crash08 UPDATE ON DEPRESSION 21 NjW 05-04-09
I have held off posting much real news – aka, the truth – for awhile. But, it's time. For those readers who want more than Brian's or Katy's happy talk, this post's for you. And if any or all of this is news to you, it has far more to do with your betrayal by your news sources than your inability to understand what's going on in your world. You should know that "news" has been a secondary or tertiary consideration by large news corporations for some decades now. And there is even less reason today. It's an easy choice for most editors to scuttle or soft-pedal a story that might piss off already-vanishing advertisers or someone with the political power to lean on the F.C.C. in one's favor… or against.
If a peek at what is really going on in your country, and how you are being flat lied to on every matter of substance, constitutes too much information for you right now, please feel free to hit Delete. If you'd also rather not deal with any of this in future either (there is much more), reply to this post and make "remove" the first word in the Subject line.
The first 3 pieces that follow are written by folks who know what we're up against. They get their facts straight and care deeply about America, their world and all living things. They also deplore what we are doing to the planet. You may disagree with some of their conclusions, but you'll have a deuce of a time dismissing their scholarship.
Their message is simple: The greed machine – Capitalism in all its many hues - is busted, broke, and out of gas (yes, pun). That for all its "benefits," it is, at bottom, just another cancerous, sociopathic device designed solely to perpetuate the long depressing legacy – from religions to feudal states to monarchies to empires of armies and world banks – of control of the masses for the benefit of the infinitesimal few.
They make powerful arguments that this go-round really is a game-changer; for a host of reasons. They hold that we are in a perfect storm of concatenating events – a few evident today, and a bunch more looming on the very near horizon – with each of the major pillars supporting our industrial/technological "civilization" visibly trembling, while others begin to reflect the shifting sands upon which they stand. If you follow folks like these 3 (I'll introduce you to more "honest brokers" as we go along), you will soon find you have enough armor to dismiss out-of-hand the rosy, faith-based forecasts of the Geithners, Bernankes and, yes, the Obamas.
They are also blunt. If occasional hyphenated Anglo-Saxonisms and the like offend, read others (although Heinberg's prose is baby-safe). Chris Hedges, in particular, writes his rage; cursing sans cursing. It's way more effective than even adroit use of the f-word. As a former wannabe moderate man-of-the-cloth, he, perhaps, has a better fix on the vast chasm between our ideals and our actions in the breech. His book, American Fascists (about the Dominionist Christianists infiltrating our armed forces and all manner of sensitive societal perches - our very own Taliban) is an eye-opener. Even Hippocrates and Jesus would wonder at the fantasy-based Fascism of these god-fearing men. A recent column was titled, America is in need of a MORAL bailout – and he is exactly right. Not that humanity couldn't do with a similar colonic, but America's world-beating hypocrisy puts it in a class by itself on this score. It's a wonder we don't lobby to make it an Olympic event; a lead-pipe cinch for a lay-down gold.
peak-all TAKING A LONGER VIEW vs today's veneer of normalcy - Heinberg 04-23-09
http://www.postcarbon.org/beguiling_veneer
And for a more trenchant take on Richard Heinberg's gentle shove above… Chris would have made a helluva preacher (he attended seminary for 3 years before switching to journalism).
peak-all AMERICA'S PSEUDO-EVENT CULTURE Brand Obama - Chris Hedges 05-04-09
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090503_buying_brand_obama/
Last, but not nearly as dark as some in the Apocalypse biz, is this right-between-the-horns blog (as most of his are) from James Howard Kunstler. The disrespectful title of his blog reveals his utter despair and disdain for the nation's leaders – including the Current Occupant – as well as all the good citizens in denial that their way of life (and yes, yours and mine) is really over and we need to get on with the business of booting-up Humanity 3.0. . Every Monday, his blog entries feel mighty like a literary trip to the woodshed.
What makes Kunstler's stuff so riveting is his total command of a wide range of issues, all feeding into the impending, self-inflicted demise of our unsustainable way of the life that some 25% (or less) of us have been living for the past 150-odd years.
crash08 HAVE WE HIT The Bottom? - James Howard Kunstler 05-04-09
http://kunstler.com/mags_diary25.html
And for those who believe a housing rebound will lead us out of the desert…
crash08 HOUSING PRICES, MEET GENeration LOST - Wasik 05-04-09
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aiiT.sNeq2YQ
and the states? http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/07/news/economy/state_budget_gaps/index.htm
FWIW, I've given a lot of thought to where we are and how we got to where we are now. While I'm still conflicted on a number of issues, I have arrived at a conclusion or two.
While the road down from our cheap-energy high will be rough, if we work it right (and begin right now), not only will we and our only home, Mother Earth, come out the other side of this in one piece, our progeny may even thank us for returning to our natural place in the world.
We need to deliver a bigfatwetkiss to all the right-wing whackos, Neocons, Fundys, supply-siders, trickle-downers, Lord Haw-Haw-style pundits, a bottom-line, bottom-feeding, real-news-avoiding Quisling press, coveys of kleptocrats, blissful dittoheads (and not just Rush's), K-Street connivers and their Fascist Congressional enablers, not to mention – but candor demands – the entire Executive Branch leadership of every administration since 1981, along with a sorry supporting cast of tens of thousands of fixers, look-the-other-wayers, flexible-ethics experts and mammon-mad middlemen, whose deranged and all-consuming greed and lust for power ultimately built a machine (they were the only ones who unwittingly could) big enough, powerful enough, confusing enough and corrupt enough to bring down the entire toxic, steaming pile of excrement known as our financial system.
Special mention goes to the one player without whose dark Herculean efforts much of the above buccaneering, banditry and bailout chicanery would not have been possible. This stellar individual's résumé boasts not 1, not 2, not 3, but a half-dozen stolen elections; two of them national (Note: his theft of the class presidency in college is not included in this total).
Had this master of deceit, duplicity and super-duper dirty tricks not done his thing, America would never have had the opportunity to sample the abysmal talents of the man who history may decide has stolen Taft/Polk/Fillmore/Harding's crown as the most totally fucked-up President ever foisted on this nation (and it has had oodles of foists). His guy's reign of fecklessness and crony Capitalism included a $10 trillion (half in additional USA debt), 8-year drive-by of the nation's Treasury. Apparently, Shrub's minions mistook it for a 9-story ATM.
If there was a mote of justice in the universe, Karl Rove would be awarded the Medal of Freedom Award for jerking awake the somnambulistic American electorate (after finessing them for the previous two decades). In the end, sad to say, Karl was the dude who finally afflicted the comfortable.
Lucky for us, Ole Karl was also a master of myopia and the idée fixe. In fact, his towering hubris rendered him basically purblind to any other possible outcome; like, actually losing. His impressive Princely talents have opened the door for the world to find another way besides "Captain Croesus and screw the crew." Let's hope Obama decides to see what's on the other side of that door; that is, after he's tried all the other lame and non-sustainable options first, of course.
My personal view is that, if the American people, as well as those in the rest of the industrial nations, don't recognize the true naked kleptocratic and larcenous nature of the beast they trusted to tend to them to the end of their days (like Oz, now laid bare for all to see) and demand that it change to a truly representative system in which the people's voices are heeded and their needs paramount, then they deserve to continue as they are: enslaved by all the whiles, tricks, traps and schemes this cesspool of corruption can devise, incarcerated just as surely as if in the bowels of the Bastille, the fruits of their labor harnessed once again in service to the continued oppression of us all.
And that would be a tragedy for all the poor wretches of the world we would then be unable to help.
Note: To bookmark the home sites of these authors for future columns, just click on their masthead logo or Home tab. All have the usual update services via e-mail, RSS, feedreader, etc. I have bold-faced the home roots in the URLs.
NjW 05-06-09
Nigel Watson freethinker 727.493.1990
freesense@Gmail.com
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
– Krishnamurti
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