Everything spinning out of control

My parents always said that the current times were not as good as times that came before. They said "what is the world coming to?" and they felt down about it. This kind of thinking isn't unique to now nor is representative of some impending doom on the horizon. It is our natural ability to realize that things are not what they could be. And sadly, generation after generation we get over this feeling without having done anything tangible about the cause of it.

So let's take stock. We have two active wars on. Neither going well and neither with a clear resolution plan. The war on terror has become the war on freedom and privacy. And the US is now torturing and rendering people. Not exactly our idea of the heroic United States and won two world wars now is it. This is the first major crack in our image and in our self perception.

Next the world looks at us differently today. Before we were pretty popular, but our awful unilateral decisions and sword swinging has put a lot of people off. So we are less welcomed, less praised and less loved world wide. Call this crack number two.

At home we've surrendered a relatively prosperous late 90's to a travesty of leadership from our dear brother Bush. In addition to putting an idiotic face on our executive leadership he has ignored a lot of what our nation has needed in order to carry on his own little crusade. The economy is bad, infrastructure bad and more. And he doesn't seem to care.

Add to this natural disasters, greedy profiteers destroying the housing market and the prices of fuel making everything harder and you have not much to be rejoicing about. Or do we?

We are still one of the richest nations on the earth. We are complaining over food prices but we CAN eat. We have shot ourselves in the foot for years by not building good public transportation because we were too selfish to give up our private cars. Now we are paying for it in bad roads and crazy gas prices.

We elected Bush. Not once, somewhat forgivable, but twice. So again we can blame ourselve for allowing his post 911 approach to take hold. I didn't see millions resisting it. Only small bands of protestors. Where was everyone else?

We don't hold our government accountable. We don't demand the things we need. We don't organize labor and make ourselves stronger against exploitation. And as consumers we gladly consume away while complaining about the companies we buy from.

We have power to change things. We have power to make government and companies listen to us. We have power to demand better transportation, better energy usage, better leadership, better products, a better environment and many many more things.

So what is it going to be fellow Americans. Depression, self pity and moping around the house feeling sorry for ourselves? Or are we going to do something about things and make change? I say change is possible, hope is possible and the future can be better. But it requires YOU to help. Not the other guy. You, your partner, your parents, your kids and your friends. Target something you don't like or are worried about and get involved in the solution. Moping is not the American self image, but it has become the American reality. Time to wake up, turn off the TV and get working on things that matter to us.

Divine Retribution for Bush Lying That God Told Him to Invade Iraq? http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/buy_bull.html

Another recent article carried by the newswires speculated on the effects on civilization-as-we-know-it of oil reaching $250/b - back to the stone-age...

Everything spinning out of control

Spinning out of control by design and the above article is a good example of it. Apart from sensationalism in the corporate media we have others manipulating the situation too like the privately-owned US Fed and lackey politicians. Bush and co. have been total failures for the American people/world but they've done an outstanding job for the super rich and the corporations. Order out of chaos is the way to global governance.

I just checked - the sky, is, in fact, NOT falling.

Carry on.

Taka

Oil at $250 a barrel? Good... This will force us perhaps, to take alternative technologies more seriously. A case in point, cars and trucks and even buses running with compressed air engines. can't get any cheaper fuel than air and the prototypes run on a full tank for 270 kilometers. The researchers say LA to NY will be possible on a single tank in a few years. Cost? 2 dollars to fill the tank or around 30 minutes. This will get better and faster as the technology develops. Why haven't we heard of this before? Because big oil doesn't like it, that's why. http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=QmqpGZv0YT4

"President George W Bush gets the approval of three in 10 people, and it is even worse for the Democratic-led Congress."

What is up with that?

Alan and Eileen here are just a couple of doom & gloomers. I agree with Taka313 - not only isn't the sky falling, heck, the sky's the limit for the greatest nation on the face of the Earth!

$250 pb oil will spell disaster that will make the great depression seem not so bad. Just think of the number of dead companies within weeks of that event. Think of food prices. Think of the impact to travel, transportation, shipping etc... Small businesses will vanish and big ones will fall over as both clients and partners become unable to do business.

We've all been afraid of terrorism, bio warfare and knife weilding maniacs in out train stations. But this, $250 per barrel oil will impact your life in ways that you cannot imagine. And a lot of people will perish. We should be taking this prosepect very seriously and looking for ways to avert it.

"President George W Bush gets the approval of three in 10 people, and it is even worse for the Democratic-led Congress."

What is up with that?

Don't know... but seven out of ten people can't be wrong, can they? Never mind though, at least they said the Democrats are even less popular than your beloved President and Commander-in-Chief.

Alan and Eileen here are just a couple of doom & gloomers. I agree with Taka313 - not only isn't the sky falling, heck, the sky's the limit for the greatest nation on the face of the Earth!

Aw, shucks and gee whizz. I've got the "Star-spangled Banner" playing on a never-ending loop in my head now. Personally I'd rate some of those Scandinavian countries a bit more highly than the good ol' U.S. of A, but if you take "richest and most powerful" to mean "greatest" then yes, it certainly is.

Shouldn't best mean highest quality of living, lowest crime, best health care, best transportation, most rational working hours, best education, good elder care, strong social fabric etc...

The US has a massive military that is not so well suited to the current world situation. We have the most money, at the moment. But our infrastructure is falling apart, we have terrible mass transit, people are working more and more hours, a big percentage of us have no health care, Education is poor or expensive and exclusive. If you are old and not well off, you are in trouble. And our social fabric looks like it has been dragged across a shredder.

So if that means great than GO AMERICA!!!

I'm with Simon. There are some countries with low work hours, better holidays, good economies and positive points on a lot of these criteria. Sad thing is that the US could be there. If we stopped letting greed drive us and started thinking a lot more about social and human values.

We've all been afraid of terrorism, bio warfare and knife weilding maniacs in out train stations. But this, $250 per barrel oil will impact your life in ways that you cannot imagine. And a lot of people will perish. We should be taking this prosepect very seriously and looking for ways to avert it.

tkoind: Don't you think there might be some method behind the madness? The late George Carlin (God bless him) said it best in "Education and the owners of America" : )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMqJvhmD5Yg

Most of the ckrap that's going on is being done intentionally to scare people into giving up their rights willingly (false sense of security), not to mention their money. Don't be afraid or fooled, be educated. It's interesting that the upcoming G8 gets all the media attention, but when the likes of Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, the Queens of Spain & the Netherlands, Condi Rice, Wolfowitz, Pearl and the CEOs of some of the biggest corps and banks in Europe/America got together earlier this month there was a total media blackout. And it's the same every year. (Click the first link in the story for a list of the attendees.)

http://warofillusions.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/my-analysis-of-bilderberg-2008/

This was not reported in the mainstream media. I wonder why not? (Imagine the biggest movie stars getting together for a similar meeting.)

Where on Earth do Americans dig up this paranoia from.? Secret governments, secret plots, conspiracy theories, men in black, covert action against ordinary folk. The country seems full of this garbage. Not a good sign of a country's mental health when half the population it seems, imagine these absurdities.

We have an election coming and one party needs their formidable allies in the media to ensure that all news is bad. And this time around if you don't buy what they are peddling you are a racist.

not sure what "men in black" have to do with this thread but by completely rejecting any ideas other than your own preconceived version of reality shows how easy it would be to further any agenda a shadow government or the Bilderberg grp might have, if that's what you are talking about.

It's not only "paranoid" Americans who "imagine these absurdities." In fact an increasing number of non-Americans (I'm one of them) know or suspect the situation is not quite as the politicians and ABCNNBC et al portray things. History is replete with stuff like this but people fail to learn.

Not like the 80's or 90's eh. Those were tough times for shadow governments and Freemasons.

they should have bumped up oil tax prices decades ago and used it to find, harness, utilise and mass build clean alternative means of energy. Hopefully the world will now be forced to find other means of clean and efficient energy.

World out of control, why? Energy price out of control, so more people finding problems in transportation woes. World will change according,to what change is imposed on it. Change is good, many nations still doing well despite, high energy woes, because their governance has adapted to changes pro-actively. Many nations governance is not adapting with hard work, to new pro-active solutions of 2000s.They want to be reactive nations/reactive citizens, so they will be affected ,because of their slow reactive obsolete governance.

this sums it up:

Cost of gas has tripled: What has our Gov done? = nothing. Food prices doubled (generally): =nothing done. Interest rates should move up within the year: expect nothing to be done (unless the rich are affected.) Electricity/home heating costs: Tax rates: up except for one time stimulus check.

Politicians talk about Iran, Iraq, Palestine, disasters but forgot about their voters. = where are the solutions to these local problems and why are you not fixing them..

weedkila I do agree that a lot of what we spend our time being afraid of is manufactured or designed to keep us under control. We make women fear they are not beautiful so they spend so much energy trying to meet the model that the media has set for them. We guys feel inadequate unless we fit the Armani suit wearing sports car driving mega male image.

The news tells us something is always out there waiting to kill us.

From Bush and the Patriot act we've seen what fear can empower governments to get away with. And we are seeing more and more control of government by corporations and a growing gap of rich and poor that will certainly leave a lot of us with very little say in things.

That said. There are real immediate problems. The environment is a real problem with real consequences. Same goes for Peak Oil. And dozens of other very real dangers we face. The trouble is sorting which ones are real and which created to keep us afraid.

Despite all this, I still believe very strongly that we can fight back. We can start taking steps to assure that we preserve rsources and moderate the impact of some of the real problems. But it will take a lot more of us standing up and trying to be heard. And that may be the most real danger in this age. But it must be done.

The poor and working people have to find a voice and start demanding change.

High oil prices don't just mean higher prices at the pumps, it has a great knock-on effect, and it's not limited to motorists. Transportation cost in general, cars, trucks, planes, higher food prices due to higher tramsportation costs, for feed to animals, for all oil derative products.

People who push for biofuel are misguided, Studies have shown that the net saving on oil dependncy is negligible, little enery is saved for little return. Cost of food going up due to land being used not for food but for bio-fuel.

Well as Warren Buffet so succinctly puts it; 'my secretaries at Berkshire Hathaway pay more per capita tax than I do.' to whit: payroll tax is the chief source of taxation in the US and the rich pay comparatively very little indeed. Not a good scenario for any country.

MPLS2. You are right about both the impact of oil prices and the limited impact of bio-fuel on consumption and the negative impact upon food production.

There are currently no calorie for calorie replacements for oil. We are just not there yet.

What makes sense for food it what several leaders have already proposed. The leading economic powers should invest heavily in the development of African agriculture. Teaching farmers modern methodologies to assure that food production can rise significantly and address both food reserve and supply needs. This will work. And it will bring added stability.

It will cost money. But it will pay off in the end in benefits. This needs to be done. Then and only then can surplus production be retooled to bio-fuel solutions.

The trouble is sorting which ones are real and which created to keep us afraid.

tkoind: I agree and good to hear you're ready to do something about it : ). Perhaps if you follow the money you'll also start to understand more fully the media obsession with topics like the carbon emissions 'problem' and even peak oil (although we don't seem to hear so much about that these days.)

As I mentioned further up the page, the Fed is privately owned and is one of the reasons the US is currently in deep trouble. (An ex president, Wilson, sold out to a bunch of banking families in 1913.) It is these parasitic families (and corporations) who really pull the strings. Interestingly, there is not even a law that requires US citizens to pay income tax, although it's enforced anyway for the elite's wars and so on. This is not a conspiracy theory and has all been thoroughly documented. A couple of online vids that explain it quite well are "America: freedom to fascism" (Aaron Russo) and "Money as debt" (both on google vid.)

tkoind: I agree

re. your 08:34 AM JST post

Avoid flooding with these simple rules: Don't live in a flood plain. Don't live below sea level.

Don't worry, it'll soon get far worse. When Israel/Us invade Iran.

Iran/Israel/US/palestine problems, will be the challenges, in future better order in world.