Dismantle Civilisation

One aspect of the destruction of civilization that is often overlooked is sexuality. We all know that society necessitates an ownership of our genitals. What we do, how we feel, and how express our desire is dictated by the culture that we live in. But is sexuality designed to be dictated by norms? More specifically, are we supposed to express our sexuality in the same way as our neighbors?

Dismantling civilzation means that we must find a way t0 exist in an equal and beautiful paradigm. We know that the way we live now lends itself to domination, patriarchy, and capitalism. We need to learn how to be explicitly free and unequivocally loving.  Everyone has a different method of loving, and the problem is that no one talks about it. The whole concept of a “norm” means that there is a right way, a wrong way, and everything in between.

What would happen if there was no norm? If we decided for ourselves how we would love each other and make love to each other? Of course we do what we want now, regardless of what others think, but it is very secretive and private. Perhaps there is a medium in which we could decide that no matter what someone chooses as sexuality, it is still wonderful and perfect. We are still very far away from that now. Those who support it are labeled “liberals” while those that oppose it are labeled “conservatives.” Why does there have to be a whole theology of thought behind these two views? And more importantly, why does there have to be only two views? Why can’t there be one thousand trickling into a digestible format known as a dichotomy?

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This is not a video about polar bears, really, although if you just want to watch a video about polar bears, then feel free to watch this anyway. The difference is, there is something more going on here – a simple but potentially effective message about you.

Why haven’t you fought back yet?

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Manipulation, propaganda, imagery & PR wizardry

by Andrew Hughes, at Global Research.

After 8 years of the Bush-Cheney nightmare during which we saw the wanton destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the cynical negation of centuries of Law designed to protect the most basic human rights and a foreign policy worthy of Genghis Khan, there came along the “Great Black Hope” in the persona of Barack Obama. The collective world consciousness turned uncritically to what was presented as a new era for peace, change and trust in Government.

Never before had one witnessed such an accomplished use of manipulation, propaganda, imagery and public relations wizardry to sell the public a man who was to take the baton from Bush and run with it in the race to destroy the economy, the rights of the people and help birth a nation totally controlled by those who have always lurked in the shadows of power. “Change” was promised and was delivered in the form of a deepening of the already Dystopic nightmare.

Promises were broken with no apology, the same creative legalese that infested the Bush administration, in the form of John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez, was again used to deny justice to the inmates of Guantanamo, It was used to justify more torture, more destruction of the Constitution and more illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens.

The President that extended the hand of peace to the Muslim world has murdered hundreds of Pakistani men, women and children. The President who promised accountability in Government has filled his staff with lobbyists, banksters and warmongers. His Attorney General refuses to prosecute some of the worst war crimes committed in modern history and continues to give legal cover to criminals who tortured with impunity.

The country has been further bankrupted by the continuing theft of taxpayer money as the Wall St. campaign donors receive their quid pro quo. Obama has stood by idly as Bernancke states that the private Federal Reserve is not answerable to either Congress of the American public. The U.S. taxpayer is now on the hook for $14.3 Trillion and rising. Foreclosures and unemployment are rising with no meaningful efforts by the administration to alleviate the symptoms, never mind the cause. The new image of America is one of tent cities, lengthening soup kitchen lines, sherrifs evicting countless thousands of young and old from their homes, once prosperous towns descending in to an eerie stillness and an increasingly disillusioned populace.

The “War on terrorism” has mutated in to a control grid for an increasingly aware population. The foundation for this had already been put in place by Bush with the Patriot Act, Patriot Act 2, Military commissions act and numerous executive orders that strangled what was left of Posse Comitatus and the Constitution.

Homeland Security now defines “Terrorists” as those who believe in the Constitution, the first, second and fourth amendments. Returning veterans are being targeted for a denial of their second amendment rights. A “Terrorist Watchlist” of more than a million and rapidly growing, is being used as the basis for denying citizens the rights to travel and to work.

Obama is now mulling over the idea of indefinite detention without trial for U.S. citizens. This, from a teacher of the Constitution ! Bills are in congress to criminalize free speech on the Internet via the Cyberbullying Act which will make hurting somebody’s feelings a felony. Just like the Patriot Act this will morph in to a criminalization of political free speech and any criticism of the Government.

“Cyberterrorism” is being used as a pretext to bring government regulation to the the last stronghold of unbiased information. Washington has realized that it’s getting harder to get away with their Fascist agenda and are moving to control the field. The populace have become more aware of just what kind of “Change” Obama intended to deliver.

There has been a growing resistance on a state level with several invoking their 9th and 10th Amendment rights in a valiant attempt to stop the Federal Vampire from draining the last drops of blood, the last vestiges of Freedom and Hope.

This is the Dystopic Nightmare that America finds itself in today and each day brings new assaults on Freedom and Sanity. The framework for total control of the citizenry, the economy and the media is being built upon in a relentless aggrandization of Govermental power. Obama sits atop his new Empire still smiling that sickeningly disingenuous smile surrounded by his seasoned courtiers who have worked for decades to bring America in to this new era of the New World Order.

How much will Americans put up with? This New World Order have also poisoned, pillaged and stripmined nature, our communities and practically everything in the name of their profits. We need a complete change.

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The collapse of industrial civilization within the next five to ten
years (perhaps sooner) is inevitable. It is the degree of collapse,
what is destroyed in the collapse, how many people will have to die
in the collapse, and what will survive the collapse that I and many
others are fighting for now. That is what every human being should be
concerned about and nothing less. Pursuing options while not rapidly
disengaging from the current economic paradigm of infinite growth is
the only real issue confronting the entire species. To not do that
will be literally to consign unborn generations and those under 40 to
death or a living hell.

by Lars Schall, Published May 22 2009 by Energy Bulletin

Lars Schall: Mr Ruppert, you’re about to publish a new book. What is the title of this book and what is it all about?

Michael C. Ruppert: A Presidential Energy Policy: Twenty-five Points Addressing the Siamese Twins of Energy and Money is a book addressing what an American President should be doing and saying about energy issues free from ideological, political, or other mental restraints. It is a simple and stark analysis of the world’s current energy picture written for those with only a High School education that quickly and clearly cuts through the nonsense we have been sold about energy, money and growth. It also has wide appeal for planners and leaders (especially local) in all countries. Energy behaves the same way everywhere. German foresight on energy issues — in particular its aggressive implementation of Feed-in-Tariffs — has offered some very positive innovations that I have recommended be adopted by President Obama here in the U.S.

When and through what did you begin to take interest in Peak Oil? Had there been all at once a nightmarish vision like “the Road to the Olduvai Gorge” in front of your eyes?[2]

I was first exposed to the concept of Peak Oil by geologist Dale Allen Pfeiffer shortly after 9-11. I was struck by how simple and clear the actual science was; how easy the issue was to both comprehend and validate using nothing more than basic math and simple logic. It was absolutely a nightmarish vision then (and still is) but it explained so much about geopolitics, macro economics, war and the markets that I jumped into it right away. — We are still on the Road to the Olduvai Gorge and that is precisely what my book seeks to prevent.

Years have gone by since then. Even though major newspapers like the New York Times admit these days that the end of cheap oil is near, they rather avoid to discuss the underlying consequences of Peak Oil. How would you explain those consequences? Isn’t Peak Oil somehow the end of globalization?

Peak Oil is not just the end of globalization. I was saying clearly that globalization was dead five years ago. It was obvious. But Peak Oil is potentially the end of the human race and that outcome is perhaps just a few years away unless the human race essentially throws every ideological sacred cow out the window and starts with a fresh piece of paper. There are around five billion people alive today that were not sustainable before oil came along. There is no combination of alternative energies (nor will there ever be) that can possibly sustain the edifice built by oil. In the industrialized world there are ten calories of hydrocarbon energy involved in the production of every calorie of food. Our soils have been little more than infertile sponges onto which we throw massive amounts of chemicals derived from oil and natural gas.

The most dire consequences may lie in food production, anyway. Agriculture depends a huge deal on oil. At From the Wilderness (FTW) you had the thesis that we are eating fossil fuels. [3] Can you explain those relations a bit?

In our world a farmer drives an oil-powered machine to plow fields. He or she then drives another oil-powered machine to plant seeds. Water for irrigation is — in most cases — pumped by electricity generated by coal, natural gas, and oil. Germany has made great strides in electrical generation through Feed-in-Tariffs which have exploded solar and wind generation but they do not resolve the whole equation. After seeds are planted and irrigated the crops are then sprayed with pesticides (derived from oil) and fertilizers (produced from natural gas). To harvest the crops the farmer then drives another oil-powered machine. Then oil is used to transport the food to processing plants and for subsequent distribution. Food is often wrapped in plastic (also oil) and frequently treated with chemical additives also derived from oil and gas.

Globalization has only compounded the issue by shipping food all over the world (wasting oil) for the sake of profit rather than sustainability. I live in California and can go to a market and find strawberries from Chile while Southern California grows great strawberries. This pattern is the same for most food consumed in industrialized countries. This only happened because cheap labour costs and less-stringent regulation became more important than common sense. Money overcomes logic every time. But just watching globalization end will not solve the problem. As I have said for years, globalization dies with cheap energy. There’s little point in fighting it anymore unless the struggle is in pursuit of a unified energy vision.

The financial mess we’re in: Has it something to do with Peak Oil, too? Is there this systemic crisis because we are heading towards the end of the Age of Oil – and no one is telling the public so?

The current economic collapse is a combination of two things. First, the current global economic paradigm — governed by fractional reserve banking, fiat currency, and compound interest (debtbased growth) — is inherently and by definition a pyramid scheme. Money is useless without energy. One cannot eat a dollar bill or crumble it up and throw it in his gas tank. Each of the trillions of dollars created out of thin air since the fall of 2008 is a commitment to expend energy that cannot and will not ever be there. The Laws of Thermodynamics prevent this. I applaud the decision of Chancellor Merkel to resist the temptation to achieve a temporary solution by printing money endlessly. I am German by ancestry. My great grandfather migrated to the U.S. from a small town in Essen called Ruppertsburg at the turn of the last century. German pragmatism and realism on energy has been apparent to me since my first visit to Germany in 2003. It is not perfect and must be improved, but I have seen more clear thinking on the subject in Germany than in any of the 13 countries I have visited. That is actually not as good a thing as it might sound. There can be no “recovery”, no return to growth (which is what the economic paradigm demands), without energy.

Why is this not discussed openly: The dinosaurs of the old paradigm — who are about to pass into extinction — cannot admit this because it would have an immediate effect on the financial markets which are already dying. People would stop buying stock if they understood that a return to growth is impossible. I think, however, that on a more fundamental level the dinosaurs just cannot see their own impending extinction. They are incapable of mental and spiritual evolution which all of our survival depends upon. They cannot adapt. As the global environment changes forever, from the related issues of climate change, energy shortages, and economic collapse all dinosaurs can do is die. That’s what Darwin so clearly proved with regard to all life on this planet. Those species which cannot adapt must go extinct. We see billionaires and dinosaurs disappearing or losing money everywhere. Even Warren Buffet and George Soros are losing money because they cannot grasp that infinite growth is not possible. The term “sustainable growth” is perhaps the greatest oxymoron ever coined and an instant indicator of imminent Darwinian deselection for anyone who uses it. I keep a safe distance from such people.

Mainstream media all over the world is corporate-owned; a dinosaur by definition. In America CNN is owned by Time-Warner; CBS is owned by Viacom; NBC is owned by General Electric, ABC by Disney; the Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp, ad infinitum. All large press outlets sell stock and — far worse — are tied into a global derivatives bubble now estimated at $700 trillion in notional value that not only is collapsing: The Mother of All Bubbles.[4] Telling the truth to the people means that people will stop buying GE, Time Warner, Viacom and Newscorp stock so that is the last thing mainstream media can acknowledge.

Those who produce, edit and report the “news” are corporate citizens rather than human beings. They have chosen to murder their own children to protect their current jobs (the food they receive from an abusive parent). Being of German ancestry I am sensitive to issues about being willfully ignorant (cowardly) in the face of great evil. I am also aware of and grateful for the White Rose and von Stauffenberg and his heroic colleagues. I have felt like these great Germans must have felt for many years now. I still owe a great debt of gratitude to my old friend Andreas von Bülow from Köln[5] who graciously exposed me to authentic German culture. I have lost contact with Andreas and his wife Anne and I pray they are well. Now we find that this blindness is an inherent part of humans in all countries and the one thing that must and will go extinct with the Old Paradigm.[6]

But the dinosaurs are losing their grip. Since the start of the collapse of industrial civilization, corporate-owned media has become something of a joke. “Check the tire pressure on your resume” is about the best advice they can offer. Then they say, “We think we have hit the bottom, so buy stock and don’t pull your retirement out of the markets” while at the same time issuing reports that show that we are nowhere near a bottom and that everything is getting worse. Who can trust such nonsense. There must be a great German word that means idiotic, contradictory and bullshit at the same time. [Kokolores]

The money that is spend in billions and trillions these days will be needed in the struggle with the consequences of Peak Oil – and will be gone. Forever. Doesn’t make that a collapse of industrial society inevitable?

The collapse of industrial civilization within the next five to ten years (perhaps sooner) is inevitable. It is the degree of collapse, what is destroyed in the collapse, how many people will have to die in the collapse, and what will survive the collapse that I and many others are fighting for now. That is what every human being should be concerned about and nothing less. Pursuing options while not rapidly disengaging from the current economic paradigm of infinite growth is the only real issue confronting the entire species. To not do that will be literally to consign unborn generations and those under 40 to death or a living hell.

Mr Ruppert, if we know something for sure about 9/11 it is the fact that the world public was rather misled. Information on TV and in the newspapers was very one-sided and incomplete. What does this tell us about the handling of the situation we are facing now in 2009? And hasn’t 9/11 itself become a major distraction from the collapse of industrial civilization?

Few have done more detailed investigation of the 9-11 attacks than I have. Even though Rubicon is in the Harvard Business Library and has sold around 100,000 copies in two countries, it has never even been acknowledged by my government. 9-11 was a predictable event and it was motivated precisely and solely by Peak Oil and nothing else. I believe I proved that conclusively in Rubicon which has never been challenged; only ignored. It is absolutely too late to go back and seek justice for the crimes of Richard Cheney and George W. Bush. I believe they were counting on that. It would be literally a waste of energy. Oil and natural gas can only be burned or consumed once. The present crisis is so severe that we cannot waste oil, natural gas and the limited energies of human consciousness to go back there.

At the end of Crossing the Rubicon you stated this scenario: “We have to pay for $100-(orhigher) a-barrel oil somehow. Why don’t we just print the money? Anyone who has heard of the damage done by inflation and hyperinflation to those least able to cope with it should think back to Germany’s Weimar Republic in the 1920s.”[7] There is no need for you to rewrite this passage insofar it seems like this recession wants to prove you’re right, don’t you think?

Weimar-style inflation is inevitable in the United States, especially as major economies start to disengage from the dollar. I predicted this at least six years ago. It is only a matter of time. Here is the basic sequence of events I see coming: FDIC insolvency, Treasury default on T-bills and all Treasury notes, the end of the dollar as the global reserve currency, hyperinflation, insolvency and bankruptcy of the Federal Reserve which is a privately-owned bank. That will be followed by the eventual collapse of the United States government. All of these things are inevitable in my opinion and could happen in full in as little as three years. The dinosaurs refuse to accept this because they won’t question a monetary ecosystem which they created and which has allowed them to thrive from the Garden of Eden until now. Those who wish to survive and understand the issue will do whatever they can to disengage from a Titanic that is clearly sinking by building local lifeboats, tailored to their local needs.

Fortunately, there are many things that can be done, independent of government action, and that’s why A Presidential Energy Policy was written.

In February of this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris put out a forecast in which they are predicting an even bigger economic crisis in years to come. According to the IEA, the reason for this is the cancelling of new investments into new drilling projects by the major oil companies. In the case of rising demand in 2010, the oil price could explode, inflation could rise and the result could be that world economic growth would likely come to an end. Let us talk about the infrastructure problem first: Why do you think big oil doesn’t invest anymore in new projects?

All of those projects, whether for deep sea oil or in pursuit of alternative energies were only profitable when oil was at or near $100. All over the world, energy infrastructure is crumbling as a result of collapsed oil prices making it unprofitable to invest in infrastructure or alternatives. A few years ago Robert Hirsch of SAIC wrote a study for the U.S. government warning of the crisis which stated clearly that the time to have started preparing for this was 30 years ago.[8] He examined scenarios in which preparations were begun twenty, ten and zero years before Peak. All scenarios were catastrophic. His observations were only confirmations of warnings issued by Vice Chancellor David Goodstein of Cal Tech which said clearly in his book that it takes thirty years and a lot of money to change an energy infrastructure.[9] Mankind has waited until the last minute and there is no money left. It’s that simple. People have been warning about precisely this moment since 1949 when the great M. King Hubbert laid this landscape out for all to see.[10] There is little or no money left for essential infrastructure investment and the infrastructure cannot be rebuilt under the current economic paradigm. As Dutch economist Martin van Mourek said in 2003, “It may not be profitable to slow decline.” He was absolutely correct and I knew it the instant I heard him say it in Paris.[11]

And now let us talk about the oil price spike. In 2006, you and Michael Kane wrote an article for FTW called “The Markets React to Peak Oil. Industrial Society Rides an Unsustainable Plateau before the Cliff”, in which you were writing about the Bumpy Plateau. You’ve explained it like this:
“Recent price swings – both up and down – have been predicted as a part of the Peak Oil scenario for years. I saw the first hard predictions of the bumpy plateau in 2002, and they made good sense.

WHAT IS THE “BUMPY PLATEAU”?

Here’s how Colin Campbell described it when FTW contacted him for this special report:

• Price shock (as the capacity limit is breached)
• Economic recession cutting demand
• Price collapse (the market overreacts to small imbalances between surplus and shortage)
• Economic recovery (followed by increased demand)
• Price shock (as the falling capacity limits are again breached) Simply put, everything is triggered by the inability of the planet to increase supply beyond a certain point, regardless of demand. That is the definition of peak. Peak is still peak whether it leads to sharp and immediate fall off or to the bumpy plateau we are now seeing.”[12]

Is this model still the procedure after which “everything is triggered”? Is it the Bumpy Plateau that the IEA is talking about for 2010? And was it the Bumpy Plateau we have witnessed already in 2008?

We are on the bumpy plateau right now. The description and predictions offered by Campbell and many others were very good but only two-dimensional in that they addressed price and demand only. I think my greatest contribution on top of their pioneering work has been to thoroughly explore and illuminate the corruption of the economic paradigm, the significance of derivatives[13] and to introduce that as a third factor. This has allowed me to make astonishingly accurate predictions for a decade now. The implosion of the derivatives bubble which has only just begun may prevent any real or even temporary “recovery” from ever taking place. All the energy spent on a “recovery” in the infinite growth paradigm will have been wasted. One thing I am also certain of is that there won’t be many bumps in the bumpy plateau. As soon as any kind of recovery begins, it will collide instantly against the brick wall of diminishing energy. We have passed Peak I am certain. The IEA has virtually admitted all this. After the last bump it is straight down the cliff back to the Stone Age unless people take action immediately.

In 2001, when the Bush Administration came to power, the broader public did know nothing about Peak Oil. The Bush Administration did. In your book “Crossing the Rubicon” you point to a speech by Dick Cheney that he delivered in London at the Petroleum Institute in 1999. [14] Mr Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton back then. He was in the loop, right?

Cheney was the loop. There is an abundant record that the most powerful policy-making institutions have known about Peak Oil since at least the 1970s. That includes our CIA, [15] leadership in Russia, Britain, China and Japan. My studies suggest that Germany understood it best and has done the most to address it implications over the years.

An important topic of your research with regard to 9/11 are the unknown records of the “Energy Task Force” run by Dick Cheney, the National Energy Policy Development Group. In Crossing the Rubicon you wrote:
“I have said for two years that the deepest, darkest secrets of September 11th lie buried in the records of the US National Policy Development Group (NEPDG) which began its work almost the same day the Bush administration took office and produced its final report in May of 2001, just four short months before the World Trade Center ceased to exist.”[16]

Can you explain this in more detail for those who have never heard about this before?

It’s explained in detail both in A Presidential Energy Policy and in Crossing the Rubicon. Essentially the NEPDG appears to have been set up, almost from the first day of the Bush administration, to find out how much oil was left, who had it, and how it could be obtained (bought or stolen) to support U.S. hegemony, U.S. consumption, and the monetary paradigm. Those things are all dinosaurs anyway and they are dying in the New Paradigm as they must. The fact that the NEPDG records have been kept secret from the American people who paid for it is one of the greatest crimes of all time. Seeing those records now would save a lot of duplicated effort in trying to inventory how much oil there is left.

The figures on oil reserves quoted by producing nations and companies are as fraudulent and cooked as the books on mortgages, banking, and even Bernie Madoff. The Saudis cannot hide the fact that they have passed Peak anymore. I prove that in my new book. The world’s largest energy investment banker Matthew Simmons proved it before I did in his book Twilight in the Desert. [17] I have proved the same thing a different way. If Saudi Arabia has passed Peak then the whole world has passed Peak. It was Peak Oil that was driving Dick Cheney’s Task Force and nothing else.

Is there a chance that we will ever know about the real content of the NEPDG files?

I hope so. That’s what I have called for in A Presidential Energy Policy.

You are known for using this quote by Benito Mussolini:
“Fascism ought more properly be called corporatism because it is the perfect merger of power between the corporation and the state.”
Isn’t Dick Cheney a perfect example for this? He did made a whole lot of money as a main-shareholder of Halliburton through the foreign policy of the Bush Administration, didn’t he?

He shouldn’t be singled out. The Bush-Cheney administration had its “base”. Some of that base is shared with the Obama administration. The Bush-Cheney administration, knowing that collapse was coming, looted the U.S. economy on behalf of its base. It was perhaps the largest wealth transfer (theft) in history. I predicted and warned about each step in precise detail for eight years. [18]

I was dead-on accurate and there’s a clear record to prove that. And I suffered for it. I was harassed, sabotaged, my offices were burglarized and my computers smashed in 2006 prompting me to flee the U.S. for four months. What did we Americans do as Bush and Cheney rode out of town with all that wealth? We gave them a parade and called it inauguration day.

Beyond Peak Oil as a motive for the Bush Administration to “arrange” the thing that we know as “9/11”, you wrote extensively about the importance of Afghani drug traffic. Since the military engagement of NATO forces in Afghanistan, the profits from heroin trade are at an all time high, aren’t they?

The global drug trade is evolving. I won’t go back now and explain what happened between 2001 and today. The global drug trade was estimated by me to be generating around $600 billion a year in total revenues in 2004. That was fine as long as the infinite growth bubble appeared to be functioning. Drug cash was chased by banks and major corporations like General Electric, AIG, Philip Morris, Citigroup, etc. back then. Europe was no exception. But now the collapse of a $700 trillion derivatives bubble has changed everything. What was a lubricant to allow further expansion of the bubble in 2001 is today less than the minimum monthly payment on a credit card.

The reason why the U.S. is having all this drug violence now is, I am certain, because U.S. banks are crying for all the illegal cash they can launder to service the “minimum monthly payments” on their derivative exposure. The drug violence is here because all over Mexico the word is out on the streets, “Get a kilo of grass across the border and you get $500.” It’s a stampede because Mexicans are starving. That is because their largest oil field Cantarell is collapsing and oil revenues have plummeted. It always comes back to energy and money.

Who knows how many drugs are being consumed now? Personally, I don’t think it is significantly higher than it was five years ago or twenty-five. I have written extensively — citing scientific studies — that only about 10% to 12% of any given population is susceptible to addiction. The rest of the people may use drugs but will never get addicted because they realize it’s not beneficial. They don’t like it. One does not create addicts by pumping more drugs into a society. One only feeds that fixed percentage who are susceptible to addiction. That is what is called a captive market under the current monetary regime.

Let’s take a look at this news article from Reuters, please:

UN crime chief says drug money flowed into banks
Sun Jan 25, 2009 9:17am EST
VIENNA, Jan 25 (Reuters) – The United Nations’ crime and drug watchdog has indications that money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis, its head was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an interview released by Austrian weekly Profil that drug money often became the only available capital when the crisis spiralled out of control last year. …

Can you comment on this?

As Claude Rains said in Casablanca, “I’m shocked! There’s gambling going on in this establishment.”

Mr Ruppert, we are talking here about Organized Crime at the top ranks in finance, economics and government. One might think: “Well, has it ever been different before?” In my opinion the main difference is that Organized Crime is nowadays almost officially part of the game – it isn’t really hidden anymore. One example for this is the manipulation of the stock market by the infamous Plunge Protection Team (PPT). Can you explain how the PPT works, who is involved and why its existence isn’t just a “conspiracy theory”?

The PPT is overwhelmed now. This collapse has been a tsunami that has rendered the PPT largely ineffective. It had the ability to intervene artificially to prevent market collapses when it was only billions of dollars involved.

Now that we’re dealing with trillions the PPT is of little interest. Broadly speaking, the U.S. Treasury (almost a proprietary of Goldman Sachs) has become in itself a PPT with increasing ineffectiveness. The U.S. is currently having the biggest “Sucker Rally” there will ever be.

I would also like to talk a little bit with you about gold under the circumstances of Peak Oil. I remember you have written a while ago that the “new” wealth is gold – which is the “old” wealth. What do you mean by that precisely?

Look, the fact is that when the FDIC and the Federal Reserve go insolvent, gold will be the only place left to turn. Proposed new currencies cannot solve the problem. They will only destroy evidence and people by chasing the mirage deeper into the hole. New currencies will only recreate the same problem in a different and more vicious form. For seven thousand years the human race has chosen only one option as a universal store of value in hard times — gold. To protect against inflation — gold. I have seen many reports saying that there is five times more paper gold than there is physical gold out of the ground. Gold is finite. It cannot be printed. It has a connection to the earth. I strongly advise all my readers to buy and hold physical gold and have done so for years. The human race does not have to stay with gold forever. But it will help those with it to survive and function economically as collapse unfolds.

Another question, straight and dry: Is the gold market manipulated, and if so, how?

Absolutely gold prices have been manipulated. For the best discussion of that I recommend the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) and ttp://www.lemetropolecafe.com [19]

You have said over and over again during the last years: “As long as you don’t change the way money works, you change nothing.” For example you wrote recently in an open letter to President Obama: “All you are doing is buying time to prevent the collapse of a totally dysfunctional marriage where the mother (the government) kills the children (us) to save her relationship with the father (the way money works).” Two simple questions: How does money work, and: How should it work in future?

These are addressed clearly and succinctly in my book.

In order to sum our interview up so far: What we need is a paradigm shift. How should it look like, besides a change of the way money works?

The way the paradigm shift should occur and what it should look like is a discussion for the entire human race. I choose not even try to answer that. I do offer some ideas on how to start the dialogue in the book.

Let us take at the end of this interview a look into the future. Ten years from now: Give us your best case scenario, please.

There is a mass awakening of human consciousness; the equivalent of mankind taking the red pill from the movie The Matrix. We stop chasing an impossible notion of infinite growth and begin to change our minds about life and what it means right now. We accurately, clearly and fearlessly accept and embrace the crisis and begin implementing available solutions today. We stop feeding the economic beast which has no option but to kill us in order to save itself. Maybe instead of four or five billion people starving and or dying in resource wars, or in nuclear exchanges over resources, we can reduce that number to two or three billion and also identify, redefine and preserve the best parts of human civilization for the generations that follow. We find a way to live in balance and true sustainability with the planet that gives us life and all the life that we share it with.

And now give us your worst case scenario, please.

Human extinction and the possible extinction of all life on the planet, either as a result of climate collapse or a global nuclear exchange over energy.

The coming situation of Peak Oil will be a turbulent event. When I got you right, you argue in “Crossing the Rubicon” that the Patriot Act and the cut-back of the Posse Comitatus Act were implemented by the American government to prepare itself against civil unrest during the “hard times” of Peak Oil. Is your country heading into a future where freedom is again a privilege, not a given right? And why should people in Europe and around the world be very interested in the freedom of the citizens in the United States?

I disagree with the Russian analyst who predicted a civil war here.[20] Civil wars are defined by geographic boundaries. I do however think it inevitable that the United Sates will dis-integrate and there are clear signs of that beginning right now. But what’s going to happen here is no different than what will happen all over the world. As human industrial civilization collapses everything will be governed by a force as powerful and unyielding as gravity. That is geography. Things do not break up. They break down. They get smaller. Problems in Essen or the Rhineland will be different from problems in East Prussia or Bavaria. There will be massive social unrest here but I do not believe it can be accurately predicted how that will play out. There can be only one end result.

Everything will revolve around what is within 50 or 100 kilometers of where one lives. The reason why the United States is so important is because my country still exerts so much political, social, economic and cultural influence around the world. In writing “A Presidential Energy Policy” I not only recognized the difficulties we face here but the fact that if the United States can change, if it can drop the suicidal notion of infinite growth and its defense of a corrupt and murderous economic paradigm, then the whole world will be that much more empowered to save itself… country by country, region by region, and neighborhood by neighborhood.

Thank you very much, Mr Ruppert, and nothing but the very best to you!

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More by Vandana Shiva, reprinted from Alternet.

This is a problem for all of us. Where 100 years ago many of us would be involved in agriculture and would eat fresh health local foods, corporations have now taken over the worlds food supply. These corporations rely on huge quantities of energy in the form of fossil fuels, that are going to get more and more expensive, pushing the prices of staples out of the reach of many of us, and making vast profits or (which could be worse in the shortterm, but far better in the long term, collapsing those corporations).

We have been foolish to allow psycopaths who value doallrs over life to dominate our food systems, and we must now rise up and say ‘Basta’, enough!

One of our writers reently commented that there is a disaster in the pipeline, and we need to do something about it, but we also must recognise that the dominant culture of empire is a perpetual disaster, destroying people, species and planet. It must be stopped by all means necessary.

The factors that have caused 200,000 suicides are rooted in the policies of trade liberalization and corporate globalization.

In a land where reincarnation is a commonly held belief, where the balance sheet of life is sorted out over lifetimes, where resilience and recovery has been the characteristic of the “kisan,” the peasant cultivation, why are Indian farmers committing suicide on a mass scale?

200,000 farmers have ended their lives since 1997.

Farmers’ suicides are the most tragic and dramatic symptom of the crisis of survival faced by Indian peasants.

Rapid increase in indebtedness is at the root of farmers’ taking their lives. Debt is a reflection of a negative economy. Two factors have transformed agriculture from a positive economy into a negative economy for peasants: the rising of costs of production and the falling prices of farm commodities. Both these factors are rooted in the policies of trade liberalization and corporate globalization.

In 1998, the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved.

Corporations prevent seed savings through patents and by engineering seeds with non-renewable traits. As a result, poor peasants have to buy new seeds for every planting season and what was traditionally a free resource, available by putting aside a small portion of the crop, becomes a commodity. This new expense increases poverty and leads to indebtness.

The shift from saved seed to corporate monopoly of the seed supply also represents a shift from biodiversity to monoculture in agriculture. The district of Warangal in Andhra Pradesh used to grow diverse legumes, millets, and oilseeds. Now the imposition of cotton monocultures has led to the loss of the wealth of farmer’s breeding and nature’s evolution.

Monocultures and uniformity increase the risk of crop failure, as diverse seeds adapted to diverse to eco-systems are replaced by the rushed introduction of uniform and often untested seeds into the market. When Monsanto first introduced Bt Cotton in 2002, the farmers lost 1 billion rupees due to crop failure. Instead of 1,500 kilos per acre as promised by the company, the harvest was as low as 200 kilos per acre. Instead of incomes of 10,000 rupees an acre, farmers ran into losses of 6,400 rupees an acre. In the state of Bihar, when farm-saved corn seed was displaced by Monsanto’s hybrid corn, the entire crop failed, creating 4 billion rupees in losses and increased poverty for desperately poor farmers. Poor peasants of the South cannot survive seed monopolies. The crisis of suicides shows how the survival of small farmers is incompatible with the seed monopolies of global corporations.

The second pressure Indian farmers are facing is the dramatic fall in prices of farm produce as a result of the WTO’s free trade policies. The WTO rules for trade in agriculture are, in essence, rules for dumping. They have allowed wealthy countries to increase agribusiness subsidies while preventing other countries from protecting their farmers from artificially cheap imported produce. Four hundred billion dollars in subsidies combined with the forced removal of import restriction is a ready-made recipe for farmer suicide. Global wheat prices have dropped from $216 a ton in 1995 to $133 a ton in 2001; cotton prices from $98.2 a ton in 1995 to $49.1 a ton in 2001; Soya bean prices from $273 a ton in 1995 to $178 a ton. This reduction is due not to a change in productivity, but to an increase in subsidies and an increase in market monopolies controlled by a handful of agribusiness corporations.

The region in India with the highest level of farmers suicides is the Vidharbha region in Maharashtra — 4000 suicides per year, 10 per day. This is also the region with the highest acreage of Monsanto’s GMO Bt cotton. Monsanto’s GM seeds create a suicide economy by transforming seed from a renewable resource to a non-renewable input which must be bought every year at high prices. Cotton seed used to cost Rs 7/kg. Bt-cotton seeds were sold at Rs 17,000/kg. Indigenous cotton varieties can be intercropped with food crops. Bt-cotton can only be grown as a monoculture. Indigenous cotton is rain fed. Bt-cotton needs irrigation. Indigenous varieties are pest resistant. Bt-cotton, even though promoted as resistant to the boll worm, has created new pests, and to control these new pests, farmers are using 13 times more pesticides then they were using prior to introduction of Bt-cotton. And finally, Monsanto sells its GMO seeds on fraudulent claims of yields of 1500/kg/year when farmers harvest 300-400 kg/year on an average. High costs and unreliable output make for a debt trap, and a suicide economy.

While Monsanto pushes the costs of cultivation up, agribusiness subsidies drive down the price farmers get for their produce.

Cotton producers in the US are given a subsidy of $4 billion annually. This has artificially brought down cotton prices, allowing the US to capture world markets previously accessible to poor African countries such as Burkina Faso, Benin, and Mali. This subsidy of $230 per acre in the US is untenable for the African farmers. African cotton farmers are losing $250 million every year. That is why small African countries walked out of the Cancun negotiations, leading to the collapse of the WTO ministerial.

The rigged prices of globally traded agriculture commodities steal from poor peasants of the South. A study carried out by the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE) shows that due to falling farm prices, Indian peasants are losing $26 billion annually. This is a burden their poverty does not allow them t bear. As debts increase — unpayable from farm proceeds — farmers are compelled to sell a kidney or even commit suicide. Seed saving gives farmers life. Seed monopolies rob farmers of life.

Farmers suicides in the state of Chattisgarh have recently been before in the news. 1593 farmers committed suicide in Chattisgarh in 2007. Before 2000 no farmers suicides are reported in the state.

Chattisgarh is the Centre of Diversity of the indice varieties of rice. More than 200,000 rices used to grow in India. This is where eminent rice scientists Dr. Richaria did his collections and showed that tribals had bred many rices with higher yields than the green Revolution varieties.

Today the rice farming of Chattisgarh is under assault. When indigenous rice is replaced with green Revolution varieties, irrigation becomes necessary. Under globalization pressures, rice is anyway a lower priority than exotic vegetables. The farmers are sold hybrid seeds, the seeds need heavy inputs of fertilizers and pesticides, as well as intensive irrigation. And crop failure is frequent. This pushes farmers into debt and suicide.

Chattisgarh is also a prime target for growing of Jatropha for biofuel. Tribals farms are being forcefully appropriated for Jatropha plantations, aggravating the food and livelihood crisis in Chattisgarh. The diesel demand of the automobile industry is given a priority above the food needs of the poor.

The suicide economy of industrialized, globalised agriculture is suicidal at 3 levels — it is suicidal for farmers, it is suicidal for the poor who are derived food, and it is suicidal at the level of the human species as we destroy the natural capital of seed, biodiversity, soil and water on which our biological survival depends.

The suicide economy is not an inevitability. Navdanya has started a Seeds of Hope campaign to stop farmers suicides. The transition from seeds of suicide to seeds of hope includes:

• A shift from GMO and non renewable seeds to organic, open pollinated seed varieties which farmers can save and share
• A shift from chemical farming to organic farming
• A shift from unfair trade based on false prices to fair trade based on real and just prices

The farmers who have made this shift are earning 10 times more than the farmers growing Monsanto’s Bt-cotton.

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By Tara Lohan, AlterNet

Vandana Shiva says industrial agriculture has left Indian farmers indebted and destitute, and explains how to stem the tide of suicides.

Last month, the world got a glimpse of an epidemic that has hit India in the last decade when news reports alerted readers to the suicides of 1,500 farmers in the Indian state of Chattisgarh.

But this has been only a fraction of the suicides committed by farmers since 1997, says Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., a physicist, environmentalist, feminist, science policy advocate and director of Navdanya and the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.

While initial news reports blamed the recent suicides on falling water levels, Shiva explains that the suicide epidemic in India is a lot more complicated and far-reaching.

“Rapid increase in indebtedness is at the root of farmers’ taking their lives,” she wrote recently. “Debt is a reflection of a negative economy. Two factors have transformed agriculture from a positive economy into a negative economy for peasants: the rising of costs of production and the falling prices of farm commodities. Both these factors are rooted in the policies of trade liberalization and corporate globalization.”

At the heart of this is a circle of indebtedness that has resulted from the so-called Green Revolution, which exported industrial agricultural practices to places like India and in doing so, made seeds, a once-renewable resource for farmers, into something that had be bought from corporations.

“In 1998, the World Bank’s structural-adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta,” Shiva wrote. “The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm-saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved. … The shift from saved seed to corporate monopoly of the seed supply also represents a shift from biodiversity to monoculture in agriculture.”

In an interview with AlterNet, Shiva explained how Monsanto’s Bt cotton has exemplified what can go wrong with industrial agriculture; what happens to farming communities when traditional farming methods are replaced by corporate sponsored mono-cropping; and how to stem the tide of farmer suicides.

Tara Lohan: Farmer suicides in India recently made the news when stories broke last month about 1,500 farmers taking their own lives, what do you attribute these deaths to?

Vandana Shiva: Over the last decade, 200,000 farmers have committed suicide. The 1,500 figure is for the state of Chattisgarh. In Vidharbha, 4,000 are committing suicide annually. This is the region where 4 million acres of cotton have been grown with Monsanto’s Bt cotton. The suicides are a direct result of a debt trap created by ever-increasing costs of seeds and chemicals and constantly falling prices of agricultural produce.

When Monsanto’s Bt cotton was introduced, the seed costs jumped from 7 rupees per kilo to 17,000 rupees per kilo. Our survey shows a thirteenfold increase in pesticide use in cotton in Vidharbha. Meantime, the $4 billion subsidy given to U.S. agribusiness for cotton has led to dumping and depression of international prices.

Squeezed between high costs and negative incomes, farmers commit suicide when their land is being appropriated by the money lenders who are the agents of the agrichemical and seed corporations. The suicides are thus a direct result of industrial globalized agriculture and corporate monopoly on seeds.

TL: Suicides of Indian farmers unfortunately is not news — how long has this been a problem, how serious is the problem, what are the underlying causes?

VS: The first suicide that we studied took place in Warrangal in Andhra Pradesh in 1997. This region is a rain-fed dry region and used to grow dry land crops such as millets, pigeon pea etc. In 1997, the seed corporations converted the region from biodiverse agriculture to monocultures of cotton hybrid. The farmers were not told they would need irrigation. They were not told that they would need fertilizers and pesticides. They were not told they could not save the seeds. The cotton seeds were sold as “White Gold,” with a false promise that farmers would become millionaires. Instead, the farmers landed in severe unpayable debt. This is how the suicides began.

TL: You said that 200,000 farmers have ended their lives since 1997 — where does that statistic come from? Are there numbers to compare suicide rates for farmers pre-Green Revolution with the numbers we are seeing today?

VS: The statistics on farmers suicides are kept by the National Crime Bureau. Since there were no large-scale suicides prior to 1997, the statistics was not maintained before that. The combination of the spread of nonrenewable seeds and globalized trade has triggered the epidemic of suicides.

TL: What role does water and water management play in the problems Indian farmers are facing?

VS: India is a land of varied climates, from rainforests to deserts. Seventy percent of Indian farming is rain-fed (dependent on rain not irrigation). Introducing inappropriate crops and cropping patterns has aggravated the water crisis and precipitated more frequent crop failure. Ecological agriculture needs 10 times less water than chemical farming. Green Revolution varieties, hybrids and GM crops are all bred for irrigation. On the one hand, this puts pressure on farmers in low-rainfall zones to drill tube wells, which fail — on the other hand, it leads to more frequent crop failure.

TL: How has the Green Revolution changed things for farmers? Is the most significant change in the ownership of seeds by corporations?

VS: The Green Revolution was the name given to the introduction of chemical/industrial farming in India in 1965-66 under the pressure of the U.S. government and World Bank. The Green Revolution was based on seeds bred for responding to chemical inputs. Companies made money from sale of agrichemicals, the seeds were in the public domain.

Genetic engineering is often called the second Green Revolution. Now, the seeds are owned by corporations through intellectual property rights. This leads to a very drastic change in how farming is done and who controls decisions in agriculture.

TL: How have companies like Monsanto, Cargill and others created what you call a “suicide economy” for farmers?

VS: Monsanto’s contribution to the suicide economy is by extracting super profits from farmers in the form of royalties and by intentionally transforming seeds from a renewable resource that farmers can save to a nonrenewable resource that they must buy in the market every year. Monsanto had a big role in shaping the TRIPs agreement [on intellectual property] of WTO.

Cargill’s contribution to the suicide economy is as the biggest controller of agricultural trade. Cargill was responsible for the Agreement on Agriculture, which has promoted dumping and denying farmers of the Third World their right to fair prices.

TL: Is there a particular area of the country that has been hardest hit? Which are the worst off and what are they growing? Are other areas more successful and if so, why?

VS: The worst-hit suicide areas of the country are Vidharbha, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Karnataka. These are also the cotton-growing areas, and these are the areas where Monsanto has established a monopoly on seed supply through Bt cotton. Areas where farmers have their own seed, where they are growing diversity of food crops and are practicing organic farming are areas free of debt and farmers suicides.

Navdanya has started a seeds-of-hope program in the suicide belt of Vidharbha. Creating seed banks, training farmers in organic agriculture and helping farmers with fair trade has helped farmers increase their incomes tenfold compared to farmers growing Bt cotton.

TL: What should the government of India be doing, and what can the world community do?

VS: The government of India should be playing a major role in public seed supply. Before Monsanto’s entry, 80 percent of the seed used to come from farmers’ own fields, and 20 percent came from government seed farms. Under privatization, government seed breeding has been wiped out. Seed is a public and common good, and hence seeds should stay in the hands of farming communities and public-sector institutions.

The government should also impose a moratorium on GMO seeds such as Bt cotton until full independent assessment of its performance in small farmers’ fields has been completed. The government should also promote organic farming, since from the perspective of farmers this is the only way to get out of the debt and suicide trap.

At the international level, the world community needs to defend seed as a common good and build a strong movement against seed patents and seed monopolies. People can also contribute to Navdanya’s Seeds of Hope Campaign.

To learn more, you can also read Shiva’s most recent article on the subject.

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paper presented at the 20th Conference of North American and Cuban Philosophers and Social Scientists, Havana, June, 2008

by Joseph Tharamangalam, Centre for Global Justice.

Give us this day our daily bread. (The only prayer Jesus is reported to have taught his followers)

With all the authority of hindsight, it is important to analyze and criticize the methods Cuba has chosen to eradicate hunger…. But we should never lose sight of the fact that the Cuban revolution declared, from the outset, that no one should go malnourished. No disappointment in food production, no failed economic take-off, no shock wave from world economic crisis has deterred Cuba from freeing itself from the suffering and shame of a single wasted child or an elderly person ignonimously subsisting on pet food. No other country in this hemisphere, including the United States, can make this claim” (Benjamin et al.189)

Introduction

This paper draws on an ongoing research project that compares the human development experience of Cuba and the state of Kerala in India, two well known success stories that have achieved an impressive measure of human well being without waiting for the so called trickle down effect of industrial development or wealth creation. Their remarkable achievements (as measured by UNDP’s human development (HD) indictors) have been hailed by many scholars and policy makers. Our research project seeks to identify common patterns in the development experience of these cases and to explore possible lessons for the world, especially for the one fifth of humanity still suffering from chronic poverty and endemic deprivations.

The paper explores the theme of food security in Cuba. Although the UNDP’s measure of HD does not directly factor in food security it is obviously at the very foundation of any system of human development and well-being. The issue of food security has assumed a new urgency in the context of the current world food crisis that is threatening to plunge as many as 100 million people into hunger in addition to the 850 million already in a situation of chronic hunger. As is well known, faced with an even more serious food crisis some two decades ago, Cuba launched a daring and unconventional agricultural revolution, regarded by some as the very “anti-thesis” of the Washington consensus and labeled as an “anti model” by a spokesperson of the World Bank. Many experts who have studied the Cuban experience (including some from Oxfam, FAO, and the WFP) now believe that Cuba may offer some lessons to those searching for alternatives to the current world food system that has failed so miserably in providing food security to vast numbers of people and has destroyed the ability of communities and countries to exercise any control over their food system.
The remainder of the paper is divided into 3 parts: A brief overview of Cuba’s post- 1990 agricultural revolution is followed by the main part of the paper that discusses some important elements of what may be called Cuba’s alternative paradigm. The concluding part will raise questions about sustainability and food security.

Cuba’s New Agricultural Revolution: From Crisis to Recovery

Historically, Cuba has had a classical colonial agricultural system that produced sugar for export, and served the interests of a metropolitan elite based first in Spain and then in the US. After the revolution Cuba became dependent on the Soviet Union and its trading partners. This resulted in an agricultural system characterized by three notable features: 1) its dependence on the USSR for almost all its trade albeit on very favorable terms; 2) its adoption of the Soviet model of large-scale high input and state owned agriculture, and 3) its heavy dependence on food imports.

With the dissolution of the Soviet trading system, Cuba was plunged into a major crisis including a 30% fall in food availability. Among the country’s highest priorities was the need to transform its agriculture from a high-input to a low input, self-reliant, small scale and viable agriculture. To this end Cuba launched a series of reforms that transformed its agricultural system radically. In sharp contrast to the experience of other third world countries around the same time, Cuba’s was structural adjustment with a difference – one that was premised upon relying on the country’s own resources and committed to maintaining its social safety net and social programs.

Many careful observers have noted that through a process of intense mobilization of state and society Cuba overcame the worst forms of food shortages in a matter of some five years, and did so without seriously compromising its social programs or human development achievements. (Koont, 2004, Malhotra, 2000, Sinclair and Thompson, 2004). Sinclair and Thompson (Oxfam America) have made the claim that “Cuba has successfully turned a severe food crisis into a sustained recovery in food production”. And a report by the Food First Institute says that “…by mid-1995 the food shortage had been overcome, drastic reductions to the food supply of the vast majority of Cubans was over” (Rosset, 2000). The same report adds (210) that in the 1996-97 growing season, Cuba recorded its highest ever production levels for 10 of the 13 basic food items in the Cuban diet- and the increase came primarily from small farms. The World Wild Life Fund has listed Cuba as the only country following a sustainable path to development in that it has achieved high HD (greater than 0.8) with low ecological footprint (less than 1.8 hectares). In 1999 the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) was awarded to the Cuban Organic Farming Association (GAO).

Towards an Alternative Paradigm

Elements of a Paradigm

Based on the Cuban experience I identify 7 elements of an alternative paradigm for a sustainable agricultural system that may also provide a basis for food security to Cuba and the world. These are indicative rather than exhaustive, and are drawn heavily on the works of such organizations as the Food First Institute (eg., Rosset, 2003), Oxfam America (eg., Sinclair and Thompson, 2004) and supplemented by our own research during the past 3 years.

1. Ecological Farming

The Cuban government confronted the crisis of the 1990s by declaring a Special Period in Peacetime, and launched a national effort to convert the country’s agricultural sector from high input to low input and self-reliant farming practices on an unprecedented scale (Rosset, 2003, 207). The principles and strategies of a holistic system of agro-ecology were put into practice (Funes et. Al., xiii). These included:

-use of biofertilizers such as earthworms, compost, natural rock phosphate, animal and green manures, and the integration of gracing animals.

-use of biopesticides such as resistant plant varieties, crop rotations and natural antagonists to combat plant pathogens, and better rotations and cover cropping to suppress weeds;

-a move from capital-intensive to knowledge-intensive agriculture; knowledge generated not only by extensive and innovative scientific research, but also by recovering people’s accumumulated knowledge, integrating the two and maintaining synergy between the two(Claudio, 1999);

-animal traction in place of fuel-hungry tractors and other machines;

- urban farms which were first introduced in the aftermath of the food shortages and rising food prices. “Once the government threw its full support behind a nascent urban gardening movement, it exploded to near epic proportions” (Rosset, 2003, 210). Oxfam America reported that urban gardens were now (2003-2004) producing half of all vegetables consumed by Havana’s 2 million inhabitants (Sinclair and Thompson);

-creation and maintenance of within-farm synergies.

Cuba has now proven that organic farming is productive and viable.

2. Decentralization and Diversification:

Emphasis is now placed on small farms and local production, relying on local resources and adaptation to the local ecosystem and the needs of the local community.

Cuba’s success in ecological farming is essentially a success of small farms and small farmers. Large state farms were broken up and redistributed precisely because they had proven to be unsuccessful in adapting to the technology and social organization of organic farming. Small farmers were able to put to use their memory and experience of an earlier form of farming. Most important, it was discovered that in state farms worker alienation was high and productivity low. By contrast, the small farms adopting organic farming were characterised by high levels of worker participation and enthusiasm.

Diversification has had several dimensions- products and exports, types of producers and their relationship to land (land tenure), markets, and finally the economy itself which has opened up more space for private actors while maintaining a strong state sector in critical areas.

Local production also eliminates the need for wasteful transportation, packaging and storage while supplying fresh food to local people.

To facilitate the above, the ministry of agriculture and its administrative structure has also been decentralized.

The Cuban experience has shown the viability of small farms. Peter Rosset ( 2003) contrasts these small farms with the high input industrial farms which, he argues, are kept viable only with huge subsidies by government. And this is not counting the high ecological deficits incurred and the massive scale of the externalization of costs. In terms of classical theoretical debates about the viability of the family farm, it would seem that it is Chayanov, not Kautsky who seems to be carrying the day.

3. Redistribution of Land to the Farmers

Redistribution of land is a prerequisite for creating the small farm sector that has proven to be suitable for ecological farming. In sharp contrast to increasing concentration of land that followed neoliberal reforms in other Latin American countries, Cuba’s land reforms during the special period effectively broke up state farms and redistributed these to a variety of cooperatives and to large numbers of individual farmers. By 1996 there were 2654 Basic Units of Cooperative Production or UBPCs (Enriqez 204) – data from CEPAL 2000, 313). These played their largest role in sugarcane, also in citrus, rice and livestock. State farm sector fell from 82% to 14.4%.

Apparently reviving an earlier idea, the program aimed at “linking people with land”. These farms provided the farmers a greater sense of control and ownership, which, in turn contributed to a greater sense of belonging and greater productivity. “We went to bed as workers and woke up in the morning as owners” as the manager of a successful UBPC told us referring to the creation of that UBPC. (farmer in a UBPC visited by author in December, 2007).

4. A Democratic State Committed to Public Provisioning for its People

The role of the state is critical in two respects. First, it has been amply proven by researchers (especially those associated with the UNDP’s HD Reports) that few societies have achieved high human development without substantial state intervention in public provisioning in the areas of education, health and basic social security. This remains true even in societies (including the US) in which free market capitalism is touted as the dominant ideology (Sen, 2000). Cuba is a well known case in this respect. In Cuba such public provisioning has included a food rationing system that is a controversial issue today, re-examined and debated by policy makers within Cuba, vilified by the country’s detractors as the quintessential sin of socialism, the subject of continuous complaint by many Cuban citizens, who, nevertheless, have come to take it for granted and to expect the “minimum food basket” it provides as a basic entitlement. First launched in March, 1962, as a temporary measure to deal with food shortages, it has, over the years, been probably the single most important institution responsible for the elimination of hunger and malnutrition, the hallmark of Cuba’s uniqueness in the world. But, burdened by high costs, purported inefficiency and a bloated bureaucracy needed to administer it, the system is likely to be redesigned or replaced by such measures as more targeted security or income supplement (Benjamin et al., Alvarez). There is, however, a bottom line that stands out crystal clear: as the quotation at the beginning of this paper makes clear, Cuba’s record in eliminating hunger and mal-nutrition remains unmatched in the hemisphere and certainly in the third world. Furthermore, there is ample evidence across the world that no society has eliminated hunger and mal-nutrition, or come close to doing this, without some state-supported public provision for its poorest and vulnerable population. Cuba’s ration system has been premised on the principles of universal accessibility and equity, a bold initiative to ensure every person’s basic right to food and other basic necessities. It would seem that some policy of this kind would be integral to a paradigm for a just and equitable system of food security.

Second, it is also important to have state support extended to its farmers, especially to the most vulnerable sections of a country’s small farmers. In this respect , Cuba stands out as the contrarian par excellence. While other third world governments were abandoning their farmers in the wake of neoliberal reforms, the Cuban government made extraordinary efforts to support its farmers with all the resources at its command. And unlike the former, the Cuban state maintained its sovereignty exercising full control over the policies affecting its agriculture and food security. To be sure, such support for farmers must be subject to international trade agreements, but the absence of real fair trade is the hallmark of the current world system, and at the root of the current food crisis.

5. Democratic Participation

Complementing the strong and proactive state were the newly expanded and strengthened local level democratic institutions of popular participation that now play an increasing role in planning and governance. Popular participation is an essential ingredient of the new agricultural system, especially in the cooperatives. Participation extends to all areas of farming including research, extension, and implementation; and most important, the produce is distributed in accordance with a democratic decision-making process. The instruments of democratic participation are well organized and institutionalized. For example, the UBPCs are managed by committees elected by secret ballots. The high levels of informed participation in these cooperatives can be described by using the concepts of “deep democracy” and “high energy democracy” – concepts that have been used to describe democracy in Kerala.

It is clear that the expansion of space for such participation and control by individuals and communities has meant some reduction in the role and control formerly exercised by the Cuban state. And this process has not been without tension and contradictions (eg., the role of the independent farmers’ association, ANAIC, Alvarez, 1999; Claudio, 1999). Nevertheless, the viability and effectiveness of the process has depended on the overall synergy between state and society, between local democratic institutions that continuously feed into the working of the central government which, in turn, supports the former. There can be little doubt that popular participation has been a critical element in the success of these farms.

6. Fair Price for Farmers

One of the sources of the current food crisis afflicting the third world in the world has been the declining incomes of farmers in the wake of neoliberal reforms and the import of cheap food from outside. Many independent farmers in countries such as India and South Korea have been driven to desperation and even suicide. By contrast, Cuba’s reforms have led to significant increase in the incomes of farmers relative to other sectors of society, in particular urban salary earners. This has been noted as a major factor behind Cuba’s re-peasantization movement though this movement may have been initially triggered by people fleeing the cities in search of food during the period of the earlier food crisis.

The Cuban experience also shows what small farmers can do if they can get the WTO off their backs.

7. A New Process of Re-Peasantization?

During the special period, especially at the height of the food shortages, there was a process of urbanites migrating to rural areas in search of food and work in farming. Many stayed back attracted by more stable jobs, higher income and access to better food. Some sociologists (Enriquez, 2003) have referred to this as a process of re-peasantization. We do not have any precise data about the extent of this process or if it has continued into the present period. Enriqez (p208) reports that in a study she conducted in several cooperatives in different parts of the country 25% of the sample population she interviewed were former urban workers. Farmers in Cuba today have higher incomes relative to salary earners, and this is true even in the poorer eastern provinces. Needless to say, they also eat much better, and have much better food security.

The re-peasantization movement may point to a possible answer to the question of how small-scale organic farming can be made viable in a country with a small population that has now been at the third stage of the demographic transition for some three generations. The problem of a declining and aging population is compounded by historical prejudices that associate farming and rural life with lower status and less desirable life-style. However, we can argue that Cuba has some unique advantages in addressing some of these issues. First, it has the most modernized and educated peasantry in the world which has achieved human development indicators that are on par with, if not higher than, those of their counterparts in the developed world. Its decentralized system of education and healthcare ensures that farmers’ access to these valued resources is not very different from that of urban dwellers. Cuba’s recent reforms promoting greater decentralization have included the decentralization of tertiary education and its university system. Similarly its political, administrative and cultural systems are also decentralized.

These factors make it possible for Cuba to integrate far more closely not only its agricultural economy with its non-agricultural economy, but also its rural culture and life-style with its urban and national culture and life-style. This process has the potential of creating a rural-urban continuum that will reduce the gap between rural, agricultural life on the one hand and urban non-agricultural life on the other. Arguably, this has reversed the process of rapid urbanization that occurred in Cuba in the 1980s, and may offer a lesson to the countries in the world plagued by an endless process of urbanization and centralization.

The urbanized rural areas which have access to similar educational, health and other services and cultural facilities available in the cities will also complement the cities that have been revitalized with urban farming. Elements of such a model of a rural-urban continuum already exist in the state of Kerala in India where the problem now is one of maintaining the economic viability of growing food crops to ensure long-term food security.

Cuba is experiencing nothing less than a new cultural revolution, a transformation in people’s consciousness (especially ecological consciousness) and world-view, a re-definition of people’s relationship to nature, a commitment to sustaining the earth, and above all, a renewed commitment to the humanist and socialist project the country embarked on half a century ago.

Food Sovereignty?

While this is too complex an issue to address within the scope of this paper, it can be said that the Cuban state has continued to exercise full control over all the important decisions concerning agriculture and food, and has continued to keep its people free of hunger. By contrast, most third world governments, including those who were democratically elected, have stood helplessly in the face of neoliberal policies and WTO rules that produced greater food insecurity, more food shortages, and increasing hunger in their countries.

A Sustainable Model?

The Cuban experience shows that its innovative model of agriculture has been sustainable ecologically, socially and politically. A major issue of sustainability in the future will be the mode of its integration into the global system, and that will depend very much on what happens to Cuba- US relations. For now all indications are that Cuba will assert its sovereignty over its agricultural and food policy. It is resourceful, and it has some unique resources to export including knowledge and models. Cuban agricultural extension workers (like Cuban doctors, social workers, and literacy promoters) are already working in other countries. It has niche markets for some of its products such as pharmaceuticals, and of course, its organic produce. It is already exporting organic produce to Germany and Canada. The situation may change drastically if a market for its organic produce were to open up in the US.

Another challenge will be whether in a changed international situation Cuba’s successful farmers will be tempted to return to the high input model of industrial agriculture.

Food Security?

Cuba still has serious food shortages and depends heavily on imports. It even imports food from the US for hard cash. In 2007 the country spent 1.5 billion dollars on food imports, an increase of some 24% from the previous year due to the higher food prices (Grogg, 2008); its purchase from the US alone amounted to $447, 065,000. (US Census Bureau, Trade Stats for Cuba). Not surprisingly, food is one of the most recurrent themes raised at all policy debates in the country. Raul Castro himself recently assured Cubans that the issue will be given the highest priority (Crogg, 2008). He said: “The country is working on this vital issue with the urgency it requires, because of its direct and daily impact on the lives of the people, especially those with the lowest incomes”.

Cuba faces many problems in reaching self-sufficiency including that of a small, declining and aging population with only less than 20% of them rural. Other issues include the historically low status of farmers, and low productivity. One answer to these problems may be the process described in 1, 7 above.

Assuming Cuba will succeed in substantially increasing its food production, the question still remains if it will ever reach self-sufficiency. But is food security to be equated with self-sufficiency? Or will Cuba (like several other countries) have to resort to the principle of comparative advantage and trade some of its other products for food? Perhaps this question is now premature, if not irrelevant, since the country is still a long way from maximising its productivity and reaching its real potential. It is likely that we will soon witness another major national effort of the kind seen during the special period to increase food production. It is reported that Cuba is already seeking foreign investment in domestic agriculture (Al Campbell, 2008) – presumably in the form of joint ventures and in a manner in which such investment can be integrated into its new paradigm). The analysis provided in this paper seems to provide reasonable grounds to believe that Cuba will be successful in this effort.

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Or: Is It “Mean” to Tell Someone Their House is on Fire?

You can never awaken using the same system that put you to sleep in the first place. – Gurdjieff

by Suzanne Duarte, at Culture Change.

Dearest Ones of Future Generations,

I thought you might find it interesting to hear what I’m observing of those people I know about who are just waking up to what the state of the planet is. Last month saw Earth Day, an international day of observance for the Earth. For nearly 40 years, it has been a day when environmentalists have had a chance to provide a reckoning of the damage that industrial civilization has been inflicting on the natural world. It is usually a time when print media make some obligatory gesture of recognition that humans live on a planet that we depend upon and that needs our attention. This year the statements were a little more urgent than usual, especially about climate change, which is increasingly referred to as “climate emergency.”

The reason that we are in a climate emergency — in fact, a biological holocaust, as it was identified over 20 yrs ago — is that the dominant Western, globalized culture has been in a “cultural trance,” drunk on oil, living in a delusional bubble for about 60 years. Now, the question is, is it unkind or rude or unskillful to try to wake people up from their cultural trance and point out that we are endangering the future of our species, and many others, to remain asleep? Is it “mean” to wake somebody up to tell them that their house is on fire? A lot of people seem to think so. I’ve lost friends by trying to wake them up. Waking up at this time of the Great Turning from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining way of life is painful. Many people still don’t want to know, don’t want to think, because it would entail facing painful truths and making hard choices. They can stand to think about it only briefly on one day out of the year. This is the reason I write letters to the future.

I feel that beings of the future need and deserve an explanation for the destruction caused by my generation. And I can be more straightforward with you than with my contemporaries, for the aforementioned reasons. In the last resort, perhaps I am writing only to my future incarnations to remind them of what this lifetime was like, remind them of the dismay, frustration and pain of not being able to wake people up so that the future might be more livable.

In any case, this missive is about what I observe to be the difficult stages of waking up at this time of crisis and danger. There is complex inner terrain to traverse before we can identify the opportunities and the adventure that await us if we have the courage to wake up and make the Great Turning. The challenge is that the Great Turning requires a psychological transformation from childlike dependence on external authorities and their outworn belief systems, to a mature, individuated, authentic sense of responsibility for oneself and one’s effects on the world. This is a major transformation, much more than is normally implied when we, at this time, speak of ‘growing up.’

It seems that the hardest part of waking up at this time is facing the fact that it is too late to avoid the pain, suffering and loss that could have been forestalled, had humans collectively heeded the warnings. The warnings were and are rational and scientifically based. The denial of the warnings was and is irrational, based on false beliefs. Pointing out that the denial was collective and irrational causes some people to point the ‘shame and blame’ finger at those who make this point. Instead of allowing themselves to evaluate the truth of the statement, they whine, ‘You’re shaming and blaming us. That’s not healing. You’re being apocalyptic. We don’t want to hear it, and it’s your fault for not giving us the message of hope that we need.’ This is a common shoot-the-messenger response, in which people who don’t like the message blame, or ‘shoot,’ the messenger.

The message of ‘hope’ that is demanded is the hope that we don’t have to take responsibility for ourselves and our world by changing how we live, and what we preoccupy ourselves with. The hope that many people want is very conditional. They can only take hope if they are reassured that things will continue as they have been during these very extraordinary last few decades.

The cultural trance prevents people from recognizing that the reality of living on Earth is unconditional. Our survival depends upon facing the reality of the larger living system we depend upon, and that larger living system doesn’t make deals. We can’t bargain with it. We live within its jurisdiction. The Earth has been very patient. It has put up with a lot of abuse, but the biological life of living systems is quite fragile, very vulnerable to damage by machines. Living systems have limits and tipping points beyond which breakdown and/or evolution can occur. The limits to which we can push living systems have been in view for decades. Because the limits were ignored, we are now seeing and experiencing the tipping point stage, and systemic chaos can therefore be expected.

The reality is that, not only do we have to change the way we live, but we need to recognize our part in creating this necessity. In order to survive we need to own this responsibility and grow up, so that we don’t repeat our mistakes again. That this message is taken as an insult is an ego-based default response, which is irrational and childish. This is the crux of the reason that humanity needs to grow up. Growing up resets these immature default settings. Growing up means accepting responsibility, taking the blame upon oneself, acknowledging one’s blind spots, and one’s dysfunctional social conditioning. Growing up means getting honest and feeling remorse for the consequences of one’s childishness and self-deception.

This is the point where we are right now, collectively. The minority of visionary Cassandras is turning out to be correct. But that is small comfort since they/we are still facing the wrath – and the consequences – of the majority who rejected foresight, and want to blame somebody, scapegoat somebody. The stages of grief have to be worked through in the process of waking up: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. Coming out of denial, the next reaction for most people is anger.

But I hope you of future generations can have some sympathy and compassion for those who are just waking up, because the discrepancy between the dream they are coming out of and the reality they must face is quite enormous. Some people talk about how “we need a new story,” a new cosmology, and this is true as far as it goes. But there are two facts that belie the simplicity of that statement. One is that the new story is still in gestation and isn’t yet a ‘live birth.’ The other is that the gap between the cultural trance of the old story and the unfolding reality of the world has never – in the history of our species – been so wide as it has become in Western civilization. The American Dream, in particular, has been so disconnected from the reality of the Earth that waking up from it is truly a ‘rude awakening,’ as we say, that can seem traumatic. Although waking up may be most difficult for Americans, that dream has also entranced much of the rest of the world.

However, since I am an American, I can identify with the difficulty of waking up from the American Dream. I know from experience that it entails working through layers and layers of collective delusion: the sense of entitlement and security of being a citizen within the “greatest country the world has ever known”; the sense that our country is superior and can do no wrong, and that it is ‘exceptional’ and will not collapse like other civilizations and empires; the sense that America is entitled to take what it wants from the rest of the world – by force if necessary; the sense that living in the United States is an unsurpassable blessing for which we should be grateful; the sense that ‘we’ (Americans) are the best people; and the sense that loyalty to our country demands that we turn a blind eye to its wrongdoings and faults. These are the delusions of the citizens of empire, carried over from ancient tribalistic habitual patterns.

Just to wake up to the injustices, lies, and crimes of our empire, and to realize that our arrogant assumptions of entitlement and superiority are baseless, takes a lot of courage; for to face these things means we must step out of the herd, and leave the herd mentality of the majority behind. This is a necessary part of growing up.

But once we’ve woken up to the injustices of our empire, the next step in growing up and facing reality is the realization that our empire is faltering and failing; in fact, it is disintegrating. At this stage one peeks over the edge of the cloud or the cliff and begins to comprehend how far it is to the ground – how far we have to fall. This is where we truly begin to realize that we are living in a former empire at the end of the industrial age, and that ‘progress’ as we’ve known it is over. Then we begin to comprehend that the glories of the way of life we’ve taken for granted – the glamour, ease and convenience of the industrial age – can never, ever be repeated, because our civilization has stripped the Earth of the resources that are accessible through the use of fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are going away. As Richard Heinberg has detailed for us, we have reached “Peak Everything” and after the peak, the only way is down.

This “Long Descent” or “Long Emergency” – as John Michael Greer and James Howard Kunstler, respectively, have described it – is the future that the majority of citizens of former empires have not yet been able to face. I don’t mean just Americans. I live in another former empire, the Netherlands. Here is what I recently observed of the masses in this overcrowded country.

Queens Day, April 30, 2009

With the sun shining and temperatures in the low 60s, boats and barges full of people wearing bright orange, often standing up shoulder-to-shoulder, float by on the canal, blaring loud music. The Dutch make a lot of noise celebrating their Dutchness on this national holiday, celebrating the chance to take a day off in the sunshine after a long, dark winter.

This is the way the Dutch have ‘fun’: they crowd together in the streets and on barges and boats, and make a lot of noise. They wear their national color, orange, to show their nationalistic solidarity. They play popular music at high volume and wave their arms in the air to express themselves. They get drunk and do crazy things. Today a driver drove his car into a crowd of people, and four people died. My Dutch husband said it was simply ‘mania,’ a mania he reported seeing on the streets yesterday as people prepared to ‘celebrate.’ The Dutch are prone to do crazy things when they have an excuse to relax their habitual stiffness.

I catch myself looking at these people unkindly. I am not only detached, but arrogantly so. Yet I immediately recognize that my arrogance is a cover for the sadness I feel, knowing that the loud display of color and sound is a cover for a psychological condition, of which the Dutch are in stubborn denial. I think about all the petroleum that is being wasted to power these people around and around the canals of the city, trying so hard to have a good time. What is behind this frivolity? Why do people waste time, energy and resources on such frivolity, if it isn’t an avoidance mechanism – an avoidance of the truth? Do they know at some level that they live in a former empire at the end of the industrial age? Is this the subconscious awareness, the anxiety that is fueling their manic ‘fun’?

I am reminded of the drunken parties of the Nazi elites, portrayed in many films, just before the fall of Berlin and Hitler’s suicide, which marked the end of World War II. This kind of frivolous abandon – also evoked by the image of the mad emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burned – seems to be a compensatory measure of resistance to facing a reality that cannot be faced. The drunken parties precede suicide.

Not far from the Dutch geographically or politically is another former empire, Britain. Both the UK and the Netherlands have supported the American empire in its military adventures to control the supply of oil. But the Brits seem to be expressing their anxiety slightly less frivolously – by attacking each other for policies that are meant to maintain the status quo and the illusion that economic recovery is possible. (The British are much better at publicly arguing with each other than the Dutch are.) However, things seem to be in a more advanced stage of economic and social breakdown in the UK than in Holland, and grassroots movements – notably Transition initiatives – are far more robust in the UK than in Holland. In fact, they started there. I attribute the Transition movement’s birth in the UK to the deeper spiritual connection with the natural world that people traditionally have had in the British Isles, and also a deeper understanding of the dark side of industrialism. After all, the industrial revolution started in England, which provoked several opposition movements – the Romantic poets, the Arts and Crafts movement, and the Luddite protests against machines, not to mention many novels. It’s almost as though something in the British cultural psyche has been waiting and preparing for the end of the industrial age since it began.

Waking up to living in a former empire at the end of the industrial age brings gravitas to one’s outlook, as Kurt Cobb suggests in Does understanding complexity beget a tragic view of life? One does not and cannot celebrate as the Dutch were celebrating outside my window. That kind of frivolous abandon is no longer possible once one has worked through the cultural trance, come down to Earth, and accepted responsibility. Then celebration takes on a decidedly more sober, mindful, even reverential tone.

But, dear ones of the future, few people in this former empire, Holland, or in America (which will soon be globally recognized as a former empire) have acquired the gravitas – the groundedness in reality – to prepare for the end of cheap oil, or any of the other circumstances that will radically change our supposedly ‘non-negotiable’ way of life.

So, if you can, try to see the wastefulness and triviality that are so prevalent at this time as the desperation of an immature culture, which is resisting the necessity of a rite of passage that only those capable of growing up are likely to survive. The ones who do survive are likely to be your ancestors. They will probably be the ones who woke up in time and prepared for the end of the industrial age and climate change.

With love and compassion for all future beings,

Suzanne

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