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WHILE tending berry vines on my small farm this fall and winter, I’ve observed the sharp decline of the US’s artificial economy. Nature has a seasonal cycle of expansion and contraction. Now contracting, the US’s manufactured economy has been built on a growth-always fiction.
   My main work for the last fifteen years has been on the organic Kokopelli Farm in Northern California. Watching the US economy descend – while caring for boysenberry vines, apple trees, and chickens – I’ve noticed a sharp contrast between nature’s ways of a real economy and the US’s false economy. Nature guides my farming, with permaculture being one system that I employ.
   The US economy, unfortunately, is not nature-based. In fact, it conflicts harshly with nature’s rhythms and is now paying the price. The chickens are coming home to roost, unhappy with the all-growth, no-rest pressure.
   ‘Things change,’ the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus declared some 2,500 years ago. They go up; they come back down. The US has had its ups; it’s now on a down cycle. Pump, pump, pump go the corporations, their media and governments, trying to inflate it back up. I don’t think so. The well is running dry.
   Even a military budget larger than those of all the other nations in the world combined cannot protect our fortress. We are besieged, but more internally by our threatening practices than by terrorists or anything external.
   Oh, our rulers may stimulate it back up a little, for a while. Throwing money at something can have a short-term impact. But it will come back down, and may all fall down. Gravity is a basic law of physics. Things go up, then they come back down, sooner or eventually. Sometimes it feels like a crash, unless one is aware of the inevitable downturn. Once things fall apart, they can re-assemble, often in an improved form.
   All things carry their opposites, Heraclitus taught. Death is inherent to life. Transitions and impermanence prevail. This is not bad news; it just is. Birth/growth/contraction/death is nature’s way. All living things follow this natural cycle. Everything that lives perishes.
   The growth-based US economy is contracting. Media economists are alarmed, even panicky. They describe this as a ‘recession’ and wring their hands with woe. They should have expected this downturn and we should accept it. Let’s see what will happen. Maybe the Earth will benefit from the declining US economy? Perhaps its pollution and other threats to the global climate and environment will lessen?
   There are too many variables to accurately predict what will happen, or when. But I am planning for a radically different future. It is time to ‘powerdown,’ to use the word that Richard Heinberg employs in the title of one of his books on Peak Oil. We should expect some chaos. The manufactured US economy is failing.
   President Bush has proposed yet another ‘growth package’ of $145 billion to boost the flagging economy by giving each taxpayer up to $800 each. Supported by many Democrats, the plan is to spend our way out of this mess. Go shopping. What a fantasy. This may worsen things, digging the hole deeper, rather than stepping out of it.
   The government’s so-called ‘economic stimulus’ is a false solution, attempting to further prop up the false economy. Giving people more money to spend – many of whom are already spending beyond their means – will not solve what is becoming our most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression.
   Trying to avoid the economic fall seems futile. A better approach would be to roll with the punches and figure out how to even thrive during this transition from a no-longer to a not-yet. Those who do can even benefit from the changing reality.
   The US economy has expanded for the last seven years. It’s time to contract, in spite of the wailing of economists. Economic growth slowed to barely 1 per cent in the final three months of 2007 – a big drop from 4.9 per cent in the third quarter. Growth may now be dipping into negative territory, according to a January 17 Associated Press article.
   Mainstream economists do not want to publicly utter words like ‘depression’ or ‘collapse,’ which may happen, if the contraction deepens. This will bring great changes, including inconveniences and difficulties. But that is inevitable, as opposed to bad.
   As the US goes down, it can be a time for others to be up in the sun. A gracious fall is better than a bitter, ballistic, hostile one. The flexibility of bamboo would be a better model for our fall than rigid, fossilised bones likely to break and shatter. Then we may come back up, though hopefully in a different, more mature way.
   The indigenous University of Hawaii at Hilo professor Manu Meyer, who hails from an ancient culture, describes the US as ‘adolescent.’ Since setbacks often help a person mature, perhaps this economic fall will help the US evolve.
   ‘Reinventing Collapse’ titles a provocative book by Dmitry Orlov, a Russian living in the US, scheduled by New Society Publishers to appear in April. He compares the evolving US collapse to that of the Soviet Union. Parts of this new book have been posted at www.energybulletin.net and elsewhere. The book’s final three chapters are ‘Collapse Mitigation,’ ‘Adaptation,’ and ‘Career Opportunities.’ Orlov draws on his experiences observing the Soviet collapse to help people manage what might happen here in the only remaining superpower.
   Now let me root this analysis in two quite different sources: the farming author Wendell Berry and the humorous gardener Chance, played by Peter Sellers in the classic 1979 film ‘Being There.’
   For over 50 years now Berry has been publishing farm-based essays, poetry, and fiction. Since at least his 1977 book ‘The Unsettling of America,’ published by the Sierra Club, he has been writing about the US economy. His field-based analysis is outside the box-based on farm-fresh wisdom rather than merely book learning or crunching numbers.
   ‘The human household or economy is in conflict at almost every point with the household of nature,’ Berry writes in his essay ‘The Total Economy.’ Humans tend to look to nature as ‘merely a supply of ‘raw materials,’ Berry bemoans. The results are what he describes as ‘economic oversimplification’ and ‘the folly’ of a ‘foolish economy.’ We fail to see the larger picture that one can sometimes see when they lift their eyes up from working in a field to see the sky and clouds above, as well as the expanse between the ground and our majestic blue covering.
   ‘The global economy,’ Berry asserts, ‘is based upon cheap long-distance transportation, without which it is not possible to move goods from the point of cheapest origin to the point of highest sale.’ Now that the price for crude oil has surpassed the $100 a barrel ceiling, we are becoming increasingly aware of the decline of cheap oil and the rising price of this black gold that fuels industrialism’s food, plastics, transportation, war-making, and much of modern life.
   We need what Berry describes as a ‘real economy,’ rather than this house of cards (the cover of Heinberg’s new ‘Peak Everything’ book) under which we live. Berry suggests that we work ‘to preserve things other than money’ and advances ‘the idea of a local economy’ based on ‘neighbourhood and subsistence.’
   ‘Did you see that old Peter Sellers film “Being There?”’ a farm hand recently asked while we lay wool around the base of berry vines as mulch to suppress the weeds and stimulate activity in the soil. While working with our hands Jeff Snook and I had been talking about the litany of economic woes for banks, housing, the dollar, unemployment, retail sales, consumer confidence, etc.
   Farmers sometimes talk about such things in fields and elsewhere. My Uncle Dale on his farm in Iowa in the early l950s, before electricity had reached parts of the rural Mid-West, used to talk about the economy. Since I have already lived without electricity – we had an icebox, root cellar, and gas lights – I can imagine doing it again. Instead of TV, we had night-time stories and day-time farm animals to entertain us. It was a good life, even without all the modern conveniences, some of which we may soon have to do without as we powerdown and make a forced transition with less available energy.
   Many signs of contraction were visible as Jeff and I recently worked –leaves falling from nearby valley oaks, boysenberry vines shrivelling, and beautiful chickens taking their annual break from egg-laying. These things are predictable and happen every year. I plan my yearly cycle accordingly, as do the wise birds and squirrels, putting acorns away.
   ‘Chance in “Being There” is a simple-minded gardener who observed nature’s cycles and acted accordingly,’ Jeff noted. ‘He knew that things should be planted in the spring and will then grow and die – a basic, natural rhythm.’
   A fictional US president in the film comes to visit a financial adviser and meets Chance. The president is proposing a temporary economic growth plan. ‘As long as the roots are not severed, all is well in the garden,’ Chance responds. ‘Some things must whither,’ he adds. The ‘president’ wisely takes Chance’s simple advice, which our current real president is unlikely to do. He accepts the seasonal, Earth-based wisdom, realising that a long-term solution is needed, rather than a band-aid.
   Our economy, in fact, has been ‘severed’ from its ‘roots,’ the Earth itself. We need a down-to-the-Earth approach to the economy, rather than the sugar pill ‘economic growth stimulus’ that Bush is proposing with his tax break.
   We need to get back to basics in the US. Our expectations of being permanently on top, always in control, forever the dominating ruler and evermore the superpower have been excessive. We need to do more than try to shore up a failing economy that requires so much war-making and destruction to keep it growing artificially, at the expense of the environment and other humans, animals, plants, and the elements such as clean water and air that sustain life. We need to accept the natural limits to growth.
   Less than 2 per cent of US citizens now farm. This number must increase, if we are to survive. Farming can be fun and educational, as well as put food on our tables and build communities. Agriculture, after all, is a basis of culture. May ours continue to prosper, but not by being based on a false, foolish economy, like the one that is now falling. R.I.P.
   We need to re-align the US economy more around nature’s economy.
   Counterpunch, January 21. Dr Shepherd Bliss teaches part-time at Sonoma State University, runs Kokopelli Farm, and has contributed to over 20 books, most recently to “Sustainability”. He can be reached: sbliss@hawaii.edu

It’s funny how, when we want to, we can make lightning-fast decisions. When it came to the submarine cable, we waited almost a decade to climb on that platform. We dithered about the Tata proposal for so long that Ratan dada got bored and went off and invested in Africa instead (apparently a distance of a continent is better than our red tape). Trans-Asian Highway we have been hearing of for years but nothing has happened; it doesn’t look like anything will happen. Lot of people mistake this for a tough negotiating stance with India, but it isn’t – it’s just incompetence.
   But it’s funny, when we want to, we can do things really fast. For example, did you even know we were negotiating to build a highway between Bangladesh and Myanmar? I didn’t. And then one day, suddenly there was a quiet little announcement that the deal had been signed. Bangladesh will construct 16-mile road including 14 miles inside Myanmar in the first phase. It will link Guandhum in Cox’s Bazar with Baulibazar.
   Did you know that we were supposed to host one of Myanmar’s top generals for a state visit? Vice Senior General Maung Aye, a senior member of Myanmar’s ruling regime, the State Peace and Development Committee. Maung Aye was scheduled to lead a high-profile delegation, hold official talks with the chief adviser to the interim government, Fakhruddin Ahmed, and attend a state banquet on September 10. I didn’t know any of this. Not that is, until I read the news that his trip had cancelled. Things must be a bit busy at home. There’s a saffron revolution. Monks to beat, people to arrest, tear gas to lob, rubber bullets to fire.
   In the last few months, Myanmar is back in a global consciousness. The sight of silent processions by monks, and then those same monks being beaten bloody. The images of blood on the pavement, and torn sandals. I imagine some of our government officials are embarrassed about their loving embrace of Myanmar in recent times.
   But all this is not new. Myanmar has been under a military dictatorship for two decades. Shouldn’t our government have already known they were dealing with a totalitarian dictatorship? After Nelson Mandela, the most famous political prisoner of recent times is Aung San Suu Kyi. She is the only Nobel laureate in recent history where even that lofty award did not succeed in getting the regime to release her. If anything, it increased their determination to keep her under permanent lockdown. Her dying husband had one wish – to visit his wife. The Myanmar junta refused his visa. International condemnations followed, but the generals did not care.
   Since 1990, when Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy received 80 per cent of the popular vote, the military junta has gone into overdrive to suppress the democracy movement. The NLD’s top leadership has been in jail for almost a decade, and repressive measures target the universities and all other gathering locations. Forced labour practices recall the worst excesses of the Stalinist gulags and armed suppression of ethnic minorities has spilled over into our borders as thousands of Rohingya refugees come to Chittagong to escape tyranny.
   For two decades, the Myanmar junta has been a human rights pariah – with condemnation ranging from hundreds of global college campuses, to Nobel Laureates Desmond Tutu and Vaclav Havel. But each attempt to bring censure in the UN has been vetoed by Myanmar’s allies Russia and China (both countries with equally poor record on human rights).
   As I write these words, the saffron is mixing with blood. Go home or we will shoot, warn the soldiers. Perhaps the monks will make a last stand. Or perhaps they will be beaten into submission. Or worse. During the 1988 uprising, more than 3,000 people were killed by the government. In 2008 things may get much worse.
   Can our government continue to be friendly with a regime like this? And if so, what does that say about the caretakers?

Let thousand flowers bloom

The metaphor used by General Moeen in depicting the state of the government in place before the 11th of January ’07 was interesting. He also mentioned that what the nation needed was an efficient driver to run the train called government.
   To some extent he was right. But what the nation needs at this moment is not one efficient driver but a team of efficient drivers, a team of thousand efficient drivers. Democracy blooms and thrives where thousand flowers bloom. Democracy dies where thousand flowers die to give space to one flower called a dictator. Democracy dies when we dehumanise humans and create myths surrounding a person or persons. What the nation needs is the resonance of thousand democratic-minded democrats. Long live democracy!
   MH Khan
   On e-mail

A possessor of a stolen article, though coming into the possession inadvertently, is punished equally as that of the thief. Now the council of advisers are looking for ways to exempt the owners of such properties from prosecution. This is not right. Even if the dishonest people of the forest department committed the crime, the beneficiaries should also hear the music. The factories therein should be confiscated and, if necessary, should be demolished (remember, Rangs Bhaban?) for the safe recreation of the forest.
   Haq
   On e-mail

‘The Great Pardon’ — the recent Dhaka University ‘drama’ — is the product of immature thinking and activity by the real drivers of the current military-‘elite’ government. This type of ‘drama’ always ends with the scene of ‘oti chalak-er golay dori’.
   M Emad
   Oxford, UK

Israel has consistently bullied the Palestinian people ever since they moved into Palestine. I have no sympathy whatsoever with the Israelis, until they learn to hand back what is not theirs.
   As long as Israel continues to occupy Palestinian land there will never be peace in the region.
   Salma Haq
   USA

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