Introducing The Bulletin, a collation of recent articles focusing upon those predicaments flowing from the ongoing collapse of our global, industrialised complex society.

Coming Clean on Clean Energy: It’s a Dirty Business | RealClearWire

The Energy Debate: Fanboys, Fangirls, and the Real Cost of Pollution | Art Berman

More Bargaining And Hopium

Natural Farming Cannot Co-exist with GM Crops – Global Research

US Hints At Regime Change In Tehran If Israel Is Attacked | ZeroHedge

The coming Planetary Emergency and its consequences

In 2023 the world’s forests stopped acting as a carbon sink

Is The West’s Growing Oppression a Portent? | how to save the world

MM #11: Renewable Salvation? | Do the Math

Washington Further Escalates Its War On Dissent

The myth that renewables are cheap persists in part due to the flawed use of LCOE – Watt-Logic

Nobody Would Vote For Any Of This Bullshit Without Extensive Manipulation

The Dieselgate Scandal

The Ardent Pipe Dreams of American Voters – OffGuardian

Deep Sea Delusions

Off-grid: further thoughts on the failing renewables transition

Science Snippets: 2030 Is Still Too Soon

FOIA Files: How Feds, Press, and Academia “Coordinate” on Speech

Make Preparations – by Jordan Perry

The Empire Is The Real Enemy

#286: Whatever happened to progress? | Surplus Energy Economics

One Step Away From the Biggest Oil Shock in History – International Man

Trilaterals over Stockholm

It Became Necessary to Destroy the Global Economy to Save It

Russia ready to execute nuclear attacks on NATO targets, according to leaked documents

Report: 82% of Scientists Say Overpopulation is a Major Problem | by HR NEWS | Aug, 2024 | Medium

“An Intricate Fabric Of Bad Actors Working Hand-In-Hand” – So Is War Inevitable? | ZeroHedge

Peace Is Not On The Ballot In November

Low Tech Life | Kris De Decker – by Rachel Donald

The Population Problem: Human Impact, Extinctions, and the Biodiversity Crisis

July 5, 2024 Readings

July 5, 2024

July 5, 2024 Readings

Move Over, Disaster Capitalism–Make Room for Addiction Capitalism–Charles Hugh Smith

No Escape From Unchecked Government Spending and Deficits…Here’s The Proof–Crisis Investing

Doug Casey on Revisionist History and How the Good Guys Don’t Always Win

Houthi Attacks On Ships Soar Most This Year In June As Critical Maritime Chokepoint Ablaze In Conflict | ZeroHedge

Cat 4 Hurricane Beryl Heads Towards Texas, Threatening Major Oil Refineries | ZeroHedge

Craig Murray’s Campaign Against Empire – Read by Eunice Wong

Egypt Teeters On Brink Of Economic Ruin As Public Debt Mounts, Poverty Rate Soars | ZeroHedge

Green New Scam Is Dying – The Daily Reckoning

The Massive Harm of LNG Fracking, Tallied | The Tyee

The Status of U.S. Oil Production: 2024 Update Everything Shines By Dimming – resilience

The Systems Within–Earth4All

From Milk Runs to MAD to Madness | Mises Institute

Borneo’s Dayak adapt Indigenous forestry to modern peat management–MongaBay

Brace for Peak Impact | Do the Math

It’s Too Hot For Trains In Canada–Guy McPherson

This Civilization Is Deeply Unnatural–Caitlin Jonstone

The Media Don’t Get Degrowth–Degrowth Is The Answer

From Milk Runs to MAD to Madness | Mises Institute

The Awesome, Terrifying Power of the Press

Scientists And Farmers Restore Aztec-Era Floating Farms That House Axolotls–MongaBay

Rebuilding the flax / textile industry as a commons: Fantasy Fibre Mill

Reporters Blame “Right-Wing Media” for Their Failure to Disclose Biden’s Infirmity – JONATHAN TURLEY

Empires are built through the creation or acquisition of wealth. The Roman Empire came about through the productivity of its people and its subsequent acquisition of wealth from those that it invaded. The Spanish Empire began with productivity and expanded through the use of its large armada of ships, looting the New World of its gold. The British Empire began through localized productivity and grew through its creation of colonies worldwide—colonies that it exploited, bringing the wealth back to England to make it the wealthiest country in the world.

In the Victorian Age, we Brits were proud to say, “There will always be an England,” and “The sun never sets on the British Empire.” So, where did we go wrong? Why are we no longer the world’s foremost empire? Why have we lost not only the majority of our colonies, but also the majority of our wealth?

Well, first, let’s take a peek back at the other aforementioned empires and see how they fared. Rome was arguably the greatest empire the world has ever seen. Industrious Romans organized large armies that went to other parts of the world, subjugating them and seizing the wealth that they had built up over generations. And as long as there were further conquerable lands just over the next hill, this approach was very effective. However, once Rome faced diminishing returns on new lands to conquer, it became evident that those lands it had conquered had to be maintained and defended, even though there was little further wealth that could be confiscated.

The conquered lands needed costly militaries and bureaucracies in place to keep them subjugated but were no longer paying for themselves…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Falling From Grace

April 30, 2024

Falling From Grace

Years ago, Doug Casey mentioned in a correspondence to me, “Empires fall from grace with alarming speed.”

Every now and then, you receive a comment that, although it may have been stated casually, has a lasting effect, as it offers uncommon insight. For me, this was one of those and it’s one that I’ve kept handy at my desk since that time, as a reminder.

I’m from a British family, one that left the UK just as the British Empire was about to begin its decline. They expatriated to the “New World” to seek promise for the future.

As I’ve spent most of my life centred in a British colony – the Cayman Islands – I’ve had the opportunity to observe many British contract professionals who left the UK seeking advancement, which they almost invariably find in Cayman. Curiously, though, most returned to the UK after a contract or two, in the belief that the UK would bounce back from its decline, and they wanted to be on board when Britain “came back.”

This, of course, never happened. The US replaced the UK as the world’s foremost empire, and although the UK has had its ups and downs over the ensuing decades, it hasn’t returned to its former glory.

And it never will.

If we observe the empires of the world that have existed over the millennia, we see a consistent history of collapse without renewal. Whether we’re looking at the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Spanish Empire, or any other that’s existed at one time, history is remarkably consistent: The decline and fall of any empire never reverses itself; nor does the empire return, once it’s fallen.

But of what importance is this to us today?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Alfred McCoy, Living in a Quagmire World

March 13, 2024

Alfred McCoy, Living in a Quagmire World

Americans have never liked to think of themselves as part of the West’s imperial history that began with the Roman empire and may now quite literally be ending, as historian and TomDispatch regular Alfred McCoy suggests, in a distinctly un-American moment. The author of a classic history of empire, To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change, McCoy has previously suggested that, in symbolic terms, if Donald Trump were to win the 2024 presidential election (or even lose it and once again contest it, possibly, thanks to his most fervent followers, in an ominously well-armed fashion), he could prove to be the end of empire personified.

Certainly, as McCoy explains today, it’s hard not to imagine that, from Ukraine to Gaza to Asia, this country is on a dramatic imperial downward slide. His own findings only serve to reinforce a view taking root among America’s European and Asian allies that the United States, globally dominant since 1945 and triumphantly the lone superpower on Planet Earth in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is now experiencing an epoch-ending terminal failure. The global Pax Americana (that proved to have all too much war in it) is, it seems, crumbling amid two grim conflicts, one in Europe and the other in the Middle East, and a political and military stand-off with China that could, at any moment, take a turn for the worse.

And let me add: it’s strange to see the American Moment (and yes, historically speaking, I do think that should be capitalized!) potentially ending here at home with two elderly men locked in an electoral knife fight that could blow the American imperium sky-high from the inside out. Tom

…click on the above link to read the rest…

What the “Rules Based International Order” Really Means

December 5, 2023

What the “Rules Based International Order” Really Means

This map, from Multipolarista, shows the US-centred Empire bloc of nations (in red) that subscribe to the US-invented Rules Based International Order. The countries in green do not recognize that order, and they continue to support de facto a UN-centred international system governed by international law.

There was a meeting a couple of years ago between the US and China where the two sides — pro-Empire and pro-Multipolarity — each used their own coded language to express what they had been conditioned, very differently, to believe to be in the best interests of world order and security. Clinton Fernandez, an Australian professor and former intelligence officer, recounts the event in his book Sub-Imperial Power:

AT A HIGH-LEVEL SUMMIT between the United States and China in March 2021, the US Secretary of State said he was ‘committed to leading with diplomacy to advance the interests of the United States and to strengthen the rules-based international order’. The director of China’s Foreign Affairs Commission countered by saying that China and the international community upheld ‘the United Nations–centred international system and the international order underpinned by international law, not what is advocated by a small number of countries of the so-called rules-based international order’.

China was essentially saying that the ‘rules-based international order’ was simply a euphemism for the will of the (US) Empire, and that China would fiercely oppose that Empire in favour of an ‘international order’ underpinned by international law (ie governed, at least ostensibly, in the interests of the people, not that of corporate wealth and power, and based on bilateral negotiations between autonomous nations, not the edicts of Empire).

This is perhaps the ultimate expression of the 21st century’s greatest “clash of ideologies”, one that could quite conceivably end in nuclear annihilation…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Leaving Blobtopia

November 17, 2023

Leaving Blobtopia

“The vibe shift being witnessed is nothing more then a managerial class losing the mandate of heaven as they squander the inheritance of empire.” —Jim Sharp

A nation can only take so much corruption, crime, and unreality. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,” said Karl Rove, veteran blobster and advisor to George W. Bush, when he uttered those fateful words. Even political junkies forget the rest of what he said:

And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Old Karl was being too polite, you understand. What he meant to say is: We’re gonna lay trip after trip on you, all of you smart-asses watching the political scene until your over-mis-educated Ivy League brains turn into something that resembles a patty-melt so that you’re lost in a fog of incoherent blabbery, parroting whatever nonsense we proffer as we asset-strip what’s left of Western Civ.

What they call “the cognitive infrastructure” of we-the-people has been twisted, crinkled, folded, looped, and twiddled until it’s nearer a state of criticality than the ten-thousand rusted-out bridges on our county roads. This week, the FCC board voted to adopt new rules to “prevent and eliminate digital discrimination.” Sounds great, huh? Reality check: I do not think that the words mean what you think they mean. They are, rather, an invitation to the rest of the US government — any malicious blob-driven agency — to meddle with the Internet, block content that they don’t like, and conduct mind-fuckery operations to their heart’s delight. Uh-oh, I think they just destroyed the Internet.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The World’s Top Industrial Countries Are in Treacherous Waters

October 12, 2023

The World’s Top Industrial Countries Are in Treacherous Waters

Sometimes, after reading a slew of news articles from around the world, I feel confused and weary. But occasionally patterns seem to emerge. I say “seem” because the human brain is all too eager to see patterns where there are none (hence humanity’s fascination with false conspiracy theories). Nevertheless, these days I can hardly escape the sense that current events are accelerating toward . . . something troubling.

Of course, we all bring preconceptions to bear on new information, and those preconceptions tend to shape the patterns we see. My own preconceptions have emerged from a few decades of studying humanity’s systemic problems—climate change, resource depletion, pollution, economic inequality and fragility, authoritarianism, war, and so on—and how these evolved through many centuries up to the present in response to new energy sources and technological innovation. The cornerstone of my preconceptions is a limits-to-growth perspective that sees the last few decades of fossil-fueled rapid expansion of population and per-capita consumption as profoundly unsustainable, and the decades of the 2020s and 2030s as the likely turning point in humanity’s overall trajectory from rapid growth to just-as-rapid contraction.

So, I guess you could say I’m a short-term, big-picture pessimist. You can judge for yourself whether focusing that particular lens on the Rorschach inkblot of current events is helpful.

The world is a complex place, and some countries are always doing better or worse than others. But occasionally, as was the case with the Great Depression and World War II, the whole world seems to falter or erupt at once. If the pattern I think I see is really there, we may be approaching a similarly pivotal moment.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Last Gasps of a Dying Empire

October 11, 2023

The Last Gasps of a Dying Empire

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818 – (image by Dezgo.com)

All empires in history follow the same trajectory of glory, stasis, and decay. They start their existence around agricultural or mineral resources that they use to create a powerful military force. Then, they grow by conquering their neighbors. The structure of an empire is not different from that of other human enterprises: companies, states, or other groups of people who happen to collaborate with each other in formal or informal ways. It is just that empires are nearly pure military organizations. They live by war, and they die by war.

Necessarily, the resources that created the glorious empire are destined to run out, typically overexploited by the greedy imperial elites. At the same time, the empire itself creates structures that tend to destroy it: bureaucracy, desertification, pollution, and more. In time, depletion and pollution collaborate to bring down the mighty imperial structure and to bring it down fast. It is the essence of the “Seneca Effect,” according to the words of the Roman Philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca, who noted that “Increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” At some point, the King of Kings, Ozymandias, will find that his time has come, and nothing will be left of him except carvings on stones in the desert that proclaim his eternal glory.

But between the phases of growth and the collapse, there is a gray zone, a short-lived age in which the empire is still powerful enough to attempt new conquests but too weak to succeed…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

What do the Rich Have in Mind? First, Their own Survival

October 10, 2023

What do the Rich Have in Mind? First, Their own Survival

We know very little about what the rich actually think, surely nothing like what transpires from their public declarations. I’ve always been thinking that the rich and the powerful are not smarter than the average commoner, such as you and I. But just the fact that they are average means that the smart ones among them must understand what’s going on. And what are they going to do about the chaos to come? They have much more power than us, and whatever they decide to do will affect us all.

Douglas Rushkoff gives us several interesting hints of what the rich have in mind in his book “Survival of the Richest” (2022)

The portrait of the average rich person from the book is not flattening. We are told of a bunch of ruthless people, unable to care for others (that is, lacking empathy), and convinced that the way to solve problems is to accumulate money and keep growing as if there are no limits. But Rushkoff tells us that at least some of them understand that we are going to crash against some kind of wall in the near future. And they are preparing for that.

Even without Rushkoff’s book, it seems clear to me that plenty of planning and scheming is going on behind closed doors. Large sections of our society are by now completely opaque to inquiry, and commoners have no possibility to affect what’s being decided. We know less of what’s going on in Washington’s inner circles than the Danish peasants knew of what was going on inside the Castle of Elsinore.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Leave Home

August 7, 2023

Leave Home

As an increasing number of people realize that their home country is becoming a liability to them, the most common question I hear from them is, “What do I have to do to remain where I am and still be assured that I’ll be able to retain both my wealth and my freedom?”

The simple (and tragic) answer to this question is that there is no such solution. The two objectives are mutually exclusive.

Throughout the ages, whenever an empire has begun its inevitable collapse, no country has ever woken up and reversed the process. In every case, the government rides the decline to the bottom. And, along the way, a series of policies is invariably undertaken to save those in government in the downward rush. These policies are always at the expense of the populace.

Invariably, as the decline worsens, governments drag out the same policies that all other failing empires have implemented before them: Devaluation of currency, default on debt, increased warfare, creation of a police state and, finally, the looting of all those citizens who have even a modicum of wealth.

The question is not whether we like our home country as it presently is, but whether we’re prepared to accept what it’s about to become.

As people become more aware that their government is not only not their friend, but has become their greatest threat, it’s human nature to hope that “it won’t get any worse.”

And, of course, it then gets worse.

The great majority of people don’t actually try to escape until they find that they’re now trapped and cannot escape. (Curbing the outward flow is surprisingly easy for any government to achieve – by implying that those emigrating are enemies of the state. This time around, those attempting to exit will be called domestic terrorists.)

…click on the above link to read the rest…

An Empire of Denial

January 23, 2023

An Empire of Denial

Is there a rise from the dead?

Despite claims to the contrary, we still live in an age of empires. The only difference this time is that the one dominating this planet is in full denial of this fact. No empire can avoid its fate however, and this one is of no exception either. In my previous post I’ve shown how Empires fail as they meet their fate at the end of their exponential growth period, but what are the ominous signs of this happening today? How long can the Empire mask its predicament by over-reliance on foreign resources, debt and constant territorial expansion? Is there a way to stop the unraveling, once the abundant flow of resources starts declining?

Finally, is there a way back for Empires from the land of the dead?

Empire State. Photo by Patrick Langwallner on Unsplash

In order to answer these questions, we have to understand what behavior has led up to this point. The key to understand this is that the overuse of resources to the point of unsustainability almost always lends a short term political advantage over those who are more reality conscious and think generations ahead. Thus the more unsustainable your actions are, the more successful you become — on the short term at least. This bidding game virtually guarantees that the Empire ends up overdoing things, resulting in overshoot: using natural resources and polluting Nature at rates well beyond the planet’s capacity to recover.

Lacking any meaningful — let alone politically acceptable — answer to this predicament, however, the Empire’s elite finds itself in a corner. The only way forward would be a rapid adaption and a radical cut-back on excess. Yet, elites cannot back down, else their rivals (both from within and outside) would immediately take advantage, threatening the Empire to plunge into chaos…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Tag Archives: empire

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

The Bulletin: September 19-25, 2024

July 5, 2024 Readings

Post navigation

Latest Posts