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 Channeliing
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." In a 2004 article by Richard Heinberg
published exclusively at From The Wilderness, he revealed a
declassified document "The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis"
from 1977, exposing the CIA's awareness of Peak Oil. According to
Heinberg, "The real motives and long-term strategies of policy makers
and intelligence gatherers alike will likely remain opaque to citizens
who pay in blood and dollars for their government's military
adventures. The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis gives us a rare, limited
glimpse into the machinery of covert information analysis and
decision-making that shape history as we live it." Consider the
administrations that have come and gone since 1977-all unwilling to
tell the American people the truth about energy depletion. Consider the
meaningless rhetoric of the current candidates who continue to delude
us about Peak Oil and economic growth and consider the reality that
they would not even be viable candidates if they were willing to expose
the suicidal delusion of unlimited economic growth. I understand how
desperately many individuals would like to believe in a "savior"
candidate who's going to make everything right. I recall how excited I
was earlier in my life about the candidates that I was certain would
turn everything around. I remember how angry I felt when I heard some
cynic tell me that there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between
any of them. Oh how I wanted-desperately wanted, to believe. But only
in America is the definition of insanity lived out with such oblivious
impunity. Only in America do we continue to believe that "this time it
will be different" in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Faith
in any of the three leading candidates running for the presidency to
have the capacity or desire to affect any significant change is nothing
less than blatantly illogical and irrational. In my recent article
"Celebrating UN-President's Day: Why I Will Not Vote For A President In
2008" I laid out my case for not voting, but that was before I saw the
latest documentary on election fraud, "Uncounted: The New Math Of
American Elections". Anyone seriously considering voting for a
president in 2008 must see this documentary as well as Bev Harris's
2006 HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy." You may, in fact, live in one
of those rare areas where paper ballot voting still occurs, but
"Uncounted" and "Hacking Democracy" reveal a rigged election system, so
gargantuan, so blatant, and so foolproof that it is now safe to say
that legitimate presidential elections in the United States are no
longer possible. In other words, American elections no longer belong to
you, but to those who manufacture the candidates and select the
winners. Moreover, in recent days Truth To Power has been covering the
proposed purchase of the Diebold Corporation by United Technologies, a
major U.S. weapons manufacturer and defense contractor. An analysis of
the ramifications of this purchase, now put on hold as a result of UT's
low bid, can be read at Catherine Austin Fitts's blogspot.
Nevertheless, rocket science is not required in order to comprehend the
significance of a major defense contractor having control of voting in
America. Although the deal has not been consummated, Diebold is seeking
a buyer and is likely to eventually sell its strategic position to a
more powerful entity-the value of which is truly priceless because
corporate control of elections represents the ultimate triumph of
fascism in the United States. In addition, no president, elected or
selected in 2008, has the capacity to reverse the fascist trajectory of
the republic launched by the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act,
and the myriad other ostensibly anti-terrorist measures resulting from
either legislation or Executive Orders during the George W. Bush
administration. In fact, all three leading candidates embrace the War
on Terror and shamelessly behave as emissaries for the military
industrial complex. This week we've witnessed the overnight demise of
Eliot Spitzer, so-called "sheriff of Wall Street" who vowed to bring
the subprime mortgage mafia to justice. Many have speculated that
Spitzer was targeted by the predators he was committed to
investigating. But whether
he is innocent or guilty, his fall is jaw-dropping in its significance:
If Spitzer was set up, it confirms that politicians who are determined
to operate transparently can no longer succeed in a system rotting with
corruption; if he is guilty, then it becomes virtually impossible to
trust any politician who pledges to function with integrity. But one's
abdication of critical thinking in the face of the U.S. election
charade is neither the most disconnected or the most dangerous course
of action. More deadly, in my opinion, is the failure to grasp the
reality that not only the empire but civilization itself has entered a
process of irreversible demise. This phenomenon is larger than the
onset of a Second Great Depression. It's even larger and more momentous
than the reality of a cartel of criminals who engineered a mortgage
meltdown, the repercussions of which will be reverberating throughout
the global economy indefinitely. As I have stated repeatedly, what is
unfolding is absolutely unprecedented and is juxtaposed with the
equally dire realities of climate chaos and Peak Oil. In their attempts
to make sense of these momentous realities, New Age devotees tout the
significance of 2012, and the Christian right insists that the rapture
is imminent. Equally sychophantic are those who argue that while the
current challenges are unprecedented, so is the technology which can
alleviate them. Pervading all three groups is a profound disconnect
from ecological, scientific, and human reality. For example, Truth To
Power has been consistently reporting appalling indicators of world
famine and global water privatization by transnational corporations.
Peak Oil, climate change, genetic modification, and the preposterous
use of ethanol as an energy alternative have caused food prices to
skyrocket as the food industry produces so-called "foods" that are
devoid of nutrients and are dangerous for our health. Moreover, ethanol
is increasing something besides food prices, namely vast dead zones in
the Gulf of Mexico produced by ethanol-laden wastewater. As the
likelihood of famine escalates, as bankruptcies skyrocket and
foreclosures surge beyond anything this nation has seen since the Great
Depression, as unemployment becomes epidemic, as the dollar daily sets
records for loss in value, as banks fail, as the price of oil flies off
the charts, I can only marvel that anyone in the United States has the
slightest interest whatsoever in a presidential election. My mind reels
but recalls the terrified and traumatized passengers on the decks of
the Titanic, hallucinating and in shock. Although we may be overwhelmed
passengers on a sinking ship, there are lifeboats. This is not quite
the same Titanic; we have options. So why would anyone re-arrange the
deck chairs by putting any faith in a presidential candidate? No doubt
there are many reasons, but if you are one of those who hopes that one
of the three corporately bought-and-sold candidates will save you, I
have to ask you if you are storing food, and if not, why not? Readers
of this site know well that the Survival Acres and Life After The Oil
Crash websites carry extensive inventories of storable food items and
other products for collapse preparedness, and within the past week,
Sharon Astyk's wonderful article "Food Storage 101" was posted on this
site. So I must also ask what you are doing to prepare yourself and
your loved ones for living in a world of famine, thirst, lawlessness,
lack of health care, a worthless dollar, and possible martial law. How
are you building community with others to weather this scenario? In a
nutshell, there are three realities that every reader of these words
must prepare to deal with: Food, fuel, and fascism. Truth To Power has
reported exhaustively on all three of these realities for as long as
the site has existed. No candidate running for president has the
slightest interest in talking rationally or honestly about these issues
with the American people, but all three would be delighted to take
action to lock down the nation, ration food
and fuel, and continue empire's quest for the last drops of oil on the
planet by any means necessary. So I won't leave you with my advice but
rather ask you a number of questions. My questions to you, dear reader,
are these: What are you doing to prepare for the "Three F's"? What
keeps you hooked to the U.S. election charade, even when a part of you
knows it is a charade? Why do you choose to put your energy there
rather than putting it into survival? What do you fear would happen if
you let go of your "hope" and stopped trusting an electoral process
manufactured from start to finish by empire? What might happen if you
stopped engaging in that process and started focusing instead on
creating options? How is it that you choose to become embroiled in
their election rather than preserving your life?