Category: News Collapse of Society
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Is Instagram TooLateagram?
It seems a bit ironic that an iconic brand with “instant” in its name may be severely impacted in crisis response by offering “too little, too late.” ”Too late” is now the classic story of much crisis response and may well describe the latest attempt of Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom to quell the storm and restore trust. The good news is that he has come forward with the appropriate response regarding the attempt to change Terms of Service language to allow the photo-sharing service to sell users photos. His first attempt was weak …
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Biofuels and Hunger: The story from Guatemala
Timothy Wise It’s bad enough when bad policy causes unneeded suffering for those governed by that policy. It’s worse when the victims include those far from the policymaking. Such is the history of U.S. farm policy. Today, that history is being written in places like Guatemala, where the U.S. ethanol boom is contributing to hunger and landlessness among that country’s indigenous majority. Thanks to the New York Times’ Elisabeth Rosenthal, we can see that history unfold in all its ugliness. She traveled to Guatemala for her feature, As Biofuel Demand Grows, So Do Guatemala’s Hunger Pangs. Her expose makes my own, which showed how U.S. corn ethanol has driven up corn import costs for poor countries, seem like just…
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Stephen Resnick, professor of economics at UMass-Amherst, dies at age 74
On January 2nd, we lost a brilliant economist, Stephen Resnick, one of the founding members and a cornerstone of the heterodox Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Steve, a devoted and fabulous teacher, touched the lives of hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students over his career. Steve, along with his colleague Richard Wolff, worked tirelessly for decades to transform Marxian Economics and influenced the researching and teaching of scores of students. He will be sorely missed. Here we reprint an early obituary, written by one of his former students from Umass. -Gerald Epstein Greg Saulmon, writing in The Republican: Jan 3rd, 2013, Stephen A. Resnick, a professor emeritus of economics at …
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65 Percent Of Americans Believe That 2013 Will Be A Year Of Economic Difficulty
Do you believe that economic trouble is coming in 2013? If so, you have a lot of company. According to a brand new Gallup poll that was just released, 65 percent of Americans believe that 2013 will be a year of “economic difficulty” while only 33 percent of Americans believe that 2013 will be a year of “economic prosperity”. Gallup has been asking this question for a lot of years, and the percentage of Americans that are anticipating economic difficulty in the year ahead has not been this high since the early 1980s. And without a doubt, there are a whole lot of reasons to be deeply concerned about the economy as we head into the new …
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Large Cities All Over America Are Degenerating Into Gang-Infested War Zones
Large U.S. cities that the rest of the world used to look at in envy are now being transformed into gang-infested hellholes with skyrocketing crime rates. Cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Camden, East St. Louis, New Orleans and Oakland were once bustling with economic activity, but as industry has fled those communities poverty has exploded and so has criminal activity. Meanwhile, financial problems have caused all of those cities to significantly reduce their police forces. Sadly, this same pattern is being repeated in hundreds of communities all over the nation. The mainstream media loves to focus on mass shooters such as Adam Lanza, but…
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4.9 Magnitude Earthquake OFF THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN – 7th January 2013
Magnitude4.9Date-TimeMonday, January 07, 2013 at 13:53:49 UTCMonday, January 07, 2013 at 10:53:49 PM at epicenterTime of Earthquake in other Time ZonesLocation37.817°N, 142.356°EDepth48.3 km (30.0 miles)RegionOFF THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPANDistances107 km (66 miles) SE of Ishinomaki, Japan
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Coming Crisis January 72-Hour Help-a-thon Begins! (Please give this month if you haven’t already done so and keep us going strong)
Have you contributed this month?Do you visit us each day?Would you like us to stay online?Want to be able to say you’ve done your part?Contribute right now and be proud. Countless others have now joined our community as supporters and trusted friends. Can you count yourself among them? Your financial support allows us to do all the work we do, including delivering the news to you and broadcasting freedom, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, even on holidays. You can give a one-time support donation, or support us monthly, both of which help tremendously. We make …
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Earth is fucked.
After extensive mathematical modeling, scientist declares “Earth is fucked” IO9Brad Werner has a simple question: Is the Earth fucked? He also has a remarkably complicated methodology yielding a very simple answer: yes, unless people start a serious global rebellion….So, to sum up: even our best efforts at environmental management are doomed to fail, unless massive scale resistance movements start springing up and send our cultural personality back toward a pre-technological era. Science has given you your mandate, people: Go blow some shit up.Put more scientifically…Despite weak economy, CO2 emissions to grow 2.6 percent in 2012: study ReutersCarbon dioxide emissions from industry rose an …
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Annoying IEA Report
I’m going to try to give y’all some tools to refute that annoying IEA report that just came out — the one that says the US will be the “new Saudi Arabia” and a net exporter of energy. I doubt this community has any new people reading it, and if you’ve been here for a while, you know this report is bullshit, but you need to know why because all these smug, optimistic cornucopians are going to be bringing the article to your attention in hopes of defeating everything you’ve ever told them about energy production.I’m going to skip the IEA report itself…
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Mike Ruppert on the Third Date
Hey Peak Shrink! I read your help-letter from the lesbian couple looking to relocate. My partner and I moved from Sacramento to Nevada County almost two years ago. It was very scary but it was a wonderful choice. We are super happy here. I would love to be put in touch with the writer. You can give her my email address. The letter inspired me to write a blog about our story. Feel free to post it to your website of refer it to other readers if you want. 🙂 Hillary Hodge ********************** My partner had “taken the red pill” and was hip to peak…
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With Visions of Sugar-Plums Dancing in My Head
I’m feeling pretty darn good about 2013. Economic crash be damned. Just had a barely awake chat with KMO over at the C-Realm Podcast’s special programming called “The Vault.” I was sleepy, as it was the day after Christmas, and DH and I did a crazy stint of driving, after we put our dino-dog-puppies to bed, then shot over to see my sister and extended family. It was a great holiday. The Shopping Gene? My sister, who has an incredible talent for picking out clothes for me, chose a fantastic hat as my gift. For …
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Doom and the Dark Side of Cosmic Fecundity
The Cosmic Dance of Shiva, supreme Hindu god of destruction and creationLike many in the blogosphere, I have expended considerable mental energy in recent years studying and fretting over the various “doomer” scenarios that threaten humanity in the 21st century. There was a time when I found the apparent facts utterly depressing and was convinced that there was no light at the end of the tunnel for mankind – that the future offered nothing but total collapse and devolution. But some time during the past six months or so, and particularly with my recent turn to the “dark side”, I have…
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A Vision of The End
Gaze with me into the mirrors of your Multiversal mind, and see one possible future coming into view…This is not the world your mythmakers promised you — no Disneyland of techno-prosperity and consumer capitalism for all. No, this world is racked by holy wars and ethnic conflicts, Malthusian catastrophes, refugee invasions, eco-anarchy and Millennial insanity. Do you see it? There, in the frontview mirror? Do you see the chaos approaching in the twilight of this, the darkest of all ages?The chaos is descending fastest across the lands of God-drunk Islam. Thirsty Yemen is falling to the soldiers of martyred bin Laden; modernity is in on the run in flood-ravaged Pakistan; hungry Egypt…
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60 Facts That Prove The American Middle Class is Being Wiped Out
Michael Snyder, Contributor Activist Post The middle class in the United States is being systematically destroyed, and nobody is doing much of anything to stop it. Our incomes are shrinking, our share of the income pie is at an all-time low, our jobs are being sent overseas, debt burdens have soared to unprecedented heights and millions of formerly middle class Americans have fallen into poverty. America once had the largest and most vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen, but now it is rapidly being shredded. Unfortunately, this is particularly true for younger Americans. Today, families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent. That is astounding. The…
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After Victory, Raw Milk Farmer Faces Same Charges in Different County
Heather Callaghan Activist Post Last September, Alvin Schlangen and his many supporters witnessed a victory when three charges were dropped against him in Hennepin county, Minnesota thanks to jury nullification. But now he is facing six charges in Stearns county – his home county – three of which are identical to the ones he was acquitted of just a few months ago in Hennepin. Those included selling raw milk, operating without a food license, and handling adulterated food. If Alvin’s motion is successful, those will be thrown out, but he will face three more misdemeanors including failing to maintain proper temperature for organic eggs, selling meat that should not have been possessed (?), and removing or disposing food embargoed by state…
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Health science journalism–don’t just blame the journalists for getting it so wrong
Coffee is good for you, coffee is bad for you. Red wine will save your life, red wine will kill you. Low carb diet is the best, low carb diet is dangerous. Most major news outlets feature health science news with information designed to help us choose healthier lives. The problem is, much of it seems contradictory, headlines seem designed to scare us into attention rather than inform us. It’s ironic: the fear expressed by particularly the younger generation about food, pharmaceuticals, lifestyle choices and the like is matched only by their extreme distrust in the media. In other words, it seems the attention-desperate …
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Is Instagram TooLateagram?
It seems a bit ironic that an iconic brand with “instant” in its name may be severely impacted in crisis response by offering “too little, too late.” ”Too late” is now the classic story of much crisis response and may well describe the latest attempt of Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom to quell the storm and restore trust. The good news is that he has come forward with the appropriate response regarding the attempt to change Terms of Service language to allow the photo-sharing service to sell users photos. His first attempt was weak at best: in it he said basically, legalese is hard for…
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Stephen Resnick, professor of economics at UMass-Amherst, dies at age 74
On January 2nd, we lost a brilliant economist, Stephen Resnick, one of the founding members and a cornerstone of the heterodox Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Steve, a devoted and fabulous teacher, touched the lives of hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students over his career. Steve, along with his colleague Richard Wolff, worked tirelessly for decades to transform Marxian Economics and influenced the researching and teaching of scores of students. He will be sorely missed. Here we reprint an early obituary, written by one of his former students from Umass. -Gerald Epstein Greg Saulmon, writing in The Republican: Jan 3rd, 2013, Stephen A. Resnick, a professor…
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The Return of Austerity-The View From Africa
Leonce Ndikumana Following the intense debate on the fiscal deficit during the U.S. presidential campaign, fiscal consolidation continues to dominate discussions in policy circles and academia. The large fiscal deficit in the U.S. and sovereign debt woes in the Eurozone are used by proponents of the “small government” mantra as a means to advance the belief that fiscal consolidation is the only way to bring the economy back to sustained growth and full employment. While the arguments are not new, the current circumstances of a global recession and a slow recovery in the U.S. make it somehow easier for proponents of this school of thought to fool the public into believing …
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65 Percent Of Americans Believe That 2013 Will Be A Year Of Economic Difficulty
Do you believe that economic trouble is coming in 2013? If so, you have a lot of company. According to a brand new Gallup poll that was just released, 65 percent of Americans believe that 2013 will be a year of “economic difficulty” while only 33 percent of Americans believe that 2013 will be a year of “economic prosperity”. Gallup has been asking this question for a lot of years, and the percentage of Americans that are anticipating economic difficulty in the year ahead has not been this high since the early 1980s. And without a doubt, there are a whole lot of reasons to be deeply concerned…
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The Good, The Bad And The Ugly From The Fiscal Cliff Deal
The fiscal cliff deal contains more bad news than it does good news. Yes, the tax increases on the middle class could have been much worse, and we should be thankful that Congress at least did something for the middle class. Unfortunately, they didn’t do enough. Every American worker is going to pay higher taxes next year as a result of this deal. The fiscal cliff deal represents the biggest tax increase in 20 years, and it is also projected to increase the U.S. national debt by an additional 4 trillion dollars over the next decade. In the final analysis, U.S. government finances are still wildly out of…
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Girls need more protection from ‘greedy corporate world’
Rising numbers of girls are suffering mental health problems after coming under “sustained assault” from diet advertisements, alcohol marketing, fashion pressures and access to pornography, a leading psychologist has warned. A “greedy corporate world” increasingly sees girls – particularly those in the pre-teen group – as soft targets to be exploited, it is claimed.Steve Biddulph said girls were being forced to grow up too quickly and warned that parents had failed to protect them from external pressures.In a new book, Raising Girls, he says that a “marked plunge in girls’ mental health” was first seen around five years …
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Rachelle Guyton: Calls 911 for Detroit Police to report her Van (and the gun under the seat inside of it) as stolen, told to "Call back…
While Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and Interim Police Chief Chester Logan explore a restructuring of the city’s police department, some residents are expressing frustration with how their calls are being handled.Detroiter Rachelle Guyton said she called 911 around 6:30 a.m. Saturday to report that her 2003 Chrysler Town & Country minivan had been stolen from an apartment building in Palmer Park — but it wasn’t the van she was worried about.“I have a gun under my car seat, and when I called the police department to explain this to them and try to have them help… they didn’t give me any attention. They told me I had to wait until 8 o’clock to call back. What …
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Earth is fucked.
After extensive mathematical modeling, scientist declares “Earth is fucked” IO9Brad Werner has a simple question: Is the Earth fucked? He also has a remarkably complicated methodology yielding a very simple answer: yes, unless people start a serious global rebellion….So, to sum up: even our best efforts at environmental management are doomed to fail, unless massive scale resistance movements start springing up and send our cultural personality back toward a pre-technological era. Science has given you your mandate, people: Go blow some shit up.Put more scientifically…Despite weak economy, CO2 emissions to grow 2.6 percent in 2012: study ReutersCarbon dioxide emissions from industry rose an estimated 2.6 percent in a weak global economy this year, a study released on Monday showed, powered by rapid emissions growth in…
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Annoying IEA Report
I’m going to try to give y’all some tools to refute that annoying IEA report that just came out — the one that says the US will be the “new Saudi Arabia” and a net exporter of energy. I doubt this community has any new people reading it, and if you’ve been here for a while, you know this report is bullshit, but you need to know why because all these smug, optimistic cornucopians are going to be bringing the article to your attention in hopes of defeating everything you’ve ever told them about energy production.I’m going to skip the IEA report…
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Dmitry Orlov: Peak Oil Lessons From The Soviet Union
Dmitri Orlov on peak oil and climate change.
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Noam Chomsky — Peak Oil and a Changing Climate
Mostly, he talks about the stuff Chomsky likes to talk about, but still good.
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Richard Heinberg: Peak Oil and the Globe’s Limitations
This is about a year old, but it’s still a good summary.Here’s a link to Chomsky from the same series on peak oil and climate change. (About 9 months old.)
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Cassandra.
The First Global Revolution: A report by the Council of the Club of Rome (1991) by Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider.No generation has ever liked its prophets, least of all those who point out the consequences of bad judgement and lack of foresight.The Club of Rome can take pride in the fact that it has been unpopular for the last twenty years. I hope it will continue for many years to come to spell out the unpalatable facts and to settle the conscience of the smug and apathetic.Price Philip, Duke of EdinburghMessage to the delegates at the Twentieth Anniversary Conference of the Club of Rome, Paris, 1988.
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Meh.
Will Humanity Face a Carbohydrate Shortage? Scientific American, with link to primary source Photosynthesis is the single most important transformation on Earth. Using the energy in sunlight, all plants—from single-celled algae to towering redwoods—knit carbon dioxide and water into food and release oxygen as a byproduct. Every year, humanity uses up roughly 40 percent of the planet’s photosynthesis for our own purposes—from feeding a growing population to biofuels….Running suggests that only roughly 5 billion more metric tons of carbohydrates can be diverted to human uses, meaning a “net primary productivity” boundary of roughly 25.6 billion metric tons. We’re closing in on that fast. “The question is thus not whether humans will reach the…
