"What this means is that corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have... .I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host."

–Derrick Jensen

By Jason Miller

(Perhaps my profane words will offend, but in light of the fact that we are in a race to eradicate capitalism before it renders the Earth uninhabitable, I don’t give a fuck).

By Jason Miller

(As inspired by a conversation with Derrick Jensen)

"There’s got to be just more to it than this;
Or tell me why do we exist?"

–Iron Maiden

Is the Western consumerist culture that we inflict upon the rest of the world truly the pinnacle of our evolution? If it is, I resign my membership in the human race. Though I don’t fear that I’ll be compelled to tender my resignation any time soon because our so-called "non-negotiable American Way of Life" is a piece of shit, for myriad reasons.

Well, we knew it would happen sometime, you know what I mean, the "end of civilization as we know it". Of course we used to think it would be a super virus or maybe nuclear war as the catalyst but instead it was a dimwhit of a president with a smirk only Joe Lieberman could love along with the Hunchback of Missouri who brought it to us.

That being said, as we watch the beginning of the slow motion train wreck that is our economy, let's have a bit of fun. Maybe gather 'round the barrel we all share outside our tin shanty's as we try to stay warm and discuss our zombie plans. I'll go first.

In today's WaPo, we find a semi-decent analysis of the recent missteps by the Hillary campaign.

The Article focuses primarily on that

fateful moment in Philadelphia in late October

you know, the one where she jumped back and forth on her feelings about Spitzer's illegal immigrant driver's license imbroglio.

In my humble opinion however, that is not the interesting part of the article.  Jump with me to the other side of the fold if you would be so kind...

This Week:

1. Double Fudge Spill

2. Grin and Bear it

3. Peak Fish?

4. Border Boar attack

5. Bicycle Clown Brigade

6. Shopocalypse

7. B-Boys

8. Molotov Chili

9. Go Veg

I am posting this because I believe that climate activists need to pay as much attention to the social sciences -- psychology in particular -- as they pay to the natural sciences.

A longer discussion of these questions can be found in our new book, Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility (Houghton Mifflin: 2007).

This Is How A Republic Falls
James Delinis
November 6, 2007

I sat on the steps of the Supreme Court on a hot, humid day in Washington D.C. this past summer, staring in disbelief at the protest developing around me. The most putrid character participating had to be the tax-exempt televangelist who had arrived in a new-model Mercedes blasting the godless liberals who "have brought ruin to our great country, murdering our babies, inviting God’s terrible judgement." I took a look at the hate-filled faces of the people gathering in anger and volume, and I thought: This is how a Republic falls.

Remember how we used to hear Republicans pull out their favorite phrase "tax cuts" all the time.  Whatever else was going on, they seemed to be able to make everyone smile by promising tax cuts.  

...James Howard Kunstler's book, The Long Emergency, makes it clear that our illusionary world of comfort and relative luxury is about to be shattered. America, under its present leadership, is like the Roman empire-growing weak from luxury, sloth & inflation on the inside, & assailed by a tough, fanatical adversary on our frontiers...

Dmitry Orlov introduces himself as "not an expert or a scholar or an activist" but an eye-witness. He watched the Soviet Union collapse, lived through it, and put together a series of brilliant observations about what he calls the "lack of collapse-preparedness"in the United States.

Since Dmitry's server (Club Orlov) was overwhelmed by requests to view his article, the Energy Bulletin has now put it online on their own server.

Go and read it here.

./.

 The long term outlook here is not so good. The economy will hit the skids on the slow motion collapse of the housing market. The wildfires of the west will eventually burn until they hit the high water mark from the hurricanes coming out of the gulf. The government is badly corrupted, perhaps irreversibly so. Fifty percent of our forces in Iraq are actually mercenaries.

 The United States shows every single sign that geriatric empires display right before they totally collapse.

 This is a stark assessment but you'll be amazed by those I've found who share this view with me and are already planning an exit.

Farewell to Meng HaoRan

At Yellow Crane Tower in the west
My old friend says farewell;
In the mists and flowers of spring
He goes down to Yangzhou;
Lonely sail, distant shadow,
Vanish in blue emptiness;
All I see is the great river
Flowing into the far horizon.

Li Bi
(tr. Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang)

I read the above meditation on the Yangtze River as a meditation on the river as a metaphor for life itself.  Rivers are metaphor-rich, and the metaphors often represent good things.  Without rivers, consciousness would not be a stream, clouds would not be souls mirrored on the stream, love would not flow, much less free-fall in cataracts of excitement.  Sometimes, rivers represent boundaries between people, states, or nations that need to be forded or bridged, whereas other times they represent a life transition to be ferried over.   Sometimes, people just get dammed up with grief, until they overflow.

Reporting in last month’s Current Biology (subscription only), Nigel Williams describes the failure of international efforts to curb the collapse of tuna populations:

Regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs) are the main mechanism developed by countries to regulate fishing in the open ocean — areas beyond national law — where most tuna catches occur. Despite efforts by some governments within tuna RFMOs, global tuna stocks are critically depleted and some species, such as the bluefin, used for sushi and sashimi, are at high risk of collapse. Although this first meeting of the world's five tuna management bodies failed to reach concrete measures to drastically cut global tuna catches, the following week Japan agreed to cut its Atlantic bluefin tuna catch by more than 20 per cent by 2010 in line with an agreement reached last November with one of the five regional bodies — the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). Catches will be cut from 32,000 tonnes to 25,500 tonnes in 2010.

A few days ago, the ever insightful Stirling Newberry observed, on the Agonist Blog, that the Bush "surge" isn't really a new offensive; it is a desperate attempt to keep Baghdad under US military control. The last few days of fighting in the capital confirm that guerrillas have the initiative and can set ambushes at will. When US forces respond, the result is hour-long fire fights that don't permanently reduce the guerrilla presence. The Rumsfeld-designed propaganda machine deployed in Iraq is far more effective than the Bush counterinsurgency strategy. Thus, the situation on the ground is probably much worse than public knowledge indicates. Here are some further bits of evidence for this view.

Poll result! 85% of 82 People Agree: "Catastrophic Collapse is possible or probable in my lifetime." 60% of these say "probable."

What is the most likely source of the wisdom and action that can pull us all together to pull us all through the greatest challenges that have ever faced mankind?

George Bush, Dick Cheney, Impeachment, The GOP and Democrats, not one of these issues is your biggest problem.  The distribution of wealth isn't your biggest problem.  Global warming isn't even your biggest problem.  I'll even put my neck on the chopping block while Hunter wields a sharpened keyboard and say that even sobbing Meta Jesus isn't your biggest problem.  These are all, at best, symptoms of your problem.

We could get rid of Bush and Cheney, preferably through impeachment, which would feel great; elect a Congress full of relatively fair-minded people, as a vast improvement; have them fix corporate giveaways and raise the minimum wage to make lives more bearable; even get real smart and elect Al Gore to start working on global warming.  Having great, laudable stuff, we might quick bickering and sniping fast enough to save my neck from Hunter's sharp blows; but not one of those things, by itself or taken all together, would solve your biggest problem.  The little problems would  miraculously reappear in short order, including the savage wars, for which you might become war-monger-in-chief.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Children of All Ages, I'll tell you  WY-Real-FP is...

My apologies to Jared Diamond, who does so brilliantly and more anthropologically than I do.

How long will it be until supply shortages of energy reserves: nuclear, oil, gas, coal and wood ruin the deferred-risk valuations of real property, shares and bonds, and commodities? Some say there are no energy shortages, nor will there be. "Tomorrow’s hand holds the solution to the challenges of today." Faith based. Some say Global Central Bankers have got a handle on the creditmoney policy. Also faith based. Still, some are better than others at making educated guesses about such.

Will we witness central bankers reviled by boomers who will have lived long enough to witness the bust that eventually follows every boom? We may. If it happens, it will be another notable example of GBB. Goofy Boomer Behavior. Yes, Baby Boomer is a broad brush generalization. True, all generalizations have exceptions including this one. But this example ain’t one of ‘em. More...

In a previous diary, I sketched a quick outline of how humans have only extremely recently come to dominate the evolutionary landscape so completely, and questioned our ability to deal with our domination of the planet.  That is here:

http://www.dailykos.com/...

In this diary, I’d like to discuss some further related reasons why human societal collapse is a non-trivial probability requiring urgent attention, and a complete transformation of our political inertia.