Thursday, November 19, 2009

Russia Grows Physically; Voters Downsize

From Jenna Orkin:

“An ignorant people is the blind instrument of its own destruction.” — Simón Bolívar

Collapse
New Greenpeace head says human existence 'under threat'
Societe Generale tells clients how to prepare for global collapse
China – Biggest Risk to the World Economy
U.N.: One billion Worldwide Face Starvation (from Rice Farmer)
From the Department of Misleading Headlines: Hunger in U.S. at a 14-Year High
The headline implies that the levels were the same fourteen years ago. No. They only started measuring fourteen years ago.

"One figure that drew officials’ attention was the number of households, 506,000, in which children faced “very low food security”: up from 323,000 the previous year."

That's an increase of over 50% in one year. - JO
The worst is yet to come for jobs
Worst Is Yet To Come For Insurance Companies
Half of UK companies plan to freeze wages another year (from Rice Farmer)
FDIC Sells Most Real Estate Since 1994 as U.S. Agency Closes Failed Banks
Private Equity Funding Drops 62% as Biggest U.S. Pension Plan Reviews Fees
Freefall In Small Business Loans
Bernanke Lunches With Wall Street as Jobless Prosperity Buoys Stock Market
'Political downsizing' is latest weapon for voters (from Rice Farmer)
Manhattan Institute Says "New York must declare a financial emergency"
NJ Faces Catastrophic Fiscal Crisis, According to Pew Center Study (from Rice Farmer)
Mexico border city groups call for UN peacekeepers (from Vantage point)
Conventions Say Good Riddance to Chicago Over Costs and Union Work Rules
Deutsche Bank Is Drowning in Las Vegas With Wall Street's Costliest Casino
Anatomy of casino capitalism (from Vantage Point)
China turns to Adam Smith
Asia embraces Scottish economist as the West turns to Marx.
BlackRock Says Central Banks Will Be Net Buyers of Gold
Here to Save the Day, SuperTaxpayer
The Worst Christmas Present Ever?
Donation in your name to reduce the national debt.
US treasury wants donations to pay off national debt
Bair: "Bank Bailout NOT a good thing"; Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp (PBGC) Bailout Coming FHA Bailout By Taxpayers On The Way
Bob Herbert on Infrastructure
Well-meaning but attributes the current failures to a lack of imagination. If only.

America’s infrastructure, once the finest in the world, has been neglected for decades, and it shows. Felix Rohatyn’s book on the subject, “Bold Endeavors,” opens with: “The nation is falling apart — literally.
Grim for government
Tax rises, spending cuts and social unrest ahead, says report.

Big Brother/Military
T-Mobile staff sold millions of phone records
Army tells its soldiers to 'bribe' the Taleban
New manual tells UK forces to buy off extremists with 'bags of gold' and talk to insurgents with 'blood on their hands'
U.S. Ship Repels Pirates with Sonic Blaster, Bullets
Osama bin Laden's son would like UN job
In Russia, Space Exploration Takes Back Seat to GPS
New York Times drives home the "no-plane-at-the-Pentagon" argument
From a review of a book which purports to criticize the 9/11 Commission:

On seeing the Pentagon in flames, the lead fighter pilot later explained, “I reverted to the Russian threat. . . . I’m thinking cruise missile threat from the sea. You know, you look down and see the Pentagon burning, and I thought the bastards snuck one by us. . . . You couldn’t see any airplanes, and no one told us anything.”
New York Terrorist Detention Centers Eyeball
Coalition on Political Assassinations
The Frankenfood that improves you
Makes you smarter, thinner.
Robot shop assistants

Energy/Food/Science
Too Fearful to Publicize Peak Oil Reality
One thing depleting faster than oil itself is the credibility of those who measure it
USDA Declares Half Of Midwest As Agricultural Disaster Area (from Vantage Point)
Farmers Scramble to Finish Harvest From Hell
New Asian Oil Export Route Expected in December
No Transition Fuels (from the NYC Peak Oil Meetup)
Food Security and Climate Change Are Deeply Interconnected, UN Secretary Says (from Vantage Point)
Copenhagen climate agreement is impossible
U.S. and China Forge Climate, Clean Energy Partnership (from Vantage Point who comments:) I’d like to be upbeat about this “partnership” but even this main stream media story is riddled with notes like: “an agreement by Missouri-based Peabody Energy to invest participate in GreenGen, a project of several major Chinese energy companies to develop a near-zero emissions coal-fired power plant.” Peabody Energy is it, as in Peabody Coal, who gets a public green wash, a “near zero” (as in almost pregnant) coal plant, while stripping the remaining Allegheny Mountains back in the old USA. The lack of journalistic scrutiny on these supposed agreements really makes me miss the old FTW analysis.

Ps: Your blog posts are excellent and I keep referring FTW Peak on to friends and mailing lists.
Gas Shortage Could Leave Anchorage in the Dark (from Jeff)
Limitless energy: Algae photosynthesis creates hydrogen fuel
First Marijuana Cafe in US Opens in Portland
Should gardeners urinate outdoors?
Anti-smoking vaccine could soon be available
A new UN report suggests that slowing population growth could help combat climate change
Nuclear Fallout: Nevada Takes Hard Look at Contaminated Groundwater From Historic Testing Grounds (from Vantage Point)

Russia/Israel
Russia is getting bigger, physically
Russian Criminals Linked to Swine Flu Scam
Russian Orthodox and Catholic church may end 950-year rift
Pro-Israel group 'bankrolling Tories'
Israeli Troops Into Schools to Boost Conscription

21 comments:

businessman said...

I see that the movie "Collapse" has now been extended through next Tuesday at the Laemmle Theaters in Hollywood, and that MCR will be answering questions there again after this Saturday's 5:20 p.m. show.

Here's a list of the other theaters and showtimes he's currently scheduled to answer questions after also:

Click Here for the Theaters and Showtimes

Jeff said...

The rest of the oil is sour,even in saudi...
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE5AI40N20091119

agape wins said...

Jenna's remark about Peabody Coal rang a bell,
The American concept "Has carried it away"!

http://www.jpshrine.org/lyrics/songs/jpparadise.html

I met John Prine, & Steve Goodman in Denver about 1970, Steve was a mean 12 string player, downright swell person.
In my opinion Steve was the better Performer-but we each of us has a different sense/concept of music/performers. Mike will never please everyone, lets leave it at that, it does not shut me off, maybe he will do some of these!
Even up, I favor what Jenna does, Jazz, Folk, & on down, but my moods change!
Sabastain has dissected me into pieces, a section for each of his many boxes-only my moods there change also; I hope his feet/moods are not cast in concrete.

http://www.evliving.com/cities_news.php?action=fullnews&id=7107

http://www.stevegoodmanbiography.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ41jw2-9K4

http://www.cobo.org/goodman/disc.html

http://www.poemhunter.com/song/lincoln-park-pirates/

http://www.poemhunter.com/song/death-of-a-salesman/

http://www.chordie.com/chord.pere/www.guitarnetwork.org/acoustic/tab/g/steve_goodman/colorado_christmas.crd

http://lyrics.filestube.com/song/8fe3d7853eda520003ea,City-of-New-Orleans.html

Amae.

Unknown said...

Count on USA Today for inspiring stuff, eh?

Concerning _Political Downsizing_, the logical extension of this idea is that one man make all the decisions. A city council of three is not a council, it is a triumverate. Beware, New York.

The money not paid to your democratic representatives is not "saved" -- those are your neighbors, who used to spend their salaries in your restaurant or art school, unlike big corporations. Now they will either be unemployed and unable to spend or they will compete with you for YOUR job. The "saving" you seem to achieve reduces popular input to decision-making and allows easier access to lobby groups and corporations, who now have only three people to win over. Less dissent does not bode well for small communities trying to stay viable in tough times.

From the article:

"Everybody is becoming aware that local governments are spending well beyond their means," says Nick Dranias, who studies the issue at *the conservative Goldwater Institute in Phoenix*. "There's a sense that something's out of control. "

Phoenix, not New York. These are the same people who wanted a US government small enough that they could drown it in the bathtub. This time they're going after what may be the last truly democratic sector in America: local government. We all know how useless writing your congressman can be, but you can actually TALK to your city council reps. They actually live in your town and must share the results of their decisions and intimately endure popular criticism when they fail.

New York, even if you have to make these positions unpaid, keep popular representation, and keep it wide enough that it represents all the people.

Also from the article:

On his count of three, they shout as one, "WESTERN NEW YORK TODAY! USA TOMORROW!"

Sheesh.

businessman said...

This I'm sure is just the beginning of lawsuits between states and geographical territories around the rights to water. Here's an article about a recent judgment in a case between the states of Texas and Oklahoma:

Click Here for the Article

meb1947 said...

I tried to watch Collapse tonight. I have charter on demand. It is only being offered in HD. I do not have HD. I received a message from my provider to contact them to order the HD set-up and box. I'm disappointed, however, I did purchase and read the book.

Jenna Orkin said...

agape wins

that particular comment came from Vantage Point.

gamedog said...

Report: McCain's Yemen visit led to anti-Shia war

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=111685&sectionid=351020206

"However, now that Sana'a and the US-backed Saudi government seem unable to defeat the fighters, despite repeated attacks and air raids, the US and their British allies plan to deploy their forces to Yemen, the site predicts.

As a prelude to the military attack, Washington has already released "hundreds" of al-Qaeda members from prisons in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Guantanamo and transferred them to Yemen with false nationalities, the report claimed."
=====================
Militants' possession of Israeli arms raises questions (Waziristan)

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Politics/17-Nov-2009/Militants-possession-of-Israeli-arms-raises-questions

"...militants are using Israeli-made light arms including “Uzi gun” and “Rapid-fire pistol” against security forces in North Waziristan as the operation Rah-I-Rast reached its final stage."

======================
for background on the wider picture re CENTCOM, this is a good piece, much easier going than the Brzezinski book! The "Rimland" concept seems to be in full swing!

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6423
=====================
When the world falls into WWIII, how many will spot that it was pushed?

Flying column said...

Any idea if a european distributor has been found for Collapse?? Will it be coming anytime soon?

agape wins said...

Gamedog,
Good post, about WWIII, as many as
knew we, The USA pushed Japan,WE
jumped into WWII, remember the
regimented CCC of the 1930's,
marching around with "tools"
on their shoulders, singing War songs, war on joblessness, &
Depression!
Amae.

I sent this to the Wyo. Movie
Monopoly, 9 of 10 screens here!

The movie CoLLapse is showing to packed theaters across the country, it would be nice to have a Q&A showing, but that may be hard to get here in Casper.
I do not expect a reply, just a showing;

http://collapsemovie.com/COLLAPSEMOVIE/screenings.htm

Thanks.

businessman said...

MCR...I know how very important your dog Rags is to you. You may have seen this video clip before, but just in case you haven't, I wanted to present it to you.

This is the great actor Jimmy Stewart reading a poem he wrote about his own dog Beau on the Johnny Carson show, and the deeper he gets into reading the poem, the more touching the video clip becomes.

Click Here for the Video Clip

RanD said...

gamedog-- An excellent suggestion whereby to answer the question: "When the world falls into WWIII, how many will spot that it was pushed?", is produced of the excellent series of links following your introduction titled "Report: McCain's Yemen visit led to anti-Shia war". However, it is also good to know that what's taking place across our planet these days in real time detail/specifics was in principle long before now forecast, app. 2000 yrs ago, in fact. Meaning: all of it was planned before being pushed; i.e., intentionality is at the root of it all.

This informs us that it is beneficial to our inherently ignorant egos to realize & accept the fact that we humans are the instruments -- not the creators -- of what is taking place throughout the field of existence, even here on Earth.

Thank you for your splendid work.

PeakedOut said...

Hi Jenna,

No need to publish this comment. I was wondering who Vantage Point is and why they don't post comments? The links are great, but I do not remember this user contributing to the Blog before. Perhaps I missed it. I'm not trying to be nosy (I hope). The links are great and show a keen eye for relevant issues. The abscence of comments seems odd. Again, just curious.

Unknown said...

RE: Russian Criminals Linked to Swine Flu Scam

Heartless criminals making money on the fear of the masses. Where have we heard that before? Flu seems to be very good for the economy.

F.Kamilov said...

I am certainly no apologist for Israel, but nobody should fall for two-bit Pakistani propaganda concerning Israeli involvement in the present Taliban insurgency there, as a post here suggests. The Pakistanis are in the habit, for the past 60 years, of blaming all their own internal faults - even the most ludicrous ones on India and Israel in a very immature manner. While there will be a whole plethora of Nazi types over in the US who would dearly like to grasp at every straw to bait Jews or even accuse me of "spinning" on their behalf - I would like to inform them that this is not the case. I am not in love with them, nor the (East)Indians, but the truth is the truth and should be accepted as such.

The same goes for the Iranian propaganda also mentioned here, which is just as shrill. And I might add, if Mr. Ahmedinejad (the Iranian president) talks of "eradicating" Israel, he is just spouting a lot of hot wind. I wish his resolve were as mighty as his words, then he would be a real enough contender on the world stage. But the problems of the world, and of Muslims, lie far beyond Israel, which is after all just a tiny regional dot backed fully by the might of US imperialism. I don't see what benefit its destruction alone would bring anyone, even its diehard enemies.

F.Kamilov said...

RanD: Yes, I gather, that it is the Annunaki that planned the present situation - is it not? The forecast you speak of was done mainly in The Book of Revelation and indeed throughout the Old Testament too, but the "Watchers" have been around for more than that, haven't they?

businessman said...

I recently learned that oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938. With this massive petroleum discovery occurring just as World War II was about to begin, it got me wondering how much Western powers may have actually encouraged the Holocaust from behind the scenes. Is it possible that this might have happened to have the world go along with establishing the State of Israel at the end of the War? This would then give the United States and Western powers a strong military presence in the Middle East, amidst all of the incredible petroleum resources there, through their postwar support of the State of Israel. Outside of this the U.S. and others wouldn't have any stronghold to control what had then become the most important petroleum region of the world.

Since Coca-Cola was allowed to both create and market their "Fanta" soft drink in Nazi Germany against U.S. law during the War, and IBM continually serviced the equipment that kept track of all of the Jews in the death camps, and how each person was exterminated there, I believe anything could have been possible.

F.Kamilov said...

Re Businessman: Conspiracy theories of all varieties aside, the present "earnest" Israeli-Western alliance is indeed very unholy - as it appears in itself on the ground, shorn of all drivel.

Westerners will commonly justify this almost hysterically emotional backing for Israel by saying that it is out of sympathy for the Holocaust - but Western enthusiasm for the establishment of Israel predates the Holocaust by decades - the first open manifestation of which was the conquest of Jerusalem from the Ottoman Turks by the British General Allenby, who became his government's pro-Zionist mouthpiece. Although Zionist Jews had begun settling in the "Holy Land" for quite some time, that was a piecemeal process, but Allenby's conquest made Palestine a "British Mandated Territory" until Israel's creation in 1948, and the flow to it of the European Jewry can be said to have formally begun with him. All this happened just as World War 1 was closing, and nobody then could even dream of Hitler and his horrors.

While mentioning holocausts, very few seem to know, or willingly admit that Hitler killed 27 MILLION Russian citizens cold-bloodedly from 1941 to 1945, compared to "only" the stated 6 million Jews; this is not to denigrate the Jewish suffering in any way, but when such an almighty fuss is being made about the Jewish Holocaust - don't the Russians, their suffering and superhuman sacrifices and equally gargantuan victory, deserve pride of place? Why is the Russian holocaust not acknowledged with the same verve? Why is it not acknowledged also, that had it not been for the Soviet victory of Stalingrad in 1943, Europe would well have been a Nazi superstate now, and God knows where America would have been.

So to sum up, the Western-Israeli "axis" is a highly suspicious relationship - and as you have said, well, anything is possible; but when the Iranians and others of their ilk shoot off the hip immaturely, they give their gleeful enemies ready ammo to use against them. Israel may be a malevolent entity in itself, but there again it would be nothing if not supported by the might of the Anglo-Western powers and the misguided public opinion of their populations. This fact however should not be translated into a base, irrational hate for Jews in general.

gamedog said...

Although I wasn't "baiting" anyone, I seem to have caught a whopper!

F.Kamilov, all "news" from the arena is propagandistic whichever 'side' produces it. The items were posted as little signposts to the wider research piece which was also posted. Regular readers of this blog don't usually need to be told news items are propagandistic, especially ones so obviously so.

If anyone is really surprised Israeli, US, EU, 'wherever' weapons are in the hands of "militants" in pak, they need to get up to speed! Try typing "Pakistan markets weapons" into any search engine for the full SP!

businessman, I wonder just how close the Zionist movement was initially in cahoots with the Nazi planners, it'll have to stay as a wonder in my mind because even questioning the official story is illegal in parts of the EU, and since we're now part of it, I could find myself extradited even tho it is not a UK law as such (really).

When they make discussion of a subject illegal, you have to wonder what it is they are hiding IMO.

businessman said...

F. Kamilov...Great post!

Yes, it amazes me how much the holocaust of so many of the Russian people in World War II has been ignored. In addition, growing up here in the United States, I wasn't taught about the Russians' role in ending the War in Germany, causing Hitler to eventually commit suicide. I guess with the Cold War going on at the time we weren't supposed to learn anything that made Russia look good in helping us to end that War.

I've come to recognize over the years that there's the collective consciousness of the Jewish people, and then there's the actions taken by the Israeli government. And unfortunately the two of them often get blended together in the media as being both one and the same.

The foreign policy of our own government here in the United States is continually formed to benefit the highest elite within our country...plundering the world for their own selfish benefit, while the media here continually tell us that these countries we're fighting in are a great danger to all of us, and that these wars are always for our own self-defense.

And unfortunately the majority of the American people still continue on in believing this.

F.Kamilov said...

Re Gamedog: If Pakistani militants use Uzis,etc., that doesn't mean that they were given them by Tel Aviv. They are available everywhere on the international arms market, and any third party buyer can "source" them for a client, merely because they are a very compact bundle. I once owned a Uzi machine pistol myself as well as an AK-47 Kalashnikov, and find the Uzi a handy cross between a pistol and full assault rifle. Pakistan's arms market is no exception. Just 25 miles from the Pakistani city of Peshawar where I live, is the internationally notorious illicit gun running and manufacturing tribal hill town of Darra Adamkhel - where you can find everything under the Sun as far as arms go, except perhaps, WMDs... Now it is occupied by Taliban.

Besides, you may or may not know, that during the 1980s CIA+MI5 jihad against the USSR in Afghanistan, Israeli commandos were in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, which was a staging post for that jihad - and they were training Gulbadin Hekmatyar's Hizbe Islami cadres under Pakistani supervision (the most radical of all the Mujahideen fanatics). I can attest to that as it was common knowledge; I also live in the same residential suburb that Hikmetyar's old house is still in - just across the road from him! Officially, it was denied by all concerned.

What is more, it would be wrong to label everything as "propaganda". There are nuggets everywhere. But I can comment with authority about the junk which the Pakistanis and their ilk churn out. I was born and brought up in this country, and many of my relatives are in top posts of the noxious Pakistani state machine that generates this stuff daily. They discuss these things in their drawing rooms at night.