Negative experiences can lead to joy and understanding. Life is untidy. When we reject this messiness - and in so doing reject life - we risk perceiving the world through the lens of our economics or our sciences. But if we celebrate life with all its contradictions, embrace it, experience it, and ultimately live with it, there is a chance for a spiritual life filled not only with pain and untidiness, but also with joy, community, and creativity. ~Derrick Jensen

It's Friday again, and as I write, I notice that the term "Black Friday" has become all too familiar. Some apply it to the day after Thanksgiving, but more recently, it has become synonymous with other Fridays in history when the U.S. stock market suffered breathtaking losses. One week ago today, November 7, was a particularly bloody day for the Dow as unemployment data in the United States, fudged as it may be, was released, and it became clear that, as one subsequent headline stated, "Having A Job Is Soooo 2007."

About five years ago, even before Truth To Power was born, I was reporting stories forecasting the coming global economic meltdown. I have never been nor will be an economist, but I vowed that I would learn some basic economic concepts in order to grasp what some were calling at that time a "housing bubble." I was assiduously reading and researching the dot connections between 9/11, Peak Oil, economic meltdown, empire, and the U.S. occupation of Iraq. People whose research I respected were warning of an economic collapse, an energy crash, and the catastrophic effects of global warming-none of which, it appeared, would become an imminent threat for at least another decade.

Suddenly, somewhere in 2006 it became apparent to me that the convergence of calamity would occur sooner, rather than later, and I realized that the fabric of empire was unraveling much faster than I had anticipated. I do not wish to re-state the obvious nor attempt to trace the unfolding of events in the past two years and beyond. What I argue, rather, is that the collapse of Western civilization is well underway-and that my work is not to impede but to assist that monumental, mythical, and momentous phenomenon.

Apocalypse
In recent conversation with a friend I reiterated the essence of the preceding sentence to which my friend replied, "That sounds so endtimes." I knew what she meant-rapture, Book of Revelation, Jesus on a white horse attended by thousands of avenging angels hellbent on destroying the earth. I abhor the Christian notion of endtimes with its bloodthirsty white, male, punitive god and would go to any lengths to distance myself from it. Yet the conversation with my friend later set me pondering the grain of truth in her comment. What she had introduced into the conversation was the "A" word: apocalypse.

Throughout the major spiritual traditions on earth one finds what Jung called the archetype, theme, motif of apocalypse. We are all too familiar with the fundamentalist Christian notion of rapture, tribulation, and new millennium now popularized in Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind" series. Yet Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and myriad indigenous traditions include, for different purposes and with their own unique embellishments, concepts of apocalypse. It appears that apocalypse is a mythic, archetypal phenomenon deeply embedded in the human psyche. Without exception, apocalypse, which actually means "unveiling" or "revealing", is perceived universally as a process in which that which is hidden will be revealed, resulting in some sort of purification. A Hopi prophecy says that "When the Blue Star Kachina makes its appearance in the heavens, the Fifth World will emerge. This will be the Day of Purification." Hopi elders believe that we are now transitioning from the Fourth to the Fifth World and that purification is the purpose of the current upheaval.

I believe that because apocalypse is a fundamental archetype, something in us knows that that is precisely what we are experiencing in the final days of 2008 and are likely to continue experiencing for years to come. Whether we admit it or not, the archetype of apocalypse is percolating in our psyches. Economists and politicians in denial or simply wishing to keep their jobs insist that good times will come again-that everything will bounce back to "normal" in a couple of years. "A long, and deep recession" they continue to parrot, even as beads of sweat gather on their foreheads-a stunning example of fighting for the familiar. We're just sailing through some rough waters, they insist, unable to grasp that what began as a few choppy waves has now become a sea change.

What it is difficult for humans to wrap their minds around is the unprecedented nature of the current moment. We grasp for whatever straws of evidence we can produce that might prove that there's nothing really idiosyncratic about it. Species have come and gone before; the earth itself has been decimated and then restored more than once, we protest. Yet such statements, while accurate, miss the staggering reality that never in human history has our species devoured in a mere two or three centuries nearly all of the hydrocarbon energy painstakingly produced by the planet over the span of millennia; never have so many humans inhabited the earth at one time, nor fouled the earth's surface and atmosphere to the extent of the current blight. And what is even more astounding is the fact that never before in human history have all of these factors occurred simultaneously with the others. So argue as we may for continuity, the current moment is dramatically unique.

Moreover, if apocalypse is an unveiling, what is it that might be revealing itself in the current predicament? Is it the looting of billions, perhaps trillions by the federal government and corporate capitalism? Is it the impotence of presidents and politicians to reverse the unraveling? Is it the reality that they actually orchestrated financial collapse and will profit handsomely from it? Will the "revelation" be the public validation of whistleblowing economic investigators like Chris Martenson, Catherine Austin Fitts, Pam Martens, and Nomi Prins?

I for one wish that those realities were actually being revealed in the waning weeks of 2008, but it may be years or decades before the extent of the plunder becomes fully transparent. However, economic meltdown is not a cause of the collapse, but rather a glaring symptom of it. What is being revealed, I believe, is the profligate, soul-murdering toxicity of Western civilization and all of the assumptions from which it has emerged. As Derrick Jensen notes, "We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means - all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity." From civilization, the values and behaviors that have engendered Peak Oil, climate change, species extinction, and population overshoot were birthed. In essence, civilization is ego and humancentric, refusing to recognize any limitations of its agenda, and deems itself entitled to extract, conquer, own, dominate, and destroy whatever might impede that agenda.

Has civilization also brought us unprecedented opportunities? Indeed it has, but quite often at the expense of our own wellbeing and that of the earth community. And while the majority of inhabitants of civilization are honorable and decent human beings, they have overwhelmingly been deeply wounded, if not driven mad, by it.

All traditions that include an apocalyptic aspect juxtapose an old paradigm with a new one and invite adherents to allow the unveiling of the old to purify consciousness so that they might step into the new. Without exception, according to these traditions, the transition is painful and demanding and necessarily imposes circumstances in which the world as one has known it ends.

Sadly, most individuals being devastated by the current apocalypse, reel with anguish as their homes and livelihoods vanish; as their bodies break down for lack of healthcare; as depression, violence, and suicide reverberate across this nation-yet all the while they question few of the assumptions of civilization on which their lives have been constructed from birth. They wish only to return to the comfort and familiarity of the old paradigm. Hence the delusion of magic bullet "solutions" that will painlessly allow the human race to continue its resource-devouring lifestyle. I have written and continue to believe that it will take massive individual and collective suffering before most Americans will be capable of questioning those assumptions and discerning the difference between the old paradigm and the new. Quite frankly, it is unlikely that most will.

I Told You So
Some individuals who have been forecasting longer than I have the events now unfolding are justifiably saddened, if not enraged, by the obtuseness and denial of other human beings to take seriously their persistent caveats. I share their frustration, and at the same time, I realize that none of this is about me or them or any of our prophetic research. In fact, to continue chanting the "I told you so, I warned you" mantra is to become further mired in the old paradigm. Civilization, after all, is nothing if not hierarchical, competitive, and arrogant.

Apocalypse is demanding the diminution of human ego, in which case, the appropriate response to the masses who didn't listen is not "I told you so," but rather, deep compassion and deep grief. The inability of our species to read the writing on the wall is another chilling testimony to the power of civilization to mentally, emotionally, and spiritually incapacitate its inhabitants. There but for fortune go any of us.

In her article "Are Human Beings Hard Wired To Ignore the Catastrophic Threat Of Climate Change?" Lisa Bennett reveals evidence that suggests that civilization has so damaged human beings that we have been virtually unable to take action to stop climate change which due to our inaction, may now be unstoppable.

I would be the first to admit that I do not have infinite wisdom or impeccable acumen with which to discern all aspects of the current unveiling. I find little pleasure in forecasting what will happen next since apocalypse now has a life of its own. It is by definition mysterious and uncertain. What I do know is that things aren't going to "bounce back" because the "normal" and "familiar" have faded into history. We're in uncharted, unprecedented, and untested waters. How desperately we demand the familiar, but in spite of our flailing, life as we have known it is over. Perhaps the best description of our plight was offered by the late Susan Sontag, not in the words "apocalypse now" but rather, "apocalypse from now on."

Politicians, regardless of how charismatic, brilliant, and astute they may be have little to offer us because their agenda is one of expanding, perpetuating, preserving, and protecting civilization and its values at all costs. While they may be able to ameliorate short-term pain with placebos and band aids, both the overwhelming magnitude of collapse and their commitment to civilization preclude the dawning of insights that might assist them in facilitating their constituents in making a conscious transition to a new paradigm. In fact, as Gerald Celente notes, Obama's "Yes We Can" is a delusion that obscures the harsh reality that "No, we can't" because:

Going to Summers, Rubin, Reich, Tyson, Volker and the rest of them to fix the economy is like fighting the War on Crime by bringing in Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Seagal, and Machine Gun Kelly.

'Yes, we can,' sounds good but it is a delusion, 'No, we can't.' Nobody can, given the current socio-political and philosophical make-up of the nation. And, unfortunately, Obama's promise of 'change' is already revealed as a fraud. That won't change either.

Re-Thinking "Gloom and Doom" Definitions
None of this is pleasant to think or talk about, but today it occurred to me that the time for choosing what we get to talk about and how good or bad it makes us feel is over. We no longer have the luxury. We either deal with what's in front of us, or we actively choose suicide.

Whereas some folks who have been forecasting collapse take it personally when others don't pay heed, I tend to take personally the label of "doomer." Those applying the label would not do so if they understood things like apocalypse, civilization, and new paradigm. What I endeavor to do in my writing is clarify those concepts so that my readers can grasp that what we're living through is so much larger, grander, more compelling, momentous, and mysterious than mere "gloom and doom."

What exactly does doom mean? That depends on one's perspective. If you mean that since the earth was built to sustain 2.5 billion people riding bicycles, not 6.5 people all wanting to live in 6000-square-foot homes and that the earth must shed at least 4-5 billion people in order to sustain itself-from that perspective, collapse is synonymous with doom. The current extinction of 200 species on earth per day, and the possibility of the entire human race becoming extinct within a few generations is certainly not a cheerful topic of conversation. But if I seriously believed that these sorts of realities are the only ones to consider in conversations about collapse, then I would deserve to be labeled a "doomer." They aren't, and I don't.

If we can allow it, collapse may take us into mythic territory-to the place within us that civilization was designed to destroy but hasn't-and cannot, to the unveiling of a "new" paradigm that isn't "new" at all because something in us remembers that it is how we were meant to live with ourselves and the earth community.

Civilization does not have to die in order for any of us to experience the unveiling, but there is no question that to do so would be easier if civilization were a faint memory in our minds. I for one am not willing to save it, preserve it, prop it up, put it on life support, or apply salves of salvation. What I am willing to engage in is a vigil-a death watch for civilization while it breathes its last breath and celebrate what is revealed in the process.

Unquestionably, collapse entails suffering, and there are no guarantees that any of us will survive. Many innocent members of the human and other species will perish. Wise people from the great traditions tell us that the transition cannot be made painlessly. What is also true is that it offers something extraordinary-something like what I see in small communities where people are already creating local currencies, becoming first responders for crisis situations, organizing neighborhood watches to provide food and heat for the vulnerable, maintaining winter farmers markets, celebrating the holidays in unique ways that do not focus on consumption but rather, on cooperation. At the same time that I feel pervasive despair nationally, I see unexpected people in unexpected places seizing unexpected opportunities. Who knows if they will survive? Who knows if anyone reading this article will survive? Who knows if I will survive?

But if mere physical survival is all it's about, then we are left with nothing but doom and gloom. If, however, things like cooperation, compassion, building authentic community, and living from a new paradigm, even if only for a brief period of time, occur, then civilization will have been transcended and dealt a significant death blow. Humans who participate in those ventures will have tasted something far more momentous than mere physical survival-something civilization can only obliterate, not sustain: the opportunity to savor one's inextricable connection with all aspects of the earth community. Or as Richard Heinberg reminds us, "Growth is dead. Let's make the most of it. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."

Juan Santos, whose articles are frequently featured on the Truth to Power website says it eloquently and succinctly:

...the key tasks before us lie not in saving the global economy, not in creating a "green" economy, not in inventing new ways to exploit new energies in order to continue to mine the life of the Earth, nor in any other activity that would seek to preserve this system in any form whatsoever.

The key tasks before conscious people today are the forging of a profound understanding of what has gone wrong - a sweeping and utter re-evaluation of all values that will be tantamount to a new renaissance, a conscious re-creation and co-creation of culture. Much of that work began to be undertaken in the 1960s, and has borne important fruit, like William Kotke's work, The Final Empire. It is ours to forge an authentically sustainable culture, even in the midst of this civilization's fast approaching end - by relying on and integrating the deepest, clearest and most coherent teachings of traditional indigenous cultures, of students of the ecology, and of the multivalent healing practices of both indigenous cultures and of the new therapies that have arisen in the last 50 years. Such a movement - one that is intent on restoring the Earth and fostering social justice and renewing our cultures by incorporating the values and vision of indigenous peoples - is already underway on a global scale. Paul Hawkens, in his important book Blessed Unrest, calls it an "unstoppable movement to re-imagine our relationship to the environment and one another." His research shows that it is the largest movement in human history, involving some 2-3 million organizations worldwide and some 200 - 300 million people whose cultural, ethical, political and ecological creativity are already impacting billions. That the processes of renewal - of healing, rectifying and relearning - will best be fostered among those in living in direct contact with, and in a caretaking relationship with the Earth and other, non- human living beings should, I hope, be self evident.

As I ponder the quote by Derrick Jensen at the beginning of this article, I notice an extraordinary paradox: If I reject collapse, I reject life, not death. Civilization kills all that it touches. Could it be that the more I facilitate its demise, the more alive I become?

Mathew Scully (pictured here between two of his fellow enthusiastic enablers of war crimes, Michael Gerson [left] and David Frum), is not just a hypocrite or opportunist. He is a menace to all life, beings, species, and nature.

As someone who is concerned about a person's overall political standpoint, and who would not embrace a Leftist who is a speciesist anymore than an animal rights person or vegan who is a racist, I had some serious problems with Scully and the fawning adulation of his book by virtually the entire animal advocacy movement. Many people, such as Karen Dawn (the founder of DawnWatch.com), saw it as a key sign of progress that the conservatives were embracing the animal cause (in welfarist form), and thus concluded that animal advocacy could be introduced to an entire new audience of people-some very rich, powerful, and influential ones at that.

No one mentioned that Scully had blood all over his hands by sycophantically serving Bush-Cheney (providing the "eloquence" they lacked) and the neo-con invasion and occupation of Iraq - all at the cost of more than 100,000 innocent Iraqi lives, over 4,000 US troop deaths, countless US troop casualties and destroyed lives, and over three trillion dollars.[i] And all based on lies and blatant deceit by Bush and his henchmen, all of whom - were there any justice in this country or backbone in the Democrats - would have been impeached and jailed for crimes of the highest order.

Nor could I understand the praise over Scully's book. Really, Dominion is two books: the first sections are indeed well-crafted and hard-hitting critiques of factory farming and hunting. But the bulk of the book was just nauseating, amateurish, antiquated medieval/early modern natural law theory which tried to justify the critique of animal cruelty in cosmic laws, rational imperatives-as if the issue of animal welfare or rights were not controversial and could not be seen in endless ways by diverse groups of people. It had a very uncomfortable authoritarian tone to it: here are the moral laws of the universe; here is moral truth. And he urged the same naïve Socratic belief that contaminates the thinking of the pacifists who dominate the animal advocacy movement - the idea that if we can only reason with people, show them this "Truth," they will no longer abuse animals. As if there were no violence and cruelty in the human heart, no desire to dominate the weak, no lust for profit off slavery of any group.

And consider the subtitle: notice that he is calling for MERCY (to the slaves) not LIBERATION (of the slaves). And we needed a burdensome arsenal of arcane metaphysics, philosophical, and legal theory to reach this conclusion? A few rights/abolitionist voices tried to expose the severe limitations of this overwrought speciesist and welfarist tome, but they were drowned out by the roar of the multitudes celebrating the movement's "revolutionary" breakthrough into new social sectors -- so "new," in fact, that there were now more white, elite, and "privileged" people in the animal advocacy/vegan movements than before.

To whatever degree he cares about animals, Scully's real constituency are rich, white, Republicans and -- having written speeches for Bush in the aftermath of 9/11 -- he had already become a shining star in the firmament of right-wing ideologues and corporate fat cats, each of whom need the best PR and BS teams they could assemble. And thanks to the fawning adulation of the likes of Karen Dawn, Scully overnight became the new darling of the animal movement. When not making the rounds of Congress or aerial warfare conventions, Scully continued to write speeches for Bush and anyone on the Right with the right fee. And, as it turned out, as so many of us were bracing ourselves for the nauseating Republican National Convention in early September 08, not wanting to hear another disingenuous word from "straight-talking" McCain but curious to hear about unknown Alaskan female governor whom he shrewdly chose to win Hillary's armies of disaffected, we learned -- at this crisis moment and critical juncture for the Far Right -- that Matthew Scully stepped in to write the kind of speech the McCain team thought necessary to disguise their malignant and predatory policies in terms of populism and family values. Right-wing soldier that he is, Scully stayed up the entire night before the speech and gave the magic words to which Sara Palin only had to give life in order to sell this sordid spectacle and sham to the US public and bring us another 4 more years of Bush--or probably much, much worse.

The moment was tense. The stakes were high. An unknown -- a woman! -- was walking onto the stage to accept her party's nomination for Vice President. But could she prove herself at the podium? Thanks to Scully's adroit words and Palin's androgynous mix of feminine soft talk and macho militarism, the chronically anxious Right erupted into a roar of elation as they felt they had, with the addition of Palin, finally found the ticket they wanted -- one entirely devoted to militarism and privatization, increasing their already obscene levels of wealth and waging a full-blown culture war against abortion, sex education in the schools, the ban on prayers in pubic places, and so on.

Well, as the right-wing pundits droned on all next day, Palin/Scully "blew it out of the water." Even Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joseph Biden said she was going to be "a tough debater" and had "a very skillfully written ...speech." And one awestruck fan gushed, "Palin sounded at times like she was speaking a foreign language as she gave voice to the beautifully crafted words that had been prepared for her on Wednesday night."

Congratulations, Scully, you did it! You galvanized and unified the most reactionary forces of the country that want to finish the job -- on the Constitution, liberties, privacy, human rights at home and abroad, the United Nations, international justice, restrictions on trade, unions, animal protections and the environment -- that Bush brought to such a high level in eight years. There is nothing innocent about what Scully does: he is a hack, a propagandist, a demagogue, a mouthpiece for nihilistic ideologies that are anything but "pro-life." To the degree that Bush, Cheney, McCain, and Palin are truly menacing forces -- who threaten not only neighboring nation states but the entire planet itself, Scully is their Paul Joseph Goebbels: a total ideologue, a skilled orator (on paper), and a devotee to the party line.

Whereas Obama is known to have fairly progressive views on animals, Palin is an aggressive supporter of hunting and herself an avid hunter. She goes so far as to champion aerial hunting of wolves and threatened to sue the EPA if they listed the polar bear as an endangered species.[ii] Beyond her regressive views on animals, she has helped mobilize the base of the far Right in a way McCain could not do himself because she is such an extreme conservative. According to MoveOn.Org:

**Palin recently said that the war in Iraq is "God's task." She's even admitted she hasn't thought about the war much--just last year she was quoted saying, "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

**Palin has actively sought the support of the fringe Alaska Independence Party. Six months ago, Palin told members of the group--who advocate for a vote on secession from the union--to "keep up the good work" and "wished the party luck on what she called its 'inspiring convention.'"

**Palin wants to teach creationism in public schools. She hasn't made clear whether she thinks evolution is a fact.

**Palin doesn't believe that humans contribute to global warming. Speaking about climate change, she said, "I'm not one though who would attribute it to being manmade."

**Palin has close ties to Big Oil. Her inauguration was even sponsored by BP.

**Palin is extremely anti-choice. She doesn't even support abortion in the case of rape or incest.

**Palin opposes comprehensive sex-ed in public schools. She's said she will only support abstinence-only approaches.

**As mayor, Palin tried to ban books from the library. Palin asked the library how she might go about banning books because some had inappropriate language in them--shocking the librarian, Mary Ellen Baker. According to Time, "news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor." [iii]

Unfortunately, thanks to Scully, Palin's "homespun" speech (professionally crafted by a DC-insider), was a smash at the RNC, and she "hit it out of the ballpark" as nearly every conservative pundit said the following day. And so we have Scully -- who wrote a book critical of hunting - to thank not only for supporting a psychopath whose lust for killing animals perhaps rivals that of Ted Nugent, but for reinvigorating a fascist movement that has excellent chances at winning the next election, and taking the US even deeper into the innermost circles of hell, as somehow I suspect that McCain-Palin will be even worse for the US, the world, animals, and the planet than Bush-Cheney.

Karen Dawn of DawnWatch in 2001 at "an evening with Julia Butterfly Hill and Sophie B. Hawkins, hosted by Gloria Steinem."

And yet, still we hear hardly a word from the animal community about what a thug and criminal Scully is and what a traitor he is to the animals, to fellow humans, and to the entire planet. The most pathetic comment I have heard so far is from Karen Dawn, a well-known animal activist and social butterfly who runs the newsletter, Dawnwatch, which comments on media representations of animal issues. Given her social and economic status - the fact that she lives in the affluent area along the California coastline, that she is a regular in the LA party and cocktail scene, that she loves to see and be seen with celebrities - it is not surprising she takes an apolitical view of animal issues, and in fact believes that this movement ought to strive to be a powerful single-issue, DC-based powerhouse like the NRA.

Here is Dawn's self-serving, cowardly, and deplorable commentary the day after Palin's speech:

"The news this week is the Republican Convention, and the animal news is the choice of Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate. Before I write any further on that issue, I need to stress that DawnWatch is entirely non partisan. If you've read [her new MTV-style book] Thanking the Monkey you know of my commitment to non-partisan animal activism. It would be unfair to the animals for their advocates to alienate half of the human population. And in Thanking the Monkey, I explain that the somewhat common assumption [which I personally have argued for in detail] that animal advocacy is a left wing issue is false. Democrat voting records are better on animal issues overall, but the exceptions are shining. Republicans John Ensign of Nevada, and Christopher Shays of Connecticut are just two of those current outstanding exceptions. And former Senator Robert Smith of New Hampshire, an ultra right wing conservative, is the only person to date to speak passionately against vivisection on the Senate Floor.

Perhaps most notably, one of the finest books ever written [!] on animal protection is "Dominion: The Power of Man, The Suffering of Animals, and The Call to Mercy." It is by Matthew Scully, who worked as a senior speechwriter for George W Bush, penning the book on his off hours. Scully sees his compassion, or mercy, for animals, and his vegan lifestyle, as perfectly in line with his Catholic conservative values ...

In an extraordinary twist of fate, Scully was selected to write Sarah Palin's speech, which aired last night. Let us hope that in the time Scully and Palin spent together working on the speech, he began to influence her thinking. I hope every Republican on this list will urge her to read his book!"[iv]

"Let us hope that in the time Scully and Palin spent together working on the speech, he began to influence her thinking." How naïve and deep in denial can this woman be?! Does Dawn think that Scully and Sarah had a reasonable and open chat about the evils of hunting?! That he gently reminded her that animals are not meat machines to shoot down in cold blood, just as he appreciatively received his lucrative paycheck for selling out the planet by helping some of the most dangerous forces in our history in their bid to win an election? I suspect Scully talked far more with Palin about his fee than her bloody proclivities to kill animals.

Dawn is indeed critical of Palin's zeal for hunting and her abysmal environmental record, but she would rather be an enabler to this carnage than offend her powerful, rich, and influential friends. I do not exaggerate when I draw a line connecting McCain/Palin to Scully and to opportunists like Dawn.

In contrast to Dawn's vapid view that we can bring all people and parties into the animal cause, another animal advocate (infinitely more authentic and profound than Dawn), Norm Phelps, penned (in a personal email to me) some extremely critical remarks on Scully and the far Right:

"I think the fact that Matthew Scully wrote her convention speech (which was a masterpiece of viciousness) should give us all pause about the notion that conservatives will ever be serious animal advocates. I used to think that AR [animal rights] was a non-political issue and that we should keep it that way in the interests of converting as many people as possible and having the greatest impact on society. I no longer think that. I now believe that the mindset that leads conservatives to pursue policies that are hostile to the well-being of most of humanity (everyone except themselves and those to whom they are close) almost invariably leads them to policies that are hostile to the well-being of most animals (everyone except those to whom they are personally close, such as their companion animals).

"There is nothing that I find more perplexing and discouraging than the blatant speciesism that is rampant in most progressive circles. But in spite of this, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the liberal to progressive end of the political spectrum is where we have to concentrate our efforts and where we will ultimately find our victory. Conservatives can, in many cases, be persuaded to welfarism (properly so called, not as redefined by the so-called "abolitionists"), but not to AR. Scully's vehement denunciations of AR in Dominion are, I think, an important indicator of this, as is the fact that this man who wrote so eloquently of the suffering of animals could put his gifts in the service of a woman who practices and celebrates all manner of barbaric cruelty to animals. Scully obviously considers the lives and suffering of animals less important than politics as usual."

Phelps is right to argue that the Left is just as abysmal in its views on animals, and yet draws this distinction:

"The speciesism of liberals/progressives contradicts their fundamental values, which creates an opportunity for animal advocates. The speciesism of conservatives reinforces their fundamental values, which creates a solid wall. But I still think it is dangerous for the AR movement, as a movement, to align with other social justice movements until we have succeeded in raising their consciousness about animals to the point that the alliance can be formed on a basis of at least approximate equality. And I think a lot of groundwork needs to be done before we reach that point. I guess where I'm headed is that we need to be taking that groundwork seriously and getting busy at it--which, of course, is what you've been doing for some time now."[v]

While I agree with Phelps that Leftists are Paleolithic in their views on animals and we should not be too ready to tie ourselves to a human rights/social justice platform as it is, and that we do need indeed to educate the Left, I have also disagreed with him (in quite friendly terms) that animal liberation is winnable without human and Earth liberation and a progressive alliance politics that fights against the main threat to the planet today, which is the capitalist grow-or-die economy.[vi]

But while we examine the problems with both the Right and the Left, let us not lose focus on the idiocy, cowardice, and opportunism in our own movement, for there are far too many "animal advocates" who are in fact advocates for something far less noble: money, power, glory, fame, and self--advancement. If it was not obvious with the writing of Dominion six years ago, Scully in particular has since revealed himself to be a sham, fraud, charlatan, prevaricator, hypocrite, and (neo-)con man, an enemy not only to animals, but also a de facto opponent of women, science, secularism, freedom of speech, and the environment.

Like the politicians he serves, Scully talks out of both sides of his mouth at once and serves each and every contradictory cause that advances his own good. No principled or consistent person writes a book against hunting, and then writes a speech for a vicious defender of hunting and avid killer herself. Can any animal advocate among us ever imagine doing this?! This is the moral and logical contradiction that would haunt a Kantian, someone with a conscience, anyone with principles or moral consistency. But it never troubles a utilitarian-opportunist.

In a nation rife with political and historical idiocy, layer upon layer of confusion, and pernicious myths linking capitalism with democracy and justice, the masses are so easily manipulated by the power elite that they can be convinced that the Clintons (who are at best center left on the political spectrum) are communists!

And nor is his work done. The Far Right loved his Palin speech so much that they will surely contract him again. Without hyperbole, I say that Scully is less a "progressive vegan and animal welfarist" than he is a reactionary and a dangerous man. He has been the words, phrases, metaphors, rhetoric, narratives, jokes, and overall a key voice and mouthpiece of the Extreme Right who want to take this country back to pre-Enlightenment, pre-secular medieval serfdom where rights mean only property rights, liberty falls to security and hierarchy, and democracy is a forgotten dream.

To end by reiterating a crucial point: Mathew (Straight-Laced, Compassionate Conservative, Corporate and Family Values Man,) Scully is not just a hypocrite or opportunist. He is a menace to all life, beings, species, and nature. This is not an ad hominem attack, it is simply a fact. Look who he works for and examine what they do. Because of the gigantic powers he brings to life, puffs up, drives forward, and legitimates with the rhetoric of his folksy, small-town populism, he represents gigantic global corporations that destroy families and communities. Because Scully casts the spell and brings out the smoke and mirrors that cover up lies and package a hideous program of destruction as "progress," and because he gets the job done, time after time, Scully is a significant danger -- and I do not exaggerate -- to this entire planet.

Scully's real project is not "dominion." It is domination-corporate hegemony of the planet and the advancement of the US Empire. To the extent his discursive artistry helps to disarm Congress and to lull Americans back into their complacent and jingoistic sleep, Scully shares responsibility with Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, Rice, Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Monsanto, and ConAgra for turning this beautiful planet into a living hell for most of its inhabitants and for leaving behind a wasteland and battlefield that will prove even more difficult (if not impossible) for future generations to survive, as ever more species vanish forever.

Notes:

[i] For data on the ever-mounting numbers of Iraqi civilians and US soldiers killed and injured, see the Iraq Body Count website at: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/. On the soaring costs of the war, see Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz, "The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More," Sunday March 9, 2008, The Washington Post, at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846_pf.html.

[ii] On Palin's regressive record on animals and the environment, see John Dolan, "Party whores: Sarah Palin's Big, Sleazy Safari," September 2, 2008, AlterNet, at: http://www.alternet.org/story/97207/sarah_palin%27s_big%2C_sleazy_safari/; "Environmentalists can't corral Palin: GOP vice presidential candidate nicknamed the 'killa from Wasilla', Associated Press, posted September 4, at MSNBC.com, at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26546967/; and ""SARAH PALIN SUPPORTS SHOOTING WOLVES AND BEARS FROM AIRPLANES," Defenders of Wildlife, at: http://www.defendersactionfund.org/. This page includes a disturbing video link to what this barbaric practice that Palin ardently supports looks like in reality.

[iii] "Who is Sarah Palin," MoveOn.Org., at: http://pol.moveon.org/emails/palin_announcement.html?rc=homepage.

[iv] Karen Dawn, "Palin provides vital opportunities for animal friendly letters," September 4, 2008, at:
http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/archive/dw1000000dawnwat/20080904102648/

[v] Phelps cited with permission in a personal email to me on September 4, 2008.

[vi] Steven Best, "Rethinking Revolution: Animal Liberation, Human Liberation, and the Future of the Left," The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Volume 2, Issue #3, June 2006; at: http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol2/vol2_no3_Best_rethinking_revolution.htm

Steven Best, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso. He has published numerous books and articles on philosophy, cultural criticism, social theory and animal rights. He has appeared on TV shows like Extra! and is frequently interviewed by national print and radio media including the New York Times and National Public Radio. Best is Cyrano's Journal Special Editor for Animal Rights, Speciesisim and Human Tyranny over Nature.

I am the earth. You are the earth. The Earth is dying. You and I are murderers. -Ymber Delecto

What a sorry lot we humans are, particularly those of us immersed in the "American Way of Life." Killing is indeed our business. And business has never been better.

More than half the tropical rainforests are gone and at the rate we're going, we will have reduced chopped, hacked, sawed, dozed, and burned our way to the virtual eradication of the "lungs of the planet" by the year 2030.

Kids, get ready to start suffocating because we're NOT giving up our meat habit! Patrick Henry was prepared to die for liberty, but we have a nobler agenda: Give us more grazing land or give us death!

Reflecting the spiritually perverse beings we are here in America (don't be fooled by our carefully polished veneer of civility and humanity--we're the most savage murderers of all) is the fact that we are considering replacing our "commander-in-chief," (the most heinous war criminal since Hitler) with a senile war-mongering septuagenarian and his recently anointed reactionary sidekick (see photo below) who never met a non-human animal she wouldn't slaughter or an ecosystem she wouldn't decimate in the name of "hunting," "free enterprise," or "resource acquisition."

Or we may occupy the impending vacancy in the White House with a pseudo-progressive who has sworn his allegiance to the genocidal "state" of Israel and to corporate America whilst surrounding himself with a depraved and ruthless entourage, most of whom sold their souls to Wall Street and the military industrial complex years ago.

McCain at the helm? Obama on the throne? Who cares? Either way we party on here in America, oblivious to the devastation and suffering our obscene existence is causing. Our factory farms will continue torturing and slaughtering billions of animals each year to satiate our meat addiction, McDonald's will keep our arteries clogged and our ascent to obesity intact, Big Pharma will inundate us with soothing and sedating "happy pills" to ensure our guilt-free participation in the murder of the planet, Big Oil will gleefully continue meeting our gluttonous demand for its "black gold," and the corporate media will keep our wretched and vile hologram intact by constantly re-enforcing rabid nationalism, ahistorical thinking, consumerism, narcissism, alienation, rugged individualism, "free" markets, the virtues of wealth, and the "superiority" of the American Way.

While numerous complex entities and dynamics enable the power elite to maintain their strangle-hold on wealth and power, military might remains their principal means of dominating, extorting, exploiting, stealing, and annihilating with impunity. While we outspend the rest of the world (that's all other countries combined, mind you) maintaining and expanding the war machine we revere with religious fervor, it is not money alone that gives our lords and masters the capacity to keep the world safe for capitalism and corporate plunder.

Our dirty little secret here in the US is that we built and buttressed our crumbling empire by unleashing a force so potent and so capable of rendering life on Earth extinct that it makes capitalism's "slow motion" ecocide look like candy-striping. In 1945 we became the first and only country to harness the power of nuclear fission and utilize it as a weapon of mass destruction. Our cold-blooded murder of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians cemented our position as global hegemon.

When the uber-capitalist ruling elite of the US saw a socioeconomic system that was a potential threat to their supremacy, they successfully convinced most of their wage slaves that they were well off under a system of the rich, by the rich and for the rich and that the "communist threat" in Russia must be extinguished. What was their solution? They forced the Russians (who were moving with amazing rapidity to industrialize an agrarian economy which was dwarfed by that of the US) into a pissing contest over who could manufacture the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Their strategy was of course successful. The Soviet Union eventually collapsed. Country-clubbing white men with snow on the roof-top and fog on the brain maintained their "right" to clench their billion dollar net worth statements in one decrepit claw and the deeds and titles of their myriad precious possessions in the other. And the rest of us could breathe easy knowing that the "American Way of Life" was no longer in jeopardy. But at what cost to the Earth and the rest of its inhabitants?

Nuclear non-proliferation is a joke. Treaties, vows, resolutions, good intentions, and promises involving crossing hearts, hoping to die and sticking needles into eyes have resulted in even more nukes brandished by more nations. Meanwhile, we US Americans continue dictating who gets "nuclear privileges" AND we still possess more WMD's than any other nation. When is another country going to invade us, depose the evil junta in DC, and hold a public lynching like our puppets did in Iraq?

Thankfully sanity (or perhaps just sheer luck) has prevailed and we have been the only nation brutal and stupid enough to employ nuclear weapons. And we have put our nuclear knowledge to constructive use by harnessing the power of the atom to create electricity. Yet when Prometheus brought us the "fire of the Twentieth Century" and told us we could use it for peaceful purposes, he failed to warn us that if this "fire" gets out of control we're all cooked.

Nuclear power only produces 20% of the electricity consumed in the US, but accounts for a number of staggering problems we simply keep sweeping under the rug for future generations to solve. Forget logic or consideration for our children or for Mother Earth, though. John McCain, Greanpeace founder Patrick Moore, and a host of other whores to the nuclear power industry hail nuclear energy as a "green" alternative to fossil fuels and clamor for more.

Yes, let's build more nuclear power plants. After all, given our culture of militarism and death, why not erect as many temples honoring Thanatos as is humanly possible?

Let's take a closer look at the technology many are ready to embrace as the "remedy for Climate Change."

Nuclear power is touted as a cheap alternative to coal (and other ways of producing energy). While it is a less expensive means of actually generating electricity once a reactor is online (the operating cost is about half that of a coal-fired plant), there are tremendous fiscal costs associated with building a nuclear facility, removing and storing radioactive waste, and decommissioning a plant once it is retired. (One hasn't been closed yet but the estimated cost to do so is around $300 million).

And just who's underwriting these outrageous costs? We the taxpayers! On May 12, 2008, the Wall Street Journal wrote, "For electricity generation, the EIA concludes that solar energy is subsidized to the tune of $24.34 per megawatt hour, wind $23.37 and 'clean coal' $29.81. By contrast, normal coal receives 44 cents, natural gas a mere quarter, hydroelectric about 67 cents and nuclear power $1.59."

More importantly, the threat nuclear energy poses to the environment is so high that calling it "green" is an absurdity one would think had sprung from the mind of Lewis Carroll.

Since nuclear plants rely on large bodies of water to cool reactors (and avoid a melt-down) and discharge about 70% of the heat they generate (as waste), they are vulnerable to droughts and cause significant thermal pollution in the bodies of water that cool them.

Nuclear power production begins to contaminate the environment with radioactivity before the fuel even arrives at the plant. It takes a tonne of uranium ore to produce 3 kilograms of uranium oxide. While the tailings that are left behind emit small levels of radiation, they do release radon gas and radioactive dust at a rate 10,000 times faster than the unmined ore. This nuclear contamination stays in the environment for 100,000 years and over time reaches such high levels that a Los Alamos Laboratory report concluded that we need to, "to zone the land in uranium mining and milling districts to forbid human habitation."

Nuclear power facilities produce a steady stream of low-level radioactive waste, including gas, solid and liquid. Gaseous and liquid wastes are "cleaned and diluted," but are eventually released into the environment. Solid wastes are transported to one of three low-level radiation disposal sites in the US where they continue accumulating and emitting radiation into the environment. Sounds Earth-friendly, doesn't it?

About once a year 33% of a reactor's fuel rods are replaced, producing anywhere from 12 to 30 tonnes of high level nuclear waste. The frightening part is that we've been using this "green" technology for 40 years now and still haven't figured out a safe and permanent means of disposing of its extremely dangerous and lethal by-products. Temporary pools or dry cask storage (large steel cylinders that require constant monitoring) onsite at nuclear facilities house most of the spent reactor fuel, which will remain a dire threat to the environment for tens of thousands of years. Nuclear power plants are running out of storage capacity and the "permanent storage solution" at Yucca Mountain, projected to be operational in 2017, is little more than a tentative and distant speck on the horizon. Perhaps we could erect dry casks on some of the sprawling estates that McCain has forgotten he owned....

The Chernobyl Disaster

How remote is the possibility of a nuclear melt-down resulting in a disaster? Let's ask the thousands of heavily irradiated victims of Chernobyl and those living in the vicinity of the "near miss" at Three Mile Island.

Lest we forget, nuclear reactors are "dual-use" by virtue of the fact that plutonium is one of their by-products and plutonium can be used to produce nuclear weapons. Small wonder our ruling class trembles with fear (hence their belligerence, bullying and macho posturing) at the prospect of Iran (a nation which refuses to genuflect to the American/Israeli Empire) developing nuclear reactors to generate power.

And someone please explain what it is that's so "green" about a source of electricity that produces waste that people (whom our malevolent and brutal foreign policy has pissed off--there are millions and millions of them) could use to make a "dirty bomb" and then deploy it against us. Granted the potential efficacy of a dirty bomb is subject to debate, but who wants to find out? We already have 104 repositories for bomb-making materials scattered across the United States. Let's push to add more!

While many anti-nuclear activists focus their efforts on opposing the issuance of licenses to build new nuclear power plants, another approach may prove to be more effective and is in play at this moment. Members of IPSEC, a group of over 70 community groups, have devoted themselves to shutting down the nuclear power plant known as the Indian Point Energy Center. Grassroots and non-profit, the objective of IPSEC groups like Riverkeeper is to replace nukes with a truly safe form of sustainable energy and to preserve the integrity of the environment. If IPSEC is successful in setting a precedent by catalyzing the shuttering of Indian Point, a domino effect could ensue and spell the beginning of the end for the menace of nuclear power.

For a litany of reasons, IPSEC is wholly justified in its appeals to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deny Entergy Corporation's bid to renew Indian Point's license for another 20 years. In fact, if sanity and moral considerations amounted to more than a pair of sickly midgets making desperate and ridiculous attempts to halt the stampeding herd of narcissistic consumers and greedy corporations that are the embodiments of monopoly capitalism, there wouldn't even be a debate.

Indian Point is situated about 25 miles from New York City, a rather populous area, eh? (93 million people live within a 500 mile radius of this nuclear facility, most of whom would be impacted by a major accident or meltdown at Indian Point).

Indian Point's two reactors that continue to function were built in 1974 and 1976, which means that they are old, hence prone to cracks, leaks, fissures, wear, deterioration, and the like. It also means that they were built to less stringent safety specifications than newer reactors.

At one time Indian Point had three functional reactors. In an October 2001 article (entitled America's Terrorist Nuclear Threat to Itself) long-time anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman wrote, "Indeed, Indian Point Unit One was shut because activists warned that its lack of an emergency core cooling system made it an unacceptable risk. The government ultimately agreed."

In 2006 the NRC fined Entergy Corporation, the owners and operators of Indian Point, $130,000 for problems associated with its system designed to warn nearby residents to evacuate in the event of a nuclear crisis.

Until they finally began moving them to dry casks in January of this year, Indian Point had 1500 tons of spent fuel rods stored in temporary pools. These pools have been leaking tritium and strontium-90 (both highly toxic substances) into the groundwater and the Hudson River since 2005 and are demonstrably vulnerable to sabotage or attack. And as Wasserman elucidates in the previously cited article, these pools (not to mention the reactor cores) are horrific accidents waiting to happen:

"Without continuous monitoring and guaranteed water flow, the thousands of tons of radioactive rods in the cores and the thousands more stored in those fragile pools would rapidly melt into super-hot radioactive balls of lava that would burn into the ground and the water table and, ultimately, the Hudson."

Indian Point Energy Center manifests nearly all that is inane and insane about humans shattering atomic nuclei and hubristically believing we can play with the fires of hell without getting burned.....

Yet there's at least a "little" Eichmann in all of us as we faithfully participate in our ecocidal "American Way of Life." So what do we care about a little radiation here or a few meltdowns there?

Remember, "Killing is [our] business.....and business is good!" Just ask a member of that species that will be extinct in about 15 minutes....

Jason Miller is Cyrano's Journal Online's associate editor.

For those of you refusing to bow at the altar of Thanatos, click on the links below to find out what you can do to help IPSEC shut down Indian Point:

Game Plan

IPSEC Information

River Keeper Indian Point Campaign

Green Nuclear Butterfly

Close Indian Point Petition

Two weeks ago, oil was soaring toward $150 a barrel; now it's nosediving to $120 and may even see $100 again. Peak Oil? Humbug! Problem solved. The market works after all.

I can see the headline of the Wall Street Journal a year or two from now: "Oil Price Falls from $300 to $275, Disproving peak Oil Theory."

For years oil depletion analysts have been painting a consistent scenario that goes as follows. Sometime around 2010 (give or take two or three years), growing decline rates in oil production from existing oilfields will overwhelm new production streams coming online. The price of oil will rise dramatically. However, when it does it will cripple the trucking industry, the airline industry, tourism, agriculture--essentially, the whole economy. A serious recession will ensue, which will reduce demand for oil (among other things). Oil's price will temporarily drop in response. Then, as declines in oil production worsen, the price will resume its upward march--but again in a
sawtooth or whipsaw fashion.

This scenario is hinted at in the second sentence of the Hirsch Report, which says, "As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically...."

Volatility is in some ways an even worse problem than high prices, because sustained high oil prices make long-term investments in alternative energy sources and public transportation look sensible--whereas periodically collapsing oil prices discourage such investments.

Now, as the US economy is reeling, partly as a result of recent high oil costs (there's also a bit of bother with banks, mortgages, and credit), there is the likelihood that urgent concerns on the part of families and policy makers to actually do something about dangerous oil dependency may wane if the downturn in gas pump prices continues. And of course politicians in Washington are doing their part to dampen the flames by insisting that all we need to do is rein in speculators or drill in protected areas and the good times of cheap gasoline can roll on forever.

What everyone needs to remember is this: the fundamental cause of the recent oil price spike has not gone away. Global demand for oil is still increasing; supply isn't. The current brief respite from the hammering effect of new oil price records being set almost daily is not an occasion to go back to sleep, but an opportunity to consolidate efforts toward energy conservation and transition.

The days of skyrocketing oil prices will be back soon enough. Will we be ready?

Conservatively speaking, approximately 100 million vertebrates in the world are experimented upon annually by the animal research industry of which approximately 22 million animals belong to the United States. Most of the animals are killed after research. While the animal research industry has managed successfully to brain wash the public into thinking animal research consists primarily of medical research, that is not the case. A large portion of animal research takes place in the cosmetics industry, the military, the EPA, the FDA, private research laboratories for industrial use, animal food companies, and others.

The March of Dimes is famous for experiments in which their researchers sewed the eyelids of kittens shut for a year in visual development tests before killing them. The visual development they claimed to study occurs in cats after birth while it occurs in humans before birth so that the tests were meaningless. The March of Dimes has also conducted research funded by tobacco companies to show that nicotine had beneficial effects. Research at the March of Dimes has also included implanting electric pumps into the backs of pregnant rats to inject them with nicotine and cocaine even though the hazards of smoking and cocaine to human babies is well known. Other addiction testing has been done by university researchers like Ron Woods who locked baboons in refrigerators filled with cocaine smoke in drug addition studies. The subject of how unjust it is, not to mention immoral and decadent, to experiment upon animals to try to solve the addiction problems human beings have created for themselves is never considered. That includes Columbia University where researchers have repeatedly operated on baboons and their babies in utero to measure the flow of nicotine through the umbilical chord.

The IAMS pet food company also engages in animal research projects. Their research has included confining dogs and cats in small, barren cages for as long as six years in which the dogs were debarked by cutting their vocal chords and then forced to endure painful surgery in which their gums were repeatedly cut and sutured to implant gingivitis, though gingivitis could have been studied on dogs that had developed the condition normally.

The cosmetics industry is another giant in the world of animal research. Procter and Gamble, for example, tests cosmetics for irritancy by locking rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, ferrets and other animals into restraining devices and then applying burning chemicals to their eyes and shaved portions of their skin. This is done without sedation or pain killers and causes excruciating pain. Some of the animals strain so forcefully against their restraints in these tests that they actually break their backs trying to escape. Those that survive are put through additional tests until they are finally killed. When chemicals are dripped into the eyes of these animals, it is called the Draize Test, and many in the medical community agree it is useless and unnecessary. More than 600 other companies produce the same kind of products that Proctor and Gamble makes without resorting to animal testing. Donated corneas to which chemicals may be applied and human skin cultures for irritancy testing are also available as alternatives to these animal testing procedures and are less expensive. However, Procter and Gamble refuses to abandon this senseless research because it does not want to admit it is wrong. The FDA continues to approve it. All so that we can have better kitchen products, better make-up, mascara, and all those other necessities Procter and Gamble makes.

None of this research discussed we've been discussing takes curiosity research into account, for example, subjecting restrained primates to a continuous three hour-long studio-generated sound ten decibels louder than a shotgun blast, a research project conducted at New York University.

The above research does not take into account the abuse of animals by supposedly legitimate medical researchers that continuously comes to light year after year after year as, for example, at Huntingdon Laboratories in England where researchers were photographed hitting puppies, shouting at them, simulating sex acts with them, and dissecting what appeared to be a live monkey. As reported by a whistleblower at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was able to back most of her charges with 59 videotapes in tests for alcohol, dopamine, and nicotine, rodents were infected with oversized tumors so large the animals could hardly carry them around and some of the tumors ulcerated and burst; a researcher broke the necks of rats to get rid of those for which she had no need; rodents have been packed together under such crowded conditions that they suffocated to death and resorted to cannibalism; mice with untended teeth grew so long that they could not eat and some of them starved to death; a researcher jokingly held up a tiny white mouse and said, "Say Bye, bye," and then beheaded her with a pair of scissors; rats screamed when being beheaded with scissors without anesthesia or numbing agents; and researchers have amputated the toes of rodents for identification purposes.

The animal industry is a huge, parasitic gravy train dependent upon mass brain washing of the public through continuous public relations efforts and 100 million innocent creatures subjected to enslavement and torture by human beings. The abuse and exploitation of animals in the world today is representative of a primitive reliance on the worst instincts of human beings.

I have developed a deep respect for animals. I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than those of humans.

- Jimmy Stewart

It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.

- Harriet Beecher Stowe

...when we removed the body (of his cagemate) to the operation room, the other chimp wept bitterly and was inconsolable for days. The incident made a deep impression on me. I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures.

- Dr. Christian Barnard (Founder of Physicians for Responsible Medicine)

I believe I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. The pains which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of enmity without looking further.

- Mark Twain

Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.

- George Bernard Shaw

To my mind the life of a lamb is no less precious than the life of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.

- Mahatma Gandhi

It is our duty to share and maintain life. Reverence concerning all life is the greatest commandment in its most elementary form. Or expressed in negative terms: "Though shalt not kill." We take this prohibition so lightly, thoughtlessly plucking a flower, thoughtlessly stepping on a poor insect, thoughtlessly, in terrible blindness because everything takes its revenge, disregarding the suffering and lives of our fellow men, sacrificing them to trivial earthly goals.

Reverence for life comprises the whole ethic of love in its deepest and highest sense. It is the source of constant renewal for the individual and for mankind.

-- Albert Schweitzer

...the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

- William Shakespeare

draize

This is what happens with the Draize test. I hope they're proud of themselves. No wonder Schopenhaurer wrote what he wrote!

David Irving is a Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude graduate of Columbia University, class of 1980, School of General Studies. He subsequently obtained his Masters in Music Composition at Columbia and founded the new music organization Phoenix in New York City.

On Wednesday 21st May, my life was to change drastically. We had prepared a new campaign on a constitutional change for animals, which would have gone for a vote in Parliament at the beginning of July. The campaign was to be launched the very next day. For this campaign we had managed to unify just about the whole movement in Austria to pull on the same string. As many of you, who know me, will have expected, this is one of my primary aims, to unify the movement for double strength.

In order to 'catch' me, police not only broke into my home, but also in the home of two of my brothers and my girlfriend's. Black clad, masked up officers stormed through the broken down door and run, guns drawn, to our beds. They pointed their guns at my head and pulled me out of my bed naked. My brother was pushed onto the wall and had the gun put into his neck.

One of the 10 people police intended to put on remand was not at home. So they phoned him, and guess what? Trustingly, he went to the police station suspecting nothing evil. Till today, 19 days later, he is still rotting in a cell, not knowing why. Incidentally, he is campaigns director of the well known animal welfare group 'Four Paws', which has offices in 6 different countries.

After police had arrested us, they searched all our homes, including those of my brothers, who are not involved in the animal rights movement. Police mainly took computers, but also brochures, books, videos and mobile phones.

You would be forgiven to think that this massive police operation was the state reaction to a high level of animal rights related criminal activity. But instead, fact is that ALF activity in Austria is on a much much smaller scale than in all other countries with a big animal rights movement.

You would also be forgiven to think that police must have had information that dangerous ALF-attacks were about to happen, or that they would discover firebombs or terrorist material. But again, you could not be more wrong. They had no such information, they did not even look for such material. They were only interested in computers, books and videos, i.e. in stuff that says something about the attitude of those people they had arrested. This is what this case is about: the attitude of people, no specific crimes.

If the police had any evidence against any of the arrestees regarding crimes they supposedly here committed, they would have said so by now. But the arrest order says something else. We all were arrested for 'forming a large criminal organisation with a hierarchical structure like a company'. And the crimes this organisation under the name ALF supposedly has committed, is EVERY SINGLE animal rights related crime that ever happened in Austria ! This sounds like a joke, but it is not. Every single animal rights related crime ever, every lock glued, every tyre punctured, every window broken and so forth, but also - believe it or not - every run-in, every home demo and every undercover investigation without criminal aspect, to every topic imaginable, from vivisection to fur, factory farming, circus, the lot, is supposed to have been done by our criminal organisation.

You would expect that if police and the State Prosecution suspect you of such heinous crimes, they would come to you after your arrest and question you. But wrong again. Ever since I have been put on remand in a cell, I have never been asked by anyone any question related to this case. My solicitor has demanded to see the police evidence, and so for we have seen some 2500 pages. And in all those pages, some animal rights related crimes of the last 2 years are forensically analysed, even a bite lock that was put on a door was investigated for DNA traces. And no evidence against any of the 10 arrestees was found. Also, police has listened to our phones, had us under surveillance, put cameras pointing at our front doors, have put V-men into our groups and have read all our emails. For 2 years! And still, they have found no evidence. So they started the huge police operation, desperate for something to use to charge us of anything, and be it tax fraud.

My arrest and remand is 'justified' as follows. There is some albeit comparatively little, animal rights related criminal activity. Hence, there must be a big, hierarchical organisation run like a company, which is responsible for it. Further, since I have been active in the movement for decades, since I have international contacts and since I am influential in the movement and have run many campaigns, I must be the head of this organisation. Full stop. That is it. That is the evidence. Can you believe it? I can't, but for all I can see, it seems to be reality.

How is it possible that I am sitting on remand for such a ludicrous 'suspicion'? Good question. For 2 weeks I was given no reason why I was arrested. Then I could see the 'evidence' and was put before a judge last Friday 6th June. The prosecutor read out the list of all animal rights related crimes and non-criminal actions in the last 11 years, which took a while. Then he said I am suspected to lead a criminal organisation, which is responsible for all of them. Then my solicitor said that there is no evidence. Then I wanted to give a statement, but the judge did not allow me to do so. She just handed me a prepared verdict, which said that I have to remain on remand for another 4 weeks, then she will consider my case again. And that she did with all 10 arrestees, including the campaigns director of Four Paws International.

So, what is behind all this? I think behind all this is the most fundamental attack on animal rights movement ever in the history of our movement worldwide. Let me explain. About 11 years ago, we embarked on a new type of campaigning in Austria . We used the classic grass roots campaign tactic with media work and civil disobedience actions for legal reforms. And we were very successful indeed. First, we banned fur farms, then wild animal circuses, then battery cages and vivisection on apes, and at last rabbit cage farming. Theses successes caused a lot of concern for powerful groups in society. After the hen battery cage ban was achieved in 2004, we started to feel an increasing amount of police repression. The anti-terrorist police department started to watch us and slander us by releasing statements how the suspect us of criminal activity. Also, police restricted our rights to protest ever more. Then the Minister of the Interior publicly called us a violent group. We tried to sue him for it, but he turned out to be immune to law suits as a minister. But he admitted in Parliament when questioned that his accusation was based on wrong assumptions. We publicly called him a liar, but, revealingly he did not react......

Or so we thought. At about the same time a special police squad was formed and started a major surveillance operation on us, i.e. on a number of different animal rights groups, NGOs and individuals. The rest you know already.

Since, after years of intensive surveillance, police could find no evidence of any criminal act, they had to come up with suspicion of an offence that does not need concrete evidence. For that they used a recently introduced law against terrorist groups and the mafia. This law says it is illegal to form a big (i.e. more than 10 people) organisation, which is hierarchical and run similarly to a company, which aims to influence politics or economy, and which was for that aim at least also and at least occasionally, criminal acts. Since we do run campaigns to influence politics and economy, and since there is some sort of animal rights related criminal activity, even if not related to us, on a very low level and of no serious kind but still, the State Prosecution is using the law now - for the first time in history against an NGO. And don't forget: some of those 'crimes' recounted by the State Prosecution include flyposting, run-ins, blockades and undercover investigations inside factory farms. This is a very worrying development.

Police is using an anti-terrorist law against legitimate and non-criminal political campaigning. Amnesty International has voiced concern. A Green Party MP has visited me in prison and the Greens have put critical questions to the minister of the interior in Parliament. But he refused to comment.

Instead, the state prosecutor released a statement to media that we are suspected of committing arson and 'gas attacks', in order to slander us.

This is a political trial, a full scale attack on legal and legitimate reformist law campaigns, which were successful. Please protest against those criminals, who are behind this attack on us, and who are probably high up in government.

I support this protest as much as I can. Immediately after my arrest, I went on hunger strike. Apart from before my court hearing in order to be able to attend, I have not eaten since. I am on my 19th day today. I have been in prison hospital for the last week, have blurred vision and fell unconscious once already. I have been told that soon they will start force-feeding me.

I need your help. I count on you. Thanks for all the support you have given us already. Please trust that there really is no evidence whatever of criminal activity against me. There is none now, and there never will be any.

To write letters (or emails) of support to ten animal welfare workers, click below:

http://www.evana.org/index.php?id=34539& lang=en

While called "liberalization," this is a process aimed at undermining the sovereignty of nations by removing any "barriers" to trade, and any nation-based efforts to control their own economic and social policies. This "liberalization" is actually aimed at chaining the total resources of the planet to the total control of private capital.

FOOD CRISIS
I had suspected that these various crises were being manipulated (and in part constructed) for some time. However, recent events have shown the hand that is at play. The global food crisis is sending millions of people into poverty and even death. A complex of issues are involved in this crisis - petroleum costs, biofuels initiatives, global warming resulting in water and crop failures, and the implementation of global economic policies. As nations struggle with the crisis, and governments are shaking under the stomping feet of the hungry, one has to wonder at the solution being offered to address runaway costs. That solution is to further "liberalize" the global food markets.

This call for "liberalization" has sounded loudly twice - once from the UN world food summit, followed a week later by a statement from John Negroponte (U.S. Deputy Secretary of State) for removing trade barriers on food.

They (heads of state) agreed urgent economic assistance for affected countries, and to support agricultural production and trade through further liberalisation and reduced trade barriers. These measures, the conference statement says, would assure "better integration of small-scale producers with local, regional and international markets." (IPS)

"These restrictions should be lifted. They have taken food off the global market, driven prices higher and isolated farmers from the one silver lining of the rise in food prices: higher incomes for agriculture producers," he said. (Negroponte as quoted by Reuters)

There is apparently no discussion of how creating the import/export economies has undermined the food security of nations, nor how that has replaced small agriculture with plantation agriculture. Nor any discussion that while "biotechnology" may produce some yield gains, that it places the food chain directly in the hands of transnational agri-business.

It also seems a major oversight to call for dramatic increases in the amount of money for food aid at the same time that the push is on to further corporatize the food supply. Just whose pockets is food aid filling?

MORTGAGE / CREDIT CRISIS
The "creative" financing that blew up the housing bubble and is resulting in foreclosures across the United States and Britain (and perhaps elsewhere), were part of "creative" investing in a "liberalized" global marketplace. Low interest and risky loans were bundled and sold up the financing/investing food chain. Then bundled with other investments and sold again and again across a global financial market. Then interest rates rose and with them the mortgage payments of millions of people. The collapse has sent cannon blasts through the global financial markets spurring bail-outs by reserve banks in an attempt (purportedly) to stop the hemorrhaging. Unfortunately, it has not. Further, and not surprisingly, the mortgage crisis "turned into" a credit crisis. This was totally predictable given the "bundling" schemes.

The lie underlying the mortgage / credit crisis is the huge losses. While certainly lots of folks got hurt (and continue to be hurt), those bundled investments made a profit at each sale and re-bundling. Those profits went in somebody's pockets. Further, Both the U.S. and the British federal reserve banks have thrown billions of dollars (and pounds) into the gapping maw. Those finances coming ultimately from our pockets ... and ending up in someone else's. This is a massive expropriation of present and future wealth - not to mention the potential collapse of national economies.

OIL (COST) CRISIS
Let me start by stating that what is driving oil prices is complex. I firmly believe that we are at (or beyond) peak oil. We are in a world where the demand for oil and natural gas continue to climb and the production is remaining steady or falling off. The increasing demand for a limited resource will drive up prices. This does not mean that there are not profit-taking opportunities. In fact, there are more opportunities than at any previous time. It is also true that manufacturing capacity has not been increased despite increasing demand. While the efficiency of refineries has increased, it appears to be maxed out. Therefore, regardless of increases in production, only so much petroleum can be refined - driving up prices by limiting supply. However, given peak oil it makes no sense to me to increase refinery capacity.

There is something significant happening beyond the realities of oil supply and capacity, and that is the commodities and futures market. It is estimated that 25% (or more) of the current cost run-up is "speculation." It has been said that the market is "out of control."

I suspect that a combination of profit-taking is happening, and this is totally predictable in a scarce resource market - even if that scarcity is being manipulated. Regardless, the crisis creates opportunities to push through more transfer of wealth and accomplish "other goals." Those goals range from a renewed push to exploit every potential oil resource (off shore drilling, ANWR, the Arctic) as well as increased pressure and manipulation on producer states (OPEC, military bases in Africa, increased U.S. military placement in Latin America). Those "other goals" may also include increased military presence and control of civilian populations.

TYING IT TOGETHER
Are we seeing a world-wide "shock doctrine" move? I believe that we are. The crises we are seeing, while certainly based in certain physical realities, have been manufactured to collapse level. That manufacturing has been facilitated by global economic and social manipulation that has removed the supports for stability (and response) at the same time that other "uncertainties" have been introduced and fanned into a seemingly out of control conflagration.

The instituting of a global war on terrorism manufactured by the neo-cons and the Bush administration (with the help of Congress and corporate media) has been great for achieving multiple goals. In the United States and elsewhere, the implementation of "anti-terrorist" legislation and machinery has undermined the transparency of government while creating actual threat to those who would resist the power grab. The occupation of Iraq has generated tremendous regional instability while removing oil resources from the market - both of which have been a consistent feature in increasing oil costs. Further, it has normalized (if not institutionalized) massive levels of corporatization - particularly of the military. This in turn has led to an incredible increase in global military spending. In fact, according to Agence France Presse there has been a 45% increase in global military spending over the last ten years. This is certainly a wind fall for the "defense" industry.

Also facilitating the current catastrophe is the "liberalization" of the financial markets. One of the segments of the market that is linked to at least two of the three crises is the commodities and futures market. In the wake of the Enron scandal, there was noise made about closing the "Enron loophole." As far as I can tell, that "loophole" remains in full usage.

Legislation was not moved forward until September of 2007 to address this "weakness" in the commodities sector. That legislation was H.R. 4066 / S. 2058 -To amend the Commodity Exchange Act to close the Enron loophole, prevent price manipulation and excessive speculation in the trading of energy commodities, and for other purposes which was referred to Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry on 9/17/07. That bill was added to the farm bill that Bush vetoed - which explains a lot about why he really vetoed the bill. The legislation to close the loop hole and provide greater oversight was included in the farm bill (Text of bill) which became Public Law 110-234 over Bush's veto. However, 110-234 does not seem to exist in either text or pdf form in the GPO database, one can view the enrolled House version H.R. 2419 . I believe that this is (coincidentally) the bill which had some sort of error and was returned to the Senate (where apparently it has languished once again).

It seems to me that one way to control the "out of control" market speculation on both petroleum and grains, is to clamp down on this market - both here and globally. At the very least, there should be a commodities "holiday" to allow a cool down period, and to move to improve the transparency and controls on these markets.

As these crises continue to drag down economies, nations, and peoples, more and more "shock doctrine" mechanisms will be thrust forward. The current situation and crises create a perfect opportunity for a corporatist end game. Such a move, would be catastrophic for us all.

I could be incorrect in my reading of the current environment. However, I could also be right. I write this to raise people's awareness of the possible "invisible hand" that is at play so that we (meaning the people of the world) are not totally disenfranchised in a Ponzi scheme pitched as "saving" us. The disasters themselves pose deadly challenges for much of the global population. I strongly believe that increased "liberalization" is not going to resolve any of these issues. However, it would dramatically advance an agenda that has already caused immeasurable harm to billions of people and the earth which is our home.

Other Related Articles
Food Summit Agrees Greater Liberalisation

U.S. says ending trade barriers key to food crisis

Global Military Spending Soars 45 Percent in 10 Years, Agence France Presse, 6/09/08

New homes slump worst since 1945

Falling like a ton of bricks

Enron Commodity Trading was Not Original.

Myth-makers caught short in oil speculation. R. M. Cutler, Asia Times, 6/18/08.

"They're taking no chances with this year's harvest on the farms in Supamburri. Alongside the heavy machinery, there's a new feature: shotguns. The message is clear: Hand off my rice." ITV News Correspondent, Inigo Gilmore ("Rising Food Prices"). This is the heart of Thailand's rice-growing region, and there's great anticipation around this season's harvest. With many countries facing shortages, rice has never been more prized, so prized, in fact, that for the first time this area has seen significant and organized thefts of the crop. For this reason local farmers are keeping a close watch on this harvest.

Haiti imports 90 percent of its food. So you can imagine, if the food prices have gone up three times over the last three years, that's going to be a country that will be very affected, "Anybody who's a wage-earner and basically has the money to buy food is suddenly finding that they can no longer put two meals on the table for their family and they have to claw it back to one." Komi Kharas, Brooking Institution ("As Food Prices").

World rice consumption has increased 40 percent in the past 30 years. Annual world production had reached a record 420 million metric tons. But global supplies have fallen to their lowest level since 1983-84 (Brinkerman). Around the world, the cost of food is going up, 83 percent in the last three years, and the rise in prices is threatening to plunge more than 100 million people deeper into poverty and hunger. This food shortage is affecting the entire world but is felt the strongest in the poorest of nations even reaching into the middle class. Reasons for this epidemic are vast; some even out of human control, but there are steps we can take to once again feed the hungry.

"What started with a shortage in Thailand and a typhoon in Bangladesh is now putting tremendous pressure on domestically produced rice," Rich Lenardson, manager of Sun Food Service Brokerage in Portland, OR. "I've sold rice since 1978 and I've never seen the kind of price increases we've seen in the past month or so here" (Brinkerman).

The high cost of fuel for transporting food, bad weather in key agricultural areas of the world, the increased food demand from developed nations and market speculations are also contributing to the high prices. "It's a complex converging of events. It's a mixture of issues ranging from bad weather -- climate change plays a role. In Australia, for instance, there's a multi-year drought that has really eaten into the global food supply," Anthony Faiola, The Washington Post ("Supply").

Several reasons are cited for the problem, high energy prices, which boost cost of food transport, climate change, which causes bad harvests in areas from Africa to Australia, and increased consumption by newly prosperous China and India, which are producing less food as farmers move to the cities. Among the numerous factors contributing to the problem are record oil prices that have driven up the cost of transporting food and increased demand.

Another factor, particularly in the U.S. and the European Union, is the diversion of crops such as corn to produce ethanol and other biofuels. In the meantime, the high prices also make it harder on aid agencies to help out; all being tied to the controversy over ethanol, the diversion of corn into a biofuel, rather than for food is an ongoing debate in this country. America produces approximately 40 percent of the world's corn and we're diverting 30 percent of our production into corn-based ethanol currently. "We've got our foot on the accelerator to produce more corn-based ethanol and to accelerate this sort of connection between food and fuel." Raymond Offenheiser, Oxfam America ("As Food Prices"). These new demands from the biofuel industry are taking up more and more of the U.S. corn production, affecting wheat prices, because farmers are inclined to plant less wheat and more corn.

A statement released by, British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown's office said that delegates planned to work with the G8 and European Union to form a global strategy that would increase support to the world's poorest countries and attempt to tackle the price problem. It was also agreed that governmental approaches to biofuels should be assessed. "Prices have surged alongside rising energy and production costs, the effects of climate change, and a squeeze on land for production. Prices have spiked as African and Asian countries rushed to secure rice stocks amid fears of social unrest." Gilmore.

In India, a country where millions live a hand-to-mouth existence, concerns about securing those domestic stocks prompted the government to ban rice exports. India is traditionally one of the largest exporters of rice in the world, and this new ban is causing alarm. The Indian government hopes it will stabilize the price of rice there, but the fear is it may push up prices elsewhere. Signs show that is already happening, India's ban follows an export ban by another major exporter, Vietnam, and all this is putting pressure on Thailand, the world's only remaining major exporter.

China has almost doubled its consumption of meat, fish and dairy products since 1990. This takes a lot of grain off global markets since, for example, it takes seven pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat. This increased demand in China reached a tipping point over the past few years, with China disappearing as one of the largest grain exporters in the world into an importer of grain virtually overnight. Demand in China and India has been increasing now for a decade or more. And globally, the system was able to cope with that demand, up until just a few years ago.

An additional 100 million people, previously not requiring food assistance, are now not able to buy food, said World Food Program, WFP, executive director Josette Sheeran. "This is the new face of hunger -- the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are" ("Global Food"). The U.N.'s World Food Program says the problem is getting worse. Food prices are going through the roof right now, which means that every day that passes we can buy less food than the day before. The U.N.'s World Food Programme was forced to tack an additional $755 million to this year's budget of $2.9 billion to account for rising prices. Oxfam America reprehensive, Raymond Offenheiser, "I think the entire humanitarian community is very concerned about the amount of money that's going to be available for food assistance over the coming year" ("As Food Prices").

The prices of rice, maize and wheat have hit record highs and have doubled in the past year. "Foods price escalation has been especially evident in recent weeks. In Asia, the price of rice has more than doubled in less than two months, from $460 a ton at the beginning of March to more than $1,000 currently," Sheeran told the BBC ("Global Food").

The cost of staples last year rose significantly. Rice was up 16 percent; wheat rose by 77 percent. This year, the spike is even more dramatic. Since January, rice prices have soared 141 percent; one variety of wheat went up 25 percent in a single day ("As Food Prices").

Due to desert conditions and dry hot weather, Mauritania, a small country in northwest Africa, is forced to import approximately 70 percent of its food supply. This is a country that's clearly dependent on the global marketplace for its food. But in a situation like they have now, where food prices have surged to, in some cases record levels, in a very short period of time, you see a situation growing where these people are simply unable to pay for their food. The food is in the markets; they just can't afford it. People who live on less than a dollar a day have to pay 70 to 80% of their income just for food. "There was a family at a marketplace in the capital of Mauritania where they were selling their last goat. They had five goats last year, but because prices have soared as they have, these people have been forced to either sell their goats or to eat them. So what they're doing at the moment is trying to hang on to what little they have. They're skipping meals. They're eating less food. They're eating poor quality food. They used to have rice puddings, for instance, that had rich milk, as well as cooking oil and sugar, and they've dwindled that down to recipes including only rice and water," Faiola ("Supply"). Presently, situation like this are quickly becoming the norm in many countries.

And as prices started to go up, many consumers decided they would be better off to buy now because prices might keep going up in the future, creating a lot of panic buying. The countries that were previously willing to sell stopped selling, reinforcing the bubble in markets. Human resources director for Sysco Food Services of Portland, Oregon, Don Haverkamp, feels, "Consumers in some instances appear to be reacting to fear of shortages by binge buying and hoarding," A sign informs customers of a purchase limit on bags of rice at a Costco:

~Due to increased demand, we are limiting rice purchases based on your prior purchasing history. Please see a supervisor to find your limit~

Analysts trace the trouble back to India, which slapped impositions on exports last year to protect domestic supplies. The ripple effect of that decision finally started to be felt in U.S. stores. "A 50-pound bag of jasmine rice that sold retail for $22 or $23 jumped to $39, $50," says Celia Chan, president of United Pacific Co. Inc., a Beaverton, Oregon wholesaler. "Some U.S. farmers, seeing the chance to increase their own profits, are now trying to capitalize by raising the prices," she said, adding, "It's really hard on the restaurant business now" (Brinkerman).

Even though the evidence is undeniable, some experts feel that the situation is causing undue panic. "I don't know why people keep asking the same question. There is plenty of rice for consumers," David Cola, USA Rice Federation, Washington D.C. "The U.S. produces 1.5 percent to 2 percent of the world's supply, and U.S. farmers grow nearly 90 percent of the rice Americans consume each year." However, Mr. Cola is failing to acknowledge the impact outside of the United States. Regardless of one's view of the situation, at the end of the day, this is not a problem of a global food shortage. This is really a problem of distribution. This is a problem of people who don't have enough money to buy food

One might ask how this could have happened. If you can draw a line from a wheat, corn or soybean farm in the American Midwest all the way to Mauritania in West Africa, one might ask: wasn't globalization supposed to make food cheaper for poor people? For the last 15 years or so, there has been this assumption that countries like Mauritania could effectively abandon their government-fixed price systems that they had and give up this idea of having to stockpile food for a rainy day, the idea being that the global marketplace would, of course, provide. As a result, when a market increases in demand, for instance, when we see rising demand from China or India, the prices are not adjusting the way they should be, because there's an inhibitor in the market. With the situation where the United State, Europe, and Japan are protecting their famers by offering government subsidies, these subsidies allow these farmers to sell their crops for less. Smaller countries that do not offer subsidies are unable to compete in the market and soon abandon their food farms to grow cash crops. As a result, less food is grown and sold while demand is getting larger every decade.

World Bank President, Robert Zoellick: "It's getting more and more difficult every day. In many developing countries, the poor spend up to 75 percent of their income on food. When prices of basic foods rise, it hits hard. Food riots have already occurred in several nations this month. At least seven people have died in violence in Haiti, where more than half the population lives on a dollar a day or less. The price of rice there has doubled since December." ("As Food Prices"). This situation is very serious, in Egypt; rioters burned a market and neighboring school. In Thailand, a country that exports 90 percent of the world's rice, farmers now carry guns to protect their crop.

World Food Program managers call this crisis a silent tsunami that threatens to plunge more than 100 million people world wide into hunger. "It's probably the toughest challenge that we are facing as and aid organization in our history," said Bettina Luescher, a New York spokeswoman for the 45-year-old agency. The WFP bought rice in Bangkok for $460 per metric ton on March 3. Five weeks later the price hit $780 (Brinkerman).

But one of the things that has happened here is that the market for food has become connected with the market for energy, because you need fertilizer to grow your crops -- most of the fertilizer is produced from natural gas. Energy is needed to transport and distribute food, the shocks that we are now seeing and the pressures in the energy market are inevitably spilling over into pressures in the food markets. As some governments are limiting their exports to protect their own populations, we have got to reinvigorate investment in agriculture and the agricultural sector in many of these countries in order to get a sustainable, a long-term solution. One of the things we may need to rethink is, how do we want to structure food? Do we want to link this market so closely to another very vulnerable market, which is energy? Or do we want to develop different forms of agriculture, which are less energy intensive?

This is not Greek tragedy where fate is decided by the gods and humans can do nothing about it. No, we have the ability to influence our futures; we can fix this problem and need to act quickly.

Works Cited

"As Food Prices Soar, U.N. Calls for International Help." The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. PBS. WOPB, Portland. 23 April. 2008.

Brinkerman, Jonathan. "A World of Factors Boosts Rice Prices." The Oregonian 4 (2008): A1and A4.

"Global Food Prices Dubbed a 'Silent Tsunami'." The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. PBS. WOPB, Portland. 23 April. 2008.

"Rising Food Prices Felt Around the World." The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. PBS. WOPB, Portland. 11 April. 2008.

"Supply, Price of Food Increases Hardship for World's Poor." The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. PBS. WOPB, Portland. 29 April. 2008.

For approximately ten days last month I traveled across the United States from my former home in New Mexico to my new home in Vermont. My journey has been the culmination of years of researching and soul searching in response to the odyssey of my species and the earth community which has now entered an irreversible trajectory of collapse.

I hasten to add that I just arrived in Vermont a few days ago and that I do not have elaborate plans for making a seamless transition into some groovy ecovillage where I intend to live happily ever after in harmonious community with other collapse watchers. I'm taking this process one step at a time and may be settling in at some point in shared living space with friends where a process will be implemented for addressing conflict and the logistics of inhabiting our common dwelling places together. Should such a group coalesce, there will be formidable challenges and hopefully, extraordinary moments of celebration as people come together and confront the demons we have all introjected from empire, not to mention the fundamentals of survival. As a seasoned Buddhist might say, I have a plan, but plans from moment to moment must be open to change. Relocation and living in community as collapse exacerbates will be a long, demanding, arduous process, but I have taken the first step, as have many of you.

Relocation involves much more than logically choosing a geographical area inside or outside the U.S., taking into consideration the climate, access to arable land, water, wood, and other resources for living sustainably-a decision requiring most individuals to carefully weigh the assets and liabilities of any given place and then acquiring the financial resources necessary to make the transition. Just deciding where one wants to live is challenging enough; equally stressful for most people is finding the means to relocate, and as the price of gas and just about everything else soars, it feels as if the sands of time are running out and against those who have not yet made their move.

What seems to get less attention when the topic of relocation is discussed is the emotional factor-that is, the goodbyes, the myriad feelings that surface as one leaves a place and people-perhaps even immediate family members, in order to relocate in an unfamiliar venue. What is already an emotionally challenging experience may become more agonizing as family and friends living in denial of collapse perceive one's decision to relocate as extreme, bizarre, or dangerous. But the emotions associated with leaving are usually rivaled by those one experiences when arriving at the new destination-feelings of unfamiliarity, disorientation, ungroundedness, anxiety, paranoia, and disconnection. None of us is an expert in relocation even if we have moved many times in our lives. After all, relocation engendered by one's awareness of collapse is not the same as simply moving to another state or country under pre-collapse circumstances.

In other words, other relocations in one's life may have been motivated by job change, the end or beginning of a relationship, the desire to be closer to family, or a hundred other conventional reasons. In those instances, moving is less emotionally complicated. One simply takes care of the business of moving, experiences the typical emotions around saying goodbyes, and then moves on. Relocation needs to happen, so we relocate. Done.

Because the prime motivating factor for many individuals in current time is preparation for the demise of empire, one is almost certain to feel passionate about the decision, but the quality of feeling about relocating will be experienced differently than with respect to prior moves. Typically, when people relocate in anticipation of collapse, many second thoughts and pejorative inner voices, as well as some skeptical external voices from well-meaning friends or family, are likely to scream things like: "What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy? Don't you think this is a little extreme? What if you're wrong, and after a few years of crisis, the world just goes on as it was? Won't you regret your move?"

After relocating, even if the new setting is structured and one's living arrangements are already well in place, a plethora of other thoughts and feelings may surface-as stated above: a sense of disorientation, ungroundedness, fear, anxiety, ambivalence. These emotions will vary in intensity and frequency depending on how different the new setting is from the old, but because the intention of relocation is to settle into a very different milieu, they are likely to be ubiquitous. What will invariably come to the forefront of consciousness is the need to trust oneself and one's decision about relocating. It will be important to mentally return to the months or years of preparation one has put into the relocation and remind oneself of all the reasons for making the transition-and reach out to fellow relocaters and friends who support ones' decision.

At this point, relocation becomes a highly emotional and, dare I say, spiritual issue. Any time I am faced with trusting myself or others, I'm in the territory of mystery, and mystery is about something greater than my own human ego. The more experience one has in consciously living beyond the parameters of one's ego and intentionally inhabiting the domain of one's life purpose, the less stressful the transition is apt to be because the "muscles" of trust have been sufficiently exercised in the context of other issues. Relocation is never easy, but it can be made easier by trusting the process that brought one to make the decision, trusting allies who have already earned one's trust, taking action, and finally waking up in the new location with all the attendant emotions and challenges and feeling, not denying them.

Having allies and a structure in place in the new setting is important, but in any event, unforeseen challenges will arise. Such is the nature of the journey of relocation. The toxicity of the culture of empire is a prime motivator for most of us as we relocate, and one aspect of that toxicity is the need for certainty and predictability. When we step out of empire and into our journey, into a new way of thinking and living, we invariably sign up for uncertainty and anxiety and guarantee that our survival and well being depend on trust as much as strategy.

For me, collapse is about far more than survival. In fact, survival may be the least important issue. What matters much more for me is the possibility of creating a new way of being in the world that rejects empire and its values and offers the opportunity for creating and maintaining community based on serving the earth community.

Well, if you're now thinking, "All right, already, enough of the spiritual babble, what about the logistics?" I will tell you why I chose Vermont as my destination; my understanding of the state based on my research suggests the following*: First, Vermont is sparsely populated with about 630,000 residents. It has abundant water and arable land with ample access to firewood which of course will be critical for woodstove and pellet stove heating as home heating oil, the predominant means of heating in the Northeast, becomes increasingly unaffordable. The state has no billboards, and residents must pay for any trash they do not recycle. In addition, Vermont is currently fine-tuning its own state healthcare system, Catamount, which provides reimbursement for anyone making less than $2600 a month. Residents can also buy health insurance through Catamount on a sliding scale. Just this past week, Vermont was rated second only to Iowa in the quality of its healthcare for children. The state also has an abundance of small farms, a thriving organic dairy industry, and a strong emphasis on eating and buying local. Most notably, Vermont is an incredibly rural state with only three towns of 15,000 or more: Burlington, Rutland, and the state's capital, Montpelier. When traveling throughout the state one has the feeling that one has left the U.S. and is inhabiting some other country because rural Vermont bears little resemblance to "McAmerica". Furthermore, Vermont is third in the nation for the amount of money it spends per capita on education, and small private and state-funded colleges are ubiquitous. Also, an Amtrak line runs from Montreal to New York City, and trains can be boarded daily from Rutland to the Big Apple.

Perhaps most enticing about Vermont is the remarkable environmental consciousness of the majority of its citizens and the sense of community and mutual support they demonstrate. In fact, I have never known a state, and I have lived in many, where cooperation is as valued as it is in Vermont. A great deal of focus is now being placed by Vermonters on renewable energy with widespread Peak Oil awareness and preparation. As for the arts, Vermont is an oasis of music and visual arts, and some have said that one cannot throw a stone in Vermont without hitting a writer.

Politically, the state tends to balance conservatism-that is fiscal restraint, balanced budgets and a "live and let live" sensibility and neighbor helping neighbor, with a long history of support for progressive causes-from support for abolition in the 19th century to support for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered persons in the 21st. Seen from opposite ends of the political spectrum, Vermont is the most radical state in the nation-the only state where one does not need a permit to carry a handgun and at the same time, a state where LGBT individuals feel safely able to become an integral part of community life. Vermont has a rich history of supporting human rights and was the first state to outlaw slavery.

In addition, a strong movement for Vermont independence, yes secession, is the passion of a significant number of Vermonters. Familiarity with Vermont's history reveals a long-standing tradition of independence modeled on the democratic republic template of the Founders of the United States. In-depth information about the "once and future Republic of Vermont" can be obtained at the Vermont Commons website where Truth To Power has a regular blogspot and where authors promoting independence offer a treasure-trove of information and support for their cause. Many supporters of Vermont independence believe that it will become an increasingly viable option as the collapse of empire intensifies and globalization is supplanted by localization.

However, as with any venue, Vermont has daunting challenges, not the least of which is its winters. Home heating oil costs this coming winter will be astronomical, and renewable energy for heating will be a critical necessity. Because of its long winters, newcomers quickly discover that they must participate in seasonal outdoor activities such as downhill or cross country skiing or snow shoeing in order to prevent "cabin fever" and to assist them in emotionally adapting to the season's length. The pay-off for those long winters, however, is lush summers and resplendent autumn foliage that bolster the state's tourism and fine arts enterprises. Because of Vermont's low population and its de-emphasis on growth, finding gainful employment is challenging. Public transportation is still inadequate in Vermont as it is in most regions of the nation which means that unless Vermonters work at home, they are required to drive fairly long distances to their jobs. At this writing, a few stores are selling gas at $3.89 in Vermont, but most Vermonters anticipate rising gas prices very soon. Culturally, Vermont is mono, rather than multi-cultural, the predominant ethnicity being Anglo-American. In addition, LGBT individuals in the state are working hard to get legislation passed that would make civil marriages legal.

As for my own rationale for leaving the Southwestern U.S., I have been researching the issue for several years, and in the light of what are certain to be lethal water shortages and climate changes that are likely to make that region uninhabitable, especially as energy blackouts become more frequent, I felt compelled to move north. Through a series of connections with friends in the Northeast, I chose Vermont for many of the reasons stated above, but also because it felt like the best option for me. I have also carefully considered relocating outside the U.S., but as the Terminal Triangle that I have written about so often-Peak Oil, climate change, and global economic meltdown exacerbate and engulf the entire planet, the assertion that leaving the U.S. is absolutely necessary for one's survival has felt increasingly spurious to me.

If you feel motivated to relocate, be advised: the sooner the better. Time is running out. Also, it is important to understand that no place is perfectly safe, no place offers one all of the attributes that make for sustainable living, and certainly no place is without challenges. Most importantly, the emotional and spiritual aspects of collapse must be attended to with as much ardor as the logistical aspects because they loom at least as large, if not larger, than the fundamental process of continuing to breathe air, eat food, drink water, and maintain one's basic creature comforts.

During my transition to Vermont I was able to offer more postings on the site than I had anticipated. I suppose I expected more disruption of daily postings than actually occurred, and for the fact that I was able to continue postings most days during the transition, I'm grateful. Truth To Power now has a new home as well as many subscribers in the Green Mountain State. I look forward to posting news regarding local political and sustainability projects in Vermont which may be useful to all Truth To Power readers everywhere, and I support all of you who are considering relocation. Choose the place that is best for you, and go there soon.

*With special thanks to Rob Williams, Professor of History at Champlain College and Editor of VT Commons, for fact-checking information about Vermont in this article

There are several striking things that jump out in the advertisement. First is the upbeat tone that distracts one from the message being given. One barely notices the substance, part of which is accurate. For example, it is true that the predictions are that energy demand will increase by 45% by 2030.

The ad begins by stating "Oil and natural gas power the past." However, the ad is telling us that oil and gas in the United States can meet future demand. Instead of talking about non-hydrocarbon energy sources, they stick with hydrocarbons as the energy solution.

The ad then states that the U.S. resources (112 billion barrels "technically" recoverable reserves according to the site) to fuel 60 million cars and 160 million households for 60 years. Look at these figures. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Commission, as of 2003 there was a total of 231,389,998 registered vehicles - not including 5,328,300 motorcycles. According to the Census Bureau, there were 116,011,000 households in the U.S. in 2006. The population is estimated to be 363,584,000 by 2030 In 2006, the number of people per household was approximately 2.6 people (Census Bureau). Assuming a consistent household size, that would mean there would be 145,433,600 households in 2030.

The population is going to grow; the number of households is going to grow; but the number of vehicles in the U.S. is going to decline to by over 75% (from the number of vehicles today). There are approximately 1.99 vehicles (excluding motorcycles) per household today, given the expected growth in population, there will be even fewer registered vehicles than that. Those registered vehicles include semi-trucks and other non-passenger vehicles. So, it looks like there are not going to be a lot of folks on the road.

So what about those 112 billion barrels of "technically" exploitable oil in the United States? Well, there is ANWR, the national parks, the coasts of Florida and California. If we signed all that over to the oil companies then "maybe" they could get that amount of oil. Costs and environment and legacy for the future be damned.

The advertisement also conflicts with the information on their own site Facts About Oil & Natural Gas. There they reiterate the 60 million "Cars can be powered" and then state "along with 25 million homes can be heated with crude oil resources from the U.S. for 60 years" (emphasis mine). That is 25 million homes - not 160 million households. In other words, only 15% of the homes could be heated.

So what about those "alternative" energy sources? According to the "Facts" page,

6 Percent of energy use currently supplied by renewable sources, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which expects the figure to increase by two percent by 2030

On another cheery note for the those who support ethanol (but don't particularly care to eat):

12.3 Percent of gasoline used in the United States that would be saved if every acre of corn was used for ethanol.

So one is wondering what "advanced" technology, and "smart" energy policy are going to do to make up an energy shortfall of roughly 80% for cars and 85% for homes.

My, that is an upbeat message - even if it is pure propaganda.

Note: While difficult to see on the computer, the ad flashes the U.S. Department of Interior and U.S. Department of Energy on the screen several times. In fact, I thought that the ad was sponsored by them.

Other Items of related Interest
Statement of Senator Carl Levin on Oil and Gasoline Prices (5/12/2008).

Levin and Feinstein Introduce Oil Trading Transparency Act (5/08/2008)

API on Wikipedia

API on SourceWatch

EnergyTomorrow.org - API propaganda site.

Well here it is folks-the great unraveling so many of us have been forecasting during the past five years as we've read the tea leaves and researched the unprecedented convergence of myriad natural, political, economic, and environmental realities. As most of you know, I'm traveling, yes on the road, across this country. I was going to wait until arriving at my final destination before writing about my experience, but with oil rapidly heading for $200 a barrel, it feels important to do so sooner rather than later because our lives have just changed more dramatically than we can imagine, and we will only be able to comprehend to what extent as the repercussions of the end of the age of oil reverberate through what is left of industrial civilization.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of what we are witnessing-and there are oh so many, is the ubiquitousness of blame. Attending almost every report on skyrocketing gas prices is the question: "So whose fault is it?" I certainly am not surprised by this, but I find it unsettling to say the least. Because Americans in particular have been absolutely recalcitrant and incapable of looking at collapse, they are being and will continue to be increasingly blindsided by it. Sadly, when humans are traumatized, their functioning becomes progressively more primal and animal-like, and their capacity for taking in and assimilating new information is markedly reduced.

When Peak Oil experts first began sharing their research, they told us that food, perhaps more than any aspect of our lives, would be impacted by it, and so it is. The double-barreled trauma now hitting Americans which is putting both gasoline and food out of their reach, is certain to result in reactive, vindictive behavior that will irrationally target a plethora of scapegoats. Add to this a foreclosure or two, a bankruptcy, car repossession, job loss or loss of health insurance and you have a recipe for mayhem. Such behavior, understandable as it may be, is adolescent in nature and therefore, untempered and unwizened, making acting-out individuals exceedingly dangerous to themselves and others.

Like me, you are probably witnessing the barrage of blame in your community and nationally if you are paying attention to mainstream news. Dmitry Orlov has given us a treasure-trove of information about human behavior in the throes of collapse chaos. What is and will be different from the collapse of the Soviet Union for Americans, however, is the level of violence that is likely to proliferate as collapse accelerates. Russians were never intoxicated with affluence and entitlement as Americans are. Their history has been replete with suffering; ours marinated in privilege reinforced by gun culture and firearm fetishes.

What those of us who comprehend collapse must understand as we navigate the daunting days ahead is that what is happening to America and the human species is an initiatory experience similar to those which have been structured and honored by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. The very best explanation I have read of this process is Nature And The Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness And Community In A Fragmented World, an extraordinary book by psychologist Bill Plotkin in which he illuminates the stages of human development and emphasizes how they have been skewed by a capitalistic, consumer-driven culture-and how each stage might be lived in fulfillment in the context of a holistic community. The current planetary initiation differs from the traditional, tribal initiation in that the former is involuntary and unwanted, whereas the latter is perceived as essential for the well being of the initiate and the tribe.

In tribal cultures young people have the opportunity to experience ritual rites of passage from adolescence to adulthood, that is, an initiation, which involves some type of ordeal created and supported by the tribe's elders. Ordeals may include rugged endurance challenges in the wilderness, treacherous hunting experiences, or isolation for a period of time in nature. In all instances, the experience is one of discomfort and danger and literally sets up a brush with death for the initiate. Many traditional societies, and some psychologists such as Carl Jung, believe that the human psyche requires initiatory experiences in order to develop in a functional manner and that without them, one's emotional and spiritual development is impaired.

Since cultures are comprised of individuals, it follows that when the individuals of the culture have not been initiated, the culture itself is likely to remain in an adolescent state. Many cultures that have experienced collective suffering such as protracted wars, famines, and disease have in the process, experienced a collective initiation which may produce some of the results of an individual initiation. This may be the reason that some European countries that endured two world wars appear to have a more mature relationship with the earth community. For example, many of those countries are far more aware of environmental issues and have taken more profound steps to live consciously in harmony with the ecosystem as noted in a recent National Geographic survey which ranks the U.S. last in environmentally conscious behavior.

I believe that the collapse of civilization, now accelerating at dizzying speed, is indeed a collective, planetary initiation of the human species. It involves all of us, not just those "clueless Americans out there", and it will deliver to each of us countless unwanted ordeals on every level-physical, emotional, financial, social, and spiritual. What traditional cultures which practice ritual initiation understand about it is that what matters most in the initiatory process is not whether the initiate survives physically, but that that person's consciousness is transformed-for her own enhancement and for that of the tribe.

What I want to reinforce for all of us is how imperative it is in the days ahead for us to walk consciously, cautiously, and compassionately through the fires of this long, protracted initiation. Beyond our physical, financial, and logistic preparations, we must continuously work-and it will be work-to open our hearts and minds to the larger purpose behind the ordeals. We must ask ourselves what each particular experience wants to reveal to us, how it comes to us to open our eyes and cleanse the doors of our perception. We will be incessantly reminded that civilization has come to all this-depletion and exhaustion of the earth community and all of the suffering that attends that. In a sense, I believe, we are fortunate to be living in this time and on this planet because something greater than our finite human egos is delivering a message with unmistakable clarity: Living estranged from the earth community as if we are the only and the most important species on earth does not work, and collapse wishes to make certain that we understand unequivocally and irrevocably that our only survival and our only serenity will be found in living as if we and the earth are one.

Moreover, because we and the earth community are one, it is imperative that we reach out to our neighbors and community members. Their awareness may range from totally clueless to that of fellow collapse watcher, but bonds must be made and trust built-for our well being and for theirs. In the days ahead, we will need them, and they will need us. The more familiar we are with each other, the less likely that any of us is scapegoated or victimized by panicked, hungry people who feel victimized and powerless to cope with what they perceive they have been dealt.

The time for a sense of entitlement is over. We are not entitled to anything; I repeat: We are not entitled to anything. Each day, each moment, each breath, each bite of food and drop of water, each smile or warm hand on our shoulder, if we are fortunate enough to have them, are precious gifts to be savored, treasured, and given thanks for.

As I have been writing in recent months, I hold a vision of possibility-the potential for small pockets of survivors to create local outposts of conscious community in which individuals can live compassionately, practicing out of necessity and choice, those behaviors that sustain themselves and the earth. Those who have already begun this process may have an advantage, but none of us will be immune-nor should we be, in my opinion. It appears that this momentous initiation is the only way in which humans can fully and finally comprehend the toxicity of civilization.

Many citizens of the former Soviet Union discovered through the experience of collapse what ultimately mattered most. Yes, there was violence, crime, paranoia, hunger, thirst, deprivation, and astounding loss, but unprecedented compassion, trust, bonding, cooperation, and support flourished in the midst of total societal disintegration. For me, collapse is the opportunity for an outpouring of the latter qualities that causes me to at least partially welcome the demise of all that has prevented us from living and sharing them. Perhaps finally, amid a frightening unraveling, we will grow up-becoming mature human beings who ultimately find it impossible to tolerate anything remotely resembling industrial civilization because we will at last have become adults.

“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

Yes. It’s another anti-capitalist rant by Jason Miller. Big surprise! I’m the associate editor for Cyrano’s Journal Online, the anti-capitalist tool. We’re not big fans of free market ideology and its tacit socioeconomic license to rape, pillage and plunder.

Fortunately, there are those with the will, conscience, and intellectual capacity to wrench their minds free from the mental shackles of capitalist indoctrination. Yet like the seemingly endless drip, drip, drip of Chinese water torture, the Bernays-crafted inculcation keeps many amongst the poor and working class singing the praises of the free markets that are robbing them blind and drives a fair number of good little Proletarians to the cruel madness of libertarianism. Visions of benevolent Invisible Hands gently guiding them to the promised land of free markets (where liberty and fairness rain down from the sky as manna from heaven) dance through their impaired cerebral tissue, a tissue ossified to the extent that most driven to the feverish state of libertarianism are more resistant to reason than the most dedicated of religious zealots.

Those whose minds remain supple and open refuse to accept the idiotic Panglossian view that a slightly evolved and cleverly disguised form of feudalism is “the best of all possible worlds.” They embrace the possibility of humanity evolving socio-economically to a much more egalitarian, just, humane, and sustainable system without attempting to create an unattainable “utopia.” And they recognize that the short-comings (many of which were imposed or caused by the United States, capitalism’s chief defender) of Maoism, Stalinism, and a number of other anti-capitalist revolutions and systems are not valid reasons to summarily reject and dismiss the notion of putting capitalism out of our misery and replacing it with a system that promotes the greater good rather than the “success” and comfort of a few individuals.

Consider but a few examples of the contradictions, perversions, crises, and abominations which are the inevitable consequences of the systematized greed and selfishness of capitalism, a highly contagious and lethal virus that is plaguing the world—to the extent that it has even infected those bastions of “communist evil,” Russia and China:

Food riots are occurring with increasing frequency around the world, food prices in the US are soaring, and 35,000 human beings starve to death each day. Yet instead of pursuing legitimate alternatives to the Peak Oil crisis, we divert significant volumes of precious sugar and corn to the manufacture of biofuels. Meanwhile, the sector of the power elite that “represents” We the People in Congress allows the major oil companies to keep record profits derived by exploiting their oligopoly on a commodity as essential to human survival as food in an industrialized society. “Our” Congress lacks the spine (or is it the will?) to compel rapacious corporate bastards like Chevron to employ reasonable portions of their staggering profits to innovate alternative energy sources. “Big Oil” has been raping the people and the planet far too long in its relentless pursuit of obscene profits.

When CNN recently ran an editorial by Glenn Beck (its resident pig-of-a-man apologist for free market economic slavery, proud ignorance, and ugly Americanism) thanking Big Oil for “providing” us with the fuel we need to make our economy run, that was a clear indication that nationalization of these parasitic entities is long over-due. (But then again so is Beck’s removal from the human race, a punishment he richly deserves for using virtually every breath he draws to help ensure the hellish reign of capitalism does not end).

We are becoming all id and no superego.

____________________________________

With television providing the seductively addictive medium for the cult of consumerism, far too many of us have been sucked into the spiritually comatose state of blind pursuit of life at the expense of the rest of Earth’s sentient beings, the liberty to run over, fuck over, and slaughter as many human and non-human animals as we see fit, and happiness derived from instantly gratifying ourselves with as much stuff and pleasure as we can jam into our over-flowing basements and eerily vacuous inner selves. We are becoming all id and no superego. Fuck conscience. Unabashed political sociopaths like Bush and Cheney reflect the depraved perversity of our collective inner selves. Lurking beneath their smirking cynical “adult” veneers are depraved children whose intellectual and moral aspects were quick frozen just before they reached their third birthdays.

The truly scary part is that there is a little Cheney in all of us. (Fortunately there is a lot more in some than in others). But take heart. You can minimize the damage your inner Cheney does. When he steps to the forefront of your psyche, simply envision your superego quail hunting with him, shooting him as he did his “friend,” and unceremoniously stuffing him and his badly mutilated face back into the inner recesses of your unconscious.

Driven by emotion and humanity’s most repulsive qualities, capitalism is intrinsically unstable. All the Fed intervention, Keynesianism, dog and pony “economic stimuli,” and liberal band-aids (i.e. our myriad half measure “social welfare” programs and business regulatory laws) cannot prevent the inevitable crises of capitalism (i.e. recessions, depressions, massive unemployment, homelessness, severe environmental damage….). FDR,” radical communist” that he was (according to the craven parasites hoarding most of the nation’s wealth), may have had good intentions when he crafted the New Deal, but ultimately the crumbs he threw the poor and working class to avert a revolution served the long-term interests of the power elite by prolonging capitalism’s inevitable demise.

Today capitalism’s grave diggers stand poised to shovel with a vengeance. Besides the aforementioned food shortages, sky-rocketing fuel and gasoline prices are finally putting a potentially lethal economic bite on the US American middle class, a group of people who have served as the buffers and unwitting foot-soldiers for the malevolent swine comprising the power elite. (Marxist sociologist C. Wright Mills provided us with masterful analyses of the power elite and the middle class in The Power Elite and White Collar).

War criminals guilty of Nuremberg-class crimes perpetuate a genocide that has resulted in the slaughter of two million Iraqis and the creation of 4 million Iraqi refugees. And that doesn’t count the millions of Iraqis who died in Gulf War I and as a result of Clinton’s barbaric economic sanctions. Rather than dangling lifelessly from the end of a rope (like the Nazi war criminals and Saddam Hussein), Bush, Cheney, et al continue perpetrating crimes of equal or greater magnitude while holding onto the most powerful positions in the world. Seventy percent of the US population is opposed to this capitalist-driven imperial invasion launched to secure a stranglehold on the rapidly dwindling supply of precious petroleum. Yet instead of getting the withdrawal Democrats promised when they retook Congress, we got a “surge.”

In our bourgeois democracy and ostensible “republic,” we have the illusion of choice between two supposedly different parties. But, as almost every social and political analyst worth his salt has concluded, ultimately the Republicans and Democrats serve the same class interests. Those of the rich and powerful. The rhetoric (and some of the actions) of the Democrats serve to create a façade of pseudo-humanity which “softens” the appearance of the empathy-deficient sociopaths who conduct US foreign policy in a brutal, murderous fashion and who allow an intolerable degree of economic suffering at home (given the extent of the wealth of this nation). Yes, Derrick Jensen nailed it when he suggested we have a one-party system. Barring a VERY limited number of exceptions, our “elected” officials are members of the Capitalist Party.

Even something as mundane as a trip to the post office serves as a poignant reminder of the extent to which our system is turned upside down. The US Postal Service, a government entity for many years, is still a quasi-public entity. Yet we leave something as “trivial” as health care in the hands of private enterprise and the Invisible Hand of the “free market” gives many of us the finger. And despite the fact that polls dating back to the 1970’s have consistently shown that over 70% of US Americans want universal health care, the power elite has leveraged its formidable economic influence to perpetuate a private health care system that ranks at the bottom of the industrialized world. Some “developing” countries actually rank above the “almighty” United States in key indicators of the health of their population. We may have the most the latest and greatest medical technologies, but what good are they if large numbers of people can’t access them?

Yet in the twisted mind and blackened heart of the capitalist, these arrangements are ideal. Mail delivery is essential to conducting commerce. “The mail must go through” and having a powerful and ubiquitous entity like the USPS ensures that businesses get the mail that is critical to maintaining the flow of their sacred profits. Health care is another matter. The power elite have access to the best medical attention known to man. What the hell do they care if a significant percentage of the poor and working class suffers through their illnesses and pain, goes bankrupt trying to get healing and relief or simply dies? As long as our economic lords and masters have enough wage and debt slaves from whom they can exploit their surplus labor and interest AND there are no riots or major social upheavals, they’re happy. Besides, Big Pharma and other elements within the health industrial complex make money by the truckload—-and that, my friends, is the essence of capitalism. Even if it means wringing profits out of the elderly, weak and infirm.

Yes, capitalism is the bane of the Earth. It is a linear system premised on infinite growth. Corporate media whores love to crow about “the growth of the economy” as if the further expansion of our highly toxic, industrialized, and consumption obsessed society on a planet that is already on life support is a “good thing.” Let’s celebrate! We drove another 100 species to extinction, increased the toxicity of the air and water, and eliminated 5% more of the rain forests!

Not unlike the Church in the Middle Ages, the infrastructures of capitalism, both physical and socioeconomic, pervade nearly every aspect of our being. Corporate media, industrialized education, inculcation, peer pressure, and Madison Avenue ensure that nearly all of us spend at least part of our lives as dogmatic adherents to the “faith.” Here are some of their soul and planet murdering lies:

1. Profits and property are valuable and inviolable. People are disposable.
2. It’s all about me. (Hyper-individualism and narcissism)
3. Capitalism and democracy are inextricably linked and one is not possible without the other. (The reality is that capitalism is a hierarchal form of economic tyranny that is antithetical to democracy).
4. The world and the human and non-human animals around us are objects to be exploited for our personal gain.
5. Public monies must go to military and law enforcement to protect our precious possessions and enforce our right to fuck others. Any attempt to spend public monies for humane purposes is a form of socialism and is a threat to our “liberty.” (We will NOT surrender that right to sleep under a bridge, by God).
6. Our economy functions most effectively when it works on the premise of the law of the jungle. If you are fit (and lucky), you prosper. Otherwise, fuck you. Have a good day!
7. Success (even spiritual success in our perverse Calvinistic form of Christianity) is measured by our accumulation of wealth.
8. Consuming with gluttonous abandon is our “Godgiven right” and sacred responsibility (remember our morally retarded president urging us to shop and spend money to counter the “terrorist” attacks on 9/11)?

These beliefs are driven into our minds with sledge-hammer blows from the moment we emerge from the birth canal. And not only do they set us up to be moral abominations (at the very least by participating in the evils of our capitalist empire in banal ways) but from a pragmatic standpoint, our perverse and distorted “faith” has plunged us into global instability: politically, economically, socially and environmentally.

The silver lining to this frighteningly ominous cloud is that collapse or revolution is coming. Neither Mother Nature nor the oppressed will tolerate abject abuse and exploitation indefinitely. Egalitarianism, democracy, social justice, sustainability, communalism, and respect for the Earth clash violently with the essence of capitalism, but no intellectually honest person can dismiss them as socialist dogma, the “backward” ways of “primitive indigenous populations,” or utopian impossibilities. We must embrace and implement these principles if we are to ensure the continued existence of human animals, non-human animals and the Earth itself.

Meanwhile, once the grave diggers have completed their task and chaos ensues, Derrick Jensen will be able to blow up all the dams he wants and the Second Amendment will prove to be the anti-capitalists’ best friend

Jason Miller is a recovering US American middle class suburbanite who strives to remain intellectually free. He is Cyrano’s Journal Online’s associate editor and publishes Thomas Paine’s Corner within Cyrano’s. You can reach him at JMiller@bestcyrano.com

The end of everything we call life is close at hand and cannot be evaded. H.G. Wells, 1946

I recently received an email from a
reader, frustrated with my insistence on holding a vision of what is
possible alongside the dismal, inevitable current realities of
civilization's collapse. Admonishing me to bear in mind America's Oprah
and NASCAR world view and therefore abdicate any sense of optimism I
might have, this reader accused me of suggesting that we should 12 Step
our way through Armageddon. Rather than being offended, however, I was
overcome with gratitude for this reader's image, frustrated with me as
he may be, because in spite of the regular "wordsmithing" that I do as
a writer, I always feel a sense of relief and validation when someone
else gives words that I may not yet have for what I've been thinking,
feeling, or doing.

With the image of the 12 Steps in mind, I decided to look more closely at them in relation to the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI) and notice how they might in fact be useful not only for recovering from addiction, but for navigating Armageddon. At first I felt shy about applying the Steps to the collapse of civilization, thinking that my readers would think I had seriously gone around the bend, but then someone sent me the "12 Steps Of Peak Oil" from a Vancouver newspaper. At that point, I realized how relevant the Steps might be not only to Peak Oil, but to Peak Civilization itself. Seasoned 12 Steppers argue that despite their 1930s origin, the Steps are applicable to any situation-no matter how monumental, and the collapse of civilization is about as big as it gets. So let's take a closer look.

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless - that our lives had become unmanageable.

Step 1 requires that I admit my powerlessness over the situation with which I'm confronted. Maybe you're thinking, "Well hey, that's no problem-did I ask for this debacle? All those years that I was an upstanding citizen and voted in elections and had faith in the American dream? What was that for? I did all the right things and now we're looking at Armageddon. Of course, I know that I'm powerless."

But that's not exactly what I mean by admitting that one is powerless. Many of us are stockpiling food, learning skills, busily relocating to other parts of the country or world, investing in precious metals, and so much more, but let's not forget that no matter how much we prepare, we're ultimately powerless over the outcome. While we may know that intellectually, letting it sink into the gut is a whole different story.

Powerless means that we don't know the outcome and can't control it, and that's really scary. I mean what it really all comes down to is the "D" word, you know: Death. And even if we end up celebrating a 100^th birthday eating soy cupcakes with our friends in some groovy ecovillage, collapse means that we'll be encountering many more endings than we can now imagine, beginning with the end of our current way of life no matter how small our footprint may be.

Control freaks won't do well with TEOTWAWKI; flexibility, on the other hand, is an essential attribute for survival. No matter how "manageable" our lives might be in the current moment, the collapse of empire is certain to challenge that and will compel us to align with others, give and receive support, trust our intuition as well as our intellect, and be willing to adapt to ever-changing circumstances. As a 12 Stepper might say, true empowerment lies in admitting one's powerlessness.

Step 2: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

People entering recovery often have a terrible time with this one. First of all, they feel they might have to buy into all that God stuff, but worse, they feel as if in order to recover, they have to admit that they are insane.

Let me hasten to emphasize that I too recoil at the use of the word "God" and wish to define "power greater than ourselves" as broadly as possible. Over the decades, countless atheists have benefited from using the 12 Steps for addiction recovery precisely because they were able to do the same. Atheists, agnostics, and feminists will have a much easier time with the Steps if they widen their concept of Higher Power to something non-theistic and gender-neutral.

"Insanity" as the Steps define it simply means that one does not recognize anything larger or more significant than one's own ego. Simply put, "something greater" could be one's concept of nature or one's confidence in the human spirit or anything else that one considers more benevolently powerful than oneself.

The 12 Steps inherently fly in the face of the ethics of civilization, based as those values are on the supremacy of the human ego-a pre-eminence that consciously or unconsciously deifies itself and whatever material gain it can amass unto itself at the expense of everyone and everything else. Now what could be more insane than that, and isn't everyone reading these words interested in transforming that paradigm into something more compassionate and sustainable? 12 Step programs further define insanity as doing the same thing that doesn't work over and over again, each time expecting different results. I can think of myriad examples of this in the culture of empire, starting with, "Maybe this time, if we just elect the right candidate for president then...."

12 Stepping into Armageddon begins with thoroughly examining how the culture of empire has inculcated us on every level and in every aspect of our lives. It means understanding how empire has programmed us to believe that we are all-powerful and that if we just do all the right things, we will succeed because our ego needs are the raison d'etre for our existence. When we are unable to recognize our powerlessness and resist acknowledging something greater than ourselves, we also rebel against the limits that life on this planet demand of us. We walk around as little "gods" and "goddesses" believing that we can consume whatever we like whenever we like at the expense of all other species as well as our own.

Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to that power.

OK, breathe. Remember-you don't have to use the word "God", and this Higher Power thing is gender-neutral.

This Step is particularly challenging because it requires action. Steps 1 and 2 just require me to admit something, but Step 3 asks me to DO something-something repugnant to the children of empire. It means I have to surrender my will to that "something greater". Eeeeeeew!

Step 3 is where the rubber meets the road-or not. In order to continue with the rest of the Steps, and therefore recovery, if that's what I'm using them for, or navigating collapse, as the case may be, I have to defer to a greater wisdom. What's even more distasteful is that I'm asked to surrender not only my will but my life.

Well, here we are again back to the dreaded "D" word. Anyone who has been researching and preparing for collapse knows the precarious position of the planet and the human race. If 200 species per day are going extinct, then the bottom line is that we are all staring our own mortality in the face as never before in human history. Collapse is, above all, forcing us to confront our personal mortality and that of our loved ones which is the principal reason so few are willing to deal with it. Who would sign up to feel that vulnerable? However, if we can allow that particular emotion, it becomes more possible to surrender our will and our life because what else do we have to lose?

The logical progression of the Steps is simply that since I'm powerless over the outcome, and there is something greater than my human ego and my five physical senses, it behooves me to consider abdicating my attempt to control what my finite humanity cannot. For this reason, I find that Step 3 relinquishes me from having "hope" because hope is ultimately another attempt to control what I cannot.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves

So now that I know that my ego can't manage my life, and I'm willing to surrender the outcome of my life and the world as I have known it to a power greater than myself, I have to look more deeply within. If we are using the Steps in relation to TEOTWAWKI, then a moral inventory could be a somewhat different experience than if we're applying the steps in relation to an addiction. Nevertheless, TEOTWAWKI is not unrelated to the addiction issue. In fact, humanity's addiction to material gain and economic growth has resulted in a delusional disregard for the earth's limits. An expression often heard among 12 Steppers is "self-will run riot" which pretty much summarizes humankind's obliviousness and even contempt toward the earth community.

But let's define our terms. Inventory simply means taking stock of what we have and don't have-what we may need more of or less of. The collapse of empire forces all of us, whether we consciously intend to or not, to consider our values and priorities. People losing houses, jobs, having to relocate out of necessity or by choice, finding that their pensions have suddenly evaporated or who have lost health insurance are forced to make tough decision about priorities.

Those of us who have been aware of collapse for some time and have been preparing for it are faced not only with making decisions such as the ones mentioned above, but are also compelled to look more deeply within to notice what qualities we need to develop in the face of collapse and which ones we may need to minimize. For example, I grew up as an only child and have lived an extremely independent life as an adult. I currently find myself working on reaching out to trusted others, making plans to live in community, and although fiercely committed to personal space and daily periods of solitude, consciously forsaking a life that is all about just me and my needs.

In so doing, I am taken to deeper layers of Step 4 as I contemplate my own part in the collapse of civilization. Although I have left a very small footprint on the earth for most of my life, I must own responsibility for the ways, no matter how small, in which I've polluted the ecosystem, my disconnection from the earth community, aspects of personal independence that have manifested in dysfunction, isolation, arrogance, and rationalization about my need for interdependent connection. In other words, although I'm not on the board of Monsanto, I have played a role in violating the human and more than human worlds.

5. Admitted the exact nature of our wrongs.

Taking a searching and fearless moral inventory compels us to admit our errors to ourselves, to something greater, and to someone else. I begin this process by verbalizing these errors to the power greater than me and then to whomever or whatever I have harmed.

With respect to TEOTWAWKI, I must apologize to generations younger than mine for the failure of my generation to preserve and protect the earth. For example, when teaching college students about the collapse of civilization and its repercussions, I'm often confronted with, "Yeah, and it's your fault and the fault of your generation." Without the slightest hesitation, I wholeheartedly agree, and I tell them that I am genuinely sorry. I also point out that collapse has built up over a period of centuries and that inherent within the values of civilization were the seeds of its own demise. Nevertheless, I have made choices in my lifetime that reinforced those values.

6. Were entirely ready to have all these defects of character removed.

Defects of character? What is this?

It's easy to become defensive around this Step unless one takes it to the next level. I define "defects of character" as those aspects of my personality that have resulted from the programming of empire, or my wounds, if you will. These are the qualities that I have taken on while growing up in empire culture which mitigate against the earth community and my connection with it. I'm very ready to have those removed, but I'm also aware that that means I may need to change my lifestyle, perhaps in drastic ways. Speaking only for myself, I need to look at my appetite for meat (which I've almost extinguished); my tendency to think of my own needs first even when I know I shouldn't; my workaholism, which although greatly diminished in recent years is not entirely absent; my tendency to isolate; my quickness to judge others-the list goes on and on. None of these qualities will be useful as collapse accelerates, and I am working to transform their presence in my life which the next Step facilitates.

7. Humbly asked for the shortcomings to be removed

Now I'm back to Step 3 and my relationship with "something greater". Because I've surrendered the outcome to it, I can also surrender my character defects and ask them to be transformed-a word that I personally prefer over "removed" since I have come to believe that no part of me can ever be totally removed. Like energy, parts of myself can be transformed but never made to disappear.

8. Made a list of all we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

While Steps 4 through 7 are about oneself, Steps 8, 9, and 10 are relational. Step 8 asks me to notice carefully who has been harmed by my empire-inflicted wounds. This definitely does not apply exclusively to people. Without meaning to, I've harmed animals, birds, trees, soil, water, air-myriad members of the earth community, and I need to reflect on that. In fact, even after learning about collapse and how I need to live differently, I have not changed my behavior to the extent that I want and need to. Step 8 is about willingness and paying attention.

9. Made direct amends wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

So now that I'm willing to make amends, I must do so. Certainly I must make amends to the people in my life that I've harmed, but just as important are those members of the more than human world that I've overlooked, minimized, disregarded, or just simply didn't notice. Just as a 9^th Step may require me to sit down with another human whom I've harmed and make amends, it may also require me to spend a day in the forest, or somewhere else in nature, expressing my regrets to trees, insects, streams, birds, or other non-humans for my obliviousness to them and the countless services they perform in the ecosytem from which I benefit.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

So Steps 6-9 are not one-shot deals. I am asked to practice them repeatedly. Inventory-taking is forever because what I have or don't have constantly changes, and it's important that I use both the "glass half empty" and "glass half full" approaches to my evolution. Just as I cannot successfully navigate collapse by myself, neither can I practice the Steps in isolation. I need the entire earth community in order to utilize them effectively.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with something greater

Some readers may recoil at the words "prayer" and "meditation", but I remind all of us of one of the key slogans of 12 Step programs which is: "Take what you like and leave the rest." If you find yourself reacting to "prayer" and "meditation", don't worry about it. The point of this Step is to improve conscious contact with something greater, and how we choose to do that is far less important than that we do it. Armageddon will not be easy to navigate, but it will be impossible without a conscious, working connection with a power greater than oneself.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Virtually every person preparing for collapse has had at least one, if not countless experiences, of attempting to share research, options, and the realities of collapse with others, only to find oneself blown off by the other person. Not unlike the individual addict who must be ready for recovery before fully applying the Steps, the people with whom we share information about TEOTWAWKI will either be ready to learn more or they will resist and maintain their head-in-the-sand posture. So we must be discreet and respectful, remembering that walking our talk (practicing these principles in all our affairs) is the most important message we can carry.

Waking up is an extraordinarily mixed blessing. With it comes tremendous clarity and joy, as well as sometimes excruciating sorrow as one witnesses more clearly civilization's trajectory of self-and-other destruction. Just as addicts in recovery frequently experience the tragic deaths of other addicts in their lives who will not engage in the recovery process, individuals preparing for collapse invariably encounter numerous loved ones about whom they care deeply who prefer to remain asleep. I feel sorrow daily for those I know who will probably never open their eyes. But I have opened mine, and I imagine that most people reading these words have as well. I carry that and these incredibly practical Steps with me, alongside a plethora of emotions and wonderfully awake allies, as each day we journey more deeply into Armageddon.

While I do not feel optimistic about survival in the abyss into which we appear to be descending, I believe that the principles inherent in the Steps can facilitate our planting seeds that may ultimately germinate and flourish as a new paradigm lived out by some of us and our descendents who are committed to creating lifeboats of localized, sustainable living that serve the entire earth community.

[As promised in my last article "Peak Civilization And The Winter Of Our Disconnect", my colleague and friend, Sally Erickson and I are offering what we believe are vitally important tools for enhancing communication with our peers as we navigate collapse.-CB]

When we think of preparing our minds, bodies, hearts, and living situations for collapse, the focus is often on our individual or household living situations. Equally important is our need to develop a circle of trusting, mutually interdependent relationships. The culture we live in is based on hierarchies of control and influence. Work relationships, kept in place largely by paychecks and ordered by project managers and bosses, are the most common experience most of us have of being part of an organized group. We have little experience outside of those hierarchies. Even more rare in our hyper-independent culture is to depend on others for mutual aid, support and comfort. So, for most people, it likely feels overwhelming to consider how to build a wider circle of people based on mutuality, as part of preparation for the ongoing collapse of basic life support systems.

Sadly, peoples' experiences of community end all too often in pain and disappointment. Such experiences range from attempts to live in intentional communities to the struggles of serving on church committees or being part of activist organizations. As a whole we are ill-equipped to create cohesive and cooperative groups and then to resolve ongoing issues and conflicts that naturally arise. People often express cynicism, despair and helplessness around the possibility of successfully creating and maintaining a sense of working community within a culture of empire. Clearly, it is critical to acknowledge the need for a sense of real connection, for the ability to work through conflict, and to cooperate in effective and joyful ways with others. Once we have come to terms with the need to do so we can begin to find others who have identified the same need and are ready for the task.

Let's first identify what we are talking about when we talk about community. In this context community does not refer only to individuals or families who own land together or who happen to live in proximity to one another, although proximity will more and more be the rule as fuel becomes scarce and travel is limited. We define community, in this context, to be a congregation of people who have, by the commitment and skills they possess, learned to establish relationships characterized by trust, understanding, mutual respect, and bonding that transcends personality and allows and even embraces differences of background or ideology. Such a group is able to think together effectively and to tap into deep wisdom about challenging issues. They can do this because they trust each other enough to question and suspend the assumptions and core beliefs that limit their insights as individuals. Such a group does not come together, as a therapy group does, for the purpose of healing per se, although insight and healing of isolation, unresolved past conflict, fears, and insecurities often occurs. The purpose of the kind of community we are speaking of is to come together to glean wisdom from listening and speaking with one another and to offer connection, support, comfort, and mutual respect. Such a group of people learns together to find better solutions, wiser actions and more joy together than is possible for them to do as isolated individuals, couples or families.

When defined in this way, the idea of community appeals to most people, even when they doubt their ability to find or create such an experience. But the times demand that we do what we've not believed we are equipped to do. It helps to remember that humans are indeed "hard-wired" for this. Indigenous peoples overall have felt the benefits of inclusion in close-knit social units. It is the wounding of the current culture that has disrupted that hard-wiring, often for many generations, and certainly most seriously in current times. But deep trust and connection is something we need in order to feel fulfilled and secure. Once accepted, the need to build community is simply another task to attend to as the current system unravels.

As tempting as it is to focus only on the logistics of living arrangements, how resources and tasks can be shared, preparation for crisis conditions, and other issues, it is equally important to develop skills to create and maintain authentic connection and to work through conflict. When groups fall apart it is almost always as a result of emotionally charged issues. It is important that people make a commitment to find ways to work with people's emotions, to communicate fully, and to bond. Groups will do well to cultivate skills in listening and truth-telling, because when emotional issues are not consciously addressed and worked through, they often sabotage a community's very existence. At the very least unresolved conflict makes life miserable and drains huge amounts of energy that would better be utilized attending to other needs. Much talk of ecovillages and intentional communities abounds among collapse watchers. Evidence that dealing with relationships is essential is the fact that most of these situations devote a significant amount of time to building a workable sense of community.

Conflict is inevitable. A community must develop skills to effectively resolve conflict so that people feel cared-for and respected. Its apparent absence is a red flag signaling the likelihood of dysfunction, of unspoken feelings and truths that need to be told, or of a strict authoritarian hierarchy that keeps conflict as well as individual creativity submerged. Indigenous cultures at their high points skillfully navigated conflict, and in fact probably welcomed it. They evolved creative skills for addressing it compassionately and assertively, with elders, both men and women, who carried those skills and wisdom down through generations. Those of us reared in the hierarchies of empire are not so lucky. Most people don't feel fully adult much less secure enough to be considered real elders. We are having to glean the best we can from older cultures and learn from the most innovative practices that have come from psychology and organizational development to find our way in to creative, cooperative relationship.

Here are some insights that may be useful:

People who have had opportunities to sit in listening/ truth-telling circles often at first feel overwhelmed with the amount of emotional work that needs to be done in order for group members to bond and build trust with each other. This has certainly been our experience. But when people make the commitment and see the process through the difficult stages, they find new optimism. Groups that break through to what Scott Peck called "true community," experience what human beings are capable of. Regular people, with the garden-variety neuroses and the wounding that is typical of most of us educated in public schools and reared in the typically dysfunctional families of empire are surprised at the connection possible. What we realize is that community members are able to consistently do this work together, and that when we do, we successfully dissolve internalized patterns that have been inculcated by empire. What we experience in the place of those old patterns is the joyful connectedness that empire had rendered utterly impossible.

Those who have participated in community-building workshops and other kinds of training in dialogue and human interaction find this is a repeatable experience. People find they are able in this work to include and allow for differences. This experience is akin to the profound, intimate joining that indigenous people experience and sustain, which has allowed them to survive and thrive. Such experiences of mutual respect, understanding and bonding are likely to support individuals and groups in critical ways during time of societal upheaval. There are principles that underlie effective group interaction. It helps immeasurably to have one or two strong facilitators present who are familiar with the inner terrain a group must travel to develop trust and to transcend differences. The process is rarely smooth. Facilitators are different from what we generally think of as leaders. Facilitators help the group, as a whole, move into shared wisdom. This is very different from a group that accepts and follows the wisdom or philosophy of a charismatic leader or the dictates of an authoritarian leader. Rather, this kind of community may be said to be "a group of leaders." Each person is regarded as someone who brings a unique set of gifts, experiences, skills, and insights. Strong facilitators help empower individuals to share those individual qualities for the greater good of the group.

Key to building this kind of community experience is the practice of compassionate listening and truth-telling. When one person speaks, the rest of the group listens attentively and stays present with both heart and mind. Speakers "speak from the heart" and speak when truly moved to speak rather than compulsively or in reaction. Another key is that each person learns to take responsibility for his/her part in whatever concerns or complaints he/she identifies. This requires each individual to examine his/her own assumptions and core beliefs and patterns, and to risk sharing those with the group so that they can be examined and understood.

What follows are some "Principles Of Dialogue" that Sally Erickson has synthesized from group development theory, Scott Peck's model of community building and David Bohm's explorations of formal dialogue practice.

Principles of Dialogue

1) We agree to identify and suspend assumptions and core beliefs. Suspending doesn't mean eliminating. It means holding them aside so as to be able to listen more deeply to another's experience, knowledge, insight. It means being willing to allow beliefs and assumptions to shift as the conversation reveals greater insight and understanding.

• 2) Examples of three kinds of assumptions/core beliefs:

**Factual: I assume energy can/cannot be created by hydrogen.

**Personal: I assume I am/am not personallyresponsible for saving the world. I assume I am/am not valued by those around me.

** Spiritual/philosophical: I assume that the material world as mapped by Newtonian physics, chemistry, biology, is/isn't all there is to reality. I assume human beings are/are not the pinnacle of evolution. I assumed there is/is not a power greater than the human ego.

What happens when we suspend our assumptions and question core beliefs? We are likely to experience initial anxiety. As we sit through that anxiety, habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and being soften and we find new possibilities. For example, if we usually talk a lot in a group, we begin to listen more. If we usually don't talk, we find the courage to speak when moved to do so. If we tend to stay in our intellect, we notice and identify our feelings and are more aware of our bodies. If we tend to be largely in our feelings and body, we begin to use the mind and insight more. Long-held beliefs and assumptions are revised or abandoned in the light of new information and insight. Group wisdom emerges that is greater than the sum of the collected individual's knowledge.

3) We agree to come together as colleagues. While individuals are not necessarily equal in specific knowledge or skills it is important to regard ourselves and each other as equal in value. Each person possesses unique abilities in a variety of arenas that are important to the community: insight, ability to listen and be present, intuitive gifts, dreams, clarity, connection to the natural world, as well as factual knowledge, skills, etc. When we come together as colleagues we make a commitment to notice the tendency to regard ourselves, and others, as either higher or lower. And we agree that when we notice that tendency we will work to open to find the unique value of others and ourselves in cooperation.

** We agree to confidentiality. To increase a sense of safety, it is important that members who come together to do this kind of work commit to maintaining confidentiality. We agree that what is shared in the circle will not be shared outside of this circle in any way that would violate the confidentiality of the members of the circle. One's own experience can be shared outside, but names, other's personal stories or what actually occurs during the circle will not be shared or gossiped about.

**We agree to show up and be present. This commitment helps members feel some degree of emotional safety. Having been raised in empire we almost all have felt abandoned when we expressed vulnerability and were trying to be genuine and honest. When everyone agrees to stay in the circle and not flee in the face of conflict or discomfort, "the space is held." As vulnerability surfaces and conflicts are confronted, the result is that everyone feels safer and more willing to risk telling their truth. Trust is built incrementally but undeniably when people "hang in there" for the long haul.

**We agree to take the time that is necessary to do the work. It has been the experience of many groups that it takes a minimum of two full days, or 16 hours of interaction, for a group to begin to establish the kind of trust and openness that yields the fruit of real dialogue and bonding. It is generally wise to schedule more than that number of hours in order for a group to really coalesce and begin to learn to work well together. It is important that all participants agree to be present for all sessions. Occasionally exceptions can be made, but generally people who miss out on the work the group does together will not develop the same level of trust.

This is a critical point to note. All too often, just as a group is about to break through into a new and more profound level of functioning, interactions will get very challenging. People will get discouraged and want to quit or take a break to do something else. This is the part of the process Scott Peck called "emptiness," and it IS challenging to get through. It is at this point that a strong facilitator can be especially helpful in giving the group confidence, in "holding the space." By his or her presence the group will find the courage to keep working rather than to flee into some other activity.

**We agree that no one is required to speak, only to work to be fully present. Since many people feel intimidated about speaking in large groups this agreement encourages people to be involved who might not otherwise participate. Often the attentive presence of very quiet people will add immeasurably to the experience. And often their verbal contributions will be spot-on when they are made. Because of the nature of the work and the need to be mentally clear and emotionally available to the experience, participants agree not to use mood altering substances including alcohol for the duration of the days that the group is engaged in the work.

**We agree to be mindful and to resist "sub-grouping." There is a natural temptation to talk in pairs or in small groups during meals and breaks about charged feelings that arise as a result of the work of the circle. It is very important to bring those expressions of feelings into the "container" of the group or there may be a tendency for factions to develop. While the tendency to "process" outside of the group is understandable if feelings and insights and challenges are not shared within the group, its power is diluted, and the process of building trust will be prolonged. Withholding unresolved feelings and conflict and factioning as a result can ultimately sabotage the work.

Interventions In The Process:

Since the facilitator is there largely as a guide and elder, but not as a sole leader, others are encouraged to intervene in the process when they begin to feel stuck or frustrated with the way things are going. Participants are encouraged to put words to their feelings of frustration and then to request that the group consider reflecting on the process and work to shift it. Anyone can make the following requests to help the group work more effectively.

1) Ask for a minute of silence.

2) Ask for people to identify, talk about, and suspend their assumptions around an issue.

3) Ask for each person to hold the question: "What is it in me that is keeping us from going deeper?"

4) Ask the group to try to "speak from the heart."

5) Ask for each person to question: "Am I taking full responsibility for MY part in whatever is going on right now?"

6) Ask the question: "Is frustration present and if so what is the nature of the frustration?"

7) Ask the question: "Is there something we are not talking about and if so what are the assumptions we hold that keep us from talking about it?"

A William Stafford poem "A Ritual To Be Read To Each Other" illumines the subject at hand:

If you don't know the kind of person I am?

and I don't know the kind of person you are?

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world?

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,?

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break?

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood?

storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,?

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,?

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty?

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,?

a remote important region in all who talk:?

though we could fool each other, we should consider-lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-?should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

The rewards of investing our time and vital energy into our community are infinite and succinctly captured in the words of author and psychotherapist, Thomas Moore in The Re-Enchantment Of Everyday Life: When we all, leaders and participants in community, discover the sheer joy of creating a way of life that serves families, ennobles work, and fosters genuine communal spirit, then we will begin to touch upon the sacredness that lies in the simple word polis, which is not just a city defined in square miles, income, or population, but a spirit that arises when people live together creatively.

A combination of modalities may be useful, but what is just as important as the method is the community's commitment to the process of healing the wounds of empire both internally and as they manifest in our relationships with each other. As we move out of the disintegrated structures of the culture of empire there is a tremendous opportunity to move into integrated and joy filled structures of relationship, inner and outer, with ourselves, one another and the whole community of life. Relationships that bring comfort and joy will be a mainstay as we sail through these most difficult times ahead. In addition, dialog circle work can facilitate our finding a greater group wisdom about how to navigate these times than we can find on our own.

Sally Erickson is the producer of the independent documentary What A Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire. She has also been the founding member of an intentional community and a psychotherapist, counselor and mentor for over twenty years.

For more information on dialogue circle training and facilitator training, you can contact Sally Erickson and Tim Bennett by emailing requests for information to producer@whatawaytogomovie.com