Farewell, Atlantis. May you be a beacon for a United Earth Federated Republic

Atlantis the lost continent may lay buried under the mud at the bottom of the sea, but Atlantis the space shuttle soared high into Space. Captain Christopher Ferguson, United States Navy and a NASA astronaut, is the Commander of the last space shuttle. Not only is the last shuttle for America but also for the world. The only other one was the Soviet Buran that flew once, unmanned, and then was shut down. In some ways the Buran was a superior vehicle and in other ways not. In any case, no other nation-states are positioned to launch such massive ships. The Soviet Union no longer exists, and the United States has become an overextended and nearly bankrupted empire. It now depends upon the Russian Soyuz to transport humans and supplies to the International Space Station. Unless something goes awry, Atlantis has 12 days to complete its mission.

Atlantis blasted off to cheers and tears this morning of July 8, 2011. This mission is the 33^rd for Atlantis and the 135^th for NASA’s shuttle program. Almost a million people came to watch the Cape Canaveral, Florida and the NASA Kennedy Space Center may well turn into Postmodern ghost towns. Thirty years of glory with its share of tragedies stirs powerful emotions. Many people remain passionate about the exploration and colonization of Outer Space. Not just Americans, but people from all around the world. Russia, China, India, Brazil, the European Union, even Iran.

Even as private corporations with wealthy investors race to commercialize space travel and industry, American President Obama has charged NASA with bold, new missions. The United States is to send astronauts to a major asteroid or dwarf planet by 2025 and a manned voyage to Planet Mars by the mid-2030s. There is talk of building bases on the Moon sheltered inside ancient craters and also deep inside old lava tubes and caves. After all both Luna and Mars have water. And there is more water in the Universe than we dreamed of. Recently a young star only 750 light-years from Earth was discovered gushing gigantic jets of water into space from its poles. The sheer quantity of water jetting into space was estimated to be “a hundred million times the water flowing through the Amazon River every second” at “velocities of two hundred thousand kilometers per hour,” said astronomer Lars Kristensen in the Netherlands. So there is plenty of water out there.

Even so we are a planetary civilization on the verge of Collapse. Yes, collapse with a Big “C” as defined by Jared Diamond, the author of books of great reckoning. A Pulitzer Prize winning evolutionary biologist and geographer-historian, his work Collapse: Why Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed seized the popular imagination. As a global civilization divided by warring economies, nations, religions, politics, tribes, and ethnic groups we expend enormous treasure and blood on war and violence. We have a huge list of serious problems threatening to overwhelm us from wars to global climate disruption to financial collapse to poverty, hunger, epidemics, pollution, environmental destruction, the domination of the money power by the global financial elite, and many more. We are not able to afford to develop and launch the technologies and machines, train the people needed, and create the logistical support base. Our governments are torn by too many competing priorities, priorities that exist as such from the viewpoint of a nation, but fall away to become moot points once the perspective of a Democratic World Government (DWG) is held.

Successful exploration, settlement, and development of Outer Space have many benefits for humanity back on Earth. New sources of raw materials and other resources, more living room to ease population pressure back on the home planet, launching sites further out and with less gravity to explore further and deeper into Space, and the development of new medicines and other products and technologies that shift from specialized use in space to the more general marketplaces on Earth. The concerted effort it would take to develop Space would demand a high degree of global cooperation. The collective effort to collaborate on such a level would break down barriers to unity and integration between formerly hostile groups and foster an evolving sense of belonging not only to a particular tribe, religion, or nationality but also to a united planet. Which in turn would feed back into uniting humanity to address the convergence of many serious problems, problems we have caused in our greed, ignorance, and willfulness, that threaten our civilization with Collapse.

A global cooperative as a Democratic World Government would be the only way to generate a truly massive space program of the caliber and expense it would take to explore, settle, and develop Luna, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and in orbit around these worlds and Earth. Venus and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn wait even further out in the future. We or our children and grandchildren may witness and participate in the founding of not just a unified Planet Earth but also a Solarian federation.

Atlantis has blasted off and now swings around our world in low or near-Earth orbit. While a shining light of triumph for the United States of America with the International Space Station being a monument to Russian-American and other global cooperation, let us stand for an even bigger, deeper picture. The space shuttle Atlantis, in her farewell mission, can serve as a beacon to inspire those passionate for space exploration to take a stand for Democratic World Government. A great place to start is to go to https://voteworldparliament.org/ and vote “Yes!” in the on-line Global Referendum for a Democratic World Parliament. Otherwise any significant space program based upon nation-states will never reach those higher frontiers beyond launching satellites and tourists. Without a view from Space of a distant, small, and majestic Planet Earth by far more people than the small number of Apollo astronauts who watched the Earth in awe, we may never achieve the local-global integration necessary to solve our problems.

Sources:

“Democratic World Parliament through a Global Referendum,” Vote World

Parliament. https://voteworldparliament.org/.

Emotions,” Space.com. July 2011.

http://www.space.com/12222-nasa-space-shuttle-atlantis-launch-emotions.html

Fazekas, Andrew. “Star Found Shooting Water ‘Bullets,’” National

Geographic Daily News, June 2011.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/06/110613-space-science-star-water-bullets-kristensen/.

Kavanagh, Michael. “Jared Diamond’s Collapse traces the fates of societies to their

treatment of the environment,” Grist: A Beacon in the Smog. February 2005. http://www.grist.org/article/kavanagh-collapse

Wall, Mike. “Tears and Cheers: NASA’s Shuttle’s Swan Song Brings Strong Emotions,” Space.com. July 2011.

http://www.space.com/12222-nasa-space-shuttle-atlantis-launch-emotions.html

By William Dudley Bass

July 8, 2011

©Copyright 2011 by William Dudley Bass

Where are you, the Government, shut down?

One of my most influential trainers is Harv Eker of Peak Potentials out of Vancouver, British Columbia. He constantly reminded my fellow students and me that “Your inner world creates your outer world.” OK. Thoughts and emotions lead to actions. The unconscious mind really drives the conscious mind to leverage the body to create and implement, or to regress and shut down.

Harv, dressed in black and highly animated up on stage, was dynamic. “Now stand up and say it out loud,” he urged. “Together!” We stood up from our chairs and all said together “My inner world creates my outer world.” It is as true for communities and organizations of human beings as well as for individuals. Harv went on to remind us with loud enthusiasm “How you do ANYTHING is how you do EVERYTHING!”

I live in the United States of America. A native of Virginia, I’ve lived almost two decades in the City of Seattle which overlays King County in the western part of Washington State. It is April 2011. Recently, close to midnight last Friday, April 8th, the American Federal Government narrowly averted a total shutdown. A partial shutdown was underway. The Republicans and Democrats, the two major parties that currently dominate U.S. politics, are more interested in bloodless civil war than in peaceful cooperation and bipartisanship. As large groups, they approach the art and craft of politics, including compromise, as schoolyard bullies with a regressed, reactive emotional intelligence. Yes, individuals stand out for collaborative policy making, but they are run over by tsunamis of angry and divisive people more intent on destruction rather than creation and innovation.

In my own state of Washington the financial warfare 3,000 miles back east has infected our state and local government. The state government is paralyzed with decisions regarding budgets, taxes, and services. The city and county governments where I live are engaged in unrelenting, neverending battles over mass transit issues and other services costing more than what is available to spend. Other governments in other areas of the world seem really shut down or in a state of warfare, from Afghanistan to Libya to Ivory Coast and elsewhere. The European Union is lurching from one financial crisis to another. The United Nations is bereft of power and agreement.

Back home Americans rail against the Government shutdown. Some even call for it, bring it on, they say; let it force us over the brink to see what happens, clean house, etc. etc. Others scramble to prevent it from happening and to maintain a status quo. Neither approach is healthy and neither is sustainable. The underlying issues, fundamentally who and what controls the Money Power, is barely recognized and not even addressed. And yet, we the people are at choice here.

We are the government, are we not? Have we abdicated responsibility to those with the money and the power and the media skills? Have we forgotten government is of the people, by the people, for the people? That the institutions of government from the global to the local are composed of fellow human beings? That “all these governments” are our governments? That the government is us?

Where in our lives are we shut down? Where are you shut down in your life? Where am I shut down in mine? Look at it. Consider it. After all, our inner world creates our outer world. How we do anything is how we do everything. Be present to what is happening now. Are you reacting? Or responding? Making decisions? Or choices? Devising criticisms and wrong-making, or generating solutions? Blaming and shaming? Or accepting things the way they are and moving forward from a stand? Are you out for revenge and to “teach ‘em a lesson,” or are you free to forgive and exercise compassion? Where are you open? Vulnerable? Are you busy talking, or do you listen? Are you trying to be fair and just, or are you implementing transformative change?

For me I feel shut down most from fear of things that exist in my mind. Fear of being ridiculed as “deaf, dumb, and stupid.” Fear of failing, fear of letting down my wife and family and even myself, fear of my own triggers from old traumas still running my life, fear of wasting money and time to pursue my dreams, fear of losing everything I love, and on and on...and on. I react to fight, flee, or freeze. My practice is become present and self-aware faster and faster to defuse these triggers, make healthier choices with intention, and move through and beyond my imaginary fears. I can set aside my right- and wrong-making, my judgements, and work with people from different backgrounds and beliefs to focus on solutions to generate results. And to be with failure so I can learn from failure. My intention is to graduate from the reactive phase to higher, more creative and possibly integrated levels. I can go there temporarily while experiencing creative, integrated, even unitary states of consciousness, but I’m far too reactive to currently maintain these temporary states as long-term levels.

What is happening from Washington, D.C. to Madison, Wisconsin to Olympia and Seattle, Washington, and indeed around the world is the outward manifestation of our inner world. We are at choice to change all of that. To be effective such change has to first arise from our relationships with one another. To go deeper into cause, for all change to have effect out in the world we must first change our inner world. For how everything shows up stems from how we chose to do anything.

Empire of Bases for Wars without End

Hey, guess what, folks? It turns out the leaders of the United States don’t even know exactly how many American and Allied military bases exist. Furthermore, the number of wars the so-called, unofficial but still real Euro-American Global Empire is engaged in does not match the official count. Because there are more violent military and intelligence operations occurring simultaneously than Empire wants to admit. When Special Forces engage in covert hostilities behind enemy lines of a state or quasi-state we are not technically at war with, or when the CIA fires drone missiles into countries that we’re also not technically at war with, isn’t that “war?”

There are two ways the great, borderless superpower of today behaves in a similar fashion to empires of old.

During the height of many large, polyglot empires from the Roman to the Mongol to the British, the imperial Center, i.e. the homeland realms, were often in a state of prolonged peace. Except, of course, for an occasional civil war for control of the state. The majority of the population enjoyed the illusion of a peaceful world of trade and commerce free of war. What they actually meant, however, were their cities and countryside were free from invasion.

The far-flung borders and colonies of these empires, however, were often in a state of chronic warfare. These conflicts included tribal wars, local ethnic rebellions, and frontier guerrilla wars. There were unique situations where off and on border wars raged between large empires without either committing fully to what would have been a Phyrric victory. Ancient History buffs may note one case in particular, the Roman-Parthian Wars. A Modern example would be the American-Soviet Cold War, although the Soviet Empire suddenly collapsed at the end of it.

Today, the dominant region of the Euro-American Global Empire is called “the United States Homeland.” “Homeland” is a post-9/11 term that recalls a time not all that long ago when the Nazis emphasized Germany as “the Fatherland.” The Soviet Communists did the same with Russia as “the Motherland.” The focus has shifted from American liberties and protecting Constitutional rights to enforcing Homeland Security with domestic surveillance and militarization. The militaristic and ultranationalist “feel” these terms evoke is quiet different from the peaceful, loving reverence many feel for “Mother Earth and Father Sky” for example.

The second similarity is the vast number of military garrisons empires establish to maintain control of far-flung regions, whether it is political control, to promote and protect certain religions and corporations, to defend against enemies, to hold territory, or to allow for safe commerce to flow. These imperial frontiers and colonies were dotted with numerous forts, castles, and other fortifications. The First and Second World Wars destroyed the concept of “forts.” Now they are called “bases.” Forts became something preteen boys built back in the bushes from which to lob rocks and sticks at one another.

No one seems to know exactly how many military bases the United States alone has. The numbers and locations keep changing, and that seems to be a convenient excuse. There are also numbers of intelligence bases, secret prisons or black jails, and centers for black ops. Some bases are large, sprawling complexes shared with many Allied nations. Others are in urban basements and nondescript buildings. Others are relatively tiny, small-unit forward operating outposts such as the U.S. Army’s Restrepo in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan (eventually abandoned, it was made famous by author Sebastian Junger whose book about that was turned into an award-winning film documentary).

Investigative reporter Nick Turse of Asia Times attempted to find out. First, the Department of Defense’s 2010 Base Structure Report states that of 2009 there were 662 military bases outside the U.S.A. in 38 nation-states. Then when the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense addressed the Senate, she claimed there were 507 permanent bases. But the Pentagon lists 4,999 total sights in American states and territories as well as in other countries. At the same time, the Base Structure Report does not include small bases, covert bases, forward operating bases, or floating mobile naval, naval air, and naval-air-marine bases. In fact one criteria is that bases have to be larger than 10 acres if overseas or have a Plant Replacement Value to repair and maintain the facilities greater than $10,000,000. In reality many bases are smaller.

To add to the confusion are what appears to be deliberate concealment of facts. There’s no mention of bases in Afghanistan when there are over 400 there. A little over 80 are listed in Iraq when there are over 500 more not listed. There are blacked-out sites in other countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. There are also bases run on our behalf by other nations and their own local national security and military-intelligence apparatus. There are covert bases operated by the CIA and possibly other secretive intelligence departments. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has bases in its Drug Wars. The DEA, for example, trains primarily at the Quantico Marine Base in the American state of Virginia, along with the FBI. My native state of Virginia, by the way, has at least 27 military and joint military-intelligence bases listed by a family business that helps military personnel find, sell, or rent homes. Some of the world’s largest bases are located in Virginia.

Many of these may not fit the criteria for size and PVR to be listed, which in turn makes them easier to hide. The power of Empire is brilliantly dispersed across the globe yet concentrated in small arenas difficult to track. The military-industrial-intelligence complex has a life of its own that outlives the temporary rotations of politicians and bureaucrats. The system itself develops its own inertia and demands for secrecy and consumption of blood and treasure that fortifies the frontiers while hollowing out the increasingly unstable homelands. The peace once felt in the homelands begins to crumble under environmental, economic, socio-political, and ethnic stress.

As far the number of wars the United States and its Allies are engaged in, many have their heads buried in the sand. Politicians and mass media pundits are either bemoaning or celebrating the U.S.A. is currently in Libya, its “3rd war,” after Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re forgetting a few things. We’re still in the Global War on Terror, the ugly GWOT, against al-Qaida and its allies across Europe, North America, Asia including Indonesia and the Philippines, and North, East, and West Africa. As the term GWOT has fallen out of favor under the Obama Regime, many in the military now refer to it as “the Long War” while many Neo-Cons like the designation of “World War IV” (after the Cold War being WWIII).

Under this umbrella America is engaged is military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and the Philippines. And now Libya. In addition there was or is possibly and likely covert action in Iran and Sudan. We’re still in a technically unresolved war of sorts with North Korea. Then there’s the Drug War, still quite violent and nasty, moving from Peru and Columbia into Mexico. It is now consuming Mexico with horrific violence while spreading not just north into the United States but also into Central America and Jamaica. I won’t begin to mention short-term interventions in various African countries or the on and off ones in Haiti.

This system of imperial overreach fosters the illusion of peace through security at home. These numerous wars, while certainly not on the scale of the World Wars, have a severely negative economic, environmental, and sociopolitical impact. Financial and material resources are extracted and expended in a one-way waste of destruction and corruption. They drain resources from everywhere and generate even more terrorists, criminal cartels, corruption, and war profiteering. Maintaining thousands, even hundreds of military and intelligence bases drain treasuries and stretch resources and distribution networks. The more an empire expands itself in order to defend itself, the more there is to defend and therefore the more it expands itself. Ultimately this hollows out the colonies and the rot spreads back to the home countries that implode within or explode outward.

The Euro-American Global Empire, however, is not the final goal of Empire. The interlinked web of international Central Bank cartels, Big Bank robber barons, the Corporatocracy, the National Security State, and their allies among the military-industrial-intelligence complex appear to have a longer vision. The rest of can’t discern but so much and have to be careful with speculation. The global elite seem to be moving with deliberation and patience. Based upon history and current events, they’re creating opportunities out of regional chaos and global crises to reconstruct humanity into some kind of neo-feudal, neo-fascist new world empire all dressed up pretty as a global democracy with elections and “free markets.”

A such working together in a cohesion at once both messy and surprisingly efficient, the global elite seek to dominate the finances and marketplaces of the entire planet. The bulk of the people working for them are unawares and believe they’re just doing their jobs. These people, the soldiers and spies, the sailors and bank tellers, the pilots, bureaucrats, managers, technicians, whoever is working for them, and I have myself at one time, are merely cogs in an Orwellian machine. They’re the unwitting stormtroopers whose patriotism and commitment to serving the common good is manipulated to serve the interests of Big Business, Big Banks who loan to those corporations, the National Security States that project and protect these interests, and the superfinancial elite who own and/or control these systems with a certain discretion. Based upon this, there may be an intention to actually break down the United States and the European Union after first using them to network then break up the rest of the global system. After all, the global elite don’t want any one nation-state remaining too powerful to challenge the implementation of a world dictatorship disguised as a democracy, nor to have their own empire associated with another. It’s difficult to tell for sure. Academics are too chicken to go there, and conspiracy theorists often muddy the waters with unsubstantiated claims.

What can the rest of us do? They global elite and their creeping empire are formidable enemies. And they aren’t the only ones. Criminal gangs, narcoterrorists, rogue states, armed racist militia, petty tyrants, corrupt governments, terrorist groups, religious fundamentalists, lone wolves with resources, they all add up. And we face impending systemic collapse on a global scale from the convergence of problems threatening to overwhelm us, problems that we can solve if and only if we can work together.

The best solution toward that end is building a constitutional Democratic World Government with transparent institutions. The best place to begin here is to vote in and support the Global Referendum for a Democratic World Parliament. Vote “Yes!” at https://voteworldparliament.org/.

It is a pragmatic place to start. Another is get involved in your local and regional even national governments to “take it back” from both the global empire builders and the ultranationalists and isolationists. So we can turn from our planetary civilization away from world empire to world community and democracy to craft our Democratic World Government. Join fired up activist networks determined to make a difference at all levels of civilization, such as Four Years Go. So go join FYG at http://www.fouryearsgo.org/about/overview/.

Beyond that, it is vital we the people take control over the Money Power from private and quasi-public institutions such as the international Central Banks. We must establish public control of the Money Power. And such public control must be transparent and the Money Power held accountable and audited. A similar example is the civilian control of the Military Power in America and its Allies. This struggle may be our hardest battle, far more difficult than establishing a Democratic World Government. What difference does it make to have the legal institutions of freedom, justice, and unity in place if it becomes all an illusion if the Global Elite continues to dominate the world through whatever institutions exist with the sheer power it wields from mass, concentrated wealth and the ability to control politics and economies?

Websites & Sources to review:

Bilchik, Gloria Shur. “Military Mystery: How many bases does the US have, anyway?” Occasional Planet: Real Change, One Progressive Idea At A Time:

http://www.occasionalplanet.org/2011/01/24/military-mystery-how-many-bases-does-the-us-have-anyway/

Department of Defense Base Structure Report (2010): http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/bsr/BSR2010Baseline.pdf

Four Years. Go: http://www.fouryearsgo.org

Turse, Nick. “Empire of Bases 2.0” Asia Times Online: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA12Df01.html

Virginia Military Base Homes at Military By Owner: http://www.militarybyowner.com/military_bases/virginia.aspx

Vote World Parliament: https://voteworldparliament.org/

by William Dudley Bass

April 7, 2011

(C) 2011 by William Dudley Bass

Collapse is a Choice

Collapse is a choice. We can choose to work together across Planet Earth for life, liberty, health, and prosperity or for global collapse and omnicide. Wait, let me say it plainer. We can choose to work together for life or die. Remember, wherever you live right now is on the same planet in the same biosphere as people in other neighborhoods on the far side of the globe. Except, of course, for a few spacefarers who hope to come back to their beautiful and precious world below.

Our species, as far as we know, originated in East and maybe Southern Africa and has spread all over Earth and walked on the Moon. We can choose to pull together or die. Retreating into your fortress with stockpiles of supplies or fighting other people over race, religion, nationality, language, geography, resources, and violent politics will not help anyone and shall make things worse. You, yes, I’m talkin’ to you, men and women and children, must get over your rage, your shame, your fear, especially fear that is all made up in your minds as False Evidence Appearing Real. Because there are real things out there to be truly afraid of but nothing to be paralyzed by. Me? I know as I went through the same process. I had to get over my desire for vengeance.

Our news is full of doom and gloom, from the mainstream mass media to alternatives on the furthest fringes. In the midst of all the negatives the majority of politicians and their pet economists are saying what most people want to hear and wish could be true: “Folks, things ARE getting better. These trends prove it. See, this and that are going up while that and this are going down. It IS a new day for another new beginning again! Yes, times are hard, but they don’t last forever, and this is proof they’re not.”

Meanwhile many of those who know better and know otherwise, regardless of their ethnicity or their political or religious beliefs, are shaking their heads “No, you idiots!” while stomping around in circles pulling out the remains of their hair then sighing in frustration. I confess to having done some of that myself before I reminded myself to breathe and wiggle and breathe again; then be still. Conservatives and Liberals, Socialists and Libertarians, Progressives and Regressives; across party lines you will find a rising tide of dissent, dismay, anger, and resignation. The magnitude and reality of Collapse simply overwhelms.

It does not have to be this way. Collapse is a choice. We don’t have to be automatons to our own reptilian and mammalian brains or even our subconscious. We don’t have to react with fight or flight or freeze to what’s coming at us right now. Engaging in blame games and one-upmanship is merely another way of rearranging the deck chairs on theTitanic as she sinks forever into the cold North Atlantic.

“Collapse” is a term made popular by Jared Diamond, an evolutionary biologist and geographer-historian who sees relationships between things, events, and systems as few do. Noted for his tedious and well-documented research as well as his deep vision, Diamond’s work is a reckoning. Although he won the Pulitzer Prize for an earlier book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, it was his Collapse: Why Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed that seized the popular imagination.

Science and history provide the answers to what happened that brought civilizations to the brink of collapse. The first step seems to be our shortsighted destruction of our environment with its relentlessly uniform results: environmental collapse leads to economic collapse leads to state collapse leads to social collapse. These phases overlap during transitions, and in turn social collapse leads to further ecocide and political turmoil. In many cases food shortages lead to riots, revolution, mass migration, civil war, warlordism, and even cannibalism as government and society disintegrates and people go hungry. Cannibalism, interestingly enough, proves to be the common last resort during extended famine. It demonstrates the desperation of human beings at all levels of society. While there is a distinction between biological collapse resulting in omnicide, the death of all life locally or even planet-wide, and social collapse, where human society including culture, the state, and the economy, collapses. In several cases, however, there were local, even regional extinctions of human populations.

These scenarios repeated themselves in different societies at different times and civilizations in different areas of the planet. The outcomes of certain choices remain the same: change and adapt to survive and maybe even thrive, or the population vanished. Today, for the first time in known human history, we are a global civilization. We are united in nearly every way as a people except in our political institutions. There is, unfortunately, no democratic world government with an Earth Constitution under which we are integrated into a federated, planetary republic.

Indeed we are being pulled in two opposing directions which tear at us every time we try to move forward to address larger problems. One is the centrifugal force of fragmentation with increasing division and warfare between polarized ethnic groups, nations, and religions. I call it the dark side of neo-tribalism. It is a focus upon locality to the violent exclusion of others or the conquest of others to exploit local resources.

The other force, in spite of this warfare or rather in its own way a cause of such strife, is Empire. Call it the American Empire, preferred by mainstream academics, or more correctly the Euro-American Global Empire. Or even the New World Order, preferred by conspiracy theorists even though it was declared such by an American president at the height of victory. Whatever it’s name, it does not matter. This new form of empire mutates with intention as it positions itself to dominate everything as we speak. It is an unofficial, de facto but very real empire with no clear title. In fact it masquerades as multinational coalitions and as election-loving democracies. This imperium uses financial conquest to consolidate economic power to then influence and control political power from the international realm all the way down to local towns and counties. What makes this convoluted regime so insidious is that it's controllers seem perfectly fine to let these local states war against one another to increase their overall profit and power.

Currently it functions as a neo-feudal imperium that maximizes the national security states and tax regimes as well as the military-industrial-intelligence complex of the USA and its allies to enforce its will. The rise of corporate power and the big banks to a level we call “the Corporatocracy” backed by and controlled by an informal yet intentionally deliberative international cartel of central banks that in turn dominate politics creates what Italian dictator Benito Mussolini called “Fascism.” Except this newer, post-modern fascism allows squabbling, co-dependent nation-states the illusion of sovereignty with “democratic” elections while maintaining a vice grip on economic and financial power. Neither the calculating Empire nor the reactionary neo-tribalists take our world challenges seriously or seem to care or, worse, view the coming catastrophe as opportunities to expand power over what is left.

Meanwhile we face an almost cosmic convergence of multiple severe challenges on a planetary level. This has never before been experienced in human history as far as we know. We are fast approaching the tipping point after which it will be too late to address them before being overwhelmed. Our list, yes, yours and mine, our list of problems is long. Overpopulation, environmental, economic, financial, energy, political, health, geopolitical, wars and violence and weapons of mass destruction, fundamentalist religions, infrastructure demands, education reform, the coming Singularity with the merger of computers, robotics, AI, nanotechnology, neurotechnology, and genetics. And many more.

Even each category has a long list. Environmental problems alone include global climate disruption, toxic industrial and agricultural pollution as well as garbage, deforestation, desertification, nuclear radiation, uncontrolled urbanization, disease epidemics, overfishing, acidification of water, increased salinization of fresh water, invasive species, loss of topsoil, loss of wilderness and natural habitat, loss of natural resources, food safety and food availability, the commodification of fresh water, ecological impact of warfare, and mass extinction.

We the People of Earth can start in several places at once. First we human beings can request a shift within ourselves in how we humans think. Goodness, we are running out of time as the tsunami of catastrophe sucks the bay dry before it thunders ashore. “Request” is civil, and now, however, we must demand, yes, demand this shift of ourselves. We must leverage our individual inner worlds together to create our common outer world. Willis Harman of IONS, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, used to call for a “global mind change” before his death.

Right now you can vote in a grassroots, online Global Referendum for a World Parliament, and a Democratic World Parliament at that. Establishing a democratic world federation won’t be easy, but many plans have already been crafted, and voting “Yes!” for such a Parliament is a good, early step. There are numerous alliances of NGOs beginning to form global cooperatives to provide innovative solutions and implement change now, such as Four Years Go. You can also “take back” your own country and local governments, too. Not to withdraw into obscure isolation, but to cast out empire builders and isolationists both. Creative people with clear views who can work together openly with others to address global problems through a united, world republic is a great place to start. It is a choice. We don’t have to give up and fall toward cannibalism and extinction. Collapse is a choice.

I don’t care if you’re a Libertarian or a Socialist. Come together to find a way to acknowledge each other and integrate individual liberties and social responsibilities. And by the way, here’s a little secret. There is no “way” to find. There is no more any “we must find a way.” You are now the mapmaker. We are all mapmakers. Together. It’s time to blaze new trails into a different wilderness, that of our very own relationships.

by William Dudley Bass

April 5, 2011

Websites to View:

Vote World Parliament: https://voteworldparliament.org/

Four Years. Go: http://www.fouryearsgo.org/

Guns, Germs, and Steel: http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/index.html

Jared Diamond’s Collapse: http://www.grist.org/article/kavanagh-collapse

(C) 2011 by William Dudley Bass

Derailed

Derailed

My house burned down on the morning of Saturday, March 20, 2010. We lost almost everything, “we” being a post-double divorce blended family with my wife Kristina and our three daughters from prior marriages. Fortunately no one was burned or injured in anyway. Thankfully no one was killed in what the fire fighters called “a killer fire.” So far there are no lawsuits flying and we continue to work things out with our insurance company. A small number of items survived in the garage, which was the least damaged part of the house. Our two cars survived simply because they weren’t there. It was a horrible time. We moved five times through temporary housing until we settled down in a rental in early June. We were all stressed out and some of us had nightmares. One day all I had to wear was women’s clothes. We were humbled and awed by the generosity of many people including strangers. People gave us money, gift cards, clothes, food, utensils, pots and pans, and furniture. Lots of furniture. You should see our house now. It’s a crazy quilt of stuff. And it works.

This fire was an initiation. Although into what we’re still discovering. We thought we would bounce back fully by now. Oh no. People who have survived catastrophic house fires say it takes months, even years to get over the losses. Thank goodness it was in Washington State in the American Pacific Northwest and not in a remote place or an impoverished, war-torn developing country. We have much to be grateful for. And we are grateful. We’ve maintained our sense of humor, though sometimes it’s tough. People were very generous in many ways. It all felt so humbling to allow ourselves to receive after being such givers in the past.

My oldest daughter had celebrated her 16th birthday the night before and had a number of girl friends over for a slumber party. Eight of them were still home with her when they noticed smoke rolling out from the heat vents and up from the stairs below. My wife and I had just left about 11:00 am to run errands; she to the vet and me to pick up the two youngest girls from their own sleepover parties elsewhere. At first the teenagers thought it must be one of them burning something on the stove. But no, no one was even boiling water for tea. The stove was turned off.

Thick, toxic smoke rapidly filled the house. These kids couldn’t even get out the front door. So they dashed out to the back deck almost one story up and jumped off into ferns and bushes. Many of them were in underwear and tee shirts or in pajamas.

The fire was catastrophic. The whole structure was in flames in less than a half-hour. It was a beautiful, model solar energy home designed and built by local but now-deceased architects. Their two sons owned it. It was a two-story structure almost 4,000 square feet built on the edge of a bluff looking out down a long, wooded ravine toward the Salish Sea and the Olympic Mountains beyond. After losing our other two homes in the Recession we had hoped to eventually buy this house. Of course, that didn’t, couldn’t happen.

From a home office point of view our library was destroyed. Our computers were melted. A friend of mine did extract the hard drives from 3 of them and managed to save most of the data. I cracked open my melted Nikon, extracted the memory card, and happily discovered almost 800 photos on there. Now we back up “into the Cloud.” We lost almost a half-million dollars of personal possessions. Much of that were items Kristina and I had purchased over the years, but most of it was the accumulated wealth of generations from our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and many aunts and uncles and even great-aunts and uncles. A lavish but old Buddhist shrine from my wife’s Japanese side of the family vanished in the fire. Photography was a serious hobby of mine, so most of my photographs and slides, tens of many thousands of them, are gone forever. Baby books, mine, my parents, and those of my children, gone forever. High school and college yearbooks, gone forever. I was also the family historian, so I’d accumulated boxes and boxes of archives from family members back East. Miraculously some survived, such as the contents of the old Bass Family Bible Box, but most of these papers disappeared in the flames and smoke forever.

Our family was woefully underinsured. It was complicated by overlapping real estate transitions and by misleading information from a particular agent in over his head. We'll probably just receive a tiny fraction of the true value of what we lost after the insurance company depreciates and devalues our possessions. Certain staff have been kind and generous in serving us and it is not enough. I encourage everyone to video record all your possessions and store it offsite. Don't waste time writing down everything. It'll take forever and you won't do it.

We are still recovering. And still reeling from prior disasters. Furthermore, the aggregate of international companies my wife and I once worked for as self-employed independent contractors crashed in the recession back in late 2007-early 2008. Not only did we lost our high-paying positions, but to our horror all our savings and investments in this venture. We were shocked to discover that two men high up in the network allegedly embezzled almost two billion dollars from over 3,000 people. Greed got the better hand within an alternative structure designed to allow middle and working class families to pool resources to gain access to sophisticated financial structures. We were all defrauded. Including those of us who worked there. It was outrageous, embarrassing, and gut wrenching.

These two monsters are now in jail, but the money seems gone. We don’t know if we’ll ever see any of it again. The dominoes tumbled. We were unable to find high-paying positions although I did pick up a part-time retail job and some small free lance writing projects. Kristina worked as a business coach and consultant, but it was very intermittent. As our home near Lake Wenatchee slid into foreclosure and then our home in North Seattle, we entered into a tedious short-sale process that finally completed this August of 2010. We moved to Edmonds, then the fire happened that Saturday morning. We felt we were drowning.

The fire was estimated to be at least 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit at times because the nails remain straight. This meant the flames were so hot it burned the wood right off the nails faster than the nails could sag beneath the weight of burning wood. Investigators determined it most likely appeared to have been faulty wires in the wall downstairs in my oldest daughter’s bedroom or maybe the wires from an outlet in the same wall. Looked as if old aluminum wires separated from copper, they arced, sparked, and set the wood afire. The lack of sheetrock facilitated the spread of the flames. Nor did the fire alarms go off at first as the smoke rolled out. The fire fighters and the investigators mused that if it had happened in the middle of the night there certainly would’ve been fatalities. And I’m sure I would have been one of them as it would’ve been my nature to rush into the fire and fight it. But the toxic smoke would’ve taken us out first, it was explained to us.

As it was it took over 30 firefighters from Edmonds, Lynnwood, Mukilteo, and maybe Shoreline responding to a two-alarm fire. We were only there 3 months.

The fire was the latest in a series of crushing hammer blows to our family. We move on anyway. In working with a therapist and counselor we became familiar with the term “derailment.” We were derailed by the loss of our jobs, our savings, our homes, and especially by that fire and the constant moving around afterwards. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

Now my wife's mother is moving into our temporary rental with us. The bank foreclosed on her condo, declined the offers from a short-sale attempt, and got zero offers at an auction. My mother-in-law had once retired early, thrived on a frugal lifestyle, and was to a degree financially free. Yet with the loss of her funds in the same embezzlement that hit us she found herself looking for work with little success and is now in dire straights. So another BAM! And we have to maintain our wits about us, laugh at all the funny things around in, appreciate our friends and family, and remember that our glasses are at least half-full and certainly not empty.

My apologies for the impact all of this has had on my blogging here. It’s taking me for longer to get back up on my feet than I thought. I also have a lot of train track to rebuild before even getting back on it, too. It’s going to take time. We have plenty of that. We hope. There’s much to do, much to be grateful for, much to still laugh about, life to live for with all its work and play. Aye, indeed, life goes on for us the living. Thank you.

William Dudley Bass

October 1, 2010

* This was jointly published on the author's autobiographical blog "Cultivate and Harvest."

(C) Copyright 2010 by William Dudley Bass.