Catching my breath after the roller coaster ride of the last week...

I write this as New Zealand faces the coldest weather we’ve seen for a long time.  There is snow on the hills of the capital Wellington, which is something few would be old enough to remember.  

At the same time in Japan people have died (and hundreds hospitalised) of heatstroke in Japan.  There are catastrophic droughts in the south of the United States and an ongoing catastrophe in the Horn of Africa.

No doubt about it but we have to endure the unprecedented extreme weather events alongside with other natural events such as earthquakes (that has had such a terrible effect on the town where I grew up - Christchurch).

But most of all we are all, in one way or another, living through the collapse of infinite growth - even if we are a speculator on Wall Street looking to make a fortune  from the American credit downgrade.

If we are unemployed or have lost our house in the United States or if our house or livelihood has been destroyed by the earthquake in Christchurch we are experiencing collapse.

We all live on the same planet and ultimately we share the same fate.

As I have written before I am having to question old assumptions and to reassess what is really important.

It has been a great disappointment for me to find that some of my old allegiances are now irrelevant and that people that I used to look to as role models seem to have scant understanding of what is happening to us at such speed; and even seem to playing a role of trying to downplay the whole things.

The future in the next 5 or 10 years is ‘uncertain’ ?- I would say the next 6 months (or even the next 6 weeks) is ‘incertain’, and at the very least carries great danger for us all.

One of the things that I try to do by bringing such a large number of stories (and their number is increasing literally with every week) is to contextualise events  and to bring commentary from a wide range of sources (from mainstream, corporate media to alternative-thinking sources who can clearly see the road ahead - people such as Michael Ruppert, Max Keiser and many others) - that basically confirms the same message.

I can hear the people (Mike Ruppert calls them 'Zombies') screaming ‘confirmation bias’!  But then by now you’d have to be a Zombie not to see the seriousness of things.  Mike Ruppert has reported a sharp drop off in the angry denunciations and hate mail recently; perhaps even these people are scared now?

The two stories that have attracted everyone’s attention in the last fortnight illustrate two major aspects of collapse. 


The first of these stories would have to be the US downgrade by Standard and Poor’s at the same time as the European sovereign default crisis deepens and spreads to Italy, and now to France.  


The second major story is the horrendous riots in cities around England and the response to those riots.

What the events of the last few weeks are showing is that the manipulations, the quantitative easing and other gimmicks have been shown to have failed - we have come to the end of the era where the books can be cooked and we are seeing things much more as they are.

In the lead up to August corporations were able to cook their earnings reports. One way this happened was to lay off large numbers of employees - from corporations as well as from the banks. It is cheaper to sack people than to employ them.

Apart from the sheer volatility of the market, a subjective response to whatever the latest news - whether an earnings report or ‘consumer confidence’ etc. the news is all bad and there is no way that it can ever go back to ‘normal’, for growth to be restored.

One news story that Michael Ruppert cited in his latest report to Collapse Net members was that there had been a $10 a barrel drop in the price of oil, something that he has not seen in all the years he has been involved in the Peak Oil movement.  


This was way beyond anything that could be justified by events on the Dow.  

Ruppert sees this as a response by those who set the prices of oil and other commodities and as an indication that they may be seeing a crisis coming that is much deeper than what we have seen hitherto.

He points to the main outcome of the debt ceiling debacle (and something largely ignored by the media) - the creation of a ‘Super-Congress’.  


This is completely unconstitutional and has been described by Mike Ruppert as the ‘poison pill’ of the crisis.

Basically it is a small group of Democrats and Republicans who can make decisions ‘in the middle of the night’ and send them straight to the President for signature by-passing the usual constitutional, democratic measures (such as Congress).

Ruppert says Thanksgiving in the United States as a key date as that is the date by which the country has to agree on the first cutbacks in spending.

What he sees is an extra-constitutional body deciding to cut back on pensions, medical assistance and other entitlements.  


This is likely to meet with an immediate and violent response from a populace that is already feeling the pain but up to now has been acquiescent.

There have been some signs that the United States government may be preparing for this outcome and we are likely to see the face of fascism in the near future.

For those of us living outside America some of the tactics of authorities and police are already well beyond anything we are used to in our countries (up to now).  Examples are armed raids on the Amish for producing raw milk and the shocking recent raid on Rawesome Foods in Venice, California.

Numerous sightings have been documented of moves of armoured equipment within the US and RT has produced a story of the US producing a force of 20,000 non-American soldiers to respond to internal terrorism or civil unrest.

It has been interesting for me that the right-wing conspiracy groups (like Alex Jones) that talk about FEMA concentration camps and the like seem to be relatively quiet about events that are actually happening practically as we speak - but then I don’t make a habit of visiting their sites that often.

Collapse Net has been documenting cases of civil unrest in the US and throughout the world.  In the US the phenomenon of ‘flash mobs’ are being transformed into ‘flash-robs’.  There are increasing cases of theft of infrastructure like copper as well as hijacking of trucks carrying valuable cargo.

The big story of social unrest has to be the riots in England in the last week.  However there have been disturbances right across Europe as described by a recent article in der Spiegel.

Pakistan is becoming more unstable and practically in a state of civil war; there is a shortage of diesel for fire trucks.  None of the crises that caught the headlines earlier in the year (such as Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen etc.) have been resolved - and civil unrest continues.

In Israel, in addition to the repression of the Palestinians Israelis are now demonstrating in their tens of thousands demanding the removal of Netanyahu.

There has been continuing social unrest in China in addition to issues of floods and droughts leading to severe water and power shortages.  In recent days there have been problems with their rapid transit rail system.

And there is the ongoing tragedy of Japan, a nation that was already in a state of economic stagnation before being hit by the earthquake and the tsunami followed by the terrible events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Japan is currently experiencing a heatwave that has killed several and hospitalised thousands while, at the same time experiencing severe electricity shortages.  No industrial nation can endure this sort of damage for long without serious breakdown; latest GDP forecasts project another decline in the latest quarter.  

Fukushima is still producing largest levels of radiation; radiation has been found in mushrooms, beef and now fish - all of which have been ingested by the population.

In the United States, in addition to the problems of national indebtedness there are problems such as: state governments unable to pay their bills or the pay for infrastructure and services; power outages, especially connected with drought; increasing job losses, home foreclosures and poverty.  

Globally there has been an increase in tensions in hot spots such as the Middle East, Iraq and recently in the South China Sea (between Vietnam, the Philippines and China).

Several authors have drawn comparisons between the current situation and the situation in Europe leading up to World War 1. The one possibility that we hardly dare think about is war.  This makes me think of another quote from Gerald Celente - “if all else fails then go to war!”

After a terrible couple of weeks hopefully we are going to experience a quieter period before the next crisis.  


The general picture is of turmoil and extreme disorder in the world where the latest response is connected with the latest event and there is no coherence.  

That is why the market is going up and down so much.

In this regard I can recommend one of my latest posts - the article “Financial lifeboats starting to get crowded”

I would like to finish by acknowledging Michael Ruppert and the team at Collapse Net.  Mike has provided what for me is the clearest and most coherent picture of this complex crisis that marks just the “end of the beginning” of collapse.


Have a good week.