Police State: New Legislation Authorizes FEMA Camps In U.S.
A new bill introduced in Congress authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to set up a network of FEMA camp facilities to be used to house U.S. citizens in the event of a national emergency.
The National Emergency Centers Act or HR 645 mandates the establishment of “national emergency centers” to be located on military installations for the purpose of to providing “temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster,” according to the bill.
The legislation also states that the camps will be used to “provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations”.
Ominously, the bill also states that the camps can be used to “meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security,” an open ended mandate which many fear could mean the forced detention of American citizens in the event of widespread rioting after a national emergency or total economic collapse.
Many credible forecasters have predicted riots and rebellions in America that will dwarf those already witnessed in countries like Iceland and Greece.
With active duty military personnel already being stationed inside the U.S. under Northcom, partly for purposes of “crowd control,” fears that Americans could be incarcerated in detainment camps are all too real.
The bill mandates that six separate facilities be established in different Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions (FEMA) throughout the country.
The camps will double up as “command and control” centers that will also house a “24/7 operations watch center” as well as training facilities for Federal, State, and local first responders.
The bill also contains language that will authorize camps to be established within closed or already operating military bases around the country.
As we have previously highlighted, in early 2006 Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root was awarded a $385 million dollar contract by Homeland Security to construct detention and processing facilities in the event of a national emergency.
The language of the preamble to the agreement veils the program with talk of temporary migrant holding centers, but it is made clear that the camps would also be used “as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency.”
As far back as 2002, FEMA sought bids from major real estate and engineering firms to construct giant internment facilities in the case of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack or a natural disaster.
A much discussed and circulated report, the Pentagon’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program, was more recently updated and the revision details a “template for developing agreements” between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.”
Alex Jones has attended numerous military urban warfare training drills across the US where role players were used to simulate arresting American citizens and taking them to internment camps.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
SC84-13 / http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE50S7NK20090130
Snow study shows California faces historic drought
A new survey of California winter snows on Thursday showed the most populous state is facing one of the worst droughts in its history, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said.
The state, which produces about half the United States' vegetables and fruit, is in its third year of drought and its main system supplying water to cities and farms may only be able to fulfill 15 percent of requests, scientists said.
The snowpack on California's mountains is carrying only 61 percent of the water of normal years, according to the survey by the state Department of Water Resources. Last year the snowpack held 111 percent of the normal amount of water, but spring was the driest ever recorded.
"California is headed toward one of the worst water crises in its history, underscoring the need to upgrade our water infrastructure by increasing water storage, improving conveyance, protecting the (Sacramento) Delta's ecosystem and promoting greater water conservation," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.
"We may be at the start of the worst California drought in modern history," added Water Resources Director Lester Snow in a separate statement.
Schwarzenegger has pushed for new dams and reservoirs to catch melting snow which feeds rivers, although environmentalists have opposed the measures. The Sierra snowpack alone provides two thirds of California's water supply.
December through January tend to be the wettest months but thus far the Sierra has only received one third of its expected annual snowfall.
"A third of normal is devastating," said Elissa Lynn, a meteorologist with the state. "January is the biggest month for precipitation in the Sierra."
"Climate change does indicate the possibility of more frequent droughts," said Lynn, "but it's hard to tell over a short time span."
This year ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific are cooler than normal in a weather system called La Nina. In northern California, that means less precipitation. Last year was also a La Nina year, but precipitation didn't slow until March and April.
"This could be a crisis situation," said Lynn. "In addition to conservation and rationing we could be paying higher prices for produce." Lynn said that some farmers have left fields unplanted based on expected lack of water.
The state's largest irrigation district, Westlands Water in the major farming counties of Fresno and Kings, told growers on Wednesday to brace for zero water supply this year.
"We thought it was a critical time to tell them, being that it is time for planting tomatoes and a lot of other crops," Westlands Water spokeswoman Sarah Woolf told Reuters on Thursday. "They need to make decisions right now whether they put seeds in the ground."
Twenty-five local water agencies are already mandating rationing. The state Department of Water Resources is arranging water transfers through its Drought Water Bank program and expects to release a full snowpack runoff forecast in two weeks.
A new survey of California winter snows on Thursday showed the most populous state is facing one of the worst droughts in its history, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said.
The state, which produces about half the United States' vegetables and fruit, is in its third year of drought and its main system supplying water to cities and farms may only be able to fulfill 15 percent of requests, scientists said.
The snowpack on California's mountains is carrying only 61 percent of the water of normal years, according to the survey by the state Department of Water Resources. Last year the snowpack held 111 percent of the normal amount of water, but spring was the driest ever recorded.
"California is headed toward one of the worst water crises in its history, underscoring the need to upgrade our water infrastructure by increasing water storage, improving conveyance, protecting the (Sacramento) Delta's ecosystem and promoting greater water conservation," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.
"We may be at the start of the worst California drought in modern history," added Water Resources Director Lester Snow in a separate statement.
Schwarzenegger has pushed for new dams and reservoirs to catch melting snow which feeds rivers, although environmentalists have opposed the measures. The Sierra snowpack alone provides two thirds of California's water supply.
December through January tend to be the wettest months but thus far the Sierra has only received one third of its expected annual snowfall.
"A third of normal is devastating," said Elissa Lynn, a meteorologist with the state. "January is the biggest month for precipitation in the Sierra."
"Climate change does indicate the possibility of more frequent droughts," said Lynn, "but it's hard to tell over a short time span."
This year ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific are cooler than normal in a weather system called La Nina. In northern California, that means less precipitation. Last year was also a La Nina year, but precipitation didn't slow until March and April.
"This could be a crisis situation," said Lynn. "In addition to conservation and rationing we could be paying higher prices for produce." Lynn said that some farmers have left fields unplanted based on expected lack of water.
The state's largest irrigation district, Westlands Water in the major farming counties of Fresno and Kings, told growers on Wednesday to brace for zero water supply this year.
"We thought it was a critical time to tell them, being that it is time for planting tomatoes and a lot of other crops," Westlands Water spokeswoman Sarah Woolf told Reuters on Thursday. "They need to make decisions right now whether they put seeds in the ground."
Twenty-five local water agencies are already mandating rationing. The state Department of Water Resources is arranging water transfers through its Drought Water Bank program and expects to release a full snowpack runoff forecast in two weeks.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
SC84-12 / http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/?q=node/261
The Ugly Truth: America's Economy is Not Coming Back
President Barack Obama and his economic team are being careful to couch all their talk about economic stimulus programs and bank bailout programs in warnings that the economic downturn is serious and that it will take considerable time to bounce back...........
...............Obviously the Obama administration recognizes that it needs to keep the finger of blame for the current economic collapse squarely pointed at the Bush administration, which is certainly fair in large part (though the Clinton deregulation of the banking industry played a major part in the financial crisis and its enthusiastic promotion of globalization began the massive shift of jobs overseas that has left the nation’s productive capacity hollowed out). But it also seems to recognize that it cannot tell the bitter truth, which is that our national economy will never “bounce back” to where it was in 2007.
America, and individual Americans, have been living profligately for years in an unreal economy, propped up by easy credit which inflated the value of real estate to incredible levels, and which led people to spend way beyond their means. Ordinary middle-class working people have been encouraged to buy obscenely oversized homes at 5% down, or even no down payment. They have been lured into buying cars the size of trucks, one for each driving-aged member of the family (in our town, so many high school kids drive to school that the school ran out of parking spaces and the yellow school buses, largely empty on their runs, are referred to by the students as the “shame train,” an embarrassment to be seen riding). They’ve installed individual back-yard swimming pools, unwilling to share the water with their neighbors in community pools. Boring faux ethnic restaurant franchises of all kinds have befouled the landscape, filling up with families too stressed out to cook, and willing to endure over-salted, over-priced and tasteless cuisine and tacky plastic décor night after night.
Now this is all crashing down. Property values are in free-fall. Car sales have fallen off a cliff. Joblessness is soaring (At present, it’s approaching an official rate of 8%, but if the methodology used in 1980, before the Reagan administration changed it to hide the depth of that era’s deep recession, were applied, it would be 17% today, or one in seven workers).
Eventually, the economic slide will hit bottom and begin its slow climb back, as all recessions do, but there will be no return to the days of $500,000 McMansion developments, three-car garages and a new car every two or three years for both parents plus a car for each highschooler. Not only will banks no longer be able to offer such credit to clients. People, having been burned, will not be willing to borrow so much. Company health care benefits, pension programs or 401(k) matching programs that were slashed during this downturn will not be restored when the economy picks up again.
Over the last 20 years, America has degenerated into a nation of consumers, with 72 percent of Gross Domestic Product (sic) now being accounted for by consumer spending—most of it going for things that are produced overseas and shipped here.
That is not an economic model that is sustainable, and it is a model that has just suffered what is certainly a mortal blow.
What we are now seeing is the beginning of an inevitable downward adjustment in American living standards to conform with our actual place in the world. As a nation of consumers, and not producers, with little to offer to the rest of the world except raw materials, food crops, military hardware and bad films (none of which industries employ many people), we are headed to a recovery that will not feel like a recovery at all. Eventually, productive capacity will be restored, as lowered US wages make it again profitable for some things to be made here at home again, but like people in the 1930s looking back at the Roaring 20s of yore, we are going to look back at the last two decades as some kind of dream.
It would be better if the new administration would be honest about this, because with honesty, we could have a recovery program that would actually address the real critical issues facing the country—the decline of our educational system, the irrationality of official promotion of home ownership that has led to the proliferation not just of suburbs but of exurbs, the over-reliance on the automobile for transportation, the unprecedented waste of resources, the pillaging of the environment, not to mention the decimation of the retirement system and the creation of a vast medical-industrial complex that is sucking the life-blood out of families and businesses alike.
With honesty, we could also confront the other big obstacle to national recovery—the nation’s obsession with militarism and foreign wars. The honest truth is that the US is technically bankrupt and in a state of chronic decline, and yet the nation persists in spending a trillion dollars a year on war and preparations for war, as though America were in mortal danger from foreign enemies.
The truth is that we are not threatened by Communism, by drug lords, or by Muslim Jihadists in any serious way. Rather, we have become our own worst enemy.
The administration could start by telling us all this straight up, but the problem is, most of us probably don’t want to hear it, which explains why we’re not hearing it. It also explains why we’re about to blow another trillion or so dollars on propping up failing banks, funding pointless highway and bridge construction, and blowing up illiterate peasants in remote places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.
President Barack Obama and his economic team are being careful to couch all their talk about economic stimulus programs and bank bailout programs in warnings that the economic downturn is serious and that it will take considerable time to bounce back...........
...............Obviously the Obama administration recognizes that it needs to keep the finger of blame for the current economic collapse squarely pointed at the Bush administration, which is certainly fair in large part (though the Clinton deregulation of the banking industry played a major part in the financial crisis and its enthusiastic promotion of globalization began the massive shift of jobs overseas that has left the nation’s productive capacity hollowed out). But it also seems to recognize that it cannot tell the bitter truth, which is that our national economy will never “bounce back” to where it was in 2007.
America, and individual Americans, have been living profligately for years in an unreal economy, propped up by easy credit which inflated the value of real estate to incredible levels, and which led people to spend way beyond their means. Ordinary middle-class working people have been encouraged to buy obscenely oversized homes at 5% down, or even no down payment. They have been lured into buying cars the size of trucks, one for each driving-aged member of the family (in our town, so many high school kids drive to school that the school ran out of parking spaces and the yellow school buses, largely empty on their runs, are referred to by the students as the “shame train,” an embarrassment to be seen riding). They’ve installed individual back-yard swimming pools, unwilling to share the water with their neighbors in community pools. Boring faux ethnic restaurant franchises of all kinds have befouled the landscape, filling up with families too stressed out to cook, and willing to endure over-salted, over-priced and tasteless cuisine and tacky plastic décor night after night.
Now this is all crashing down. Property values are in free-fall. Car sales have fallen off a cliff. Joblessness is soaring (At present, it’s approaching an official rate of 8%, but if the methodology used in 1980, before the Reagan administration changed it to hide the depth of that era’s deep recession, were applied, it would be 17% today, or one in seven workers).
Eventually, the economic slide will hit bottom and begin its slow climb back, as all recessions do, but there will be no return to the days of $500,000 McMansion developments, three-car garages and a new car every two or three years for both parents plus a car for each highschooler. Not only will banks no longer be able to offer such credit to clients. People, having been burned, will not be willing to borrow so much. Company health care benefits, pension programs or 401(k) matching programs that were slashed during this downturn will not be restored when the economy picks up again.
Over the last 20 years, America has degenerated into a nation of consumers, with 72 percent of Gross Domestic Product (sic) now being accounted for by consumer spending—most of it going for things that are produced overseas and shipped here.
That is not an economic model that is sustainable, and it is a model that has just suffered what is certainly a mortal blow.
What we are now seeing is the beginning of an inevitable downward adjustment in American living standards to conform with our actual place in the world. As a nation of consumers, and not producers, with little to offer to the rest of the world except raw materials, food crops, military hardware and bad films (none of which industries employ many people), we are headed to a recovery that will not feel like a recovery at all. Eventually, productive capacity will be restored, as lowered US wages make it again profitable for some things to be made here at home again, but like people in the 1930s looking back at the Roaring 20s of yore, we are going to look back at the last two decades as some kind of dream.
It would be better if the new administration would be honest about this, because with honesty, we could have a recovery program that would actually address the real critical issues facing the country—the decline of our educational system, the irrationality of official promotion of home ownership that has led to the proliferation not just of suburbs but of exurbs, the over-reliance on the automobile for transportation, the unprecedented waste of resources, the pillaging of the environment, not to mention the decimation of the retirement system and the creation of a vast medical-industrial complex that is sucking the life-blood out of families and businesses alike.
With honesty, we could also confront the other big obstacle to national recovery—the nation’s obsession with militarism and foreign wars. The honest truth is that the US is technically bankrupt and in a state of chronic decline, and yet the nation persists in spending a trillion dollars a year on war and preparations for war, as though America were in mortal danger from foreign enemies.
The truth is that we are not threatened by Communism, by drug lords, or by Muslim Jihadists in any serious way. Rather, we have become our own worst enemy.
The administration could start by telling us all this straight up, but the problem is, most of us probably don’t want to hear it, which explains why we’re not hearing it. It also explains why we’re about to blow another trillion or so dollars on propping up failing banks, funding pointless highway and bridge construction, and blowing up illiterate peasants in remote places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Monday, January 26, 2009
SC84-11 / http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/
State of Cringe
January 26, 2009
Just as Mr. Obama has danced into the oval office, we've arrived at a moment when a lot of people have a hard time imagining the future. This includes especially the mainstream media, which has reached a state of zombification parallel to that of the banks. But even in the mighty blogosphere, with its thousands of voices unconstrained by craven advertisers or pandering managing editors, the view forward dims as a dark and ominous fog rolls over the landscape of possibilities. For at least a year several story-lines have been slugging it out inconclusively for supremacy of the Web-waves. The main event has been the Deflationists versus the Inflationists. The first group basically says that so much "money" is being welshed out of existence that it dwarfs the new "money" being shoveled into existence in the form of bail-outs, tarps, and office re-decoration stipends. The Deflationists see the tattered remnants of the consumer credit economy auguring ever deeper into a hole until it is buried so far down that all the back-hoes ever sold will not be able to dig it out. The competing Inflationists say that the massive truckloads of shoveled-in "money" will soon overtake vanishing "wealth" and, in the process, make the US dollar worthless. Some of us see both outcomes in sequence: the deflationary "work out" of bad debt currently underway -- of loans that will will never be paid back, of acronymic paper securities revealed as frauds, of "non-performing" contracts entering the swamps of foreclosure, of banks pretending to still exist, of hallucinated "wealth" rushing into the cosmic worm-hole of oblivion -- can only go for so long before everyone who can go broke will go broke. Then, just as we find ourselves a nation of empty pockets, the tsunami of shoveled-in "money" designed to "reboot the consumer" (created not from productive activity but just printed recklessly), will start churning through the "economy," chasing products and commodities that became scarce during the deflationary phase -- and the result is hyper-inflation, the eraser of debt, destroyer of fortunes, and suicide pill of feckless governments. I guess the basic difference is that the hardcore Deflationists seem to think that their process can go on forever. The society just gets poorer and poorer until we're back at something like a scene out of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Inflationists see a fork in the road leading to more overt destruction, especially political turmoil as a lot of negative emotion joins the work-out orgy and overwhelms government. But in this moment, the week after a new president's inauguration, the deadly fog has rolled in and absolutely everyone dreads what lurks on the other side of it, without being able to discern the path through it. For example, the "bail-out fatigue" being reported suggests that congress may just call a halt to money-shoveling. Where would that leave Mr. Obama's urgent call for "stimulus?" Not to mention further TARP injections for redecorating bank offices. I've been skeptical of the "stimulus" as sketched out so far, aimed at refurbishing the infrastructure of Happy Motoring. To me, this is the epitome of a campaign to sustain the unsustainable -- since car-dependency is absolutely the last thing we need to shore up and promote. I haven't heard any talk so far about promoting walkable communities, or any meaningful plan to get serious about fixing passenger rail and integral public transit. Has Mr. Obama's circle lost sight of the fact that we import more than two-thirds of the oil we use, even during the current price hiatus? Or have they forgotten how vulnerable this leaves us to the slightest geopolitical spasm in such stable oil-exporting nations as Nigeria, Mexico, Venezuela, Libya, Algeria, Columbia, Iran, and the Middle East states? And we're going to rescue ourselves by driving cars? I know it is difficult for Americans at every level to imagine a different way-of-life, but we'd better start tuning up our imaginations, because endless motoring is not our destiny anymore. The message has not moved from the grassroots up, and so at this perilous stage the message had better come from the top down. Mr. Obama needs to go on TV and tell the American public that were done cruisin' for burgers. He could do that by drastically reviving his stimulus proposal as it currently stands. Putting aside whether this "stimulus" represents reckless money-printing in an insolvent society, let's just take it at face-value and ask where the "money" might be better directed:
-- We have to rehabilitate thousands of downtowns all over the nation to accommodate the new re-scaled edition of local and regional trade that will follow the death of national chain-store retail of the WalMart ilk. Reactivated town centers and Main Streets are indispensable features of walkable communities. The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU.org) ought to be consulted on the procedures for accomplishing this and for rehabilitating the traditional neighborhoods connected to our Main Streets.
-- We have to reform food production (a.k.a. "farming"). Petro-dependent agri-biz will go the same way as the chain stores. Its equations will fail, especially in a credit-strapped society. That piece of the picture is so dire right now, as we prepare for the planting season, that many crops may not be put in for lack of front-money. This portends, at least, much higher food prices at the end of the year, if not outright scarcities and shortages. And the new government wants to gold-plate highway off-ramps instead? Earth to Rahm Emanuel: screw your head back on.
-- As mentioned above, we have to get passenger rail going again because the airlines are going to die the next time there is an uptick in oil prices, or a spot shortage of oil. Let's not be too grandiose and attempt to build expensive high-speed or mag-lev networks -- certainly not right now -- because they require entirely new track systems. Let's fix those regular tracks already out there, rusting in the rain, or temporarily replaced by bike trails.
Those are three biggies for moment and enough to keep this society busy for a couple of years. But more to the point of this blog, observers of all stripes are having trouble imagining any way out of our multiple predicaments. All the possible actions tried so far have have seemed absurd. Why even try to prop up inflated house values when the single most crucial need in this sector is for house prices to return to parity with incomes so the shrinking pool of ordinary people still employed can begin to think about buying one? Well, the obvious explanation is that politicians can't bear the pain of watching mass foreclosures and the ruination of families. This is pretty understandable, and it is tragic indeed. Frankly, I don't know of any political narcotic that can mitigate the pain that results from having made poor choices in life -- even if those choices were promoted and reinforced by the mighty ideology of "American Dreaming." Anyway, the foreclosures are well underway now, and perhaps the salient question is how long will the public's fury remain constrained while they hear about Wall Street executives buying $80,000 area rugs? Surely there is a tipping point of collective distress that is not too far from where we're at now. In the realm of TARPS and other continued bail-outs aimed at the banks, the car-makers, and a host of other corporate special pleaders, I wonder if we have already reached the saturation point. But opinion on the Web is starkly divided and a prime manifestation is the debate over whether it was a terrible blunder or the right thing to let Lehman Brothers sink into bankruptcy. Both sides make valid arguments, but virtually all the other super-banks right now have lurched to death's door and we have no clear guidance on what we should do about them. Each one is touted as "too big to fail," as well as being interlocked with the others on credit default swaps that would bring them all crashing down if one counter party truly failed. It seems to me that this is what lies at the heart of the present situation. Nobody I've encountered in the sphere of opinion-and-comment thinks that these banks will survive, and this outcome beats a short path to the conclusion that the entire banking system is fatally ill -- leading directly to a super-major crisis of political economy in which the whole reeking, leaking system just crashes. I think this is what lies behind Mr. Obama's appeals for very urgent action. But then we're back to square one: nobody, including Mr. O himself, has really proposed a set of actions that have not already been tried in the way of money-shoveling. So this will be a week in which, perhaps, some wise and intrepid figures -- perhaps even the president -- will articulate something we haven't heard before, perhaps even something like bearing our hardships bravely. It'll be a very interesting week, I'm sure.____________________________________
January 26, 2009
Just as Mr. Obama has danced into the oval office, we've arrived at a moment when a lot of people have a hard time imagining the future. This includes especially the mainstream media, which has reached a state of zombification parallel to that of the banks. But even in the mighty blogosphere, with its thousands of voices unconstrained by craven advertisers or pandering managing editors, the view forward dims as a dark and ominous fog rolls over the landscape of possibilities. For at least a year several story-lines have been slugging it out inconclusively for supremacy of the Web-waves. The main event has been the Deflationists versus the Inflationists. The first group basically says that so much "money" is being welshed out of existence that it dwarfs the new "money" being shoveled into existence in the form of bail-outs, tarps, and office re-decoration stipends. The Deflationists see the tattered remnants of the consumer credit economy auguring ever deeper into a hole until it is buried so far down that all the back-hoes ever sold will not be able to dig it out. The competing Inflationists say that the massive truckloads of shoveled-in "money" will soon overtake vanishing "wealth" and, in the process, make the US dollar worthless. Some of us see both outcomes in sequence: the deflationary "work out" of bad debt currently underway -- of loans that will will never be paid back, of acronymic paper securities revealed as frauds, of "non-performing" contracts entering the swamps of foreclosure, of banks pretending to still exist, of hallucinated "wealth" rushing into the cosmic worm-hole of oblivion -- can only go for so long before everyone who can go broke will go broke. Then, just as we find ourselves a nation of empty pockets, the tsunami of shoveled-in "money" designed to "reboot the consumer" (created not from productive activity but just printed recklessly), will start churning through the "economy," chasing products and commodities that became scarce during the deflationary phase -- and the result is hyper-inflation, the eraser of debt, destroyer of fortunes, and suicide pill of feckless governments. I guess the basic difference is that the hardcore Deflationists seem to think that their process can go on forever. The society just gets poorer and poorer until we're back at something like a scene out of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Inflationists see a fork in the road leading to more overt destruction, especially political turmoil as a lot of negative emotion joins the work-out orgy and overwhelms government. But in this moment, the week after a new president's inauguration, the deadly fog has rolled in and absolutely everyone dreads what lurks on the other side of it, without being able to discern the path through it. For example, the "bail-out fatigue" being reported suggests that congress may just call a halt to money-shoveling. Where would that leave Mr. Obama's urgent call for "stimulus?" Not to mention further TARP injections for redecorating bank offices. I've been skeptical of the "stimulus" as sketched out so far, aimed at refurbishing the infrastructure of Happy Motoring. To me, this is the epitome of a campaign to sustain the unsustainable -- since car-dependency is absolutely the last thing we need to shore up and promote. I haven't heard any talk so far about promoting walkable communities, or any meaningful plan to get serious about fixing passenger rail and integral public transit. Has Mr. Obama's circle lost sight of the fact that we import more than two-thirds of the oil we use, even during the current price hiatus? Or have they forgotten how vulnerable this leaves us to the slightest geopolitical spasm in such stable oil-exporting nations as Nigeria, Mexico, Venezuela, Libya, Algeria, Columbia, Iran, and the Middle East states? And we're going to rescue ourselves by driving cars? I know it is difficult for Americans at every level to imagine a different way-of-life, but we'd better start tuning up our imaginations, because endless motoring is not our destiny anymore. The message has not moved from the grassroots up, and so at this perilous stage the message had better come from the top down. Mr. Obama needs to go on TV and tell the American public that were done cruisin' for burgers. He could do that by drastically reviving his stimulus proposal as it currently stands. Putting aside whether this "stimulus" represents reckless money-printing in an insolvent society, let's just take it at face-value and ask where the "money" might be better directed:
-- We have to rehabilitate thousands of downtowns all over the nation to accommodate the new re-scaled edition of local and regional trade that will follow the death of national chain-store retail of the WalMart ilk. Reactivated town centers and Main Streets are indispensable features of walkable communities. The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU.org) ought to be consulted on the procedures for accomplishing this and for rehabilitating the traditional neighborhoods connected to our Main Streets.
-- We have to reform food production (a.k.a. "farming"). Petro-dependent agri-biz will go the same way as the chain stores. Its equations will fail, especially in a credit-strapped society. That piece of the picture is so dire right now, as we prepare for the planting season, that many crops may not be put in for lack of front-money. This portends, at least, much higher food prices at the end of the year, if not outright scarcities and shortages. And the new government wants to gold-plate highway off-ramps instead? Earth to Rahm Emanuel: screw your head back on.
-- As mentioned above, we have to get passenger rail going again because the airlines are going to die the next time there is an uptick in oil prices, or a spot shortage of oil. Let's not be too grandiose and attempt to build expensive high-speed or mag-lev networks -- certainly not right now -- because they require entirely new track systems. Let's fix those regular tracks already out there, rusting in the rain, or temporarily replaced by bike trails.
Those are three biggies for moment and enough to keep this society busy for a couple of years. But more to the point of this blog, observers of all stripes are having trouble imagining any way out of our multiple predicaments. All the possible actions tried so far have have seemed absurd. Why even try to prop up inflated house values when the single most crucial need in this sector is for house prices to return to parity with incomes so the shrinking pool of ordinary people still employed can begin to think about buying one? Well, the obvious explanation is that politicians can't bear the pain of watching mass foreclosures and the ruination of families. This is pretty understandable, and it is tragic indeed. Frankly, I don't know of any political narcotic that can mitigate the pain that results from having made poor choices in life -- even if those choices were promoted and reinforced by the mighty ideology of "American Dreaming." Anyway, the foreclosures are well underway now, and perhaps the salient question is how long will the public's fury remain constrained while they hear about Wall Street executives buying $80,000 area rugs? Surely there is a tipping point of collective distress that is not too far from where we're at now. In the realm of TARPS and other continued bail-outs aimed at the banks, the car-makers, and a host of other corporate special pleaders, I wonder if we have already reached the saturation point. But opinion on the Web is starkly divided and a prime manifestation is the debate over whether it was a terrible blunder or the right thing to let Lehman Brothers sink into bankruptcy. Both sides make valid arguments, but virtually all the other super-banks right now have lurched to death's door and we have no clear guidance on what we should do about them. Each one is touted as "too big to fail," as well as being interlocked with the others on credit default swaps that would bring them all crashing down if one counter party truly failed. It seems to me that this is what lies at the heart of the present situation. Nobody I've encountered in the sphere of opinion-and-comment thinks that these banks will survive, and this outcome beats a short path to the conclusion that the entire banking system is fatally ill -- leading directly to a super-major crisis of political economy in which the whole reeking, leaking system just crashes. I think this is what lies behind Mr. Obama's appeals for very urgent action. But then we're back to square one: nobody, including Mr. O himself, has really proposed a set of actions that have not already been tried in the way of money-shoveling. So this will be a week in which, perhaps, some wise and intrepid figures -- perhaps even the president -- will articulate something we haven't heard before, perhaps even something like bearing our hardships bravely. It'll be a very interesting week, I'm sure.____________________________________
Sunday, January 25, 2009
SC-84 / http://ricefarmer.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html
President Obama: No Change
Throughout the US presidential campaign we’ve been fed the usual rubbish about how we’re going to have "change," but of course as everyone knows, the more things change, the more they stay the same, and that also goes for President-Elect Obama, whose new job it is to put a black mask over the same old program and pull the wool over the eyes of gullible Americans.
Just check out those links for starters. See any signs of change there? So the "change" we are offered is purely cosmetic. Mr. Obama is committed to The Program, which is of course a prerequisite for running on one of the two Republicrat tickets.
American pundits and indeed authoritative, pontificating commentators around the world are now filling the media with joyous pronouncements about how putting a black man in the White House shows how America has overcome its race problem, as if Obama’s fantasy declaration that blacks have come 90% of the way were actually true. Please.
Barack Obama is smooth, urbane, assured, an accomplished talker, and handsome — indeed, just the kind of person that America’s elites now need to occupy the Oval Office after eight embarrassing years of the tongue-tied and befuddled Dubya. Obama was the perfect guy to rake in the white liberal vote because he is a feel-good, non-threatening choice for liberal whites. In other words, he will surely not upset the current social order, so liberal whites can vote for him in that confidence, and tell themselves that race equality is really here, and gee, we voted a Black man into the White House! Feel good, baby!
You can put sewage in a white bottle, a black bottle, a yellow bottle, a red bottle, a brown bottle, or even a purple or green bottle if you so desire, but that does not change the sewage into perfume. Yet, that is the hocus-pocus that has been perpetrated on the American people in this election. How much did we hear about candidates who really promise change, like Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader? Virtually nothing, and of course they weren’t allowed to debate, either. That’s of course because they are not with The Program.
I hope Mr. Obama is happy with his role, assuming he realizes what it really is. But for the discerning, there is no hope for "change."
Throughout the US presidential campaign we’ve been fed the usual rubbish about how we’re going to have "change," but of course as everyone knows, the more things change, the more they stay the same, and that also goes for President-Elect Obama, whose new job it is to put a black mask over the same old program and pull the wool over the eyes of gullible Americans.
Just check out those links for starters. See any signs of change there? So the "change" we are offered is purely cosmetic. Mr. Obama is committed to The Program, which is of course a prerequisite for running on one of the two Republicrat tickets.
American pundits and indeed authoritative, pontificating commentators around the world are now filling the media with joyous pronouncements about how putting a black man in the White House shows how America has overcome its race problem, as if Obama’s fantasy declaration that blacks have come 90% of the way were actually true. Please.
Barack Obama is smooth, urbane, assured, an accomplished talker, and handsome — indeed, just the kind of person that America’s elites now need to occupy the Oval Office after eight embarrassing years of the tongue-tied and befuddled Dubya. Obama was the perfect guy to rake in the white liberal vote because he is a feel-good, non-threatening choice for liberal whites. In other words, he will surely not upset the current social order, so liberal whites can vote for him in that confidence, and tell themselves that race equality is really here, and gee, we voted a Black man into the White House! Feel good, baby!
You can put sewage in a white bottle, a black bottle, a yellow bottle, a red bottle, a brown bottle, or even a purple or green bottle if you so desire, but that does not change the sewage into perfume. Yet, that is the hocus-pocus that has been perpetrated on the American people in this election. How much did we hear about candidates who really promise change, like Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader? Virtually nothing, and of course they weren’t allowed to debate, either. That’s of course because they are not with The Program.
I hope Mr. Obama is happy with his role, assuming he realizes what it really is. But for the discerning, there is no hope for "change."
Saturday, January 24, 2009
http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4019:the-peak-oil-crisis-what-of-2009&catid=13:news-stories&Itemid=76
The peak oil crisis: what of 2009?
Our wish has been granted for we are indeed living in interesting times. The world's economy is either collapsing or is putting on a very good imitation of doing so.Production of cheap, abundant fossil fuels is peaking and will soon be withering away, yet gasoline for our cars has almost never been inflation-adjusted cheaper. Around the world, numerous sovereign governments are close to becoming dysfunctional -- likely with very bad consequences. We are pumping so much of the wrong kinds of gases into the atmosphere that the poles are melting, the seas are rising, the land is drying out and some day soon this planet is going to be very tough to live on. On top of all this, the world seems to be acquiring a fair number of people who are convinced that only they understand God properly and that the rest of us deserve to be done in. The only good news is that, so far as we know, there are no large meteors heading towards earth that would render the foregoing problems irrelevant.The purpose of reciting a list of woes is to remind ourselves that we are living on one big interrelated, interconnected earth. Attempting to solve one problem will either mitigate or perhaps exacerbate the others, for nothing much remains static these days. Economic growth has come to a halt in most countries and even China's meteoric growth is subsiding towards half what it was a couple of years ago.How long this will last is anybody's guess. While Wall Street babbles on about rebounds in six or maybe nine months, others are convinced that the damage done to the world's financial systems in recent years is so great that, despite the trillions in bailouts and stimuli, there is no hope for recovery in the foreseeable future. Those of us who worry about such things are concerned that low oil prices have stifled new investment to such an extent that in a few years the oil industry will find it impossible to stem declining production from natural depletion.In recent weeks, the idea of a short recession that will be over in a quarter or two seems to have been replaced by near-universal pessimism. If part of your job is to be eternally optimistic in order to sell things, then you will say that the economic situation will start to get better next year. If you are allowed the freedom to expound on realities, you will say we are in for an unknown, likely lengthy, period of unknown hardships.In the last six months, oil prices have fallen by an unprecedented amount and are currently bouncing around $40 a barrel depending on the news of the day. This decline clearly is because supply began outpacing demand last summer and there is a widely held belief that as the world economy contracts, the demand for oil will contract faster. While it is true that the demand for oil is no longer growing, the available numbers do not suggest that, as yet, it is exactly "collapsing" either.This week the U.S. demand for oil is officially reported to be down about 4 percent as compared to last year. Gasoline consumption is down only 2.1 percent, which does not seem to be much for a country that is laying off people by the millions and where all but the poorest of the poor drive cars as part of their daily existence. A fair guess is that the consumption of gasoline is so deeply imbedded in the American way of life that the economy is going to have to get a whole lot worse, and prices are going to have to get a whole lot higher, before we see more impressive declines in oil and gasoline consumption - say on the order of 10 or 20 percent.Although the growth in China's demand for oil is slackening, it is still up, with December 2008 consumption 12 percent higher than December 2007. Actually Beijing knows a bargain when it sees one and is busily buying up crude to stash away in its new strategic reserve.The International Energy Agency, which is sort of the official keeper of the world's oil statistics now acknowledges that a global recession is in progress but only sees world oil consumption for 2009 falling by 500,000 barrels a day (b/d) to 85.8 million. While these projections will be revised again and again during the year, at the minute they do not suggest anything that could be characterized as a "plunge" in the demand for oil. Despite rather impressive increases in U.S. stockpiles that have many convinced that demand is disappearing, the IEA reports that total stocks in the OECD countries, while above normal, actually went down by 2 million barrels in November and likely dropped another 8 million in December.As prices plunged this fall, OPEC met, and met, and met again, each time announcing production cuts which they all swear they will implement. Considering that the unprecedented drop in oil prices has shattered their leaders' plans for power, prestige, glory, and economic development, they appear to be so desperate that they are likely to make a substantial portion of the announced 4.2 million barrel production cut. Some OPEC members are becoming so desperate that they are already calling for another cut that would bring the total to 5 or 6 million b/d.Thus, the big unknowns for 2009 are just how far and how fast the world's GDPs are going to fall and just how fast the demand for oil will fall with them. It is obvious that if demand falls by only the officially projected 500,000 b/d, or anything close to that number, and production actually goes down 4 or more million b/d, then by every known law of economics oil is not going to stay at $40 a barrel, but is going to rise, perhaps even soar. For now we can only wait and watch.
Our wish has been granted for we are indeed living in interesting times. The world's economy is either collapsing or is putting on a very good imitation of doing so.Production of cheap, abundant fossil fuels is peaking and will soon be withering away, yet gasoline for our cars has almost never been inflation-adjusted cheaper. Around the world, numerous sovereign governments are close to becoming dysfunctional -- likely with very bad consequences. We are pumping so much of the wrong kinds of gases into the atmosphere that the poles are melting, the seas are rising, the land is drying out and some day soon this planet is going to be very tough to live on. On top of all this, the world seems to be acquiring a fair number of people who are convinced that only they understand God properly and that the rest of us deserve to be done in. The only good news is that, so far as we know, there are no large meteors heading towards earth that would render the foregoing problems irrelevant.The purpose of reciting a list of woes is to remind ourselves that we are living on one big interrelated, interconnected earth. Attempting to solve one problem will either mitigate or perhaps exacerbate the others, for nothing much remains static these days. Economic growth has come to a halt in most countries and even China's meteoric growth is subsiding towards half what it was a couple of years ago.How long this will last is anybody's guess. While Wall Street babbles on about rebounds in six or maybe nine months, others are convinced that the damage done to the world's financial systems in recent years is so great that, despite the trillions in bailouts and stimuli, there is no hope for recovery in the foreseeable future. Those of us who worry about such things are concerned that low oil prices have stifled new investment to such an extent that in a few years the oil industry will find it impossible to stem declining production from natural depletion.In recent weeks, the idea of a short recession that will be over in a quarter or two seems to have been replaced by near-universal pessimism. If part of your job is to be eternally optimistic in order to sell things, then you will say that the economic situation will start to get better next year. If you are allowed the freedom to expound on realities, you will say we are in for an unknown, likely lengthy, period of unknown hardships.In the last six months, oil prices have fallen by an unprecedented amount and are currently bouncing around $40 a barrel depending on the news of the day. This decline clearly is because supply began outpacing demand last summer and there is a widely held belief that as the world economy contracts, the demand for oil will contract faster. While it is true that the demand for oil is no longer growing, the available numbers do not suggest that, as yet, it is exactly "collapsing" either.This week the U.S. demand for oil is officially reported to be down about 4 percent as compared to last year. Gasoline consumption is down only 2.1 percent, which does not seem to be much for a country that is laying off people by the millions and where all but the poorest of the poor drive cars as part of their daily existence. A fair guess is that the consumption of gasoline is so deeply imbedded in the American way of life that the economy is going to have to get a whole lot worse, and prices are going to have to get a whole lot higher, before we see more impressive declines in oil and gasoline consumption - say on the order of 10 or 20 percent.Although the growth in China's demand for oil is slackening, it is still up, with December 2008 consumption 12 percent higher than December 2007. Actually Beijing knows a bargain when it sees one and is busily buying up crude to stash away in its new strategic reserve.The International Energy Agency, which is sort of the official keeper of the world's oil statistics now acknowledges that a global recession is in progress but only sees world oil consumption for 2009 falling by 500,000 barrels a day (b/d) to 85.8 million. While these projections will be revised again and again during the year, at the minute they do not suggest anything that could be characterized as a "plunge" in the demand for oil. Despite rather impressive increases in U.S. stockpiles that have many convinced that demand is disappearing, the IEA reports that total stocks in the OECD countries, while above normal, actually went down by 2 million barrels in November and likely dropped another 8 million in December.As prices plunged this fall, OPEC met, and met, and met again, each time announcing production cuts which they all swear they will implement. Considering that the unprecedented drop in oil prices has shattered their leaders' plans for power, prestige, glory, and economic development, they appear to be so desperate that they are likely to make a substantial portion of the announced 4.2 million barrel production cut. Some OPEC members are becoming so desperate that they are already calling for another cut that would bring the total to 5 or 6 million b/d.Thus, the big unknowns for 2009 are just how far and how fast the world's GDPs are going to fall and just how fast the demand for oil will fall with them. It is obvious that if demand falls by only the officially projected 500,000 b/d, or anything close to that number, and production actually goes down 4 or more million b/d, then by every known law of economics oil is not going to stay at $40 a barrel, but is going to rise, perhaps even soar. For now we can only wait and watch.
http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/949/1/ - PERESTROIKA 2.0 BETA, By Dmitry Orlov
Congratulations, everyone, we have a new president: a fresh new face, a capable, optimistic, inspiring figure, ushering in a new era of responsibility, ready to confront the many serious challenges that face the nation; in short, we have us a Gorbachev. I don't know about you, but I find the parallel rather obvious.
Obama wishes to save the economy, and to inspire us with words such as "We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories." [Inauguration speech] At the same time, he cautions us that "We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense" -- an echo of Dick Cheney's "The American way of life is non-negotiable." And so we descend from the nonexistent but wonderfully evocative "clean coal" to the more pedestrian "Put a little dirt in your gas tank!"
But these are all euphemisms: the reality is that it is either fossil fuels, which are running out while simultaneously destabilizing the planet's climate and poisoning the biosphere, or the end of industrial civilization, or (most likely) both, happening in that order. According to the latest International Energy Agency projections, the half-life of industrial civilization can be capped at about 17 years: it's all downhill from here. All industrial countries will be forced to rapidly deindustrialize on this time scale, but the one that has spent the last century building an infrastructure that has no future -- based on little houses interconnected by cars, with all of the accompanying moribund, unmaintainable infrastructure -- is virtually guaranteed to fall the hardest. An American's two greatest enemies are his house and his car. But try telling that to most Americans, and you will get ridicule, consternation, and disbelief. Thus, the problem has no political solution. Tragically, Obama happens to be a politician.
"Whenever we confront a problem for which no political solution exists, the inevitable result is an uncomfortable impasse filled with awkward, self-censored chatter. During the Soviet establishment’s fast slide toward dissolution, Gorbachev’s glasnost campaign unleashed a torrent of words. In a sort of nation-wide talking cure, many previously taboo subjects could be broached in public, and many important problems could suddenly be discussed. An important caveat still applied: the problems always had to be cast as “specific difficulties,” or “singular problems” and never as a small piece within the larger mosaic of obvious system-wide failure. The spell was really only broken by Yeltsin, when, in the aftermath of the failed putsch, he forcefully affixed the prefix “former” to the term “Soviet Union.” At that point, old, pro-Soviet, now irrelevant standards of patriotic thought and behavior suddenly became ridiculous — the domain of half-crazed, destitute pensioners, parading with portraits of Lenin and Stalin. By then, fear of political reprisals had already faded into history, but old habits die hard, and it took years for people’s thinking to catch up with the new, post-imperial reality. It was not an easy transition, and many remained embittered for life.
"In today’s America, it is also quite possible to talk about separate difficulties and singular problems, provided they are kept separate and singular and served up under a patriotic sauce with a dash of optimism on top. It is quite possible to refer to depressed areas, to the growing underclass and even to human rights abuses. It is, however, not allowable to refer to America as a chronically depressed country, an increasingly lower-class and impoverished country or a country that fails to take care of its citizens and often abuses them. Yes, there are prisons where heroin addicts are strapped to a chair while they go through withdrawal, a treatment so effective that some of them have to be carried out in body bags later, but that, you see, is a specific difficulty, a singular problem, if you will. But, no no no, we are a decent, freedom-loving country in spite of such little problems. We just have a slight problem with the way we all treat each other... and others. We did recently invade a country that had posed no threat to us and caused about a half a million civilian deaths there, but no no no, we are a freedom-loving country! That is just a specific difficulty with our foreign policy, not a true reflection of our national character (which is to squirm when presented with unpleasant facts and to roll our eyes when someone draws general conclusions from them based on a preponderance of evidence).
"When it comes to collapse mitigation, there is no one who will undertake an organized effort to make the collapse survivable, to save what can be saved and to avert the catastrophes that can still be averted. We will all do our best to delay or avert the collapse, possibly bringing it on sooner and making it worse. Constitutionally incapable of conceiving of a future that does not include the system that sustains our public personae, we will prattle on about a bright future for the country for as long as there is enough electricity to power the video camera that is pointed at us. Gorbachev’s perestroika is an example of just such an effort at self-delusion: he gave speeches that ran to several hours, devoted to mystical entities such as the “socialist marketplace.” He only paused to drink water — copious amounts of it, it seemed — causing people to wonder whether there was a chamber pot inside his podium.
"There are few grounds for optimism when it comes to organizing a timely and successful effort at collapse mitigation. Nevertheless, miracles do happen. For instance, in spite of inadequate preparation, in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, none of the high-grade nuclear fissile material has ended up in the hands of terrorists, and although there were a few reports of radiation leaks, nothing happened that approached the scale of the Chernobyl catastrophe. In other ways, the miserable experience had by all was mitigated by the very nature of the Soviet system, as I described in Chapter 3. No such automatic windfalls are due the United States; here, collapse preparation, if any, is likely to be the result of an overdue, haphazardly organized and hasty effort." [Reinventing Collapse, pp. 108-110]
I sincerely hope that Obama manages to do better for himself than Gorbachev. History can be mean to do-gooders. On that fateful day when Gorbachev lost his job, his wife suffered a stroke, and he, since that day, hasn't been able to wipe that deer-in-the-headlights look off his face. Trying to solve problems that have no solution is a fine thing to try to do. Even if it is utterly futile, it makes for great drama. But I hope, for his sake, that Obama doesn't give up any of his hobbies. should he still have any.
Obama wishes to save the economy, and to inspire us with words such as "We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories." [Inauguration speech] At the same time, he cautions us that "We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense" -- an echo of Dick Cheney's "The American way of life is non-negotiable." And so we descend from the nonexistent but wonderfully evocative "clean coal" to the more pedestrian "Put a little dirt in your gas tank!"
But these are all euphemisms: the reality is that it is either fossil fuels, which are running out while simultaneously destabilizing the planet's climate and poisoning the biosphere, or the end of industrial civilization, or (most likely) both, happening in that order. According to the latest International Energy Agency projections, the half-life of industrial civilization can be capped at about 17 years: it's all downhill from here. All industrial countries will be forced to rapidly deindustrialize on this time scale, but the one that has spent the last century building an infrastructure that has no future -- based on little houses interconnected by cars, with all of the accompanying moribund, unmaintainable infrastructure -- is virtually guaranteed to fall the hardest. An American's two greatest enemies are his house and his car. But try telling that to most Americans, and you will get ridicule, consternation, and disbelief. Thus, the problem has no political solution. Tragically, Obama happens to be a politician.
"Whenever we confront a problem for which no political solution exists, the inevitable result is an uncomfortable impasse filled with awkward, self-censored chatter. During the Soviet establishment’s fast slide toward dissolution, Gorbachev’s glasnost campaign unleashed a torrent of words. In a sort of nation-wide talking cure, many previously taboo subjects could be broached in public, and many important problems could suddenly be discussed. An important caveat still applied: the problems always had to be cast as “specific difficulties,” or “singular problems” and never as a small piece within the larger mosaic of obvious system-wide failure. The spell was really only broken by Yeltsin, when, in the aftermath of the failed putsch, he forcefully affixed the prefix “former” to the term “Soviet Union.” At that point, old, pro-Soviet, now irrelevant standards of patriotic thought and behavior suddenly became ridiculous — the domain of half-crazed, destitute pensioners, parading with portraits of Lenin and Stalin. By then, fear of political reprisals had already faded into history, but old habits die hard, and it took years for people’s thinking to catch up with the new, post-imperial reality. It was not an easy transition, and many remained embittered for life.
"In today’s America, it is also quite possible to talk about separate difficulties and singular problems, provided they are kept separate and singular and served up under a patriotic sauce with a dash of optimism on top. It is quite possible to refer to depressed areas, to the growing underclass and even to human rights abuses. It is, however, not allowable to refer to America as a chronically depressed country, an increasingly lower-class and impoverished country or a country that fails to take care of its citizens and often abuses them. Yes, there are prisons where heroin addicts are strapped to a chair while they go through withdrawal, a treatment so effective that some of them have to be carried out in body bags later, but that, you see, is a specific difficulty, a singular problem, if you will. But, no no no, we are a decent, freedom-loving country in spite of such little problems. We just have a slight problem with the way we all treat each other... and others. We did recently invade a country that had posed no threat to us and caused about a half a million civilian deaths there, but no no no, we are a freedom-loving country! That is just a specific difficulty with our foreign policy, not a true reflection of our national character (which is to squirm when presented with unpleasant facts and to roll our eyes when someone draws general conclusions from them based on a preponderance of evidence).
"When it comes to collapse mitigation, there is no one who will undertake an organized effort to make the collapse survivable, to save what can be saved and to avert the catastrophes that can still be averted. We will all do our best to delay or avert the collapse, possibly bringing it on sooner and making it worse. Constitutionally incapable of conceiving of a future that does not include the system that sustains our public personae, we will prattle on about a bright future for the country for as long as there is enough electricity to power the video camera that is pointed at us. Gorbachev’s perestroika is an example of just such an effort at self-delusion: he gave speeches that ran to several hours, devoted to mystical entities such as the “socialist marketplace.” He only paused to drink water — copious amounts of it, it seemed — causing people to wonder whether there was a chamber pot inside his podium.
"There are few grounds for optimism when it comes to organizing a timely and successful effort at collapse mitigation. Nevertheless, miracles do happen. For instance, in spite of inadequate preparation, in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, none of the high-grade nuclear fissile material has ended up in the hands of terrorists, and although there were a few reports of radiation leaks, nothing happened that approached the scale of the Chernobyl catastrophe. In other ways, the miserable experience had by all was mitigated by the very nature of the Soviet system, as I described in Chapter 3. No such automatic windfalls are due the United States; here, collapse preparation, if any, is likely to be the result of an overdue, haphazardly organized and hasty effort." [Reinventing Collapse, pp. 108-110]
I sincerely hope that Obama manages to do better for himself than Gorbachev. History can be mean to do-gooders. On that fateful day when Gorbachev lost his job, his wife suffered a stroke, and he, since that day, hasn't been able to wipe that deer-in-the-headlights look off his face. Trying to solve problems that have no solution is a fine thing to try to do. Even if it is utterly futile, it makes for great drama. But I hope, for his sake, that Obama doesn't give up any of his hobbies. should he still have any.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11951 - Mystery Prison Buses in the Desert
On a recent visit to Tucson, Arizona, where I was invited to give a presentation on monetary reform, I was disturbed by a story of strange goings on in the desert. A little over a year ago, it seems, a new industrial facility sprang up on the edge of town. It was in a remote industrial zone and appeared to be a bus depot. The new enterprise was surrounded by an imposing security fence and bore no outward signs identifying its services. However, it soon became apparent that the compound was in the business of outfitting a fleet of prison buses. Thirty or so secondhand city buses were being reconfigured with prison bars in the windows and a coat of fresh paint bearing the “Wackenhut G4S” logo on the side.
The new Wackenhut operation is shrouded in mystery. It has been running its fleet of empty prison buses night and day, apparently logging miles on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contract. Multiple buses can be seen driving all over town and even on remote desert back roads. Oddly, except for the driver and one escort guard seated in front, these buses are always empty.
Wackenhut Services was founded by George Wackenhut in 1954 to provide prison guard services to state and federal governments. Wackenhut Services is now owned by the Danish corporation G4S.
Observers originally thought that the purpose of the new Wackenhut operation was to outfit prison buses to be distributed in other parts of the country. But it soon became apparent that none of the buses was leaving the Tucson depot. Recently, a passerby observed what appeared to be a training operation there. In what seemed to be strange activity for 10:30 PM on a Saturday night, the depot yard was fully illuminated, the entire fleet of buses was up and running, and drivers and guards were scrambling around the yard. The question is, what were they training for?
Wackenhut has never officially announced itself to the community, and the local news media have never mentioned its presence. Hiring has been discreetly conducted via the Internet, and an apathetic general public has taken little notice. Among the few who have noticed, one theory is that the prison bus depot is simply infrastructure for border security. But if so, where are the illegal aliens? Why are these buses always empty? What is the alleged justification for burning thousands of gallons of diesel fuel to run thirty decrepit, smoking buses night and day without passengers?
There is another interesting piece to this puzzle. On the desolate plain between Phoenix and Tucson is a tiny town called Florence, Arizona, which features a population consisting largely of prisoners. For decades, Florence has been the home of two of the largest county and federal prisons in the state; and in 2007, a vast new DHS prison was built there as well. Like the Wackenhut buses, this shiny new facility, which literally disappears into the horizon, has gone unannounced and unnoticed by the general public. A new facility for imprisoning illegal aliens? It is hard to imagine such expensive infrastructure being built for that purpose when U.S. policy has been to simply return illegals to their home countries.
Fraud and waste aside, this mysterious activity has sinister implications. Why the obvious secrecy? Since the World Trade Center disaster in 2001, the Department of Homeland Security has grown to monster proportions, claiming a projected $50 billion of the federal budget in 2009. DHS includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which earned notoriety in 2005 for its gross mishandling of the Katrina disaster in New Orleans. Al Martin, a retired naval intelligence officer and former contributor to the Presidential Council of Economic Advisors, has linked the remilitarization of FEMA to the civil unrest anticipated along with economic collapse. He wrote in a November 2005 newsletter called “Behind the Scenes in the Beltway”:
“FEMA is being upgraded as a federal agency, and upon passage of PATRIOT Act III, which contains the amendment to overturn posse comitatus, FEMA will be re-militarized, which will give the agency military police powers. . . . Why is all of this being done? Why is the regime moving to a militarized police state and to a dictatorship? It is because of what Comptroller General David Walker said, that after 2009, the ability of the United States to continue to service its debt becomes questionable. Although the average citizen may not understand what that means, when the United States can no longer service its debt it collapses as an economic entity. We would be an economically collapsed state. The only way government can function and can maintain control in an economically collapsed state is through a military dictatorship.”1
All of this is quite ominous.
The new Wackenhut operation is shrouded in mystery. It has been running its fleet of empty prison buses night and day, apparently logging miles on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contract. Multiple buses can be seen driving all over town and even on remote desert back roads. Oddly, except for the driver and one escort guard seated in front, these buses are always empty.
Wackenhut Services was founded by George Wackenhut in 1954 to provide prison guard services to state and federal governments. Wackenhut Services is now owned by the Danish corporation G4S.
Observers originally thought that the purpose of the new Wackenhut operation was to outfit prison buses to be distributed in other parts of the country. But it soon became apparent that none of the buses was leaving the Tucson depot. Recently, a passerby observed what appeared to be a training operation there. In what seemed to be strange activity for 10:30 PM on a Saturday night, the depot yard was fully illuminated, the entire fleet of buses was up and running, and drivers and guards were scrambling around the yard. The question is, what were they training for?
Wackenhut has never officially announced itself to the community, and the local news media have never mentioned its presence. Hiring has been discreetly conducted via the Internet, and an apathetic general public has taken little notice. Among the few who have noticed, one theory is that the prison bus depot is simply infrastructure for border security. But if so, where are the illegal aliens? Why are these buses always empty? What is the alleged justification for burning thousands of gallons of diesel fuel to run thirty decrepit, smoking buses night and day without passengers?
There is another interesting piece to this puzzle. On the desolate plain between Phoenix and Tucson is a tiny town called Florence, Arizona, which features a population consisting largely of prisoners. For decades, Florence has been the home of two of the largest county and federal prisons in the state; and in 2007, a vast new DHS prison was built there as well. Like the Wackenhut buses, this shiny new facility, which literally disappears into the horizon, has gone unannounced and unnoticed by the general public. A new facility for imprisoning illegal aliens? It is hard to imagine such expensive infrastructure being built for that purpose when U.S. policy has been to simply return illegals to their home countries.
Fraud and waste aside, this mysterious activity has sinister implications. Why the obvious secrecy? Since the World Trade Center disaster in 2001, the Department of Homeland Security has grown to monster proportions, claiming a projected $50 billion of the federal budget in 2009. DHS includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which earned notoriety in 2005 for its gross mishandling of the Katrina disaster in New Orleans. Al Martin, a retired naval intelligence officer and former contributor to the Presidential Council of Economic Advisors, has linked the remilitarization of FEMA to the civil unrest anticipated along with economic collapse. He wrote in a November 2005 newsletter called “Behind the Scenes in the Beltway”:
“FEMA is being upgraded as a federal agency, and upon passage of PATRIOT Act III, which contains the amendment to overturn posse comitatus, FEMA will be re-militarized, which will give the agency military police powers. . . . Why is all of this being done? Why is the regime moving to a militarized police state and to a dictatorship? It is because of what Comptroller General David Walker said, that after 2009, the ability of the United States to continue to service its debt becomes questionable. Although the average citizen may not understand what that means, when the United States can no longer service its debt it collapses as an economic entity. We would be an economically collapsed state. The only way government can function and can maintain control in an economically collapsed state is through a military dictatorship.”1
All of this is quite ominous.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
