Inevitable collapse offers real change

Election results to come in tonight! I've heard the Republicans will retake the House and possibly the Senate. I confess that I don't believe that a non-choice between two substantially similar parties will make a difference in the long run. While I have more in common with Democratic candidates than Republican, I've lost faith in the American political process.

The problems we face are systematic and unlikely to be resolved by ballot alone. We need real change and not just false prophets selling campaign messages. Political dialogue in this country has become dominated by hot air and froth.

I'm aware that my position might be considered heresy by most political analysts, who make their living from presenting a false choice of candidates and parties neither of which can govern without serving some corporate interest or wealthy constituency. If apathy were the desired outcome, our two party system has hit its goals.

Many of our problems are internal, despite the tendency to find threats abroad which should unite us, although they haven't. Trends evolving out of our present day political climate include:
1) Corporatization: he who has gold makes the rules, or so Machiavelli said. Corporations feed at the federal trough in a quid pro quo exchange of campaign financing for politicians, made legal by Citizens v. United.
2) Privatization: services formerly provided by government become run by for-profit entities. Look no farther than Goldman Sachs' buy-out of Chicago street parking meters--Indianapolis has done the same, albeit for 10-year periods not Chicago's 75.
3) Militarization (the classic Military Industial Complex.) Ongoing wars serve a bloated and inefficient war economy that drains from the productive sector. Politicians too afraid to question military spending.
4) Abuse of power (cataloging since 2001.) The War on Terror is a gateway to abuses like the Plame outing and fake terror warnings timed for political motives, like those framed by Olbermann's Nexus of Politics and Terror.
5) Police state/surveillance society. Give up your rights to fight an fabricated terror threat. Government violates citizens' privacy and legal rights with impunity.
6) De-democratization. Black box voting allows corporations to manipulate voting results. Two corporate parties present illusion of choice: twiddleedee and twiddleedum both lead nation downward.
7) Prisonization. Prison industrial complex now warehousing some two million Americans, due to failed (but not for its financial beneficiaries) drug war.

I could continue but the list can depress the reader. Wouldn't want to depress anyone now. This was never my intent, though making an emotional impact on the reader is a fundamental goal of most forms of expression.

I've never meant this blog to depress anyone but how else will Americans become informed? If they're so fearful of being depressed--or is it change they so fear?--then the public doesn't deserve to know. The status quo, as I've been warning, is sending us off a cliff--if the sheople are lemmings and go over the cliff, at least I can say I tried to warn them.

I'd be reluctant dismiss the trends I've outlined above, whatever the emotional price. Many of my previous predictions have been accurate, about Obama and the designed-to-fail war strategy, just to name a few. But this blog wasn't created as testimony to my skills as an analyst, or to blast the co-opted mass media, but rather to influence others who might spread the word.

If you know anything by now, and judging from your visit to this blog you already know this, the mainstream media is not the place for the truth. The Web isn't necessarily a hotbed of intellectual truth, but it isn't a bunch of sanitized hogwash either. In my case and yours too I hope, I'll take honesty over untruth any day, substance over style, no matter how messy and ugly the truth.

The mass media isn't the only party at fault. Raising public awareness is a worthy purpose, but it's a task only achievable if the public gets involved. Today many won't vote today, believing their vote will only go to unsympathetic posers who care nothing for no one but themselves, despite the elaborate effort to pretend they offer real change, or constructive leadership.

The facts speak for themselves. Our present situation has come about in part due to the lack of political participation in our nation by its citizens. The corporate takeover hasn't come overnight but rather has been brought about by a series of gradual encroachments on our liberties and quality of life. The process hasn't ended and thus might still be abridged, but not if all the political candidates--the so-called "choice"--are controlled by campaign donations and the same corporate interests.

Going forward--in reverse

Our society may not be advancing just because our technology has. Some Web media tend to isolate individuals within a pantheon of largely consumption-oriented choices. Like basketball, connect with others who do. Consume something? Well, most everyone's brand has space on the Web. Like a particular celebrity? No shortage of that.

Most of the growth in Internet's popularity can be attributed to hyper-consumerism and celebrity worship rather than lofty intellectual goals. People may need real news, but they don't want it. Like a child, most Americans tune out the world, and our recent wars epitomize the individual's inattentiveness, their cultivation into consumers of the highest order.

Yet people can produce and grow by sharing their interests with others. Truth-sharing becomes a much more prolific endeavor when friends meet. People don't take kindly to bad news, and believe me when I say most of the news is bad (another lesson drawn from years of intensive news gathering.)

Rather than focus on truth and substance, style and image are massaged to give media viewers a perception of political candidates and corporations in their most beneficial light. This process is fundamentally dehumanizing--how can you alone have a relationship with a celebrity who will never know you? This obsession in entertainment is idolatry in its smoothest package offered to date.

People don't want the truth. To quote Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men: "we can't handle the truth!" So we're offered a mostly mindless smorgasbord of meaningless media consumption chocies. Then we pretend we're different from others because our choices of consumption differ.

While geographically unlimited, and pentrating broadly, the Web hasn't reached its potential as a medium of communication, although twitter and social networking has utilized the Web in profound ways.

We've all heard about the perils of the Internet. Given the anonymity granted by the Web, our children are coached not to trust strangers. The speed and quantity of data can overwhelm--these are the negatives.

Positives of the Web include rapid dissemination of data, and the ability to circumvent conventional mass media. It's also a vehicle for content, allowing artists to work within the digital media and present to anyone with a Web connection and a computer.

The Web's a part of us now, tied to our collective conscious. When the Web works, we connect; our organic tapestry comes together. Web users have all known the feeling of friendship created online. People have been married, hired, murdered through it. Yes, that's right: the Web can be used for sinister purposes by people of ill intent, reflecting whom we are as a people whether saint or sinner.

At the same time, the Web is limited. We are bound by the proposition that into which we put our endeavors should come a corresponding reward, advancement, or personal gain. We can measure what we've accomplished with our lives only in others. Who will sing of our praises or even remember us if not for what we've done for them?

Many of the "things" (oh, yes, how many things) you think you cherished, you'll realized don't matter. Therefore it's a tragedy to see so many labor so hard to create not art but generate an attic full of things.

Our inner psyches would likely collapse if we had to face down all the petty obsessions (fixations, the Dalai Lama calls them) that drain our better selves. We settle for less because we believe that's all that we can have. Maybe a simpler and more agrarian lifestyle could slow us down. The hard work might set us free from the constantly accelerating world, one that surely spinning out of control.

I guess my time to look more towards myself and spend less time on others will come. But in some ways, I guess it's when we contract into ourselves that we begin to die not physically (although it can often manifest this way) but spiritually. Better to continue to keep an open mind, and connect with others, rather than lose that path on a road to individualism, a very American concept that may not serve us well into the 21st Century.

Bound by economic realities

I've focused on issues in the economy and financial system for the better of four years. Numbers matter, as do details like the ugly fact our government now has an unpayable quantity of debt. Yet the Federal Reserve threatens to churn out even more debt in the form of quantitative easing (QE 2).

Remember that every dollar that comes into existence brings with it debt-someone must be owed in order to spend any newly created money. Not by coincidence, that someone is a bank, who can borrow for free these days. The debt-based economy requires debt to grow. Eventually the quantity of debt (which is money!) will grow so large that the initial investors/lenders can't be repaid. In criminal law it's called a Ponzi. In our financial system, it's legalized fraud. The scam works fine until people don't pay enough in taxes (put new money into the Ponzi), then the debt begins to debase the currency itself.

The exertion of corporate influence over government policies brings very real risks to the financial system. Like Greece or Argentina, a sovereign debt downgrade could wreak havoc on financial markets. The risk premium paid to non-government issuances could further hamper corporate borrowing and economic activity. Like a Third World nation, Americans would have to turn to foreign sources of borrowing, and submit to the will of international bankers once public debt becomes unmanageable.

By the way, I am watching the mortgage mess, which is more accurately described as lender fraud PLUS misrepresentation (a term with criminal implications in the field of securities litigation.) The banks misrepresented the mortgages that they sold to investors, being that the banks didn't observe the proper chain of custody over the documentation required to transfer ownership. The robo-signatures on fraudulent foreclosures are therefore only a part of the much larger problem of identifying who holds legal title to the properties, and thus defining exactly how much control investors in the mortgage securities retain vis a vis the banks who sold them.

Banks aren't lending. They're risk averse, like anyone whose got something to gain from the status quo; or anything to lose by change. The federal trough runs so deep the pigs' snouts are buried in it, lapping up the future tax debts while ignoring the public interest or any sense of morality. Of course the best example are the consultants quite literally ringing the capital city who make a living from the war machine and corporate contracts belching forth from our capital.

Hands off my gov't paycheck

There might be more hope if not for the fact so many have been dumbed down. I live in a town that once had jobs for plenty. Economically, I'm surrounded by people who know not what will come tomorrow nor have they prepared for it. The lack of education carries most of the blame, or to be more accurate the lack of respect for the power of learning. Like poverty, this attitude gets passed on down generations, boosted perhaps by disdain for the better educated elite.

First to go must be the presumption that a public high school degree will cut it in the 21st Century economy. The public school process does institutionalize stupidity by not challenging younger Americans. High school graduates simply aren't competitive in the global economy. I'm shocked by how deficient many Americans' writing skills are--most read at a middle school level.

Many here have parents who worked steady Industrial Era jobs, and have been able to live a reasonable quality of life...'til recently. Yet the future is going to be much more dependent on self-starters, with good communication and money management skills.

There will of course be people still working the trades and other occupations who might not think they need anything like that. But who among them doesn't have debts to pay, or investments to build and track? If we are indeed in a "YOYO" Economy (Your On Your Own), then shouldn't people be taking more responsibility over their retirement?

Don't think for a second that Social Security will be enough, or that Medicare benefits will continue in their present form. The money is running out. And a Republican victory will mean more cutting of social services, especially considering they're too weak to cut war spending (perhaps because that requires acknowledgement of its ineffectiveness?). And even if they can lower taxes--inherently good--the Republicans will simply be delaying and worsening the eventual fiscal reckoning.

We all need to come together, first to inform one another and acknowledge the problem, then take action. It begins with each of us, and the desire to become informed about issues that effect us. Without the assertion of self-responsibility, I don't see how our society can advance, much less not fall backward if for no other reason than how it--if taught, monitored and enforced--can benefit the collective good--a term I seldom here any more.

Our society has become boomers on steroids. We want to get as much for ourselves as we can, before the clock runs out. The only question is whether Earth's clock will run out before, or who will seize control of the world's last resources?

Yes, it really comes down to the rat race and humankind's descent to it. Does any empire have the chance to outlast time? In the waning days of every Empire, the periphery weakens as resources are plundered and profits repatriated to the capital. Imperial power may erupt from the inside out but economic decline begins on the outside and works its way in.

American-style consumption of Earth's resources simply won't continue. Already, we've got such huge trade deficits, and we're exporting so little that we can only offer more shiny pieces of paper to overseas creditors, who export things upon which we've come to rely.

Just how safe is it to presume our way of life will be forever there for us? Economic turmoil could easily create an intense transition overnight.

Prepping

I'm taking the steps toward being prepared. No, I don't plan to hole up in some bunker somewhere. Survivalists and preppers are two distinctly different breeds.

As my movie reviews a few months ago showed, so much of our present day preoccupation with the Apocalpyse is based on dominating others. The message: be strong or a victim. A true crisis could actually be better met by cooperation and communication among the affected. For everyone to hunker down may be a necessity but for a short time. Human contact will be restored. Violence is really the antithesis of this approach--killing people probably won't bond you to others. So don't fight, I say, unless your being attacked. I wouldn't raise a weapon in defense unless I were forced. And, yes, while they're times when you might be forced to protect yourself, your property, or others, those encounters are far less likely to happen if you're prepared.

While using firearms may sound good, and self-defense is necessary, I'd argue firearms have no place at the communal fire except when the group is threatened by outsiders. Take the Swiss, for example, who require military service from everyone, not to secure some corporate goal or spending trough, but for the collective defense. I can't buy into this Lone Ranger, John Wayne-type concept of holding out against the vampires like Charles Heston in The Omega Man.

No economy operates in isolation. People will adapt to changing economic opportunities and limitations. Our future will be shaped by who you know and key skills. Survival requires partnerships with people, trust, and sharing resources. Trade and immigration won't stop; they'll simply shift from place to place. Taking one threat--ecological changes--back in human history and you'll see astounding distances that were travelled. We're an adaptable species, of that we can have no doubt.

We are bound by our physical needs. As nice it is to cater to intellectual pursuits, at some point we must consider our circumstances. Just think of what it'd be like without fully stocked supermarkets, or gas stations. I don't want to fearmonger but rather deprogram you. We Americans assume that our elaborate distribution systems will be there for us 24/7. They won't. Sooner or later, the corner store won't be open, store shelves will empty, or the opposite: prices could shoot up.

My wise readers need to contemplate what to do under various scenarios, so as to not be caught totally unprepared. Have a supply of water, a water filter, and enough canned food to last a month or two. Better yet, look to create renewable sources for food and energy.

Prepping has both logistical implications but also a softer side: the aspects that make community agriculture, barter, and re-localization viable. Until people are willing to rely/trust/use local sources, chances are they'll be inadequately developed. Self-sufficiency is an action-oriented goal--people in your town need to do specific things to get results. If they simply rely on the present situation, they'll be at the mercy of food conglomerates and monetary systems beyond their control.

The key is to start. Small is OK. Do something to prepare for the possibility of a crisis. Don't horde costly you may never use. What's more you want a sustainable path; once everyone begins to hoard, stocks will be depleted to the point buying large quantities from retailers in the future won't be possible. Another reason not to horde is that much of what is bought won't be used. Purchases should be limited to things you'll consume anyway.

While planning for a worst case scenario can be good, if for instance #2 below happens and you live west of the Mississippi and can't fly out, you're done anyway, so why care? Better it is to assume something less than total destruction. Perhaps an intense but brief economic crisis is something most easily prepared for. Food supplies might shrink but in a few months could be restored. A fuel embargo--not on the list--could aggravate and lengthen a crisis, but in time it would end, like most all the causes listed below.

Many kinds of future crisis may be short-lived. Others could be entrenched and lasting, like the devaluation of the dollar. Here are my big seven:
1) Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). Been researching this one. Could wipe the Web, digi-comms, etc..
2) Earthquake. Could be Yellowstone caldera like the movie 2012 or something in New Madrid or California.
3) Tornado. Probably localized.
4) Nuclear accident. I've written on the fallibility of the nuclear power from sourcing to use and disposal. [Potassium Iodate is recommended.]
5) Civil disorder. If enough people get unhappy enough, they could loot and pillage.
6) Flooding. Likelier due to unconstrained sprawl and deforestation plus more erratic rainfall/bursts.
7) War/Terror strike. Any terror strike will justify the state's monoply on use of force, seizure of liberties, etc.. More than a hassle issue if you happen to be a targeted subgroup, or caught on the transport grid away from home.

Lastly, don't be worried about everything that could happen--it's a waste of energy. Simply consider the implications of various events for the purpose of prepardeness. One result of the planning process could be the gradual accumulation of silver or other physical stores of durable value, as inflation might be the most likely. Don't spend too much as a crisis might never happen, then you'd look like a jackass.

Provisioning Lifeboats

Agrarian societies may play well into a resurgence of lifeboats, places where people can come together in communal self-support and live a sustainable lifestyle in a barter-oriented economy.

The idea is that should some crisis arise, people could transport themselves to another area where they've already established a network of CSA's (Community- Supported Agriculture) hubs. If people can generate agricultural goods, they can build for themselves a level of food security not possible in an economy built around Big Boxes and long-distance (and thereby fuel intensive) delivery. By acquainting themselves with the products peculiar to their region, people can support each other while reducing dependence on imports. If money is spent outside the community, it will only benefit outsiders.

It could take a good amount of time to establish a lifeboat. Included in such a scenario would be the following:
1) Educational system: avoid forced Big Pharma vaccine programs and the threat of autism.
2) Water. Hopefully devoid of Pharma run-off as many prescription drugs don't break down in the body.
3) Food. Not knowing what's used to grow what you eat can be dangerous. Better you grow it or face frankenfoods (about which government will do nothing to protect you from Big Agra and their toxins.)
4) Energy. Will need affordable and sustainable sources. Biodiesel has a lot of appeal; solar/wind will be huge.
5) Permaculture. Make renewal a key functional goal of community farming. this way, don't need as many petrochemicals/fertilizers.

Note to readers

Always like writing on the 1st of the month. Gives me a chance to be first. You may have noticed I've cut back on my blog frequency to about once a month.

Writing is art. So I've enjoyed my artistic allotment here, which has been no small thing in time and effort. Continuity in writing over extended periods with no pay is challenging. Yet I consider the effort well worth the reward. By writing, I can expose my observations then create as part of my artistic complement through the written word.

Economics might be seen by many as too dry a topic to be art, but remember science has its place in any display of art. No art form can exist outside its medium, no statute lean at such a tilt as to defy gravity, nor no painting recreate the sound of a horse's clicks on cobblestone.

Art is bound. Forces constrict it. No amount of creativity can overcome objective rules and limits. Compromise is a necessity as is awareness of one's limits in trying to explain things, which I see as a fundamental purpose of expository writing.

Like the Indiana painter T.C. Steele, I like to see nature around me. Whereas he caught his subjects with pen and brush, I seek to capture many of the same landscape scenes he did through photography. I don't know how well I'll be able to achieve that task but its a goal I'll savor.

I'll be working more on my photography in the coming years, as well as archival work on others' pictures.

While I doubt I touched on many lives, I know I did change the way some people see their world. And the exercise of blogging provided distinctly personal benefits; it's quite an accomplishment to stick with any challenging task over the long haul.

If the mission is therefore to inform, this blog has done that well. Whether you paint, or write, or express yourself in any form, you'll come to experience art as a very personal, inward journey, whether broadcast across the Web or sealed forever in personal diaries.

You'll know you're coming to the end of an artistic adventure, assuming you've applied yourself fully. The end to the inquiry could come years after you set out on your journey. When you get back, no matter how many lives you've contacted, you'll find that it about you that you've learned the most--about your limits, aspirations, and priorities.

As I learn more about the ways of the world, I desire to shrink from it, to get closer in touch with the environment-Earth. We all need to forge a relationship with our Maker, I believe. Our origin is found in Nature, so to know one's self, one needs to come into close contact with their natural world.

I've said we need to come closer to our physical environment for some time now. Fortunately we have a path towards sustainably on the North American continent offered by its Native Peoples. The Iroquois revere the Snake, as they say its a holy creature because it spends its time next to the Earth. Their Snake Dance pays homage to the Snake and Mother Earth, forces they see as unshakable.

I don't think society can shrug away the passage of time, like the Amish, whose numbers are actually growing. Luddites seek to shun the technology that the passage of time brings. They see the expenditure of energy on things modern better be directed elsewhere, like into the Earth. Maybe their escapism should be seen not as a step backward but the realization that the passage of time and adoption of technology don't improve us, or make us any better people.

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Debt-addicted economy on life support

{Newsflash: The FBI just raided the homes of antiwar activists in the upper Midwest and elsewhere. The lengthening shadows of tyranny cross our land. See the bottom for a warning to bloggers.}

In this atmosphere of hate and distrust, we've got plenty of reasons to be cautious about the economy. It's like our economy is the body and we're trying to pour more debt on the fire. Like an alcoholic, our body--the economy--reels with an overdose of alcohol. We crave the booze but it doesn't help the body to be an addict. Drinking more only postpones the Day of Reckoning when the alcoholic--like the economy--bottoms out.

It'll take a catastrophe most likely to break us out of denial. Americans are in denial that our country has so much debt. Look also at the frightful hypocrisy of the Republicans, who through the Tea Party are claiming fiscal conservatism. Imposters! We all know the GOP, with some Democratic help, launched the trillion dollar Pentagon budget. So how can they represent fiscal discipline?

With our head--the American body politic--confused and in such denial, it's a wonder our bodies haven't simply collapsed into the gutter like small town drunks. I won't get into how the mass media struggles to tell the grand lie of the Establishment--that thing are getting better. Don't look, but behind the facade of change is business as usual, all the way through the political and economic spheres.

So we'll have the crisis; the reason behind the last one are equally valid today. As long as the Federal trough keeps sucking enough blood off the host, we'll be getting weaker economically. More and more productive resources will be diverted to government coffers. And the price of maintaining so much debt grows, encouraging more money to be created out of thin air.

The Financial Complex controls our monetary policy. The real economy has succumbed to a shadow banking and derivatives scheme that uses fractional reserve banking and access to cheap money. The derivatives are still out there and the housing stock that serves as their asset base has further to depreciate. Can a crisis not occur?

Peter Schiff has been saying that CrisisTwo will occur. Judging from the movies I've reviewed, you can pretty much guess what I think. I wouldn't hold Peter to any precise prediction on when this event will occur. Nor would I discount his prediction simply because it hasn't occurred yet.

In economics (hardy a precise science despite the analytics), it's the direction that matters. Like the study of any science--which seeks to discover truth--the facts are vital to the truth. Judging by your willingness to come to the Web, to explore the facts free of interference, myths and lies.

The key to making predictions is making preparations clear. The Chinese have a character in their language which combines the concept of crisis with opportunity.

Now there's the whole gold thing. Gold's been up without inflation. As much as gold bugs like to talk of gold as a safe haven, the facts are that gold fell dramatically with the credit crisis. As asset values fall, they're worth less and the dollar is actually worth more by virtue of being able to buy more. It's a deflationary trend that offsets inflation, which is the opposite of dollar being worth more through a crash in asset values. I'd say it was the pre-crash market environment that was inflationary, and oil was zooming.

If you'd been reading me, you might have chosen silver like me. It's otuperformed gold this year and has been about the best thing out there. So it's been a good call. But I've been examining the rising prices of gold and silver with uncertainty. Yes, there's the potential for inflation. If inflation really were showing up--it isn't--then gold/silver would likely be higher. Oil isn't moving like in 2008, so an asset bubble rebuild (and likely burst) may not be forthcoming.

I hold silver but at $22/ounce, I'm beginning to wonder if the run is sustainable. Probably, in the short-term. (Not the answer you wanted to hear, I'm guessing.) Translation: I'd look to take some profits on it soon. Wait for a correction to buy? Certainly. But now? I don't know. I also don't know if my reticence to buy at these levels is the same as wanting to sell it.

Well it isn't my job to speculate but rather gather and present the facts so you, my reader, can choose what to do. Besides, I wouldn't recommend any security without understanding your specific financial situation. Most cookie cutter approaches to investment management are flawed. And recommendations that appear in millions of newspapers and magazines are hardly discoveries: by the time they make through production, everyone knows what they like and don't.

So where do you start? Well, not to give too much information, I'd make sure the insurance levels are good and accumulate a emergency fund of 3-6 months worth of living expenses. Why's that so important? Because you might lose your job. Things happen beyond your control. Appliances break and need to be replaced. Relatives need help from time to time too.

The key to investing is time horizon--the length of time you hold your investment. So why should the emergency fund matter? Well, chances are if you need money, let's say in the next three to five years, you'll end up cashing out too soon. Imagine having to dump a stock back in 2008, for instance. If you'd stuck around, kept your money in the market another 6-12 months, chances are you'd recovered nicely. Maybe you would have recovered not all your losses perhaps but a good chunk of them.

Be suspicious by the fact most people selling you financial products DON'T check your general financial welfare before they recommend something. Honestly, the lack of an emergency fund isn't a problem for the entity selling you a commissioned product on which they must earn a profit.

With loaded products, selling generates a commission as well, so the impatient investor gets not only insufficient time to let their investment recover but is also gouged by the broker for selling.

Commission costs do add up. Now those with discount brokerage accounts might disagree. Trades for under $10 may make a lot of sense, but evidence supports the idea that you do better if you have someone helping you make decisions (see search term "performance load versus no load".)

Yes, you have to pay for it and all, but over the long-term commissioned products tend to do almost as well as no-loads. The reason: the problem is you. Cocooning in your little world, you the investor might get the idea that you are the next Gordon Gekko, the next day trader extraordinary. This inflated ego typically strikes after you made your first big profit. Trust me when I say the the superior performance and the feeling of invincibility will end.

Now the stock market is more than a casino. It represents investment in America. Potential returns can allow people of moderate income to become wealthy. Making money and being rich are distinctly different, as the book Millionaire Next Door attested.

Of course increased risk comes with increased reward. The two are inseparable, unless of course you're a Goldman Sachs able to conduct millions of High Frequency Trades, or a Federal Reserve able to create money out of nothing. For those entities there's little risk, although the crash in 2008 seemed to put even the vampire squid in peril. Unlike the problem being your ego, the problem with them I see as their greed and egos.

The reason for the Lehman Brothers failure isn't that different from why you might fail (although Lehman was allowed to fail and the presumption is you might not fall down like that, or let you collapse like Paulson did that company.) If you've been following my analysis of how the money machine works, you know that turning off the debt spigot (new dollars into the Ponzi) will keep a financial services firm from lending. Lending, as it turns out, is the raison d'etre which these same financial entities turn to when justifying their bailout (another term for allowing them to borrow instead of fail.)

Lehman lost its ability to tap low interest loans which are at the heart of investment banking post-Glass Steagall. Treasuries were used to balance the deteriorating balance sheets and companies like Lehman who weren't selected for termination. The Fed took in Mortgage-Backed Securities of questionable quality and unquantifiable value in exchange for solid AAA (for now) Treasuries: our debt.

That's right, the Fed burdened our grandchildren with billions to bail out the bankers' failed derivative schemes. (I just read that Ireland will spend $41 billion to bail out its Anglo Irish Bank.) The transfer of billions in private sector liabilities to the vaults of the Fed puts the taxpayer on the hook for whatever decline in values those MBSs might have in the future. Our bonds, meanwhile, safely in the vaults of for-profit banks, are backed by the full faith and assurance of the US government--meaning taxes will be raised if necessary to cover them--and generate interest all the while, which further weakens the fiscal strength of our nation.

All banks, like Lehman, are at the mercy of the Fed, its rules, and cheap money. This may have been the message sent by allowing Lehman to fail: get too greedy, overcapitalize and speculate (on real things) with all the funny money we let you have and your firm might be purged.

The banks, who were quick to claim their irreplaceable value during the crisis, have chosen not to lend but to flow their new dollars back into Treasuries, or spend them to acquire smaller regional banks. The Fed can't be too happy with the lack of lending, but being comprised of the larger banks exclusively, must see TARP and the Fed Reserve spigot as benefitting their member banks, who get to borrow at subsidized rates.

Debt as money theory

We can't have a monetary system that constantly inflates. But at the same time our economy is dependent on new money, which requires new dollars to be lent. And each dollar represents debt, so more growth=more debt. More dollars and those out there are worth less (unless of course there's some deflationary blow-up, or high unemployment to depress--as in Depression--asset values.)

The dollars (or FRNs to be more accurate) out there decrease in value in proportion to how much new money comes in. Bernanke's recent push towards Quantitative Easing attempts to increase consumption by making dollars available to lend.

The money itself isn't the problem. According to the blog The New Arthurian, it's the extension of too much credit that created the conditions necessary for a collapse. This might explain why inflation hasn't struck. There's not too much money, in fact there may be too little to pay existing debt.

The lack of new money entering the real economy explains why we're experiencing such slow growth, what some would claim is a Depression.

I have a theory that the credit crash helped forestall what would have been mammoth price inflation back in 2008. If the bubble of easy money (monetary inflation) hadn't burst, speculation by large financial companies likely would have driven commodity prices even higher. I can't say for sure that the crisis was engineered though it was clearly predictable and predicted.

As we know, lending is the fundamental basis for the pyramid scheme known as the Federal Reserve Note, or FRN for short. FRNs, you see, aren't an asset but a liability. You are working for someone else's debt. When you make money, they pass you an IOU. Rather than come directly from the Treasury our money goes through a central bank middleman. This middleman is a banking cartel, the private, for-profit Federal Reserve. who has an exclusive monopoly over the distribution of our money or our FRNs.

Fortunately, we're not to the point we have a single world currency. No nation would let its money supply be so controlled (although the Euro's survivability attests to the willingness and ability of some nations to work together on this.)

Bretton Woods chartered a unipolar financial order after World War II that has come apart. The Chinese economy, destined to be the world's largest, will control its own money. So the order will be changed, whatever the Anglo-American axis used to think about the supremacy of the dollar and pound.

Following is a cross-post from activistpost.

The dollar won't get rolled in with currencies outside the Western Hemisphere. The Amero is destined to be created with the next big dollar devaluation. (Called crisis or disaster capitalism, this system of cronyism is already in place.)

The Amero will be introduced as a way to stabilize a money-based crisis, such as the resolution of a sovereign debt devaluation.

Evidence of a move to the Amero has been out a while. It would be a Canadian Dollar/US dollar/Peso mix. New debt would be issued in Ameros by all three governments.

Now Canada does have a large natural resource base which could solidify the Amero's standing. Essentially this means it has the power to tax extractive enterprises.

Meanwhile the US has comparatively less to offer due to its balance of trade and huge liabilities. Mexico I presume would offer its people.

I wouldn't say the dollar will be worthless. it'll just be worth less. But this could encourage the move to the Amero--if Americans lose faith in the purchasing power of the dollar.

Another heads up: I don't know if we can predict these events. There's been end times talk for centuries. It's better to prepare. Start now. Have enough water, food, firewood, and silver (maybe 100 ounces.) I'd recommend the 90% Kennedy or Franklin Half-Dollar. Or you could convert some cash into gold: more portable but subject to forfeiture...

Also, you need to know people to barter, an alternate to money. Connections will be key. No Mad Maxs or Elis can survive. Sooner you're prepared, the less you have to worry.

Remember also that crisis won't last forever. There'll be better times, so maintaining morale is vital, like any survival situation.
/END COMMENT

LINKS
Signs of crisis:

http://www.alternet.org/economy/148295/20_signs_that_the_economic_collapse_is_already_upon_us/

http://www.opednews.com/Diary/19-Statistics-Indicate-Cor-by-William-Cormier-100929-161.html

www.survivalblog.com

PART II
Me and Money

Investing has been an area of interest for me since graduate school. My family always used to call me "money bags." Not because I won at Monopoly, mind you, although I often did but rather because money's always interested me.

I went to graduate school relatively soon after college: an exercise that taught me the importance of taking responsibility for one's financial future. Had my father not invested in blue chip stocks in the Seventies--at their bottom--I'd never been able to go.

After school, I worked in the financial services industry for several years. This combined my knowledge of investing garnered in school with sales and practical experience with how money works out in the real world.

Any client proposition involving investment, insurance, and money is likely a psychological battle more than one involving reason. I learned people are easily put on the defensive when it comes to their understanding and use of money. Most people clam up and stop listening when you talk about the principles of good financial stewardship. It's as if they been pre-programmed not to grasp the fundamentals but rather chase unrealistic returns like those seen during the dotcom bubble. (The financial industry's fixation on transactions encourages this.) The prospect of a twenty percent return or more sells so much more easily than talk of having a rainy day fund, or sufficient insurance, although long-term success in investing requires the latter.

Thanks to the bull market of the Nineties, I was able to work part-time despite the fact I only earned commissions, and very little at that as my sales skills--I would eventually discover--weren't that great. Thanks to my investments, I was able to devote a good deal of time to learning the art of money management. As a technical-type person, I was always fascinated in the details about investing, particularly mutual funds and the field of asset allocation, which built on my education in economics.

Coupled with a solid self-education in investing, sales experience has been invaluable going forward. It's amazing how much you can learn when you have to teach others about money. Rather than isolate myself to learn as much as I could, sales forced me to be more outgoing, to engage the world rather than shy away from it as was my tendency. As an introvert, I had to talk to people to try and earn a living. While I wasn't able to make a career with sales, I learned what I wasn't good at, which is a big part of learning what you could be good at.

I found I was motivated by my desire to learn. Offering an endless bounty of details, the investing business intrigues me. It's too bad that most everyone who goes into financial sales is first a salesperson and second an investor because I think the investing is much more fun. Now you of course do need some money to invest (others' if not yours), but I learned it doesn't take much to get started.

You do need a firm grasp over your compulsions to buy, which in a commercial-saturated world like ours are hard to override. Blown out of proportion by consumerism, every little want becomes a need and if you give in to the little things, chances are you'll be buying too much of what you don't need. That's where the concept of opportunity cost is so important to understand. If you reward yourself now--either through spending or, worse, borrowing--your denying your future you a reward. If you spend now, you can't spend later. I know these are obvious concepts, but it's so easy to want for yourself now what you'll need in the future.

A major reason to defer gratification is also the return that investments provide. I believe the lack of understanding about how investment returns compound is a major reason why people don't invest enough. Einstein called compound interest the Seventh Wonder of the World. Given time, an income-producing investment will rapidly multiply.

A great many poor people needn't be poor. If they understood how quickly even small investments can grow--even at relatively low rates of interest--they'd have a way out of poverty. Perhaps the process might take some time-not in a few years time, no, nor even in their lifetimes. Yet what are the only options available to the poor other than investing? In this economy, I'm not sure if a solid education--the other way out of poverty--can provide an equally likely chance of building wealth. Plus the costs are simply too high and burden of paying off the student debt too steep.

That said, I'm of course a big fan of education but if you look around you'll see college graduates who aren't really worth what they think they're worth. And a lot of people acquire skills in college that may be available through real world experience on the job. Ask yourself: how much of what you learn in school do you remember? Or worse, how much of what you learned did you apply? Well, we go to school for more than empirical knowledge unless of course you can transition to a technical job after graduation; for that, the graduate has been trained more than educated.

So there's a place for a pure liberal arts education. Yet few employers in the world seem to understand that. Plus, it can take years for a liberal arts graduate to catch up with his more technically trained peer. Yet unlike the student who spend four or more years training, the liberal arts graduate has skills that will make him a better person. This may sound trite but trust me, you don't want to be surrounded by one-dimensional people. It grows tiresome.

So educate yourself. And the process never ends, which is what a well educated person (versus someone trained for industry) knows--you never stop learning. In a wildly gyrating economy, this is a key lesson. Even many of those who've trained for a specific career will find themselves changing fields. So I'd say try and learn for learning's sake, not just because you think that's where the money is. No, not all that you'll learn will be measured in physical capital--money--but rather social capital or goodwill.

Not all of man's achievements can be captured on a balance sheet. Chrisitianity espouses the concept of a divine list of sins and good deeds, which will be read when we die. Developing people skills--which is what the Dupont(TM) ad calls Hu, the human element. (BTW I need to enclose the TM--Trademark symbol because some corporations have begun suing bloggers over the use of alleged copyright violations. The legal firm is called Righthaven. See more on these insidious, politically motivated tactics in the blog DailyPaul.

Protect your right to free speech! Don't let FBI raids intimidate peace activism. They will get away with everything we let them get away with.

As a blogger you are not alone. It's good to know that there are real Americans standing up for their rights.

WARNING TO FELLOW BLOGGERS
I received this e-mail from TheDailyPaul on September 30th.:

Righthaven Lawsuit Update

As some of you may know, the Daily Paul (i.e., me) is being sued by the copyright trolling firm Righthaven, which at last count has sued 144 bloggers - many of them small time operators who don't make any profit (and often have very few visitors). 

I found out about this about a month ago from Las Vegas Sun reporter Steve Green.  I have since spoken with 5 different lawyers (the first hour is free :), and have been studying the situation thoroughly. 

I've been advised by all of the lawyers to keep my mouth shut while the lawsuit is under way.  I'm sorry I can't share more about my case, but I deeply appreciate everyone who has offered moral support.  It has been a tremendous learning experience for me, and not an entirely pleasant one!

I was heartened to learn that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is fighting back on behalf of the Democratic Underground in a case that is very similar to mine.  Not only is the EFF defending the DU, they've filed a counter suit to put an end to all of them.  This is a very important case, as it goes to the very heart of defining the legality of the internet, including fair use and First Amendment rights, as we know it.

I have been following Steve Green's reporting on the topic daily at his Las Vegas Sun archive, and if you are interested in this case, I urge you to do the same.  More information can be found at the Righthaven Victims site at:  http://righthavenvictims.blogspot.com/. 

If you are a blogger, or know others who are...

I urge you to check this guide and take steps to avoid being sued!  If you have so much as a few paragraphs of an article from the LVRJ.com on your site (the Democratic Underground is being sued for 4 paragraphs!), you are at risk!  And it doesn't matter if you have only a few visitors, you are still at risk. 
/End excerpt


PART III
End of the world?

I've come across a few articles that explain all the signs (links above.) Like ancient times, people these days seem to want to see signs. (As a sidenote, the Bible cautions that people don't demand signs from God, which are deemed disrespectful and evidence of a lack of belief in God's existence.)

Of course I have to mention the Bible. It's the Word of God to some and many here in the U.S. believe what is written within to be written by God Himself.
We couldn't discuss crisis in America without discussing God. Religion plays a continuing role in education and politics.

This is because crisis is a matter of personal choice. Its boundaries are subject to personal interpretation. For thousands of year, this group and that group have foretold of the end of civilization. Some were nut jobs, of course, but many mostly rational people used numerology to determine end dates.

I happen to think sitting around and anticipating the Apocalypse brings it on.

Unlike the discreet nature of faith, the exercise of end times belief involves other people. To be in the end times, all that is needed is for enough people to believe we're in the end times. If enough people believe the end times have arrived, they'll most likely change their behavior--distrust, suspicion, etc.--to the point that the bonds between people begin to break down.

In this respect, the apocalypse represents an abandonment of Christian values, although some might be inclined to be compassionate, in the spirit of an all-giving Christ.

You could say the victims of Nazi death camps who gave away their food were the greatest examples of how to endure suffering. Of course they were the first to die, but I believe it was Victor Frankl who wrote about how important it was for these people to preserve their dignity, and if it required giving away their life-saving rations, so be it.

So self-sacrifice does have a role in how believers behave in the end times. We can't assume everyone--especially those with strong religious beliefs--will simply be whisked away. Nor will those Left Behind resort to evil, although by that interpretation those Left behind will be the unsaved, and thus given over to sin. The Earth then would become the Hell.

Exercising belief in the apocalypse is no simple prayer exercise. Dancing the apocalyptic masquerade doesn't require divine intervention. It accepts the world as it is, and defines our times as meeting the conditions necessary to qualify as the End Times

Some believers may succumb to the concept that their personages might go up to heaven with the end time, is as thought to happen in some interpretations of the Book of Revelation.

Now that book has been open to a variety of interpretations, at least outside those who take the Bible literally cover-to-cover. I know of one researcher who claims that John--who ostensibly wrote Revelation--was talking about events that occurred long ago, during the destruction of Jerusalem. According to that timeframe, the period when Earth has been under the rule of Satan is coming to an end.

I don't claim to have any knowledge of the scripture that can offer insights or interpretations, but I am open to opinions and not all are. Most would rather have popular fiction determine when the Apocalypse has arrived. (I use that word interchangeably with "end times," although the two may not even be the same. Armaggedon is another word, which is actually a physical place in northeastern Israel.

In the most broadly accepted cultural definition, the end times= Armageddon= Apocalypse, though these words may not be confused in their usage. It's easy for our imaginations to run wild when consider the concept linking these terms to an exercise in mass hysteria and fear. Movies and books reinforce the end times mythos. You can run the gambit from Mad Max to "extinction-level events" caused by seismic or celestial forces. Wherever the imagination can go, so too can we imagine this or that bad thing happening. So firm is this notion of an apocalypse seeded that we actually see it as inevitable. This is where the impact of manmade climate change roars its head: it's because we've screwed the Earth up that we're to be punished. Mystics and superstitious witch doctors blame various evil spirits for every predicament we've ever faced.

///

Movie Review: The Road and Book of Eli

Warning: This post contains plot spoilers for these movies

These two movies depict a future America a state phrased by survivalblog.com as TETWAWKI, The End of the World as We Know it.

I was struck by the dreary, stunning yet foreboding imagery of The Road. The Road stars Viggo Mortensen, who reduces his weight precipitously to play the role. He escorts his son along a road to some hopefully better place.

In one scene, Mortensen's character swims out into the sea to scavenge a cracked up old rusty freighter. The blue-gray (always gray) waters are rough, surprisingly so for a completely naked Mortensen to swim to in a real world way. His low body weight must've made the scene hard to shoot, and dangerous.

We're not exactly sure what's caused the apocalyptic North America in The Road. Earthquakes and forest fires create a scorched out landscape, which is caught in Director John Hillcoat's cameras as a gray, soggy existence. Food isn't found; nothing is growing, nothing alive at least. (A beetle emerges in a later scene, an indicator that perhaps the Earth is recovering.) The only breathing things appear to be the humans themselves, who are scurrying around the wasteland looking to feed on anything whose path they cross.

As the pair go down the road to some undefined location, they encounter all sorts of unpleasantries--foremost among them, cannibalism. Starvation on an epic scale justifies the smorgasbord of human flesh.

In The Road, a heavily disguised Robers Duvall plays a small role as an almost Kurosawa-type/Taoist old-man-walking-alone role. Blind, of course, Duvall's character can see into the past and future like some itinerant sage. He represents both what the world was, and what it will be. I guess Mortensen and his son are striving to escape Duvall's fate but need to embrace the old man, to learn from the past mistakes of humankind, to not go back, or along The road. They leave it and its many dangers soon after.

In Denzel Washington's Book of Eli, America is a far different kind of place, though in both movies, cannibalism and lawlessness rule, although Gary Oldman, playing the evil Carnegie, does organize a town providing water, security, and barter.

Barter becomes the chief means of trading, just like we saw in Mel Gibson's Mad Max series, which has become the granddaddy of this expanding genre. The first stage in all these dystopia/post-apocalyptic movies is a breakdown of order--what I call Mad Max Level One--then the rise of gangs, graduating through to reestablishment of order, the rebirth of small towns like the aptly named Bartertown. In Eli, Carnegie takes the place of Tina Turner's Aunty Entity ruling over his private domain.

Eli's style contrasts with Mortensen's. Eli is a hardy adventurer-turned-crusader/guardian of The Book. At some previous point, Eli had received a message from the Holy Spirit that he was to take the Holy Book to the west, and his enemies would part before him, or something like that, clearing the route for Eli down the road to salvation and rebirth.

An atmosphere of fear plagues The Road, while Denzel rises above it like some superhero invulnerable to the many evildoers plaguing the post-apocalyptic world. Mortensen is anything but the hero, hiding and scampering and only reluctantly killing. He retains his humanity--perhaps because of his son--even as he slowly dies from injury and starvation. Eli never dips below his moral principles, which have come to him in a supernatural (believers would call it "divinely inspired") way.

Mortensen's character seems more possessed with simple survival, scampering away even from a stocked shelter out of fear when he hears scampering above. Which survival methodology is more probable? Well, Mortensen's is realistic, while Denzel's is pure Hollywood.

I was struck by similarities in The Book of Eli's world and the popular computer game series Fallout. Both have nuclear war as the force majeure causing TETWAWKI. In scorched out flatlands we see craters caused by nuclear warheads pockmarking the ground.

Radiation doesn't seem to plague the survivors much in Denzel's world, which is one where the Holy Bible has becomes a much-treasured item sought by Oldman's dark hero Carnegie to control minds and exert power. The Bible, you see, is blamed for much of the destruction, and every last copy burned by survivors of the Holocaust. Implausible though it might seem, the Bible that Eli (Denzel) carries is the last in the world. {Personally I found this premise unlikely considering 1), the number of Bibles in use today, and 2) the value of the Bible as a source of spiritual strength, which would be more in demand after than before the apocalypse.}

The Road is scary because we don't know how much time passes between the beginning of the crisis, which begins softly, as Mortensen draws the blinds against a nighttime sky lit red with fire, and the time he and his son leave on the road. In The Book of Eli, a whole new generation comes of age, referring to Eli and Carnegie as "old timers," who are a shrinking group.

The Road makes the impending trip a scary but unavoidable tragedy-simply for lack of food they must travel the dangerous road. Some time into the calamity, the wife of the man--we don't learn the name of Mortensen's character, nor hers--played by the beautiful Charlize Theron can't handle the gloom and wanders off into it.

The Road is the darker of the two. You leave the film in a bit of a downer. I guess it's the cannibalism, or to be more accurate, the dark symbolic imagery of cannibalism, the skulls on stakes here, the human captives locked in the basement, the cold callousness of tortured calls felt as much as heard when Mortensen and his son wait out in the dark, nearly becoming captives themselves.

It hit me after the film that it's cannibalism rising in such a world that bothers you. In Book of Eli, cannibalism is brought up slyly, with dark humor: a couple invites Eli and Solara into their house, serving them tea in a shaking-like-a-leaf-if-there-were-any- left way, which is apparently a symptom of some disease I'd never heard of before where you eat too much lean, red meat. I guess if the cannibals could only devour hungry humans, their meal items would likely be starving as well as provide a food source lacking much fat.

In the Book of Eli, Eli is checked for shaking hands by a guard at the entrance to Carnegie's town, demonstrating that cannibalism was reviled even by the robbers and rapists who frequented the town. In this regard, Hughes' world reconciles itself to ours a little more; the instincts of the townspeople are still humanist at their core, despite all the inherent post-apocalyspe divisiveness and individualist nature of survivalism.

Hope, the greatest treasure

If the sole purpose of these movies were to warn, they'd have done that excellently, at perhaps the price of a depressive experience for the reader/viewer. Instead Hillcoat and Eli's Hughes push a ray of optimism into the inherently dark backdrop--if not for the characters trudging through the wasteland, then their offspring and followers (in the case of Book of Eli, it's the pretty yet overly-self-confident-for-such-a-time-and-place Solara, played by Mila Kunis.)

Both movies do cradle hope at their core.Like any dystopia movies, expressed vividly are the uglinesses of the post-apocalyptic world. More subtle, yet beckoning, are the little glimpses into a future less stained by violence and destruction, a world where reconciliation is possible.

In The Book of Eli, the Bible ends up getting delivered to Alcatraz Island, where a small but committed team of re-constructionists attempt to assemble the knowledge lost from the pre-apocalyptic world. It's an effort at re-humanization we can all appreciate.

I saw on a Discovery special not too long ago about what would happen during times of starvation. Apparently people have been documented traveling vast distances as they starve. Often spiritual leaders arise who promise to lead "their people" to a "promised land." We know also that extreme hunger can cause delirium, hallucinations, and the like. So the notion of a long-distance march may be quite plausible in a dystopic environment, especially one driven by mystical or religious experience.

Some inner motor must lead us on, blindly during these times of starvation. In that sense the Exodus-like wanderings are a demonstration of faith, the inner experience of belief in hope. Instead of confined to the spiritual world, our physical longings are brought to reality through the unifying event, the Apocalypse, and all the woes it spawns--including of course hope in the infallibility of Nature and faith in our fellow man.

Dark future fantasies

I've always been a fan of movies like The Omega Man with Charlton Heston. In that movie, Heston is the sole surviving human immune from a virus, at least he thinks so until discovering others like him. One aspect of these kinds of movies are the circumstances under which these scenarios which could occur, and how the concordant dystopia would unfold, or society unravel: "how did we get there." We think of these thinks mostly to prevent them, I guess, or perhaps better cope with them should they happen, though how someone will react is anyone's guess.

Trying to determine a time that TETWAWKI occurs has become can be a bit of a challenge. I guess when law and order break down, and laws can no longer be enforced, we've entered Mad Max Level One. Gangs will rise in such an environment. Interestingly, we don't need an apocalypse to cause TETWAWKI; nor do we need a nuclear winter nor zombie/vampire takeover to start the dystopia ball rolling. TETWAWKI is a subjective experience: a child leaving their home could mean and an end to all their expectation of the world outside--if it's limited to that. We've had plenty hells on earth; they need not require much space at all--heck a serial killer's basement could provide the setting.

Once started, the dystopia ball gets rolling, and further acts of depravity increase as civilization breaks down. This is the lesson of both movies, the dark specter of fear that colors the stories in each. We cringe at the the thought of losing what we hold dear: it's a threatening notion that strikes us on a personal level. It's not so much the actual apocalypse that gets us, and provides a compelling story line, but the shocking realities that ensue. We enter these movies not as voluntary Mary Poppins-style wanderers down the Yellow Brick Road of endless smiles but instead are pulled, dragged...unwilling prisoners to the dark side of our nature.

The idea of dystopia makes for good entertainment precisely because we want to see--deep down inside of some repressed part of ourselves--Nature exact some vengeance. George Carlin sums it upped magnificently in his video clip (from 3m15sec on), Saving the Planet as well as in his HBO special, Life Worth Losing, unavailable on youtube at the moment. People are drawn to natural disasters because they want to experience their mortality, or to contradict the arrogant notion that people are masters of their universe. Floods and calamities are Nature's way of getting back, or so Carlin iterated.

Deep down inside, we may all dread yet almost expect calamity to strike. Disaster films have grown more popular with scenarios of global warming, asteroid collisions, and similar issues, some of which humanity can endure. It's the purpose of a movie to entertain, so rare it is to see a movie where all the humans die off...I can't think of any titles. The Road comes close to killing all hope as you develop a personal attachment to the survivors. It's hard to wish anyone dead, but dying is a typical condition in a post-apocalyptic world. The movie 2012, which I saw recently as well, echoes the theme of worldwide calamity, yet even there Africa survives even if America doesn't.

The 70s saw a jolt of these movies: Airport7_, The Poseidon Adventure, etc. (see a list of here, about halfway down.) The idea of getting wiped out en masse has been central to entertainment for some time.

Perhaps there's some auto-response in our brains that let's us accept death, should it come through some wild event affecting us all simultaneously. Maybe the shock of the attack releases a surge of serotinin or some naturally biological response takes over, kind of like what's thought to happen to animals killed and eaten alive on the African savannah. Observing these victims in their death throes, the animals often seem quite docile despite what must be an immense desire to flail and kick.

Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) References:

The Book of Eli

The Road

The Omega Man

Complete synopses for the movies are available at all links.

///

Hollywood fantasy or dark future reality? The movie Children of Men reviewed

I recently saw the movie Children of Men, based on a novel by P.D. James, directed by Alfonso Cuaron. For those interested in seeing the movie, you may want to avoid this review until you've seen Children of Men; I've tried to avoid spoiling surprise where I can.

The futuristic world is England in the year 2027. The future James paints is one of totalitarian-type governments. According to the plotline within the story, the world endures a series of cataclysmic events beginning with a flu pandemic in 2008.

War on terror themes run throughout in the sets. One banner reads: "Alone, Britain soldiers on."

Immigrants have lost their rights in the movie and are herded into refugee camps, one a converted coastal city reserved for immigrants. We do not know the extent to which citizens and non-citizens are treated once they've entered the system; we get the feeling the people simply disappear, regardless of nationality.

In the tradition of apocryphal works, Children of Men depicts a world that has given upon hope because it's lost its children.Children of Men is cast in a time when women can no longer have children.

The movie begins with media coverage of the death of the world's youngest man, "...Diego Ricardo, the youngest person on the planet, the youngest person on earth was 18 years, 4 months, 20 days, 16 hours, and 8 minutes old" represented the world's most recently born person, grown to adulthood.

The world's next youngest person--a woman--then assumes the title of world's youngest person and receives the accompanying celebrity.

Theo Faron (Clive Owen) tries to complete his mission--one not of his choosing but rather one assigned him by his former beau, played by Julianne Moore.

Retired (and well cast) Michael Caine, who plays a retired political writer Jasper Palmer, who's friends with Faron. There, in an isolated homestead which offers the solace of solitude, Caine grows pot while tending his catatonic wife.

A quick scan of Palmer's desk reveals a posted newspaper clipping of a 2008 Award as best political writer, and shows an article with a picture of a traumatized woman, accompanied by the headline "Woman Claims Torture." From the blank stare and silence of Palmer's wheelchair-bound wife throughout the movie, we are left wondering as to the cause of her condition.

Some past dark secret in their lives speaks of their lives spent in decline and isolation, yet they have each other. Dark skies brood over the English moors that surround the country cottage, evil encroaching from a society gone mad.

Children of Men is about a world that devalues human dignity, degrades the value of human life, and even supplies them with free Suicide Kits, advertised under the Quietus brand (a concoction of rat poison which is perfectly legal, according to Caine's character Palmer, although pot remains illegal).

What began as a national effort to expel immigrants ends up affecting all, citizen and non-citizen alike, who must contend with the savagery of the anti-government forces. In other words, no one is safe.

A movie like Children of Men succeeds by casting a compelling picture of a future of a dire and dying world.

The saddening picture probably won't brighten any viewer's day, but some among us do have a curiousity concerning end-of-times events and sequences and are drawn to these kinds of stories. Somewhat pathetically, we enjoy contemplating the possibilites that would have to concur in order to bring that world into being.

We skeptics tend to guard our disbelief, and view realism as a vital plot ingredient.

My Inner Omega Man

Cataclysmic compositions have long been a fascination of mine, and I feel drawn to the bittersweet isolation of one man or a few in a world of chaos, anarchy, or zombiefication. One of the first and best of these movies is Charleton Heston's The Omega Man; the Planet of the Apes series also helped plant the apocalyptic theme in me.

I'm not much into Costner's Waterworld and Postman or Romero's zombie movies, but I do respond to some of more plausible future scenarios like those painted in Children of Men, although a world like that depicted in the movie may be equally illusory when its main premises are considered. The fewer the number of implausible events in the futuristic society, the easier it is for me to enter into the escapism that I seek out of these kinds of films.

I don't want to dwell too long on the macabre elements in the movie, because many of these movies are sensationalized, in typical Hollywood style.

Hollywood is often tempted to take shortcuts and other deus ex machina plot devices which can stretch whatever realism might be there into the realm of fantasy. Unlike novelists, movie-makers do have the heavy burden of creating a visual pantheon in order to sustain the alternate world created out what were formerly just words.

I also just saw The Last King of Scotland, where a young Scottish doctor Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, played by James McAvoy, becomes Idi Amin's personal physician and adviser. No such doctor existed; still, the creation of the mythical doctor offers a bridge into Amin's personal life--a character with whom the audience can identify and sympathize not only with the doctor, but Amin as well.

To be credible as a form of entertainment for the skeptics among us, the movie's environment can be theoretical yet must also be plausible. Historical precedent might not matter to all or even most of the viewers, but plausibility is central to believability for fans of apocalyptic works like me.

It's hard for viewers like me to imagine the future world if lacks realism. In explanation of early effort to create a matrix from the second movie in that series, designers of the first matrix had lost entire "crops" because the world they'd created had been too full of love and happiness, and thus too unrealistic for those whose brains were wired into the Matrix.

The world of Children of Men is frighteningly plausible in all regards except perhaps the loss of children from our planet--a point made clear when main character Theo Faron (Owen) wanders through a rotting, vine-infested school barely recognizable save for long-idled student desks.

Plausibility of the Scenario

Premise #1 for the movie is deportation and sequestration of non-British nationals.

Raids are now taking place in the US by Immigration Customs Enforcement, which cast detainees in prisons awaiting deportation, separating them from loved ones over sometimes vast distances. In an article originally posted in American Prospect, David Beacon's "The Story of the Smithfield Raid" follows the enforcement crackdown.

One such workplace raid occured in the Smithfield meat processing plant in North Carolina. Beacon explains:

That day, the migra (agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Homeland Security Department) picked up 21 people while trying not to alert the rest of the plant's laborers. One by one, supervisors went to Mexicans on the line. You're needed in the front office, they'd say. The workers would put down their knives, take off their gloves and walk through the cavernous building to the human resources department. There, ICE agents took them into custody, put them in handcuffs and locked them up in a temporary detention area. Later, they were taken out in vans and sent to immigration jails as far away as Georgia.

Bacon goes on to talk about the possible motivations for the raid, which could well have been to bust up unionization efforts. He explains:

...organizing efforts, and not the 21 detained workers, were the real target of the raid. Mark Lauritsen, packinghouse director for the United Food and Commercial Workers, says the Department of Homeland Security and the company "were worried about people organizing a union, and the government said, 'Here are the tools to take care of them.'"

In the Smithfield case, union activity and efforts to raise awareness concerning worker rights and safety conflict with a corporate agenda.

Anti-immigration sentiments run strong in much of the far Right-wing. However, Republicans have been reluctant to heartily combat the flow of illegal immigrants.

Democrats are broadly thought to be more sympathetic to the plight of illegals; it's no coincidence that Hispanic voters are predomimantly Democratic voters: converting illegals into voters would likely create more Democrats, unless of course Republicans can outshine the potential new voters by offering amnesty or better terms, perhaps like a antiwar Republican might pander to the Democratic base.

Hispanic political influence dominates both parties. Xenophobic tendencies could be exacerbated in a time of economic chaos or catastrophe; whether a more radical approach might be the possible under Republican or Democratic leadership remains unclear.

Select immigration raids could well evolve into broader sweeps. Such a radical approach would reduce illegal immigration, but many corporations believe in the benefits to their bottom line of hiring illegals, saving on labor costs, and dodging pesky unionization.

It remains to be seen whether the corporate interests exploiting cheaper labor will continue to shape our immigration policy.

Often, corporate interests trump worker concerns; the two groups are on opposite ends of the burgeoning political divide in this country. Our government's willingness to let corporations dictate and influence policy also plays contrary to the interest of its citizens.

A big part of the corporate influence in American politics today is about protecting the financial interests of--as Marx would put it--"owners of the means of production."

Many corporations want the floodgates of America opened to cheaper labor, illegal or not. Many technology companies easily fill H1-NB Visa quotas and demand more, so they support immigration. Employers on the higher-end of the wage scale (at least for immigrant labor) are more legally bound to legitimatize the employee credentials through the organized worker importation program.

Lower skilled illegal immigrants go most likely to jobs where they can be paid in cash and made part of the invisible economy. The complexities of registering all US employees, as ICE intend to do under a new system, faces mammoth logistical issues in addition to privacy concerns, legal issues, and political obfuscation.

The Power of Race

Minorities disenfranchisement is nothing new, interesting in Bacon's article is the level of solidarity between blacks and Latinos, so the conjoined political influence of those groups cannot be underestimated by either party. Both have fought racism; the inherently anti-Mexican dictate of ICE actions makes the two groups natural allies, who between them would have a combined and rising 70 million people or so.

Terrorism could trigger round-ups, but the Mexicans aren't likely to commit such acts, nor would Mexicans be associated with terrorism. Far more likely is some economic chaos, which would exacerbate racial tensions. Even then, huge contingents of politically connected African Americans and Latinos would make politicians pay a huge price at the polls.

Economic issues could provide a pretext for deportation. In The Last King of Scotland, Amin expels all "Asians"--predominantly long-term residents from the Indian subcontinent, many of whom had been born in Uguanda.

Amin feared the political influence posed by the dominance of so-called "Asians" in the Uguandan economy. As a wealthier and better educated segment of society, Amin labelled exploitation of Africans by so-called Asians as the source of Uguanda's economic problems.

In effect, Western societies are made up by ethnic groups; destroying the immigrant communities would mean destroying members of similiar ethnicity. This isn't to say immigrants have been fully assimilated; it's simply hard to believe that legal immigrants would stand idly around as their illegal brethren are deported and/or hauled off to camps.

Even now Hispanic influence certainly impacts immigration policy. Under a new bill, citizenship has been offered as part of an amnesty would make illegal Latinos a potentially dangerous political enemy in the many regions of our nation with a large Hispanic presence.

Polls suggest anti-immigrant opinion lies in a good chunk of the population, but a majority appears to favor immigration reform that would allow citizenship and tolerate amnesty. Could the majority voice be quashed in favor of a broad immigration crackdown? Perhaps not, with the political influence Hispanics wield and would presumably exert on behalf of their illegal brethren.

Wholesale deportation would be difficult if not impossible as a result of logistical and moral challenges. Hispanics in the military would undoubtedly have problems following orders like the soldiers in Children of Men. Still the world has seen plenty of examples of inner-racial violence.

Large-scale deportation would have to be militarized, as Katrina has shown us that no one else in the Federal government is capable of managing a refugee crisis, much less engineering a "solution". Still, the prominence of minorities in our military limits the upper capabilities of effectiveness of any enforcement.

Artificially created disasters might be alllowed to purge one area of its inhabitants--like a neutron bomb, without the radioactivity. The wake of Katrina has seen a large increase in the numbers of Hispanics in New Orleans. African-Americans may make up less of the city's population, although it's not clear if the black economy is threatened by illegal immigrantion, or how many will return. We also don't know how thoroughly the city will be rebuilt, most notably how much the government appears willing to do to help predominantly African-American portions of the city which still lie devastated.

Hypothetically, inhabitants deemed more friendly to the regime (or more necessary to its recovery) could then be introduced while its former inhabitants languish in refugee camps, or are geographically dispersed. Numbers reduced, they lose political influence in the affected region or control over the land they formally inhabited: we say they've been ethnically cleansed.

Premise #2: Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing

Director/screenwriter Cuaron offers an ultra-realistic combat scene in the end, with an extraordinary munitions display. The superior camerawork envelops the viewer in the intense action sequences which are quite horrifying in their realism. Adjusting to the jiggling, hand-held camera was hard at first, until later action scenes where it immerses you into the intense violence.

This week has shown us violence coming from one such refugee camp in Lebanon, which are as I understand it, horrific and violent places not far removed from concentration camps of the Nazi era: except perhaps that the detained have guns. While there may be no genocide by the governments running the camps, the systematic rape of human dignity is a common element.

The treatment of Arabs stands out in Children of Men. We do see a "Allah Akbur" procession of angry Islamists in the movie, who actually carry a French flag in what must be some symbol of cross-channel significance.

The government's treatment of non-British nationals subsists on the premise that one group should be identified and cast out of British society. Muslims are in this respect the Jews of Nazi Europe, as they are easily stereotyped, already disenfranchised and seen as outside the mainstream cultural values of "citizens".

These examples are most troubling when viewed in their historical context: It's the progression that's frightening; what begins as a limited ethnic cleansing devolves into broader killing. "First, they came for the Jews," Pastor Niemoller's saying goes.

Jews were purged at first, with more mainstream sources of resistance targetted for elimination later, after the regime had begun its genocide. Next were the trade unionists, homosexuals, priests, gypsies, mentally ill, not in any particular order, though that too may have been carefully orchestrated in order to reduce discalm that would certainly accompany any ethnic cleansing as the number of persecuted groups expanded to reflect whatever the twisted objective sought through the genocide.

In The Last King of Scotland, Idi Amin is driven ever deeper into genocide, thrust onward by his paranoia, which builds during the course of the movie. Towards the climax, Amin is killing entire villages of rival tribes, women and childen too.

There's no denying governments can go to extremes, so the historical precedent is there. Yet it's virtually impossible for a government to kill off vast numbers of people, with a few exceptions, notable in Rwanda and Cambodia--both more primitive societies than ours or England's.

The Nazis rose to power in a German democracy, so the ascent of genocidal regimes is possible in the secular West. But if the Nazis are taken as an example of ruthless efficiency in their genocidal campaign, even they failed to rid themselves of all Jews and they had years to do it. We don't know how long the deportations have been going on in Children of Men.

For the US or Britain to root out their illegals would be a multi-year task, and certainly lack the efficiency of the Nazi death machines. As resistance to the deportation and confinement of immigrants rose, a larger body of persons classified as undesirables or enemies of the state would grow and compound the logistical problems involved in finding and transporting victims, even if ovens were waiting for them.

The instant emptying of Phnom Phen by the Khmer Rouge upon their seizure of that city in 1975 provides an extreme example of instanteous genocide, herding the people out of the city, giving them an hour, as I heard said while I was there. Starvation over the long-term contributed to a large proportion of the fatalities--the re-education camps were mismanaged collectives first and killing fields second; in the eyes of the Khmer Rouge, starvation saved a bullet.

Governments are open to extreme measures in an attempt to identify potential counter-revolutionaries. Extremists on the fringe left like Maoists may possess an even more paranoid vision of a new order. As Nicholas Cage says in Merchant of Death, the worst groups were those with the name "Liberation" in their title; these guerillas take their violent solutions with them into government.

Few regimes could commit genocide on a scale of the Khmer Rouge; still the callous objectivity and flippant decision by which boy soldiers determined who of the newly conquered lived and died reminds us of Holocaust movies. In Schindler's List, the Nazi death camp officer played by Ralph Fiennes executes camp prisoners from afar with a sniper rifle--an arbitrary act of execution meant on establishing the alternate reality that all in the camp laboring below must be constantly working, and not idle, which could be result in execution; a twisted code but a code based on logic nonetheless, perverse as it might be.

History has seen constant purges, and we see this behavior worldwide. Western governments have a tradition of leniency on immigration, so the capacity for ethnic cleansing appears quite low.

Premise #3: Government Abuse of Authority

In Children of Men, what begins as a national effort to expel immigrants ends up affecting all, citizen and non-citizen alike, who must contend with the savagery of both pro- and anti-government forces. In other words, no one is safe.

It's not what may happen in the future that makes us fear Children of Men's world, but rather the plausibility of what we already know our governments to be doing.

A Children of Men world is indeed possible, and the War on Terror provides us a present-day bridge into an Orwellian future.

Opposition to torture and the mistreatment of minorities and immigrants stands out in the movie. The abuse of authority has becomes a rationale for violence against government, which perpetuates the cycle of violence.

Early in the movie, we can only guess how badly the State mistreats its citizens. Later, as the plot unfolds we get a fuller picture of an Orwellian state ethnically cleansing its population; we come to doubt that the purge is limited to immigrants.

I suppose this slow parting of the curtains of secrecy is a dramatic device meant to gradually expose the deep and dark functionings of government, only after government extremism is put in context of revoultionary actions taken by anti-government partisans, whose bombings and violence demonstrate inhumanity to their fellow man on a standard of morality no better than the soldiers and police.

Resistance to mistreatment and disenfranchisement is a popular theme for anti-establishment movies, which Children of Men must be considered. It's against the totality of the state's power and the subjugation of the individual to it that the movie viewer must revolt.

State power makes an old familiar target, and anarchist and revolutionary types will certainly revel in the resistance to the imposition of State power upon the individual as it is depicted in the Children of Men. Yet by going into the hearts of partisans, we see no virtue--the self-defined revolutionaries are shown to be power-hungry and vicious, as cold and calculating as the organ of any government body could ever hope to be.

The Terror War has increased the probability of a Children of Men world. Civil liberties have been restricted, wiretapping arbitraily conducted. Perhaps the frightening part isn't necessarily how far our State has become in the measures of totalitarianism, but instead the direction which the war on terror and attack on individual rights are taking us, towards a society ruled by racism, fear, and paranoia.

England has wired its cities with integrated Closed Circuit cameras which undoubtedly fuel fear of a police state. In the US, distinctions between citizens and non-citizen are increasingly ignored in the surveillance society of today. 9/11 became both motive and opportunity to impose restrictions on Constitutional liberties in the name of fighting terror.

Here or in Britain, both nations are headed in a direction where minorities and terrorism suspect have lost legal rights which be a first timid step towards the wholesale dismantling of our legal system.

Bush's use of signing statements, the politicization of the Iraq War, and the continuing illegal eavesdropping have sent obvious signals that the Executive seeks to assert its supremacy. Congress would be turned into a debating society. Our laws have become subject to limitations, exceptions, and circumventions at the whim of the Executive solely responsible for enforcing the law.

Coupled with acts of terrorism, there is a potential for declaration of martial law. Post-Katrina, we've seen a federalization of our states' National Guards and the passage of the Military Commissions Act, which basically codifies the President's right to control any military element in any way he sees fit.

A change in the form of government and complete breakdown in the rule of law has not come. We simply aren't there yet, and the advance of time cannot bring a Children of Men world to us, at least not without more undermining of our legal codes.

Premise #4 - Breakdown in Order; Abuses of Human Dignity

Economic collapse and anarchy are rather ordinary expectations in cataclysmic literature. Advancing to a post-apocalyptic scenario requires breakdowns in law and society, or a precipitating event like terrorism or the ever popular experiment-gone-wrong.

Starting a string of unfortunate events in Children of Men was a global flu pandemic in 2008, an event certainly within the realm of possibility.

Economic woes provide a necessary context for the anarchy that ensues to make the threat credible. To be specific, the threat must be real in the present, and foreseeable in the not too distant future.

Mel Gibson's Mad Max is a good example of a downward spiral from the first movie's simply ineffectual Halls of Justice, introducing the need for vigilanteism, followed by groups fighting over resources for their survival in the second movie. The third, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome issues in an alternate society with rules forged by the brutality of survival in a post-apocalyptic world.

Children of Men lets us imagine the events that led to the genesis of its world, flashes of horrific visions of violence and destruction. Children of Men leaves most of the breakdowns in society to the imagination of the viewer.

I thought back to the "experimental aversion therapy" (imdb.com review) dispensed upon Alex de Large (Malcolm McDowell) in Clockwork Orange, whose eyelids are forced apart as he's forced to view for hours on end in a twisted effort to purge young Alex of his inner evil.

Children of Men speaks for the frailty of human dignity. Viewers might be enraged by the treatment of detainees in the movie, which parallels the prisoner abuse at the hands of our government in the War on Terror.

In one scene of overpowering force, a devoutly Christian woman, Miriam, is confronted, then "detained" as their bus passes through security into a refugee camp. The bus stop is a surrealist, Auschwitz-type environment. The scene ends with the bus pulling out as a black sack is cast around Miriam's head.

The cruelty Miriam faces forces reexamination of viewer reactions to the treatment of enemy combatants in Guanatamo and Abu Ghraib.

The movie advocates sympathy for the problem of prisoner abuse here and now, in places like Guantanamo, and with the treatment of terrorism suspects like Jose Padilla.

By thrusting the viewer in a future world of hopelessness, or chaos, and evil, we can better recognize the slippery path which we've taken. Anticipate the evils we could face in the future, encourages actions here and now, and leaves us less inclined to remain detached from our all-too-possible fate.

I would say the movie's purpose is not to show the world as it might be, but rather to warn us what it could become, and show that love for one another can eclipse even the darkest hate that life might bring us.

By showing the depths to which society can depreciate, we feel compelled to take action now, to confront the threat of dehumanizing each other with racism, which is the dark root of ethnic cleansing, a systematic process of depopulating a region based on its ethnic makeup.

Dismantling the Children of Men world before it comes becomes an moral imperative. If we tolerate the rise of an oppressive government, we're collectively guilty--ultimately we will all pay consequences.

In the end, the movie sends morally uplifting messaging in its embrace of hope for the human race, representing the return of child-birth and -rearing to the world. There is hope, even in the depravity of the future world created in Children of Men.

One of my initial reactions to Children of Men was that I should prepare for the worst case scenario laid out in the movie--a sort of reaction similar to that motivating builders of bomb shelters. Yet before too long I realized I couldn't hide from such a world, were it to come true. Who can remain preserved indefinitely in a cocoon of safety when a civilization starts to unravel? No one is safe, not even the Omega Man. We all get bitten.

At a certain point, it matters little to ordinary citizens whether by society had broken down through neglect, Nazi-like totalitarianism or simply fanaticism like that of the Khmer Rouge. Eventually all the citizenry suffers regardless of their status within the State.

The more I thought about the plausibility of massive deportations, the less plausible I imagined the Children of Men to be in the United States, which removed some of the movie's plausibility and thus it's impact. Still, who's to say what's possible, considering the current trend towards government abuse of authority, extralegality, and militarism, which coupled with some economic catastrophe, pandemic, and/or acts of terror could bring such a world much closer.

Other Sources

A 2007 documentary titled "Children of Men; Visions of the Future" is available; I plan to see it as well.


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