The Wealth Gap and the Collapse of the U.S.

The word "apocalypse" does not mean "the end of the world". Apocalypse means "revelation" (Greek: Ἀποκάλυψις -translit. Apokalypsis), literally "the lifting of the veil" – a term applied to the disclosure to certain privileged persons of something hidden from the mass of humankind. The Greek root corresponds in the Septuagint (an early Jewish text) to the Hebrew galah (גלה), "to reveal".

“It’s the end of the world as we know it…and I feel fine.” -R.E.M.

Sudden Collapse or Slow Decline?

 

Not long ago the debate was whether it was happening at all. Today the question is whether global warming and consequent climate disruption will destroy industrial civilization as we know it, and if so how quickly. A sense of just how far we have moved can be found in the debate between environment-watchers George Monbiot and Paul Kingsnorth.

Monbiot’s position is that unless industrial society re-tools and powers down with the urgency and speed of the allies’ World War II re-armament program, the world will soon face an irreversible ecological collapse in which the global human population will fall dramatically from its present 6 billion plus to under 2 billion. Those who survive will inherit a species-depleted planet and a Hobbesian human society run by the psychopaths who always take over when civilization fails.

Monbiot admits to having become more pessimistic about whether industrial civilisation will in fact act in time to pull back from disaster, but argues persuasively that the prospect of a mega-die-off is so awful that any sane and humane person would want to prevent it. Kingsnorth, on the other hand, believes that the radical changes Monbiot is calling for are simply not going to happen. Human nature being what it is we are more likely to delay the necessary painful steps until it is too late, which it may already be.

However he disagrees with Monbiot that the collapse will come like a "thief in the night." His scenario is similar to that described in John Greer’s book The Long Road Down. According to Greer there will be no quick cosmic cull of homo sapiens, but a slow and extremely painful decline - two or more centuries of war, genocide, famine, drought and disease - which has in fact already started with resource-wars and increased hunger among the world’s "bottom billion." This long descent will be like a combination of the Hundred Years War, the Black Death and the Dust Bowl over a longer period and on a planetary scale.

Since we cannot avoid this, Kingsnorth suggests that we must make the best of it by managing and mitigating some of its extreme horrors. However the fact is that human population has overshot the carrying capacity of the earth and run down its resource-base and, like all species that suffer population overshoot, will inevitably be cut back painfully. But once the human race has been suitably reduced we will have learned some valuable lessons--we are not separate from Mother Nature, nor can we ultimately control her, and the notion of infinite economic growth is an economic fantasy.

So on the one hand Monbiot believes we might just save our industrial civilization by alternative technology and a radical reduction in consumption but if we fail the fall could be sudden and catastrophic, like the collapse of a beehive. On the other, Kingsnorth says that Monbiot’s action-plan is too little too late but that there will be a series of more gradual collapses over the coming centuries rather than a sudden one just around the corner. Resistance is futile but we (or rather some of our descendants) will survive--fewer than we are but wiser in the ways of the planet.....

 

'Grow up or Die'

Ruppert speaks well, in perfect little sound bites, and often comes across as arrogant, filled with hubris, but also vulnerable, sad, and scared. Calling for revolution in the human soul and mind, he growls "Every aspect of human existence is on the table." Political parties, religion, ideologies won't help anyone survive. They are archaic, dead fossils holding people back. The real quest is to find the right balance between growth and a planet with finite resources.  "It's all about getting balance back. Grow up or die." 

In the face of collapse, much of what is advocated is purely practical... store seeds, restore the soil, get rid of your cell phone, invest heavily in local food production. Ruppert cites two very different examples of what can happen when oil disappears, namely North Korea and Cuba. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, both nations were thrown upon their own resources, almost overnight. These very different scenarios provide an extremely useful primer in how survival can happen, or not, in the face of sudden and irrevocable change. Says Mr. Ruppert: "Community is what will save us... You will fail as a rugged individualist, you will survive as a member of a tribe or a family." Then he bursts into tears. Whether it's the notion of people coming together in the face of calamity or the fact that uncountable numbers of human beings will suffer and die as the world grinds to a halt is unclear. Personally I think it is the former. 

Calling for a revolution in human thinking, what Ruppert also seems to desire is a return to human community. A stripping away of Wal-mart world and plastic vampire television culture. Real living encompasses fear and love and joy. "I see all that richness buried under such bullshit," he says. I have to admit at that point in the film, I thought "Right on, brother." But still... While there is a great deal of stuff I would not miss about contemporary culture, there is much that I would miss. Like Richard Rodriguez memorializing about the death of newspapers, there are many things that would be deeply mourned on a personal level. 

From the biggest social crisis to the smallest heartbreak, it is impossible as a human to not be human. We are trapped by our own emotions, and our inability to surpass how we feel about things. But in the face of real honest to goodness genuine collapse, there may not be any time for waxing rhapsodic about the good old days and grand institutions that once were, no time for sentiment in the face of survival. Or as, Mr. Ruppert so eloquently puts it, "Climb down off the cross asshole, we need the lumber."

....

Very Timely

Timely and succinct coverage of a fascinating film.

The evidence of mass unravelling of society is quite remarkable. Related is the huge disconnect between what most 'real' people intuitively understand, and the hollow rhetoric from our elites. I suspect this disconnect is symptomatic of why things are so bad in the first place.

For a purely academic study, students of collapse should read Prof. Joseph Tainter's brilliant "Collapse of Complex Societies". His research is the most plausible account of how a complex society spends more and more effort trying to solve more complex problems, leading to a huge cost-benefit deficit where the complexity soon outstrips any possible utility for its citizens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter

We are seeing examples of this at every turn. Opening a bank account is now a protracted undertaking of paperwork, ID verification and delays. 20 years ago, it was simple. Buying a house has become a complex, expensive process, whereas 20 years ago, it was easier. Accessing a government service now is overwhelming. Before, you could make a phone call and someone would answer and try and help. A middle class family now has to spend $1,000 per year for: house insurance; car insurance; dental insurance; tax preparation; legal fees; all as their incomes drop. The list goes on and on.

These are perfect examples of a system that is so complex, so obtuse, so completely disconnected with people's needs, they are walking away from the entire edifice, which is so top heavy it is about to topple over onto its citizens below, crushing us.

Tainter's parallel thesis is that people will simply avoid using the highly complex system and revert to a simpler method, any method, that requires less effort. Enter the cash society, where more and more people are dropping out of the upper middle class world of credit checks, investment funds and expensive lawyers and accountants and bankers and insurance agents. Instead, people are turning to cash, pot, drugs, gangs and the entire underground economy that is exploding.

While 'simpler' in so many ways, it is also a jungle, devoid of justice, equality and social fairness.

This vision is brilliantly explored by Howard James Kunstler's World Made by Hand, (he also wrote The Long Emergency), a frightening expose of a world without law.

http://www.amazon.ca/World-Made-James-Howard-Kunstler/dp/0871139782

...

time to think about thinking

I guess I’m part of the “doomer” cabal.

Anyone who has taken a questioning, rear-view look at the world around them knows we are well into the “Collapse”. “The fact that we are looking backwards at it means that things have already shifted.” That we are witnessing the “death and the falling away of the things we remember and love about our world” is too obvious.

Michael Ruppert hits the nail on the head when he calls for “ revolution in the human soul and mind”. The message here is, undeniably, a call for a revolution in human thinking. When, and if, it happens every aspect of human involvement in the noosphere will come under scrutiny.

Unlike Rupert, I don’t think the real quest is finging the right balance between growth and resources, rather it’s finding a human population dynamic that fits those resources. (Probably nitpicking but I see a distinct difference.)

Peak oil is a blessing. And when you really think about it, if there is a revolution in human thinking, it will expose more than capitalism’s carbonated Achilles heel. Today, those in the soft green environmental movement … the Suzukis and Bermans … have also become the earth’s enemy. These are the folks, co-opted by the joys of celebrity, that respond to corporate greed with oxymoronic regularity, “We’re not against growth, but let’s do it with concern for the environment”.

http://thetyee.ca/ArtsAndCulture/2009/11...

 

"Science doesn't care how you vote."

I: U.S. Societal Breakdown

You may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. Before exposing the root causes of this breakdown, let’s look at some vital statistics and facts:

* The inequality of wealth in the United States is soaring to an unprecedented level. The US already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis. Since the crisis, which has hit the middle class and poor much harder than the top one percent, the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99% of the US population has grown to a record high.

* As the stock market went over the 10,000 mark and just surged to a 13-month high, the three big banks that took taxpayer money and benefit the most from the government bailout have just set a new global economic record by issuing $30 billion in annual bonuses this year, “up 60 percent from last year.” Bloomberg reported: “Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, had a record profit in the first nine months of this year and set aside $16.7 billion for compensation expenses.” Goldman Sachs is on pace for the best year in the firm’s history, they are also benefiting by only paying 1% in taxes.

* The profits of the economic elite are “now underwritten by taxpayers with $23.7 trillion worth of national wealth.”

As the looting is occurring at the top, the US middle class is just beginning to collapse.

* Workers between the age of 55 – 60, who have worked for 20 – 29 years, have lost an average of 25 percent off their 401k. During the same time period, the wealth of the 400 richest Americans went up by $30 billion, bringing their total combined wealth to $1.57 trillion.

* Home foreclosure filings “hit a record high in the third quarter [of 2009]… They were the worst three months of all time… 937,840 homes received a foreclosure letter” in this three month period. “3.4 million homes are expected to enter foreclosure by year’s end, with some experts estimating that next year will be even worse.”

President Obama has enacted a $75 billion taxpayer funded program that has been a spectacular failure in stemming the foreclosure crisis and has proven to be another massive waste of billions of taxpayer dollars.

* 25 Million people are unemployed or underemployed.

This means we have 25 million people who urgently need to increase their income, and they’re quickly running out of options. The unemployment rate is expected to rise further and remain high for several years. “The president’s chief economic adviser warned that the nation’s unemployment rate could stay ‘unacceptably high’ for years to come.”

The NY Times reports: “Americans now confront a job market that is bleaker than ever in the current recession, and employment prospects are still getting worse. Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking…” As this ratio continues to grow, it will lead to a further reduction in wages – average worker wages have seen a sharp decline over the past year.

Economist Nouriel Roubini, a man who accurately predicted our current crisis, just reported on unemployment stating: “Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening…. So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. In other words, if you are unemployed and looking for work and just waiting for the economy to turn the corner, you had better hunker down. All the economic numbers suggest this will take a while. The jobs just are not coming back.”

* As the few elite banks thrive, there have been 123 US bank failures thus far this year. Recently, three banks that the government declared “healthy” and gave taxpayer money to have folded. The Wall Street Journal reports: “U.S. regulators have seized or threatened at least 27 banks that got capital infusions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, including some lenders government officials knew were troubled when they awarded the money. The troubles put taxpayers at risk of losing as much as $5.1 billion invested in the banks since TARP was launched in October 2008.”

* As bankruptcies surge across the board, 10 US states are on the verge of bankruptcy, with several ready to declare a financial state of emergency. California, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin are all “barreling toward economic disaster, raising the likelihood of higher taxes, more government layoffs and deep cuts in services.”

This is occurring at a time when the “federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that just ended was $1.4 trillion, nearly a trillion dollars greater than the year before.” In total, “US public debt topped 12 trillion dollars for the first time in history… The public debt topped 10 trillion dollars in September 2008. The debt is quickly approaching the statutory limit of 12.104 trillion dollars, meaning Congress would have to raise the ceiling to prevent a shutdown of government operations.”

Economist Dean Baker explains the risk of running such a large deficit: “The debt limit must be increased at regular intervals in order to allow the government to function normally because the government is currently operating at a deficit. If the debt limit is not passed, then at some point the government will not be able to pay workers and contractors. It won’t be able to send out Social Security checks or make payments for Medicaid and unemployment insurance to state governments. And, it will not be able to make interest payments on government bonds, effectively defaulting on the national debt.”

Needless to say, all of this will make life drastically more difficult for citizens of the US. As the middle class continues on the path of economic decline, the number of citizens living in poverty has already hit an all time high.

* Although the government’s official figure tries to low-ball the number, 47.4 Million US citizens live in poverty, and the US poverty rate is the highest in the industrialized world.

Predictably, homelessness is rising at an increased rate as well. “The US government does not tally the numbers but interested organisations say that more than 3 million people were homeless at some point over the past year…. The fastest growing segment of the homeless population is families with children.”

Children have been hit especially hard by the economic crisis:

* 50% of US children, one out of every two children, will need to use food stamps to eat.

One out of every two children in the United States of America will need to use a food stamp… to EAT!

If you didn’t think starvation was a serious threat in the US, just read this new Washington Post report: “The nation’s economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people — including almost one child in four — struggled last year to get enough to eat… Several independent advocates and policy experts on hunger said that they had been bracing for the latest report to show deepening shortages, but that they were nevertheless astonished by how much the problem has worsened. ‘This is unthinkable. It’s like we are living in a Third World country,’ said Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America.”

The United States Department of Agriculture released these findings in a study that was completed in December 2008, which means these numbers don’t take into account the millions more unemployed throughout 2009. The numbers of people living in poverty and struggling to eat has seen a significant increase since then.

This a national tragedy. But it gets much worse.

* In 2008, according to the Census Bureau, the number of US citizens without healthcare grew to a record 46.3 million. “The new figures, however, understate the severity of the economic downturn because a large portion of nation’s job losses and unemployment rate increases occurred after the Census survey data was collected in March as part of the annual Current Population Survey.”

* Lack of health Insurance has caused 45,000 preventable U.S. citizen deaths in the past year. The American Journal of Medicine recently released a study that stated “Nearly two out of three bankruptcies stem from medical bills, and even people with health insurance face financial disaster if they experience a serious illness.”

A Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study reported that 17,000 children have died due to lack of healthcare. You can also add in a recent report that revealed that 2,266 US Veterans have died in 2008 due to lack of insurance.

The 50 million now uninsured and the 45,000 preventable deaths per year statistics are expected to drastically rise over the next few years. As the Senate continues to strip meaningful amendments from a healthcare bill that wouldn’t even take effect until 2013, it has become clear that, despite the media hype, the healthcare bill is going to fall far short of meaningful reform and continue to rig the game in favor of large insurance company profits at the expense of the US population. With the highest cost healthcare in the world, current trends will continue and much needed change is not on the horizon.

Never before has the United States had so many citizens with so little means, little to no income and heavy debt. Debt and costs of living have now shackled US citizens just as it has shackled people throughout the world. The economic hit men have now hit the US as well and millions of US citizens are now effectively sentenced to a slow death.

Economic Imperial blowback has hit the mainland.

And the clock is ticking louder by the day…

Here’s another fact for you:

* The gun and ammunition manufacturing industry in the United States has over 200 companies producing billions of dollars in annual revenues. This huge manufacturing base cannot fulfill demand quickly enough. The demand for guns and ammunition has hit a record high and the gun industry cannot produce enough bullets to keep up with orders.

American’s are arming themselves to the teeth!

* In the past year, 100 new armed militia groups have been formed, as militia members have doubled in numbers. Federal authorities are gravely concerned about the “uptick in militia activities.” One federal authority recently said, “All it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence.”

So let’s breakdown these numbers.

You have a population of 50 million people who are in desperate need of money, they most likely have no health insurance and can’t afford to get healthcare or help of any kind. Part of this population probably also has loved ones who can’t get life sustaining medical treatments, or loved ones that have already died due to lack of costly medical treatment. The clock is ticking loud for these people and they are running out of options fast, and time delayed is time closer to death.

While the richest one percent have never had it so good, a significant percentage of the US population now has firsthand experience in this. Millions upon millions of Americans are poor, broke, struggling, starving, desperate… and armed.

We are sitting on a powder keg!

We are now witnessing the critical unraveling of US society.

http://pubrecord.org/commentary/6084/critical-unraveling-society/

II: Environmental Crisis

....Regardless of your beliefs, due to climate change, we are on the verge of experiencing major water shortages spreading “across the country. Sooner rather than later…” California has already been hit by extreme drought and water is in very short supply. As the Arctic continues to melt, California will continue to experience extreme drought. A new study revealed: “when Arctic sea ice disappears, the jet stream—high-altitude winds with a profound influence on climate—shifts north, moving precipitation away from California.” A recent “sweeping water-reform bill” in California temporarily eased public outcry, but the problem remains. The U.S. is confronted by a serious water crisis.

For a global example, there is currently an extreme drought in East Africa as well, which has 23 million people on the verge of dying from starvation. Due to the drought, crops have been killed in unprecedented fashion. Events of this nature are happening all over the globe.

Of the worldwide record one billion people going hungry, the leading cause is destroyed agriculture due to extreme weather.

As a significant percentage of humanity faces death due to climate change, we are in the midst of our planet’s sixth great extinction. Over 17,000 species are threatened with extinction, “more than one in five of all known mammals, over a quarter of reptiles and 70 percent of plants are under threat.”

For those of you unaware, the earth’s ecosystem is a very delicate balance. Being in the midst of the earth’s sixth great extinction is not a matter to be ignored.....

Is the happy countenance of a healthy economy required to distract the nation from the other face whose fangs are now rotating into full view?

All of the glad-handing, back-slapping self-congratulatory accolades that the Obama administration and Wall Street are heaping upon themselves in the press is scant comfort for the vast majority of citizens now unemployed and of no fixed address. For them, this economic crisis isn’t so much a temporary crisis as a permanent redistribution of wealth and living standards representative of a downgrade in the quality of life.....

....The idea of revolution keeps popping up, albeit intermittently, in the fringe blogosphere. I wonder just how far the disconnect goes between what the government-banking-media mafia thinks the public will swallow without complaint, versus the grave and solemn outrage dangerously smoldering in the hearts and minds of its victims that is the reality that brings that idea closer to an explosive existence?

This is the real and stark potential future for the United States. With crime on the rise in virtually all sectors, and the population already armed to the teeth, there is a fine line on the horizon that this organized crime gang seems intent on crossing.

The basic requirement of all humanity is food, shelter, and gainful employment. Historically, armed revolutions are ignited when those basic elements disappear from the daily lives of a majority of the population, such that most have nothing better to do than steal, beg, or roll over and die. When enough of that despair permeates any portion of humanity, there is an organic, deeply-rooted fury that, expressed collectively, has never failed to topple governments and rewrite the world order.

Proponents of globalization point to the fact that there has never been a longer period in the history of the planet where more people have enjoyed a peaceful and prosperous existence.

That may be true, but one must question if that is because we have been living under a system that is for the most part fair and equitable, or have we just so thoroughly mastered the arts of manipulation and delusion through the offices of mass media that there has also never been a time where such astonishingly massive concentrations of personal wealth have accrued to such a proportionate few in the same time span?....

http://seekingalpha.com/article/138026-t...

Mike.  Do you ever get the idea that you are preaching to the choir? I don't think there are many on this site that would argue this point about the superwealthy.

docmims said:

Mike.  Do you ever get the idea that you are preaching to the choir? I don't think there are many on this site that would argue this point about the superwealthy.

This is part of the problem. The superwealthy have the system locked up. This was talked about on one of CM's blogs a few months ago. Here's part of the conversation:

CM said:

What follows is not partisan commentary - it is purely political.

In the US there is really no difference between the parties.  As far as I can tell both parties have precisely the same goals, namely the pursuit of additional power, but slightly different tactics.

Consider that in the US there is a 98% reelection rate for incumbents and it becomes obvious that change at the ballot box is practically impossible.

But even if it were, our effective choices at ballot time are either flavor A or flavor A' so "voting someone out" is really only switching brands but not the substance being bought.

What is the root cause of the 98% incumbency rate?  Fighting that battle would have required immense citizen involvement several decades ago when the Gerrymandering rules were bent and then destroyed.  

The only solution I can think of to this is to switch over to a proportional form of representational government.  Instead of a winner-takes-all if you don't like 'em vote different next time! form of government, imagine how different it would be if one party secured 35% of the power, another 28%, another took 22% and a fourth took 15%.

In order for anybody to get anything passed, a much more inclusive set of opinions would have to be considered.  This is, in my opinion, why Germany now enjoys such a large and accepted set of green principles and has so much of its power generated from alternative sources. 

Without the green party having secured its right to wield some power by taking a portion of the votes (beginning with amounts far less than 50%) the usual suspects would have never even considered their position.

In short, here in the US I see no practical benefit to voting the bums out of office besides, possibly, making them ever more slightly careful in wooing the voters during the election cycle.  Otherwise, it's just flavor A vs. flavor A'.

The problems here go so far beyond voting for a different candidate that has already been vetted and given the seal of approval by the existing party machinery that I see no real benefit to pulling one lever over another.

A third party is a possible starting point but, unless it can in a majority of the votes (a near impossibility given the practical realities involved), it just as well might not even run at all.

Lastly, I know a number of people who do not vote because they consider it worse than a waste of time in selecting between two indistinguishable candidates - they consider it a form of demonstrating support for a system in which they have no faith.

 Their rallying cry: "Don't vote, it only encourages them!"

....

xraymike79 said:

The U.S. is a corporate oligarchy masquerading as a two-party representative democracy. As Chis pointed out, both parties are on the take of corporate monies and influence. Is it any wonder that candidates like Nader and Ron Paul are/were marginalized by the corporate media. Take your pick of Brand A or Brand B; either way, the corporatocracy wins. Chris Hedges talks about this in his latest book.

Oh and the Constitution? It's a dead letter. The heart of the Constitution that was supposed to protect the individual from the state has been parsed and interpreted out of existence.

.....

Erik Townsend said:

Talk about depressing... I tried to make another donation to Peter Schiff's campaign for senate today, but was turned away because I have already donated at the maximum allowable limit. Meanwhile, corporate interests can spend hundreds of thousands in lobbying money.

It's a hard enough pill for the people to swallow that in order to get change, they might have to ante up and pay some real $$$ to compete with the corporate $$$ that are corrupting the system. But when you're actually ready to do that and get turned away because the system is rigged to prevent individuals from making contributions that can meaningfully compete with corporate interests, it just sickens me.

xrayMike, I think we are in "violent agreement" here to a large extent. I agree with you that the system is totally screwed up at this point, and that the few candidates that actually have merit (Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, etc.) have been marginalized by the mainstream and the crooked system. My point is simply that the reason the system got so screwed up is 100+ years of complacency and disinterest in government on the part of the citizens. Americans have had it so good for so long that they have stopped caring about the civic duty of each and every citizen to participate in democracy, and we no longer teach those values in schools.

To my point, I purchased 300 Crash Course DVDs last year for the purpose of giving them away for free to anyone who would watch them. I felt it was the best tool I had to try to promote awareness. After giving away about 120 DVDs, I learned in follow-up conversations that less than 5% of the recipients ever bothered to watch it, including close friends whom I told this was something really important to me. In a country that is falling apart at the seams, the notion that the vast majority of people in my life simply aren't willing to invest 3 hours of their time to learn about what's going on just blows my mind. Of the people I followed up with, about 50% said they never "got a chance" to watch it, and about 45% claimed to have watched the first couple of chapters but found the content "boring". When you are loosing your job and the economy is crumbling around you, I fail to comprehend how you could find a cogent explanation of the cause and what to expect next "boring", but that's the general consensus. I wound up sending the remaining full box of 100 DVDs to Chris as a donation to his cause, and I still have about 60 DVDs sitting in a box. I admit that I've given up on sharing them with people in my life, because I just found the lack of interest so depressing.

The vast majority are uninformed and too preoccupied with the daily struggle to pay their bills, etc to fully comprehend the big picture. Lets see what happens in election year 2012.

I get excited about the possibility of running for office after seeing what Jesse Ventura pulled off.  I get excited about speaking truth to people that are hungry for truth whenever I'm on CM.com, but when I get back to talking with real people, I'm shocked at the lack of consciousness...not just lack of awareness of things like the 3 E's but general lack of consciousness about life or about anything besides the 2 party programmed left vs. right camps.  I've also found the most educated people are generally the most ignorant.  So I don't see how to make a difference by running for office.  Bernays and the control freaks who paid him did their job well...

for the hour-long documentary (and 3 other hour-long ones):  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8953172273825999151&ei=QFUGS_T9L5jcqAOvmey7CQ&q=century+of+the+self#

Hello Strabes,

     Looks like an interesting vid; I'll review it when I have more time.

....We can cut our consumption of fossil fuels. We can use less water. We can banish plastic bags. We can install compact fluorescent light bulbs. We can compost in our backyard. But unless we dismantle the corporate state, all those actions will be just as ineffective as the Ghost Dance shirts donned by native American warriors to protect themselves from the bullets of white soldiers at Wounded Knee.

“If we all wait for the great, glorious revolution there won’t be anything left,” author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen told me when I interviewed him in a phone call to his home in California. “If all we do is reform work, this culture will grind away....

...The oil and natural gas industry, the coal industry, arms and weapons manufacturers, industrial farms, deforestation industries, the automotive industry and chemical plants will not willingly accept their own extinction. They are indifferent to the looming human catastrophe. We will not significantly reduce carbon emissions by drying our laundry in the backyard and naively trusting the power elite. The corporations will continue to cannibalize the planet for the sake of money. They must be halted by organized and militant forms of resistance....

...

We can save groves of trees, protect endangered species and clean up rivers, all of which is good, but to leave the corporations unchallenged would mean our efforts would be wasted. These personal adjustments and environmental crusades can too easily become a badge of moral purity, an excuse for inaction. They can absolve us from the harder task of confronting the power of corporations.

The damage to the environment by human households is minuscule next to the damage done by corporations. Municipalities and individuals use 10 percent of the nation’s water while the other 90 percent is consumed by agriculture and industry. Individual consumption of energy accounts for about a quarter of all energy consumption; the other 75 percent is consumed by corporations. Municipal waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States. We can, and should, live more simply, but it will not be enough if we do not radically transform the economic structure of the industrial world.

“If your food comes from the grocery store and your water from a tap you will defend to the death the system that brings these to you because your life depends on it,” said Jensen, who is holding workshops around the country called Deep Green Resistance [click here and here] to build a militant resistance movement. “If your food comes from a land base and if your water comes from a river you will defend to the death these systems. In any abusive system, whether we are talking about an abusive man against his partner or the larger abusive system, you force your victims to become dependent upon you. We believe that industrial capitalism is more important than life.”

Those who run our corporate state have fought environmental regulation as tenaciously as they have fought financial regulation. They are responsible for our personal impoverishment as well as the impoverishment of our ecosystem. We remain addicted, courtesy of the oil, gas and automobile industries and a corporate-controlled government, to fossil fuels. Species are vanishing. Fish stocks are depleted. The great human migration from coastlines and deserts has begun....

The reason the ecosystem is dying is not because we still have a dryer in our basement. It is because corporations look at everything, from human beings to the natural environment, as exploitable commodities. It is because consumption is the engine of corporate profits. We have allowed the corporate state to sell the environmental crisis as a matter of personal choice when actually there is a need for profound social and economic reform. We are left powerless.

http://www.thelibertyvoice.com/?p=1118

I have been to Central America where I have witnessed this type of pollution first hand - along with the burning off of miles and miles (as far as the eye can see) of land to use for a year or two to grow crops - it is not confined to China... India is a huge hot spot as well as Central and South America.

article here...

http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/

and here is tickerguy on it...

America used to mistreat her land and water like this.

This sort of thing, by the way, is how you manage to produce things with a wage of $1 or $2/day and undercut first-world producers.

When we have "free trade" with China, this is what we are supporting. This is what we're serving up on their people. This is what our government and corporations all say is ok - so long as it is hidden from us, and happens "over there."

Make all the excuses you want America, this is what you're supporting every time you buy anything made in China or containing Chinese componets.

Go walk around your house and pick up 10 random items. Look for the "made in" tag on the back or bottom. What's it say? Now consider this - it is virtually impossible today to buy a piece of consumer electronics, a toy, an automobile or even a toaster without some part of it coming from China.

YOU are why this is happening.

These are not old photos, or someone's Photoshop experiment.

They're real, they're current, and they are what our hedonism, demand for $20 DVD players and "cheaper and faster" from everyone has resulted in, all so our "corporations" can report "record profits."

Those "great earnings" the last two quarters were in fact generated by firing Americans and shifting yet more production over to China, where they poison their air, water and ground with wild abandon, all so we can have a "strong" stock market and our banksters can loot us some more.

We don't live in a democracy:

The purpose of the government is to serve those in power - the corporate and banking elite.