Wednesday, March 05, 2008

First Seeds Arrive in Seed Vault
No one person has all the codes for entrance...

Already three-quarters of biodiversity in crops has been lost in the last century, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Eighty percent of maize types that existed in the 1930s are gone, for example. In the United States, 94 percent of peas are no longer grown.
Follow-Up on Longyearbyen
My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)
Jenkins' Humanure Handbook
The Pentagon's Ray Gun
Obama, Bush Offer Kiss of Death to Africa
China and Russia Cry Foul Over Satellite
FBI Documents Contradict 9/11 Commission Report
Radiation Dose Chart of Common Exposures
Of Cables and Conspiracies

14 comments:

Rice Farmer said...

Afghanistan produces 93 percent of global opiates
http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-16/0803051006191652.htm

Mission accomplished!

Rice Farmer said...

Oil at $105. The Japanese media blame it all on "speculators," but as Jeff Vail points out, it just ain't so.

http://www.jeffvail.net/2008/03/its-still-demand-inelasticity.html

Rice Farmer said...

Just what we knew all along: cellulosic ethanol is dead.

http://www.card.iastate.edu/publications/DBS/PDFFiles/08wp460.pdf

There's a gross misunderstanding of what "renewables" can and can't do. Wind, solar, and biofuels are high-entropy forms of energy that need a fossil fuel subsidy. Even with that subsidy, they can't possibly maintain what fossil fuels have built. In fact, the same goes for nuclear energy, which would not exist without fossil fuels.

Tyler Havlin said...

In Deep Winter, Volunteer Help Provide Heating Oil to Stave Off Cold for New England Families

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080308/helping_to_heat.html

The low point in Kimberly Henderson's struggle to keep her family warm came in early January when she was too broke to order an oil delivery and had to buy a 5-gallon container to take to her dealer to get enough fuel to make it through the night.

"I could have cried," said Henderson, a 40-year-old single mother of three who lives in a rental home in downtown Bangor. Like many in Maine, she has been hit hard by heating oil prices that have soared to an all-time high of $3.35 a gallon, or roughly $1 more than a year ago.

While many get help from the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the average LIHEAP benefit of $750 isn't enough to fill the standard oil tank at today's prices. That's why volunteer efforts like the Rev. Gerald Oleson's Sunny Corner Fuel Assistance have sprung up to provide emergency help to those who fall through the cracks.

In Maine, donations have ranged from $250,000 from outdoors outfitter L.L. Bean in Freeport to an anonymous fifth-grader's gift of her $5 weekly allowance. Best-selling author Stephen King, who lives in Bangor and is known for his generous support of community fundraising efforts, has made an unspecified contribution to the local community action agency's fuel assistance program.

The state has gotten into the act with its Operation Keep ME Warm, an initiative started five years ago by Gov. John Baldacci that seeks private donations to help poor people pay fuel bills.

While Keep ME Warm brought in between $25,000 and $50,000 in past years, this winter's total has already exceeded $1 million.

Mike said...

My apologies for posting here, but I am trying to subscribe to the FTW newsletter and the site hasn't allowed me to do it for the past week or two. It routes me to ftwstore.com and there's nothing there. How can I subscribe to the print version of the FTW newsletter?

los doggies said...

Peak Oil - True or False
by Stephen Lendman

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8260">http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8260

Can someone please rip this article apart? This guy usually writes pretty decent article, until I saw this one. It makes me question most of Global Research, and I'm at a loss for an alternative in the absence of FTW. I'd love for someone to trash this lame, obviously biased, editorial.

Jenna Orkin said...

hi mike
ftw doesn't publish anymore. long story. see mike ruppert's various articles on the home page

A peon said...

AP Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water

A peon said...

los doggies,I only skimmed over the globalresearch article you posted,and it looks like it just presents the top arguments for Peak Oil being a reality,and the good ol abiotic oil argument,then leaves it up to the reader to decide which holds more water(or in this case oil).Seems odd for the author to dredge up that old argument this late in the game seeing as abiotic oil has been debunked by Dale Allen Pfieffer at FTW,on Mark Robinowitz's OilEmpire,and several other places I'm sure for quite some time now.The article starts off saying that the Peak Oil argument is "so one-sided, it's practically a given that "peak oil" is real and threatening. Or is it?" which is news to me.I can immediately bring to mind several people who argue that Peak Oil is not real:Dave McGowan,Victor Thorn,Alex Jones,Greg Palast,and several others.OilEmpire.us has a list of Peak Oil skeptics,and
conspiracy gatekeepers.I don't get it.

Oh,I forgot to thank Jenna before for Ken Levines email so I can ask him about "Fear and Present Danger".Its something to ask my wife to get me for my birthday.That and "Political Ponerology.I've really been wanting to read that book.Anyways,thanks Jenna.80)

Tyler Havlin said...

Is your state in a recession?

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2008-03-04-local-differences_N.htm

On the campaign trail and in homes across the USA, the debate is underway about whether the U.S. economy in 2008 will see its first downturn in seven years.

Despite the recent onslaught of negative news, it remains unclear whether the current state of affairs meets the economists' definition of a recession: a widespread decline in economic activity lasting more than just a few months. As in politics, all economics is local.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, for example, believes the U.S. economy is in recession.

Rice Farmer said...

Feature article on today's financial page: Japanese dairy farmers are on the ropes. Almost all feed (except for hay and silage) is imported, and that alone is dragging them down. Then there are increased energy costs. Selling bull calves used to bring in money, but prices fetched now don't even cover the cost of the feed and formula, according to the article. It was surprisingly pessimistic for an article aimed at the general public.

Rice Farmer said...

I suppose we'll never know for sure what happened to the undersea cables, but, now that the dust has settled, here's a possibility that comes to mind. It could have been an experiment to see how snipping cables here and there would affect internet connectivity. Knowing how much connectivity was lost, in which countries, how traffic was rerouted, and how much time it took, are valuable bits of strategic information. And even if all those cuts really were due to anchors or whatever, there is little doubt that the big players were watching and trying to glean just such information.

Tyler Havlin said...

Recession has already started, CFOs say-survey

http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/080312/cfo_survey.html

A recession has already started and the downturn is likely to last longer than in the recent past, with the economy recovering only late next year, according to a quarterly survey of corporate finance chiefs released on Wednesday.

Fifty-four percent of the CFOs said the United States is in recession, and another 24 percent said there is a high likelihood of one starting later this year, according to a Duke University/CFO Magazine survey completed on March 7.

Nearly three-quarters of the CFOs said they were more pessimistic this quarter than in the prior quarter about the U.S. economy, reflecting concerns about consumer spending, turmoil in credit and housing markets, and high energy prices.

The survey included responses from 1,073 CFOs, including 475 based in the United States.

Those polled in Europe and Asia have also grown more pessimistic about economies in their regions, while two-thirds of Chinese CFOs said they are concerned about U.S. recession hurting their profit margins or demand for their exports.

The CFOs in the survey largely agree with the view of economists, as polled by Reuters.

Rev. G. said...

Thanks for posting the article about heating oil in Maine..It's still cold here. If folks would like to donate, please send checks to Sunny Corner Fuel Assistance, Inc., 73 1/2 Court Street, Bangor, Maine 04401...God bless, Rev. G