  Of course, I agree that the rich Western nations should do much more, but it is also a great shame that the oil-rich states of theMiddle Eastdo not use their wealth to help the world’s poorest people.

I hope that some of your readers will go to my website, www.thelifeyoucansave.com and will make a personal pledge to share some of their income with people who are much poorer than they are.

KZ: do you see any significant relationship between morality and the culture of consumerism? Can we argue that the more consumerism penetrates into the society, the more morality declines and turns down?

PS: I don’t think it is quite so simple as that.  Although I agree that there is too much emphasis on consuming things, I also think that we are making progress in morality, and there is more concern for the poor, for the environment, and for animals, than there used to be.  I am also pleased to see that there is now wider acceptance of the equality of women, and that homosexuals are no longer persecuted in the way that they were 50 years ago.  These things are all improvements in morality.

KZ: at the beginning of your “Ethics” entry for the Encyclopedia Britannica, you raised a number of questions the answers to which deal with the discipline of moral philosophy. One of them was that “If conscripted to fight in a war we do not support, should we disobey the law?” I want to know your answer to this very question. Do you believe that in the contemporary world which is witness to destructive and lethal wars and conflicts, people should refuse to comply with their nationalistic obligations and avoid taking part in wars which will inevitably lead to the killing of innocent civilians? In a broader sense and with regards to countries with fragile political structures which are prone to revolutions and popular uprisings, is joining the opposition and voicing support for the contenders of the government considered to be immoral and a kind of betrayal to the republican values? To put it more succinctly, I want to raise the example of Iran. In Iran, the majority of people are satisfied with the way the government handles the country’s affairs; however, there’s a significant minority which is at odds with the government. We have also powerful opposition groups and parties outside the country, including some terrorist groups such as PKK, PJAK and MKO who want to topple the government at the cost of the lives of innocent people. Is allying with them and supporting them moral, in your view?

PS: I do not think that anyone should ally with terrorist organizations, ever.  But I do believe that the people ofIranshould be able to vote for their rulers, and I mean, for the people with ultimate power to decide the future of their country.  So I would like to see a peaceful opposition movement inIranthat moves the country towards true democracy.  Such a movement has happened recently inTunisia, and also inEgypt, although it is certainly running into greater difficulties there because of the resistance of the military to losing power. But if this can happen inTunisiaandEgypt, why not inIran?

KZ: does culture influence the value of moral action? Can we find conceptions and behaviors which are moral in a certain culture but are considered to be immoral and unethical in another? I want to know if culture influences the quality of moral action and the morality of deeds and social behaviors. Does such an impact exist? Of course you’ve talked about the universality of ethics and argued that there are no ethical universals, because as you have put it, “there is so much variation from one culture to another that no single principle or judgment is generally accepted” but I think some concepts such as abnegation, sacrifice, truthfulness, honesty and loyalty have the same meaning in the all the cultures around the world. What’s your take on that?

PS: I do not recognize the quote you have above.  In fact I do believe that there are some ethical universals, even though there is also a great deal of cultural variation.  But the principle of reciprocity, or example, appears to be universal, as is the obligations of parents to support their children.  I also think that there are more fundamental universal moral truths, like having equal consideration for the interests of all, which may not be recognized everywhere yet, but one day will be.

KZ: according to the Sophist Thrasymachus, “the concept of justice means nothing more than obedience to the laws of society, and, since these laws are made by the strongest political group in their own interests, justice represents nothing but the interests of the stronger.” What’s your viewpoint regarding his argument? After all, there should be an authority to administer justice and proclaim the foundations and bases of justice. Is it right to deny that the distinction between right and wrong has any objective basis, only because those who set the rules of justice are in power and have authority and abiding by their rules would mean obedience to power?

PS: I do not accept the cynical view of morality put forward by Thrasymachus.  What the strongest political group says is right is often not right at all.  It may be that just as there are truths of mathematics, so there are moral truths, for example that suffering is bad.  These truths may often not be fully accepted in a community, because we humans tend to be selfish or nationalistic in our outlook.  That is understandable, for evolutionary reasons, but it does not make it right.

A Greeting for 2012: Looking Back at Durban and “Occupying” Ourselves

This is the time for New Year’s resolutions. Notwithstanding occasional gains like President Obama’s promise to delay approval of the Keystone XLpipeline, a promise now whittled down to 60 days by his signature on recent legislation, we are losing the fight against global warming decisively, and with it, losing

– the homelands of a number of the world’s nations,

– the productivity and reliability of global agriculture, and

– likely more of the world’s biodiversity, and faster, than in any other period in geological history,

Maybe there are physical forces making disaster inevitable, or maybe what is happening is within the control of human free will, but the window of opportunity for the latter is rapidly closing. Hopefully it is not entirely shut yet.

Global warming may be lethal, but it is still only one of Earth’s illnesses. A debt-ridden, overpopulated, hungry and warring humanity is shredding the biosphere, home to billions of beautiful and innocent creatures like the family of mergansers you see, and at the same time facing “peak everything,” with fossil fuels at the top of the list, along with many of the minerals essential for agriculture and high technology. (1) Our erstwhile governments and most of the seven billion or if you prefer, the 99%, are sitting in a stupor as if paralyzed. Some, last spring’s Middle Eastern protesters and the Occupiers around the world in recent months, were awoken by a Middle Eastern fruit vendor who immolated himself. This appeal is made by one of the seven billion, from a tiny American town not far from the home of Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau, explaining why he went to jail rather than pay his head tax to support the Mexican-American War, wrote, “It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump.” That was also the message of the fruit vendor who sacrificed his life for us all. There is very little evidence that the world’s governments are willing or capable of taking decisive action, so it is up to us, the 99%, or however many of us are willing, to “leaven the lump” and bring back the world from the precipice.

This article will argue that we the people, and more specifically those of us who call ourselves “green,” are losing the battle to stop global warming, and many other battles largely because we all or at least too many of us have been indoctrinated

– to forget Mr. Thoreau’s other reminder, that ‘The government is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will.”

– to forget what “conservationists” understood before Earth Day 1970, that every environmental problem has its roots in “too many people using too much stuff.”

– to forget what Thoreau and Gandhi and many others have taught us, that relinquishment of material wants is empowerment, not self-sacrifice.

– to forget the foremost teaching of religion and spiritualism and ethics for at least four millenia: the Golden Rule.

We are all guilty. So we need to resolve now to reinstate those principles in our personal lives and the life of society, not tomorrow but today. It’s a tall order, but in fact we are coming so close to destroying civilization and the earth, that only a rethinking of fundamental values will save us.

What is more difficult to understand than that we have been losing the battles against environmental and human injustice, is that the people of the Baby Boom, now in power ’round the world or at least in the United States, grew up in the shadow of a great man, John Kennedy, who said, “Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again.” (2) We believed him then, and indeed it seems self-evident, doesn’t it? So we can believe him now. Yet most of us sit as if paralyzed.

On the global warming front in particular, the test case for survival of the Earth, all the talk and agreements and campaigns since the eighties have not even created a “blip” in the seemingly inexorable rise of CO2 in the atmosphere, never deviating in the slightest from a course followed for half a century (3):

If the cacophony since the eighties has resulted in any progress, it is not apparent in the physical world, is it? There are those who say that the talk alone is a sign of progress, and they may be right. But not for Mama Nature.

Look what’s happened in the last few weeks. This is what you already know if you’ve been paying attention.

1.International Energy Agency (IEA) scientists, the ones the world pays to know, announced that we have about five years (that’s until 2016, just around the corner) to put a stop to increased greenhouse-gas emisssions before global warming gets completely out of control. Their reasoning was economic. When you build a power plant or tar sands oil pipeline or widget-manufacturing facility, you expect to pay for the investment out of the sale of electricity or tar sands oil or widgets. So the construction locks everyone in to producing the widgets or oil or electricity, and if that causes CO2 emissions, the economics makes it much harder to cut the emissions than before the construction happened.. Five years from now the expenditures will have been made that lock us into emissions that will cause more than 2 degrees C of warming. The time to halt the emissions is now, not after many costly new CO2-generating plants and pipelines have been built, which must somehow be paid for.. “The door is closing,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, says. “If we don’t change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever.” (4) Forever.

2. The IEA scientists also announced that global warming is happening much faster than expected; and unless practices and policies change very rapidly, global warming could easily be 3 degrees C by 2050, 6 degrees C (11 degrees F) by 2100. The politicians had made an official finding at Copenhagen that anything more than a 2-degree warming, any time sooner than the end of the century, would have unacceptable environmental and economic impacts. Three times the warming by century’s end or 50% more in less than half the time? We’re in trouble. The unacceptable is becoming the inevitable. It’s getting so warm in the arctic that (a) the ice is rapidly disappearing, which causes more sunlight to be absorbed and less reflected, which in turn means the earth heating up rapidly just because of that regardless of how how much more CO2 we put into the sky, and (b) methane is bubbling up from under where the ice used to be and from formerly frozen peat – LOTS of methane, which is a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful. than CO2 on a 100-year average basis, and even several times worse than that on an immediate short-term basis The methane emissions will just keep coming faster, and like the missing ice, they’ll create their own global warming without regard to CO2.

3. There was also agreement at Copenhagen that for the protection of the more vulnerable countries that will be annihilated by rising seas, the 2-degree ceiling should be reconsidered no later than 2015 to be possiby lowered to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F),

4.. As the politicians were about to fly into Durban on highly-polluting planes to talk about global warming, it was announced thaqt 2010 had seen a 5.6% increase in world CO2 emissions, the largest gross increase in human history. And that’s with the Kyoto protocols in effect as much as they have ever been. The problem is, of course, that China and the US, the biggest emitters, don’t have to do anything at all under Kyoto, and Europe, which at least gives lipservice to it, uses paper emissions trading said by some to be 90% fraudulent (5).

5. The politicians flew into Durban

– knowing that Kyoto is hardly working at all and in particular that under Kyoto we just saw the largest increase in CO2 emissions in history. , .

– knowing that we’ve got five years to put into effect something that will halt further commitments to emissions increases;

– knowing that they had promised to reconvene in 2015 to consider lowering the ceiling to 1.5 degrees to protect the more vulnerable nations, and

– knowing that warming is now happening much more and much sooner than the maximum they had declared acceptable at Copenhagen..

6. What was their response? .

– They agreed to extend Kyoto, due to lapse next year.
.
– They agreed to try to come up with a new plan in 2020, already four years after the scientists say it will be too late, five years after they had promised to consider lowering the ceiling to 1.5 degrees, and thirty years after Kyoto…

– They declared a victory and went home for the holidays.

7. As soon as the folks in Durban announced the extension of Kyoto, Canada announced it was going to walk out of the treaty. Bad medicine. Why? because Canadian tar sands oil is just as polluting as conventional oil when it is consumed, but more polluting in the refining process and the greater source of emissions for tar sands oil is where it’s gotten out of the ground rather than where it is ultimately used. Tar sands oil will

– produce vast quantities of CO2 emissions where it is produced in Canada, where the emissions will be completely uncontrolled with Canada out of the treaty, and

– produce vast quantities of CO2 emissions where it is consumed – in the US if the Keystone XL pipeline is built, or elsewhere via a Pacific Coast pipeline if the Keystone XL pipeline is not built..

There are those who say that if the pipeline is built, the battle to halt global warming is lost forever, and they are likely right. (6) The same is true by the same logic, of course, if the pipeline is not built but the oil is sent elsewhere.

2010 was a bad year for CO2 emissions? You ain’t seen nothin’.

8. In the meantime, the govenment and industry have been busy working to bring Canadian tar sands oil into the US, for all the world as if we should never cease burning oil.. . Back in Washington, thanks to 350.org and William Mckibben surrounding the White House with protesters, President Obama said he would postpone approval of the pipeline until there had been further environmental studies done. Good. Of course if the pipeline is blocked, the oil will likely go out to the Pacific Coast by a much more environmentally damaging pipeline route, and will be used elsewhere. (7) Oh well, at least the US won’t be blamed for the inevitable massive increases in emissions, even if Mama Nature can’t tell the difference.. So 350.org declared a victory and the protesters went home for the holidays..

9. And then there is “fracked” shale gas, an immense new source of natural gas, which will become its own immense new source of greenhouse gas emissions. Anyone who cares about global warming knows that the only thing to do with new fossil fuels is to leave them in the ground at least until there is a global warming treaty, and not make investments in their exploitation that will have to be repaid through their sale. “Fracking,” even if it could be done “cleanly,” is for economic reasons, one more pound of nails in the earth’s coffin.

10. Last but perhaps more appropriately first, the UN recently admitted for the first time that its projected world population of 9 billion by mid-century, already more than can be fed sustainably under any plausible scenario without corresponding increases in fossil fuel consumption,, is going to keep spiralling upward to over 10 billion by the end of the century. The farther we go in that direction, the more locked in we will be to impossubly destructive CO2 emissions, not to mention impossibly destructive losses of remaining forest lands. As was pointed out years ago, the really “inconvenient truth”about global warming is that uncontrolled population growth means uncontrolled global warming.(8)

Of course we should have known that our efforts at Durban would fail. The politicians flew to Copenhagen, accomplished very little, declared victory and went home. With both the United States and China refusing to commit to anything legally binding, the possibility of meeting the 2 degree ceiling is receding into fantasy-land.. Talks began before 1990, and now the earliest we could even hope for a treaty binding on the largest emitters is more than 30 years later. And the biosphere hangs in the balance.

To this writer what is more difficult to understand about the present state of affairs is this. We greens will have been hard at work over thirty years trying to convince the governments to do the only thing that can be done about global warming: at this point: to tell us to stop putting so much CO2 in the air. What we have to show for it is thirty years of steadily increasing emissions with no end in sight. If we fail to get the governments to order us to stop polluting, what stops us from doing it ourselves.without orders, however difficult that may be what more realistic alternatives do we have, and why does there seem to be resistance to the idea?

The mainstream environmental groups are very vague about who will in fact have to stop polluting, and how much, but the truth is that to reach the goals we assert to be needed, we will have to decrease our driving radically, decrease our consumption of electricity radically, decrease our consumption of home heating fuels radically, etc.. How much? Probably at least 80%, because in the thirty years between Kyoto and our next meeting date, huge volumes of CO2 will have been added to the atmosphere, making additional heating for the next century inevitable.. You and I have to make those cuts or leave an almost unlivable earth to our descendants, yet we go on using whatever fossil fuels are available as if there were no concerns, making small efforts like purchase of hybrid vehicles, which fail to show up on the chart. “Alternatives” (eg solar electricity, biofuels, “hybrids,” etc. are there, but they appear at this point to be too little, too late. And when environmentalists talk about decreasing emissions, there are always two fundamental approaches – conservation (e.g. drive less) or efficiency (e.g. fuel efficiency standards). We hear proposals for the latter, (which have not been shown to be sufficient soon enough, not to mention that they are fleeting at best because they will be negated by population increases), but not proposals for the former.

Forty years ago, it was gospel that the root causes underlying almost all deterioration of the environment were “too many people using too much stuff.” The fundamental solutions, then, were fewer people using less stuff. For close to four decades, however,the mainline environmental organizations have had a conspiracy of silence about the “too many people” part. And when it comes to “stuff,” there is a lot of talk about “sustainable alternatives” ( clean energy, hybrid vehicles, etc). but very little talk about “less stuff” – before Earth Day we called ourselves “conservationists,” but now the major environmental groups hardly talk about conservation at all. It’s as if the former “conservationists” have acquired a conspiracy of silence about conservation itself as well as population.

From people who saw the root cause as “too many people using too much stuff,” mainstream professional environmentalists have become folks who won’t say there are too many people and won’t say they use too much stuff.. Of course the GDP is measured by how many people there are and how much “stuff” they create in monetary terms, so “too many people using too much stuff” is almost the same thing as too high a GDP. Admitting that in today’s world is trouble,. so we seek “sustainable growth,”

As has been observed, “sustainable growth” is an oxymoron. In the global warming context the weakness of the “alternatives” approach (which is also the “sustainable growth” approach) is self-evident. You build a car with greater fuel efficiency, and that just allows more driving or a larger population of drivers. The amount of fuel used has to be addressed head-on, but that doesn’t seem to be happening in active programs among the mainline environmental groujps. No wonder we lose. This blindness shows up directly when it comes to global warming – a refusal to talk about people actually using less of what generates greenhouse emissions. We don’t want to talk about conservation, yet expect the government to impose it. Huh?

The primary stumbling block to implementation of the Copenhagen goals was that both the United States and China refused to make any legally binding commitment at all. Wen this writer reviewed Copenhagen from his personal point of view (9), he pointed out that there was little on the horizon that would make the outcome different in future attempts to reach an accord, and said (I’ll repeat verbatim, italicized, because the facts above only demonstrate that what was apparently true then is unquestionably true now, two years deeper into the hole.For the reader’s convenience, endnotes and interlineations are provided for further clarification.)

We are left with the two largest GHG emitters, the United States and China, unwilling to commit to binding goals for reduction. All the while, there’s little hope that the public can introduce any sort of meaningful change in this situation. At the same time, the rest, the signers of the Kyoto accords, increased their emissions when the protocols called for decreases. So much for governments.

All considered, we have lost twenty years [now 31, since the parties at Durban postponed further discussions until 2020] for bringing about meaningful climate change mitigation and we have little time left because every year that the atmospheric CO2 load increases, there is even a lesser chance that the dangerous processes can be reversed. Meanwhile, we, clearly, face governments in the hands of corporations and corporations blind to any need that could adversely affect the next quarterly report. Are these conditions going to change in the few years we have? It is unlikely. The concerned public has thus far proved incapable of accomplishing meaningful governmental and corporate programs to halt global warming, so how can we have confidence except in more of the same until time runs out?

Is it hopeless? Apparently so if we are going to depend on the governments and the corporations. Yet in taking that position, we are putting aside an “inconvenient truth” – inconvenient because we might rather put responsibility on irresistible forces out there in the universe than on ourselves.

The inconvenient truth is that there are few if any human CO2 emissions not the result of our own individual and collective consumer decisions. There are our direct uses of fossil fuels for transportation and home heating, there is the electricity we consume that is generated by burning fossil fuels or, more recently, biofuels and biomass. There is the energy consumed in production and transport of our food and consumer products. Why – the catalogue is in fact the same catalogue that would have to be dealt with under a global treaty!

So in fact, we the people, in the United States and all over the world, have no need to wait until we are forced by government programs to take the steps necessary to reduce CO2 emissions. We can do what we’ve been waiting for the governments and corporations to do, and because they are doing nothing, we no longer have any alternative except to make the changes, ourselves.

Are we so childish that we can do nothing except whine that we haven’t been told what to do, when the future of the earth, the future of humanity, depends upon action? Maybe the answer is yes – I don’t know what you will do, and I don’t know what I will do. Yet if we do not want to be responsible, individually and collectively, for the horrors to come, then we must, individually and collectively, say no to any more greenhouse emissions than the scientists say are safe.

Henry Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi taught us that our needs are much less than our wants and that we can peacefully bring down governments and corporations by refusing to accept their measures of our needs.

[Thoreau is widely viewed as the originator of civil disobedience as a moral and civic duty, especially in all societies aspiring to democracy. .He believed that the Mexican-American war was immoral, yet he found himself requested to pay a head tax to finance the war. So he said no, and went to jail. We shall never know how far he would have taken the experiment, because his neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson, over his objection, paid the tax and got him released. In explaining why he viewed refusal to pay the tax as his duty, he said, “It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support ” (7) Obviously we have not wiped our handsof global warming when we buy the fuels or the electriciy or consumer goods and not only create emissions but finance our opponents as Thoreau’s head tax financed the war. We will not by ourselves have stopped global warming, but the example will be seen, and our willingness to make sacrifices for reductions in emissions will for the first time be unquestionable. As Thoreau explained, “It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing;” Rather, if substantial numbers of people refuse to pay the profiteers or to engage in throwing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it will demonstrate their sincerity in a manner that cannot be accomplished by just asking the government to do something. We shall, hopefully, “leaven the whole lump,” and ideally, slow the growth of demand for products destroying the earth. There will be less profit in building the power plants and pipelines about to lock us in to failure, and we can sleep better in the knowledge that we “washed our hands of it.” BESIDES, NOTHING ELSE THAT HAS BEEN SUGGESTED WILL WORK.

The core teaching of “Civil Disobedience” is, as Martin Luther King saw it, “Noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.” As consumers and users and financial contributors to the makers of the pollutants that are destroying the earth, its biodiversity, and its agricultural productivity for millions of years to come, we must demonstrate our opposition with noncooperation. Why?

– Because it is a moral duty,

– Because it will “leaven the whole lump,”

– Because nothing else is working at all.

Another important part of Thoreau’s teachings is his examination of our ability and responsibility to reduce our material consumption to the core at which we can carry on our lives as principled members of the community without either imposing on others, depriving ourselves of freedom or violating our own moral beliefs. That is Walden, which forces us to understand that consumerism locks us out from living our lives with integrity and freedom. It’s a message essential for giving up the material “needs” for which we are destroying the earth.

Gandhi’s self-imposed poverty gives us the same message – that abandonment of material needs is empowerment, not self-sacrifice. It’s a view, of course, that is anathema to the global corporations that control our lives through the culture of materialism. Without that understanding, it is unlikely that Americans can voluntarily relinquish their “rights” to a standard of living Russia’s President Putin and undoubtedly millions or billions of others have rightly called parasitism. As long as Americans maintain that view, they are playing with the danger that the world will quickly and painfully take away the material “rights” they enjoy at everyone else’s expense – “rights” that will soon be gone in any event as “peak everything” imposes itself on us.. To fail to make a virtue of a necessity is the height of folly.

Remember Gandhi’s spinning wheel? It was a simple declaration of independence from British capitalism, a statement that India could do without the capitalists. “Mahatma Gandhi Album: the Man and the Wheel,” http://www.kamat.com/mmgandhi/wheel.htm To the extent we liberate ourselves from the causes of global warming, so will we also liberate ourselves from the corporations of Wall Street,which act in arrogant confidence that we are ever their dependents and ever in debt to them. If we step away from the shiny things they produce, they will have no power over us, so it is time to do it in small ways and large.].

It is time to stop waiting for governments to act as we expected them to act at Kyoto long ago and at Copenhagen [more than two years ago and at Durban most recently.]

At this point, exclusively focussing on government action is little more than avoidance of the inconvenient truth of our individual and collective responsibility. So we must get on with the show – convincing and helping ourselves, convincing and helping our neighbors, convincing and helping humanity to reduce CO2 emissions by all means within our power, to reach the goals and timelines the scientists are telling us we must meet. . We must do it with the good will and generosity so lacking in Copenhagen because our “leaders” showed us in Copenhagen [and Durban] that the needed changes, assuredly, will not happen otherwise.

There is a little catch. The fundamental rule of social behavior, raised to a pinnacle by “free-market” economics, has been for generations, in the words of 1952 U.S. Progressive Party Presidential nominee Vincent Hallinan, “Fuck you Jack, I got mine!” That is unnatural and unsustainable.

Every major religious text, back at least as far as the Egyptian Book of the Dead [four millenia ago], has taught us in substance, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

[For specific wording of the rule in twenty of the world’s religions, see “Universality of the Golden Rule,” http://www.edminterfaithcentre.ca/goldrule.htm. The rule explicitly dictates behavior towards all things living among the Jains, Native Americans, and Nigerian Yoruba, and this writer submiots, implicitly does so among others. It is hard to seen how a universally accepted rule of behavior can be, as asserted by our colleagues in the corporate world, genetically impossible, and it is of course a necessary rule for survival among the hunter-gatherer tribes from which we descend.

The corporate anti-Christ has tried to tell us otherwise for centuries. That is hardly surprising, because it is increasingly coming to be understood that the structure of large corporations, indeed probably all large integrated organizations, regardless of stated mission, automatically draws to the top, psychopaths, people who, generally through factors of nature and nurture beyond their control, lack the ability to empathize. (9)

Look where it has gotten us.] There are reasons why the free market rule has repeatedly brought down the US economy, destroyed the Copenhagen and Kyoto efforts and will make our efforts to stop global warming, with or without the aid of the governments, an impossibility .No other rule than that taught by universal religion, will work to leave a world to future living beings in which they can, actually, survive and thrive.

We certainly have our work cut out for us, but we have no choice. And the governments and corporations are welcome to join us all if they see fit. If the offenders find themselves boycotted, they should not be surprised. So think about this message, start saying no to carbon, along with unnecessary consumption of goods and services. Instead, share the vision for a low carbon footprint with your neighbors, friends, other associates, congregations, nonprofit organizations, everyone. Then ever so nicely, ask them to get with the program post haste, because the responsibility is now with us.

We the seven billion are well-meaning folks on the whole, but with all due respect we are also all the righthand men and women of Wall Street. Want to bankrupt the global corporations, one or all? Just stop consuming what they sell, and stop producing future consumers. I,It’s that simple, and within decades it will in any event be forced upon us by the limits to growth. t’s all about “too many people using too much stuff,” so if we fail to do now what the limits to growth will force us to do tomorrow, future generations, if they survive, will pay dearly.. We allowed ourselves to be indoctrinated by the corporate psychopaths into believing that we are like them, constitutionally unable to care for our fellow beings. That’s not us, or wasn’t until they took over control of our minds and our religions. Things might be different if we decided to “occupy” ourselves without abandoning the occupation of Wall Street, and having done so, to implement the Golden Rule, the central teaching of every major religion on earth, and the principle that conservation is empowerment, not self-sacrifice..

Think of these things, please, but with humor and good will, as you honor in your own way the religious and spiritual holidays. And to be effective, the nonprofits need to change course too, and stop knocking their heads against walls that will remain unmoved until we all change our ways.

(1) Vernon, 2007, “Peak Minerals,” Oil Drum Europe, http://europe.theoildrum.com:80/. Thee appears to be consideable uncertainty as to the supplies of key minerals, which have not been studied in nearly the detail of oil, so this writer will not vouch for the current accuracy of Vernon’s work.

(2) American University Speech, June 13, 1963.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkamericanuniversityaddress.html

(3) Farley, The Scientific Case for Modern Anthropogenic Global Warming, Monthly Review

(4) “World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns
If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will ‘lose for ever’ the chance to avoid dangerous climate change,” Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 November 2011 05.01 EST http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/09/fossil-fuel-infrastructure-climate-change

(5) “Carbon offsets have already run out of credit,” http://tgrule.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/carbon-offsets-have-already-run-out-of-credit/. See also Carbon Trade Watch, which reports, “Carbon trading schemes are awash with paper “reductions” that do not correspond to actual reductions of greenhouse gas emissions in the real world, and this is a systematic problem.” http://www.corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/publications/LettingTheMarketPlay.pdf

(6) Why? because of tar sands oil’s “EROEI” (energy recovered over energy in.) When the energy recovered in extracting a fuel from the ground is less than the energy needed to extract it (ie EROEI < 1) , getting it out is pretty much worthless, and when EROEI is only a little over 1 (as when you pull 4 barrels of oil out of the ground but burn the equivalent of three of them to get them), you’ve already expended several times the net recovery to get there, which means the oil from tar sands has already caused more CO2 emissions before it even reaches the refinery than it or conventional oil causes after it’s burnt. Really bad medicine. Additionally, meeting recognized scientificly-established goals for reduction of CO2 emissions requires using less than the total reserves of “conventional” oil and gas. Once development of “unconventional” sources (tar sands oil, shale oil, deep sea oil and “fracked” shale gas) are initiated in full scale, it will become virtually impossible to halt their use, since the investors will fight to retrieve their investments.

(7) See http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/sclefkowitz/pipeline_and_tanker_trouble_ne.html
Pipeline and Tanker Transport Trouble: New report shows the impact to British Columbia’s communities, rivers and Pacific coastline from tar sands oil http://www.climateark.org/blog/2011/12/release-another-tar-sands-pipe.asp December 12, 2011 RELEASE: Another Tar Sands Pipeline Postponed in Major Victory for First Nations and Ecological Internet, http://www.wcel.org/our-work/tar-sands-tankers-pipelines TarSands,Tar Sands, Tankers & Pipelines.

(8) See, eg, Diane Francis, “The Real Inconvenient Truth,” http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2314438 See also, “Peak Food: Can Another Green Revolution Save Us?”. www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau310710.htm, one of many discussions of the need to maintain growth of fossil fuels to maintain growth of food production.

(9) “Copenhagen Failed Us. What Do We Do Next?” http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau150210.htm

(10) end of “Civil Disobedience” Part One, http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil1.html

(11) Brian Basham Thursday, 29 December 2011″Beware Corporate Psychopaths – They Are Still Occupying Positions of Power.” Basham cites some of the recent peer-reviewed academic literature on the subject http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/brian-basham-beware-corporate-psychopaths–they-are-still-occupying-positions-of-power-6282502.html

Black Friday 2011: The Violence Continues

NEW YORK (MainStreet) — Black Friday took a turn for the worse this year as shoppers in stores around the country resorted to fighting, shooting and even pepper-spraying their way to the most coveted deals.

The violence began even before Thanksgiving was technically over. Moments after a Walmart in Los Angeles opened its doors at 10 p.m., one woman reportedly used pepper spray on at least 20 customers – some of whom were children – to keep them away from the discounted electronics she planned to buy.

As if the pepper spray incident weren’t bad enough, shoppers elsewhere in California had to contend with something even more frightening: an actual shooting.

A man was found shot and bleeding in the parking lot of a Walmart in the Bay Area just before 2 a.m. The man and his family had apparently been the victim of an attempted mugging, as “several” people with guns tried to take the family’s purchases by force.

Meanwhile, police in Fayetteville, N.C., reported gunshots fired near the food court of a local mall at 2 a.m., but no injuries were reported.

And then there were the fights – after all, what Black Friday would be complete without the fights?

In Kissimmee, Fla., two men fought at a jewelry counter at a Walmart, and one of them had to be dragged away by the police, according to the Orlando Sentinel. Other customers captured videos of  in line,  in stores and  affiliated with Occupy Wall Street and put them up on YouTube.

Sadly, Black Friday violence is nothing new, though the actual number of injuries this year seems higher.

In 2010, one shopper in California was arrested for carrying a handgun and ammunition to stores and another was arrested for threatening to shoot those in line, though neither actually hurt other customers.

Then, of course, there was the infamous stampede at a New York Walmart on Black Friday three years ago that resulted in the death of one employee.

Moral of the story: sometimes it pays to shop from home.

Source: mainstreet.com

Is China Ready To Pull The Plug?

There are two mainstream market assumptions that, in my mind, prevail over all others. The continuing function of the Dow, the sustained flow of capital into and out of the banking sector, and the full force spending of the federal government are ALL entirely dependent on the lifespan of these dual illusions; one, that the U.S. Dollar is a legitimate safe haven investment and will remain so indefinitely, and two, that China, like many other developing nations, will continue to prop up the strength of the dollar indefinitely because it is “in their best interest”. In the dimly lit bowels of Wall Street such ideas are so entrenched and pervasive, to question their validity is almost sacrilegious. Only after the recent S&P downgrade of America’s AAA credit rating did the impossible become thinkable to some MSM analysts, though a considerable portion of the day-trading herd continue to roll onward, while the time bomb strapped to the ass end of their financial house is ticking away.

The debate over the health and longevity of the dollar comes down to one very simple and undeniable root pillar of economics; supply and demand. The supply of dollars throughout the financial systems of numerous countries is undoubtedly overwhelming. In fact, the private Federal Reserve has been quite careful in maintaining a veil of secrecy over the full extent of dollar saturation in foreign markets in order to hide the sheer volume of greenback devaluation and inflation they have created. If for some reason the reserves of dollars held overseas by investors and creditors were to come flooding back into the U.S., we would see a hyperinflationary spiral more destructive than any in recorded history. As the supply of dollars around the globe increases exponentially, so too must foreign demand, otherwise, the debt machine short-circuits, and newly impoverished Americans will be using Ben Franklins for sod in their adobe huts. As I will show, demand for dollars is not increasing to match supply, but is indeed stalled, ready to crumble.

China, being the second largest holder of U.S. debt next to the Fed, and the number one holder of dollars within their forex reserves, has always been the key to gauging the progression of the global economic collapse now in progress. If you want to know what’s going to happen tomorrow, watch what China does today.

Back in 2005, China began a low profile program to issue government debt denominated in the Yuan, called Yuan bonds, or “Panda Bonds”. This move was almost entirely ignored by establishment economists. They should have realized then that China was moving to strengthen the Yuan, expand its use in other markets, and recondition their economic structure away from export dependency and towards consumerism (as they have done with the establishment of the ASEAN trading bloc). Of course, in the MSM at that time, there was no derivatives bubble, no credit crisis, no debt implosion. America was on cloud nine. China, through inside knowledge, or perhaps a crystal ball, knew exactly what was about to happen, and insulated itself accordingly by generating distance between its system and the soon to derail retail based society of the U.S. This dynamic has not changed since the 2008 bubble burst, and Chinese activity is still the ultimate litmus test for economic volatility.

Today, there is widespread confusion in markets over the direction of America’s financial future.In the wake of the credit downgrade, most investors unaware of the bigger picture are desperately clinging to any and every piece of news no matter how trivial, every rumor from the Fed, and every announcement from the government no matter how empty. China’s economic news feeds have been tightly regulated and filtered, even more so than usual (which is cause for concern, in my opinion), while distractions in Europe abound. Let’s take a step by step journey through these issues, and see if we can’t produce some clarity…

U.S. versus EU: A Game Of Hot Potato…To The Death?

The theatrical seesaw between the U.S. and Europe is not only becoming obvious to the most narrow of economic analysts, it is also becoming kind of boring. The entire ordeal has been subversively exploited as a false example of systemic “contagion”, and with purpose; global banks need to convince average Americans and average Europeans that destabilization in one portion of the world will automatically lead to destabilization everywhere. This concept is true only so far as forced globalization and centralization have made it true. That said, the charade has been somewhat effective in conditioning the populace with ideas of collectivist survival. In other words, we are being trained to take fiscal responsibility for countries outside of our sovereign national boundaries as if we are morally tied to every penny they have or do not have (global socialism/feudalism – here we come!). This process is culminating in worldwide harmonization through fear as well as guilt.

What we are witnessing is NOT contagion. Instead, we are seeing multiple and mostly separate collapses activated simultaneously. Each nation suffering dire straights in Europe is doing so because of its own particular financial problems, not the problems of other countries nearby, and certainly not those of countries on the other side of the world. Contagion arguments are only applicable to those economies overly dependent on exports, yet, China has already shown (at least in the case of the U.S.) that such dangers can be controlled by minimizing exposure to the poisoned portions of the system and reverting to more internalized wealth creation.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the heads of World Bank and IMF have perpetuated the lie of contagion between the U.S. and the EU primarily to service the progress of globalization, but also to hide the inflationary effects of dollar devaluation. While the greatest threats are stacked squarely against America’s economy and the dollar, somehow we have been led to focus on the comparatively less explosive drama in the EU. U.S. dollars, as well as Chinese funds, are flooding into Europe to support the region, while investment in the U.S. and its debt weakens and disappears. In the meantime, a weaker Euro makes the dollar look more attractive (at least on paper), but in reality, both currencies are on the path to bloody hari-kari.

How much longer can this game of hot potato go on? Again, China decides. Eventually, China is going to have to choose which currency to support; the dollar or the euro. Supporting both is simply not an option, especially when the chance of collapse in both currencies is so high. So far, the most logical path has been the euro. While the EU may suffer an astonishing breakdown, we must take into account that our own Treasury and central bank have seen fit to throw trillions of dollars into propping up Europe (with even more on the way):

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/15/us-eurozone-idUSTRE78B24R20110915

With so much inflation and devaluation being thrust upon the dollar in the name of saving the EU, China’s move towards a stronger economic relationship with Europe at the expense of the U.S. is a no-brainer:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-14/china-willing-to-buy-bonds-from-sovereign-debt-crisis-nations-zhang-says.html

If I were to place a bet on who would come out of the crisis less damaged, my money would be on the EU, everyone else’s money certainly seems to be…

China Discreetly Moving To Dump U.S. Debt

China has been tip-toeing towards this for years, and has openly admitted on numerous occasions that they plan to institute a break from U.S. debt and the dollar in due course. Anyone who continues to argue that a Chinese decoupling from America’s economy is impossible at this point is truly beyond hope. Though increasingly more rare, news on China’s push to drop the U.S. still leaks out. Recently, a top advisor to China’s central bank let slip that a plan is in place to begin “liquidating” (yes, they said liquidate) their U.S. Treasury bonds as soon as possible, and reposition national investments into more physical assets:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100011987/china-to-liquidate-us-treasuries-not-dollars/

But let’s step back for a moment and pretend China hasn’t told us exactly what it is going to do time and time again. Instead, let’s look at the fundamentals.

The primary concern in China right now is inflation. Because China does not yet have the ability to export its fiat to other markets the way the U.S. does, its own liquidity injections in the face of the credit crisis have led to severe price increases. In August alone, overall inflation was rated at 6.2% (always double government produced numbers to get true inflation). Food prices jumped 13.4%, while meat and poultry jumped 29.3%. Because these numbers are around 1% lower than in previous months, the Chinese government has prematurely proclaimed a “cooling period”:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/8751482/China-inflation-cools-as-food-price-rises-slow.html

With harsh inflation continuing unabated, eventually, the Asian nation will be forced to enact abrupt policies. This will likely take the form of a strong Yuan valuation, or a “floating” of the Yuan. A sizable increase in the value of the Chinese currency is the ONLY way that the government will be able to combat rising prices. By increasing the buying power of its citizens, the government allows them to keep pace with rising prices, and eases the tension within the populace which could otherwise lead to civil unrest. For China to ensure that a floating of the Yuan will lead to a much higher value, their forex and treasury holdings will have to fall. Period.

A dumping of the dollar will give the Chinese room to breath, and this space will be needed very soon. The debt ceiling deal made by Congress in the aftermath of the credit downgrade left the rest of the world unimpressed. While the MSM tries to make us forget that this event ever occurred, most foreign investors have not. Markets are anxiously awaiting an announcement from the Fed for further liquidity injections. If this announcement is not made after meetings next week, then it will certainly be made before the end of the year. Ironically, the same quantitative easing that investors are clamoring for today is liable to become the final signal for China to cut its losses and separate from U.S. securities completely. China has been positioned for many months now to take such measures…

Lights Out…

Delusions of Chinese dependency on the U.S consumer still abound, and those who suggest a catastrophic dump of U.S. debt and dollars in the near term are liable to hear the same ignorant talking points we have heard all along:

“The Chinese are better off with us than without us…”

“China needs export dollars from the U.S. to survive…”

“China isn’t equipped to produce goods without U.S. technological savvy…”

“America could simply revert back to industry and production and teach the Chinese a lesson…”

“The U.S. could default on its debts to China and simply walk away…”

“The whole situation is China’s fault because of their artificial devaluation of the Yuan over the decades…”

And on and on it goes. Though I have deconstructed these arguments more instances than I can count in the past, I feel it my duty to at least quickly address them one more time:

U.S. consumption of all goods, not just Chinese goods, has fallen off a cliff since 2008 and is unlikely to recover anytime soon. China has done quite well despite this fall in exports considering the circumstances. With the institution of ASEAN, they barely need us at all.

China is well equipped to produce technological goods without U.S. help, and if Japan is inducted into ASEAN (as I believe they soon will be), they will be even more capable.

America will NOT be able to revert back to an industrial based economy before a dollar collapse escalates to fruition. It took decades to dismantle U.S. industry and ship it overseas.Reeducating a 70% service based society to function in an industrial system, not to mention resurrecting the factory infrastructure necessary to support the nation, would likely take decades to accomplish.

If the U.S. deliberately defaults on debt to China, the global reputation of the dollar would implode, and its world reserve status would be irrevocably lost. We won’t be teaching anyone a “lesson” then.

Yes, China currently manipulates its currency down, but then again, so does the U.S. though quantitative easing. Both sides are dirty. Taking sides in this farce is pure stupidity…

Now that all that has been cleared up (again), the primary point becomes rather direct; the reason it is difficult to predict an exact time frame for an American collapse is because all the pieces are in place to trigger an event right now! There are, of course, stress points within the system that set a time limit, even on global banks and China, but a full spectrum catastrophe is not only a concern for some distant future. Every element needed for the so called “perfect storm” is ever present and ready to ignite at a moments notice. The destructive potential coming from China alone is undeniable. Everyday that the spark is subdued should be treated as a gift, an extra 24 hours of education and preparation. This is how close we are to the edge.It is not for us to be alarmed, but to be ready, and ever aware.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

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