There is this ridiculous notion in bioengineering that we can somehow manage to “tweak” the natural world even better then it already is, through technology and science, for human use of course.

This video series reveals what plans they have for Earth — FrankenForests where natural biology is a thing of the past.

Argentina has a tax rate of 65%, which causes a great many Argentines to engage in cash transactions.  This has spawned a huge crime wave of robbers who are engaged in “liberating” the cash people are carrying around.

With nearly 5,000 victims in the first six months of 2010, “withdrawal robberies” are a huge crime wave in Argentina.

Robbers will place spotters in banks to watch for potential victims making large cash withdrawals. Upon leaving the bank, the spotter will signal the robbers of who’s got the cash.  What follows is predictable, including assault and murder.

Argentines risking all to carry huge wads of cash

Unfortunately, the article doesn’t convey the general distrust Argentinians have for their banking system — or their government.  The author alleges “Transferring such money electronically would solve the problem in an instant” — however, this is not true.  Banks all over the world create huge paper trails of every transaction, itself a rather major problem, especially in fascist countries.

Argentina suffered a pretty severe economic meltdown in the recent past — one reason why “paying cash” is still preferred by so many — and as a way to avoid the ever-present taxation.

America’s economic future will rival Argentina (if it doesn’t already), as the global depression deepens even further (view Max Keiser, On The Edge:

“We’re getting closer to the true nature of the debts, ten of trillions of dollars as the deflationary spiral enters it’s fourth year and the global economy gets swallowed up in what looks to be the biggest, worst, ugliest, global depression, ever.”

Over 500 US banks are expected to collapse yet (last year, the number was 1,000 and a great many did).

And here’s a real bone for you: 11.2 million jobs already lost.

I don’t spend as much time documenting the economic collapse as others do, but the evidence is there.

Collapse can be spelled many different ways I suppose, depending on your personal perspective.  But in the end, it’s all the same and you’re still left with finding a solution.

[Readers letters in response to the silence I’d mentioned - Admin]

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John,

You said things were quiet out here… just writing a note to tell you how much your writings mean to me.  They are like a slap in the face of complacency, a warning that continues to haunt me as I go about the daily battles we call living.  I find so much truth in what you write and I constantly refer your website to others.

We live in perilous times.  As you’ve pointed out, in your neck of the woods, the struggle is obvious.  People are trapped in their circumstances with little or no refuge.  Debt weighs heavy on most.  Many are forced into servitude via underwater mortgages.  The government continues to be unresponsive - waging illegal wars against people we have no real beef with - simply to create a need for further military spending - a never ending cycle.  And the government barely blinks at the debt that grows like an ominous tidal wave ready to sweep everything in front of it away.

Their solutions to their own debt?  Cutting SSec and Medicare, raising the age of eligibility, etc., to pay for the wars and the military/security complex it created.  Citizens be damned… seniors go to hell. Even though they’ve paid all of their lives into these funds, the government has raided them for years and simply issued IOUs to spend on their wars.  And as expected, the government has not interest or intention in paying back what it borrowed.

And state and local governments increasingly remind me of failed states…  the very thing our government fears in third world countries is happening in state after state.  And beyond that, we have local governments failing to realize the stress everyone is under - raising taxes as though there is some hidden band of gold the average man can tap.

In Kansas, our property taxes fund local governments and schools.  Local government coffers rise when property values rise - automatically - the government simply assesses more taxes based on its own estimates of property values.  But now that property values have fallen or failed to rise - according to the government itself, so what is the response?  You guessed it:  local government is raising the rate of taxes (mil levies) to compensate.  So while people are losing jobs, their assets as measured by the stock market and their real estate holdings plummet, these governments are forcing new taxes on people.  In Kansas, the state even raised the sales tax by a percent.  This tax applies to food and medicine - talk about immorality!!!  And this tax is being used to fund highways - primarily to provide “corridors” for large soot-spewing trucks.  (The promise - from the governor’s lips - is that this spending will generate “tens of thousands of jobs” - a total lie).  Taxing people while both their assets and income are falling is a recipe for social unrest.  The breaking point is coming…

What will generate this breaking point is anyone’s guess.  I believe this is what is behind the drive to create the “national security” state.  It is why an increasing amount of our tax dollars are being used to spy on ourselves.  I’m sure you, like me, already know what your doing.  We don’t need the government spying on us to tell us what we’re doing.  Something else is afoot…

The government knows peak oil is ahead.  It knows that time is running out on its fiat currency being the world’s reserve currency.  And when the shelves run dry and food disappears, their is bound to be unrest if not outright rebellion.

Call it the next phase of America - the “warlord” phase.  Food will buy power.  A new feudalism is coming.

What are my efforts being directed towards? The next key for me is water.  I plan to build a large pond on the north side of my property.  I also plan to replace the shingle roof on my garage with a metal roof so that I can capture rainwater near my house.  The metal roof is necessary to make it potable.  And hopefully I can eventually get alternative power on my roofs… including wind power.  This and learning to grow my own food and hunt are my past times now.  But all of this takes time and money, and I am still paying a mortgage.

I was not born into wealth and my parents are retired and will leave this world with only the shirts off their back.  No inheritance for me….  So be it.  We all are going down a path towards oblivion.  And the world holds hands as it approaches the cliff…..

logrithmic

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Dear SurvivalAcres Blogger,

I am writing to thank you for a most wonderful, terrifying, accurate, and prognostic Blog which has kept me almost singularly from going into denial. There are other news blogs which list what’s happening in the collapse of civilization, but none that are as personal as yours. You have given us all your heart and your friendship, and written your truths, which I agree with almost 100% in a very brave manner. Actually you have probably risked your life doing so. I know, I have a website and I have been targeted. It takes a very strong conscience to keep going, and I have felt less alone in the world because of your writings.

Because I paid practically no taxes to the mafiagov in my whole life, I personally don’t feel too rooted to the usa. I have lived in latin america for 20 years and am headed towards my elder years.  Because we, my partner and I feel we are too close to the usa, we are planning to move far far away, in hopes that where we move to will see less violence and starvation, and a place to keep writing from and be safer. I don’t kid myself as to the seriousness of the world ecology, I just would rather be one of the last people to go down. We have found a great place, and I am writing to tell you that I want to invite you, or at least get to know you. You are a person that I would want to associate with as everything perishes, because of your capacity for mourning and  your sense of outrage.

Grace

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey John,

I sent another thank you for the effort you put into the site / blog.

I also thought I would send a quick note to let you know that I’m still out here checking the site daily and working my ass off in preparation of detaching from the matrix the best I can.

I’m fairly certain I’m not the only reader out here in the same, or similar position.

Like I mentioned in our previous exchange I have a near-term date when our current project delivers, to be out, done, and be finished, then I begin a mission to live a simpler life. I took a 70 hour permaculture design course last year; which was very positive and inspiring, in spite of the grave situation we all face. Last fall I took a trip to Europe and spent a few days at an Eco-village called Tori Superori in northern Italy.

http://www.torri-superiore.org/index.php?s=home&p=benvenuto&l=en

That was an awesome experience (especially after visiting a friend in the west bank of Israel and seeing the horror show that is Hebron first hand). Anyway, there are people out there doing good work and I hope to connect with them once I’m free from this job.  I recently turned 40, and I realize I’ve spent so much of that time indoors. I’m going to try my best to flip that and spend the next 40 outside.

I don’t really have a plan yet, just a date of departure. Vermont still calls. Wandering to the national parks by bicycle sounds good. Maybe some more classes at the tracker school, which is like an outdoorsman’s boot camp for city boys like me. It’s totally wide open.  I’m liquid. Once my crap is in storage I’m totally mobile and will take the opportunity to  hunt for a place or community in which to plant and grow that food forest.

I’ll admit it, it’s intimidating. And sometimes I feel very behind the curve. I read about you building the root celler and all the other projects you’ve mentioned and I think… “fuck, I have to get my act together, I’m late to the long term prep party.”

And I know it’s more than trying to prepare. It’s the challenge to develop a lifestyle that is fulfilling and beneficial to life on this planet; as opposed to our culture’s self-destructive  method of existing.

Anyway, It’s late I’m still at the slave-hole office, thanks again.

Cheers,

Anonymous

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Amended to include this link, A World In Collapse

Alex Doherty: You have written that: “To be fully alive today is to live with anguish, not for one’s own condition in the world but for the condition of the world, for a world that is in collapse.” Even amongst environmentalists it is rare to describe our situation in such apocalyptic terms. Why do you think it is justified to describe the world as collapsing?

Robert Jensen: Take a look at any measure of the fundamental health of the planetary ecosystem on which we are dependent: topsoil loss, chemical contamination of soil and water, species extinction and reduction in biodiversity, the state of the world’s oceans, unmanageable toxic waste problems, and climate change. Take a look at the data, and the news is bad on every front.

And all of this is in the context of the dramatic decline coming in the highly concentrated energy available from oil and natural gas, and the increased climate disruption that will come if we keep burning the still-abundant coal reserves. There are no replacement fuels on the horizon that will allow a smooth transition. These ecological realities will play out in a world structured by a system of nation-states rooted in the grotesque inequality resulting from imperialism and capitalism, all of which is eroding what is left of our collective humanity. “Collapsing” seems like a reasonable description of the world.

That doesn’t mean there’s a cataclysmic end point coming soon, but this is an apocalyptic moment. The word “apocalypse” does not mean “end.” It comes from a Greek word that means “uncovering” or “lifting the veil.” This is an apocalyptic moment because we need to lift the veil and have the courage to look at the world honestly.

I suggest everyone read the full article on the link above - Admin.

Some pictures here on the severe damage in New Zealand by the earthquake.  It’s amazing how few people were hurt.  Unlike Haiti, the buildings were considerably stronger.

I always find it interesting how unbelievably fast your world can fall apart.  The Southeast Asian tsunami wiped out the lives and livelihoods of tens of thousands of people in mere seconds.  Earthquakes are even faster.  The Australian brush fires only took a few minutes longer.  Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, forest fires - it all can happen pretty quick.

There have been dozens of mudslides and landslides killing thousands of people all over the world this year alone.  We don’t often connect the “why” to the root causes of many of these events, but they all trace directly to climate change (with the only exception being earthquakes and there is some scientific discussion that some of these are actually being caused by the uplifting of the continents as the ice melts).

There is a radical theory that the Earth is actually expanding and this is the cause for the earth movements we experience.  I’d never heard of this before this year, geology was a great class I took in college (I got an “A”), but that didn’t qualify me for squat. Plate tectonics of course, is the dominant theory to this day. More major quakes are expected.

Group Attacks Googles Privacy

Also reread my entry, Society Not Ready For Technology for more on what Schmidt and Google are really all about.

I’ve posted the Survival Acres Newsletter back issues number issue #30 through #61 to the blog, found on the right hand column here (scroll down).

There are now Newsletter issues dating from November 2009 - May 2010 online.  These were the “fillers” while this blog was idle — there is a lot there.

Missing from here on the blog still are issues #1 (August 2009) thru #29 (November 2009) — but to be honest, I don’t know if anybody wants these and / or I’m wasting my time.

You’re awfully quiet out there.  There is a near-total silence now (feedback), so I don’t know if your shocked, awed, disgusted, dead or dying.   I’m still here, beating my fists against the air, one day I hope to connect with something solid before it’s too late for all of us.

From the Financial Times: Fear Grows Over Global Food Supply

Riots and protests, and a two year Russian ban on exports.

The situation in Niger continues to worsen dramatically, as flooding wipes out all remaining food stocks, leaving over 200,000 homeless.

Niger has been particularly hard hit in recent years, with oil spills dwarfing the Gulf of Mexico disaster many times over.

The global food situation is worsening dramatically — and very, very rapidly.

I found this over on Desdemona Despair today, but couldn’t comment properly (too long).

This is an oddball article, that you should read first before my commentary: If the world is going to hell, why are humans doing so well?

This perspective depends on your view of “better”.  More people starve now then at any time in human history. More people are enslaved now (real slaves, not just wage slavery, also now at global levels) then at any time in human history (in excess of 20,000,000 real slaves are reported by human rights organizations, this is far more then at any other time in human history).

Life expectancy has risen - in some areas, but not for all. Human populations levels have massively increased — but not without a terrifying price in terms of human oppression, disease outbreaks, servitude and environmental collapse.

The notion alleged in the original article that “human well-being continues to improve” is patently false, based upon a very warped understanding of human existence and the quality of life (and what it now actually takes in terms of effort and labor to simply “exist”).

Various studies have been done by anthropologists and others that demonstrate that we work harder and receive less in terms of quality of life then at any other time in history.

Increased population levels do not mean that we are “better off” at all. Nor does the increased life-span for some groups imply this either.

“The authors, led by geographer Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne of McGill University, offer four hypotheses for this “environmentalist’s paradox”: humans are actually worse off than we think; the ability to grow food trumps all other ecosystem services as far as humans are concerned; technology has allowed us to transcend the environment; and the ill effects of environmental degradation lag its benefits, i.e. the worst is yet to come.”

Indeed it is, the worst is yet to come. Human civilization has collapsed many, many times before, we are no different. We have however, made this scenario and likelihood significantly worse then any other former human civilization, due to our global degradation and depletion of the world’s environment and natural resources. Coupled with a gigantic overshoot in human population, there can only be one possible outcome.

It’s a very odd article, a feel-good “don’t worry right now” with some weird contradictions, like this:

“A prime example is cities—both a maw of human consumption and a way to minimize the human footprint on the planet.”

Cites are in no way a “way to minimize the human footprint”, they are the exact OPPOSITE. Producing zero resources themselves, they are black holes in which energy and materials and raw resources are voraciously consumed at ever-increasing rates.

Minimizing human-footprint would actually require the demolishing of cities and a return to localized living — which is the only sustainable method of living that exists — anywhere in the world.  The city requires global / national and mega-regional inputs — a truly unsustainable existence, along with very high population levels and density.

As I said, a weird article with outrageous assumptions that defy common sense:

“First off, as far as anyone who has studied the issue can tell, despite vast differences, on the whole, humanity has never been better.”

This is yet another patently false statement. Humanity is significantly worse off now then at any other time in human history (despite our expansion and growth). Every human on the planet is now imperiled due to human-activity and the dire consequences this causes.  Future humans are even worse off as we edge constantly closer to the precipice.

The author is unread apparently, the Anthropocene is a era of human-caused disasters and suffering, one which can only be championed as “the best it’s ever been” if you simply ignore our cause and effects at the expense of everything else, even ourselves.

(Reuters) - The U.S. government will have unmanned surveillance aircraft monitoring the whole southwest border with Mexico from September 1, as it ramps up border security in this election year, a top official said on Monday. U.S. drones to watch entire Mexico border from September 1