Loss of Civil Liberties Since 9/11

One thought on “Loss of Civil Liberties Since 9/11”

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  aft

  February 11, 2008 at 1:00 pm

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  I was reading this by another Permaculture founder (Holmgren this time). And the more I read about them, the more I’m impressed with their insightful analysis of problems and also how they think with a positive spin while still being realists. In this case solutions will have the barriers you cite:
  Adam Grubb from Energy Bulletin interviews David Holmgren, co-originator of Permaculture, on the future of agriculture, oil peak and how an energy descent culture might look

  Whether these solutions actually spread under a label of permaculture or not is less significant than their spread itself. But the impediments are in many different forms. We can see in the global economy at the moment with the established powers in corporations, that are struggling to position themselves as to how to deal with the energy descent. Now that may not take the form of a corporate plan worked out in the boardroom, but I think somehow, there’s an understanding in some circles that the current game is a short lived one. A lot of the big forces that are driving world politics and the global economy at the moment are very much reflecting energy descent. Essentially the global war on terrorism — as Donald Rumsfeld said, `the war that will never end in our lifetimes — is in fact their version of how to deal with energy descent. They’re trying to gather all the key productive zones under their complete control. The idea that the society as a whole is completely ignorant of this is wrong. But it may not express itself in the ways we would expect. If you look at the drift towards fascism that’s everywhere in the world at the moment, that seeks to find blame or causes for unfortunate circumstances as being the responsibility of some other group — that is actually a classic response of established authority when it’s caught with it’s pants down. Whether we describe that as a conscious conspiracy if you like, or whether it’s a natural, organic response to energy descent, is playing out in front of our eyes now. That is actually the biggest threat to the permaculture industry now. We have an opportunity to positively engage with energy descent and to learn and to change as we’ve done in the past.

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