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"Scum always rises to the top, but instead of scraping it off and discarding it, most people follow it!?!"
--Sherlyn Meinz, 2008
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 | Truth To Power: Want to Stick it to the Banks? Join a Credit Union! |
 By Dave Lindorff
A few months ago, like many struggling Americans, I had my credit line frozen at my local bank. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and have always paid my monthly installment payment on time, but I learned from a bank employee at the institution, which had once been a small family-owned operation but had earlier this year been acquired by a regional bank, that most of the bank’s home-equity lines of credit were being similarly frozen and “reviewed” because the bank had lent a lot of money to a housing development that was underwater and facing bankruptcy. I was told I could simply apply for a new credit line, and pay off the old one, but there was a hitch: I’d be paying almost 3% more per month in interest than with the old loan.
More recently, I went in to the bank with a check I had just received, a bit late, from a magazine for which I write regularly. Because the payment was late, so were some of my bills, so I asked a bank officer, as I had occasionally done over the years, to okay the check for immediate credit as a courtesy, which would allow me to pay those bills. I was turned down. “We don’t offer that service anymore,” he said. “Your check has to clear, which could take two days.” When I pointed out that what I wanted to pay was my mortgage, which was owed to the same bank, and that the money, in any case, would be in the bank’s hands either way, he said, “Sorry, that’s our policy.” The final blow came when I learned that some company in China had accessed my account, pulling out first a few pennies in two trial electronic transactions, and then hundreds of dollars. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, January 12 @ 19:26:14 EST (193 reads)
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| Truth To Power: When Technology Fails |
 A Book Review By Carolyn Baker
Rarely in the specialized milieu of industrial civilization does one encounter a Renaissance man or woman-someone who is well-versed in a wide spectrum of disciplines and who can expound upon them in writing that is both articulate and engaging. So when I discovered Mat Stein's phenomenal When Technology Fails: A Manual For Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving The Long Emergency, I immediately contacted the publisher, Vermont's own Chelsea Green, for a review copy of this fabulous tome on preparing wisely for the end of the world as we have known it.
While this book at first glance may resemble something of a 21st century Whole Earth Catalog it is so much more. Whereas that classic of some three decades ago served as a primer for individuals and groups seeking to live simply and sustainably, primarily because it felt good and seemed like the right thing to do, When Technology Fails, feels as if it has erupted out of the urgent necessity of this moment. Its intention is unmistakable: to offer a "bible for emergency preparation and survival" as well as green and healthy living. However, one should not assume that this book is a "survivalist" manual. It isn't about grabbing your bug-out bag with a few cans of beans in it and running into the woods dressed in camo. It is a book about surviving but also about living well in harmony with the earth community while using methods that allow one's lifestyle to endure and flourish. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, February 11 @ 20:54:49 EST (283 reads)
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| Truth To Power: Presidents, Power, and a People’s Attorney |
 Carolyn Baker Interviews Charlotte Dennett
For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure--one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it. - Quotes from David Rockefeller's Memoirs (Random House, New York, 2002) Chapter 27, pages 404 and 405
In early December, 2008 I drove to the home of Charlotte Dennett in rural Vermont to speak with her not only about her recent run for Attorney General of the State of Vermont, but also about Thy Will Be Done, a book she and her husband, Gerard Colby, had published in 1995-a book extremely relevant to the most recent, and in fact all, recent American presidential elections. I wanted to find out what motivated her to run for Attorney General of Vermont with the promise that if she were elected, she would appoint Vince Bugliosi, author of The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder, as special prosecutor to charge the lame duck President with murder, and also, to learn more about her and Colby's research and how they became involved in the project. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, January 12 @ 12:46:29 EST (287 reads)
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| Truth To Power: Stolen Elections And Media Blackouts |
 Carolyn Baker Interviews Mark Crispin Miller,
A Truth To Power exclusive
Burlington, Vermont Shortly before a public lecture presented at Champlain College, I sat down with Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Media Studies at New York University, to ask him a number of questions regarding stolen elections-a subject Miller has researched and written about extensively. Greg Palast, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Bev Harris, Steve Rosenfeld, Bob Fitrakis, and Lynne Landes, have provided monumental contributions to the subject of election fraud, each with their own unique styles and methods of targeting the issue. Mark Crispin Miller's 2005 book Fooled Again, impeccably documents the stealing of the 2004 election, and Loser Take All, a 2008 collection of essays on stolen elections incorporates the research of other investigators of election fraud such as Robert Kennedy, Jr; Bob Fitrakis, and Steve Rosenfeld.
Generously, Professor Miller gave me both time and disturbing insights regarding the upcoming election of 2008. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, October 27 @ 20:18:41 EDT (305 reads)
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| Truth To Power: The Gathering Inn: Bed, Breakfast, And Beyond |
 By Carolyn Baker
Ecovillages, intentional communities, anarchist collectives, Community Supported Agriculture, bicycle culture, animal husbandry, natural building techniques, biochar, sail transport network, and the path of the peaceful spiritual warrior. And more, add away. If you are not a part of these things, or aren’t supporting them, then you are definitely part of the problem and will be left behind in today’s Consumer Age. Whether the latter is a good or bad memory, we'll see.-- Jan Lundberg
A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving--Lao Tzu
If you're watching the state of the world and are up to speed on the collapse of civilization, and if you want to take a vacation or just get away for the weekend, where do you go? Do you want to hang out with folks who haven't noticed that "normal" is over and that a new paradigm is foisting itself upon us whether we welcome it or not? If that's you're only option when planning your getaway, you may lose your motivation to pursue it-unless you could escape to a place where you'd be surrounded by people who know what you know and are willing to talk about it with you. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, September 18 @ 19:48:21 EDT (340 reads)
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| Truth To Power: Food From Thought |
 By Carl B. Russell
[Many people choose not to eat animal flesh because they do not wish to harm animals, and as a result, have become adamant vegetarians. While there are many reasons for adhering to a vegetarian diet, Carl Russell challenges our pre-conceptions that consciously taking animal life in order to feed ourselves and our families is inherently abusive and inhumane.—Carolyn Baker]
When I was a teenager I participated in a group of friends who were enthusiastic about our outdoor adventures. Fishing, hunting, hiking, and camping, we immersed ourselves in natural experience. Like many of our kind, during summer we would seek deep cool water to recharge our spirits. One favorite swimming hole was in an abandoned copper mine on the side of a mountain, several miles from town. A jeep trail led there through challenging terrain, enhancing the adventure.
During mining operations copper ore had been blasted out of the bedrock, leaving long narrow ravine-like shafts. Once abandoned they had become filled with water. The steep rock ledges were burnt-orange, almost red in color. The water was bright aqua-blue, and milky with suspended sediment. The contrast between green forest, red earth, and brilliant blue water created an exotic visual effect.
Upon arrival we would race over the barren ground to the edge of the cliffs, and plunge one behind the other into the cold blue water. Once we calmed down from the initial rush, we would engage in the main purpose for our coming, cliff jumping. There was an increasing gradient along one side of the mine where we could jump from spots ranging in height from ten, to as high as sixty feet. We would freely charge out into the air from the lower cliffs, demonstrating different styles of cannon balls and dives. The approach at the highest place was more subdued. The cliff walls of the ravine were only thirty feet apart, and from a height of sixty feet an aggressive jump could end dangerously close to the opposite side. ....
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, September 02 @ 19:35:36 EDT (351 reads)
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| Truth To Power: Energy Descent Preparation: Vermont Yes And No |
Carolyn Baker Interviews Local Peak Oil Educator
Every day, year-round, Carl Etnier hops on his bicycle and rides three miles from East Montpelier, Vermont to downtown Montpelier, the state's capital, to work full-time on educating Vermonters and the nation regarding the realities of Peak Oil. I caught up with him at a Montpelier café owned and operated by the New England Culinary Institute which endeavors to use primarily local ingredients for its delectable luncheon menu.
At the top of my list of questions for Carl was: What would make a private consultant with a solid, secure income quit his day job to teach people about Peak Oil?
CB: So Carl, tell me about what motivated you to stop working as a private consultant and devote your time to educating the community about Peak Oil. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, July 30 @ 21:01:05 EDT (488 reads)
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| Truth To Power: I Think I Saw Tom Paine on the 4th of July |
 By Carolyn Baker
These are the times that try men's souls. ~Thomas Paine~
Everyone said I must attend a Fourth of July parade in New England. I yawned and thought of all the Fourth of July parades with which I'd been familiar while growing up in the Midwest-you know, the emphasis on God, country, mom, apple pie, and America right or wrong. I hadn't attended one since I was a very young child. But my friends assured me that it's different in New England, and especially in Vermont.
And so I went to what is traditionally the largest and most popular Fourth of July parade in the state, the one in Warren. I got up very early in order to get there in time to find a parking place which I was warned would be daunting. Like most rural Vermont towns, Warren resembles a small New England village during the days of the Revolutionary War with its white wooden-frame town hall, a narrow main street alongside a tiny, gurgling stream, and a few small shops of colonial architecture.
The Warren parade is traditionally quite political, especially this year as presidential, gubernatorial, legislative, and Congressional seats will be hotly contested in November. But what most impressed me was not the content of the parade, but the mood of the people participating and watching. Yes, I proudly marched in the parade with the Vermont Independence folks and handed out copies of their first-rate, newspaper, Vermont Commons, the style of which is not unlike those early colonial newspapers that served up an intellectual feast rather than the vending machine, mindless junk food of today's corporate tabloids.
In the throes of bands playing, crowds cheering, and walking alongside a man dressed as Ethan Allen, for a moment I was transported to 1776. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, July 08 @ 17:33:46 EDT (446 reads)
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| Truth To Power: George Carlin’s Gift To Apocalypse |
 By Carolyn Baker
This morning as I began gathering Truth To Power's Daily News Stories, I opened Energy Bulletin's site and found a stunning article by Kathy McMahon "26 Things You Can Do Right Now To Manage Your Anxiety." Although she doesn't directly talk about humor, numbers 20 and 21 in the article which refer to protecting one's mental health and cultivating healthy pleasures certainly include it.
References on the internet to George Carlin since his death earlier this week are ubiquitous. All the photos and video clips have taken me back to the early seventies when I first discovered him as "the hippie-dippie mailman with your hippie-dippie mail--Man." More recently he gave us priceless routines such as "The American Dream" and "7 Words You Can't Say On Television". Like all skillful court jesters, George made us take a second look at the insanity of our world and our government, put it in perspective, and see it for what it is-unequivocally absurd. Of course, that does not erase the lethality and horror of it, but it offers another way of looking at and living with it. Humor has always empowered the victims of oppression, even as they know that it cannot make it go away. Not a few holocaust concentration camp inmates were able to maintain some sense of humor, however faint, amid the horrors of their daily lives. Sanity and human dignity are always augmented when brutalized people are able to laugh at their torturers.
It is impossible to listen to Carlin routines without sensing the rage behind the humor. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, June 25 @ 21:51:20 EDT (397 reads)
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| Truth To Power: Real Human Casualties of the Mortgage Massacre |
By Carolyn Baker & Melissa Taylor
Sonoma County, Calif. -- Nearly three years ago, the Taylor Family found a home they thought was perfect, a four-bedroom, single-story home with a hot tub in the backyard in a middle-class neighbor located between two parks. It was a safe neighborhood and a place that seemed to meet their needs as a family.
The price was a major stretch at $747,500. But as a couple, they had owned two other homes. One they had sold after they bought their last home. They tried to be landlords and found the experience frustrating. They rented their first home, but it was in a neighborhood where keeping tenants was extremely challenging. They sold the home for a small gain, but the cost of maintaining the rental was becoming a burden.
So it was that the Taylors moved from a gang-infested area in hopes of getting into an area where there was less violence and a better school district for the children. They moved into a nicer home knowing that while it was not perfect, they might eventually move into another someday.
Over the course of 12 years, they had adopted three children who were siblings and in the need of a home. In fact the children were all related to their family, and the decision was made that the children needed a stable family where they could be loved and cared for. The Taylors then refinanced their home to help cover large adoption expenses and other household repairs. The home became too small for their growing family, and they began to look at the possibility of adding on or moving to a larger home.
For two years they worked with several real estate people looking for a new home that was single-level and a bit larger to accommodate their family. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, June 17 @ 20:40:22 EDT (343 reads)
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| Truth To Power: Making Sense of Collapse: Funeral Procession or Party Time? |
 By Carolyn Baker
In his most recent post, Richard Heinberg asks "How Do You Like Collapse So Far?" and also asks why we should think or talk about collapse if there's nothing we can do about it? He suggests that in the face of the gargantuan unraveling over which we have very little power, keeping in mind what it is about our species that is worth saving is a salutary emotional and spiritual practice. In fact he says, "...there may in fact be only one occupation worthy of our attention: that of identifying the qualities that make our species worth saving, and then celebrating and exemplifying those qualities. If we concentrate on doing that, perhaps we win no matter what. Outwardly, it will probably look a lot like what many of us are already doing: working to save a species, an ecosystem, a human community; to make a village sustainable, or to halt a new coal power plant."
What Heinberg states here is exactly what many other collapse watchers have been up to for the past several years. We look at the truth, we feel it, we act. As we take action, we do not do so naively believing that any particular action or several actions taken even by masses of individuals will prevent collapse, but we do it because it's the right thing to do-that is, acting according to what Sharon Astyk calls "The Theory Of Anyway." ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, June 12 @ 20:20:50 EDT (359 reads)
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| Truth To Power: Location, Location, Re-Location |
By Carolyn Baker
For approximately ten days last month I traveled across the United States from my former home in New Mexico to my new home in Vermont. My journey has been the culmination of years of researching and soul searching in response to the odyssey of my species and the earth community which has now entered an irreversible trajectory of collapse.
At the completion of this transition, I feel compelled to clarify a number of issues around my relocation and relocation in general. Obviously, for the past two years on this website I have been talking about relocation as one piece in the complex tapestry of collapse preparation. Therefore, I feel that I owe it to regular readers and subscribers of Truth To Power to let you know that I've taken this enormous step since many of you have relocated long before I did, and many more of you are contemplating doing so. I believe that where we choose to stay or move to is monumentally important in terms of how we prepare or do not prepare for collapse. I do not believe that everyone should relocate, and I certainly do not believe that everyone should relocate in Vermont since relocation is a highly individual decision encompassing myriad factors, and one size definitely does not fit all.
I hasten to add that I just arrived in Vermont a few days ago and that I do not have elaborate plans for making a seamless transition into some groovy ecovillage where I intend to live happily ever after in harmonious community with other collapse watchers. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, June 03 @ 18:12:42 EDT (358 reads)
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| Truth To Power: Rapid Unraveling and the Demise of Adolescent America |
By Carolyn Baker
Well here it is folks-the great unraveling so many of us have been forecasting during the past five years as we've read the tea leaves and researched the unprecedented convergence of myriad natural, political, economic, and environmental realities. As most of you know, I'm traveling, yes on the road, across this country. I was going to wait until arriving at my final destination before writing about my experience, but with oil rapidly heading for $200 a barrel, it feels important to do so sooner rather than later because our lives have just changed more dramatically than we can imagine, and we will only be able to comprehend to what extent as the repercussions of the end of the age of oil reverberate through what is left of industrial civilization.
In my travels I've seen exactly one RV on the road, a few SUV's and vans, a number of small cars and motorcycles, and lots of eighteen-wheelers going 55 MPH. Motels have a record low number of guests, and few people are eating in restaurants. I thought about writing an article entitled "Ghost Town USA: Echo Across America", but that was before oil reached a new record of $135 yesterday. The speed of collapse is taking even a seasoned collapse-watcher like me by somewhat of a surprise, and I feel compelled to talk about it as it unfolds in this moment. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, May 23 @ 20:53:57 EDT (393 reads)
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| Truth To Power: 12 Stepping Our Way To Armageddon |
By Carolyn Baker
The end of everything we call life is close at hand and cannot be evaded.
- H.G. Wells, 1946
I recently received an email from a reader, frustrated with my insistence on holding a vision of what is possible alongside the dismal, inevitable current realities of civilization's collapse. Admonishing me to bear in mind America's Oprah and NASCAR world view and therefore abdicate any sense of optimism I might have, this reader accused me of suggesting that we should 12 Step our way through Armageddon. Rather than being offended, however, I was overcome with gratitude for this reader's image, frustrated with me as he may be, because in spite of the regular "wordsmithing" that I do as a writer, I always feel a sense of relief and validation when someone else gives words that I may not yet have for what I've been thinking, feeling, or doing.
With the image of the 12 Steps in mind, I decided to look more closely at them in relation to the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI) and notice how they might in fact be useful not only for recovering from addiction, but for navigating Armageddon. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Saturday, May 10 @ 20:55:53 EDT (367 reads)
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| Truth To Power: We Can Survive But Can We Communicate? |
 Building Community As The World Unravels
By Carolyn Baker and Sally Erickson
The distance between us is holy ground
To be traversed feet bare,
Arms raised in joyous dance
So that it is crossed.
And the tracks of our pilgrimage shine in the
darkness
To light our coming together
In a bright and steady light.
--Raphael Jesus Gonzales
[As promised in my last article "Peak Civilization And The Winter Of Our Disconnect", my colleague and friend, Sally Erickson and I are offering what we believe are vitally important tools for enhancing communication with our peers as we navigate collapse.-CB]
When we think of preparing our minds, bodies, hearts, and living situations for collapse, the focus is often on our individual or household living situations. Equally important is our need to develop a circle of trusting, mutually interdependent relationships. The culture we live in is based on hierarchies of control and influence. Work relationships, kept in place largely by paychecks and ordered by project managers and bosses, are the most common experience most of us have of being part of an organized group. We have little experience outside of those hierarchies. Even more rare in our hyper-independent culture is to depend on others for mutual aid, support and comfort. So, for most people, it likely feels overwhelming to consider how to build a wider circle of people based on mutuality, as part of preparation for the ongoing collapse of basic life support systems.
As daunting as that challenge may seem, consider that individuals in isolation will have a hard, lonely, and extreme challenge if they try to survive the world that will remain when systems collapse with ever-increasing rapidity and intensity. Humans are hard-wired as social beings. Absent the distractions of media and entertainment we will find that we need each other. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, May 05 @ 22:26:43 EDT (497 reads)
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