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Collapse of Industrial Civilization

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Collapse of Industrial Civilization

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Canticle of the Sun

21 Sunday Jun 2015

Posted by darbikrash in Capitalism, Consumerism

≈ 139 Comments

Tags

Abrupt Climate Change, “Creeping Socialism”, “Red Pope”, Billy Graham, Capitalism, Christian Fundamentalists, Christianity, Climate Change, Climate Change Denial, Consumerism, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, Gustavo Gutierrez, Kevin Kruse’s “One Nation under God: How Corporate America invented Christianity”, Laudato si', Liberation Theology, Marxism, Monotheism, Neo-Paganism, Nikki Manaj, Pantheism, Papal Encyclical, Polytheism, Pope Francis, Rev. James W. Fifield, The Catholic Church, The Evangelical Right

As a young boy raised in the rigid catechism of the Catholic Church, I was no stranger to contradiction and non sequitur.

The high, arching vaults of cathedral whose vertical volume is designed to put man in his place among the towering edifice of the saints, the superimposed almost miniature scale of the pews, the oppressive silence of a vast and empty church.

The looming spectacle of towering oak confessionals, hushed inside with heavy curtain, and black, pitch black, it takes a few moments to find the kneeling pad and to position yourself near the thin fabric partition panel, a wooden core perforated with small holes from which movement and shadow emerge.

A rustling ensues and an invisible door slides open, exposing the partition to the priest’s chamber on the other side. You cannot see but you can hear.

The priest speaks in a thick Irish brogue, first in Latin then after an appropriate incantation, in English. I tremble in the darkness as the sins of a 12 year tumble out, slowly and haltingly at first, then uncontrollably. A tidal wave of transgressions, the bad words spoken, the stolen candy, the parental disrespect, the poor scholastic performance, all of it comes out. There is no consolation, no hope of salvation, the depths of hell soon to open up and engulf me, the oxygen is gone and I begin to suffocate, the pregnant pause and heavy silence of the invisible priest validates the certainty of my demise.

The priest pauses, taking it all in, his mind weighing the calculus of just penance for such sins of the living. Venial and mortal are weighed against gravitas and malign, the 20 century old calculator passed through the ages whirrs and crackles, and the penance is announced: 

“Two laps around the rosary beads and six Hail Mary’s will settle the accounting nicely. To be completed immediately.” 

I emerge from the dank confessional into a beam streaming from stained glass clerestory windows, light in step and free of heart, the banality of the exchange from sinner to winner lost in the eager imagination of a 12 year old.

For this is the story of a centuries old institution, full of hypocrisy and theology squandered through the millennia, as it attempts to rehabilitate itself.

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Handwritten sign on farm fence during Texas drought.

The Church occupies a precarious space between irrelevance and populist hypocrisy on the one side, and the frothy wrath of conservative thinking, chaired by Capital on the other. Chastened by its post-Enlightenment fall from grace, the Church tentatively sought out the meager ground of allowable existence bifurcating these two forces.

As a result, the Church’s positions are filtered to maintain an uneasy equilibrium between these opposing dictates.

The Church long ago decided that a post Enlightenment bias toward hypocrisy and irrelevance was preferred, as at least survival was possible. Tangling with the forces of Capital in its unwavering march of exploitation, both of labor and of environment, was clearly a more ominous undertaking than offending suburban church ladies by turning a blind eye towards meaningful social commentary.

But the fetters of Capital were but a primer for the existential challenges the Church has always faced since time immemorial. The conservative Church has millennia of expertise at a very deep level in not only understanding external threats, but in countering them- effectively.

These existential threats come in several forms, but one of the most damaging comes from the positioning of Man within Nature.

The essential premise is the concept of Dominion, a stated Church philosophy that Nature is under the dominion of Man, entirely subservient to and dictated by Man. Dominion taken literally asserts mastery or control over a subject, the fundamentalist view takes this further into (theological) Dominion of government and other religions not compliant with Christianity. Taken in this form, Dominion reflects a dangerous authoritarian system- even fascist- means of societal structure.

The Roman Catholic interpretation allows for Dominion in the context of the greater good, a collectivist view which is not absolute. This is drastically different than the fundamentalist view which has no room for greater good considerations.

We can see the slippery slope emerge and morph through the ages until the intersection with Capital and its attendant system of value production. Herein we see a definition of the “greater good” that becomes increasingly influenced by Capital until it becomes entirely subsumed to represent any conceivable exploitation of the environment in the pursuit of profits.

The Church’s liberalized interpretation of Dominion becomes its own worst enemy.

Another significant factor in the theological scrum of ideologies is the notion of monotheism, versus pantheism and polytheism.

These concepts juggle the position and relationship of Man to the Environment, and a central objective of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular is displacing these alternative theisms by a singular omnipotent and externalized God.

This displacement is essential to establish Christian dominance in all matters-science, and sociology included. Christianity wants no competitors, no sharing of power, no interference from pagan idolatry, it insists on a zero tolerance policy.

Pantheism in particular has a much more integrated understanding of the relationship of Man and Nature by deifying aspects of nature, a position considered heresy by the mainstream Church.

Acknowledging that elements of Nature are sacred is a concession to neo-paganism- an existential threat to the Church which has spent millennia trying to unravel these alternative belief systems.

The Church systematically dismantled these pluralistic options to establish, maintain, and control theological dominance- a strategy that remained effective for 1600 years, notwithstanding a few religious wars and dust-ups along the way.

But what we are left with is a dismissal of Nature, and enforced subservience, and an attack stance towards any belief system that suggests any outsized importance for Nature beyond relying on an externalized God.

These manifestations are relatively benign in a pre-Capitalist world with insignificant populations, but an explosion in population coupled with the intersection of Capital proves to be a poisonous elixir.

*********************************************************************

Merger of Capitalism and Christianity

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The constraints of dominion and a subservient Nature pass through the millennia, benign at first with (relatively) small numbers of humans embedded in a vast tableau of Nature, then exploding into crisis with the intersection of Capital and the Industrial Revolution.

Against the backdrop of the Industrial revolution, the ascendancy of Capitalist value production, and importantly, the tectonic shift from an agrarian lifestyle of self-sufficiency to a wage labor economy, there arises an increasing and profoundly powerful exploitation of the environment.

This manifests in two dimensions, firstly, on the input side as natural resources are extracted at an increasing rate in support not just of an exponentially increasing population, but of the added and significant burden of creating profit for profit’s sake, for which there is no end and no demand limits.

On the output side, the waste products of unlimited value production are unleashed on the environment as recklessly and wantonly as possible, so as to avoid any reduction in surplus value. Controls and environmental regulations are criticized as “job killers” and discarded, a not so subtle reminder that your ability to eat is dependent on their ability to profit.

But the cognitive dissonance of these conditions are painfully obvious, and Capital needs a compelling narrative that will support its ceaseless plunder.

It finds a willing if unlikely partner in the nascent American Christian movement that arose during the early to mid-20th century.

While Catholicism held back from full throated endorsement of the robber baron business model, the Christian fundamentalist and Evangelical movements exploded onto the scene with full endorsement.

In retrospect, the alliance between Christian fundamentalists, Evangelicals, and Capitalists should have been easy to foresee as inevitable. The Catholic Church’s long standing focus on the plight of the poor, and its ascendancy in American society became troubling to many on the Right. The size of the Catholic constituency began to grow within American culture to the extent that the dream of a parallel, Catholic society become feasible to implement, and in fact the Catholic Church did just this, with thousands of Catholic schools built and staffed by (mostly) clergy and nuns.

In and of itself this parallel culture of a differing and more restrictive moral fabric was not especially concerning to conservatives, the focus on the plight of the poor however was very disturbing.

After all, several hundred years of caring for the poor, providing sanctuary within Church buildings, sheltering refugees, etc., one might begin to ask why are these people here, and what conditions exist to precipitate this plight.

And there are more than a few folks who would very much like that these questions not be asked- because they are very afraid of the answers.

In response, the Right girded its loins to prepare for a campaign of discrediting and aggressive preventative measures, posturing against recognizing systematic exploitation of the poor, and eventually, applying the same tactics to environmental exploitation as well. In this fashion, fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians founded a counter offensive against the as yet unspoken undercurrent of Marxist underpinnings buried deep within Catholic theology.

As chronicled in Princeton professor Kevin Kruse’s book “One Nation under God, How Corporate America invented Christianity”, Capital, fearful of the burgeoning support for New Deal policies, began to associate itself with Christianity to establish a moral imperative for so-called free market business practices.

Back in the 1930s, business leaders found themselves on the defensive. Their public prestige had plummeted with the Great Crash; their private businesses were under attack by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal from above and labor from below. To regain the upper hand, corporate leaders fought back on all fronts. They waged a figurative war in statehouses and, occasionally, a literal one in the streets; their campaigns extended from courts of law to the court of public opinion. But nothing worked particularly well until they began an inspired public relations offensive that cast capitalism as the handmaiden of Christianity.

The two had been described as soul mates before, but in this campaign they were wedded in pointed opposition to the “creeping socialism” of the New Deal. The federal government had never really factored into Americans’ thinking about the relationship between faith and free enterprise, mostly because it had never loomed that large over business interests. But now it cast a long and ominous shadow.

Every Christian should oppose the totalitarian trends of the New Deal.

It wasn’t until Billy Graham mobilized the Evangelical right in the early fifties that the movement really took off.

They all believed religiosity, if widely and officially deployed, would be a mighty weapon in the battle against collectivist liberals at home and Communists abroad. As their ally, Billy Graham, preached in 1951 at one of his ever popular crusades, Americans urgently needed to rededicate themselves to “the rugged individualism that Christ brought” to the world.

Accordingly, throughout the 1930s and ’40s, corporate leaders marketed a new ideology that combined elements of Christianity with an anti-federal libertarianism. Powerful business lobbies like the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers led the way, promoting this ideology’s appeal in conferences and P.R. campaigns. Generous funding came from prominent businessmen, from household names like Harvey Firestone, Conrad Hilton, E. F. Hutton, Fred Maytag and Henry R. Luce to lesser-known leaders at U.S. Steel, General Motors and DuPont.

Rev. James W. Fifield, pastor of the elite First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, led the way in championing a new union of faith and free enterprise. “The blessings of capitalism come from God,” he wrote. “A system that provides so much for the common good and happiness must flourish under the favor of the Almighty.”

Christianity, in Mr. Fifield’s interpretation, closely resembled capitalism, as both were systems in which individuals rose or fell on their own. The welfare state, meanwhile, violated most of the Ten Commandments. It made a “false idol” of the federal government, encouraged Americans to covet their neighbors’ possessions, stole from the wealthy and, ultimately, bore false witness by promising what it could never deliver.

This malignant coupling of commerce and Christianity was hugely successful, culminating with the addition of the words “In God We Trust” on all US paper currency in 1957. The stage was set for the usurpation of Christian principles with Capitalist principles, as the saints and martyrs of Christendom were exchanged for the imprint of US president’s faces on US currency.

A new religion was born.

******************************************************************** Liberation theology

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The problem with focusing on the plight of the poor is that sooner or later, the threads of class consciousness begin to emerge.

The rise to prominence of Latin America within the Catholic Church in the ’60’s and ’70’s brought forward a disruption to the fundamentalist juggernaut operating at full steam in North America.

Led by Gustavo Gutierrez and other Catholic intellectuals, the nascent movement of liberation theology emerged, informed by the subtle undercurrent of Marxist class struggle embedded in Orthodox Catholicism.

At its core, liberation theology re-emphasizes Catholicism from the perspective of the poor.

A more detailed examination of the principles of liberation theology nets some surprising tenements. It turns out much of the first few centuries of Church teaching viewed the poor in a much more sympathetic light, and directly associated exploitation as causality for the condition, and further, assigned a series of accusations of sinfulness at to those who were doing the exploiting.

Hence, one of the primary missions of the Catholic Church was not just to eradicate sin, and to provide recompense for those that succumb, but importantly, to side with and defend the exploited.

The underpinnings of this renewed focus on the poor from early Church teaching reveals that the response to poverty from those more fortunate, should not be just charity giving from surplus, but giving from sustenance as well. In other words, personal sacrifice, but also a rejection of material possessions even to the point of personal suffering.

Further, liberation theology makes a significant breakthrough in our understanding of right and wrong, it legitimizes the concept that sin is not just an act of individual moral failure, it can also be an act of organizational failure, e.g. not only can people sin but institutions, governments, and economic systems can also be sinful in their very existence and practice.

These points may seem obvious, but they represent a profound contradiction within the mainstay of Christian Conservativism off all stripes, which demands fealty to the rigid dictates of individuality, only individuals can sin and therefore only individuals have accountability.

This represents an existential threat to right wing Christianity, and as easily anticipated, the full court propaganda press goes into warp drive to head off any traction that may be had by such musings. These arguments are particularly troubling to American Christians in general, and Catholics in particular, as these types of viewpoints obliterate and contradict the central thesis of America’s religious consolidation with Capitalism. Indeed, the National Review published an article “The secret roots of liberation theology” which claims this was concocted by the Russian KGB. We just can’t have this gaining any momentum, so one should expect a flurry of these types of smear articles as the Pope’s encyclical becomes more widely distributed.

This does symbolize a renewed battle of ideologies chaired by strange bedfellows, now apparently led by a new champion, the Catholic Church

Is the Church struggling for relevancy? Is an activist posture forthcoming that activates 1 billion lumpen proletariat into the vanguard, through a coupling of class consciousness, ecological destruction, and limits to growth?

********************************************************************

The Red Pope

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Nikki Manaj’s preposterous attire symbolizes the tongue and cheek rebuttal of a “Red Pope”, as a communist sympathizer who embodies in his recent encyclical, a call to “un-American” action theories, a Pope who overextends his position and segues into science, economics, and other topics far afield of his domain expertise.

After all, he calls for an end to endless growth, rampant consumerism, excessive consumption by the wealthy, and cessation of environmental destruction.

How dare he!

Everyone knows the American dream, that indefatigable strain of individuality, the boot strap mentality to step over every obstacle at any and all costs, that deepest reliance and valorization on the individual, this as anyone knows, is the very cornerstone of spirituality, after all God wants you to be strong and rich!

But the Pope, in the encyclical ‘Laudato Si’ says not so much.

In the meantime, economic powers continue to justify the current global system where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain, which fail to take the context into account, let alone the effects on human dignity and the natural environment. Here we see how environmental deterioration and human and ethical degradation are closely linked. Many people will deny doing anything wrong because distractions constantly dull our consciousness of just how limited and finite our world really is. As a result, “whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule”.

A challenge to the free market ideology? Why, this is blasphemy. But we have seen similar observations in the previous exhortation, wherein the consumerist free markets were challenged for the first time with papal authority. This encyclical, however, goes much, much further.

To be sure, most of the controversy and commentary on ‘Laudato Si’, is focused on the destruction of the environment. Readers of this blog will find nothing new or interesting in these claims, as they are self evident, and although they are a strong and recurring theme of the encyclical, I find other elements much more interesting.

Perhaps the most powerful thrust of this Pope’s directive is the restating of Christian priorities from social to economic. The Christian right has seized on the culture wars of women’s reproductive rights, same sex marriage, women in the priesthood, etc. as not only central issues, but the very backbone of a ideological spectrum that extends to denial of racism and denial of climate change. These superficial cause celebres, distract and deflect attention away from critical issues and rely on principles of substitution to activate fundamentalist solidarity.

In contradiction to these movements, the current Papal encyclical as well as the previous exhortation resets the priorities to elevate inequality, climate change, and ecological destruction as a by-product of value production, as the key topics of concern.

This substantially deflates the Christian Right’s standing and values, and sets into motion a conflict and dialogue that ultimately may not end well.

These top level contradictions quickly devolve into further disagreement, especially in subjects such as property ownership.

We are not God. The earth was here before us and it has been given to us. This allows us to respond to the charge that Judaeo-Christian thinking, on the basis of the Genesis account which grants man “dominion” over the earth (cf. Gen 1:28), has encouraged the unbridled exploitation of nature by painting him as domineering and destructive by nature. This is not a correct interpretation of the Bible as understood by the Church. Although it is true that we Christians have at times incorrectly interpreted the Scriptures, nowadays we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures. The biblical texts are to be read in their context, with an appropriate hermeneutic, recognizing that they tell us to “till and keep” the garden of the world (cf. Gen 2:15). “Tilling” refers to cultivating, ploughing or working, while “keeping” means caring, protecting, overseeing and preserving. This implies a relationship of mutual responsibility between human beings and nature. Each community can take from the bounty of the earth whatever it needs for subsistence, but it also has the duty to protect the earth and to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations. “The earth is the Lord’s” (Ps 24:1); to him belongs “the earth with all that is within it” (Dt 10:14). Thus God rejects every claim to absolute ownership: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me” (Lev 25:23).

I’m guessing John Locke missed this part.

But the real issue, long since lost in Capital’s co-opting of biblical principles is the notion of an equity position for all inhabitants.

One of the more interesting comments in the encyclical, although not covered extensively, is the concept of a Jubilee, a long standing biblical reference to a resetting of the ownership economy approximately every 50 years.

……. Finally, after seven weeks of years, which is to say forty-nine years, the Jubilee was celebrated as a year of general forgiveness and “liberty throughout the land for all its inhabitants” (cf. Lev 25:10). This law came about as an attempt to ensure balance and fairness in their relationships with others and with the land on which they lived and worked. At the same time, it was an acknowledgment that the gift of the earth with its fruits belongs to everyone. Those who tilled and kept the land were obliged to share its fruits, especially with the poor, with widows, orphans and foreigners in their midst: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field to its very border, neither shall you gather the gleanings after the harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner” (Lev 19:9-10).

Yet it would also be mistaken to view other living beings as mere objects subjected to arbitrary human domination. When nature is viewed solely as a source of profit and gain, this has serious consequences for society. This vision of “might is right” has engendered immense inequality, injustice and acts of violence against the majority of humanity, since resources end up in the hands of the first comer or the most powerful: the winner takes all. Completely at odds with this model are the ideals of harmony, justice, fraternity and peace……….

Whether believers or not, we are agreed today that the earth is essentially a shared inheritance, whose fruits are meant to benefit everyone. For believers, this becomes a question of fidelity to the Creator, since God created the world for everyone. Hence every ecological approach needs to incorporate a social perspective Catechism of the Catholic Church, which takes into account the fundamental rights of the poor and the underprivileged. The principle of the subordination of private property to the universal destination of goods, and thus the right of everyone to their use, is a golden rule of social conduct and “the first principle of the whole ethical and social order”. The Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute or inviolable, and has stressed the social purpose of all forms of private property. Saint John Paul II forcefully reaffirmed this teaching, stating that “God gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members, without excluding or favoring anyone”. These are strong words. He noted that “a type of development which did not respect and promote human rights – personal and social, economic and political, including the rights of nations and of peoples – would not be really worthy of man”. He clearly explained that “the Church does indeed defend the legitimate right to private property, but she also teaches no less clearly that there is always a social mortgage on all private property, in order that goods may serve the general purpose that God gave them”.

Consequently, he maintained, “it is not in accord with God’s plan that this gift be used in such a way that its benefits favor only a few”. This calls into serious question the unjust habits of a part of humanity.

This would appear to be a pretty straightforward indictment of the rentier class, again with disruptive conclusions regarding property rights.

The natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone. If we make something our own, it is only to administer it for the good

If we do not, we burden our consciences with the weight of having denied the existence of others. That is why the New Zealand bishops asked what the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” means when “twenty percent of the world’s population consumes resources at a rate that robs the poor nations and future generations of what they need to survive”.

Clearly there is a pattern emerging centering on strong critique of our socially accepted concept of property rights, linkage to ecology and use for the greater good, and the continuing acceleration of vast inequality.

With this linkage established, the encyclical moves into discussion of root cause responsibility, which is named generally as “consumerism” but when explored in more detail we see commentary specific to excessive consumption and overproduction.

Politics must not be subject to the economy, nor should the economy be subject to the dictates of an efficiency-driven paradigm of technocracy. Today, in view of the common good, there is urgent need for politics and economics to enter into a frank dialogue in the service of life, especially human life.

Saving banks at any cost, making the public pay the price, foregoing a firm commitment to reviewing and reforming the entire system, only reaffirms the absolute power of a financial system, a power which has no future and will only give rise to new crises after a slow, costly and only apparent recovery. The financial crisis of 2007-08 provided an opportunity to develop a new economy, more attentive to ethical principles, and new ways of regulating speculative financial practices and virtual wealth. But the response to the crisis did not include rethinking the outdated criteria which continue to rule the world. Production is not always rational, and is usually tied to economic variables which assign to products a value that does not necessarily correspond to their real worth. This frequently leads to an overproduction of some commodities, with unnecessary impact on the environment and with negative results on regional economies.

In perhaps one of the most powerful passages in the encyclical, the endless cycle of consumerism, inequality, and environmental destruction is laid bare:

Since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products, people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending. Compulsive consumerism is one example of how the techno-economic paradigm affects individuals. Romano Guardini had already foreseen this: “The gadgets and technics forced upon him by the patterns of machine production and of abstract planning mass man accepts quite simply; they are the forms of life itself. To either a greater or lesser degree mass man is convinced that his conformity is both reasonable and just”.

This paradigm leads people to believe that they are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume. But those really free are the minority who wield economic and financial power. Amid this confusion, postmodern humanity has not yet achieved a new self-awareness capable of offering guidance and direction, and this lack of identity is a source of anxiety. We have too many means and only a few insubstantial ends.

The current global situation engenders a feeling of instability and uncertainty, which in turn becomes “a seedbed for collective selfishness”. When people become self-centred and self-enclosed, their greed increases. The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume.

It becomes almost impossible to accept the limits imposed by reality. In this horizon, a genuine sense of the common good also disappears. As these attitudes become more widespread, social norms are respected only to the extent that they do not clash with personal needs. So our concern cannot be limited merely to the threat of extreme weather events, but must also extend to the catastrophic consequences of social unrest. Obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence and mutual destruction.

I believe the encyclical has touched on some critical founding principles in its pursuit of re-establishing relevance to the Catholic Church. First, considerable text has been devoted to the walking back, rehabilitating even, the concept of Dominion over Nature. Much of the previous definition had been exclusionary of any meaningful deification of Nature as noted earlier, and was ultimately co-opted by Capital to allow a profit driven land and resource grab with appalling veracity. Coupled with Evangelical and fundamentalist Christian support, this was cemented into American thinking and remains a formidable intellectual obstacle.

Will the encyclical succeed in resetting environmental priorities to a restorative, rather than profit driven cycle? Of course the answer is no, and even if it could, it is likely too late.

Considerable text has also been allocated to the discussion of the integration of science and technology into Church teachings. This represents a good step forward, although it took quite some time (400 years!) to come up with a way to reconcile science with the necessary mysticism of a religion. Rather than considering science as the enemy (with apologies to Galileo) the pope has instead embraced science to ultimately support a morality statement in mobilizing against climate destruction. I think this is a pretty clever way to take the position.

If I permit myself a bit of altruism, one might see in the encyclical a roadmap to a different world, a different place and a different outcome. Surely if this prescription were followed as suggested for 21 centuries we would have a better place? I think the answer to this is yes, but it requires a revisionist perspective, to overlook the 16 centuries of power dominance and various and sundry atrocities of the Church, the take-no-prisoners approach to leadership which contributed greatly to the world we have now.

But I suspect the greatest impact of the message is not directed to the 20% of the world participating in excessive consumption, who will likely never change of their own volition.

Perhaps it is meant for the 1 billion who are not. The 1 billion who will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change. What might they do with this information?

*******************************************************************

The dawn of the second day of the Easter Triduum came for me with a strange mission- stewardship of the Vigil Candle. As a 12 year old altar boy, I had been bestowed the symbolic responsibility of insuring the lighted Vigil candle remained that way during my shift.

The lighted paschal candle symbolizes the presence of the Holy Spirit, in that darkest of days between Crucifixion on the cross (Good Friday) and the Resurrection (Easter Sunday). As a lay person one might conjure this a period of instability, indeterminate, a body lying in state with no clear connection to either world, an ethereal space between the earthly bounds of sin and exploitation and the soul cleansing transition to afterlife.

The fragility of the flickering candle light represents that it can go either way.

In the pre-dawn hours I walked alone the familiar route from my house to the church. Alongside the church was the entrance to the priest’s chambers, down a long path bordered by Calla lilies and lush elephant ferns to the rear of the church. Inside chambers was a veritable forest of dark baroque woodwork, neatly organzied apothecaries, hanging vestments and the strong lingering odor of incense. There was a small closet with altar boy gowns, it was first come/first serve to find a usable size, and I was fortunate enough to find one that fit.

I was noticed by the poor sap with the earlier shift, he needed no encouragement to leave his post on the altar, shed his gown quickly and head for the door.

I took his place on the altar, kneeling for what promised to be a long three hours with my eye on the flickering candle.

For a 12 year old, spending the pre-dawn hours alone in a darkened church, lit only by flickering candles under the watchful eye of various saints and church luminaries, is not an assignment that one relishes. The mind wanders, reflecting first on memorized phrases from ritualized catechism, from other worldly repose the minutes and hours while away to more traditional boyhood daydreaming- anything to stave off the fear of impending doom.

Shocked from my reverie by a sharp jab, I turned to see an elderly woman poking me frantically. There was no speaking allowed on the altar, she was no doubt one of a small army of lay persons that brought flowers and attended daily early mass- apparently from lack of anything better to do. She gestured emphatically towards the vigil candle.

The flame had gone out.

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Say Goodbye to the Holocene Epoch

25 Monday May 2015

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Military Industrial Complex, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 249 Comments

Tags

400ppm CO2, Abrupt Climate Change, Australopithecus afarensis, Capitalism, Capitalist Industrial Civilization, CIA Climate Research Medea Program, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Consumerism, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Intensified Hydrologic Cycle, Jeremy Grantham, Mad Max Future, Mid-Pliocene Era, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, PETM Extinction Event, Techno-Utopians, The Anthropocene Age, The Fossil Fuel Age, The Holocene Epoch, Tim Garrett


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Mankind’s exothermic machine of industrial civilization recently blew past the 400ppm CO2 mile post, causing a few passengers to exclaim, “Homo sapiens have never existed at these levels of heat-trapping gases!” Hundreds and even thousands of years will pass before the full aftermath from our fossil fuel orgy plays out, but we’ll see plenty of nasty surprises in feedback loops and tipping points this century, perhaps most notably sea level rise. Another area of glaciers once thought to be stable has fallen to the human CO2 spike which is occurring 14,000 faster than natural processes and 10-200 times faster than the PETM extinction event. Every so often I feel the need to try to wrap my mind around these horrific statistics and re-examine our place in time as we continue whistling past the graveyard. Keeping in mind that we have yet to take our foot off the gas pedal of economic growth, I’ll try to make sense of what we are doing to the earth by looking back at paleoclimate records when such atmospheric conditions did exist:

– The last time carbon levels reached 400 ppm, and “mean global temperatures were substantially warmer for a sustained period,” was probably 2-3 million years ago, in the Mid-Pliocene era.
– Sedimentary cores taken from a Siberian lake north of the Arctic Circle shows that mid-Pliocene atmospheric CO2 measured between 380 and 450 parts per million. Those same cores contain fossil pollens from five different kinds of pine trees as well as numerous other plants we don’t find in today’s Arctic.
– Temperatures were 2-3 ˚C higher—about 4-6 ˚F—above pre-industrial levels.
– Arctic temperatures were between 10-20 ˚C hotter.
– Sea levels were, on average, between 50 and 82 feet higher.
– A warmer Arctic saw the spread of forests and forest biology to the far reaches of the north.
– Many species of both plants and animals existed several hundred kilometers north of where their nearest relatives exist today.
– The Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Current experienced enhanced heat transport pushing warm water further to the north. Similar heating in the Pacific impacted the areas as far north as the Bering Sea.
– Arctic ice was “ephemeral”, as in, not permanent, and melted in the warm season.
– North Atlantic regions warmed considerably.
– Australopithecus afarensis, an early hominid at the time, roamed East Africa and slept in trees, eating mostly fruit, seeds, roots, and insects with the occasional lizard and scavenged meat.
(sources: Motherboard, wfs.org, and yalescientific.org)

australopithecus_afarensis2

Until this prehistoric hominid changed its diet to high protein,
expanding its brain to enable complex tool and weapon-making,
it was easy prey for the saber-toothed tiger.

The prehistoric environment described above is not compatible with modern-day civilization and its billions of infrastructure and supply chain-dependent people. Billions will perish without the technological exoskeleton that houses, feeds, and nurtures them. Nearly all are under the spell that our money system, economy, and energy resources are somehow more vital to us than the environment upon which those manmade structures were built. What they don’t realize, or appreciate, is that nature’s ecosystems are what provide the foundation for any civilization if we want breathable air, potable water, arable land, and a planet hospitable to humans. We have gone a long way in undermining this foundation and now hold the dubious honor of being this planet’s first sentient beings to predict, document, and witness their own self-inflicted demise. This was the Holocene, as discussed here. Notice the red “temperature anomaly” spike at the very end of that era. Put in context with other geologic eras, it looks like this. See the difference? The Holocene was a very stable period compared to any other time in the deep past, but we wrecked it with our greenhouse gases. The climate system’s lag time prevents us from seeing the full effects just yet, but changes in the earth’s hydrologic cycle and weather patterns are already apparent. In response to such changes, trees are adjusting the speed at which they cycle water.

I peg the dawn of the Anthropocene at the mid 19th century when fossil fuel consumption began to take off, ramping up anthropogenic climate change:

william-rees-2012-boulding-award-speech-isee-11-728

If we expand our historic view of industrial civilization’s gargantuan appetite for energy, we see it as an aberrant blip in evolutionary time when Homo sapiens, fueled by hydrocarbon, disrupted all the major biochemical processes of the planet.

hsu1

We have a 10% chance that the earth will warm 6°C by 2100 according to scientists, but the fossil fuel industry is betting it’s a sure thing by planning its future business around magical, nonexistent technologies that would remove CO2 emissions. Notwithstanding the armchair technotopian dreams of a future world that includes driverless cars, zero-point energy, and asteroid mining, we are living at the peak of capitalist industrial civilization which produces a continual flood of products promising to improve and enhance our lives but which, in the end, only complicate them. We are trapped between mindless consumerism and the thoughtless destruction of the environment. Tim Garrett calls our dilemma a double bind. The only thing that will save us from a deadly warming of the planet is the very thing that will destroy most of us if it happens —the complete crash of the global economy and its CO2 emitting process of “building wealth.” Homo economicus is too busy converting his rich environment into monetary tokens to think about the consequences of what he is doing or perceive the impending crash of the earth’s biosphere that will take care of the human overshoot problem and all the transient material wealth that has been covetously accumulated and guarded. Rising oceans, floods, fire, drought, and various superstorms from a damaged biosphere will take it all back and destroy it. For a species that has created a throw-away society, such an end is fitting. With every loss we inflict upon biodiversity, extinction creeps ever closer toward us. The consequences of ignoring the hard laws of physics, chemistry, and biology will be dire:

Screen Shot 2015-05-24 at 3.43.24 PM

Countries once thought of as having relatively stable and developing economies like Brazil are now openly contemplating the use of their military in order to keep the megacity São Paulo from spiraling out of control in the face of severe climate change-driven droughts. And in the so-called First World country of America, president Obama’s science adviser is warning that “climate change could overwhelm California,” a state that grows a large percentage of what the country eats:

…The huge inertia built into the energy system — a $25 trillion worldwide investment in a mainly fossil-fuel infrastructure — is colliding with enormous momentum in the climate, which responds slowly to the buildup in greenhouse gases. The world is not even yet fully experiencing the results of emissions put into the atmosphere years ago, he said. It will take decades to turn both systems around.

“If we stopped emitting today, the temperature would still coast up for decades to come,” Holdren said.

He recalled sitting on a presidential science advisory panel during the Clinton administration.

“Quite a lot of folks were saying the impacts of climate change are uncertain and far away, the costs of dealing with it are large and close — therefore, we should wait and see what happens,” Holdren said.

“Well, like it or not, that’s pretty much what we did.”…

Wall Street investment fund guru Jeremy Grantham is predicting a “severe upheaval in agriculture as a result of climate.” I wonder if he still holds faith in mankind’s techno-fixes. Interestingly, the CIA is shuttering a secretive climate research program called Medea that studies how global warming could worsen conflict. Its closure to the public will end much of the access that climate scientists had to its data, leaving me to wonder if such information was becoming too sensitive for national security reasons. Perhaps it would be too hypocritical and cynical even for the CIA to be studying climate change as a conflict multiplier when the U.S. military, the planet’s single largest polluter, is exempt from auditing its own CO2 emissions and is drawing up plans to turn the Arctic into a war game zone. As with all nations’ militaries, The U.S. is not interested in protecting the Arctic, but exploiting this “new frontier.”

The mental traps and psychological defense mechanisms employed by the naked ape makes him a basket case of contradictions and ironies, simply adding more insurmountable obstacles to the insoluble problem of capitalist industrial civilization. That’s why we love dystopian operas that reflect our own twisted culture and capitalist society.

A sobering video…

Extreme weather events are rapidly increasing. Right now we are in the 6-sigma risk zone of climate change.

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Bloodwatch

27 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation

≈ 114 Comments

Tags

Anthropocentrism, Capitalism, Carbon Man, Climate Change, Consumerism, Culture of Addiction, Doomsday Preppers, Evolutionary Dead End, Extinction of Man, leonard Nimoy, Madness of Modern Civilization, Nihilism, Overpopulation, Romanticism of Indigenous Cultures, Sociopaths/Psychopaths, Suicide, Techno-Utopians

When past predictions of future catastrophic events like ice sheet melt, spreading tropical diseases, and forest fragmentation start to become reality while no substantial means to prevent them from happening has ever been implemented, you begin to question the phrase so often bandied about that “it’s never too late.” It was never too late decades ago and we’re still holding out on that hope. Despite any techno-utopian fantasies you hear in the news, economic activity and growth are still linked to CO2 emissions. Until this fundamental truth is dealt with, we’ll all be spinning our wheels and wringing our hands over our continued descent into ecological and societal collapse. Perhaps this is part of the reason I have not blogged recently. As Leonard Nimoy expressed in his last twitter message, I think I’ll try to enjoy the here and now while I’m alive…

Snap 2015-03-27 at 03.44.20

The following is a guest post by commenter BP:

The majority of people visiting collapse and post-peak sites are Caucasian, disillusioned, with a slimmer majority subset being male; in other words, representatives though not participating members of the failing power elite. If these collapsitarians did wield real power, they wouldn’t be deeply dissatisfied with the present social arrangement and secretly hoping for an honest to goodness smokin’ homecookin’ cracklin’ good ole’ fashioned apocalypse to happen in their lifetime. You know, just to spice things up a little bit and provide some entertainment because industrial living can be such a boooooring, regimented drag, man. Tick tock. Time to get up, time to eat, go to work, come home, go to sleep, wake up, rinse and repeat. Even regularity in our shitting is considered desirable in this totalizing system. Watches are slave driving devices – a shackle – your very own drill sergeant and task master all rolled into one convenient portable sleek wrapped modern design. Little wonder you have so many suit and tie clean-cut preppie American Psycho types with their rictus eternally sun shining grins (everything’s alright, everything’s fine, everything’s okay) resorting to extremes: bungee jumping, sky diving, narcotics and gambling, binge eating, binge shopping, binge TV watching, auto-erotic asphyxiation, any and all manner of titillation and stimulation just to get a rise. We’ve been dulled and sanitized, tamed and neutralized. The demographic comprising most of the power elite also happens to be the one most likely to become serial killers preying on their own species. If you live in a foreign land you might argue there’s no difference between Ted Bundy and the president. Either way, it’s another fun-filled pet project to while away the hours with. But I don’t want to give anyone any ideas, and I won’t be held accountable for what you do when you turn off your addictive electronic stimulus delivery systems aka computers tonight, even though we excel at passing responsibility onto something else. The lengths people will go… And these are the lucky ones who still have jobs. YAY!! I don’t even want to imagine life on the other side – we’ll all get there soon enough. Why spoil the surprise?

So raise your hands if you’re waiting for a giant or gradual (does it really matter?) clusterfuck that results in a significant reduction in our species’ numbers, because whatever you think is likely, it’s a necessary precursor to what ever comes next. The table has already been set and our carcass is the main dish.

Now that you’ve had your fill, how about some desert? I have a thought experiment that shouldn’t take too much time. Suppose you’ve decided to kill yourself. You’ve set a date, (a week from tomorrow), a time (midnight), thoroughly planned the method (hanging), bought the needed supplies (rope – duh!), and are dead set on following through. How, if any, would your life change in the time remaining? I’ll indulge in some fantasy since there doesn’t seem to be enough of that going around and Star Wars isn’t out until December. For starters, you could max out your credit and buy that car you’ve always fancied – you know, the one that runs on limited gasoline? You could also screw a few whores and not worry about contracting a venereal disease or what you’d have to say to your wife. Gorge on that chocolate cake and go for seconds topped with ice cream this time, downed with cola and chased with both pizza and hamburgers for desert. Why not? Fuck blood pressure, you’re going to die anyway. Then after your attention deficit disorder kicks in, you could switch to watching porn, wasting time playing Modern Warfare while eating Doritos and not feel one ounce of guilt that you could be doing something more with your life. Consume shit you don’t need to your heart’s content without any second thoughts! After all, ecologically speaking, we’re consumers! Let’s take a moment to give Capitalism some credit. It found a way to manipulate our basic human nature for its own ends and boy has it ever worked. Nothing has mobilized humanity – not pharaohs, despots, kings nor gods – like the wage economy. The best part about the whole affair is you can live without consequences because, in case you forgot, you’ll be dead in a week. Sound familiar? It’s a rarity these days when ideas and reality coincide. Yep, you guessed it. That’s exactly what our species has been doing – living large like there’s no tomorrow – and it’s hastening our eventual collective suicide.

And is that such a bad thing? There’s way too much despair, self-pitying, and despondent anger on these websites. Outside of our narrow anthropocentric perspective, the human race’s demise might even be cause for celebration. If that’s too much, at least it needn’t be mournful. After all, our history on this planet has proven that, if nothing else, we’re two legged, genocide-wreaking, blood-thirsty assassins. The only species that kills for fun, whether it be bipeds, quadrupeds or any other number of peds, we’ve obliterated them all. I’m confused by all this concern about surviving in a post industrial world. Are our souls (if we even have them) really worth saving? Even if a band of hardy survivors manages to achieve some semblance of harmony with their environment, sooner or later some marauding horde is going to come along, fuck things up, steal their shit, and rape their women. Hey, we’ve had a good ride. Nothing lasts forever. Time for something else to take a turn so we can join the dinosaurs. We aren’t going to change or magically turn into peaceful, loving breathren. That’s simply more wishful thinking, a romanticization of a few mythological hunter and gatherer tribes of the past projected onto the future. The reality is we rape, love, murder, bully, give and take, enslave, create music, art, math, and take pleasure in sadism (see UFC, boxing, WWE, Clausewitzian Warfare aka NFL, the latest scandal, the natural disaster channel aka The Weather Network/CNN and your generic horror movie and cop drama), all of which is hard-wired into our DNA. The human race is folly and cleverness stuffed into a complex paradoxical package. There’s no shame in that. I don’t see the point in worrying over what’s out of our control and what can’t be changed. It’s better to laugh than cry and maybe that’s all we can do. Time to stop demonizing the species.

And isn’t it also time we accept ourselves as natural? Our criticism of all the havoc we’re wreaking on the planet implies we’re outside, removed from nature; ironic since this divide is also acknowledged as part of the problem. Nature – ‘The Environment’ – is something we act upon – not a part of. Bullshit. We’re terrestial, carbon-based omnivores. There’s not an ounce of artificiality about us. That includes the products of our actions like the much-maligned villainous scoundrel PLASTIC. Dah, dah, dah, daaahhh. So what if humans synthesized 22 out of 117 periodic elements? That manipulation, as the word implies, came at our own hands with existing elements crashing together in high-speed accelerators. A polar bear – that sacred symbol for the ineffectual environmental movement – and its particular combination of constituent elements didn’t occur naturally on Earth for most of the planet’s history either. It will soon return to that condition in short order. And what of the indignant protest that plastic doesn’t degrade? Be patient. If our species lasts long enough, which I doubt, it might get to witness that little miracle. After all, a lot can happen in the next few billion years. Making the case that plastic is natural is not to say it isn’t disruptive. Any new arrival on the scene disrupts the existing order. Some things more than others. But it still derives from the Earth, doesn’t it? And so do we. And eventually, that’s where we’ll end up – 6 feet under. Maybe it’s better if that happens sooner rather than later. But it’s going to happen one way or the other regardless the constant declarations of ‘we have to do this…,’ or ‘if we don’t do that…,’ I hear on forums, in the news, at home. We’re good at giving ultimatums that we’ll never see through. Every day there’s a new resolution and self-imposed limitation proclaimed with the most dire urgency. The truth is we don’t have to do anything. The Earth will correct a wayward entity and return to balance. The catch is the new stasis doesn’t have to include us. Even if we could do something, it’s too little, too late. So do yourself a favor, enjoy your life and stop worrying so much. Maybe even laugh once and awhile. If you want to plant a tree – do it. If you don’t – knock yourself out. There are no imperatives. We’ve been unduly harsh on ourselves. Trying to be judge, jury, and executioner is just too damn exhausting. Well, my watch tells me it’s time to go to bed. Just another day in the life of the species… Tick Tock, Tick Tock.

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Bearing Witness

14 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Neo-Colonialism, Pollution

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, American Empire, Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD), Capitalism, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Consumerism, Kenn Orphan, Neoliberal Capitalism

The Tree of Death.jpg
Championing the rapacious conversion of the Earth into dead commodities and its peoples into soulless consumers, the adherents of capitalism have succeeded in entrenching their ideology into the minds of the vast populations as the only viable economic system and way of life. Mesmerized by the electronic gadgetry of the digital age and singing the praises of the “free market”, atomized citizens blissfully hack away at the tree of life that supports them. The bio-destructive power of capitalist industrial civilization stamps out the poetry of nature, silencing entire ecosystems. This essay by Kenn Orphan describes the mindless march towards self-destruction and the redemption that comes by bearing witness to it.

Kenn Orphan

Jonathon Blair - Copy

“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.” – Carl Sagan

We are all witnesses to the Great Dying, a sixth mass extinction, the last one being 65 million years ago which wiped out the dinosaurs. This is not hyperbole; it is a defining feature of our age.

Countless species are falling prey to the wealthy’s indifference, militarism and folly everyday. As in ancient civilizations, the wealthy and the privileged are generally the last to feel the pain of collapse, yet are most often the root cause. And compared to the mass of humanity we share this planet with, and as a result of rapacious exploitation and plunder, Americans, and westerners in general, are the wealthy and the privileged of modern civilization.

Despite overwhelming evidence of crashing ecosystems, many of us living in the twilight years of the American empire seem oblivious to the canaries in the coal mine. Every…

View original post 853 more words

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Where’s the Evolution?

07 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Military Industrial Complex, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 69 Comments

Tags

Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Albert Einstein, Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD), Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, E.M. Forster: “THE MACHINE STOPS”, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Ferengi of Star Trek, Inverted Totalitarianism, Joseph Tainter, Kevin Lister's The Vortex of Violence and why we are losing the battle against climate change, Military Industrial Complex, Nuclear Proliferation, Peak Oil, Resource Wars, Rudolph Herzog, Social Unrest, Thermonuclear War, War for Profit, War Profiteers

20121115093029712

“Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops – but not on our lives. The Machine proceeds – but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die.”
~ E.M. Forster, “THE MACHINE STOPS”

Insects, birds, mammals, and fish have all been migrating to cooler zones for the past four decades in response to the cataclysmic climate disruption ignited by industrial civilization, but humans are the only organisms inhabiting this blue orb we call Earth who are not altering their behavior. They live within an energy cocoon that keeps them cool in the summer, warm in the winter, stuffed with massed produced food from mechanized factory farms, and entertained by a virtual world of digital imagery. As cracks and holes in the Earth’s biosphere grow ever larger, the natural response of capitalist carbon man ensconced within his protective energy shell is to try to put a price tag on what is being burned, i.e. fossil fuels, rather than deal with the deeper root cause of an unsustainable economic system and way of life which demands such exorbitant consumption of resources.

Our energy slaves feed us and control the climate for us while at the same time destroying the natural world that had enabled humans to create such an artificial environment. Detached from nature and enslaved by our own technological creations, we sleepwalk over the cliff of extinction. Our so-called progress will, in the end, disappear like a mirage in the scorching desert sun as nature is sacrificed to the machine of industrial civilization.

Throwing money into the maw of the ‘free market’ is the predictable modus operandi of technocapitalism’s indoctrinated disciples who believe such offerings will create a technofix, miraculously healing the planet. In the Star Trek TV series, the Ferengi were an extraterrestrial race whose culture was characterized by “a mercantile obsession with profit and trade, and their constant efforts to swindle unwary customers into unfair deals.” Just like the Ferengi species where profit is the first, last and only important factor, the high temples of private enterprise are commodifying and monetizing the atmosphere just as they have everything else in nature. The colonization of the public mind by capitalism is complete and overriding. We ignore unfolding geologic forces and instead put our faith in manmade market forces to our detriment.

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In the final days of capitalist industrial civilization, the relentless and compulsive pursuit of profit and growth has subsumed any intelligent and realistic plans for survival. In fact, with the race amongst nations for nuclear technology and sophisticated weaponry, the requisite competitive economy to support such hi-tech militaries nullifies any attempts at reducing greenhouse emissions and pushes the world towards nuclear annihilation. As Kevin Lister, author of the forthcoming book The Vortex of Violence and why we are losing the battle against climate change, points out:

…The fundamental dilemma all nuclear weapons states face is that to maintain a credible nuclear force, be it a force of one or one thousand nuclear warheads on deployment, a massive military industrial complex must be maintained. As well as building the actual nuclear weapon systems, it must also provide the conventional defence screen consisting of fighter jets, patrols planes, anti-submarine warfare technology etc. In an ultimate irony, the purpose of these becomes to defend the nuclear forces to ensure a second strike can be launched rather than to defend people, because there is no defence against a determined nuclear attack. The military industrial complex that delivers this equipment must be continually fed with new streams of contracts at increasing values otherwise the industrial complex collapses. Thus a key objective in the initial gate document which justified to parliament the early procurement of material for Trident was that, “We must retain the capability to design, build and support nuclear submarines and meet the commitment for a successor to the Vanguard Class submarines.” In other words, we build Tridents to continue building Tridents.

The enormous cost of this needs to be covered by taxes, and for this some £500 billion of additional excess economic activity is needed which requires energy from fossil fuels and is the antithesis of making the urgent cut backs we need to tackle the soaring greenhouse gas overburden. Thus once the decision is made to proceed with Trident, it becomes impossible to make the climate change agreements to save the planet. In this context Trident is more dangerous than we ever first thought and it is the ultimate Faustian bargain.

Your commissioners have also failed to acknowledge in their report that the public spending that will be needed on Trident must be made at the same times as scarce public funds must be diverted to building a low carbon economy and mitigating the effects of climate change such as flooding and storm damage. This conflict will arise as tax receipts simultaneously drop through energy price rises.

The impossibility of meeting these conflicting challenges is the reason that much of the negotiations at climate change conferences takes place around the positions of the nuclear weapons states and their need to maintain large military industrial complexes and competitive and expanding economies to fund these…

…to build at huge expense a nuclear force whilst the nation is effectively bankrupt that will never provide secure protection from nuclear attack and merely encourage our competitors to reciprocate. It drives a race to the bottom where rational decisions on climate change can never be taken.

This nexus between global capitalism, the lucrative military-industrial complex, and the strategy of nuclear deterrence has locked the nations of the world into a trajectory of escalating anthropogenic climate disruption, environmental degradation and an ongoing arms race since World War II. Illustrative of this are the energy consumption levels of the U.S. DoD and war profiteering motives of defense contractors:

…The US military is the largest single consumer of energy in the world. If it were a country, the Department of Defense (DoD) would rank 34th in the world in average daily oil use, coming in just behind Iraq and just ahead of Sweden…

…Electricity usage by the military, which accounts for even more greenhouse gas emissions, is also gargantuan. In FY 2006, the DoD used almost 30,000 gigawatt hours of electricity at a cost of almost $2.2 billion. The DoD’s electricity use would supply enough electricity to power more than 2.6 million average American homes.

In fiscal year 2012, the DoD consumed about a billion gigawatt hours of site delivered energy at a cost of 20.4 billion dollars. While consuming that amount of energy, DoD emitted 70 million metric tons of CO2. And yet, total DoD energy use and costs are even higher simply because the energy use and costs arising from the contractors to support military operations both domestically and abroad are not included in DoD’s data…

…The increased propensity for war and conflict brought about by global warming is being exploited by the military-industrial complex which is planning on how to profit from it. Defense contractors are looking at climate change as a growth and profit opportunity due to the potential conflicts produced by food and water shortages. They are salivating over the potential profits to be made leading to increased stock market performance and, therefore, higher CEO compensation.

Defense contractors are setting their sights on a narrow-minded militarist approach. Indeed, the very companies most responsible for climate change are set to make a killing from its intensification. – link

Only one civilization in history has voluntarily uncomplicated/decomplexitized its society in the face of resource scarcity. According to Joseph Tainter, that civilization was the Byzantine Empire:

“After the Byzantine empire lost most of its territory to the Arabs, they simplified their entire society. Cities mostly disappeared, literacy and numeracy declined, their economy became less monetised, and they switched from professional army to peasant militia.”

 As commenter James wryly puts it:

…Because the human ape is such a competitive and vicious sort, there must be a constant “progress” in technology and development to prevent being eaten by or dominated by another nation. Evolution writ large. Without a doubt it will end soon and nothing shall remain but the Ozymandian technological skeletons of times gone by…

photo-11 Yes, where is the evolution? Teeming within the capitalist industrial civilization that is M.A.D. are 7+ billion naked apes, the most dangerous creature to ever walk the face of the Earth capable of wiping itself out within mere minutes from thermonuclear war, if anthropogenic climate disruption, ocean acidification, and global nuclear reactor meltdowns don’t do the trick.

As a warming planet cooks our brains and scrambles our environment, the trigger finger of some mentally ill and agitated soul may just belong to someone sitting at the launch button of a nuke. As Albert Einstein said, ‘I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.’

Full video here: http://www.c-span.org/video/?312985-1/book-discussion-short-history-nuclear-folly

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No Dice — Too Little, Too Late.

03 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution, Wall Street Fraud

≈ 60 Comments

Tags

Antarctic Ice Melt, Barack Obama, BP Oil Spill Crime, Capitalism, Carbon Trading Scheme, Climate Change, Climate Tipping Points, CO2 Emissions and GDP, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Ethanol Scam, Eugene Debs, Financial Elite, Food Vs. Fuel, Fracking Chemicals Contaminating Groundwater, Infinite Growth Paradigm, Inverted Totalitarianism, Keystone XL Pipeline, Offshoring of CO2 Emissions, Regulatory Capture, Superorganism of Industrial Civilization, The 'Clean Coal' Myth, Wall Street Fraud

Pawe_Kuczy_ski_20

President Obama recently unveiled his plans for America to cut its CO2 emissions 30% compared to 2005 levels by 2030 “to limit warming below the 2˚C ceiling agreed by countries“, a plan that Al Gore declares “the most important step taken to combat the climate crisis in our country’s history.” I’m here to explain to you that if that is the best the human race can muster, we’re trapped in a very sad state of anthropocentric denial.

Keeping in mind that humans of industrial civilization have thus far warmed the planet by 0.85˚C in the last couple hundred years, the extreme weather events that have occurred just in the last decade, let alone in the last year, are clear evidence of an increasingly destabilized climate system. Catastrophic changes in the glacial zones of the Arctic and Antarctic have been set into motion, altering global jet streams and weather patterns as well as locking in a sea level rise that will make most coastal cities uninhabitable within a couple of generations. Thus we can see that the target of 2˚C is a totally fraudulent upper limit for anything safe; industrial civilization has already passed the point of no return into climate chaos.

From day one when he entered office, Obama was never anything but a yes man to corporate interests. As far as energy is concerned, Obama is the “clean coal” guy even though there is no such thing. Ethanol from corn is a big joke as well with a net energy of nil. Meanwhile, the increasing price of food does not get figured into the CPI. The Keystone XL pipeline is already approved and being built piece by piece while Democrats and mainstream environmentalists pretend it’s still something under consideration. Obama’s current plans include “an incentive for states to develop regional carbon-trading systems”, despite the fact that such pollution swapping schemes have historically been proven to be rife with fraud and failure. There is no “right price” for carbon. Assisting BP in covering up the largest environmental disaster in American history and allowing fracking consultants to write their environmental impact report are a couple other highlights on Obama’s record that don’t inspire confidence. When it comes to protecting the planet for future generations, both parties in our political duopoly have essentially followed the same omnicidal path. Lou at The Cost of Energy points out:

The US political system is so broken, so blatantly an open bazaar where corporations can buy public policy puppets like so many street hookers, that it’s hard to imagine any policy stronger than the new EPA proposal going into effect and not being killed by the next presidential administration or strangled by the purse strings controlled by the Congress…

Debs

The commercial, capitalist part of society has completely outstripped the interests of humanity as a whole. In the case of fossil fuels, private firms and individuals are carrying out activities which are having dire consequences for everyone, but corporations are only interested in their own advantage and in fact are required by law to place shareholders’ interests above all else with no regard to the long-term well-being of the global community and future generations.

Although CO2 emissions have fallen in the U.S. in recent years due primarily to electricity plants switching to the cheaper source of natural gas, they have jumped back up once again according to the latest reports. Demand for coal abroad has also been on the rise with the U.S. exporting its supply to meet the demand. However, most disturbing is the following graph which illustrates that in the last 164 years, no new energy source has ever stopped our expanding usage of fossil fuels. Levels of carbon extraction are perhaps a more telling indicator of the primacy of fossil fuels and the direct correlation between economic growth and global emissions than the energy statistics of any one particular country:

…as Mike Berners-Lee and I argue in The Burning Question, despite radical changes in the global energy mix over the last two centuries (and even more radical changes within individual countries) energy use and carbon emissions have undergone remarkably consistent long-term exponential growth. The implication is that there’s a technological and social feedback loop at work, with each new energy source increasing access to and demand for all the other sources. Energy begets energy.

The graph below, which shows total human energy use since 1850, reflects this. When coal use took off in the nineteenth century biomass energy didn’t decline as is often assumed. In fact it increased, helped rather than hindered by coal-powered industrialisation and globalisation. Similarly, coal use increased when society started extracting large amounts of oil – which makes sense given that oil not only proved useful for coal mining but also enabled the mass roll-out both of cars and energy-hungry suburban homes. In turn, gas and hydro helped drive technological and engineering revolutions that have made obscure oil sources more viable…

…The fact that new energy sources tend to be additional to existing ones helps explain why more gas production has dinted neither US carbon extraction nor global emissions. But critics of gas beware: the same caveat applies to genuinely low-carbon energy sources such as renewables and nuclear, or indeed increasing energy efficiency. We usually assume that installing a wind turbine or nuclear plant will reduce global emissions but that’s not necessarily true, since the fossil fuel that the clean energy system replaces may get burned elsewhere instead, perhaps kick-starting new energy feedback loops in other parts of the world and driving global carbon emissions up yet further.

In some cases there has even been talk of using low-carbon energy sources directly to increase fossil fuel flows. For example, modular nuclear reactors are being considered as a way to propel natural gas down the remote pipelines that bring energy to Europe’s homes and power plants, or for melting tar to produce oil for the world’s billion-strong car fleet. This seems crazy at first given that it would be more efficient and less polluting to use the nukes directly for producing electricity, but existing infrastructure can determine our energy choices as much as the available energy sources do…

…there’s little evidence so far that fracking, wind power, nuclear or any other technology is helping us leave any carbon in the ground. Indeed, as I wrote recently, despite all the renewable power installed so far, all the fracking rigs, all the energy efficiency gains, all the national carbon cuts, and even a collapse in average fertility levels, global emissions are still growing at the same rate today as they were in the 1850s… – link

Snap 2014-06-03 at 01.33.30

In The Biophysics of Civilization, Money = Energy, and the Inevitability of Collapse, a similar correlation was demonstrated between money (the economy) and CO2 emissions. Without fundamentally changing the economy’s dependency upon growth and profit, emissions will continue to rise and deceptive non-solutions will continue to be sold to the public. Even if all human industrial activity ceased this instant, we would still be looking at upwards of a 2.65˚C temperature rise, but capitalist industrial civilization is a superorganism that is on an unwavering trajectory. The scales have been tipped out of favor for mankind. The geologic pendulum will swing back to bring things into balance over millennia, and in the process industrial civilization will be crush beneath the iron hand of natural law.

One look inside the self-serving and hypocritical mind of those running in society’s elite circles will tell you there is no chance for any radical departure from the moribund thinking which keeps the rotted status quo in place.

[Nate Hagens: …from a (good?) friend of mine – married to a billionaire, very connected, energy investment guy – i sent him the EPA announcement]

Nate,

You have seen the movie Idiocracy, right?  Well President Mountain Dew Commacho in that movie is a better leader than BO.  At least Commacho knew sometimes you need to listen to smart people & put them in charge.

Long story short, the presidency is in meltdown mode.  Everyone has figured out what I told you…he is a bad guy.  Whether you definition of “bad guy” is a person who used his skin color to get where he is in DC then holding the US hostage to his bitter, bigoted edicts; or just a lucky ne’er do well who wanted to save the world, but instead made it worse.   HE IS DONE! <<<the exclamation point is Carney quitting.

Nate, none of what he does means squat (especially the agencies like EPA)…dems/repub know it.  Next elections will save the economy for 20-30 more years…I know you & I disagree on the timeline.  I hope, and pray, you are wrong…but I do know your logic is correct.

Best,

Jxxxxx

Buy coal/BTU tomorrow on the dip.

Like the radiation from Fukushima, CO2 emissions are invisible and their calamitous effects can play out over generations. The masses simply can’t stomach hard reality when they are entranced by a techno-capitalist wonderland of mental distractions and virtual reality pitfalls.

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Business-As-Usual on a Dying Planet

19 Monday May 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 120 Comments

Tags

BP, British Petroleum, Capitalism, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Consumerism, Corexit, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Corporate State, Dr. Wilma Subra, Eco-Apocalypse, Ecological Sacrifice Zones, Environmental Collapse, Gross Inequality, Gulf Oil Spill, Industrial Disease, Inverted Totalitarianism, Mass Die Off, Noam Chomsky, Peak Oil, Renfrey Clarke, Tragedy of the Commons, Vice Media: Crude Awakening

Molotov

A recent investigative piece by Vice on the aftermath of the BP oil spill, America’s most devastating environmental accident to date and the “largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry”, shows that people are still getting sick and dying in the Gulf region.

Award winning chemist, Dr. Wilma Subra, conducted blood tests on Gulf Coast residents who were symptomatic with new illnesses and found that some of the cancer-causing agents were 65 times the expected level in the victims blood tests. Subra noted that Corexit is in the air, the water and the Gulf resident’s blood.

“There’s a whole population that’s very sick and doesn’t have access to medical care, and that’s what we’ve been trying to work on now, from the very beginning, is getting them medical care so they will get better,” says Subra. “How many people do you think we’re talking about, do we have any guess?” “Hundreds of thousands along the whole coastal area,” Subra says. “Hundreds of thousands of people?” “That are sick, yes.”

It also is likely that the BP cleanup workers are going to suffer the same fate. Listen to what Dr. Wilma Subra had to say about the health of this group.

These findings can leave little doubt that BP’s use of Corexit has seriously compromised the collective life span of Gulf Coast residents. This is a staggering implication for the collective longevity in the Gulf. – link

Nearly 2 millions gallons of Corexit were used to prevent the millions of barrels of leaked oil from hitting shorelines. Where did all that oil go? Once Corexit is dispersed over an oil slick, it causes the spilled oil to break apart and sink to the bottom of the ocean. In the case of the BP oil spill, this toxic material created massive kill zones on the Gulf floor. When oil and Corexit are mixed together, the resultant substance becomes 52 times more toxic and penetrates human skin much easier. The locals don’t eat what they catch, but remember that Obama said it was safe.

Corexit has been banned in 18 countries, including the UK, because “it is a cancerous causing neurotoxin pesticide that is acutely toxic to both human and marine life.” Every time there is a strong storm, the Corexit chemical and oil mixture gets swept up onto shore and enters the water cycle:

As of early October 2013, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website specifically stated that the spill should have no effect on drinking water, and that any questions residents might have about their water should be directed to their drinking water provider. The website fails to mention that water from the Gulf, mixed with oil and Corexit could make its way into the ecosystem eventually, washing up onto the Gulf’s shores and seeping insidiously into the ground water. Florida’s ground water aqueduct system provides drinking water to 18 million residents. – link

The happy motoring culture of suburban sprawl, bread & circus infotainment, and celebrity/wealth worship has long since forgotten what has been called “the biggest public health crisis from a chemical poisoning in the history of this country“. Entrapped by poverty and lacking the means to escape the Gulf region,  its residence have become part of the sacrifice zone offered up in the name of profit to the carbon-hungry God of industrial civilization.

None of the locals who took part in the clean-up effort were told of the dangers to their health, nor were they allowed to wear protective gear such as respiratory masks, suits, and gloves because it would have more accurately conveyed to the world the true nature of the disaster. More recently, BP has been accused of hiring internet trolls to threaten critics of its handling of the 2010 disaster. Surely the authorities were aware of the aftermath from the Exxon Valdez accident wherein the same dispersant was used by those clean-up workers who are now nearly all dead at the average age of 51. For BP and the U.S. government, image and corporate interests override the horrific realities of ecocide and corporate manslaughter. Better to sink the oil out of sight and mind in order to maintain the illusion that all is well rather than have a company pay the full cost for its recklessness. All that oil mixed with Corexit is now a 3 to 4 inch toxic layer blanketing the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, inhibiting its biodegradation by natural oil-consuming bacteria and prolonging the disaster for decades. And BP is once again allowed to bid for U.S. government contracts after having sued the EPA in 2013 to lift the suspension. Of course lots of conspiracy theories surrounded the BP oil spill, but the only real conspiracy here was the government/corporate collusion to hide and minimize the damage, control the public’s perception of the disaster, and protect corporate profits over people and environment — nothing out of the ordinary for the corporatocracy we live under, here or abroad.

It’s not just in the oceans that we have to worry about oil spills. If we look at just one set of data from one inland state, you can get an idea of the staggering scale of the fallout from the oil drenched machine of industrial civilization:

Snap 2014-05-19 at 08.56.37

When you take into account all the global destruction that capitalist industrial civilization has wrought over the last few centuries, you realize no solution will ever be forthcoming from our corporate overlords. The idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is simply a PR and marketing ploy. CSR employs ineffective market-based solutions, making it appear that a corporation is addressing a social or environmental problem when in fact it only serves to protect corporate financial interests and shift the blame to the individual and elsewhere. Over decades, corporations have molded society into atomized, uninformed, and passive consumers who parrot the same talking points fed to them from the mainstream media. Those wielding the power in society and leading mankind over a cliff are the same ones that hide behind the moniker of CSR, a smokescreen for continuing the looting and polluting of the planet to the point of ecological collapse.

521622_591434340867473_1869861116_n As the catastrophes of the BP oil spill and Fukushima illustrate, a bankrupt planet is preferable to them over a bankrupt corporation. The Tragedy of the commons, as Noam Chomsky points out, has been perverted and twisted by the widespread adoption of the capitalist ethos. It actually means the opposite of what most have been taught to believe:

…there is another part of Magna Carta which has been forgotten. It had two components. The one is the Charter of Liberties which is being dismantled. The other was called the Charter of the Forests. That called for protection of the commons from the depredations of authority. This is England of course. The commons were the traditional source of sustenance, of food and fuel and welfare as well. They were nurtured and sustained for centuries by traditional societies collectively. They have been steadily dismantled under the capitalist principle that everything has to be privately owned, which brought with it the perverse doctrine of – what is called the tragedy of the commons – a doctrine which holds that collective possessions will be despoiled so therefore everything has to be privately owned. The merest glance at the world shows that the opposite is true. It’s privatization that is destroying the commons. That’s why the indigenous populations of the world are in the lead in trying to save Magna Carta from final destruction by its inheritors…

tumblr_n4jfednib51qjb4vfo1_1280 09-52-16

I’m afraid we are light years away from the Charter of the Forests and any sort of bucolic utopias. As for the future, think moonscapes, tumbleweeds, and the creaking sheet metal of rusted-out cars. The hyper-reality of megacities, with their pulsating neon lights and traffic-filled streets, will fall into silence and decay. Coastal cities will be swallowed up in watery graves. The impotence of man’s technology will become painfully evident as the global-scale geochemical disruptions caused by man quickly unfold, ripping asunder any hold we once had on Earth.

…If modern industrial capitalism were a person, he or she would be on suicide watch. The system that has brought us quantum physics and reality television, modern medicine and the columns of Andrew Bolt is set on a course which, by all the best reckoning, points directly to its doing itself in. If capitalism goes on — everything goes. Climate, coastlines, most living species, food supplies, the great bulk of humanity. And certainly, the preconditions for advanced civilisation, perhaps forever…
~ Renfrey Clarke

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Occam’s Razor Dispels Many Outlandish Conspiracy Theories

10 Saturday May 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Empire, Military Industrial Complex, Peak Oil

≈ 106 Comments

Tags

9/11 Truthers, Blowback, Capitalism, Chemtrails, Climate Change Denial, Conspiracy Theorists, Consumerism, Corporate State, Corporatocracy, Empire, Inverted Totalitarianism, Noam Chomsky, Occam's Razor, Resource Wars, The Principle of Parsimony, The Principle of Plurality, War for Profit

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Occam’s razor, or Ockham’s razor, is a line of reasoning which uses succinctness and simplicity, employing the least assumptions to arrive at the most probable hypothesis that fits the available evidence. In other words, given two equally plausible explanations for a given phenomenon, the one making the fewest assumptions is more likely correct. Its foundation rests on two guiding principle to cut through falsehoods and pseudoscience reasoning:

  1. The Principle of Plurality – Plurality should not be posited without necessity
  2. The Principle of Parsimony – It is pointless to do with more what is done with less

In the search for truth, this tool of reasoning has been used throughout history by scientists and philosophers in the creation of models and theories, by detectives in solving crimes, and by objective researchers in debunking convoluted conspiracy theories. Occam’s razor is embodied by the probability theory which says that “all assumptions introduce possibilities for error and if an assumption does not improve the accuracy of a theory, its only effect is to increase the probability that the overall theory is wrong.” It is a heuristic method to guide scientists in the development of theoretical models. In the case of anthropogenic climate change, it can be applied to show how those who are skeptical about AGW are forced to weave a much more tangled web in order to explain things:

The serious, mainstream science view goes like this:

  1. The greenhouse effect is real. Without it, average surface temperatures would be -15C, not +15C
  2. CO2 is a greenhouse gas
  3. CO2 levels have increased by 41% since pre-industrial times
  4. A 100% increase will cause a 1.2C rise in earth surface temperatures
  5. This rise will in turn cause a 3C (+/- 1.5C) rise in surface temperature.
    Explanatory video on this point here
  6. Any rise above 2C must be avoided

Reasonably simple, given the vast complexity of our planet’s climatic system, and in fact the handful of serious climate scientists on the “sceptic” side agree with points 1-4.

Now here is the climate “sceptic’s” case:

  1. The earth is not warming
  2. If it is warming, it is due to the sun
  3. The warming is due to some kind of natural variation
  4. It’s going to get cooler soon
  5. CO2 is too tiny to make a difference
  6. CO2 will make a difference but there’s nothing we can do about it
  7. We can afford to wait another 10-50 years to see if it is going to get hot then do something about it then
  8. It is going to warm but only a bit
  9. CO2 is good for us
  10. Cloud cover will extend in a warmer planet and cool us down (No it will not)
  11. All models are always wrong
  12. Some models show that the climate will not warm much
  13. It is all a conspiracy by climatologists, Greens, the nuclear industry and the UN
  14. It cannot be happening because it would mean that fossil energy would become unprofitable
  15. It is cold outside today
  16. Heat cannot get into the ocean
  17. And so on
  18. And so forth

What the above shows is that there is an endless complexity to the arguments brought by the “sceptics”, many of them self-contradictory.

They are not trying to present a coherent picture of reality, which is the aim of science. They are merely producing a stream of counter statements. I have been impressed recently that when I try to discuss the one point where agreement exists with a delayer, they rapidly change the subject to find disagreement.

In fact, their case often boils down to a mirror image of the case for man-made global warming. If we say white, they just say black.

I predict therefore that soon “sceptic” blogs will be quoting William of Occam as evidence for the truth of their case.

Another cock-eyed conspiracy theory is chemtrails which astronomer Bob Berman deconstructs using the logic of Occam’s razor:

Some folks regard contrails suspiciously. Apparently, many don’t know what they are. Several websites call the lines chemtrails, and think that the US military is deliberately spraying a substance upon the population.

This is silly for a number of reasons. First, if you’ve ever watched crop dusting you know that chemicals must be released very close to the ground. Released on high, they’d dissipate with the wind and take forever to get down; the concentration on the folks below would be zero. Second, my commercial pilot friends (along with the controllers at the FAA) would all have to go along with the plot, since they’d see the process happening. I’m a pilot and airplane owner myself: It’s NOT happening. Third, what would be the purpose? Some say mind control. But are people acting differently lately? Others say it’s to sow disease. But why would anyone want to do this? Who would go along with it? Finally, some say “chemtrails” are a government project to combat global warming. Nice, but then why should such a laudable effort be kept secret? Other web-based “explanations” involve even wackier stuff like electromagnetic rays.

Logic never placates the truly paranoid, and discussions are rarely satisfying. Those who “believe” WANT to believe, and claim soil tests show that dangerous substances have been found beneath the planes. But again, nothing released from 40,000 feet would ever reach the ground except diluted to zero. And, more to the point, the videos of these supposed “chemtrails” shown on the scare web sites are actually a common type of contrail. The believers claim they’ve only started around 1998 – but I’ve observed those “spreading out” contrails for over 40 years. They’re not new. They’re contrails. No mystery, and nothing sinister here at all.

And yet another imaginative conspiracy, thoroughly debunked by the scientific community, surrounds the terrorist attack of 9/11 in which its die-hard followers believe that elements within the U.S. government planned and executed a controlled demolition of the TWC towers and WTC 7 in order to justify the invasion of Middle East countries and restrict domestic civil liberties. The first obvious question is why would a nefarious group within the government go through the logistical nightmare of crashing airliners into buildings in addition to rigging those buildings beforehand when a massive truck bomb, Timothy McVeigh-style, would have sufficed? Was that elaborate scheme really necessary in order to galvanize the political will to invade a foreign country for oil? And as Noam Chomsky points out in the video below, why implicate nationals from our major ally Saudi Arabia instead of people from the very country the neocons so desperately wanted to invade, Iraq? Perhaps the Bush administration just enjoyed the extra hurdle of fabricating WMD’s because planning and executing such a byzantine maze of deception involving so many people was the best way to keep it all secret and ensure the highest probability of success.

Another article of faith among conspiracy theorists is that the conspiracy would not have to have been very large. In Crossing the Rubicon, Michael Ruppert writes that there didn’t have to be any more than two dozen people with complete foreknowledge of the attacks to orchestrate 9/11, and that they would all be “bound to silence by Draconian secrecy oaths.” But those numbers begin to balloon out of control if all of the people and institutions accused of playing a part in the cover-up are counted. They would have to have included the CIA; the Justice Department; the FAA; NORAD; American and United Airlines; FEMA; Popular Mechanics and other media outlets; state and local law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New York; the National Institute of Standards and Technology; and, finally and perhaps most prominently, the 9/11 Commission. – link

[youtube:www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRV_MsbAZv4]

As more and more people fall off the economic ladder and lose faith in government, their plight will become fertile ground for conspiracy theorists looking to manipulate the anger and desperation of the dispossessed. JFK conspiracists have been around for nearly half a century and I think it’s fair to say that 9/11 conspiracists will have an even longer lifespan, perhaps outliving industrial civilization itself. The maxim of never letting a good crisis go to waste certainly held true for abusive power structures all across the globe after 9/11, but such an atrocity was inevitable due to nearly a century of nurturing and exploiting radical Islamists to serve the interests of the British and American Empires:

…When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in the 1980’s, the West, led by the United States, countered by implementing the “Islam” strategy. The recruiting of Islamic militants from around the world to fight in the “jihad” included the recruitment of Osama bin Laden by Saudi and Pakistani intelligence services. [26]

Ultimately, British strategy manifested or transmogrified into American support for the ‘holy warriors’ against the Soviet invasion. The United States invested massive amounts of armoury, military training and billions of dollars in this enterprise.

Chalmers Johnson defined, ‘blowback’ “as a way of thinking of an individual, a class, a nation or an empire…” when employed in the arena of “international conflicts” this way of thinking, “has a tendency to blow back onto the party releasing it.” [27] The criminal events in New York and Washington almost ten years ago, were partly and clearly a blowback from the “Islam” strategy.

Whereas Britain concocted and propelled the “Islam” option into strategic consideration amongst policy makers during the Cold War period, it was then the United States which was largely seen to “release”, implement and support this policy in Afghanistan in the 1980’s.

In conclusion, it needs to be emphasised that as the provenance of this “Islam” strategy pre-dates the Cold War and even the emergence of the United States as a superpower, there is every reason to believe that it will also outlive a perceived declining United States. We can now see this in Libya where NATO has worked in conjunction with Libyan Islamists to overthrow the Gadhaffi regime. [28]

The inside job of 9/11 was not some fiendishly clever plot by Cheney and a crack team of explosive experts and false flag operatives. It was the net result of decades and decades of colonial rule and the thirst for resources by Western citizens weened on suburban living, gas-guzzling automobiles, fast food, and industrial age values. Much energy and time is wasted on chasing phantom villains, while the real problems pile up around our make-believe world. Looking into history as well as into the mirror might be more productive than a crusade to bring imaginative boogeymen to justice.

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Overpopulated by Homo Colossus

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Pollution

≈ 118 Comments

Tags

Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Derrick Jensen, Environmental Collapse, Gross Inequality, Overconsumption, Overpopulation, Poverty, Social Unrest, Wage Slave, William Catton

Snap 2014-04-01 at 21.56.52 Do citizens of industrialized, consumerist nations have the moral authority to lecture the world about overpopulation, singling it out as the root of all the world’s problems? William Catton coined the term Homo colossus to describe those living in the industrialized world whose consumption of resources is disproportionately greater than those in the so-called undeveloped world:

Snap 2014-04-20 at 11.42.06 In his book Endgame, Derrick Jensen points out that the argument of overpopulation becomes rather meaningless unless it is framed within the context of consumption levels:

Snap 2014-04-20 at 09.24.25 If we take a look at who is actually pushing the environment to collapse according to their consumption levels, it becomes clear by the numbers that the real planet destroyers are not the teeming masses of the Third World, but industrial civilization’s energy gluttons driving their SUV’s, checking their stock portfolios on the internet, and wagging their finger at the huddled masses who have been corralled into megacities because globalization wiped out their indigenous means of subsistence:

consumption-inequality-2005-pie

consumption-inequality-2005-bar

…What is immediately apparent from Chart 1[above] is that the 10 percent of the world’s population with the highest income, some 700 million people, are responsible for the overwhelmingly majority of the problem. It should be kept in mind that this is not just an issue of the rich countries. Very wealthy people live in almost all countries of the world—the wealthiest person in the world is Mexican, and there are more Asians than North Americans with net worth over $100 million. When looked at from a global perspective, the poor become essentially irrelevant to the problem of resource use and pollution. The poorest 40 percent of people on Earth are estimated to consume less than 5 percent of natural resources. The poorest 20 percent, about 1.4 billion people, use less than 2 percent of natural resources. If somehow the poorest billion people disappeared tomorrow, it would have a barely noticeable effect on global natural resource use and pollution. (It is the poor countries, with high population growth, that have low per capita greenhouse gas emissions.22) However, resource use and pollution could be cut in half if the richest 700 million lived at an average global standard of living.

Thus, we are forced to conclude that when considering global resource use and environmental degradation there really is a “population problem.” But it is not too many people—and certainly not too many poor people—but rather too many rich people living too “high on the hog” and consuming too much. Thus birth control programs in poor countries or other means to lower the population in these regions will do nothing to help deal with the great problems of global resource use and environmental destruction… – link

By far, the wealthy have the world’s largest environmental footprint :

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the carbon footprint of the top quintile is over three times that of the bottom. Even in relatively egalitarian Canada, the top income decile has a mobility footprint nine times that of the lowest, a consumer goods footprint four times greater, and an overall ecological footprint two-and-a-half times larger. Air travel is frequently pegged as one of the most rapidly growing sources of carbon emissions, but it’s not simply because budget airlines have “democratized the skies”–rather, flying has truly exploded among the hyper-mobile affluent. Thus in Western Europe, the transportation footprint of the top income earners is 250 percent of that of the poor. And global carbon emissions are particularly uneven: the top five hundred million people by income, comprising about 8 percent of global population, are responsible for 50 percent of all emissions. It’s a truly global elite, with high emitters present in all countries of the world.

In the post Earth to Humans: “Get Off Your Merry-Go-Round Ride to Extinction”, I quoted a well-reasoned article by Devon G. Peña who explained the self-serving and hypocritical stance taken by the capitalist industrialized nations regarding the issue of overpopulation. The root causes driving mankind to extinction are completely sidestepped:

…In climate change debates, overpopulation arguments serve to delay making structural changes in North and South away from the extraction and use of fossil fuels; to explain the failure of carbon markets to tackle the problem; to justify increased and multiple interventions in the countries deemed to hold the surplus people; and to excuse those interventions when they cause further environmental degradation, migration or conflict.

As such, population theory is far more than a theory or a principle. It is above all a political strategy that obscures the relationships of power between different groups in societies, whether these be local, national, global, while at the same time justifying those political relationships that allow certain groups to dominate others structurally, be they men over women, property owners over commoners, or ‘us’ over ‘them’. The “too many” are hardly ever the speakers, they are always the Other.

This partially explains why those considered to be surplus are not those who profit from continued fossil fuel extraction but those most harmed by it and by climate change…

As was shown in the post The Biophysics of Civilization, Money = Energy, and the Inevitability of Collapse, GDP and money are tied to energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Climate change is the greatest threat to humanity and our economic model and profligate way of life are on a collision course with catastrophe. Realistic solutions require dealing with the root of the problem, not the symptoms. Geoengineering, carbon trading schemes, and GMO’s are technocapitalist solutions to climate change. Focusing on overpopulaion ignores the socio-economic system behind all the exploitation and destruction.

…It is not surprising, however, that a worsening climate situation is often attributed not to continued fossil fuel extraction but to too many people. Whenever global environmental crises, Third World poverty or world hunger are at issue, whenever conflict, migration or economic growth are discussed, economists, demographers, planners, corporate financiers and political pundits (at least in the North) frequently invoke overpopulation.

Over 200 years ago, at a time of immense social, political and economic upheavals and deprivation in England triggered by the enclosure of common lands and forests on which peasant livelihoods depended, free market economist Thomas Malthus wrote a story about how nature and humans interact. The punch line was his mathematical analogy for the disparity between human and food increases. Harnessing politics to mathematics, he provided a spuriously neutral set of arguments for promoting a new political correctness – one that denied the shared rights of everyone to subsistence, sanctioning instead the rights of the “deserving” over the “undeserving”, with the market as arbiter of entitlements. The poor were poor because they lacked restraint and discipline, not because of privatisation. This is the essence of the overpopulation argument.

Today, a range of industries use the same argument to colonise the future for their particular interests and to privatise commonally-held goods. In agriculture, for instance, the talk is of extra mouths in the South causing global famine — unless biotechnology companies have the right to patent and genetically-engineer seeds. With respect to water, growing numbers of thirsty slum dwellers are held to threaten water wars — unless water resources are handed over to private sector water companies. And in climate, the talk is of teeming Chinese and Indians causing whole cities to be lost to flooding through their greenhouse gas emissions — unless polluting companies are granted property rights in the atmosphere through carbon-trading schemes and carbon offsets. These are the tools of the main official approach to the climate crisis that aims to build a global carbon market worth trillions of dollars.

Two centuries ago, Malthus was compelled to admit that his mathematical and geometric series of increases in food and humans were not observable in any society. He acknowledged that his “power of number” was just an image — an admission demographers have since confirmed. And for over 200 years, his theory and arguments — that it is the number of people that cause resource scarcity — have been refuted endlessly by demonstrations that any problem attributed to human numbers can more convincingly be explained by social inequality, or that the statistical correlation is ambiguous. Malthus’s greatest achievement was in fact to obscure the roots of poverty, inequality and environmental deterioration. The “war-room” mentality generated by predictions of scarcity-driven apocalypse has always diverted attention away from the awkward social and environmental history of discredited policies and projects – a more important focus of study.

Frequently left out of discussions about tackling malnutrition, hunger, starvation and famine, for instance, are the maldistribution of the world’s food supplies, skewed access to land, trade policies, the hazards of devoting land to agrofuel or carbon offset production, unequal access to money to buy food, and commodity speculation.

If over one billion people do not have access to safe drinking water, it is because water, like food, flows to those with the most bargaining power: industry and bigger farmers first, richer consumers second, and the poor last, whose water is polluted by industrial effluent, exported in foodstuffs or poured down the drain through others’ wasteful consumption… – link

And of course we can always wash our hands of everything by saying humans, driven by base biological urges, are inherently aggressive, selfish, and hierarchical by nature. We can blame our fossil fuel consumption on the optimal foraging theory and the lethal mutation of higher intelligence. We can excuse our self-destructive behavior on account of evolutionary blind spots such as faulty human brain circuitry with its numerous cognitive biases and inability to perceive long-term threats like climate change. We can say that “complex global human systems” are beyond anyone’s control and therefore cannot be altered or stopped. In other words, we can rationalize inaction and put forth many reasons for why we are helpless as our manmade economic system speeds toward the cliff, but as the masses see the system for what it really is, the facade becomes harder and harder to maintain. The mantra of business-as-usual is becoming a curse for most, and if continued on for much longer will most certainly be a death sentence for all.

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No Better than Primordial Bacteria?

30 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Ecological Overshoot, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 76 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Capitalism, Carbon Man, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Consumerism, Cyanobacteria, Ecological Overshoot, Empire, Environmental Collapse, Evolutionary Dead End, Extinction of Man, Mass Die Off, Peak Oil

Asteroid Earth Falling Meteor Planet Space World

The detritus of distant planets hurdled through the darkness of space on a one-way collision course with a young, cloudless planet devoid of life. Unceremoniously crashing into this planet’s surface, these rocks from the heavens carried a gift –amino acids, the seeds of life. Anaerobic microorganisms soon emerged in the greenish-red, anoxic oceans of the planet. For the longest time these primitive life forms thrived in the ocean depths, the only place safe from the deadly ultraviolet radiation of that planet’s sun. But then by some misfortune of the cosmos, their reign abruptly ended as an oxygen-producing bacteria (later to be known as the cyanobacteria) created the planet’s first great extinction event by wiping out the anaerobic life forms. You see, free oxygen happened to be toxic to these anaerobic organisms and, subsequently, photosynthetic organisms took their place, pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and filling it with oxygen which would eventually allow life to expand onto newly formed continents.

26.00

The planet fluctuated between pulses of glaciation and warming as the tug-of-war between fire and ice raged for aeons. Volcanos erupted, the atmosphere warmed, and oceans grew to swallow up land, only to slowly recede back again as water became locked up in glaciers. During this volatile time, the chemistry of the oceans changed from an anoxic environment rich in hydrogen sulfide to one in which oxygen penetrated its deepest waters. The stage had finally been set for multicellular animals to evolve from this rich aquatic oasis, and life slowly crept onto land from its watery cradle. Complex organisms of all shape and size sprang up over time to walk, swim, and fly, but the planet’s restive climatic system would, on occasion, still open its jaws to swallow up nearly all plant and beast across the globe. Continents collided with each other, pushing the planet’s crust upward into mountain ridges. Ocean and air currents reconfigured their paths, and ice age cycles came and went.

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After nearly 4.5 billion years of planetary evolution there stood upright a creature whose cleverness and adaptability far surpassed any living thing that had ever existed. Its kind lived and hunted in groups using tools to catch and kill from a distance, and wherever it roamed, waves of extinct species were left in its wake. The success of the tribe expanded and so did its numbers, spreading from continent to continent wherever it could get a foothold. Its tools became more sophisticated and it learned to cultivate food in one area rather than nomadically searching for it. Societies with sophisticated social structures and cultures developed within these fixed settlements, and from them grew empires with armies which fought with one another for resources and slaves. These civilizations had their own growth and decay timeline, fading into ruins after becoming overly complex and corrupt while overshooting their ecological threshold. But from the ashes of one would always arise the next to build upon the collective knowledge of the species.

2001 Ape with iphone.jpg

It would be the compressed dead matter of ancient life that would truly propel this species to heady heights of technological and material wealth. The steel-and-concrete of megacities rose up to the sky and millions flocked to them to work, live, and die in their cold geometry. A constant barrage of digital lights, pictures, and slogans kept the masses beguiled by illusionary riches. The city was a labyrinth of dead ends and a house of mirrors, but the minions were told that if only they stayed in the game and ran a bit harder, they could reach that ‘dangling carrot’. After millenia of evolution, the one species at the top of the food chain, a.k.a. carbon man, was now ensnared by its own intricate web of myths and outright lies that it had spun for itself. Unable to see, speak or hear the truth, this oddity of nature was quickly losing ground to reality and on the fast track to joining all those other living things it had pushed over the cliff of extinction. For all carbon man’s cunning and ingenuity, his actions and behavior were much worse than that of the primordial cyanobacteria mentioned earlier in this planet’s history. This time the deadly pollutant from a single organism’s activities that would cause the Final Great Extinction Event was not O2, but rather CO2.

Snap 2014-03-19 at 13.23.23

Carbon man’s modern set of living arrangements known as capitalist industrial civilization was not, in all reality, taking its passengers down a road of enlightenment and progress, but down an ever-darkening path of barbarity and death. All its vainglorious achievements and techtopian visions of the future were but hot air from a species drowning in its own propaganda and toxic waste as it raced towards an evolutionary dead-end. For if the species were able to recognize and acknowledge that industrial civilization’s own waste was creating its very demise while at the same time being powerless to do anything about it, then the end result for this hubristic species would be no different from that of the unthinking and rudimentary bacteria of the planet’s first life forms.

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Who really pulls the strings?:

The megawealthy and Washington have become so symbiotic as to be a single entity. The bought-and-paid politicians sitting in Washington are simply the marionettes of the corporations and financial elite who are dictating public policy and regulations.

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"What we have, in what passes for US democracy in 2012, is a kabuki play that Cicero put to papyrus 1948 years earlier. All historical empires and war aggressors have used propaganda to claim their looting and police states were necessary and helpful to the 99%. Instead, a sorrowful history tells us they were almost always for the sole benefit of the 1%." - Albert Bates

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  • Moving Interruptus, and Why Hospitals Suck July 1, 2019
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  • How Many Damn Fucking Times Do I Have to Explain This? May 15, 2019
  • So Close, Yet So Far April 7, 2019

RSS Arundhati Roy

  • Modi's brutal treatment of Kashmir exposes his tactics – and their flaws | Arundhati Roy August 5, 2020
  • Arundhati Roy extract: 'The backlash came in police cases, court appearances and even jail' May 31, 2019

RSS Arundhati Roy Says

  • A perfect day for democracy February 9, 2013
  • Arundhati Roy speaks about the issue of rape in India December 22, 2012
  • We Call This Progress December 17, 2012

RSS ASPO – USA

  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 13 April 2020 April 13, 2020
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 6 April 2020 April 6, 2020
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 30 March 2020 March 30, 2020
  • Peak-Oil.org is now The Energy Bulletin March 24, 2020
  • Peak Oil Review – 23 March 2020 March 23, 2020
  • Peak Oil Review – 16 March 2020 March 16, 2020
  • Peak Oil Review – 9 March 2020 March 9, 2020
  • Peak Oil Review – 2 March 2020 March 3, 2020
  • Peak Oil Review – 24 February 2020 February 24, 2020
  • Peak Oil Review – 17 February 2020 February 18, 2020

RSS Avedon’s Sideshow

  • There was a stone-cold pack of lies January 19, 2021
  • I dropped by to pick up a reason January 4, 2021
  • I have no reason to be over-optimistic December 20, 2020

RSS Bad Astronomy

  • Why Biden Thinks McConnell Could Join His War on Malarkey
  • My Husband Has Declared Our Favorite “Adult” Genre Is Now Off-Limits
  • The Nonsensical Republican Argument for Dismissing Trump’s Impeachment

RSS Barbara Ehrenreich

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RSS BBC: Science & Environment

  • UK government backs birth control for grey squirrels January 26, 2021
  • Climate: Government postpones Environment Bill again January 26, 2021
  • Scientists address myths over large-scale tree planting January 26, 2021

RSS Big Picture Agriculture

  • How to Stay Informed About Agriculture, Food, and Farming Issues October 15, 2019
  • Dr. Walter Falcon's 2019 Iowa Farm Report September 11, 2019
  • Agriculture Reading Picks October 31, 2018
  • The Merits of Amaranth October 30, 2018
  • Global Food and Agriculture Photos October 28, 2018 October 28, 2018

RSS Bill Moyers

  • The GOP at the Crossroads January 26, 2021
  • Best Rural Reporting from ‘In These Times’ January 26, 2021
  • In These Times January 26, 2021

RSS Bit Tooth Energy

  • Waterjetting 37e - Using Cavitation to disintegrate rock November 18, 2015
  • Waterjetting 37d - Underground Drilling with Waterjets November 16, 2015
  • Waterjetting 37c - A Drilling Diversion October 14, 2015

RSS Bizarro Blog

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RSS Brane Space

  • Discovery Of New Magnetar Shows Connection To Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) January 26, 2021
  • Looking Again At Diophantine Equations January 25, 2021

RSS Brave New World

  • A Year in Kazakhstan: Some General Observations October 25, 2020
  • ‘Dirilis Ertugrul’ — A History We’ve Forgotten? August 15, 2020
  • Almaty, Kazakhstan: City of Tourists and Mountains November 18, 2019
  • Nur-Sultan City (Astana): A Young and Futuristic City July 28, 2019

RSS Breaking the Set

  • Abby Martin Breaks the Set One Last Time February 28, 2015
  • Never Stop Breaking the Set! February 28, 2015
  • Cuba Part III: The Evolution of Revolution February 27, 2015
  • Cuba Part II: Ebola Solidarity & Castro’s Daughter on Gay Rights February 26, 2015
  • Why Are Americans Getting Their Medical Degrees in Cuba? February 26, 2015

RSS Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

  • Politics, race, and religion: Pandemic misinformation courses through the Southeast Asian internet January 25, 2021
  • Turn back the Clock: The nuclear ban treaty is entering into force January 22, 2021
  • The responsibility to disarm and the nuclear ban treaty January 22, 2021

RSS Business Insider

  • Private equity investment means funding firms of great promise that don't trade on public stock exchanges January 26, 2021
  • The best space heaters in 2021 January 26, 2021
  • White House official calls Trump administration's rhetoric on race 'dangerous' as Biden halts DOJ contracts with private prisons January 26, 2021
  • DC National Guard commander says the Pentagon took away authority to send in a quick reaction force to respond to Capitol riots January 26, 2021
  • An ex-hedge fund quant researcher whose firm uses AI to pick stocks breaks down how her fast-moving strategy works - and shares why it's superior in chaotic market environments January 26, 2021
  • People are reporting problems using major web services as Verizon Fios experiences outages January 26, 2021
  • Senate confirms Antony Blinken as Biden's secretary of state January 26, 2021
  • Top Democrats introduce a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2025, raising pay for 32 million Americans January 26, 2021
  • Trump activist Brandon Straka was charged over the Capitol riot after the FBI noticed him posting video of himself there, prosecutors say January 26, 2021
  • US EV companies rally after Biden announces electric fleet plans for the federal government January 26, 2021

RSS C-Realm

  • Automation and SJWs: A Conversation with James Howard Kunstler February 12, 2016
  • It's official. The Age of Limits gathering is on hiatus January 22, 2015
  • Three Conferences in Three Weeks June 13, 2014

RSS Cagle: Premium Cartoon News

  • Biden Amnesty Expands U.S. Labor Market January 25, 2021
  • Resisting Girl Scout Cookies’ Temptations Harder than Ever January 25, 2021
  • Exposing the Sins of the Technical Catholics January 25, 2021
  • Henry Arron January 24, 2021
  • Mutations Variants and Aberrations January 24, 2021
  • Be like Kamala January 24, 2021

RSS Cassandra’s Legacy

  • The Ghost Shirt Rituals: Preparing for the End of the World January 25, 2021
  • Requiem for Universities: A Historical Cycle is Over January 22, 2021
  • Eco-fascism and Overpopulation January 18, 2021
  • The Hydrogen-Based Economy: Is it Enough to Paint Something Blue to Make it Green? January 15, 2021
  • The Great Reset: The Western Path to Dekulakization January 11, 2021

RSS Censored News

  • Kumeyaay 'No Border Wall on Native Land' January 25, 2021
  • Standing Rock Thunderhawk Litigation Advances in Appeals Court against Morton County and TigerSwan January 25, 2021
  • Border Wall construction continuing defying Biden's executive order January 23, 2021

RSS Center For Biological Diversity

  • Federal Bill Proposes Fracking, Drilling Halt on California’s Central Coast, Bay Area January 25, 2021
  • Millions of Americans, Hundreds of Groups Support Halting Fossil Fuel Leasing, Permitting on Public Lands, Oceans January 25, 2021
  • Lawsuit Challenges Trump Administration Review of Massive Arizona Copper Mine That Would Destroy Sacred Oak Flat January 25, 2021

RSS Center for Investigative Journalism

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RSS Center for Economic & Policy Research

  • Politicians Have Lied about Social Security. The US Must Elect Someone Who'll Fight for It February 3, 2020
  • Joe Biden and Social Security January 27, 2020
  • The Issue Dividing Democratic Candidates Is Hidden in Plain Sight January 27, 2020
  • Reducing the Health-Care Tax January 14, 2020

RSS Charles Eisenstein’s Blog

  • Entwicklung im Zeitalter der Ökologie October 30, 2018
  • Das Zeitalter, in dem wir einander brauchen November 20, 2017

RSS Chomsky

  • The Kind of Anarchism I Believe in, and What's Wrong with Libertarians June 9, 2013
  • Upcoming speaking event in Boston with Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, and Jeremy Scahill April 19, 2013

RSS Chris Hedges

  • Imagining A New World on the Other Side of the Pandemic March 20, 2020

RSS Class Warfare Blog

  • Bemoaning/Lauding the Obvious January 25, 2021
  • Astrology is the Old Homeopathy January 25, 2021

RSS Cliff Schecter

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RSS Climate and Capitalism

  • ‘The health of the people should be the supreme law’ January 26, 2021
  • Crisis in the Amazon: A Planetary Challenge January 24, 2021
  • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, Jan. 2021 January 20, 2021
  • Bidenfreude: Covid-19 in Post-Trump U.S. January 16, 2021
  • Upper Ocean Temperatures Set a New High Record in 2020 January 14, 2021
  • Amber Waves: A Biography of Wheat January 13, 2021

RSS Climate Central

  • The Carbon Skyscraper
  • Miami Beach’s Housing Crisis Worsened By Climate Change
  • Viviendas asequibles en riesgo de inundaciones costeras
  • Barely Above Water

RSS Climate Change: The Next Generation

  • Amy Westerfelt: The Reason COVID-19 and Climate Seem So Similar: Disinformation April 27, 2020
  • Bill McKibben's response to Michael Moore's Planet of the Humans April 24, 2020
  • WaPo: The Congo rain forest is losing ability to absorb carbon dioxide. That’s bad for climate change March 8, 2020

RSS Climate Citizen

  • The Australia Clause and Kyoto Carryover Credits demystified December 12, 2020
  • 5 Year Fossil Awards - the Paris Agreement Five years on and Australia December 12, 2020
  • DELWP fails consumer choice on electricity plans and greenhouse gas emissions September 25, 2020

RSS Climate Code Red

  • Net-zero emissions by 2050: Leadership or climate colonialism? November 2, 2020
  • What must climate and energy policy really achieve? It's time for a ... October 12, 2020
  • Surviving the age of extreme heat October 9, 2020

RSS Climate Connections

  • Climate Connections Update February 5, 2015
  • CIC’s environmental and social justice photography contest open for entries January 9, 2015
  • FBI Harassing Activists in Pacific Northwest January 7, 2015

RSS Climate Denial Crock of the Week

  • The Greta Effect: It’s Real January 26, 2021
  • Beyond Meat’s Deal with Pepsico Rewards “Visionaries” January 26, 2021
  • Biggest Investment House: Business Needs to Act on Climate or Governments Will January 26, 2021

RSS Climate Progress

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RSS Climate Snapshot

  • "Carbon tsunami" lead by Enbridge Northern Gateway takes aim at BC June 18, 2014
  • BC's tar sands? Thirteen proposed LNG projects equivalent to 13 times current BC emissions June 9, 2014
  • Car Carbon series: cool new animation, plus the jaw-dropping impact it left out May 13, 2014
  • Climate change fuels both California's record drought and "polar vortex" storms May 6, 2014

RSS ClimateSight

  • Talking, typing, and the social model of disability July 22, 2020
  • We need your help! Share your views on climate change with us. October 21, 2019
  • Ice sheet melting: it’s not just about sea level rise September 23, 2019

RSS Club Orlov

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RSS ClusterFuck Nation

  • Flying Blind January 25, 2021
  • Rough Ridin’ with Biden January 22, 2021

RSS Cocktailhag – FDL

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RSS Colin Tudge

  • Let's not bet the farm | Colin Tudge April 3, 2013
  • Why the world needs a renaissance of small farming | Colin Tudge September 18, 2012

RSS Common Dreams: News

  • More US Lawmakers Urged to Speak Out Against 'Vaccine Apartheid' for Palestinians January 26, 2021
  • NYC Pension Funds Set 'New Bar for Climate Finance Action' With Approval of $4 Billion Fossil Fuel Divestment January 26, 2021
  • As World Demands Peace and Aid for Yemen, Biden Told to 'End Every Aspect of This War' January 26, 2021
  • Majority in US Want Senate to Convict Trump, Bar Him From Holding Office Ever Again: Poll January 26, 2021
  • 'Incredible': Schumer Says Biden Should Declare a Climate Emergency January 26, 2021

RSS Consortium News

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RSS Consumer Energy Report

  • Notice: New R-Squared Is rrapier.com June 3, 2017
  • Contact Information And Blog Migration Update May 19, 2017
  • Guest Post: Offshore Wind Power Cost Update April 20, 2017
  • The Peak Oil Estimate You Won’t Believe: A Tale Of Two Sigmoids March 28, 2017

RSS Corp Watch

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RSS CorrenteWire

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RSS CorrenteWire – Quick Hits

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RSS Counter Currents

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RSS CounterPunch

  • Jimmy Dore and The Boogaloo Boys Will SHUT DOWN The Black Vote | Tim Black January 26, 2021
  • The Political Fallout From the Capitol Hill Invasion May Prove More Significant Than 9/11 January 26, 2021
  • Three Wednesdays In January January 26, 2021
  • Greed in the Suites, From Walgreens to Walmart January 26, 2021
  • Rob Malley for Iran Envoy: A Test Case for Biden’s Commitment to Diplomacy January 26, 2021
  • When Biden’s “New” America Confronts the New China January 26, 2021
  • Masking Up Under Biden: the Perils of Tribalism, Bureaucracy and Lawsuits January 26, 2021
  • Political “Unity” is Neither Necessary Nor Desirable January 26, 2021
  • Haunting Melodies January 26, 2021
  • Convict Donald Trump and the Bipartisan System That Put Him Into Power January 26, 2021

RSS Crooked Timber

  • Freedom from the Market January 26, 2021
  • Branching points January 23, 2021
  • Another Covid book, this one about the digital context January 22, 2021
  • Benjamin Constant looks at Brexit January 21, 2021

RSS Crooks and Liars

  • Tucker Carlson Defends QAnon January 26, 2021
  • Facing $1.3B Lawsuit, Guiliani Doubles Down On Dominion Lies January 26, 2021
  • Nikki Haley Pleads For Trump: 'Give The Man A Break!' January 26, 2021
  • Harriet Tubman $20 Bill Only Delayed Due To Trump's Racism January 26, 2021

RSS Cryptome

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RSS Culture Change

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RSS Dahr Jamail

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RSS Daily Kos Comics

  • Cartoon: Freedom vs. freedom 2021 January 26, 2021
  • Cartoon: The censure January 25, 2021
  • Cartoon: Life in the liminalverse January 25, 2021
  • Cartoon: White House exit interviews January 22, 2021
  • Cartoon: Boredom is a treat January 22, 2021
  • Cartoon: Hijacked January 21, 2021

RSS Damn the Matrix

  • Unsustainable, that’s what we are…. January 16, 2021
  • Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future January 14, 2021

RSS Dan Hagen

  • What Superheroes Mean January 24, 2021
  • When the Unreal Seems More Real January 23, 2021

RSS Dangerous Intersection

  • My Cell Phone Tells me the Sky is Falling Down January 25, 2021
  • Today’s Visit to the St. Louis Zoo January 25, 2021
  • Take That First Step January 24, 2021

RSS Dark Ages America

  • A Nation Going Nowhere January 23, 2021
  • Banana Republic January 14, 2021
  • Bad Joke January 7, 2021
  • 413 December 28, 2020

RSS David Bollier

  • Saving Farmland, Supporting Young Farmers January 1, 2021
  • Beating the Bounds: Inside the Struggle to Make Open Source Seed December 10, 2020
  • Dave Jacke on Ecological Design and Abundance November 30, 2020

RSS David Cay Johnston (Link – National Memo)

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RSS David Cay Johnston (Link – Tax Analysts)

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RSS David Harvey

  • Video: We Need a Collective Response to the Collective Dilemmas of Our Time November 13, 2020
  • New Book: The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles October 20, 2020
  • Video: David Harvey’s Recommended Marxian Reads September 23, 2020

RSS David Hilfiker

  • Welcome August 4, 2011

RSS David McNally

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RSS David Roberts

  • Seattle’s unbelievable transportation megaproject fustercluck June 5, 2015
  • Please support Grist April 10, 2015
  • There’s an emerging right-wing divide on climate denial. Here’s what it means (and doesn’t) April 8, 2015

RSS Death by Car: Capitalism’s Drive to Carmageddon

  • Automakers Now Openly Admitting to Haloware Ops January 14, 2021
  • Museum of Impending Carmageddon: Piece #2 January 7, 2021
  • Not-So-Robo Cars January 6, 2021
  • To Laugh or to Cry? December 29, 2020
  • On Wealth and Perception December 20, 2020

RSS Decline of the Empire

  • Fascism Marches On — Episode 1
  • There Is No Middle

RSS Deep Green Resistence News Service

  • Lessons from a Mangy Coyote: Why Anticoagulant Rodenticides Must Go January 26, 2021
  • Corporate Colonialism and Africa’s Date with Disaster January 25, 2021
  • News Alert: Support Needed To Oppose Dam Accross Zambezi River January 24, 2021
  • Environmental Racism, Green Colonialism, and The Renewable Energies Revolution January 23, 2021

RSS Deepak Tripathi’s Diary

  • UK’s Brexit Maze October 29, 2019
  • Book Review: Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy August 23, 2019

RSS Democratic Underground

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RSS Democratic Underground – Breaking News

  • Pfizer to Deliver U.S. Vaccine Doses Faster Than Expected January 26, 2021
  • CDC finds with precautions in place, scant spread of coronavirus in schools January 26, 2021
  • Rand Paul to force test vote to gauge Republican support for Trump impeachment trial January 26, 2021
  • Senate confirms Blinken as secretary of state in the Biden administration January 26, 2021
  • Indian court rules that groping without removing clothes is not sexual assault January 26, 2021
  • Big Internet outages hit the East Coast, causing issues for Verizon, Zoom, Slack, Gmail January 26, 2021
  • Poll: President Biden's first approval rating 63 percent January 26, 2021
  • Capitol Police chief apologizes for security failures during the assault January 26, 2021
  • Pentagon restricted commander of D.C. Guard ahead of Capitol riot January 26, 2021
  • Trump Presidency May Have 'Permanently Damaged' Democracy, Says EU Chief January 26, 2021

RSS Democratic Underground – Good Reads

  • GOP operatives are sending out clear signals about the next attack on democracy January 26, 2021
  • America's national healing depends on Donald Trump facing real punishment January 26, 2021
  • Former Voice of America overseer hired two law firms to $4 million no-bid contracts. January 26, 2021
  • 50 things that are better already January 26, 2021
  • Moderna: Lab study confirms its COVID-19 vaccine still protects against new variants January 26, 2021
  • The Global Radical Rt Celebrated When Extremists Breached The U.S. Capitol, Drew Lessons From It January 26, 2021
  • Opinion: Why the Trump impeachment trial is crucial January 26, 2021
  • 'Wealth increase of 10 men during pandemic could buy vaccines for all' January 25, 2021
  • 'Josh Hawley, President 2024': School Yearbook Indicates Long- Held Ambition of Missouri Republican January 25, 2021
  • ICE Finally Frees All Women Who Could Be Witnesses In Case Around GYN Accused of Abuses January 25, 2021

RSS Democracy Now

  • Inequality Virus: Pandemic Widens Wealth Gap for Women, People of Color as Billionaire Profits Soar January 26, 2021
  • Biden Is Reversing Trump's Anti-Immigrant Acts. Will He Repair Harm from Deportations Under Obama? January 26, 2021
  • Biden Reverses Trump's Trans Military Ban, But Assault on Rights Continues at State Level January 26, 2021
  • Headlines for January 26, 2021 January 26, 2021
  • "They Came Away with Their Dignity": Striking NYC Workers Win Wage Hike After Surge of Solidarity January 25, 2021
  • Rev. William Barber Says Biden Admin Must Not Sacrifice Racial & Economic Justice for False Unity January 25, 2021
  • End the Filibuster: Calls Grow to Retire Relic of Slavery & Jim Crow to Make Senate More Democratic January 25, 2021
  • Headlines for January 25, 2021 January 25, 2021
  • Joe Biden Canceled Keystone XL. Indigenous Leaders Demand the Same for the Dakota Access Pipeline January 22, 2021
  • As Pandemic Rips Through Indian Country, Indigenous Communities Work to Save Elders & Languages January 22, 2021

RSS Derrick Jensen

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RSS Desdemona Despair

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RSS Desertification

  • Team to probe Gansu deforestation January 26, 2021
  • Multi-Billion USD Funding Announced for Sahel Great Green Wall Project January 26, 2021
  • Student strives to stave off spread of sand January 26, 2021
  • Chinese environmentalists up in arms over forest destroyed to make way for vineyards January 26, 2021
  • Burkina Faso: UN dispatches experts to assess contamination in wake of floods January 26, 2021

RSS deSmog Blog

  • UK Climate Diplomacy Staff Cut Again as Post-Brexit Links to Trump and US Deniers Strengthen November 24, 2016
  • Scenes from a Locked-Down Washington D.C. as Biden Takes the Reins January 22, 2021
  • Cheaper Solar Power Means Low-income Families Can Also Benefit — With the Right Kind of Help January 21, 2021

RSS Digbys Blog

  • Untitled January 12, 2020
  • They can save the world by @BloggersRUs January 12, 2020
  • Just drifting: R.I.P. Buck Henry By Dennis Hartley January 12, 2020
  • It looks like he wants to take Iraq's oil money January 12, 2020
  • Untitled January 11, 2020
  • Let's not forget who worked with Suleimani's IRGC January 11, 2020

RSS Disinfo – Ecology

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RSS Dispatches from the Underclass

  • Left Bitches w/ Glenn Greenwald teaser: Welcome Home, War On Terror! January 25, 2021
  • US Foreign Policy: Hawkish No Matter Who’s In Charge January 25, 2021
  • Trumpism Will Grow If Dems Don’t Address Root Causes January 21, 2021
  • Censorship will backfire on the left, it already has January 15, 2021
  • US adds Houthis to terrorist list, further starving Yemen January 15, 2021

RSS Dissent Magazine

  • Emotions on Strike January 25, 2021
  • Belabored: Stopping the Spread of Prop 22 January 22, 2021
  • Los Deliveristas Unidos Demand Justice January 21, 2021
  • The Not-So-Strange Death of Right Populism January 20, 2021

RSS Dissident Voice

  • Rob Malley for Iran Envoy: A Test Case for Biden’s Commitment to Diplomacy January 26, 2021
  • That’s All, Folks! January 26, 2021
  • Farmers’ Protests Reflect Existential Crisis of Indian Agriculture     January 25, 2021
  • A Classic Example of Biased Political Reporting January 24, 2021
  • Fast Culture, Slow Culture January 24, 2021
  • The “humanitarian” left still ignores the lessons of Iraq, Libya and Syria to cheer on more war January 24, 2021
  • Complex Life Threatened January 23, 2021
  • Immortal Wins: India Defeats Fortress Australia January 23, 2021

RSS Do the Math

  • Eclipsed, Lately September 11, 2017

RSS Dollars & Sense Blog

  • January/February 2021 Issue January 1, 2021
  • Polly Cleveland on Monopoly on The Analysis December 2, 2020
  • Our November/December Issue Is Out! November 16, 2020
  • Helen Lachs Ginsburg, Jobs-for-All Scholar-Activist November 10, 2020
  • Review of “Liberty from All Masters,” by Barry C. Lynn October 30, 2020
  • New Issue Drops! September 26, 2020

RSS Doug Stanhope

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RSS Douglas Rushkoff

  • Team Human Serialization #37 & 38: The Damage We Do to Ourselves When We Try to Function Like Computers May 29, 2020
  • Team Human Serialization #36: On the Internet of Things, We People Are the Things May 29, 2020
  • Team Human ep. 157: Tyson Yunkaporta “Everything Indigenous is Human” May 27, 2020

RSS Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

  • The War on Covid Is A War On The People January 26, 2021
  • If you don’t think the Western World is completely Insane, Read this January 25, 2021

RSS Dredd Blog

  • The Shape Shifters of Bullshitistan - 24 January 23, 2021
  • The Young Old Sea Level Change Hoax - 5 January 22, 2021
  • Appendix TsSlc January 22, 2021
  • The Young Old Sea Level Change Hoax - 4 January 21, 2021

RSS Ear to the Ground – Truth Dig

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RSS Early Warning

  • New York Not Close to Exiting Lockdown April 17, 2020
  • Is New York Containing Covid? April 8, 2020
  • New York vs Italy March 23, 2020

RSS Earth First

  • “UNC Dildo-Boy” accosts homophobic preacher, releases anti-technology declaration March 2, 2014
  • Subpoena caps bad week for fossil fuel March 2, 2014
  • Less Than 60 Hours Left to Support Indigenous Land Defenders! February 18, 2014

RSS Earth Observatory: Image of the Day, Natural Hazards, and News

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RSS Earth Observatory: Image of the Day

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RSS Earth Observatory: Natural Hazards

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RSS Earth Policy Institute Blog

  • Data Highlight - Wind Power Beats Nuclear Again in China
  • Data Highlight - Plastic Bag Bans or Fees Cover 49 Million Americans
  • Plan B Update - Fossil Fuel Development in the Arctic is a Bad Investment

RSS Ecocide Alert

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RSS Ecohuman World

  • Our mission November 23, 2016
  • Ecohumanist society and ecology November 23, 2016

RSS Eco-Shock News

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RSS Ecological Headstand

  • For the Abolition of the Wages System! June 18, 2015
  • The Incredible Shrinking Blog June 9, 2015
  • Keynes "hadn't got round to it" May 25, 2015
  • Napoleon Solow and the Phantom Mechanism May 20, 2015

RSS Ecological Sociology

  • Commons Enabling Infrastucture August 31, 2013
  • A Short History of Progress: Book Review August 26, 2013
  • Foucault, Power, Truth and Ecology August 14, 2013

RSS Ecologise

  • Charles Eisenstein: The Coronation May 16, 2020
  • Visakhapatnam gas leak accident: A preliminary modelling study May 15, 2020
  • The electric car must fail March 30, 2020
  • Economy and ecology are now in conflict; it’s time to integrate them with wisdom March 27, 2020
  • War, mismanagement and climate change: Iraq’s environment on the brink March 20, 2020
  • Big Farms make Big Flu: The deadly connection between industrial farming and pandemics March 17, 2020
  • The Songs of Trees: Stories From Nature’s Great Connectors March 13, 2020
  • Charles Hugh Smith: Could Covid-19 overwhelm us in the months ahead? March 10, 2020
  • Just like the economy, India’s forests too are thriving only on paper March 7, 2020
  • New Zealand’s ‘well-being budget’ and the unnecessary evil of economic growth March 4, 2020

RSS Economic Hardship Reporting Project

  • Utah Lawmaker’s Firm Squeezes Thousands From Renters Months After Evictions January 21, 2021
  • Alissa Quart Interviewed on NBCLX January 15, 2021
  • Housing Is a Right. During a Pandemic, It’s Also a Fight. January 13, 2021
  • Michael Apted Took The Very Long View January 12, 2021
  • How the United States Chose to Become a Country of Homelessness January 9, 2021
  • Foundations That Want to Support Local Journalism Should Take a Close Look at Alt Weeklies January 6, 2021

RSS Economic Undertow

  • Repost From 2015: Pied Piper of Dumb Money January 26, 2021
  • The Arc of the Moral Universe January 13, 2021
  • Meet the New Year, Same as the Old Year January 4, 2021

RSS EcoWorldView

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RSS Empire Burlesque

  • The Surrenderists: Dem Leaders Stand Down; No Consequences for Coup January 7, 2021
  • Unwrung Withers: No Downsides for Trumpists From Their Coup Push November 11, 2020

RSS Empirical Magazine

  • From the Empirical Archives: Genius or Folly? August 30, 2013
  • From the Empirical Archives: Nights Such as These August 29, 2013
  • From the Empirical Archives: Second Time Foster Child August 28, 2013

RSS EmptyWheel

  • Peter Strzok Subpoenas Trump’s Soccer Ball from Putin
  • A DOJ IG Investigation Is Insufficient to Investigate Trump’s Attempt to Get DOJ Help to Steal the Election
  • Some Key Gaps in the January 6 Story

RSS End of More

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RSS Energy Balance

  • Covid-19, Fracking and the Global Oil Supply. October 29, 2020
  • Solving the Plastic Problem: from Cradle to Grave, to Reincarnation. October 2, 2020
  • What Kind of a World do We Want? (...really?) August 16, 2020
  • Economic Recovery from Covid-19 and Climate Action: Twin Challenges. July 31, 2020
  • Will the Virus Go Away – “Post-Covid”, or Recalibration? July 21, 2020
  • Year 2020: Last Chance to Avoid Rebound into Carbon Chaos. June 23, 2020

RSS Environment & Food Justice

  • National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Statement on the Climate Crisis October 31, 2019
  • La Lucha por La Sierra | Scion of Texas Oil Barons Seeks to Overturn Historic Use Rights to the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant August 30, 2018
  • Biopiracy in Mexico | Foundation stealing wild beehives in Yucatán June 14, 2018

RSS Envisionation Blog

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RSS Extraenvironmentalist Blog and Podcasts

  • [ Episode #95 // Economy of Things ] January 28, 2017
  • [ Episode #94 // Rocking the Google Bus ] October 25, 2016
  • [ Episode #93 // Climate Agreements ] September 5, 2016

RSS ExtraEnvironmentalist’s Videos

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RSS ExtraGeographic

  • Brexit, empire and cultural dementia. David Andress demolishes lazy nationalism
    A leave voter at the Save Brexit Rally wants Brexit so that Britain can “get back to being a British Empire”.… Read more The post Brexit, empire and cultural dementia. David Andress demolishes lazy nationalism first appeared on Extra Geographic.
  • Brexit explained in three tweets
    Three recent tweets encapsulate the misinformation, corruption and mess of Brexit Britain. They’re a window into a peculiar time. The UK government’s Department for International Trade (DIT) “helps businesses export, drives inward and outward investment, negotiates market access and trade deals, and champions free trade”.… Read more The post Brexit explained […]
  • Ann Pettifor on Carillion: ‘a grand Ponzi scheme’
    In a recent interview Ann Pettifor, global financial analyst, spoke about the corrupted crony capitalism that led to the collapse of Carillion, a major Government contractor.… Read more The post Ann Pettifor on Carillion: ‘a grand Ponzi scheme’ first appeared on Extra Geographic.
  • James Joyce in summary: escape is a key theme in his work
    Throughout his life James Joyce attempted to escape – from war, religion, convention, narrative structure, language… “When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight.… Read more The post James Joyce in summary: escape is a key theme in his work first appeared on Extra Geographic.
  • Jeremy Clarkson buys an electric car: an optimistic vision of the UK’s EV future
    A nation’s stories play a large part in its future. Established ideas become conventional wisdom in social institutions. The institutions then draw on this wisdom when enacting public policy.… Read more The post Jeremy Clarkson buys an electric car: an optimistic vision of the UK’s EV future first appeared on Extra Geographic.

RSS Facts for Working People

  • The US Congress: Best Democracy Money Can Buy. January 26, 2021
  • Michael Roberts: Covid and fictitious capital January 25, 2021
  • Review: The Invention of the White Race and the political origins of White Supremacy January 22, 2021

RSS Fair: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

  • Factchecking NPR’s Attempted Takedown of Bernie Sanders February 18, 2020
  • Wired’s Gee-Whiz High-Tech Militarism August 7, 2019
  • NBC News Whitewashes Colombia’s Right-Wing President July 2, 2019

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RSS Farooque Chowdhury’s Diary

  • Road rage faces student spirit August 4, 2018
  • Fires within the Arctic Circle July 28, 2018
  • A Facebook post on quota mobilisation July 14, 2018

RSS Feasta

  • Statement on the US Rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement January 20, 2021
  • De-growth discussion 3: Inflation, Deflation or (probably) Stagflation January 19, 2021
  • Podcast: economic narratives and systems innovation December 31, 2020

RSS FireDogLake

  • Dissenter Weekly: Leak Prosecutions Against BLM Protesters, Police Whistleblower In Illinois July 11, 2020
  • US Government Plays Games With Reality Winner’s Life As Coronavirus Outbreak Is Confirmed At Carswell July 8, 2020
  • Beyond Prisons: Historian David Stein Reflects On Ascent Of Abolition July 8, 2020
  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘All Tomorrow Carry’ By Special Interest July 8, 2020

RSS Fish Out of Water

  • Polar Vortex breaking down now: Major Stratospheric Warming will impact weather all winter December 31, 2020
  • Arecibo Puerto Rico's Huge Radio Telescope Collapses December 1, 2020
  • Hurricane Iota Explodes to Category 5 Will Slam Central America Tonight November 16, 2020
  • I will not forget, but I will open my heart to the possibility of forgiveness November 7, 2020
  • Hurricane Eta, Cat 4, is rapidly intensifying will be catastrophic for Central America November 3, 2020
  • Unprecedented open water & ocean heat has triggered Siberian shelf "methane bomb" October 27, 2020

RSS Foreign Confidential

  • Chinese Virologist, MD, PhD, Says Coronavirus Made in Wuhan Lab September 15, 2020
  • Rebels and Spies: the [GREAT] Graphic Novels of Vittorio Giardino July 18, 2020
  • Deep in Red China ... July 6, 2020
  • Preview Video Comic Strip Hero Battles Totalitarian China July 5, 2020

RSS FracTracker

  • Fracking Waste in the Appalachian Basin – A Story Map January 15, 2021
  • Channels of Life: The Gulf Coast Buildout in Texas December 23, 2020
  • People and Production: Reducing Risk in California Extraction December 17, 2020

RSS George Monbiot (Alternet)

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RSS Get Real List: Chris Nelder

  • My new gig December 5, 2015
  • Announcing the Energy Transition Show October 14, 2015
  • Guest appearance on The Energy Gang podcast May 14, 2015

RSS Gil Smart

  • With Gil Smart on guns, the NRA January 19, 2015
  • Gil Smart right on development February 8, 2015
  • Gil Smart makes sense May 19, 2014
  • Right on, Gil Smart February 17, 2014

RSS Glen Ford – Black Agenda Report

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RSS Global Guerrillas

  • The Long Night is Coming January 4, 2019
  • Disruption, Drones, and Big Airports December 20, 2018

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RSS Global Research

  • The Virus of Mass Destruction January 26, 2021
  • Support “Fake Democracy” Abroad, If All Else Fails Resort to Violence January 26, 2021
  • Israel to Decide Fate of the JCPOA Nuclear Deal? January 26, 2021

RSS Global Research CA

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RSS Gonzalo Lira

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RSS Green is the New Red

  • Trump Supporter Promises Legislation to Label Protest as “Economic Terrorism” November 22, 2016
  • Violence against environmentalists is now at an all-time high July 8, 2016
  • “To Build a Fire”: New Split EP With “Old Lines” and Will Potter June 13, 2016
  • “It changes who you are—forever. What you do with that change is what defines who you are.” April 28, 2016
  • Exclusive: New Virtual Reality Investigation Goes Inside Factory Farms April 13, 2016
  • New Sticker — Animal Rights Activists Must “Join or Die” February 22, 2016
  • “Truth and Power” TV series features Will Potter on “eco-terrorism,” ag-gag laws, and investigative journalism February 15, 2016
  • This woman rowed straight into a hurricane. And you should too. February 11, 2016
  • 6 Lessons From How the FBI and Media Treat Militia Groups January 12, 2016
  • Here’s How One Activist Convinced the FBI to Leave Him Alone December 7, 2015

RSS Green on Huffington Post

  • State And Local Leaders Push Biden To Protect 30% Of U.S. Land, Waters By 2030 January 26, 2021
  • Tornado Hits Alabama City, Killing 1 And Damaging Homes And Businesses January 26, 2021
  • Brazil's Indigenous Leaders Sue President Jair Bolsonaro For Crimes Against Humanity January 23, 2021
  • How SUVs Won The Pandemic January 22, 2021
  • Climate Change Once Again Appears On White House Website January 22, 2021
  • Confused Penguin Joins The Wrong Group... Only To Be Rescued By A Penguin Pal January 22, 2021
  • Goodbye To 'No Bull Bison,' Trump Admin's Short-Lived, Very Dumb Twitter Account January 21, 2021
  • World Welcomes U.S. Return To Paris Climate Accord, Readies Wish List For Biden January 21, 2021

RSS Greenpeace Blogs

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RSS Greg Palast

  • Why were Capitol rioters allowed to leave a murder crime scene?Palast and Zach D. Roberts on Brian Ross Investigates January 21, 2021
  • Insider: White House was Warned March was IllegalTrump’s Call to March Broke Organizer's Promise to DC Police January 15, 2021

RSS Gregor Macdonald

  • Oil Fall December 31, 2018

RSS Grinning Planet

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RSS Grist

  • In a trash-filled pandemic, low-waste businesses are taking off January 26, 2021
  • The next big climate PR campaign: abolish the filibuster January 26, 2021
  • Climate change will destroy communities. Let’s help them move now. January 26, 2021
  • The unfinished business of Flint’s water crisis January 26, 2021

RSS Growth Busters

  • Shrinking Your Travel Footprint (podcast episode 52) December 28, 2020
  • Philosophy of Shrinking Footprints (podcast episode 51) December 26, 2020
  • Taking a Vacation from Carbon Emissions (podcast episode 50) October 27, 2020
  • Damn, It’s Earth Overshoot Day Already! (podcast episode 49) August 17, 2020

RSS Guernica Mag

  • How to Wash Your Hands in a War Zone January 26, 2021
  • Stitching and Writing on the Margin January 25, 2021
  • The Requirement of Adequacy January 22, 2021
  • Maurice Chammah: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty January 21, 2021

RSS Guy McPherson’s Blog

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RSS Health After Oil

  • Public Health’s Response to Decline: Loyalty to the 1% December 15, 2014

RSS Hot Topic: Global Warming and the Future of New Zealand

  • Postcards from La La Land #132: time warps and twaddle June 7, 2018
  • The final cut: crank paper on NZ temperature record gets its rebuttal – warming continues unabated May 2, 2018
  • Anthropogenic climate change is real: pithy post-punk anthem for the Trump generation December 9, 2017

RSS How to Save the World

  • Not So Extreme January 22, 2021
  • IFLS, the Sequel January 18, 2021
  • The Road Not Taken January 16, 2021

RSS I am Not a Number

  • The civil war in the LP was NEVER about antisemitism. November 20, 2020
  • English patriotism and the left – a political conundrum October 3, 2020
  • The new Reclaim Party and the ‘culture wars’ – the incoherence of our two party system and the failure of liberalism October 3, 2020

RSS I Cite

  • "Feudalism Lives on in the Delta" -- Ray Sprigle August 17, 2020
  • Critical Theory and Climate Change 2 April 2, 2020
  • Critical Theory and Climate Change 1 March 23, 2020
  • Untitled July 18, 2019
  • America's obsession with rooting out communism is making a comeback September 25, 2018

RSS Iamronen

  • Yoga Practice – Winter 2020/21 December 29, 2020
  • I Shakuhachi – December 25, 2020: Love’s Impurities December 25, 2020
  • I Shakuhachi – December 23, 2020: Slow Reach December 23, 2020
  • Mixing Paint December 21, 2020
  • I Shakuhachi – December 18, 2020: Calling Rita December 20, 2020

RSS Ian Welsh

  • Will Bill Gates And mRNA Vaccine Monopolies Be Responsible For Millions of Covid Deaths? January 26, 2021

RSS Idea Explorer

  • Habitat Loss November 9, 2020
  • Marginal Hope August 24, 2020
  • A Pandemic-Altered Future April 15, 2020
  • Bridging the Future March 31, 2020
  • Drop Ratios February 5, 2020

RSS Idea Explorer – Big Pic Explorer

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RSS Idea Explorer: Land of Conscience

  • Responsible Survival January 1, 2020
  • Every Day December 23, 2019
  • Memories of Value July 23, 2019

RSS If You Love This Planet – Helen Caldicott

  • Steven Starr, Bruce Gagnon and William Hartung at the Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction symposium April 18, 2017
  • Dr. Helen Caldicott, Ted Postol, Max Tegmark and Alan Robock at The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction symposium June 23, 2016
  • Dr. Caldicott’s October 2014 speech: The Ukraine Crisis, Is Nuclear Conflict Likely? February 17, 2015
  • Dr. Helen Caldicott interviewed by Bob Herbert about her latest book, “Loving This Planet” December 28, 2012

RSS Indybay Features

  • Fascist Coup Attempt Fails to Overthrow Presidential Election Results
  • Moms for Housing Rack Up Victories
  • Our Long National Nightmare Is Over
  • Rallies Readied for Possible Post-Election Electoral Emergency

RSS Indybay Newswire

  • Resistance against Agropoly
  • High-Level Climate Summit to Launch Action Agenda
  • Facebook escalates attack on socialist left
  • America's Post-Trump Reckoning
  • The end of Trumpism?

RSS Information Clearing House

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RSS Inside Left – The OFFICIAL Anti-Olympics Blog™

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RSS Institute for Public Accuracy

  • Groups Organizing Against Tom “Mr. Monsanto” Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture January 25, 2021
  • Calls for Biden to End the War on Yemen January 25, 2021
  • Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty Now in Force: What Does it Mean? January 22, 2021
  • Biden Continuing Trump’s Targeting of Venezuela January 21, 2021
  • Will Biden Continue Bombings? January 20, 2021
  • Leading Big Tech Lawyer May Head Biden Antitrust January 20, 2021

RSS International Debt Observatory

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RSS iWatch: Global Muckraking

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RSS Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer Blog

  • Five Things We Need to Know About the “Fiscal Cliff” December 10, 2012
  • Wasteful Pentagon Spending and Costly Wars Hurting Minnesota Communities November 6, 2012

RSS Jacobin

  • Chicago Teachers May Be on the Cusp of Another Strike January 26, 2021
  • The Meaning of January 6, 2021 January 26, 2021
  • There’s Really No Need to Compromise, Joe January 26, 2021
  • Red London in Tory Britain January 26, 2021
  • Bernie Sanders Gets It. We Should All Have Free Health Care During the Pandemic. January 25, 2021
  • Union-Bashing Is on the Menu at Tim Hortons January 25, 2021

RSS Jeremy Scahill

  • Biden Should End Espionage Act Prosecutions of Whistleblowers and Journalists January 21, 2021

RSS Jill Stein

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RSS John Cook Video Uploads

  • Climate misinformation: Will Happer on CO2 being plant food January 24, 2021
  • Climate misinformation: David Legates & Willie Soon on CO2 lag January 24, 2021
  • Climate misinformation: Marco Rubio on past climate change January 24, 2021
  • Climate misinformation: Rick Perry compares climate denial to Galileo January 24, 2021

RSS John Hively

  • When the Dust Clears…the Rich Have Been Redistributing $2.5 trillion Every Year for the Last Twenty-Five Years January 23, 2021
  • The Political Games of the Billionaires and Their Political Representatives December 19, 2020

RSS John Pilger

  • THE MOST LETHAL VIRUS IS NOT COVID. IT IS WAR.

RSS John Perkins

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RSS John W. Whitehead

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RSS John Zerzan: Anarchy Radio

  • Anarchy Radio 01 26 2021 January 26, 2021
  • Anarchy Radio 01 19 2021 January 19, 2021
  • Anarchy Radio 01 12 2021 January 12, 2021

RSS Jonathan Turley

  • Twitter Summons “The Birdwatchers” In Expanding Campaign Against “Misinformation” January 26, 2021
  • Impeachment Mania Hits Universities: Students Are Facing Trials Or Removals Over Political Views January 25, 2021
  • Do The Democrats Really Want Unity? January 25, 2021
  • Rhode Island Professor Denounces Science, Statistics, and Technology As “Inherently Racist” January 24, 2021

RSS Karl Grossman

  • I've switched from this site to my website -- www.karlgrossman.com -- for my blog. November 29, 2015
  • The End of Police Raids -- at Long Last -- on Gays of Fire Island July 1, 2015
  • "Fire Island Was Paradise,Truly Paradise" June 21, 2015
  • My First Big Story June 1, 2015
  • Disaster Waiting to Happen at Indian Point May 12, 2015

RSS Karl North Eco-Intelligence

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RSS Kate Ausburn

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RSS Keith Farnish

  • Uprooting Civilization (Part 2) May 7, 2014
  • Uprooting Civilization (Part 1) February 21, 2014
  • The Problem With…Conspiracy Theories January 7, 2014

RSS Knight Science Journalism – MIT

  • The Tracker Now Lives Here … November 1, 2015
  • A farewell post: Three reasons why good science writing is worth defending. January 6, 2015
  • Globe story on non-invasive prenatal testing offers murky argument. December 31, 2014
  • (UPDATED/2*) What Ho? A 2014 List of Lists of best, worst, or otherwisest in 2014 December 30, 2014
  • Cancer & poverty: When a reporter’s journey becomes part of the story. December 23, 2014

RSS Kulture Critic

  • Distraction, Deflection, Diremption July 25, 2020

RSS Kunstler Cast

  • John B. McLemore Email to JHK: Huffing gas fumes in shittown alabama June 1, 2017
  • Release: S-Town Podcast Prequel: KunstlerCast Ready for Binge Listening May 31, 2017
  • KunstlerCast: S-Town May 31, 2017
  • James Howard Kunstler on John B. McLemore of S-Town May 31, 2017
  • Transcript: KunstlerCast: S-Town May 31, 2017

RSS Kurt Kobb

  • The latest story of toxic deceit and delay: PFAS January 24, 2021

RSS Lack of Environment

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RSS Law and Disorder

  • Law and Disorder January 18, 2021 January 18, 2021
  • Law and Disorder January 11, 2020 January 10, 2021
  • Law and Disorder January 4, 2020 January 4, 2021

RSS Le Monde diplomatique – English edition

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RSS Le Monde diplomatique – Open Page

  • Toward politically engaged scholarship January 26, 2021
  • Africa's struggle for pharmaceuticals January 24, 2021
  • Biden dreams of rebuilding the international order January 24, 2021
  • Fake news: A false epidemic? January 20, 2021
  • The financiers who backed Brexit January 19, 2021

RSS Leaving Babylon

  • Even Iran is laughing at us November 9, 2020

RSS Lee Camp

  • Gov’t Secrets #26 – JFK Assassination Part 1 & New Fred Hampton Revelations January 26, 2021
  • MOC #35 – It’s Time To Say Goodbye January 25, 2021
  • MOC #34 – Free Assange & Other Actions For Right Now January 22, 2021
  • MOC #33 – Everything Wrong With Biden’s Inauguration Speech January 22, 2021
  • Gov’t Secrets No. 25 – Attack On Capitol Was Coordinated, & The U.S. Nazi Partnership In Ukraine January 20, 2021
  • New Senate Report Shows U.S. Funding Terrorist Orgs (Redacted Tonight) January 20, 2021

RSS Lee Fang

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RSS Leonardo Boff

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RSS Les Leopold

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RSS Life Itself

  • 2020, the Year the US Imploded, so Where is Hope? December 27, 2020
  • The best and worst of my US of A July 4, 2020
  • The little virus that could is not done with us, is it? May 29, 2020

RSS Limited, Inc.

  • In the beginning was the pun January 26, 2021
  • Vandalism and the souring of the world January 24, 2021
  • A blues for the rich girl - Karen Chamisso January 19, 2021

RSS Link TV – Earth Focus

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RSS Low-Tech Magazine

  • How and why I stopped buying new laptops December 20, 2020
  • How to Make Biomass Energy Sustainable Again September 20, 2020

RSS LRB Blog

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RSS Luis J. Rodriguez

  • Stand Firm on Election Day November 3, 2020
  • 50th Anniversary of Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War August 31, 2020
  • Trump's War on the United States July 24, 2020

RSS Mabinogogiblog

  • Zoom Meeting on the Melbourne Isolation Hood to stop spread of Covid in Hospital January 16, 2021
  • We Can Cut the Number of Hospital Acquired Covid Infections January 1, 2021
  • JCVI has not thought through their vaccine prioritisation December 4, 2020
  • The Changing of the Shared Narrative December 3, 2020

RSS Manicore – Accueil

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RSS Marginal Revolution

  • Tuesday assorted links January 26, 2021
  • Our Virginia regulatory state is failing us January 26, 2021
  • What does the minimum wage literature really tell us? January 26, 2021

RSS Mark Biskeborn – Underground Essays

  • Kafkaesque November 11, 2014
  • Larry Summers Still Living Large April 9, 2013
  • War and Corruption Deficits: Insects and Leviathans January 21, 2013
  • Breaking News: Lt. Col. Shaffer Accuses Former CIA Dir. Tenet December 29, 2012

RSS Mark Fiore

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RSS Mark Lynas

  • Saved by the pandemic? June 30, 2020
  • New book – ‘Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency’ June 30, 2020
  • ‘The single most important goal of the candidates’ climate plan’ – CNN.com September 6, 2019
  • The planet is being consumed by humans – CNN.com August 8, 2019
  • UK and Trump miles apart on climate change – CNN.com June 3, 2019

RSS Martin Wolf

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RSS Matt Bruenig

  • Trump NLRB Smashed Google Guy February 17, 2018
  • Neoliberals Used to Refer to Themselves as New Democrats December 22, 2017
  • Alabama Part II December 16, 2017

RSS Matt Taibbi

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RSS Matt Wuerker

  • Cartoon: Freedom of speech is absolute, but... April 30, 2015
  • Cartoon: Clinton Inc April 23, 2015
  • Cartoon: Reince's Women Issues April 16, 2015
  • Cartoon: The way to win April 9, 2015
  • No Cake for you! April 2, 2015

RSS Max Keiser

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RSS Media Lens

  • ‘A Ghastly Future’? Israeli Apartheid, Biden, Starmer, Assange And Mass Extinction January 20, 2021
  • Media Bias, Activism And Meditation – Secular Buddhist Network Interview With David Edwards January 13, 2021
  • Stuck In A Lift With John Pilger – ‘News And How To Use It’ by Alan Rusbridger December 4, 2020

RSS Media Matters – Environment

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RSS Media Matters – Everything

  • Fox guest on possible troop withdrawal from Afghanistan: "The solution is more blood, sweat, and tears" 
  • Fox host defends Trump: "Just because you use harsh language doesn't mean your intent is to denigrate another race"
  • Fox News is talking more about abortion than the Democratic debates did

RSS Media Roots

  • Media Roots Radio: Sex Workers Battled Big Tech First, Obscenity Laws & Cuckolding in the Trump-era w/ Dr. Susan Block January 22, 2021
  • Empire Files Podcast: Jan. 6 Was An Inside Job January 19, 2021
  • Media Roots Radio: QAnonEleven, DC Military Lockdown & Trump’s #StopTheSteal Wack Pack w/ gumby4christ January 19, 2021

RSS Methane Hydrates

  • Joint New Zealand - German 3D survey reveals massive seabed gas hydrate and methane system May 12, 2014
  • Noctilucent clouds: further confirmation of large methane releases December 10, 2013
  • Earthquake M6.7 hits Sea of Okhotsk October 2, 2013

RSS Michael Hudson

  • Multipolarity and Financial Capitalism January 7, 2021
  • Rentiers a bunch of gangsters January 7, 2021
  • A Hard Look at Rent and Rent Seeking December 14, 2020

RSS Michael Miller – Viewpoint

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RSS Michael Parenti

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RSS Mike Philbin – Free Planet

  • LAST OF THE CATHEDRA available in trade paperback from Amazon. October 24, 2020
  • OUR ELECTRIC MOON October 21, 2019
  • Best Real-time in-game Physics engine EVER by Dennis Gustafsson September 13, 2019

RSS Mondoweiss

  • ‘NYT’ portrays pro-Palestinian activists as unhinged in article on campus debate January 26, 2021
  • Dershowitz persuaded Trump to let the Israeli billionaire, Dan Gertler, loot DR Congo again January 25, 2021

RSS Mons Angelorum: Deadly Serious 3

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RSS Mons Angelorum: Waiting for Good Weather

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RSS Mother Jones

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RSS MR Zine

  • Yoshie Furuhashi, "After MRZine" January 1, 2017
  • Louis Allday, "Controlling the Narrative on Syria" December 14, 2016
  • Marta Harnecker, "Fidel, Today and Forever" December 11, 2016
  • Prabhat Patnaik, "Developing 'Infrastructure'" December 9, 2016
  • Susie Day, "Forward Ever, Normal Never: Taking Down Donald Trump" December 6, 2016
  • Samir Amin, "The Election of Donald Trump" December 1, 2016

RSS Musings on Iraq

  • Iraq Delays Early Elections Due To Technical And Political Issues January 26, 2021
  • This Day In Iraqi History - Jan 26 January 26, 2021
  • Security In Iraq Jan 15-21, 2021 January 25, 2021

RSS Nafeez Ahmed

  • IDF's Gaza assault is to control Palestinian gas, avert Israeli energy crisis | Nafeez Ahmed July 9, 2014
  • World Bank and UN carbon offset scheme 'complicit' in genocidal land grabs - NGOs | Nafeez Ahmed July 3, 2014
  • The open source revolution is coming and it will conquer the 1% - ex CIA spy | Nafeez Ahmed June 19, 2014
  • Iraq blowback: Isis rise manufactured by insatiable oil addiction June 16, 2014

RSS Naked Capitalism

  • 2:00PM Water Cooler 1/26/2021 January 26, 2021
  • Poor Lives Matter, But Less January 26, 2021
  • Links 1/26/2021 January 26, 2021
  • Michael Hudson: Finance Capitalism vs. Industrial Capitalism – The Rentier Resurgence and Takeover January 26, 2021
  • Why Is Everyone Talking About Squatters’ Rights in Covid-Ravaged Spain? January 26, 2021

RSS Naomi Klein

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RSS Naomi Klein – Guardian.UK

  • We were told Joe Biden was the 'safe choice'. But it was risky to offer so little | Naomi Klein November 8, 2020
  • Covid-19 spreads to every African country - as it happened May 13, 2020

RSS Nature Protects, As She is Protected

  • No Name Calling Please, Give Us Evidence Which Proves GM Crops Are Safe March 30, 2017
  • Let’s Be Honest About Genetically Modified Crops March 9, 2017

RSS Navdanya’s Diary

  • Rewilding food, rewilding farming January 25, 2020
  • Which future of food do we want? November 24, 2019
  • Vandana Shiva : No to Junk Food in Schools, Yes to Climate Change Education in Schools November 12, 2019

RSS New Internationalist

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RSS New Left Project

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RSS New World Notes

  • Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse January 2, 2021
  • Clutter December 27, 2020
  • Scooter's War on Christmas Kickstarter December 24, 2020

RSS News Junkie Post

  • Capitol Riots: The Day of Infamy When Populism Became Fascism January 12, 2021
  • The Three Farm Laws: Not Only a Fight of Farmers for Themselves but Also for India’s Food Security December 17, 2020
  • COVID-19 Behavior Policing: Rehearsal for Crackdown on Dissent Ahead of Climate Collapse? December 4, 2020
  • Slavery of Fear July 28, 2020
  • COVID-19: Confirmed Wuhan Man-Made Coronavirus Chimera Enters Vaccine Design July 8, 2020
  • COVID-19 Cold War: Will the Second Wave Come from Vaccine Trials? June 16, 2020

RSS NOAA: Monthly State of the Climate Report

  • December 2020 National Climate Report

RSS Notes from the Aboveground

  • On Inequality July 27, 2015
  • Shameless is as shameless does July 21, 2015

RSS NYT Examiner

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RSS Occupy.com

  • Sedition caucus mimics Trump’s worst sin: Demolition of content—legal, moral, democratic or electoral January 14, 2021
  • Tell Congress to #StopLine3 January 12, 2021
  • UK’s 5-day Hiatus from Christmas Lockdown May Pave the Way for Ill-Fated New Year for Britain's Poorest January 10, 2021
  • The worst president January 9, 2021
  • Green New Deal, Part VIII: New Zealand’s Zero-Covid-19 Strategy Shows how Politics Can Serve the Common Good January 7, 2021
  • Finding a Home for the ‘Politically Homeless’: Could a UK Version of Spain’s Podemos Party Work In Britain? December 11, 2020
  • ‘Bye-bye, Betsy DeVos. You won’t be missed,’ says Sanders as billionaire education secretary attacks push for tuition-free college December 7, 2020
  • House passes comprehensive marijuana reform legislation historically de-scheduling marijuana December 7, 2020

RSS Occupy las Vegas

  • Bitcoin s’élève à 1 700 $ en 48 heures : Plus de 19 000 dollars pour une capitalisation boursière de 20 milliards de dollars (Market Watch) January 25, 2021
  • Crypto-kriminalitet falder, men Bitcoin-ransomware steg i 2020! January 20, 2021
  • The advantages and disadvantages of consensus building January 2, 2021

RSS Occupy Wall Street

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RSS Oddity Central

  • Japanese Company Creates “Smart Glasses” That Can Allegedly Cure Myopia January 26, 2021
  • Man Prefers His Hyper-Realistic Doll Girlfriend Because It Doesn’t Ask For Anything January 26, 2021
  • Thousands of Colored LEDs Turn Dutch Farmland Into Nighttime Wonderland January 25, 2021
  • Jealous Wife Allegedly Attacks Husband Over Photos of Him With Her as a Younger Woman January 25, 2021
  • Cat Survives Three-Week Journey Locked in Shipping Container With No Food or Water January 25, 2021
  • Social Media Star Promotes Fake Books as Props for Wanna-Be Online Influencers January 22, 2021

RSS Of Two Minds

  • Everything Is Broken January 25, 2021
  • How the Fed Fails January 22, 2021
  • The Dangerously Diminishing Returns on Monetary and Fiscal Stimulus January 20, 2021

RSS One Penny Sheet

  • Easy Ways for Disabled Entrepreneurs to Find Financing May 13, 2020
  • Can You Take Out A Personal Loan And Use It For Your Business? May 13, 2020

RSS One Struggle – South Florida

  • Teachers Resist! Lessons in Solidarity from Haiti November 13, 2020
  • WTF Is Still Happening? What isn’t Progressive: the Biden/Harris Capitalist Alternative November 7, 2020
  • WTF Is Still Happening? The Supreme Court is Still Capitalist October 29, 2020
  • WTF is still happening?!: Elections 2020 October 23, 2020

RSS Orion Magazine

  • A Deeply Imperfect Democracy January 8, 2021
  • Foreword: The Most Radical Thing You Can Do January 5, 2021
  • Thank You, Barry: Margaret Atwood December 29, 2020

RSS Our Finite World

  • 2021: More troubles likely January 12, 2021
  • 2020: The Year Things Started Going Badly Wrong December 23, 2020
  • Humans Left Sustainability Behind as Hunter-Gatherers December 2, 2020

RSS Pando Daily

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RSS Paul Haeder

  • Rumble Inside the Chaos of Capitalism January 23, 2021
  • USA: Unsafe at any Speed January 10, 2021
  • Dreaming Inside the Egg Sac of a Basking Shark January 10, 2021

RSS Paul Kingsnorth – Elswhere

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RSS Paul L. Street

  • Shock and Awe: This Happened During Trump’s First and Hopefully Only Term* November 16, 2020
  • “The Envy of the World”: Still No Functioning Democracy Here November 16, 2020
  • Avoiding the Real Issue to the be Faced November 16, 2020
  • Make a Plan to Resist November 16, 2020

RSS PBD – Progressive Blog Digest

  • 46 January 21, 2021
  • HIS LEGACY January 20, 2021
  • THE END GAME January 19, 2021

RSS PeakOil.com News

  • Glimpse into dynamics of post-pandemic oil industry January 25, 2021
  • Kunstler: Flying Blind January 25, 2021
  • Why The Future Still Means Fossil Fuels, For Now January 25, 2021

RSS Peak Prosperity Blog

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RSS Peak Prosperity: Daily Digest

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RSS Peak Prosperity: Featured Voices

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RSS People Before Profit Blog

  • "Blacklisted Again" Michael Berkowitz on "Trumbo" by Norman Markowitz December 10, 2015
  • A Corrected and Updated Version of The "Madness" of Donald Trump by Norman Markowitz December 9, 2015
  • The "Madness" of Donald Trump by Norman Markowitz December 8, 2015

RSS Phlegm

  • "we fight each other while it devours us" Belgium June 2017 December 1, 2017
  • West Didsbury Manchester. May 2017 December 1, 2017
  • Dulwich picture gallery. April 25th 2017 December 1, 2017

RSS Phyllis Bennis

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RSS Physicist-Retired Newsvine

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RSS Pink Tank

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RSS PlanetSave – Climate

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RSS Political Violence @ a Glance

  • Trump’s Legacy in Yemen: Why Terrorist Listing May Jeopardize Peace Talks January 25, 2021
  • Gender and White Supremacist Violence January 21, 2021
  • The Escalatory Nature of Violence in Undermining (American) Democracy January 20, 2021

RSS Popular Resistance

  • CTU Rank-And-File Votes To Save Lives January 26, 2021
  • How The Nuclear Ban Treaty Impacts The United States January 26, 2021
  • Defund The Police Is Not Abolition January 26, 2021
  • The Economics Lesson Taught By The Pandemic January 26, 2021

RSS PRN with Danny Schechter

  • The Gary Null Show – 08.15.16 August 15, 2016
  • Leid Stories – Election 2016: Primaries Deliver A Big Payday for Clinton, An Inevitable Payout for Sanders – 06.08.16 June 8, 2016
  • The Gary Null Show – 05.10.16 May 10, 2016
  • Meditations and Molotovs – 05.02.16 May 2, 2016
  • Focus on the Facts – 02.29.16 February 29, 2016
  • Warrior Connection – 02.28.16 February 29, 2016
  • Resistance Radio – Darcia Narvaez – 02.28.16 February 29, 2016
  • Meria Heller Show – 02.28.16 February 28, 2016
  • Expat Files – 02.28.16 February 28, 2016

RSS Progressive Radio Network

  • Webinar With Dr. Gary Null: Embracing the Future, Honoring the Past January 26, 2021
  • What In The Cell Is Going On – 01.26.21 January 26, 2021
  • The Hour of Lateral Thinking – 01.26.21 January 26, 2021
  • Ask Beatty – 01.25.21 January 26, 2021
  • The Covid-19 Pandemic as a Psychological Coup d’Etat January 25, 2021
  • Leid Stories – 01.25.21 January 25, 2021

RSS ProPublica

  • How the CARES Act Forgot America’s Most Vulnerable Hospitals January 26, 2021
  • The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try. January 25, 2021
  • “We’ve Let the Worst Happen”: Reflecting on 400,000 Dead January 23, 2021
  • The Unfinished Business of Flint’s Water Crisis January 22, 2021
  • Global Right-Wing Extremism Networks Are Growing. The U.S. Is Just Now Catching Up. January 22, 2021

RSS Project Censored

  • John Marshall And Nolan Higdon January 20, 2021
  • Capitol Coup d’Trump: Deconstructing Media Narratives around January 6th Events January 16, 2021
  • Kevin Gosztola and Michael D. Knox January 12, 2021

RSS Public Intelligence

  • Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Report: Protecting Against the Threat of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)
  • (U//FOUO) DHS-FBI-USSS Joint Threat Assessment: 59th Presidential Inauguration
  • (U//FOUO) Domestic Violent Extremists Embo