Cassandra, Jeremiah, and me

People have gone to deserts for more than 2000 years to find solitude, inspiration, meditation, and freedom. This website delves into some aspects of desert life in the early 21st century with a geographical focus on Newberry Springs, California. The front page is my blog and the links on the right deal with a few resources in a local context.

Books

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Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond; why Europeons overwhelmed the First Americans and not the other way around.

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Collapse by Jared Diamond; how and why societies fail.

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The Party's Over by Richard Heinberg; oil, war, and the fate of industrial societies.

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Twilight in the Desert by Matthew Simmons; do you think OPEC has lots of oil?

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Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak by Kenneth Deffeyes; one of the best descriptions of peak oil by a colleague of M. King Hubbert.

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Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb; how shit happens that we have no way of predicting and it makes a big impact.

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Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change by William R. Catton; one of the best descriptions of the fix we're in -- a classic.

Ay Caramba!

So this is how it happens. We have to kill the country to save it. If you've ever wondered how the Rothschild and the Rockefeller families take over governments, now you will get to watch it in action. When this maneuver of the financial elite is over Hank Paulson, head of Goldman Sachs, will be your new dictator. The courts, formerly the last bastion of civil rights, will be powerless to intervene. You, the taxpayer, will be even more of a debt slave to the financial system, and the only things left of our former Republic will be history. Don't expect much from Congress except a quick rush to do their master's (the financial elite) bidding. Parliaments in empires are mostly hereditary luxury clubs anyway. It's all peeled grapes and Roman baths for the Senators. For us little people, though, this is the beginning of a very long term debt slavery. The lid is coming off the national debt. That debt will never be paid back so the question is: what assets will go into foreclosure. For many now out on the streets it was their homes. It will most certainly be our natural resources. Don't look for much concern about your environment in the new world order. For the proletariat it will be a lifetime of labor for a daily bowl of gruel.

These two articles in the mainstream media are rather bleak. Next week, most likely, Congress will cede it's last wee bit of power to the Federal Reserve, a clique of private bankers. That will leave us with two branches of government: the Executive Branch and the Federal Reserve and no constitution. These two branches, one of them unelected and the other chosen by an odd system of the electoral college, will make up the rules and change them at will. Congress will be relegated to deciding whether or not gay marriage is legal while the courts will be responsible only for punishing petty crimes of the people. Welcome to the Union of Socialist Republic Corporations.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aDhH0TDoeFaY&refer=home
  • teosinte @ 18:02 

    Se la vi

    The first word most children learn is "Mama" and the first sentence they learn is, "that’s not fair" proving that most of us are born ideologues, going around comparing the world to some ideal that exists in our mind of truth, justice, and the way it ought to be. The trouble with ideology is that reality doesn't give a rat's ass what we think. It just goes on happening as it happens, in one seemingly bizarre and troubling thing after another until one day it sucks us down the memory hole and we too are gone.

    Meanwhile, back in the country of America between the Rio Grande and the 49th parallel we taxpayers are getting ready to be soaked for the biggest bailout in history. Next we'll bailout the automobile manufactures then the next in line and the next until who will bail out the taxpayer? Regulators closed Silver State, the eleventh bank to go bust this year, so I suppose the FDIC will need a bailout here pretty soon, too. Does anyone remember all the money that went missing about the turn of the century? It was something on the order of 10 to the twelfth power of dollars. Talk about a Y2K glitch that you never heard about. You know somebody has that money and it ain't you or me.

    The next war is getting closer every day. Whether it's snarling Dick Chickenhawk swooping down on the Caucasus or Israel getting ready to bomb Iran or Lebanon or Syria or a fleet of warships bringing "humanitarian aid" to Georgia, it's only a matter of time. I guess we'll still have plenty of money for bombs and ammunition even after all the bailouts.

    I suppose some people who see this and realize that they and their children and grandchildren are going to have to pay for the bailouts of all those high rollers, their multi million dollar salaries, bonuses, and severance packages might think that it's not fair. Some people might think that $2.3 trillion dollars missing from the Pentagon is wrong. Some people might think that starting another war on top of the two we already have going might not be a good idea. I suppose a whole lot of people will eventually get worked up into a righteous fit and find another bunch of people equally worked up to fight with. But I'll keep my head down, try to grow leafy green vegetables this winter, and wait for the next thing to happen. It's going to be a long and rocky road down from the summit. Every few years there will be some new trouble and things will get a little worse for more folks. This is how it happens. Se la vi.

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