Consumer confidence has just plummeted to a nearly 30-year low. The war in Iraq has become a tar-baby entanglement. Global warming appears to be working up a real head of steam. The world also seems to be running low on it's fuel of choice. Food prices have suddenly surged. Foreclosing on homes and credit counseling have become the nation's only growth industries. The ice caps are melting faster with each passing day. Fishing fleets return home with smaller and smaller catches. Grain, once so plentiful it was often stored in piles on the ground, is suddenly in short supply driving feed and food prices through the roof. The fertilizers and chemicals needed to maintain high grain production are in short supply and prices are at record levels. Diesel, the fuel that moves nearly everything that needs moving, is now over $5 a gallon and going higher each day. Somethings gone wacky with the weather too. Living in America's Midwest, has become like living in a Cuisinart.
When you add up all the different "disturbances in the Force," it leaves one wondering why those running for president aren't sounding a lot more alarmed. After all, come next January 21st one of them is going to have it all dumped in their lap.
In fairness, the candidates do touch on many of these issues in their stump speeches. They talk about global warming, home foreclosures and the price of gas. And they each offer the hope that, if elected, they can and will do something about all this. But do they mean it ... really? It's a truism that "talk is cheap" and no talk is cheaper than the politic variety. (i.e. "I'm a uniter, not a divider," and "America needs to adopt a humble foreign policy." GW Bush circa 2000.) These guys and gals will say anything to get elected. After that it's always been back to business as usual.
And, even a more frightening possibility, do they even "get it?" I have no idea if any of the candidates actually understands how serious things are, or how much worse they are becoming with each passing day. And, even if they did, or do, understand, would they tell us the truth? Would any of them risk being the skunk at a garden party?
So far the answer to that question is "no," I don't think any of them wouldst risk that, even if they understood the true depth and breath of the problems ahead.
That's as much our fault as it is theirs. We don't react well to bad news and we are not kind to the bearers of such. So candidates tell us what we want to hear. When they do address problems they shave the sharp edges off them, then assure us that the problem, while real, is "manageable"and that the only reason it has not been managed is because the other candidate or party has failed to manage it.
Sometimes that's true. This is not one of those times. This is no run-of-the-mill "problem." This is a cancer that has been allowed, by both parties, to metastasize. This patient doesn't need a trip to the doctor, it needs to be put into intensive care, and fast.
Here's the truth, none of the candidates dares utter because so few want to hear it:
We -- (and that would be the global "we,") -- are about to come face to face with the most jarring social, financial and ecological crisis in eight centuries. Nothing like what's bearing down on us has been happened since the plague swept Europe in the mid-1300's, wiping out one in three souls and nearly thrusting Europe 300-years back to the dark ages.
Yes, it's that serious and it's that threatening.
Yet you have not, and will not, hear any of the candidates sounding anything like the sense of urgency such dire circumstances require. Tipping points will soon will be reached. After that we'll all be on for the ride of our lives -- literally.
Here's a related truth we can't handle: We're been living in a fool's paradise. That's what you get when virtually no consideration is given to the sustainability of the systems that underpin, fuel, feed, house and finance everything that matters in our daily lives.
Instead we embrace the quick, the easy, the cheapest, the short-term fixes. That's because short-term fixes can quickly address immediate problems, despite the often obvious finite nature of the resources required and/or the negative impacts such quick fixes almost always produce as byproducts.
Well, short-term solutions are just that. And we are now discovering that the meter has run out on a whole lot of short term fixes all at once. It's been a great, but careless, ride, and now the wheels are falling off.
Get used to high food costs, water shortages Climate report offers a dire look at next 50 years in U.S.
Seattle, Washington: Shocked by rising food prices? Get used to it -- and be ready for water shortages, too, says a sweeping new scientific report rounding up likely effects of climate change on the United States' land, water and farms over the next half-century.... Some effects already can be felt, says the report released Tuesday, which synthesizes results of more than 1,000 individual studies.
And it's not just humans' food that's at risk, said witnesses at a congressional field hearing in Seattle on Tuesday. An intense and sudden acidification of the Pacific resulting from climate change presages a possible breakdown in the marine food web, experts said at the hearing, headed by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
Stephen Pizzo has been published everywhere from The New York Times to Mother Jones magazine. His book, Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, was nominated for a Pulitzer.
"Sometimes that's true. This is not one of those times. This is no run-of-the-mill "problem." This is a cancer that has been allowed, by both parties, to metastasize. "
This is a cancer that has been intentionally created and made to metastasize. The elites want to rid the world of about 5/6ths of the population.
The parties are irrelevant. The puppet-masters speak and the parties follow.
Starvation is growing and will encompass us all. Fight or get used to serfdom. I like Mike Rivero's comment the best... 'Eat the Rich'.
I wonder what psychopath's taste like.... Perhaps with a bit of soy saucea and tenderizer...
by
richard (0 articles, 5 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 785 comments)
on Friday, May 30, 2008 at 5:14:52 PM
Maybe it was Kerouac, Vonnegut, I really can't remember that far back now, but I was young, 12, early teens, that started me off on a journey that changed me and before they tried to draft me into their killing machine, I was able to see through the BS, and like cheney, had better things to do. Only in my case they really were better things.
Not long after that I help a brilliant professor, Prof. Ron Cone, from NIT start one of the first environmental institutions IEA, which eventually morphed into Sierra Clubs efforts, this was 71? 72?, anyway by then I had already come to a conclusion that my generation, was indeed true "December's Children", we were the last to have experienced the best the world was every going to have to offer, from cradle to well into advanced age and blow it all away in one big orgy of insanity because ... well insanity doesn't have a because, it just is.
Seems a shame, doesn't it? All these millions of years of evolution, several thousand years of honing perfection of the most intriguing animal this planet has ever seen, and for what? To piss it all away in a game of my dick is bigger than yours?
Who knows? Maybe after we've clubbed each other to death and the last one standing dies of loneliness, something doesn't evolve out of the toxic-primordial soup, that we'll leave behind, and achieve that Utopia we're all killing ourselves to get to, when we left it all behind a long time ago.
Whatever the long term predictions are, they are indeed being short circuited by short term gains.
I too, like others, have seen this coming for a long time. Not because we're able to predict the future, most of it's just numbers and commonsense. Ever since childhood, where we were the first generation to grow-up under a real threat of total world annihilation , "duck & cover", and it has persisted and haunted us all our lives, only to look like, it too, may become true.
How does one deal with this, almost "forbidden fruit" of knowledge? Panic? Look within? Rebellion? Sadness, despair, drugs, religion, how does one cope with knowing that everything you do is basically meaningless? No need to write a book, no one will be around to read it. Maybe a "survival book", but who the hell wants to live in a world like "Mad-Mack" on steroids after living the Life of Riley for most of it?
I remember when someone first called me "Mr. Doom & Gloom", and I thought, well, yeah, I probably sound like that, but wouldn't you be too knowing this? And it did take it's toll, escape, drugs, alcohol, letting the knowledge spur me on, the what does it matter attitude took over and I did some damage to myself, but more importantly to others.
Eventually I gave-up all that. Coming as we are into late December, perhaps I'm getting to think about other realms and dimensions, for they do exist, of that I have no doubt, Heaven on Earth may no longer be possible, but there are other planets needing a seed, for lack of a better word, and when this spirit has landed some other place, it won't be where the likes of the destroyers of this planet will be.
None of this makes me happy or am I consoled by what may be just a fantasy I dreamed-up to me comfort, or from going insane. I guess that really doesn't matter. My suffering has been mild, I've had it relatively easy most my life, but the pain I feel for the innocents that are going to suffer is something I'll never understand, or the total waste of all the most beautiful endeavors of man, if it were just achievements in the Arts it would have been a species well worth creating, but to have all of this and more, all the sacrifices, of all mankind, to get to this point, for what? To disappear beneath a mountain of skulls and drowned in an ocean of blood?
I guess we'll all find out soon enough.
The Mayans are looking smarter and smarter all the time.
by
Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 1403 comments)
on Friday, May 30, 2008 at 9:24:50 PM
Thats the elites false truth that they want you to believe. Recognizing problems is not truth. Truth is the root cause of the problems, and it ain't too many humans on the planet consuming finite resources. Truth is not permitted to be spoke. The Lie is our Truth. It's downright Orwellian.
Thomas Malthus was concerned about overpopulation when this planet had 600 million people, and not 6.6 billion people. He failed to appreciate mans ability to use his brain to feed himself.
Today of course, brains are directed at globalization and social and population control. Instead of using our intellect to develop national and global infrastructure and technology so that the human race may flourish in an environmentally friendly way, we use it to create weapons that kill people, and to take control of money, food, energy, and water to use as weapons against nations and our own people, to reduce population growth and living standards. We bioengineer viruses and unleash them on populations targetted for reduction. We develop technology to modify weather and create geophysical disasters so as to use as a eugenics weapon and terrorize nations into following the NWO. We invade countries like Iraq to prevent them from developing and flooding the world with cheap oil, and then destabilize the country which serves to depopulate and divide it. We threaten Iran for the same reasons.
If an alien race were observing man and were to see that we were worried about, with even water being in short supply, on a planet flooded with water, they would conclude that our race was not very intelligent, and might suggest culling the herd, especially the dumb ones.
For example, the technology exists to convert salt water to potable water. It requires energy to do so, and infrastructure to transport it, but the neo-malthusians who want you to believe we are at our carrying capacity have convinced you there is an energy shortage, and that even if there were not, using the energy would damage the environment so badly the world would be destroyed. They offer one solution, population reduction and reduced consumption (living standards). Many believe them.
I don't believe them. These are the same people who gave us the official version of 9-11, and anyone with a fully functioning open mind knows that to be a lie, just takes a bit of research into the facts exposed by others. If you have an understanding of physics, and common sense, you can figure out much of this yourself. Just another lie amang many.
Every crisis today, financial, energy, food, water, etc. is the intentional creation of the neo-malthusian elite to get you to surrender complete control of your lives to them, and your liberties. It is terrorism. The world has been terrorized for over a century by these psychopaths.
Look at the various wars we have had just in the last 60 years.
Cold War (Communism will take over the world, we will be nuked, the planet is toast, but we created Communism, and handed nukes to the Soviets)
War on Drugs (they are the drug trade, you think the Taliban is taking the profits from the drug trade in Afghanistan and can launder 600 billion in cash)
War on Crime (put those that buy their drugs in jail so they can not vote and breed)
War on Terrorism (they are the terrorists who gave you 911)
War on Poverty (they create poverty by exporting your jobs abroad)
War on Racism (they are racists and created the KKK)
War on Hunger (they create hunger by impoverishing nations, and tightening supplies )
War on Cancer (they used it to develop HIV that causes cancers in young people)
No Child Left Behind (leaves children behind)
WW III is being fought. Actually, it's a slaughter since one side does not know there is a war. It is not a war of nations, it is a Global War of the psychopathic neo-malthusian elite who are loyal to no nation, whose numbers are in the thousands, against 6.6 billion humans; that they call animals.
They get normal people to follow their agenda because they are so much more intelligent than normal people, and control pretty much the entire global economy and it's public and private institutions, including MSM. As one of the Rothschilds once said 200 years ago, give me control over a nations currency, and I care not who makes the laws. We surrendered control over our currency to the psychopaths in 1913. And it's been 95 years of hell (thats why we have global warming), and it's just going to get hotter.
by
pft (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 464 comments)
on Friday, May 30, 2008 at 11:09:01 PM
...well DUH. It will get down to a shoot-out between the kops and the zombies... the kops being the paid mercenaries defending the rich shitpokes who have all the goods... and the zombies who will bloody starve if they don't get SOME goods... and are willing to get froggy to get them. We used to call them "eentrepreneurs."
Answer: sure. we are fucked. now we gotta hunker down and not get killed in the crossfire as the zombies and kops kill each other... without becoming either zombies or kops.
whathefuck is so difficult to understand about THAT? Or "hard to handle?"
by
waldopaper (11 articles, 3 quicklinks, 24 diaries, 426 comments)
on Saturday, May 31, 2008 at 12:38:31 AM
Global warming a problem? Wasn't global cooling a problem 10 years ago? What has changed? Global warming is about 89% scam IMHO. Guess who is going to get taken? Who is going to pay for it? The rich? hahahahahaha
The real problem is in Europe right now. Look at the percentages of the populations of France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and UK that are Muslim. Most of these people are okay. Fine, hardworking people. But amongst them is a group of malcontents that want to cut off everyone's head that is not like them. In forty-fifty years these countries will be majority Muslim because their birthrates are 2 or 3 times of those people in the countries where they live and the number of malcontents, like rats, will multiply. Don't believe that? Go there and see for yourself. The problem is that the radical Muslims hate and want to kill everyone not just Americans.
India and China are growing economic powerhouses that are ignoring the problem of global warming while we are preparing to shackle our economy with all kinds of environmental restraints. At the same time China is a growing military powerhouse too and could wind up as a Far Eastern bully of major proportions. What will be their influence on not only the Far East by the world in 20-40 years? I hope it is good.
If the problem of Iran is not solved, peacefully or militarily, the world may have severe energy supply problems at some point because those people are nuts. Bush was right in taking out Hussein in the short run - 10-20 years. The big problem is that there were two elephants in the room when it came to middle eastern oil. Without middle eastern oil we have world wide depression and Iran has almost reached a point that they have the capability cut all oil off. Are you ready for $10/gallon gas? We have to get energy independent or else. Put the money into that instead of this global warming nonesense. If we don't we will pay politically and economically.
These are just a few of the problems worse than Global Warming. The biggest problem might be coming down the road in November because we have a good chance to elect a former street organizer/Senator who has zero experience with dealing with the complex problem we have coming at us. There is not a day that goes by that the Senator doesn't show us how inexperienced he is. It may get totally scary unless he can sell the Hope and Change BS to the whole world.
by
Mad Jayhawk (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 305 comments)
on Saturday, May 31, 2008 at 9:36:34 PM
I wondered what happened to David Duke. He changed his name and now prowls the comment sections of online news/opinion sites. Yes, I see it all so clearly now. Muslims are the world's biggest problem. Not nutcase fundamentalist Christians -- but Muslims. (A relief maybe to Jews who these kind of folk used to think were the world's biggest problem.) The world may be running out of gas, but posters like this guy are still full of the stuff. They remind us why next November is so important. They motivate.
by
Stephen Pizzo (90 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 27 comments)
on Sunday, June 1, 2008 at 10:20:05 AM
An ad hominemargument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the man", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. The process of proving or disproving the claim is thereby subverted, and the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject.
It is most commonly used to refer specifically to the ad hominem abusive, or argumentum ad personam, which consists of criticizing or personally attacking an argument's proponent in an attempt to discredit that argument. It is also used when an opponent is unable to find fault with an argument, yet for various reasons, the opponent disagrees with it.
You probably didn't learn good manners either. Your divisive comments based on your ignorance do not bother me. I am confident in my views and do not have to resort to vile gutter tactics to make them.
The gist of my post was that there are many problems in the world including some of those that you listed. Eventual Muslim domination of Europe is only one of them. That is an observation and an opinion and is hardly racist. But, judging from your response, that does not matter, does it?
by
Mad Jayhawk (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 305 comments)
on Sunday, June 1, 2008 at 2:36:50 PM
No I don't lose sleep at night over that. Over here we hear the same xenophobic fear that hispanics are about to "dominate" North America. A hundred years ago New Yorkers worried that the Irish were about to "dominate" New York. And then it was the Italians. With rare exceptions such population shifts result in something significantly less than "domination." Instead a blending of sorts results. So Muslim domination of Europe is way down my list of worries. In fact I worry a whole lot more about Christian fundamentalists domination of our nation, and what its produced for us over the last couple of decades. As it relates to the actual content of this essay, what the born-agains did to worldwide family planning is a crime against humanity. The effects of over population will kill us all long before Muslim "domination" does.
by
Stephen Pizzo (90 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 27 comments)
on Sunday, June 1, 2008 at 6:36:30 PM
It doesn't seem that even here many can handle the truth. Everyone skirts around the core of the problem without saying it. CAPITALISM. The egocentric philosophy that places me and mine over everything else. If you can't see your connection to the whole you won't care about the whole.
by
arlen custer (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 246 comments)
on Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 9:22:00 AM
11 comments
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