21:12:2012: A Crossroad: Barbarism or Communism

[William Prest]

A mountain of speculation exists as to the meaning of Dec. 21^St, 2012. There are as many ideas seemingly as there are people. Popularly, the date centers on the Mayan calendar that indicates that this date is the end of the current cycle of the long count that extends for 5,125 years that commenced on August 13^th, 3114 BC. Many people have taken this date and suggested that it points to the end of the world. There are a number of things that can be said about this. The first is that in order to create something new, something else has to be destroyed. This is an axiom that can be linked with dialectics and nature. The second thing that can be stated is that there appears to be a confluence of separate natural phenomena that will culminate on or about this date. Thirdly, as pointed out by the Mayans and by ourselves, that various planetary alignments have, are or are about to occur. Some hold that the winter solstice sun will align with the center of the galaxy on the given date. Though this is a rare occurrence, it is an event that does recur approximately once every 25,860 years. This aside we consider the natural phenomena.

The situation is now coming to a head again with the coincidence of a long count and calendar round. Again there are important astronomical indicators. There was the closest approach to Earth by Mars in August 27th, 2003, closer than in any time for 60,000 to 74,000 years depending on who you reference. Then there is the fact that the light of Polaris shone down the descending passage of the pyramid of Giza in 2004, the first time a star did this in about 4,100 years. In 2004, Polaris was a close to being in line with the Earth’s axis of rotation as it will ever get. There was the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun (an important event seen from a Mayan perspective) on December 9th, of 2004. This will occur again on June 6th, 2012. In 2012, the winter solstice sun will align with Sagittarius A, the center of the galaxy, where the ecliptic and galactic plane intersect according to some sources. The later is an event of extreme rarity, due to the fact that it won’t happen again for another 25,860 years! These are the recent events and there will be other significations.

On a more mundane and familiar level, events are converging toward 2012 as a major paradigm shift. Consider that AIDS will have driven many African cultures to extinction by 2011. Some nations have already collapsed due to the loss of the entire productive population. This figure was given in a news analysis of 2003. As it stands at this writing in Feb. of 2010, some African countries are already in economic collapse because the almost the entire adult population has died of AIDS, leaving only seniors and children to run the economy. Seniors are too old and frail to do intensive agriculture or hunt and the children a too young and ignorant of agricultural and hunting practices. The result is extreme poverty and famine despite all other favourable factors. Other diseases will bring more suffering due to these conditions. AIDS is still sweeping the world, virtually unchecked. Most people are just too poor to afford any treatment and there is virtually no will to compassion by those who are in a position to help. The rich nations are too concerned with the bottom line and economic health to help those in genuine need. Yes there are donations, but they are woefully inadequate to address the real need. Much of the donations disappears en-route and ends up lining the pockets of those in between the donor and intended recipient. Scandals concerning corruption emerge continually. The result is that intended help never reaches those whom it was intended for the most part. The military budget of the US dwarfs all combined contributions hundreds of times over.

In Canada, the spruce pine beetle will have destroyed 80 percent of all BC forests by 2012. An area of some 175,000 hectares is now infected each year (1999). The concern is that it will jump the Rocky Mountains and devastate the rest of Canada by then, especially if it occurs in the summer. A winter windstorm of Dec. 14th, 2006 did just that; it blew bugs over the mountains into Alberta and they showed up in the summers of 2007 and 2008 east of the Rockie Mountain divide. Global warming due to human industrial activity has allowed the pest to “winter over” in large numbers. At this writing, the beetle devastates an area some six times the size of Vancouver Island each year. With the timber destroyed, there will be no jobs in timber, paper production or home building. During the winter of 2006, the beetle managed to cross the Rockies into the Prairies. The claim is that they have been stopped, but by now this has been proven false. The US won’t have to worry about Canadian softwood! With the end of most of the forests, planetary oxygen will fall and carbon dioxide levels will rise. This will raise the ante on global warming considerably. The result may be another global meltdown such as occurred 12,900 to 6,500 years ago. As of 2009, both poles have seen significant melt-down, ice shelf collapse and glacial retreat.

Consider the forests of the Amazon, thought to be the “lungs of the Earth.” These are being clear cut for beef raising agriculture for the likes of Burger King, McDonalds and soy production. As the soil is nutrient poor, such intensive agricultural practices exhaust the soil in a couple of years, causing poverty stricken farmers to clear cut more forest by slash and burn methods. Between 1978 and 1996, more than 500,000 square kilometers (200,000 square miles) or 12.5 percent of the Amazon's rain forest were destroyed, an area about the size of France. Presently, some 20 percent is now clear-cut, with an area the size of Belgium being felled annually (source BBC news). 2004 was a year that is 2nd in a historical context of the amount of clear-cutting. Over the last several years, the weather patterns have changed over the Amazon basin, tending to a drier condition. The areas that have been exhausted are abandoned and they tend towards becoming a desert. Countless species have been driven to extinction, most without actually being discovered before the fact. By 2012, most of the Amazon will be in ruin! Though governments promise action, little more goes on than hand wringing, politicking and public relations exercises. In 2003, as described in New Scientist, an acceleration of deforestation by some 40 percent has been noticed by satellite. Some scientists think that the Amazon rainforest may be entering a phase state change. So much has already been destroyed the rest may simply collapse due to local climate changes.

China now has a Juggernaut economy, growing by 10 to 12 percent yearly (now 6 to 8 percent after the 2008-09 world economic collapse). Here are just a few recent accomplishments. The largest hydro electric dam (Three Gorges Dam) was recently completed across the Yangtze River, flooding millions of hectares of prime agricultural land and forcing nearly a million into homelessness. China has a new and active space program, with a goal to be on the moon by 2008 (so far it has not happened and has been rescheduled to 2010). China is set to soon outstrip the American economy in production and consumption. This was assisted by the US with the de-industrialization that came of the economic crash that is still throwing millions out of work in N. America. China is severely plagued by global dimming of up to 24 (2008-09) percent due to brown clouds of pollution. Consider that the North Americans and Europeans have 20 percent of the world population, but consume 80 percent of the world’s resources. When China fully enters the consumer society way of life, the results will be devastating. They have 1/6th of the world’s population. It will be almost equal in impact as the developed nation’s impact. Imagine doubling the current output of pollutants. Right now the Chinese have gone car crazy. They can’t build them fast enough. China has a rapacious appetite for recycled metal, drawing on whatever resources they can find. The price of copper has skyrocketed, causing the poor in Canada, the US and UK to obtain it by any means possible, including stealing plumbing and wiring in use with fatal results in the latter. Recently, China and Japan have locked horns with China acting as the aggressor. The cause is ostensibly over Japan’s refusal to apologize for war crimes in WW11. The reality is over marine resources in the region between Japan and China. No date has been calculated for this.

Humanity has dramatically impacted the planet since the industrial revolution, with the most dramatic impact occurring since the 1850’s. Since then we have added radioactive elements, noxious chemicals, plastic, and planned obsolescence to the “landfills.” At the same time, consumerism has escalated, not by China’s standards of 10 to 12 percent per year, but usually 2 to 3 percent, at least until the collapse that started economies to contract except for Chin and India. Capitalism requires continual growth to remain viable. Unfortunately, the Earth is a closed system. This means that we are approaching the carrying capacity of the system and threaten to exceed it. Global dimming alone tells us that we are having the same influence on agriculture as a super volcanic explosion or an asteroid impact. The Earth will not allow continual unchecked growth. Scientists now say that the situation will culminate in 2025. But with China as an up and rising contender in the consumerist life style the date has been pushed back to 2012. Global dimming has masked the true extent of global warming. The suspended soot and nitrous oxide in the high atmosphere is trapping sunlight and heating the upper atmosphere while everywhere below gets cooler despite accumulating global warming evidenced by the meltdown at both poles. This melting has been consistent for the last 19 years according to scientists who study these things.

The shrinking of global agricultural production first by some 40 percent in 2008 and then be another third in 2009 bodes disaster by way of nearly universal famine, especially when the human population is topping out at 7 billion people. The shrinkage is due to climactic confusion; the loss of rains, shrunken monsoons, untimely frosts and flooding, being the primary causes. With the world economy now in decline, hundreds of millions are being excluded from “the market” and thus starve even though there is still enough to go around. Then there is the deliberate destruction of food because there are no subsidies and “no market”. Food riots occurred in many places in the fall of 2008 and also after the Haiti earthquake. Corruption as far as charities and disaster capitalism did not help.

The world ice packs are melting at an accelerating rate, with dramatic shrinking of glaciers and the polar ice caps. Since 1950, the ocean levels have risen 9 inches. Many low lying Islands are now being inundated. The Mississippi Delta faces the same fate, as does Florida. Ocean levels are still rising and picking up speed with the dramatic increase of Antarctic ice pack break up, melt down and run off. All coastal cities face flooding and most of humanity faces migration, homelessness, disease and famine. Many arable lands are low laying, such as the Mississippi delta, the Nile delta, BC, California, the Amazon, Florida, the Maldives and others are in the line of flooding. The only equatorial ice fields on the equator are expected to be completely melted by 2015, wiping out the water supply for those Peruvians who rely on glacial melt waters. Snow packs in the Alps are already subject to early melting, leaving summer water supplies absent in Europe. This impacts agriculture and threatens to bring famine to these regions. There are already shrinking food supplies due to less run off melt water as well as global dimming.

With the global redistribution of mass, there is increased geological activity. The huge earthquake of Dec. 26th, 2004 off the west coast of Malaysia occurred due the collapse of a 200 by 1,200 kilometre section of the sea bed resulting in tsunamis that impacted a sixth of the planet. Further the Earth’s axial tilt shifted by an inch and the day shortened by a millisecond. This may seem insignificant, but we have a benchmark as what is required to literally shift the Earth globally. A greater earthquake than 9.3 on the Richter scaled could mean greater shifts. A 9.4 earthquake could shift the pole 10 inches with the consequence of Earthquakes planet wide. We came very close in that one! A second massive earthquake struck a day after Easter Sunday of 2005. Since then, 12 volcanoes in the region have come to life, the legendary Anak Krakatoa among them. Krakatoa has been identified as the culprit behind the Feb. 27th, 535 AD catastrophe that brought down mighty civilizations by itself. New societies emerged from the ashes about a hundred years later, including Islam and the warrior Mayan culture. Europe remained in a dark age for nearly a thousand years. We have direct historical records of the 1883 explosion that generated massive tsunamis and cooled summers for several years. The same is true with the 1815 Toba explosion. Both caused years without summers, agricultural failure and famine. With ongoing global mass distribution, more of such activity and greater can be expected. Will this also converge on 2012? Currently, three sub oceanic volcanoes have been discovered under the Pacific Ocean that did not exist before. Time will tell on this on. In any event, expect a major paradigm shift! Remember, Krakatoa alone shattered mighty civilizations around the world. Are we exempt? I think not! So we ought to make a voluntary paradigm shift right now rather than being forced into it by catastrophe; a catastrophe in which we have contributed to in a major way. The capitalist response to disaster is to take it as an opportunity to make a profit through redevelopment. This ugly fact showed up in Malaysia, New Orleans and now in Haiti. The masses are left out of the equation when the shattered regions are rebuilt with maximum profit in mind.

The wild profit guided speculations of Wall St. investors from 2000 to 2006 lead to the financial collapse of Sept.-Oct. 2008 that led to tens of millions losing jobs and homes, created an economic melt-down the impacted the whole world. In the world at large, over 100 million were dumped into the streets. By the late spring of 2009, several million people were added to the unemployment roles and millions more homes were under threat of foreclosure. Big businesses like GM and Chrysler virtually shut down. Over ten trillion dollars was given in bailout funds were given to banks and large businesses, but the worst is still unfolding, creating a lot of nervousness. It is expected that the economy will continue to struggle for years. At the same time, principally Oct. 2006 as a watershed of 9/11/2001, Habeas Corpus was struck down under sections of the Patriot Act and Homeland Securities Act passed in Oct. 2001. By 2009, the US now condones torture and calls it "intensive interrogation". This “torch” has been picked up and carried by Barack Obama.

Throughout the history of the Earth there have been great mass extinctions. We are now engulfed in the 6th great planet wide extinction of species. The difference this time is that it is entirely man-made and not of a natural cause like volcanism or an asteroid impact. Those who track such things have noticed and acceleration of species extinction. Changes in amphibians and reptiles have threatened extinction or actually caused extinction. The loss of natural habitats is another threat as well as the pollution of existing ones. The incursion of mankind into the natural world has driven many species to near extinction if not outright extinction altogether. For political reasons of conquest, the plains bison was driven nearly to extinction in the 19th century. Many natural predators like wolves and mountain lions were completely wiped out in many areas due to competition for resources with humanity and are only now being reluctantly reintroduced. The loss of a single predator has a dramatic and negative impact on the balance of nature and leads to a chain of extinction. This scenario was observed in Yellowstone Park. Other species have been hunted to near extinction by over fishing in the oceans. Unwanted species were caught up or destroyed by drag nets in a bid to obtain every last edible fish. Fish stocks in the oceans have decreased to three percent of what they were originally. It is estimated that it will take centuries for ocean bottoms and fish stocks to recover from mankind’s activity. And then there is fish farming which introduces disease stress to wild populations. Climate change also affects the survival of species, especially in restricted ecological zones. Introduction of non-native species introduces further pressures, whether by intent or by accident. It is estimated that ten million species will be extinct by 2012. This of course must have an impact on humanity. The loss of some species and/or the severe reduction of numbers already have left an impact by way of unemployment, impoverishment and famine.

The watershed of Sept. 11^Th, 2001 is the imperial and monopoly capitalist order has moved to political totalitarianism, dictatorship and militarization enforced by torture, disappearances and the total shock doctrine. Each year reveals ever greater horrors. The rulers of the world have become a pox on humanity and the natural world. WWIII, like all other wars, are heavily ruinous to the environment, especially since wars are now fought by high tech remote control robots of all sorts. The perpetrators can now commit genocide without getting their hands dirty. Prominent targets can now be taken out by robot bombs. The de-facto policy of the New World Order capitalist Neo-cons is to take what they want by force and leave the masses to die of inflicted wounds in regions bombed back into the stone age. This policy is universal and world wide. We haven't even reached 2012 and many regions have already landed into barbarism. The way things are unfolding at this juncture of 2010, the end appears to be barbarism, because what little resistance there is is frustrated and quashed before it has a chance to take root.

What can we expect of Dec. 21^St, 2012? The current direction appears to be in a world gone to the hell of barbarism where each and every one of us is in a perpetual war with everyone else; fighting in a frozen or boiling, hellish world just to breath, drink a drop of water or find something to eat, even if it is one another. Just from natural causes, there have been times like this in geological history. But does it have to be this way? We now stand in a position to do it to ourselves or to undo that direction for something better.

Despite the incredible odds that suggest that we are utterly fated and predestined to agonizingly writhe out the balance of our miserable days in a living Earthly hell, there is an alternative. But we have to commit to the alternative or die trying. That alternative is a logical, materialist based, planned economy that includes nature and all of the worlds authentic and legitimate toilers and peasant farmers. It means the end of capitalism in all its forms and the popular delusion that we have something to gain thereby. Capitalism can only gain if and only if the majority accept suffering and slow death as a result. Hodtory is plain in revealing the truth. Capitalism cannot work in a closed world environment due to inherent contradictions of continual expansion and its own inherent anarchy. Only a planned socialist or communist economy can address the problem capitalism has dumped upon humanity and nature. It has become a huge task but it must be done if 2012 is about renewing instead of total destruction. It will take a thorough going planned economy just to undo the collected damages bequeathed to us by greed centered capitalist modes. It will take the lifting of censorship imposed upon humanity whether by propaganda, lies or unfulfilled promises with the liberalizing of real knowledge. To wrest the Earth out of hell placed their by self serving and greedy capitalists, the masses will have to snatch it away and completely smash the existing order and replace it with real democratic communism, where councils of the people will decide the course of the economy and what needs to be done. Everything will be decided by need instead of the current mode for greed and self enrichment at the cost of everyone and everything else. Once, not so long ago, humanity had to be communist just too survive. We all had to work individually and collectively to help the whole community survive. The choice is ours now; barbarism or communism. Which will it be?