From Jenna Orkin
Headlines
Martin Armstrong Writes From Solitary Confinement: "We Are Entering Phase II Of The Debt Crisis"
The Entire World Is Zombie Japan Now, And If Any Central Bank Tightens We're Doomed
What will a post-peak world be like? We might be about to find out
World's slums grow despite rapid economy growth: U.N.
Iranian Government accused of arming Taleban
Economy
Federal Reserve Shouldn't Have Power Stripped: Frank
Bernanke: Keep Fed as Watchdog of Small US Banks
Yeah, it's them sneaky little banks that're the real threat.
The FHA Is Being Run Like A Ponzi Scheme That Will Surely Implode
Manitoba Chiefs declare a state of emergency over winter roads
Quick Guide To Why The UK Is Screwed
Greenspan: I Had Absolutely Nothing To Do With The Financial Crisis
Intelligence/Terror
What's the Point of Nuclear Weapons on Instant Alert?
Russia: Navy needs at least 50 nuke subs - from Rice Farmer
Military intelligence 'ran renegade torture unit'
CIA’s Jihadi Chat Room Hacked by Pentagon - from Rice Farmer
Drones may be sent soon to help with border security, Napolitano says - from Rice Farmer
Syrian Murder, Israeli Planes Not Linked - from Rice Farmer
Colombian Journalist Shot and Killed
A gunman killed a Colombian journalist who had received threats and reported on politicians linked to paramilitary death squads, police and the victim's family said on Saturday.
World
Greece Will Pay Its Debts, Will Not Default
TV's new chairman: UK faces 'national crisis'
The economy is in worse shape than the 1970s, says Archie Norman
Yemen declares end to northern war
Europe and Central Asia facing energy crunch - World Bank report - from Rice Farmer
Drought continues in China, 51 million people affected
China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S. - from Rice Farmer
Here's Why Taiwan Is Destined To Submit To Beijing's Will
Nations Decline to March to U.S. Beat - from Rice Farmer
Ex-IMF head urges insolvency mechanism for states
British Airways Flight Attendants Strike in Bid to Halt Pay, Staffing Cuts
Unrest
Thousands Rally in Russia Against Economic Policy
Black lawmakers say 'tea party' protesters used racial epithets
China's anti-riot squad maintains public security in Port-Au-Prince after earthquake - from Rice Farmer
Environment/Science
Cap and Trade's Last Hurrah
The Most Amazing Solar Plant On Earth Doesn't Use A Single Solar Panel
Magnitude-5.6 Quake Near Guantanamo, Cuba
Large Hadron Collider Triples Its Own Record
Car runs on coffee waste
Step Closer to Cloak of Invisibility
And...
Fiddling While Undergoing Brain Surgery
Re "What will a post-peak world be like?"
ReplyDeleteThe anonymous bureaucrat who wrote this piece is an idiot. Why bother putting up such fluffy prattle? As the web site is an extension of a British governmental agency, the political motive for writing the piece is fairly obvious...for anyone following British politics, that is.
The Amazon - a "green gold-rush"
ReplyDeletehttp://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/amazongate-part-ii-seeing-redd.html
Headline: What will a post-peak world be like? We might be about to find out...
ReplyDeleteAWWW, COME ON! Doesn't anybody pay attention to what goes on in the world? What will it be like? PUHH-LEASE! What has EVERY social melt-down been like in the past --oh, I dunno-- 10,000 years?!?!!? MY GOD, MAN!! What will it take to get people to read a friggin' history book?
"... Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed; and everywhere, the ceremony of innocence is drowned..." -- W. B. Yeats
Blinded by the shininess of gold. Damned shame! The human race had such great potential.
gamedog, I'll see your "Eco-Imperialism (Green Power, Black Death)" with a "Wall Street Salivates - Green Bubble."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/0081908
Green types, you have been played like squawky, old fiddles. It takes big cajones to cop to having been had. It's not the end of the world. Move on.
Elmo, some people mistake life boats for water wings. A short overview of Archeofuturism:
ReplyDelete"...once the historical digression of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has finally closed, with egalitarianism’s hallucinations having descended into catastrophe, humanity will return to archaic values, that is, quite simply, to biological and human (anthropological) values: distinctive sexual roles; the transmission of ethnic and popular traditions; spirituality and sacerdotal organization; visible and supervisory social hierarchies; the worship of ancestors; initiatory rites and tests; the reconstruction of organic communities that extend from the individual family unit to the overarching national community of the people; the deindividualization of marriage to involve the community as much as the couple; the end of the confusion of eroticism and conjugality; the prestige of the warrior caste; social inequality, not implicit, which is unjust and frustrating, as in today’s egalitarian utopias, but explicit and ideologically justifiable; a proportioned balance of duties and rights; a rigorous justice whose dictates are applied strictly to acts and not to individual men, which will encourage a sense of responsibility in the latter; a definition of the people and of any constituted social body as a diachronic community of shared destiny, not as a synchronic mass of individual atoms, etc."
sebastian
ReplyDeletesource for quote please...
Jenna,
ReplyDeleteHere ya go:
http://guillaumefayearchive.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/the-essence-of-archaism/
Unfortunately, little of Guillaume Faye's work has been translated into English. There are selections on his blog that have been.
Same holds for the work of Alain de Benoist:
http://home.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/debenoist/
Incorporating principles of the European New Right into the political culture of NAmerica is a challenge, to say the least. However, those principles best point at a direction that is post-Green. That the work of Pentti Linkola is in here goes without saying.
Here's one more link with a wide selection of Traditionalist, New Right, Conservationist and Integralist thought:
http://www.freespeechproject.com/
We do our best over here:
Renaissance Party of North America
RE: Here's Why Taiwan Is Destined To Submit To Beijing's Will
ReplyDeleteTypically, Business Insider mixes a title bearing a grand announcement with a diminuitive article offering little, if anything upon which to base it.
First of all, what is meant by "Beijing's Will"? If the meaning is that the US not sell weapons to Taiwan, and that Taiwan be politically integrated into China, this is very different from economically dominating the place. It is a large, further step.
China also dominates Southeast Asia economically. You could say that it dominates America, which owes it a couple trillion dollars for a constant stream of crap no longer made in America. Is China about to politically annex Japan and Korea (both more dependent on trade with China than is Taiwan)?
In Taiwan, roughly half of the voters are pro-independence, while about half are into following Beijing's lead. There's a significant difference in the commitment of the two groups, though. The former are die-hard patriots, the latter are mostly scared of invasion and willing to bow to the bigger force. These are unlikely to be pleased by PLA soldiers actually roaming their streets. Taiwan would be ungovernable.
In addition, Taiwan has been set up for a very long time to take care of itself. Whereas France has highways and rail lines leading into every part of the the EU, Taiwan is insulated by the 180 km Taiwan Strait. It generates its own energy, supplies its own water and could, if necessary, grow its own food. China may hunger for Taiwan, but Taiwan does not, for any reason, need China. And most people know this.
Only the fear of invasion keeps unification on the radar. While it's true that economics play a huge role in politics, in this case even buying Taiwan lock, stock and barrel would not result in owning it. It would take more words than you want to read to explain that.
RE: China's anti-riot squad maintains public security in Port-Au-Prince after earthquake
ReplyDelete“Dim lights, the sound of a dog barking and the terrible smells really make them thrill. However, they still march forward in the darkness, bringing peace and quietness to the country.”
Hoo-hoo! That’s what you want in your neighborhood, crack Chinese riot cops, marching forward in the darkness, thrilling to the terrible smells. And ready to deploy … well, anywhere! (This is China Television reporting.)
Some of these discussions about preparing for what's coming and organizing groups of like-minded people all working together for a common goal sound great, but how are you going to handle what will most likely become the inevitable? People will be hungry, starving. The masses will not have prepared, and they will be desperate for food. And they will be willing to do whatever it takes to get it, including coming together with guns, moving in, and telling you they're now seizing everything that you've built together.
ReplyDeleteJenna,
ReplyDeleteFiddling brain surgery link points to invisibility cloak article...
What? a
ReplyDeleteChina trade deficit?
Seems folks aren't importing what they used to. Except China, of course. Guess that domestic market will have to eat all that Australian iron.
Maybe China won't buy Taiwan after all.
Sebastian, all of that sounds like just a fancy way of saying: "we'll all be back to living in grass huts". As I truly believe this is the only thing which can save mankind, and I'm also not naive enough to believe it will ever happen, I say we're all F___d! Time will tell.
ReplyDeletegamedog...That article you gave us the link to...The Amazon--a "green gold-rush"...is one of the best articles I've ever read discussing how big business interests and the powerful elite, create and exploit environmental causes for their own benefit, harming indigenous people in the process, and get the governments to go along with them.
ReplyDeleteeyeballs...I'm completely with you on your quote:
ReplyDelete"Typically, Business Insider mixes a title bearing a grand announcement with a diminuitive article offering little, if anything upon which to base it."
It's like the Wendy's restaurant commercials from years ago here in the U.S. where the lady used to say "Where's the beef?"
Then sometimes Business Insider drives me crazy by making us click to see every single example of what they're talking about, instead of just giving them to us all on one Web page.
Sebastian, I see your banksters with cartoon style $$ sign eyes, and raise you a private army :)
ReplyDeletePrivate Army Sets Sights on Iceland
http://www.grapevine.is/News/ReadArticle/Private-Army-Sets-Sights-on-Iceland
Why would the German banksters let this one slip out?
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/03/german-central-bank-admits-that-credit.html
Does anyone out there know who offers non collectable gold coins at the best prices???? I want to start preparing for the coming "crisis". Hope someone out there has a reasonable company to deal with. If you watch Glenn Beck there are atleast a half dozen that all say they are the best. ANY IDEAS??????
ReplyDeleteI'm interested in solutions. What are the recommended seed companies? Is Survival Seed Bank recommended, even though they advertise on Glenn Beck? I have a rented garden plot and I need to know what to plant this Spring.
ReplyDeleteBusinessman, in answer to your question about the starving masses, by living far enough away from them to be hard to get to, by having made sure the terrain favours my tribe, by living in country that is productive enough that only the truly stupid will starve, by not living close to large urban populations, and by being prepared, in the unlikely event that all the above fail, to defend vigourously that which we have achieved by being prepared through hard work, thrift and foresight.
ReplyDeleteBusinessman, how have you prepared for the world you see coming?
Those whose prep does not closely match the above prescription are about to discover how implacable natural selection processes can be. Time is running out folks. As I said on the last thread, it takes time to intergrate into a small community and showing up very late in the game will not go down well unless you have a very well connected sponsor. I am thinking years, not months to achieve what is required.
Gold is a nice hedge, but having to go somewhere to exchange it for goods is its trap. Better to be able to stay out of harms way and be self sufficient for a while, even if that means learning to tan hides for clothes and not wearing nice soft cotton knickers! Humanity is going to loose its civilised veneer for a time, and given the rate of rise of civilisation and a basic understanding of trajectories, it is my prediction that the fall will be steep and at high speed. The sudden stop at the bottom will hurt those not prepared before they embark on the decent. (think parachute)
What this blog is about seems to me to be identifying the moment we begin the decent(jump from the plane). MCR's future activities seem to be about getting resources by telling those who do not already know that they need to jump. The problem as I see it is that there are only a limited number of parachutes in existance, they take time to make, and time is running out. MCR's resources, if gathered, will only buy goods, not time, and I sincerely hope he has put time and effort into having his personal parachute packed, stowed and ready for use.
None of what I am saying is intended to denigrate anyone's efforts, but is an honest appraisal of the situation as I see it.
"The masses will not have prepared, and they will be desperate for food. And they will be willing to do whatever it takes to get it ~ businessman
ReplyDeleteEXACTLY!!! And yet, for some reason, the little voice in my head tells me to keep making more gardens. I must really be losing it!
@ Tom Cleland
ReplyDeleteI can't tell you anything about seed companies, as I originally got most of mine form local stores (Wal-Mart, mostly). However, I can tell you some things that are good to plant.
Your best bet for high-yields and long-term storage are tubers (potatoes, carrots, etc). Turnips, radishes, and especially rutabagas keep well (if you can stomach the damned things). Also a thing called a kohlrabi, which my girlfriend Betty calls a "sputnik" (tastes kind of like cabbage). Any type of squash, pumpkin, etc... Even watermelon has a remarkably long shelf life. Dried beans & corn last just about forever.
All of this stuff can be stored on open shelves in a dry basement with good ventilation, and should keep all winter.
Probably the best use of land (if you have a good sized lot) is what the Iroquois call the "Three Sisters"... Corn, pole-beans, and squash planted together in mounds. Each are beneficial to the other, and can keep a section of ground productive for 10-15 years without need of rotating. Google "three sisters", as there are various methods of doing it.
You will get increased yields if you grow short beans, like great northerns and lima beans, around the base of larger plants, like broccoli, tomatoes, sunflowers; as beans add nitrogen to the soil. They also shade the soil, so it keeps down weeds, and retains water better. This is most easily done in 4' wide sections; that way, you don't have to step into the beds.
And if you're throwing away or burning your autumn leaves, DON'T! Suck them up with a bagging lawnmower, and turn them unto your garden beds. They will compost over the winter, and you will have fresh, light soil, in the spring. Only mix about 1 shovel of leaves for every 4 shovels of dirt, or they won't decay completely. Save any leftovers, and use it for mulch.
Oh, hey...
ReplyDelete@businessman (and everyone else too)
If you're worried about hungry hordes molesting your gardens, try planting some stuff that most people don't know you can eat, like Day Lillies, or Prickly Pear cactus.
There's a guy on YouTube who calls himself "Green Dean", does a show called "Eat The Weeds". Lots of useful (if not always tasty) info.
Simon...Very well written.
ReplyDeleteFrom your writing style I believe you're from either the UK or from one of the areas greatly influenced or controlled by Great Britain and/or England in years past.
I live in Southern California here in the U.S. Which is an area heavily dependent on water being brought in from elsewhere because we don't get very much rain here.
I'm amazed at the great work many here in the Blog have already done at creating sustainable lifestyles for themselves, and there's much for me to learn from these people.
Businessman: hanks for the compliment. Actually I was educated in NZ, and live on a very habitable island just south of Australia. My father was English, though and had an awesome command of the language.
ReplyDeleteMy best advice for anyone not well down the road would be to find a few like minded individuals and share the load. Its fun.
Simon...My father was a RAF pilot in World War II, so it's a little easier for me to pickup the nuances in your writing, even though I live in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteThanks Elmo!
ReplyDeleteThanks Elmo!
ReplyDelete