Food, Fuel And Fascism: Their Election Or Your Life? (Carolyn Baker)

[Tace]

March 13, 2008 (CarolynBaker.net) -- After two years of managing the Truth To Power website and subsequent to many more years of researching domestic and geopolitical events and trends, it is chilling to witness so much of what "prophets" like Mike Ruppert, Matt Savinar, Catherine Austin Fitts, Richard Heinberg, Matt Simmons, Dmitry Orlov, myself, and many others have been forecasting for nearly a decade or longer. We are no longer prophets but truly historians, and yet I take no pleasure in the accuracy of these forecasts or in the fact that our dire predictions are unfolding before our eyes. When I use the word "chilling", I mean just that, while at the same time, I feel sorrow that so many are yet still so comatose to the reality of the cataclysm that is manifesting around them. While I feel fear and sadness for them, I have no energy now to expend on them. As most readers of this site know, my life is all about preparation and building community in order to navigate the inevitable.

These are the last hours on the deck of the Titanic, and the chamber orchestra is now playing "Nearer My God To Thee" as the ship continues to take on barrels of water per second, and all but one or two lifeboats have been filled to capacity and launched into the open seas of escape from the capsizing horror -- and with no guarantees that they will survive. Throngs of the doomed are drowning in the steerage compartments below-those indigent, third-class, "racially impure" masses of humanity that the "first-class," who helped design the "unsinkable" vessel, kept locked away below the decks of obscene privilege and conspicuous consumption. Some say that economic depressions don't affect the poor because they are already poor, but I'm certain that a black mother in the projects who can now give her kids only two meals a day will become acutely aware, as will her children, when she can only give them one.

Yet, amid what is unfolding in front of us, I receive emails from readers who tell me that they are quite sure that somehow Obama is our hope and that if we just get the right leadership, things will turn around. I hear talk at the checkout counters of "all recessions eventually end" and "we just have to ride it out." I wonder what these individuals will be doing one year from now. I wonder how they will eat, where they will be living, what will get them up in the morning, and whether they'll be able to sleep at night. And as the hollow, trite, tired clichés assault my eardrums, I see and hear Richard Heinberg reporting soberly and assertively in "The End Of Suburbia" that we will soon enter "a recession that never ends." I also hear Matt Simmons telling us that oil is still too cheap, and I ponder his recent interview on CNBC forecasting $378 a barrel. I recall overhearing a man last summer saying, "Gasoline is now three dollars a gallon. What's happening to this world?" I wonder where the man is now; I wonder if he'll still be around for $378 a barrel.

This week in the Daily News Stories section of the Truth To Power website, a link was posted to the Channeling Hubbert blogspot which noted that the father of the Peak Oil theory, M. King Hubbert, openly discussed the unsustainability of a high-growth economy with high-level officials of Chase Manhattan. Yet, "Instead, key individuals in government, think tanks, and corporations opted to use their influence and decision making capacity to forward a perpetual high-growth economy dependent on high-grade finite fossil fuels in the hopes that technology would make low-grade resources economic over time. They believed that speculative technological advances including coal to liquids, oil shale, breeder reactors, fusion, and enhanced oil recovery would become economic in the long run, thereby justifying the continuing growth of a consumerist suburban, car-oriented way of life and fueling the development of a highly industrial globalized system for the rest of the world."

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http://www.worldnewstrust.com/commentary/food-fuel-and-fascism-their-election-or-your-life-carolyn-baker.html

[northernsoul]

1. Well, guess we should all just go find a bridge to jump off of now.

Yeah, we're in deep shit. I know that. But I have to question the purpose of such relentless doom and gloom. Let's start figuring out workable solutions rather than wallow in despair.

[Tace]

4. These Are Daunting Times

I understand what you're saying about "relentless doom and gloom." I wish Carolyn were more optimistic. Alas!

[Demeter]

2. I'll Grant You, As Long As Things Stay The Way They Are, The Recession Never Ends

But change has to start somewhere--preferably lots of somewheres. And the first change is admitting we have a problem--that old 12 step solution. Just please eliminate that God stuff, since religion seems to underpin a lot of the reasons why we have these problems!

Accurate information and suppression of narcissism will get us 90% of the way to a better life for all, but only if all participate.

[katty]

3. baker has been telling it like it is - no frills observations