NAmerican Secession Gains Traction in the Peak Oil Community

Many thanks go out to Clifford Wirth for featuring, as a guest post, my paper, Post-Peak Oil and NAmerican Regional Secession. See Cliff's blog Surviving Peak Oil: Planning, Preparation, and Relocation. The paper can also be found in here with a search.

Peak Oil Liberals

It would seem that as things currently stand, the leading "radical" voices in the Peak Oil community, e.g. Kunstler, Heinlein, Ruppert, Savinar, Orlov, still cannot bring themselves to the conclusion that the institutional breakdown they recognize and advocate includes the social institution of the industrial nation-state. There is a serious philosophical, ideological, political, and I would say, U.S.A.-centric, blind-spot at work here. The most ludicrous fringe of this philosophical non-position is, of course, that Papa Obama will fix all and mom, apple pie and baseball will be painlessly back on the agenda before we know it. Such pedestrian finger-painting is even evident amongst secessionists who have not yet worked through the paradox and political schizophrenia of attempting to be a "patriotic secessionist."

If the average person on the street is stopped and questioned as to from where stems his/her sense of nationalism, one might well be informed that it is a genetic pre-condition. That is, of course, nonsense. Nationalism is learnt behaviour, it is Pavlovian conditioning to the max.

Until such time as the disintegration of the industrial nation-state (in our case, the United States and Canada) is legitimately incorporated into the Peak Oil dialogue, then the Peak Oil movement remains a political skeleton, a sham and hoax, of what it could and must be.

You can't have it both ways. Massive and cheap energy flow-through over the last 150 years, with the guidance of capital, created the industrial nation-state. The lack and negation of same translates into the demise of said nation-state. To keep heads stuck in the sand around this eventuality merely chases the best of intentions into the herd of denial, but with oh such radical and progressive differentiations.

The Rock Gets Set to Rock the Secessionist Boat

This story could end up getting sub-titled The Rock vs. The ROC (Rest of Canada). Liberal Senator George Baker has thrown a very unanticipated curve into the usually staid proceedings of Canadian politics by declaring yesterday during a radio interview that, "People (of Newfoundland and Labrador) will soon be advocating, you know, that we can't remain in the Confederation in which we're discriminated against and not respected for the great contribution that we make. I believe that day is coming for sure if this keeps up." Senator predicts Newfoundland separatist party The conservative National Post was quick to weigh in to-day, dishing out a not altogether surprising slap on the wrist with the article, Is The Rock eyeing sovereignty role?

By "this" Senator Baker was referring to a capped equalization formula that Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams insists will cost the province $1.5-billion worth of federal cash in the next three years. The capped formula is contained within the Federal Government's bail-out budget. Also on the hit list is Quebec which is purported to be short roughly $1 billion of transfer payments.

That provincial jurisdictions that are not altogether friendly towards the Conservative Government are the ones that are getting hit with the budget would seem to be self-evident. Premier Williams was the architect of the "Anything But Conservative" campaign during the recent federal election, and Quebec Premier Jean Charest turned on the Conservatives during the election over proposed cuts to the arts community.

The nature of federal-provincial feuds is about to change drastically. The case of Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec are prime examples. The former is politically expendable, as are the Maritime provinces, because they carry no political clout in the federal system, i.e. 32 seats out of 308. The latter is owned by the Bloc Quebecois and no federal party of whatever political stripe is about to alter that.

The nature of federal-provincial feuds that is about to change needs to be seen within the greater context of the global financial meltdown and the related entry onto the Post-Peak Oil descent curve. Federal financial largess towards the provinces is a thing of the past. The federal coffer is running on empty and will continue to do so. The Canadian financial, political and geographical hinterland is best off awakening to this fact.

Via the secessionist shot across the bow taken by Senator Baker, one can only predict that the sleepy and politically corrupt Maritime provinces will be stirred to at least awaken, if not to immediate action. When the Maritimes finally get around to taking some kind of action the proposed Novacadia Independence Party should be reasonably cobbled together to field several candidates to advocate the inevitable secession of the Maritime provinces.

Post-Script: On March 6, 2009, the defender of the national fabric (along with the CBC) weighed in on the issue. In an editorial titled "Intolerable in a national party" The Globe opined:

"Mr. Baker belongs to the caucus of a national party that hopes to soon form a government. His status within that party, as a senator and former cabinet minister, gives him a platform. When he uses it to effectively advocate the formation of a nationalist - and possibly separatist - movement in his home province, he behaves so recklessly that fellow Liberals should be tripping
over each other to distance themselves, not making apologies on his behalf."

Someone is nervous.

HCR 6 Disappears and Igor Panarin Reappears

In a stunning vote in the New Hampshire House to-day, the States' Rights Bill HCR 6, was defeated by a vote of 216-150. The Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers declared that the House Members voted "in violation of their oath of office."

This one is not over by a long shot. Rep. Dan Itse and his co-sponsors of HCR 6 are to be congratulated...and saluted. Has the House vote inadvertently handed Rep. Itse the State's Governorship during the next gubernatorials? I guess we all get to stay tuned on that one.

Thanks go out to Harold Thomas at The Ohio Republic, not only for being so on top of this story, but also for the very important work he is doing in the States' Right community, especially rounding up support for Ohio's bid.

On another note to-day, Igor Panarin, the Russian analyst who is becoming somewhat of a secessionist poster boy, was back in the news, this time via an AP story that was picked up by both MSNBC and Fox News, Russian analyst: U.S. will collapse next year. Canada's National Newswatch linked to the Fox article.

Mr. Panarin and his hypothesis for U.S. implosion first broke last November and then the story was picked up by the WSJ on December 29. What is popping my antennae is the "legs" that the story is being given by the corporate media. First the WSJ and now MSNBC. Makes one wonder, yes?

As a commenter pointed out over at ClubOrlov, the word "collapse" is more and more creeping into the mainstream media, e.g. The collapse of manufacturing in The Economist...along with the notion of Peak Oil.

The Secessionist Mycelium: Introduction

(Note: As of March 1, 2009 this blog will run in tandem with the WordPress blog Novacadia Alliance. Posts, links, etc. from the latter are in process of being brought over from WordPress, ergo "Under Construction").

Having attended the Third North American Secessionist Convention in Manchester, NH this past November, three things became very clear:

1. Delegate coordination and support, and media coverage of the secessionist movement were drastically weak and counter-productive relative to the pending conditions of empire collapse;
2. Events were quickly far out-stripping and out-distancing the philosophical positioning of the movement and its ability to be representative of those events;
3. The existing organizational structure to effectively coordinate the NAmerican secessionist movement was terribly lacking and, by virtue of a haphazard organizational initiative, was sadly undemocratic.

None of these observations is meant in any way to denigrate from the work invested by individuals and secessionist organizations over the past three years to kick-start the NAmerican secessionist dialogue. At any given time, we do what we can with the resources at-hand. However, there comes a time at the early stages of the life-cycle of any organization and/or movement when it is necessary to claw one's way up to the next level. That time has arrived.

As a sub-item of the first point above, i.e. lack of delegate coordination and support, it was also apparent that the secessionist movement was not well-represented by two major demographics: Peak Oilers and disillusioned, bioregional Greens, to both of which secession is practically an automatic fit.

Two other events have come into play since the Third North American Secessionist Convention. The first is, of course, the wild-fire flourishing of the States' Rights movement in the United States. The second event is the assertive, secessionist re-positioning of both the federal Bloc Quebecois and the provincial Parti Quebecois in Canada.

Taking the above conditions into consideration and after initial dialogue with other secessionists, it has been decided to bring into play a Steering Committee to pull together the inaugural meeting of the North American Secessionist Congress in Columbus, OH on October 16-18, 2009. The status of this proposed historic event is still "tentative." However, work is underway by the Steering Committee to firstly solidify its own legitimacy and then to probe for and determine support for holding the Columbus meeting.

Please check in every now and then to see how things are going as we prepare to trudge towards Columbus.

See also: NAmerican Secessionist Movement Asleep-At-The-Wheel