March 13, 2008 (CarolynBaker.net) -- After two years of managing the Truth To
Power website and subsequent to many more years of researching domestic and
geopolitical events and trends, it is chilling to witness so much of what
"prophets" like Mike Ruppert, Matt Savinar, Catherine Austin Fitts, Richard
Heinberg, Matt Simmons, Dmitry Orlov, myself, and many others have been
forecasting for nearly a decade or longer. We are no longer prophets but truly
historians, and yet I take no pleasure in the accuracy of these forecasts or in
the fact that our dire predictions are unfolding before our eyes. When I use the
word "chilling", I mean just that, while at the same time, I feel sorrow that so
many are yet still so comatose to the reality of the cataclysm that is
manifesting around them. While I feel fear and sadness for them, I have no
energy now to expend on them. As most readers of this site know, my life is all
about preparation and building community in order to navigate the inevitable.
These are the last hours on the deck of the Titanic, and the chamber
orchestra is now playing "Nearer My God To Thee" as the ship continues to take
on barrels of water per second, and all but one or two lifeboats have been
filled to capacity and launched into the open seas of escape from the capsizing
horror -- and with no guarantees that they will survive. Throngs of the doomed are
drowning in the steerage compartments below-those indigent, third-class,
"racially impure" masses of humanity that the "first-class," who helped design
the "unsinkable" vessel, kept locked away below the decks of obscene privilege
and conspicuous consumption. Some say that economic depressions don't affect the
poor because they are already poor, but I'm certain that a black mother in the
projects who can now give her kids only two meals a day will become acutely
aware, as will her children, when she can only give them one.
Yet, amid what is unfolding in front of us, I receive emails from readers who
tell me that they are quite sure that somehow Obama is our hope and that if we
just get the right leadership, things will turn around. I hear talk at the
checkout counters of "all recessions eventually end" and "we just have to ride
it out." I wonder what these individuals will be doing one year from now. I
wonder how they will eat, where they will be living, what will get them up in
the morning, and whether they'll be able to sleep at night. And as the hollow,
trite, tired clichés assault my eardrums, I see and hear Richard Heinberg
reporting soberly and assertively in "The End Of Suburbia" that we will soon
enter "a recession that never ends." I also hear Matt Simmons telling us that
oil is still too cheap, and I ponder his recent interview on CNBC forecasting
$378 a barrel. I recall overhearing a man last summer saying, "Gasoline is now
three dollars a gallon. What's happening to this world?" I wonder where the man
is now; I wonder if he'll still be around for $378 a barrel.
This week in the Daily News Stories section of the Truth To Power
website, a link was posted to the Channeling
Hubbert blogspot which noted that the father of the Peak Oil theory, M. King
Hubbert, openly discussed the unsustainability of a high-growth economy with
high-level officials of Chase Manhattan. Yet, "Instead, key individuals in
government, think tanks, and corporations opted to use their influence and
decision making capacity to forward a perpetual high-growth economy dependent on
high-grade finite fossil fuels in the hopes that technology would make low-grade
resources economic over time. They believed that speculative technological
advances including coal to liquids, oil shale, breeder reactors, fusion, and
enhanced oil recovery would become economic in the long run, thereby justifying
the continuing growth of a consumerist suburban, car-oriented way of life and
fueling the development of a highly industrial globalized system for the rest of
the world."
In a 2004 article
by Richard Heinberg published exclusively at From The Wilderness, he
revealed a declassified document "The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis" from 1977,
exposing the CIA's awareness of Peak Oil. According to Heinberg, "The real
motives and long-term strategies of policy makers and intelligence gatherers
alike will likely remain opaque to citizens who pay in blood and dollars for
their government's military adventures. The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis gives us
a rare, limited glimpse into the machinery of covert information analysis and
decision-making that shape history as we live it."
Consider the administrations that have come and gone since 1977 -- all unwilling
to tell the American people the truth about energy depletion. Consider the
meaningless rhetoric of the current candidates who continue to delude us about
Peak Oil and economic growth and consider the reality that they would not even
be viable candidates if they were willing to expose the suicidal delusion of
unlimited economic growth.
I understand how desperately many individuals would like to believe in a
"savior" candidate who's going to make everything right. I recall how excited I
was earlier in my life about the candidates that I was certain would turn
everything around. I remember how angry I felt when I heard some cynic tell me
that there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between any of them. Oh how I
wanted-desperately wanted, to believe.
But only in America is the definition of insanity lived out with such
oblivious impunity. Only in America do we continue to believe that "this time it
will be different" in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Faith in any of
the three leading candidates running for the presidency to have the capacity or
desire to affect any significant change is nothing less than blatantly illogical
and irrational.
In my recent article "Celebrating UN-President's
Day: Why I Will Not Vote For A President In 2008" I laid out my case for not
voting, but that was before I saw the latest documentary on election fraud, "Uncounted: The New Math Of American
Elections". Anyone seriously considering voting for a president in 2008 must
see this documentary as well as Bev Harris's 2006 HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy." You may, in
fact, live in one of those rare areas where paper ballot voting still occurs,
but "Uncounted" and "Hacking Democracy" reveal a rigged election system, so
gargantuan, so blatant, and so foolproof that it is now safe to say that
legitimate presidential elections in the United States are no longer possible.
In other words, American elections no longer belong to you, but to those who
manufacture the candidates and select the winners.
Moreover, in recent days Truth To Power has been covering the
proposed purchase of the Diebold
Corporation by United Technologies,
a major U.S. weapons manufacturer and defense contractor. An analysis of the ramifications of
this purchase, now put on hold as a result of UT's low bid, can be read at
Catherine Austin Fitts's blogspot. Nevertheless, rocket science is not required
in order to comprehend the significance of a major defense contractor having
control of voting in America. Although the deal has not been consummated,
Diebold is seeking a buyer and is likely to eventually sell its strategic
position to a more powerful entity-the value of which is truly priceless because
corporate control of elections represents the ultimate triumph of fascism in the
United States.
In addition, no president, elected or selected in 2008, has the capacity to
reverse the fascist
trajectory of the republic launched by the Patriot Act, the Military
Commissions Act, and the myriad other ostensibly anti-terrorist measures
resulting from either legislation or Executive Orders during the George W. Bush
administration. In fact, all three leading candidates embrace the War on Terror
and shamelessly behave as emissaries for the military industrial complex.
This week we've witnessed the overnight demise of Eliot Spitzer, so-called
"sheriff of Wall Street" who vowed to bring the
subprime mortgage mafia to justice. Many have speculated that
Spitzer was targeted by the predators he was committed to investigating. But
whether he is innocent or guilty, his fall is jaw-dropping in its significance:
If Spitzer was set up, it confirms that politicians who are determined to
operate transparently can no longer succeed in a system rotting with corruption;
if he is guilty, then it becomes virtually impossible to trust any politician
who pledges to function with integrity.
But one's abdication of critical thinking in the face of the U.S. election
charade is neither the most disconnected or the most dangerous course of action.
More deadly, in my opinion, is the failure to grasp the reality that not only
the empire but civilization itself has entered a process of irreversible demise.
This phenomenon is larger than the onset of a Second Great Depression. It's even
larger and more momentous than the reality of a cartel of criminals who
engineered a mortgage meltdown, the repercussions of which will be reverberating
throughout the global economy indefinitely. As I have stated repeatedly, what is
unfolding is absolutely unprecedented and is juxtaposed with the equally dire
realities of climate chaos and Peak Oil. In their attempts to make sense of
these momentous realities, New Age devotees tout the significance of 2012, and
the Christian right insists that the rapture is imminent. Equally sychophantic
are those who argue that while the current challenges are unprecedented, so is
the technology which can alleviate them. Pervading all three groups is a
profound disconnect from ecological, scientific, and human reality.
For example, Truth To Power has been consistently reporting
appalling indicators of world famine and global water privatization by
transnational corporations. Peak Oil, climate change, genetic modification, and
the preposterous use of ethanol as an energy alternative have caused food prices
to skyrocket as the food industry produces so-called "foods" that are devoid of nutrients and are
dangerous for our health. Moreover, ethanol is increasing something besides
food prices, namely vast dead
zones in the Gulf of Mexico produced by ethanol-laden wastewater.
As the likelihood of famine escalates, as bankruptcies skyrocket and
foreclosures surge beyond anything this nation has seen since the Great
Depression, as unemployment becomes epidemic, as the dollar daily sets records
for loss in value, as banks fail, as the price of oil flies off the charts, I
can only marvel that anyone in the United States has the slightest interest
whatsoever in a presidential election. My mind reels but recalls the terrified
and traumatized passengers on the decks of the Titanic, hallucinating and in
shock. Although we may be overwhelmed passengers on a sinking ship, there are
lifeboats. This is not quite the same Titanic; we have options. So why would
anyone re-arrange the deck chairs by putting any faith in a presidential
candidate?
No doubt there are many reasons, but if you are one of those who hopes that
one of the three corporately bought-and-sold candidates will save you, I have to
ask you if you are storing food, and if not, why not? Readers of this site know
well that the Survival Acres and Life
After The Oil Crash websites carry extensive inventories of storable food
items and other products for collapse preparedness, and within the past week,
Sharon Astyk's wonderful article "Food Storage
101" was posted on this site. So I must also ask what you are doing to
prepare yourself and your loved ones for living in a world of famine, thirst,
lawlessness, lack of health care, a worthless dollar, and possible martial law.
How are you building community with others to weather this scenario?
In a nutshell, there are three realities that every reader of these words
must prepare to deal with: Food, fuel, and fascism.
Truth To Power has reported exhaustively on all three of these
realities for as long as the site has existed. No candidate running for
president has the slightest interest in talking rationally or honestly about
these issues with the American people, but all three would be delighted to take
action to lock down the nation, ration food and fuel, and continue empire's
quest for the last drops of oil on the planet by any means necessary.
So I won't leave you with my advice but rather ask you a number of questions.
My questions to you, dear reader, are these: What are you doing to prepare for
the "Three F's"? What keeps you hooked to the U.S. election charade, even when a
part of you knows it is a charade? Why do you choose to put your energy there
rather than putting it into survival? What do you fear would happen if you let
go of your "hope" and stopped trusting an electoral process manufactured from
start to finish by empire? What might happen if you stopped engaging in that
process and started focusing instead on creating options?
How is it that you choose to become embroiled in their election
rather than preserving your life?
***
{mosimage} Carolyn Baker is an adjunct professor of history, a former psychotherapist, an author,
and a student of mythology and ritual. Her website -- CarolynBaker.net -- offers up-to-the-moment
alternative reporting of U.S. and international news, articles containing
information and opinion, and a venue of support and connection for awake
individuals who want not only to be informed, but to organize their lives and
communities in ways that most effectively assist them in navigating what current
events are manifesting.
Carolyn’s Mission: “The Chinese proverb and curse says, ‘May you live in
interesting times’.” In the first decade of the twenty-first century, we live in
profound uncertainty, faced with issues unprecedented in the history of the
human race. Truth To Power seeks to provide readers with a ‘fixed point in a
changing universe’ that both informs and supports humanity’s efforts to remake
the world—both our personal worlds and our planet. My intention is to offer a
beacon of light in the smothering darkness with which we seem to be engulfed,
making available information and specific ideas and strategies which we all
might utilize as we experience the life/death/rebirth process inherent in the
inner and outer realms of our current reality.”
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