To foster the creation of a local, sustainable economy in the Willits area by partnering with other organizations to watch for opportunities and vulnerabilities, incubate and coordinate projects and facilitate dialog, action and education within our community.

For a start, let me say that I found myself somewhat confused as to whether WELL embraces an isolationist policy that focuses upon further exploiting remaining local resources or seeks to leverage local opportunities for attracting new sources of income from outside the Willits area. My confusion was increased by a recent presentation on economic opportunities that in some way was based on what sounded like the Chinese 5 Element Theory.

To be clear, a local, sustainable economy in the Willits area will either reach out to greater markets or turn inwards towards a subsistence model that will devolve to Medieval standards. A dwindling number of logging operations, a handful of ranches and a few vineyards produce much of what is now traded to the world beyond Willits for its sliver of the contemporary lifestyle.

By contemporary lifestyle I mean a daily existence based upon the interlocking triad of cheap energy, industrial metals and widespread electrical distribution. Currently, Willits is not partnering with any organization providing these, except as a consumer.

As the United States economic bubble continues to shrink, Willits will be challenged as a community to produce enough of value to meet the increasingly inflationary demands of a national policy of money debasement. This is the reality of economic collapse.

You see, the primary raw material in the Willits area was the timber harvested by the Rockefeller oligarchy and that is all but gone. The ranchers that followed occupied vast tracks of land in the effort to make beef production profitable. Compared to the vineyards and orchards of Sonoma and Napa Counties, similar local efforts seem meager at best.

The so-called fall of the Roman Empire resembled more a long term transition to what became known as feudalism than the series of catastrophes commonly presented in fall of the Roman Empire scenarios. As what passed for Roman economic policy debased Roman money, people fled the city of Rome to take up subsistence farming with the large land owners. These evolved into the feudal keeps so familiar to fans of the Middle Ages.

Those living through the transition from American Empire to whatever comes next will witness the birth of new institutions. One remarkable difference between the American Empire and previous empires is our unprecedented urbanization and integration with high technologies that are not land based but based upon the triad I mentioned above.

Unlike ancient Rome, most of the citizens in North America will not be able to return to the land to support their lifestyles. That option does not exist for the vast majority.

Willits is somewhat central to producing medical and recreational marijuana. This situation needs to be put into perspective.

Most of the large grows function as isolated and self-contained operations remarkably independent from local economic conditions. After a successful growing season, most of the product, as well as the profit, leaves the county.

Marijuana is not grown in the mountains because it is optimal for the plant. Marijuana is grown in mountainous Mendocino County because the growing scene there overwhelms local law enforcement.

It is grown by opportunists, in some cases the third generation of opportunists, who take advantage of local conditions and leave with their bounty, investing next to nothing in the local economy.

Can WELL keep the marijuana growers in the area long enough that some of that money gets spent locally? Can WELL develop new markets for local products beyond local borders, establishing contact with retail customers?

It seems odd to me that these issue cannot be found on the WELL agenda. Perhaps that is the source of my confusion.

Buddha’s Example of the Burning House

Bertolt Brecht

Gautama, the Buddha, taught
The wheel of desire on which we are bound,
And bade us
Put off desire, and thus without it
Go into the Nothing that he called Nirvana,

And one day some disciples asked him:

“Master, what is it like, this Nothing?
We all wish to put off desire, as you bade us, but tell us
If this Nothing, into which we go,
Is a kind of oneness with all creation,
As if a man lay in water, limbs at ease, at midday,
Empty of thought, lay lazy in water, or sank into sleep,
Scarce knowing if someone tucked a blanket round him, so deep was he under;
Tell us if it is a pleasant thing, this Nothing, a good thing,
Or if it is simply nothingness, cold, empty, without meaning.”

The Buddha was a long time silent, then shrugged.

“There is no answer to your question.”

But in the evening when they were gone
Buddha sat under the breadfruit tree and gave to the others,
Those who had not asked, the following example:

“Once I saw flames licking the roof of a house,
And when I went to it I saw that there were men inside.
I called to them that the roof was burning.
But they were in no hurry.
One, while the fire singed his very brows,
Asked me what it was like outside, If it was raining still,
And if the wind had stopped, if there was another house nearby
And suchlike things.
I did not answer him and came away.
Truly, my friends, to the indifferent who see no need for change
Have I nothing to say.”

Thus Gautama, the Buddha.

And we too, no more concerned with the arts of patience,
Rather with the arts of impatience, of manifold means to improve man’s lot,
Teach him to lift away his worldly suffering,

We too to those, who, when any day the bombs may fall upon the cities,
Ask us what savings books and Sunday suits will be like in the new society,
To them have we little to say.

(Translated by Arnold Hinchcliffe in The New Reasoner Winter 1957-58 number 3).

I am not even bothering with the distraction of noting the myriad trickle down effects triggered by the wholesale debasement of the dollar. We live during the time of the economic collapse, if not the absolute fall, of the first truly global empire. Macro-economic stability appears trashed world-wide so elegant economic theory can wait until something new emerges, perhaps later in our lifetime.

Remember, during times of hyperinflation, it is a mistake to keep cash overnight. Always buy raw materials and durable goods that you can sell later when you actually need cash.

Raw materials and durable goods innately possess value, make sure you get paid what they are worth. Now that must be the sum total of my opinion regarding the foreseeable future economy.

Reflecting upon the raw materials side of the equation, the environment, reveals more of a horror story than most people can absorb. It seems I possess an unusually large capacity for real life horror compared to most people.

Rather than push you into overload with shear volume, try this single issue. It did it for me.

My December pick for

Environmental Horror Story of the Month

After BP capped their blown out Macondo Project well at the failed Blowout Preventer (BOP) the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) disaster ground zero continues to evolve. Even people inside the oil industry may have little appreciation of the shear scale of the drilling operations in the GOM and their ultimate effect upon the New Madrid Seismic Zone.

It now appears evident that the capping did not work. I have seen it compared to trying to use super-glue on a greasy surface.

So the initial gusher has only been temporarily plugged, mostly. The plug is disintegrating. As bad as it was before, expect it to get at least that bad again. Probably, it will get much worse.

Numerous leaks and seeps within five to ten square miles of the Macondo Project increased their aggregate outflow. The leaks and seeps themselves worsen the structural integrity of the sea floor in the GOM by eroding the channels they pass through.

The Macondo Project drilled in an area of the sea floor already weakened by a salt dome. That may well have contributed to the failure of the BOP.

The drilling and subsequent explosion further weakened the sea floor, especially in the area of the well head itself. No known technology can repair this damage.

Plugging the well increased the back pressure throughout an already fractured substructure. Hydrocarbons leak out in greater volume as time progresses.

Videos from the GOM sea floor now regularly show evidence of new failures in the cap. All around the Macondo Project site evidence of increased seepage and leakage continuously emerges.

Make no mistake, we only heard about this individual oil industry disaster due to its unprecedented scale. In the future, they will both get worse and routine enough to no longer be news worthy. Just as they were in the recent past.

An uptick in seismic activity has been noted in the region and its close proximity to the New Madrid Seismic Zone gives prudent people pause to consider. In this context, the loss of the New Orleans oyster industry and even the entire GOM tourist industry pales in comparison.

Of course, no one in government or mainstream media seems willing to connect the dots for the general public. Who knows what damage that would do to re-election prospects or advertising revenue?

IMHO, as well as in the opinion of those who know more than me, these issues pale in comparison as well. Indeed, this is an issue that the whole world should appraise.

Little chance of that though. United States posturing over territorial waters, lucrative economic trade zones and bogus security claims will insure it.

The government and industry appear in bed to protect their mutual vested interests. No one is looking out for you.

No one is looking out for the inhabitants of the planet as a whole. Just one grossly destructive system in place, relentlessly grinding towards eliminating the very possibility of its own existence while mindlessly seeking its own gratifications and sucking everyone into its insatiable maw.

Picture of a Real Life Monster

Do not expect to see much about this in domestic mainstream media. None the less, this is real and the people who know make it available, if you look for it.

If you need more gory details go to The Market Oracle, an UK blog. It recently published an article by Dr. Tom Termotto, National Coordinator, Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference (International Citizens’ Initiative), Tallahassee, FL, complete with multiple images and many links.

A Gulf of Mexico disaster and we have to read about it on an UK blog. Go figure.

Of course this news alone may trigger catastrophic events much less than the actual inevitable results of the destruction of the integrity of the GOM sea floor. The impending release of unimaginable volumes of hydrocarbons into the 7 Seas places the entire human race in a Predicament of Impending Doom (PID).

Reality enough? Ready to get distracted by a tabletop game, yet?

The conditions for the next United States Civil War were created by the victors of the first United States Civil War, the corporate elite and their political agents. At issue are rights established with The Declaration Of Independence.

The Declaration Of Independence is truly a magnificent document much superior to the United States Constitution, a severely flawed compromise in comparison that ultimately legalized the corporate take-over of the United States Of America. The key phrase of The Declaration Of Independence is

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,
and to institute new Government”

“These ends,” being, of course, “to secure these rights,” which are “endowed by their Creator,” making them “certain unalienable Rights, among these being Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It was specifically stated

“That, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The government established with respect to The Declaration Of Independence was terminated in 1861 when 11 states exercised their rights, declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America, also known as “the Confederacy“. Both Buchanan’s outgoing administration and Lincoln’s incoming administration rejected the legality of secession, considering it rebellion.

Rebellion is only possible in the face of the arbitrary will of another person.

Slavery consists of being “subject to the incessant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man.”

~ John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government

The rejection of the legality of secession was also the rejection of the legality of The Declaration Of Independence. The first Civil War was foremost a war to unite the states under a single government controlled by the corporate elite with the ending of slavery a political weapon used more to keep Great Britain out of it than any high and mighty purpose.

The African-American slaves were “freed” to live under the corporate controlled government instituted in defiance of The Declaration Of Independence. Previously, the United States government had existed De jure and since then it has existed De facto.

Without the freedom to exercise the Right to alter government or abolish it and institute a new one, everyone finds themselves to be “subject to the incessant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man.” Without the freedom to exercise the Right to alter government or abolish it and institute a new one, everyone finds themselves to be a De facto slave.

The De facto government of The United States Of America passed laws legitimizing itself. The De facto government of The United States Of America has been on a global rampage ever since.

1867

Midway annexed

1890

Wounded Knee Massacre

United States Census Bureau announced the disappearance of a contiguous frontier line for the first time in United States history

1893

The Kingdom of Hawaii was under the rule of a sugar plantation cartel, which in 1887, with the full support of the United States Of America, instituted a constitution that eliminated  the possibility of native Hawaiian self-government.

This constitution became known as the “Bayonet Constitution” because it was backed with the overt threat of military action, “gave all Americans and Europeans, even non-citizens, the right to vote” while denying it to the majority population.

The author of the Bayonet Constitution was attorney Lorrin Thurston, an agent of the sugar cartel. Thurston imposed himself on the Hawaiian government as its interior minister then used that position to plot the overthrow of the kingdom, which was consummated in January 1893.

1898

Hawaii annexed

1899

After smashing the forces of Spain the United States of America annexed Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. This meant fighting the Republic of the Philippines, a conflict that became a three-year-long counter-insurgency war.

1900

American Samoa annexed

1903

“Big Stick” diplomacy begins

U.S. instigated “uprising” separates Panama from Columbia and then Panama leases canal zone to U.S.

1917

U.S. declares war against Germany

Virgin Islands annexed

1941

U.S. declares war against Japan

1947

Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, captured from Japan, administered by U.S.

1948

NATO formed, the Cold War begins and the Bill of Rights severely compromised to combat the “Communist Menace”

1950

Korean War divides country and installs U.S. puppet government in power to this day

1954-1962

Congress terminates more than 60 Native American tribes as political units

1955-1975

Vietnam War divides country and installs U.S. puppet government

1959

Hawaii admitted as a state to escape international pressure to restore Hawaiian autonomy

1980

“War on Drugs” begins, erodes Bill of Rights, jails 1/5 of young African-American men and continues to this day

1991

Gulf War is first U.S. reduction of a regional power

2001

“War on Terror” begins, negates the Bill of Rights and continues to this day

invasion of Afghanistan

2003

invasion of Iraq

2008

Global financial crisis and recession as working people (producers) are forced to bail out corrupt bankers and their government enablers (expropriators)

There are many other examples and I invite you to list yours in the comments. The key elements remain the same in example after example as resources are stolen, key individuals deceived and entire peoples are first economically debased and then killed off by introduced diseases, malnutrition, starvation and finally military action as a coup de grace.

“What’s happening in my country is also happening in your country…. You don’t even know it, but you’re the Indians of the 21^st Century, and that’s very sad.”

~ Russell Means, Indian Activist and Facilitator of the newly created Independent Republic of Lakota

The pattern set by the post-1861 De facto United States government regarding its treatment of indigenous North American people was

• repeated around the world by the United States government and continues to this day
• studied and admired by Adolf Hitler who repeated the pattern in his treatment of Gypsies, Jews and intellectuals
• repeated by Zionist Israelis in their treatment of the Palestinians

and is now being repeated upon the domestic population of the United States Of America.

So what is to be done?

You could quit. Quit being complicit to everything wrong that is going on.

Quit going along with it all. Simply stop helping it all happen, wherever you can.

Object to what is going on. Stop funding the system.

Stop working for psychopaths. Quit your jobs and go do something else to keep yourself alive.

Go do anything else. Just do not keep supporting the system.

Your life will become more challenging when you face up to your true responsibilities in life. Your life will also become immensely more satisfying.

“Each gesture of this sort, taken individually, seems as evanescent as a snowflake. But an avalanche begins as nothing more than a particularly large gathering of individual snowflakes that somehow found their way to the high ground.”

- William Norman Grigg February 26, 2010

The Next Civil War will be between producers, those who work to earn their own way and prosper through their own efforts, and expropriators, those who survive by taking from others with governments as their agents.

You do not want to be in the middle of this!

Already many United States citizens view government administrations that enrich their business cronies at citizen expense not as opponents but as enemies. The escalation of entitlements is not sustainable and when it inevitably ends so will any remaining public support.

Until that time, productive people who take responsibility for their own lives and well-being are seeing the fruits of their labor taken from them along with their independence, freedom and rights, endowed by their Creator, certain unalienable Rights, among these being Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Being enmeshed in the system increases your risk of becoming a victim. Do not be a victim.

FNORD

For anyone without income, a home or even hope, the collapse has already happened. The number of those people on the ropes certainly seems to be increasing daily.

On the other hand, in this personal sense, you may not experience collapse during your lifetime. Of course that is not what the doom and gloomers say.

I used to be a doom and gloomer, an authentic doomsday freak pointing out the failures of our system and its imminent collapse. I’ve learned to temper my fears simply by living long enough.

However, in a larger more empirical sense, we may ask what exactly constitutes a societal collapse. Here we are asking about the nature of the collapse of the Euro-American Empire indicated by the ongoing disintegration of its global hegemony.

If you are someone who does not want to read social criticism, stop now.

If you are worried about you head exploding when you are presented with new information, stop now.

OK, now that I know you are willing to deal with this, I will continue.

As a first step, we have to acknowledge certain conclusions by Karl Marx. I know he is widely disparaged in the mainstream media, at community colleges nationwide and in state universities structured to provide occupational training in technical fields.

Rest assured, at elite institutions training the nest generation of leaders Karl Marx is read and discussed. The children of the hegemonic elite destined to inherit the reigns of power over 99.5% of the rest us know and study his work.

Well, they do if they actually did the work and didn’t just have their families purchase their degrees with another endowment. But that is another issue.

Sure, Karl Marx gets a bad name because of the abuses of the word ‘communist‘ by authoritarian megalomaniacs. To be honest, the world has never seen an authentic communist system in operation.

Part of the problem is that in the day and age of Karl Marx communication was a problem for those living in rural areas. Most people living today cannot imagine the isolation experienced by those living outside of city limits.

Karl Marx proposed an urban workers’ vanguard party to represent those in the hinter lands. This idea of a vanguard party has been much abused by totalitarian regimes around the world that bear little resemblance to his proposed communal life.

He was spot on in exposing the fatal flaw in capitalism. Bear in mind that Karl Marx thought capitalism was a good thing at the time and a step in the right direction away from the manorial serfdom that was the previous norm.

Anyway, capitalism depends upon continuous growth.

The capitalistic system just does not function as a steady state model.

Growth is required to pay off the interest charged on the debt incurred during the capitalization of industry and business. Without growth, only enough profit is made to pay off the principle.

Karl Marx realized that the earth is finite and possesses limited non-renewable resources. Once capitalism went world-wide it was destined to collapse.

In the time of Karl Marx, world-wide pretty much meant Europe in the predominant narrow ethnocentric view. And there were those of his (and later) generations who just couldn’t wait.

Just like the early Christians who grew impatient with God’s promise to destroy the world and started setting fires to help God out, early adopters of the Communist Manifesto perceived revolution as the fast track to post-capitalism.

That turned out badly for all concerned, both Christians and communists.

Karl Marx merely pointed out that given the requirements of capitalism regarding growth, eventually it would hit the limits of growth. With this realization he predicted the certain collapse of capitalism and projected forward from there, betting on human intelligence to come up with something better.

Of course, he thought he was as smart as anyone and perhaps he was. Anyway, communism was merely his projection into the unknowable future and the actual shape of things to come is totally up for grabs.

It is understandable that capitalists the world over took offense. This became the primary driver for political acrimony and national conflict ever since, at least as far as the general public was concerned.

Anyway, capitalism did hit the wall in the early 1970s. China, the last big holdout market, joined in capitalist expansion and left capitalism with no place else to grow.

A whole slew of events indicate the truth in this. Not only did we see the abandonment of the gold standard in the U.S. and the free floating of the U.S. dollar but we also saw the beginning of the first giant debt bubbles.

I first ran away to the mountains in the 1970s believing the collapse was in motion. I was right about that but wrong about the timing regarding my personal situation in the U.S.

The capitalistic hegemons turned to their own populations and began capitalistically monetizing every aspect of personal life, expanding into spheres of influence long felt to be intrinsically off limits. They did this with the full support of governments indebted to their central banks.

The FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sector of the economy merged to form the financial services industry once government regulations that previously prevented this were abandoned. We now live in the era when all biopolitical production falls under capitalist control through the monetization of the once common property of social networks.

Without real growth, growth that is only possible through capitalist expansion into new markets, debt accumulates with no possibility of ever being paid off. The ballooning consumer debt, commercial debt and government debt are merely symptoms of the current crisis of capitalism.

The global debt crisis is a symptom of capitalism reaching the limits of growth.

This largely financial crisis will predictably cause a great deal of needless pain, suffering and death but all by itself is something that the human race as a whole can overcome. History is full of examples of empires falling in part due to the debasement of their currency by corrupt politicians and their financial handlers yet people survived to prosper again.

However, in the effort to extract greater profits by depressing the price of labor through population overshoot to produce a surplus supply of labor, other limits have been quickly approached. Paid labor, after all, originated after the population collapsed during the Great Plague and is part of the foundation of capitalism itself.

History indicates that the loss of productive farm land through extractive agricultural methods and the resulting decrease in productivity, coupled with erosion, also contributed to the collapse of empires. Despite so-called advances in food production, decreasing food value and exploding populations drive us towards a Malthusian Catastrophe of global proportions.

The so-called advances in food production have literally been fueled by the extravagant use of non-renewable hydrocarbons. Not only that, but civilization itself, especially as we have experienced it, has been literally fueled by the extravagant use of non-renewable hydrocarbons.

The remaining hydrocarbon reserves are being used by the global hegemonic elite to maintain their positions of privilege and power rather than used to enable a transition to another form of civilization. The U.S. armed forces is the largest user of non-renewable hydrocarbons and it is a safe bet that they will use the last of the extractable reserves maintaining the privilege and power of the global hegemonic elite.

This greatly complicates things.

Empires have fallen due to financial collapse and agricultural collapse but none have faced the exhaustion of non-renewable hydrocarbons. This evokes the specter of peak oil.

All the statistics surrounding peak oil originate from within the oil industry itself. We simply cannot know if peak oil is real or simply a clever ploy to increase profits.

In any event, either actual or engineered scarcity will drive huge profits even higher until it is no longer economically viable to extract hydrocarbons from the earth. People just are not prepared for that and, in fact, the global hegemonic elite works against even the possibility of energy independence.

Then there is the issue of climate change as it seems no longer politically correct to refer to global warming. In the end it does not matter if it was caused by people or not because it is happening and the hegemonic elite refuse to risk their privilege and power to enable meaningful change.

Population overshoot, financial collapse, agricultural collapse, exhaustion of non-renewable hydrocarbons, climate change and the machinations of the global power structure to stay in power creates an environment ripe for rampant deadly new diseases. The next Great Plague is now overdue and the ability to globally respond to it with adequate measures simply degrades by the hour.

Plastic pollution, acidification of the oceans and the collapse of one fishery after another are all further symptoms of an impending global collapse of Biblical proportions. This situation is real and very few are even thinking about preparing for it.

Think about preparing for collapse now.

Do you really want to be dependent on society as it is currently structured?

It seems to me that in order to prepare, concerned people need to be reducing dependence upon the status quo. This is becoming increasingly difficult to do because every effort to disengage from the system will be perceived by the system as an act of rebellion, criminal and terroristic.

I believe some people will survive and a few will continue to live relatively well. But to be able to do so will involve becoming responsible for all aspects of your own life.

It may well be that it will be only the minority who actually does the work to prepare will become the few who survive. And eventually, as the facts of the case become irrefutable and obvious to many more people, the remaining carrying capacity of the planet will not support those who start too late.

As long as the system prevails, you will have access to the Internet. The Internet offers more possibilities for creating income independent of mainstream employment than any brick and mortar opportunity in the world.

Perhaps you should be thinking about creating your own Internet business sooner rather that later. Then you will have a measure of control over timing the collapse, at least as far as your personal life is concerned.

What do you think?