Chicken Little Was Right

Blind Spot

A Dry Dipstick Movie Review
88 minute DVD
Filmmaker:Adolfo Doring
www.blindspotdoc.com

Blind Spot is a powerful presentation of the state of the planet, with a primary focus on Peak Oil, but including overpopulation, global warming, and the worldwide economic infrastructure. The film is well-made, with excellent photography, editing and narration, and the choice of talking heads much more interesting than the average Peak Oil film.

I was especially pleased to see perceptive observations and commentary from Joseph Tainter, the historian author of The Collapse of Complex Societies, and from sociologist William Catton, author of Overshoot: The Ecological Basis for Revolutionary Change. Both placed the planet’s current situation in its proper historical and evolutionary content—which is basically more of the same except much, much worse, since we now have a global society rather than a local or regional one.

One of the more memorable quotes in the movie was from author Derrick Jensen:

“The world is saying, ‘Look you have a choice. You can either fix it or I can fix it, and if I fix it you are not going to like it because I’m going to throw everything away.’ And everything means most of us.”

But I’ll have to admit my favorite quote was from economist Max Fraad Wolff:

“Wal-Mart is basically the distribution arm of the Peoples Republic of China.”

Blind Spot is the creation of Adolfo Doring, and was funded by the Wallace Global Fund, one of the more farsighted foundations that supports worthwhile groups concerned about the planet and the human family. The film would be an excellent introduction to friends who aren’t yet familiar with Peak Oil which, if our experience is typical, still includes almost everyone in the United States.

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Recording on KPFA Berkeley of discussion with Frank Biancheri, Research Coordinator of LEAP/E2020’s GlobalEurope Anticipation Bulletin. LEAP/E2020 yesterday published a letter to the G20 leaders in the Financial Times worldwide edition. It states that if the G20 doesn’t make radical changes by summer, it has lost all control over events, leading to “global geopolitical dislocation “/

Here’s the recording of KPFA’s Guns & Butter interview with Biancheri.

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This column from the Washington Times is excellent (even if it is from the Moonie-backed Wash. Times)

Washington Times column

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
KUHN: When Israel expelled Palestinians:
Randall Kuhn

OP-ED:

In the wake of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak made this analogy: “Think about what would happen if for seven years rockets had been fired at San Diego, California from Tijuana, Mexico.”

Within hours scores of American pundits and politicians had mimicked Barak’s comparisons almost verbatim. In fact, in this very paper on January 9 House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor ended an opinion piece by saying “America would never sit still if terrorists were lobbing missiles across our border into Texas or Montana.” But let’s see if our political and pundit class can parrot this analogy.

Think about what would happen if San Diego expelled most of its Hispanic, African American, Asian American, and Native American population, about 48 percent of the total, and forcibly relocated them to Tijuana? Not just immigrants, but even those who have lived in this country for many generations. Not just the unemployed or the criminals or the America haters, but the school teachers, the small business owners, the soldiers, even the baseball players.

What if we established government and faith-based agencies to help move white people into their former homes? And what if we razed hundreds of their homes in rural areas and, with the aid of charitable donations from people in the United States and abroad, planted forests on their former towns, creating nature preserves for whites to enjoy? Sounds pretty awful, huh? I may be called anti-Semitic for speaking this truth. Well, I’m Jewish and the scenario above is what many prominent Israeli scholars say happened when Israel expelled Palestinians from southern Israel and forced them into Gaza. But this analogy is just getting started.

What if the United Nations kept San Diego’s discarded minorities in crowded, festering camps in Tijuana for 19 years? Then, the United States invaded Mexico, occupied Tijuana and began to build large housing developments in Tijuana where only whites could live.

And what if the United States built a network of highways connecting American citizens of Tijuana to the United States? And checkpoints, not just between Mexico and the United States but also around every neighborhood of Tijuana? What if we required every Tijuana resident, refugee or native, to show an ID card to the U.S. military on demand? What if thousands of Tijuana residents lost their homes, their jobs, their businesses, their children, their sense of self worth to this occupation? Would you be surprised to hear of a protest movement in Tijuana that sometimes became violent and hateful? Okay, now for the unbelievable part.

Think about what would happen if, after expelling all of the minorities from San Diego to Tijuana and subjecting them to 40 years of brutal military occupation, we just left Tijuana, removing all the white settlers and the soldiers? Only instead of giving them their freedom, we built a 20-foot tall electrified wall around Tijuana? Not just on the sides bordering San Diego, but on all the Mexico crossings as well. What if we set up 50-foot high watchtowers with machine gun batteries, and told them that if they stood within 100 yards of this wall we would shoot them dead on sight? And four out of every five days we kept every single one of those border crossings closed, not even allowing food, clothing, or medicine to arrive. And we patrolled their air space with our state-of-the-art fighter jets but didn’t allow them so much as a crop duster. And we patrolled their waters with destroyers and submarines, but didn’t even allow them to fish.

Would you be at all surprised to hear that these resistance groups in Tijuana, even after having been “freed” from their occupation but starved half to death, kept on firing rockets at the United States? Probably not. But you may be surprised to learn that the majority of people in Tijuana never picked up a rocket, or a gun, or a weapon of any kind.

The majority, instead, supported against all hope negotiations toward a peaceful solution that would provide security, freedom and equal rights to both people in two independent states living side by side as neighbors. This is the sound analogy to Israel’s military onslaught in Gaza today. Maybe some day soon, common sense will prevail and no corpus of misleading analogies abut Tijuana or the crazy guy across the hall who wants to murder your daughter will be able to obscure the truth. And at that moment, in a country whose people shouted We Shall Overcome, Ich bin ein Berliner, End Apartheid, Free Tibet and Save Darfur, we will all join together and shout “Free Gaza. Free Palestine.” And because we are Americans, the world will take notice and they will be free, and perhaps peace will prevail for all the residents of the Holy Land.

Randall Kuhn is an assistant professor and Director of the Global Health Affairs Program at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He just returned from a trip to Israel and the West Bank.

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From the January 13 Jerusalem Post online

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231760642497&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The Security Council resolution passed on Friday calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza was a source of embarrassment for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who helped prepare it but ultimately was ordered to back down from voting for it and abstain, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday.

Rice did not end up voting for Resolution 1860, thanks to a phone conversation Olmert held with US President George Bush shortly before the vote, the prime minister told a meeting of local authority heads in Ashkelon as part of a visit to the South.

Upon receiving word that the US was planning to vote in favor of the resolution - viewed by Israel as impractical and failing to address its security concerns - Olmert demanded to get Bush on the phone, and refused to back down after being told that the president was delivering a lecture in Philadelphia. Bush interrupted his lecture to answer Olmert’s call, the premier said.

America could not vote in favor of such a resolution, Olmert told Bush. Soon afterwards, Rice abstained when votes were counted at the UN.

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Fantasy of the Day: What if there’s a reverse “Bradley Effect“? In other words, what if there are hundreds of thousands of white Southerners who are embarassed to admit to pollsters that they’re going to vote for Obama?

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The Disappearing Android App

On August 26th, in a post titled “Google’s (Not So) Secret Strategy”, Phineas JW wrote on Android Guys (www.androidguys.com) on why Android application Enkin not only didn’t make the first cut in the Android Developers Competition (much to the surprise of many), but literally disappeared from view. As Phineas points out, the very last words (dated May 17th) on Enkin’s blog were….

“The first round of the Google Android Developer Challenge is over and the list of winners has been released…
“As some of you already noticed, Enkin is not one of them. We could speculate about the reasons for this, but there is more interesting news:
“We have been contacted by Google separately and they, too, are excited about our project.
“So at this point in time there are a number of possibilities for the project’s future, which we are currently exploring.” http://enkinblog.blogspot.com/

Enkin was gone, but Phineas JW suggested that Enkin will reappear as “Live View” a mobile part of Google’s Street View, a “real-time, real-life ‘map’ of your current location, using the phone’s built-in camera, compass, and GPS, with floating annotations of your destination(s)”. In short, the disappeared Enkin would magically reappear as an important part of a new Google Killer App. It was an interesting and very likely theory.

Let me tell you another little story.

Neven Vision – What Was It?

Once upon a time…

No, let me be more precise.

On August 14, 2006, a company called Neven Vision was a worldwide leader in the field of image recognition. The company, founded by Dr. Hartmut Neven, had its headquarters in Santa Monica, California and offices in Japan, Germany and the U.K.

Neven Vision was among the world’s top three companies—and perhaps the top—in visual recognition technology. Its products consistently scored in the top three in the U.S. Government’s Facial Recognition Vendor Test. Clients successfully using their products included Coca Cola in Germany, DoCoMo in Japan, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its facial recognition technology was the best in the world, integrating facial analysis, iris scanning and skin texture analysis.

Neven was the only company that had high-level image recognition software that would run on camera-enabled mobile devices. The phones did basic initial processing, then sent their image and data to Neven’s servers for complete analysis. Neven then returned the results of their analysis to the phones.

Neven’s new product iScout promised to bring its technology to cell phones around the world, revolutionizing sales, marketing and a host of other interactive information industries. http://tinyurl.com/6qjgk7

Here’s what Neven Vision founder Dr. Hartmut Neven said about his technology at a presentation in Munich several years ago. http://tinyurl.com/k5jm5 (After a few minutes in German, the video switches to English)

Dr. Neven discussed iScout’s ability to:

• Tie in with print advertising [which Google has been testing for the past year or so.]
• Turn your breakfast table into a mini shopping mall.
• Mobile marketing
• Product packaging
• Magazines
• Billboards
• Movie posters
• Travel Guide (picture of storefront, bar, restaurant, nightclub)
• Car/equipment manuals
• Biometric facial identification (tested in Los Angeles, Iraq and Afghanistan) (DoCoMo phones use this for user authentication)

Reinventing Collapse
The Soviet Example and American Prospects

Author: Dmitry Orlov
176 pages
ISBN 0865716064
2008, New Society Publishers

Well, first of all, it’s funny. Really. I don’t mean it’s filled with jokes, but Dmitry Orlov has a very humorous and biting style. This humorous approach serves two important purposes:

1. It makes the book enjoyable to read.
2. It helps the reader develop a certain healthy detachment from the subject matter. If you can see the humor in the situation, it can lessen the melodrama of the Cold War in the past, and the collapse of both the Soviet Union (past) and its mirror twin the United States (very current).

Orlov observes that the citizens of both the U.S. and the S.U. were targets of marketing campaigns that successfully developed intense brand loyalty. In each country, it was forbidden (either legally or through intense peer pressure) to advocate for the other brand. The U.S. was for capitalists (Yes, we’re #1), and the S.U. for communists (Da, we’re #1), and never the twain shall meet.

Those benighted residents of countries other than the US and the SU were often forced to choose sides; particularly in the smaller countries when well-armed and well-funded sales reps showed up to make them a deal they couldn’t refuse.

Orlov’s demonstration in the first part of the book of the similarities between the two countries helps further this detachment, just as he does later in the book with his description of the differences between both empires. What is perhaps most interesting and intriguing is his pointing out that although they appear to be mirror opposites, things are not that simple. Each contains yin-yang-like the opposite of itself, so that the Soviet Empire had a strong entrepreneurial nature (which manifests most obviously through the huge black market), and the American Empire has a strong communal nature, which manifests through community groups and the high-level support of charitable organizations. Orlov even states that Americans make better communists than the Russians, because they are much more willing to live communally.

For the American reader, however, it is the differences in preparedness for collapse that are most important. It’s not that the Russians intentionally prepared; it’s that their society’s condition inadvertently prepared them. The collectivization of agriculture changed, as Orlov says, Russia from Europe’s bread basket to Europe’s basket case. It was a massive failure. So Russians started their own kitchen and neighborhood gardens which eventually, although only 10% of agricultural land, were estimated to produce a staggering 90% of the country’s agricultural products.

Housing was another issue. The Soviet Union’s housing program was as bad as its agricultural program. There was always a major housing shortage, and families were required to live in crowded conditions in ugly concrete housing monstrosities. And yet…everyone was housed and the state owned the buildings. When the collapse came, everyone was still housed, because there were no bankers to foreclose on their homes.

Transportation was another important issue. The Soviet Union never dismantled its passenger rail system, as the U.S. began doing in the 1950s when the interstate highway system was being built. So intercity travel remained as good (and as uncomfortable in many cases) as ever. Within the cities, housing was built by the state only where public transportation was available. Few people could afford (and even fewer needed) automobiles. When the crash came, transportation continued as before. Buses, trolleys, trams, subways continued to move residents throughout their cities.

In many smaller cities and most towns in the U.S., public transportation is poor at best, and transportation to outlying suburbs is nonexistent. A huge percentage of Americans are dependent on their personal cars for transportation. When the collapse comes and gasoline is prohibitively expensive (if even available), the choice will no longer be food or fuel. Except…millions of Americans need fuel to get to, or earn the money to pay for, food.

The book is filled with useful information, but I think the most important is the need for “social capital”. This is the good will and trust built up among people over time as a result of frequent social and cooperative contact. Orlov describes how the people in Russia who got by best were those who networked with friends and neighbors, giving when they had something, receiving when they didn’t. This seemed to be even more essential than the barter system, which was also very important and heavily used.

I’ve already given several copies of this book to friends. I think it’s an excellent manual filled with useful tips, and even more importantly, a guide to the psychological and emotional attitudes that will be necessary to survive in much of the world as we all encounter the tribulations of Peak Oil and Economic Collapse.

“Reinventing Collapse” by Dmitry Orlov is available through local bookstores and at Amazon.com.

Mick Winter (www.DryDipstick.com) is the author of Peak Oil Prep: Prepare for Peak Oil, Climate Change and Economic Collapse (www.peakoilprep.com)

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Sure it’s an outrageous idea. But…

1. Google and Apple cooperate in many areas.
2. The CEO of Google is on Apple’s board.
3. Google has no desire to compete with Apple. Selling gadgets isn’t part of Google’s business plan. It’s in the information/advertising business. Apple is in the gadget business.
4. Android phones will allegedly be available in the second half of 2008.

Steve Jobs is apparently revealing the next version of iPhone on June 9 for sale end/June or early/July.
What if the next iPhone was a dual-OS system, with both Mac and Android?

Sure, it’s unlikely, especially since ATT, currently the only carrier in the U.S. authorized to use the iPhone, just recently said they were looking at offering Android phones.
And two operating systems on a cellphone might be too cumbersome and space-demanding.

An iPhone that also runs Android would be a true killer. It would also possibly piss off a lot of hardware manufacturers who are involved in the Open Handset Alliance. But Android is supposedly available for, and to, anyone, and those manufacturers too will have their chance to turn out stunning Android-equipped handsets. By the very concept of the OHA, no company should/will be restricted from using Android, whether they’re currently members of OHA or not. So Apple could hardly be not allowed to use Android.

Offering an Android Too version would make Apple’s iPhone a must have, and absolutely cause sales of the iPhone, currently declining, to explode.

Are there technical obstacles? Probably. Not my area.

But wouldn’t it be cool?

UPDATE: June 11, 2008

Well, the fact that Android on the iPhone was a far-fetched idea was confirmed by Steve Job’s info on the new iPhone 3G. Nevertheless, I haven’t given up on the idea and was intrigued to notice someone on one of the techie websites hoping that someone writes an application that allows iPhone to run the Linux-based Android platform.

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World Made by Hand - a Novel

Author: James Howard Kunstler
336 pages
ISBN: 0-87113-978-2
2008, Atlantic Monthly Press
www.worldmadebyhand.com

This book could more precisely, but less poetically, be named “World Made by Kunstler”. Author and Peak Oil commentator James Howard Kunstler has written a novel that brings to life a community and world that Kunstler himself has created. It’s not just any creation, however, because what he has created is informed by his many years of study of our society, its built environment, and the Peak Oil threat.

As a novel it’s entertaining and interesting. As a demonstration of Kunstler’s vision for the post-Peak Oil future, it’s vivid and compelling. Kunstler imagines a time where all systems have broken down because of Peak Oil, climate change, economic collapse, apparent nuclear war—a number of U.S. cities are gone—and, of course, famine and pestilence. In short, it’s a world ravaged by the Four Horsemen and a bunch of their close friends.

Needless to say, things aren’t quite the same after all this. Kunstler’s protagonist, Robert Earle, moved with his wife to her home town of Union Grove in upstate New York after “the bomb went off in Los Angeles”. Robert, a former software marketing executive whose job became rather superfluous, now supports himself as a carpenter, living alone while grieving for his dead wife and daughter, and his long-missing son.

His community is not thriving, but it is surviving. Nearby is another sort of community, run by wealthy and enterprising land-owner Stephen Bullock, who has created his own fiefdom, a plantation where industrious workers labor in the various farm and manufacturing enterprises their “manor lord” has created. It is a totally self-contained community, as sustainable on its own resources as was any such community in early 1800s America. That is, it still depends on trade with the outside for the things it cannot grow or make itself.

Into the town of Union Grove comes a sizable religious sect—the “New Faithers”—led by Brother Jobe, a charismatic and increasingly mysterious leader who purchases the town’s former high school as a center for his flock. That flock is interesting in itself, being decidedly non-pacifist and equally non-puritanical.

Another community just outside of town is led by Wayne Karp, who with his hardcore biker followers has taken over the town’s former refuse dump, and now “mines” it for salvage materials. With these four examples of possible post-Peak Oil communities—small town New England, religious sect, back-to-the-1800s plantation dwellers, and hard-drinking Mad Max ex-bikers—the scene is now set for Kunstler to lead his protagonist Robert through what is in effect a coming-of-(a new)-age novel for both Robert and his town.

Kunstler suggests that all of these types of communities are likely to occur in the not-distant future, although he obviously favors the small town community that by the end of the novel comes together stronger and closer, experiencing a simpler and more meaningful life. It’s democracy with a little “d”, in which people work out problems because it’s too destructive to their community if they don’t. It’s also a restoration of an earlier America.

Union Grove is hardly a utopia, and Kunstler has no illusions that creating—or ending up with—such a community is an easy thing. But as his other writings also show, he does believe that such communities can be brought about in this real world, preferably earlier than later.

Kunstler has spent many years justifiably ranting about the anti-human aspects of our suburbs, the destruction of our cities, and the resulting decline in our civility and way of life. He has emerged as a major, and very vocal, spokesman for the Peak Oil movement; one who calls on us all to repent, mend our ways and forsake our dependence on “Happy Motoring” and the strip mall cul-de-sac suburbs that have resulted.

Now Kunstler has written a novel—I’d call it more a novella, a moving snapshot—of what he envisions may be our future. Despite a couple of bizarre scenes which remain frustratingly undeveloped, and a line or two of dialogue fraught with a meaning that is never revealed (although perhaps other, smarter readers than I will decipher them)—he has created a vivid depiction of what he envisions may be, can be, and should be, our future.

Just as the communities are varied, so are the book’s characters. Kunstler has tempered his usual neo-Gonzo writing style and created interesting characters with depth and complexity who inhabit a world which is described quite lyrically at times. There are no stereotypes here; the “good” guys have flaws, the “bad” guys have their strengths. World Made By Hand is well worth reading. After you read this book, you can decide which, if any, of those communities you’d like to work toward. And if none of them, you may at least see more clearly your own image of the future.

Kunstler has taken a major step by providing us with a detailed vision of a very possible future. It gives us a starting place for a very important, and long avoided, discussion. Give it a read.

Mick Winter (www.DryDipstick.com) is the author of Peak Oil Prep: Prepare for Peak Oil, Climate Change and Economic Collapse (www.peakoilprep.com)

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After the Peak - The End of Cheap Oil
27 minute DVD
www.afterthepeak.com

After the Peak is a mock-TV news program. It’s presented as if live from a local television station in North Carolina, with anchors in the studio reporting and talking to reporters in the field. And, yes, there’s even the obligatory sports guy.

The time is “one year from today”. Worldwide oil production has peaked and is declining. It’s still early in the Peak Oil saga with gasoline usually available, but prices are going up. Oil is now $195 a barrel and prices at the pump average $10.29 a gallon, seriously affecting people’s lives, their businesses and their commutes.

The movie very clearly brings home the effect of the early stages of Peak Oil. This is not a film of starvation, the end of air travel, or the collapse of world trade and civil order. In other words, this is not a pictorial version of scenarios such as those imagined by people such as James Howard Kunstler in his new novel “World Made By Hand”. But it is a picture of every day life for every day citizens as they try to deal with the cost of the fossil fuel on which their lives and livelihoods depend.

Most of the focus is on the cost of transportation, but other resulting problems become apparent. Shoppers start to discover food shortages in the local stores, homes distant from town are declining in value, and some farmers are shutting down. Local government and school districts are struggling with increasing fuel costs. The sheriff’s office is conducting fewer patrols; the school district has cut back on school bus service and eliminated high school sports.

After the Peak uses interviews to make its point, and its interviewees include a college professor, motorists at a local gas station and the station’s owner (who has hired an armed guard), and local officials and business owners.

Instead of breaking to commercials between news reports, the film cleverly breaks to well presented information on oil production statistics. The information is very clear and very appropriate.

As producer/writer Jim McQuaid has said, After the Peak is not aimed at the Peak Oil-aware audience, but rather at those who have little or no awareness of oil depletion at all. It’s intended to show a likely future through the eyes of a medium that most people are very familiar with—the evening news.

This is a film that should stimulate discussions in households and gatherings around the country. Show it to some friends and neighbors who know nothing about Peak Oil and see what their reaction is. And then be prepared for some serious, very concerned, questions. If they have none, we may be in even more trouble than many of us think.

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