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POPSDreams Die Hard
Within the context of conventional party politics - the kind that has been baseline "normal" in the USA for a long time - we see this playing out in two factions that are increasingly out-of-touch with reality. The Obama government has made itself hostage to a toxic form of pretense and lying. In order to sustain the wish for "hope" - if not hope itself - the President and his White House advisors along with his cabinet appointments, are pretending that the historical forces of compressive contraction are not underway. They're flat-out lying about the employment figures issued in the government's name. They're willfully ignoring the comprehensive bankruptcy gripping government at all levels. They refuse to bring the law to bear against "the malefactors of great wealth." They appear to not understand the epochal energy scarcity problem the whole world faces, or its implications for industrial economies. Most of all, they persist in promoting the lie that this economy can return t
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POPSTen Ways To Prepare For A Post-Oil Society 9: We have to reorganize the medical system. The skein of intertwined rackets based on endless Ponzi buck-passing scams will not survive the discontinuities to come. 10: Life in the USA will have to become much more local, and virtually all the activities of everyday life will have to be re-scaled. See Also: - The Long Emergency: What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle? - JHK's post-oil novel World Made By Hand - The Kunstler-cast , a weekly discussion about the tragic comedy of suburban sprawl.
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POPSJames Howard Kunstler's "World Made By Hand" [trailer] A novel about peak oil and what it could mean for America's future. While this novel depicts a pretty bad scenario (global war, the end of petroleum shipments to the US, the general collapse of the US), it's actually a quite hopeful book. See also: - The Long Emergency: What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle? - James Howard Kunstler speaks @ TED on "The Tragedy of Suburbia" - Jim Kunstler's podcast
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POPSThe Long Road Ahead -- Are You Ready for the Worst the Economy Has to Offer?
The killer tidal wave washes away all the things they have labored to build for decades, all their poignant little effects and chattels, and the survivors are left keening amidst the wreckage as the sea once again returns to normal in its eternal cradle. So, that's what I think we will get: an interval of deflationary depression followed by a destructive wave of inflation that will wipe out both constructed debt and constructed savings, scraping the financial landscape clean. There's no question that stage one is underway. But we can be sure the giant wave of money recklessly loaned into existence in just a few weeks time will wash back through the global economy leaving a swath of destruction. And then what? The societies of the world will be faced with the task of rebuilding systems of fruitful activity, i.e., real economies based on productive behavior rather than the smoke-and-mirrors of Frankenstein-finance con games.
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POPS"The tragic comedy of suburban sprawl" [podcast] Suburbia is a cartoon of country living in a cartoon of a house with a cartoon of a front lawn. It has all the worst aspects of being isolated out in the boonies, and none of the benefits of living in a city. It is a lifestyle that will come grinding to a halt once people realize that the cheap oil and fossil fuels that made the entire living arrangement possible are a thing of the past as The Long Emergency dawns on us.
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POPSDark Age Ahead Interesting perspective on the times we live in. My favorite author, Jane Jacobs, is the inspiration for the title of this forum posting. I do think that society is now beginning to realize the gravity of our situation, but is still in the panic/disbelief state. This is not a "lifestyle" issue as the CBS producers seem to view it. It is about the future of the human species.
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POPSBehold, the vision of End Days Every once in a while, you stumble on one of those perfect images that sums it all up—your frustration, your fears, your demons and ills. And you weep a little. If you're sane, anyway.
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POPS"Radiant City": a documentary on suburban sprawl A documentary in which a two-man team consisting of a journalist and "Canada's king of surreal comedy", heavily influenced by James Howard Kunstler, heads off to document life in the mass-produced strip-mall world of 21st-century suburbia.
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