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Collapse of Industrial Civilization

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Collapse of Industrial Civilization

Tag Archives: Noam Chomsky

Evolutionary Dead-Ends

19 Monday Mar 2018

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

≈ 95 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Arctic Blue Ocean Event, Capitalism, Carl Sagan, Climate Change, Collapse of Civilizations, Donald Trump, Dr Charlie Veron, Ecological Overshoot, Elizabeth Kolbert, Herman Daly, Jared Diamond, Micro-Plastic Pollution, Noam Chomsky, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, Stephen Boyden, Svante Arrhenius, Techno-Fix, U.S. National Climate Assessment, Wealth Inequality, William Rees

“It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.” ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

Have things improved since I wrote my last essay a year ago for this blog? Have we miraculously transformed our entire energy system into one that does not poison and degrade the natural world? Have we slowed the onslaught of plastic pollution choking the planet’s rivers, lakes, and oceans? Have we done anything meaningful to halt the deterioration of the planet’s biodiversity toward mass extinction? Has this global, hi-tech civilization done anything significant to avert its own demise? Despite a constant flow of warnings from the scientific community and even a letter signed by more than 20,000 scientists, the simple answer is no. We have failed to address the complexity of our rising population and a degrading environment. Yes, we are self-conscious and thus able to recognize the fact that we are destroying the only home we have, but will the end result differ much from a population overshoot of bacteria in a Petri dish? Dependent on a continuous stream of finite resources imported from across the globe, modern megacities contain the seeds of their own destruction and that of all other life forms upon which humanity depends for its survival. The exponential growth of modern civilization ensures that one of the next doubling times will produce an absolute increase in overshoot that tips the world into unavoidable collapse. Enough damage may well have already been done; we’re just waiting for inertia to catch up to the impacts.

2017 set a global record for the most skyscrapers built in a single year and 2018 is predicted to eclipse it. The fossil fuel energy spent to construct those concrete and steel buildings translates into a melting cryosphere. Not to mention the fact that the carbon footprint of some of the world’s biggest cities is 60% bigger than previously estimated. “Renewable energy” still only comprises a tiny fraction of global energy consumption and plans for a total transition will take decades, if it’s even possible. Any growth in ‘renewable energy’ has been offset by increased consumption of fossil fuels in the developing world. 2017 marked a new record high in CO2 emissions with 2018 set to break that record. Global CO2 emissions have yet to peak, and the UN has warned that we are on course for a 3C world. It doesn’t help that the current U.S. administration plans to cut funding for alternative energy R&D, with the Energy Department expecting no drop in the U.S. carbon footprint through 2050. Having embedded itself in the U.S. government over a century ago, the fossil fuel industry has consistently worked to block climate change action and undermine environmental laws. A UK shipping executive recently admitted his industry is guilty of doing the same to protect their bottom line. The utilities companies knew the dangers as well. Like most corporations, the viability of their business model depends on perpetuating an unsustainable way of life. With warnings ignored since the late 1800s starting with the work of Svante Arrhenius, it should be obvious by now that intelligence without sapience has produced deadly results. A new study finds “the most accurate climate change models predict the most alarming consequences.” The recently released U.S. National Climate Assessment has similar findings:

While climate models incorporate important climate processes that can be well quantified, they do not include all of the processes that can contribute to feedbacks (Ch. 2), compound extreme events, and abrupt and/or irreversible changes. For this reason, future changes outside the range projected by climate models cannot be ruled out (very high confidence). Moreover, the systematic tendency of climate models to underestimate temperature change during warm paleoclimates suggests that climate models are more likely to underestimate than to overestimate the amount of long-term future change (medium confidence). (Ch. 15)

In a new ominous research finding, the evil twin of climate change(ocean acidification) is threatening the base of the marine food chain by disrupting the production of phytoplankton. This is yet another positive feedback loop increasing the rate of global warming. Climate feedback loops and ice sheet modeling are two weak areas of climate science, which means many unpleasant surprises. This is why researchers are constantly astonished. Adaptation is not a luxury most organisms have at the present rates of change. Techno-fixes are but a pipe dream.

A diet reliant on animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gases, biodiversity loss, and oceanic dead zones, yet global per capita meat consumption is increasing rapidly in both developing and industrialized countries. Investments have been made to increase global plastic production by 40% over the next decade, even as all the world’s natural bodies of water become inundated with microplastics. Coca Cola alone produces 110 billion throwaway plastic bottles every year – an astounding 3,400 a second. Plastic waste from the military is another massive contributor that cannot be overstated. Half of all plastics have been made in just the last thirteen years. Over 90% of the so-called purified bottled water sold to the public has been shown to be contaminated with hundreds and even thousands of microplastic pieces. A byproduct of petroleum and the epitome of our throw-away society, plastics have truly become ubiquitous in the environment, entering the food chain at every level.

A study published last year pulls no punches by describing the mass extermination of billions of animals in recent decades as a “biological annihilation.” Extinction risks for many species are vastly underestimated. Insects, the base of the terrestrial food chain, are faring no better. With the steep loss of invertebrates, multiple studies indicate the world is “on course for an ecological Armageddon”. Trees are dying at an unprecedented rate from extreme weather events, portending profound effects to Earth’s carbon cycle. Coral bleaching events are now happening four times more frequently than a few decades ago. Dr Charlie Veron, a renowned scientist specializing in corals and reefs, said this last year:

“Half of all coral colonies on the Great Barrier Reef died over the past two years due to coral bleaching,’’ Dr Veron said.

“It’s going to be a horrible world. Young people now are going to curse the present generation for what we’ve done. We’ll have left them a planet in dire straits.’’

“Between a quarter and a third of all marine species have part of their life cycle in a coral reef. Taking away the reefs precipitates ecological collapse of the oceans. It’s happened twice in the past due to volcanoes releasing carbon dioxide and lava flows, but that was nothing like the amount of carbon dioxide being released now.’’

No one thought that ecosystems such as The Great Barrier Reef would be circling the drain this soon. How these changes are affecting flora and fauna as well as human societies is critical, but it’s like trying to predict the outcome of a high speed car crash as it’s happening. Hindsight is 20/20, but it only serves a purpose if you are still around to learn from it. Abrupt climate change is happening now and we’re not prepared for it. Fighting to protect the very life support system we all share, environmentalists are under attack worldwide and being murdered in record numbers. The problem of poaching is so bad that scientists are advising people to scrub all GPS data from their nature photos before publication to help protect endangered species from being ransacked. The voracious consumption and defilement of the planet continues unabated, despite clear signs the once-stable biosphere that enabled the establishment of human civilizations is quickly unraveling(Puerto Rico, Houston, never-ending wildfire seasons, melting Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, widespread glacial retreat, shrinking lakes, and many other signs of a destabilized climate). The following picture taken in Oregon last summer illustrates my point; seemingly oblivious to the massive wildfires raging in the background, a group of golfers continues playing a round…“We’re trading a habitable climate for a few generations of easy living.”

Climate change is just one of many factors in mankind’s planetary overshoot. We even have a day designated in recognition of our oversized ecological footprint which comes earlier every year, with nary a mention of it in official economic reports. As Herman Daly has explained, the global economic system treats the earth as a business in liquidation. The destruction of the natural world is enshrined in our positive economic indicators, i.e. rising GDP. And if need be, those numbers will be massaged to meet expectations. On a subconscious level, the growth imperative applies to all species including humans:

Humans share two behavioral traits with all other species that are critically important to (un)sustainability. Numerous experiments show that unless or until constrained by negative feedback (e.g., disease, starvation, self-pollution) the populations of all species:

• Expand to occupy all accessible habitats.

• Use all available resources.

Like mindless bacteria bent on their own success, humans are victims of their own DNA and ingenuity. Any civilization that develops energy harvesting technologies allowing for rapid population growth will generate entropy which will in turn almost certainly have strong feedback effects on the planet’s habitability. Our exponentially growing economy is on a collision course with an immovable ecosphere.

The end of the world is coming for the naked ape, not by a cabal of bankers or any sort of cockamamie conspiracy tale like chemtrails, but by us –the entire human race– and the economic system we have developed. We’ve become hostages to the complex structures and ever more intricate specialization of an economic system designed to exploit diminishing resources. Pollution and waste are of little concern for capitalism until they become a significant drain on overall profitability and new frontiers to exploit are exhausted. When profitability on a global scale is finally threatened by climate change, it will be far too late. The response will be militarized and authoritarian.

On a more insidious note, capitalism is driven by a deep instinctive drive to accumulate which was a very survival-positive compulsion during our several million years of evolving into Homo sapiens to overcome dry periods and other threats. Capitalism hits on this genetic proclivity, and when we get a clear opportunity to grab a big time accumulation, get rich and all, social good be damned. Our big and powerful cerebral cortex is hard-pressed to find a cure.

“I am rather pessimistic. The maladaptive assumptions of prevailing cultures are deeply ingrained. The notion that economic growth must take precedence over all other considerations and general ignorance of biological and ecological realities do not augur well for the future.” ~ Professor Stephen Boyden, human ecologist

In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond found that a common factor was the myopic and self-serving decision-making of elites who believed they could insulate themselves from the consequences of societal disasters. As the elites reaped the rewards, the resulting damage to everyone else built up over time until calamity struck. The grim reality is that history has proven such cycles of extreme wealth inequality have only been broken by catastrophes –plagues, revolutions, massive wars, and collapsed states. The U.S. has now reached a degree of wealth disparity unequaled in history:

Overall, the highest-ever historical Gini the researchers found was that of the ancient Old World (think Patrician Rome), which got a score of .59. While the degrees of inequality experienced by historical societies are quite high, the researchers note, they’re nowhere near as high as the Gini scores we’re seeing now…”it is safe to say that the degree of wealth inequality experienced by many households today is considerably higher than has been the norm over the last ten millennia,” the researchers write in their paper.

The crisis of civilization is planet-wide this time. We’ve turned a utopian world of plenty into a dystopian world of fascist-leaning governments, industrial disasters, collapsing ecosystems, and technological addiction. We have a Commander in Chief who tweets bizarre debunked conspiracies at 3 am, gets his intel briefings from right-wing TV shows, dismantles any remaining hindrances to unbridled capitalism, and doesn’t know the difference between weather and climate. Public discourse has been dumbed down to the level of Fox news talking points and tribal groupthink. Those who can discern actual ‘fake news’ from scientific fact are left to watch in horror as mainstream scientific projections continue to prove overly optimistic. Not only are regulations being cut left and right, they are not being enforced. Government science advisors are being purged and replaced with mouthpieces for industrial polluters. In fact, this administration is actively working to delegitimize and destroy government institutions. A sizable population of low information voters supports such actions, but it’s only to their own detriment. Although both major parties are under the sway of corporate power, Trump and company represent an exceptionally predatory class of people. The Union of Concerned Scientists is monitoring the current administration’s war on science and public health; their latest report is here:

The administration’s one-year record shows an unprecedented level of stalled and disbanded scientific advisory committees, cancelled meetings, and dismissed experts. The consequences for the health and safety of millions of Americans could be profound.

We live in an age of unparalleled technological advancement, while at the same time we turn a blind eye to the disintegrating natural world that gave birth to us, having forgotten that our destiny lies in our relationship with the earth. Like Icarus who, in his exuberance, ignored his father’s warnings and flew too close to the sun, modern man with his technology has ascended to great heights without heeding sound advice.

“We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.” ~ Carl Sagan

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The Stark Realities of Baked-In Catastrophes

02 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

≈ 45 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Antarctic Ice Melt, Anthropogenic Climate Change, Arctic Sea Ice Melt, Capitalism, Climate Change Denial, CO2 Emissions, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Economic Hitman, Environmental Collapse, Intensified Hydrologic Cycle, Mangled Jet Stream, Noam Chomsky, Sea Level Rise, Sustainability, Techno-Fix, The Unsustainability of Mega-Cities, Warren Buffett

Joe-Webb-Greetings-From-California

In a civilization gone mad with delusions of grandeur, we’re left with tatters of human sociability held together by rancid mythologies.

Despite human fossil fuel burning recently reported to be “flat”, CO2 levels have been on a tear for the last six months, reaching new worrying levels which have some wondering whether permafrost melt may be contributing to the unusually high spike if no decline happens soon. The giant holes in Siberia serve as an ominous sign. Considering that the current El Niño is contributing only 10% to what we are now seeing, runaway global warming may be accelerating worldwide. But don’t worry, Warren Buffett says climate change is no more of a problem than the Y2K bug and will be profitable through increased premiums and inflation.

Ever dire studies continue to reaffirm worst case scenarios, making clear to anyone paying attention that Earth in the next century will be unrecognizable from its current state. Basic planetary geography and atmospheric conditions will be altered through warming oceans and rising sea levels which are now increasing faster than at any time in the past 2800 years. On average, sea levels were between 50 and 82 feet higher the last time CO2 levels were at 400ppm. Glaciologist Jason Box expects ice melt from the West Antarctic to become the biggest contributor to sea level rise in the coming decades due to a feedback loop not in the climate models. CO2 levels have been increasing around 3ppm per year, a twentyfold increase since pre-industrial times when the highest recorded increase was 0.15 ppm per year. We’ve long since passed the tipping point of melting Arctic summer sea ice; 300-350 ppm of CO2 was the threshold for many parts of the climate. These changes are irreversible on a timescale of human civilizations. Even if all human industrial activity magically ceased today, the footprint man has already left will be felt for eons.

In our warming world, the hydrologic cycle is changing and creating extreme weather; crop-destroying droughts and floods are becoming more frequent. The Jet Stream is transforming into something different, becoming wavier with higher ridges and troughs prone to stagnating in the same region. As global temperatures rise over time, hotter air will be trapped under these layers of high pressure from a mangled Jet Stream, cooking everything to death. Rising winter temperatures are beginning to destroy the “winter chill” needed for many fruit and nut trees to properly blossom and produce maximally. Climate change is also disrupting flower pollination and pushing fish toward the North/South poles, robbing poorer countries at the equator of crucial food resources. In a new study, marine scientists are surprised to find a disturbing trend in the increasing numbers of a specific type of phytoplankton, coccolithophores, which have been “typically more abundant during Earth’s warm interglacial and high CO2 periods.”

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Homo sapiens have only been on the planet for the equivalent of a few seconds in geologic time but have managed to overwhelm and foul up all of earth’s natural processes and interdependencies, leaving a distinct layer in the sedimentary record. There is nothing modern humans do that is truly sustainable. Here are a few glaring examples:

  • Techno-fixes are built into the IPCC’s projections for maintaining a habitable planet for humans.
  • Money megacities spend for adapting to climate change is linked more to protecting valuable capital than vulnerable people (Capitalism is doing an outstanding job of converting the planet into dead dollars.)
  • Nuclear Power: “Even if there were no issues like meltdown or waste proliferation, the cost and time for planning, permitting, and constructing nuclear plants is prohibitive. The Arctic ice will already be gone.
  • Japan prime minister: We came within a “paper-thin margin” of nuclear disaster and the evacuation of 50 million people in 2011
  • Germany’s carbon dioxide emissions increased by an estimated 10 million tonnes from 2014 to 2015, in a blow to the country’s claims to climate leadership.
  • New study published in the journal Environmental Pollution shows that urban soil can emit up to 72% as much CO2 as fossil fuels burned within a city and at a rate of up to twice that of rural soils.
  • 90% of Indigenous in Brazil’s Amazon Suffer Mercury Poisoning: A new study shows that water and food sources for 19 Indigenous communities have been massively affected by illegal mining.
  • Satellite images suggest tropical forests from the Amazon to the Philippines are disappearing at a far more rapid pace than previously thought, a University of Maryland team of forest researchers say.
  • African elephants ‘killed faster than they are being born’
  • Desertification in China is a major problem for Beijing, as the country’s deserts are growing, threatening environmental, economic, and political stability.
  • The environment is now being destroyed by corporations in the name of green growth. Sham greenwashing projects are created, funded, and enforced by the IMF and World Bank.
  • Unknown continental-scale process is dumping phosphorus into streams and lakes across the U.S.
  • According to a new study, efforts to curtail world temps will almost surely fail: “A person living today uses about four times as much energy as a person did in the early 1900s.”
  • Greenpeace says China increasing coal-fired capacity: “There is a very rapid and accelerating net increase in coal-fired generating capacity”
  • UN envoy warns of environmental activist murder ‘epidemic’
  • Remember this headline from 2013?: Arctic methane release could cost economy $60 trillion -study. Our response was to go on a fracking binge which increased our methane emissions by some 30%.
  • While the resource intensity of GDP may be falling (less resources needed to produce 1$ worth of goods/services), the absolute decoupling of resource use, emissions, pollution, etc from GDP growth is the only thing that matters and that is not happening. If the world’s population continues to grow as projected and current lifestyles do not change, global resource consumption will increase anywhere from 2 to 5 times by 2050. It defies logic that a continually growing economy would be able to reduce its resource intensity down to near-zero to achieve a sustainable ecological footprint.
  • According to recent research, even if we converted 100% of farmland to reforestation projects it would only lower temperatures 0.45C by the end of the century. Converting half of global farmland to reforestation would result in just a 0.25C drop. Other recent studies have come to the same conclusion:

No amount of reafforestation or growing of new trees will ultimately off-set continuing CO2 emissions due to environmental constraints on plant growth and the large amounts of remaining fossil fuel reserves,” Mackey says. “Unfortunately there is no option but to cut fossil fuel emissions deeply as about a third of the CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 2 to 20 millennia.

ambiente-01

Relying on machines for answers to the existential problems of a species run amok with planet-destroying tools and weaponry is rather ironic and tragic. We’re locked-up inside a complexity trap of our own making. The human propensity for tool-building coupled with our discovery of fossil fuels has created a set of living arrangements in which we are now enslaved to those machines and tools. The globalized capitalist economy externalizes its destruction and atrocities, keeping the masses in a state of ignorance and denial. Our corporate overlords are not conscientious citizens, but mindless organizations whose sole purpose is to grow profits no matter the external damage done to society and the environment. Between the economic oil hitmen who ensure that profits flow smoothly and GOP politicians who openly espouse their science illiteracy, a hospitable climate for future humans seems remote. Hopeful delusions have given way to the stark reality of our predicament as scholars like Noam Chomsky who originally started his career fighting for a modicum of social justice have now set the bar at just the chance of human survival. Despite the best efforts of scientists, environmentalists, and activists, the wealthy countries most able to do something won’t “get it” until famine, disease, and war come to their country. All is being left for the almighty ‘free market’ to sort out at the same time that climate change, a conflict multiplier, ramps up.

imageedit_3_7415100861

The sixth mass extinction gathers steam and climate inertia works to catch up to the catastrophic ecological collapse already baked-in. All the while, modern man engages in the spectacle of tribal politics(building walls, exuding military strength, recapturing past glories of their nation) and presidential candidates discuss the size of their penis.

For those who come to understand modern man’s predicament, it can either be the ultimate mind fuck or an epiphany that helps a person appreciate the fragility of life, the urgency of living in the here and now, and the grand cosmic joke of a global, hi-tech civilization that arose from the burning of ancient fossil remains only to have those fumes become a deadly curse, extinguishing any trace of our lofty accomplishments…

The fossil record, Plotnick points out, is much more durable than any human record.

“As humanity has evolved, our methods of recording information have become ever more ephemeral,” he said. “Clay tablets last longer than books. And who today can read an 8-inch floppy?” he shrugged. “If we put everything on electronic media, will those records exist in a million years? The fossils will.”
– Link

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A Slow and Systematic Genocide

12 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Corporate State, Empire, Inequality, Military Industrial Complex, Neo-Colonialism

≈ 110 Comments

Tags

"Mow the Lawn", Amira Hass, Disproportionate Force, Fascism, Gaza, Genocide, Ghettoization, Heathcote Williams, IDF (Israel Defense Forces), Intifada, Irgun Zvai Leumi, Israel, Israeli Blockade, Israeli/Palestinian Conflict, Likud Party, Menachem Begin, Militarism, Military Industrial Complex, Nafeez Ahmed, Noam Chomsky, Open-Air Prison, Operation Protective Edge, Palestine, Qassam Rockets, Right-Wing Herut (or "Freedom") Party, Robert Fisk, Sahar Vardi, Smuggling Tunnels, The Dahiya Doctrine, The West Bank, Uri Avnery, Warfare State

Israel Bleeding“People who call themselves supporters of Israel are actually supporters of its moral degeneration and ultimate destruction.” ~ Noam Chomsky

There are a number of Israelis, such as Sahar Vardi and Uri Avnery, who strongly reject the occupation of Palestinian lands and the militarization of Israeli society. Although they recently lost their exemption status from military service, an ultra-orthodox sect of Judaism known as the Haredi whose numbers comprise 10% of the Jewish state are also opposed to war and the violent land grabs of Israeli settlers. There are others as well, but their voices are suffocated by powerful forces which have no interest in ever finding a peaceful solution to the Israeli/Palestinian crisis.

“…not only does Israel now occupy 80% of the area of historic Palestine, but it – via the water company Mekarot – also takes 80% of the water resources from the 20% of the land that is left to the Palestinians…” – link

Looking back into history, one finds that the current right-wing ruling Likud party of Israel has roots in the Irgun Zvai Leumi (Hebrew for “National Military Organization”), a terrorist Jewish organization which played an integral part in the establishment of Israel: 

“…The Irgun has been viewed as a terrorist organization or organization which carried out terrorist acts. In particular the Irgun was branded a terrorist organisation by Britain, the 1946 Zionist Congress and the Jewish Agency. The Irgun believed that any means necessary to establish the Jewish State of Israel, including terrorism, was justifiable.

The Irgun was a political predecessor to Israel’s right-wing Herut (or “Freedom”) party, which led to today’s Likud party. Likud has led or been part of most Israeli governments since 1977.” – link

In fact, Menachem Begin, the sixth Prime Minister of the State of Israel, was a terrorist leader of Irgun Zvai Leumi and founder of the Likud party. As they say, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

The disproportionate force and indiscriminate killing of this year’s Operation Protective Edge are a crafted policy of the IDF:

“This Dahiya doctrine, developed at Tel Aviv University, calls for disproportionate force against civilians and civilian infrastructure to extract the maximum pain from those civilians, to make them stop the resistance–an absolute collective punishment crime against humanity.”
– link

The thousands of primitive Qassam rockets fired by Hamas have killed 28 people and injured 1,900 since 2001, whereas Israeli hi-tech missiles have killed thousands and injured tens of thousands of Palestinians in the same time period as the following chart illustrates:

(Click to Enlarge)IP_conflict_deaths_total

The chart above does not have the complete death toll as of today, so a few thousand more Palestinians and a few dozen Israelis must be added to the body count. As the popular saying goes, war carried out by the state is simply terrorism with a bigger budget.

Just as America pursued a westward expansion of its territory with the ideology of manifest destiny and implemented the Indian Removal Act of 1830 which removed native people by force, if necessary, from desirable territories within state borders and herded them into less valuable land, so too is Israel pursuing a similar strategy. Palestinians have been isolated into two areas, the Gaza Strip (including East Jerusalem) and the West Bank. The Gaza Strip is sealed off on its land borders with Israel by concrete and steel walls, a double wire fence, watchtowers and checkpoints, and sensors and buffer zones. This Israel–Gaza barrier is equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance technology and manned by armed Israeli police. To complete the land enclosure of Gaza at its southern border, a steel wall that will extend 60 feet deep into the ground is being erected by Egypt with the help of American and French money and expertise. Last year, the Egyptian military resorted to flooding Gazan smuggling tunnels with sewage. The Israeli navy controls all ingress and egress from Gaza ports, while Israeli drones and fighter jets rule the Gazan skies. The West Bank is similarly ghettoized and in the process of being walled off. Ironically, Israel has exiled the Palestinians to the very same sort of ghettos that confined and segregated the Jews for centuries in Europe and later in the Nazi-occupied countries.

…ghettoization is itself the aim, having been implemented for the past 65 years. In other words, the aim – unfolded with the advent of time -has been to concentrate the Palestinians in reserves, after most of their land had been robbed of them. And if they desert and move abroad, it’s of their own free will. A direct planning and ideological line stretches between the enclaves in which the Palestinian citizens of Israel live and those of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

This is the real Israeli historical compromise. It is not with the Palestinians, but with the dictates of reality and among the various Zionist ideological currents. The crowded, offensive reservations – the creation of which is violence, pure and simple – are a compromise between the craving to eject the Palestinians from their land and the recognition that regional and international conditions do not permit it.
~ 
Amira Hass, Palestinian ghettos were always the plan

gaza

While the U.S. exterminated the buffalo which was the North American Plains Indian’s primary source of food and material for clothing, shelter, tools and religious icons, Israel has a policy of precisely calculating the number of calories to be allowed into the open-air prison of Gaza in order to control dietary intake and keep the people on the brink of malnutrition. To circumvent this blockade, Hamas built tunnels and estimates are that 75% of the goods that stock Gazan shelves are smuggled through these subterranean corridors. Contrary to current mainstream media propaganda, these tunnels were built out of a necessity for survival rather than for terrorist purposes. Israeli gunboats also prevent Gaza fishermen from fishing more than two or three miles off their coast despite the fact that the Oslo Accords agreement granted access to 20 nautical miles off the Gaza coast.

The Israeli navy uses different tactics of torture to punish the fishermen for persistently fishing, including shooting with live ammunition (on numerous occasions injuring fishermen), shelling, shooting with high-powered water cannons [all of which is simultaneously designed to damage the boats and equipment], at gunpoint forcing fishermen to strip naked and (after a long wait in the cold air) to jump into freezing waters and swim over 50m to the waiting naval ship before hauling the fishermen up, blindfolding and handcuffing them, and abducting them to Israel for interrogation unrelated to issues of fishing. – link

Due primarily to the blockade and previous Israeli airstrikes on power plant infrastructure, electricity generation has in recent years been severely curtailed to less than half of normal demand in Gaza. Loss of energy to waste treatment plants has caused “up to 90 million liters of partially treated sewage to discharge into the Mediterranean Sea every day.” The current Israeli bombardments on July 29, 2014 have now left Gaza in an even more dire condition:

“If there were one attack that could be predicted to endanger the health and well-being of the greatest number of people in Gaza, hitting the territory’s sole electricity plant would be it,” said Eric Goldstein, deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “Deliberately attacking the power plant would be a war crime.” – link

Snap 2014-08-11 at 21.15.38

Most wars are started under false pretenses and Israel’s current “mowing of the lawn” is no different, as Fair.org reported, but Israel has the backing of a super power to legitimize its sadistic war crimes. Western media outlets parrot the crudest of Israeli propaganda. As America’s number one recipient of military and economic aid, Israel has proven itself an integral linchpin of the American empire:

“Israel’s demonstration of its military prowess in 1967 confirmed its status as a ‘strategic asset,’ as did its moves to prevent Syrian intervention in Jordan in 1970 in support of the PLO. Under the Nixon doctrine, Israel and Iran were to be ‘the guardians of the Gulf,’ and after the fall of the Shah, Israel’s perceived role was enhanced. Meanwhile, Israel has provided subsidiary services elsewhere, including Latin America, where direct US support for the most murderous regimes has been impeded by Congress. While there has been internal debate and some fluctuation in US policy, much exaggerated in discussion here, it has been generally true that US support for Israel’s militarization and expansion reflected the estimate of its power in the region.

The effect has been to turn Israel into a militarized state completely dependent on US aid, willing to undertake tasks that few can endure, such as participation in Guatemalan genocide. For Israel, this is a moral disaster and will eventually become a physical disaster as well. For the Palestinians and many others, it has been a catastrophe, as it may sooner or later be for the entire world, with the growing danger of superpower confrontation.” ~ Noam Chomsky

With a larger percentage of its economy devoted to the military and security industry than any other country (even the U.S.), Israel is a militarized warfare state.

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Last month, Robert Fisk wrote that the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict is about land and Nafeez Ahmed wrote that it is about Gaza’s gas reserves. I say it’s about land and resources, but it’s also about war profiteers feeding the military industrial complex with endless conflict. From the gas chambers of the Holocaust to today’s slow and systematic genocide of the Palestinian people, it’s about man’s inhumanity to man and the vicious cycle of history repeating itself.

Excerpt from the poem

The Children of Gaza
& the Profits from their Genocide

by Heathcote Williams

…

For over a third of Israel’s income
Comes from its exporting its weapons,
And since it’s cultivating its deadly fruit
In its Gazan hot house at a profit,
Then why would it see the need for peace?

‘Operation Cast Lead’ in 2009
Boosted Israeli Arms sales
To a record 6 billion dollars.
It killed 1,471 Palestinians.

‘Operation Pillar of Defense’
The second large scale operation in Gaza
Was launched in November 2012
And Israel’s weapons sales that year
Set a new all time record
Of 7,000, 000,000 dollars,
While 169 Palestinians lay dead.

In ‘Operation Protective Edge’
Over a thousand would die in July 2014,
And whatever its final body count
The price will have been considered worth it
By the thriving Israeli arms business.

As Israel ruthlessly destroys the besieged Gaza Strip,
Elbit Systems, its largest developer of military technology
And its drone-maker, benefits from the bloodshed.

Since 8 July, 2014, when Israel began its latest offensive,
US-traded shares of Elbit Systems,
Climbed 6.1 percent
According to Bloomberg Business Week.

Israel’s three-week long massacre
Of 1,200 Palestinians in Gaza,
Including nearly 300 children,
“Has pushed Elbit’s stock close to the highest level since 2010
While its valuation on a price-to-earnings basis
Is near the most expensive in five years.”

Israel, in other words,
Makes bloodshed its business.

…

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The Loneliness of Anti-Imperialist Fighters, by Andre Vltchek

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Corporate State, Empire, Inequality, Military Industrial Complex, Neo-Colonialism

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Andre Vltchek, Capitalism, Corporate State, Corporatocracy, Empire, Financial Elite, Inverted Totalitarianism, Investigative Journalism, Military Industrial Complex, Noam Chomsky, War for Profit, War on Terror

For a glimpse into the life of someone who is actually doing the dangerous and solitary work of true investigative reporting, exposing the dark underbelly of Western imperialism and global capitalism, please read the recent blog post of Andre Vltchek and support his work.

Richard Falk has said of Vltchek:

Chomsky and Vltchek help us to realize that an array of powerful forces are using their wealth and influence to prevent us from seeing. We are allowed to see only as much as the gatekeepers of the public mind want us to see, and yet we are not relieved from using our capacities for sight. Reading Chomsky and Vltchek removes the scales from our eyes, at least temporarily, as they have managed to elude these gatekeepers, but at considerable risk, with a display of moral courage, civic responsibility, and extraordinary intellectual energy. I learn a lesson in civics from their vigilance: as citizens of constitutional democracies we retain the freedom, and hence possess a heavy responsibility to see for ourselves what is being done in our name…

Algérie Résistance

Andre Vltchek. D.R.

It is late at night and you cannot sleep. Ebrie Lagoon is right behind the window of your hotel, but it is hardly visible at this hour. You are in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa.

You are here because you were informed that the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, also known at ‘Chocolate King’, has been getting his cocoa from the fields of this country. You are also convinced by several of your sources, based all over the world, that his confectionary empire,Roshen, is receiving its basic product from some of the most terrible plantations in Côte d’Ivoire that are still using child labor. You decided to come here, to investigate…

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Endlessly Apologizing for a Self-Destructive System

24 Saturday May 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Wall Street Fraud

≈ 57 Comments

Tags

Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate $tate, Corporatocracy, Financial Elite, Gross Inequality, Inverted Totalitarianism, James Howard Kunstler, Joel Magnuson, Mass Media Manipulation, Mindful Economics: How the U.S. Economy Works - Why it Matters - and How it Could Be Different, Monopoly Capitalism, Monopsony, Noam Chomsky, Poverty, Regulatory Capture, Richard Wolff, Systemic Disorder, Systemic Fraud in Politics, The Invisible Hand of the Free Market, The Myth of Laissez Faire Capitalism, The Profit Motive

occupytoronto-021

Although I agree with much of what J. H. Kunstler has to say, particularly on his analysis of energy and his critiques of American suburbia, when it comes to his views on the human-made system that is driving this entire train wreck, he gets it dead wrong. Here is a quote from his last blog post:

Now I am, going to reveal to you why it is so difficult to get a live human being on the telephone at these important places: because the more of a racketeering matrix medicine becomes, the more it seeks to evade responsibility for the consequences. That is, the more medicine becomes a criminal enterprise, the less it wants to hear from its client/victims. The same ethos is at work in just about every other realm of corporate enterprise in the USA. Our problem in the USA is not “capitalism,” it’s racketeering. Why we fail to comprehend it is one of the abiding mysteries of contemporary life.

…It ought to be self-evident that this could only happen in a profoundly corrupt, dishonest, and degenerate society, because it took the form of a social compact that accepted this sort of behavior as okay…

Kunstler is perpetuating a deep-seated myth about capitalism that many in American society repeat. Laying the blame on those victimized by an economic system, which by design exploits, disenfranchises, and discards its subjects, overlooks the fact that the problem is the system itself. Capitalism is not an ethical system, and its overriding force of motivation is always the bottom line. Inequality, conflict, and regulatory corruption are all part and parcel of capitalism. History has borne this out numerous times. Unless someone steps in to break them up, monopolies are the natural result of unbridled capitalism (Mindful Economics, Joel Magnuson):

Winner-take-all

Corporate money greases the wheels of the political system which then passes regulations discouraging competition and favoring large corporations. Regulatory capture is inevitably what happens when successful capitalists amass wealth and buy off the political class whose lifeblood is, after all, money. Under the present system, we will never see a candidate elected to office without a substantial war chest of funds stuffed with corporate ‘donations‘. Government does the bidding of capitalists, not vise versa. We saw this in spades with the election of Obama when all his campaign promises of “hope and change” evaporated into thin air as he filled his cabinet with Wall Street and Goldman Sachs cronies. Who wrote the legislation for Obama’s healthcare reform? — lobbyists for the healthcare industrial complex where, not surprisingly, “the big bucks are currently earned not through the delivery of care, but from overseeing the business of medicine.” The corruption that Kunstler decries is not an aberration of capitalism, but a natural feature of it:

…What chiefly drives this sort of political corruption today is capitalism’s structure. For many capitalist enterprises, competitive and other pressures exist to increase profits, growth rates, and/or market share. Their boards and top managers seek to find cheaper produced inputs and cheaper labor power, to extract more output from their workers, to sell their outputs at the highest possible prices and to find more profitable technologies. The structure provides them with every incentive of financial gain and/or career security and advancement to behave in those ways. Thus, boards and top managers seek the maximum obtainable assistance of government officials in all these areas and also try to pay the least possible portion of their net revenues as taxes. Boards of directors tap their corporations’ profits to corrupt mostly the top echelons of the government bureaucracy, those needed to make advantageous official decisions.

Individual capitalists act to corrupt government officials to serve their enterprise’s needs. Grouped into associations, they do likewise for their industries. When organized as a whole (in “chambers of commerce” or “manufacturers alliances,” etc.), they corrupt to secure their class interests. When such corruption is not secret, capitalists articulate their demands to corrupted officials as “good for the economy or society as a whole.” Such phrases constitute the “appropriate language” that enables officials publicly to disguise and hopefully to legitimate their corrupt acts.

Strict moral codes, regulations and laws have been imposed to prevent individual or grouped capitalists from corrupting government officials. Evidence suggests, however, that neither civic-minded ethics, nor regulations nor laws have come close to ending capitalists’ corruption. Countless government courts, commissions, etc., have hardly ended official complicities in that corruption. Mainstream economics mostly proceeds in its analyses and policy prescriptions as if rampant corruption did not exist. Mass media tend to treat capitalist corruption (at least in their home countries) as exceptional and government efforts to stop it as serious. These, too, are further examples of that “appropriate language” with which modern capitalist societies mask systemic corruption.
~ Richard D Wolff

Noam Chomsky uses the acronym RECD (Really Existing Capitalist Democracy, pronounced ‘wrecked‘) to describe the capitalism that exists in the real world, and he doesn’t hold out much hope for civilization surviving it. Any sort of idyllic form of capitalism only exists in people’s heads and is kept alive by the myth of laissez-faire capitalism (Mindful Economics, Joel Magnuson):

Myth of a free market

BeFunky_null_12.jpg

A democracy cannot exist without an informed and intelligent electorate, and when corporations and monied interests intentionally spin the news, the populous are reduced to conspiracy mongers and what Gore Vidal scoffingly called ‘consumer-depositors’ in thrall to the financial elite. Alas, the institution intended to educate the public, aka the Fourth Estate, on matters of vital importance has been thoroughly dismantled and perverted by capitalism. The internet, the last bastion of independent and alternative news, is soon to follow suite (Mindful Economics, Joel Magnuson):

media

If the masses are unable to see through the spin and distortion propagated by a class of greedy parasites, there is one entity that will not suffer the fate of the dispossessed, dying quietly in some dark corner. The Earth is not so forgiving to such continued capitalist assaults, and it’s not fooled by propaganda such as ‘sustainable development’, ‘green growth’, or ‘corporate social responsibility’. Since pre-industrial times, the global temperature has ‘only’ risen 0.85 degrees Celsius (1.5 degrees Fahrenheit), and we can already see the havoc to civilization’s infrastructure that climate chaos is wreaking. With forecasts of average global temperature to be many fold greater by mid century, it would seem that only a miracle will save us.

Systemic Disorder published an important essay yesterday on the systematic destruction of labor rights throughout the world. How long will these myths about capitalism persist until the exploited finally wake up and realize their blood, sweat, and sacrifice are what fills the coffers of the über rich? Many at the bottom of the economic hierarchy bend over backwards to apologize for our current system, calling it everything but capitalism. No matter how often capitalism fails, no matter how many people it kills, it is religiously touted as the only and the best economic system available despite its flaws. Will humans continue to amuse themselves to death, defending a systemically self-destructive system?

…

We watched the tragedy unfold
We did as we were told
We bought and sold
It was the greatest show on earth
But then it was over
We ohhed and aahed
We drove our racing cars
We ate our last few jars of caviar
And somewhere out there in the stars
A keen-eyed look-out
Spied a flickering light
Our last hurrah

And when they found our shadows
Grouped ’round the TV sets
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data on their lists
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to death . . .

…

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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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The Conspiracy is Systemic and Legalized.

08 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Corporate State, Empire, Military Industrial Complex, Neo-Colonialism

≈ 69 Comments

Tags

Apophenia, Capitalism, Class War, Colin Todhunter, Confirmation Bias, Corporate State, Corporatocracy, Dr Patrick Leman, Empire, Financial Elite, Glenn Beck, Gross Inequality, Inverted Totalitarianism, Michael Parenti, Military Industrial Complex, Noam Chomsky, Patternicity, Plutocracy, Police State, Poverty, Regulatory Capture, Security and Surveillance State, Social Unrest, Subjective Validation, The Elite 1%, True-Believer Syndrome, unwashed public, Wall Street Fraud

conspiricy-blog-2-colossal-concerns-2

If you are a person who gets their news solely from mainstream media and forms a worldview from that information, then this website would perhaps strike you as radical, off-base, and conspiratorial. But what if nearly everything you listen to and read has been filtered through the monied interests of the most powerful entities on the planet? And what if those entities quite literally control the government by way of a revolving door, campaign contributions, and lobbyists who unduly influence the crafting of legislation in favor of big business while ignoring the needs of the common citizenry? What if you are merely a pawn in the machinations of such a system — a consumer for the all-important world market and a disposable human resource in its labor pool? What if the wealth created by such an economy is amassing at the very tip of this pyramid scheme while leaving those below to fend for themselves in a world depleted of its resources and poisoned by industrial waste. Would such a grim reality be considered a conspiracy theory? In other words, would the previously described outcome of such a socio-economic system necessarily have to be the plan of a secret cabal of powerful people? If corporations must compete to survive and are legally bound to look after the financial interests of their shareholders, then protecting and growing profits must in the end override all other concerns — environmental and social. The gross wealth disparity, environmental destruction, and political disenfranchisement created by capitalism is not the byproduct of a conspiracy; it’s simply the end-result of a system operating as intended. Concentration of wealth, a characteristic result of capitalism, inevitably leads to a near total corruption of journalism and democracy. Of course the corporate elite may collude to price-fix, bribe regulators or heads of state, and cover up environmental damage and dangers to public health, amongst many other devious activities, but it is invariably done in the interest of gaining dominance in the market place and protecting profits. Capitalism and democracy are not compatible. In fact, life on Earth is ultimately not compatible with capitalism.

One author who has written extensively on conspiracy theories is Colin Todhunter. In his essay New World Order “Conspiracy Theories”: Diversions and Deceptions, he pinpoints the time at which conspiracy theories became widespread:

“…Although conspiracy theories have been around for centuries, some gained in popularity during the 1960s and 70s as ‘post-modern disillusionment’ set in and people began to question the very notion of ‘progress’. Modernity had not lived up to expectations. Living under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, environmental degradation, poverty and the inability of science or politics to address such concerns, people began moving towards ‘new age’ beliefs and concepts or embracing unconventional theories that seemed to explain humanity’s plight.

This all occurred against a backdrop of (failed) proposals to collectively address worldwide problems that went beyond the capacity of individual nation states acting alone. The UN had been set up along with various other international institutions in order to address global issues but also to cement US global hegemony…”

In his insightful essay The Role of Anti-Establishment “Conspiracy Theories”, Todhunter informs us about the exploitive and unstable nature of a system that has given rise to so much conspiracy theory:

“…The advocates of populist conspiracy theories seek to explain everything in terms of secret societies and codes, Zionism, ‘communism’ or the hand of ‘Rothschild’. Of course, families like the Rothschilds and Rockefellers and groups like Bilderberg exist and do hold great power. That much is not in dispute. However, the nature of the dynamics of power is. Groups or think tanks like Bilderberg, Brookings Institute, Trilateral Commission, Chatham House, Council on Foreign Relations, RAND Corporation and so on are where capitalism’s state-corporate hegemons, including the rich families mentioned above, meet to discuss, devise policies and manage capitalism.

Radical critiques of society have often focused on the underlying logic and processes of capital accumulation and capitalist economic crises as well as capitalism’s inherent contradictions. An analysis of the historical antecedents of modernity according to scholarly analysis has also been prevalent. Today, it is popular to assert that the members of some shadowy group have been in charge all this time – the Illuminati, often used as a metaphor for ‘the Jews’.

The rise of such explanations are understandable in a complex world, where the ordinary person feels utterly powerless, confused and craves easy answers. Little surprise then that events and crises are said to be the work of some sinister ‘Illuminati’, an explanation which tends to steer clear of any genuine analysis of capitalism.

In the West, jobs are being outsourced, wages are falling and unemployment rising. As the market becomes saturated with goods and demand is unable to mop up supply, firms go bust. There is a shift towards powerful monopoly capitalism, while citizens and workers experience increasing powerlessness and immiseration. And to seek out new profits, imperialist ventures abroad become the norm. State-corporate monopoly capitalism and imperialist intent are not part of a ‘New World Order’ but are part of a world in which the few benefit at the expense of the many and that has been in the making ever since Britain became the first industrial nation and capitalism emerged.

But what we now have isn’t free market capitalism, some might say. The notion of the free market has always been a myth. It’s always been controlled and manipulated. It’s never been ‘free’.  And we are now witnessing advanced capitalism in all its gore.

Capitalism has inherent contradictions. All was never intended to be fine. Remember the slogan to end poverty by 2020 (or whatever the date was)? Capitalism thrives on poverty. It’s integral to the system. That’s why it is rampant in the West and much more so in the cheap labour economies of the ‘developing world’. The increasing concentration of power, ownership and wealth and the rising impoverishment of the masses is one of capitalism’s greatest contradictions. It’s not some kind of conspiracy to keep the masses in poverty or in fear of falling into it.  It’s built in to capitalism.

But many do not refer Marx, Engels, Lenin or Trotsky to gain an understanding of the processes of dialectic materialism and capitalism.  They and their theories are regarded as being part of the Zionist conspiracy. If socialism and communism are the creation of Zionism, which supposedly exerts so much control over the US and Britain, strange then that the secret services of both the US and Britain spent so much time and energy on infiltrating, deradicalising and subverting the left (3).

While the late Antony C Sutton (sometimes regarded as the father of modern conspiracy theories) provides food for thought in his writings and research (4), conspiracy theories tend to provide limited insight into the dynamics of power and oppression in the 21st century.

However imperfect the work of people like Robert Brenner (5) and Barrington Moore (6) may have been, their research was based on broad comparative sociological analysis of the cultural, historical, agrarian and economic factors that led to the rise of capitalism, fascism and communism in various societies. In the absence of this, however, prominent proponents of conspiracy theories in the US and Britain make crude assumptions about such phenomena comprising part of an Illuminati plot, which play on the prejudices and fears of ordinary people, who in turn latch on to the explanation offered as a proxy for the underlying causes of their powerlessness and frustrations.

Why bother having an informed understanding of the dynamics of the modern world based on rigorous research? Much easier to watch a few YouTube clips about some secret, manipulative elite or even amphibians from outer space with an agenda to control the world.

Many conspiracy theorists have indeed actually been quite informative on how the banking system works and how bankers conspire to control policies by keeping governments in permanent debt. They have also highlighted glaring flaws in official accounts of 9/11. They have rightly pinpointed what the mainstream misses out of its narratives and have raised issues that many on the left had tended to ignore or gave scant attention to. But such useful insights then become wrapped up in theories that too often appear to be based on flights of fancy.

There is no doubting that people can and do conspire to shape events. Not everything can be explained by structures where individual motive is eradicated. For example, corporations conspire to produce price cartels, media barons conspire to dominate and state-corporate interests embark on military jaunts to control markets and resources. And yes, bankers conspire to restrict credit for various reasons. But this has to be placed within the wider context of Empire and capitalism.

In capitalism, the compulsion to compete, dominate and pursue profit casts long shadows over virtually every social and cultural institution, from government and politics to education, law, agriculture and entertainment.

Conspiracy theorists and their followers may well appreciate aspects of this, but merely speculate about the intentions of and actions of groups of people without addressing how capitalism shapes any of it…”

How many commercials and advertisements are bombarded at the average person every waking day of their life. It’s in the thousands – everything from TV commercials to billboards to junk mail to radio adverts. Don’t you think this would have some sort of effect on a person’s psychological well-being? Is it any wonder that the one country in which conspiracy theories thrive most also happens to be the epicenter of unbridled capitalism? British author Roger Cohen said, “Captive minds… resort to conspiracy theory because it is the ultimate refuge of the disempowered.” In an environment where everyone is expected to sell themselves everyday in order to eat and ‘the truth’ is manufactured so as to protect the vested interests of those who bring you the ‘news’, desperate souls grasp at any explanation for why the system is so dysfunctional, corrupt, and unfair. According to Dr Patrick Leman, a psychologist at the Royal Holloway University of London, the weak and marginalized of society gravitate towards conspiracy theories because they have no voice in society:

…People are also more likely to believe in conspiracy theories if they feel powerless in the face of large social authorities or institutions, and not part of the mainstream of society.

This is supported by the observation in the USA that beliefs in conspiracy theories tend to be stronger amongst members of ethnic minority groups.

Sociologists suggest that these minority groups feel politically disenfranchised or discriminated against and this gives rise to higher levels of belief in conspiracy theories…

Cognitive bias also encourages the acceptance of conspiracy theories. One such behavior is the human tendency to seek patterns from random information. Conspiracy theorists are said to be notorious for this proclivity and it goes by several different names such as apophenia or patternicity. Other cognitive biases include confirmation bias, subjective validation, and true-believer syndrome.

Development of hi-tech communication technology coupled with the rapid expansion of the World Wide Web and social networking has fueled the growth of conspiracy theories around the world. With little money, the rantings of anyone can be voiced to the world. Below is a picture of a twenty-dollar bill folded in such a way as to resemble the twin towers on 9-11. It quickly spread across the internet and was picked up by Glenn Beck, a monger of conspiracy theories, and featured on his blog:

“What are the odds that a simple geometric folding of the $20 bill would accidentally contain a representation of both terror attacks?”

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“The radical analysis sees such things as ecological crises, military interventions, the national security state, homelessness, poverty, an inequitable tax system, and undemocratic social institutions such as the corporate owned media, etc… It sees these things not as the aberrant outcome of a basically rational system, but as rational outcomes of a system whose central goal is the accumulation of wealth and power for a privileged class…” ~ Michael Parenti

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Chomsky Poses a Question

07 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Wall Street Fraud

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Addiction to Fossil Fuels, ALEC – American Legislative Exchange Council, Capitalism, Climate Change, Climate Tipping Points, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Consumer Culture, Corporate State, Corporatocracy, Eco-Apocalypse, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Financial Elite, Gross Inequality, Henry Bemis, Inverted Totalitarianism, Mass Die Off, Noam Chomsky, The Elite 1%, The Twilight Zone, unwashed public, Wall Street Fraud

In his latest essay, Chomsky asks the simple question, “Can Civilization Survive Capitalism?” And when he says “capitalism”, he means the true capitalism we have today here in America in which capital has corrupted and usurped government regulation and legislation to the (N)th degree. Crony capitalism is the same as unfettered capitalism which is the end result of all types of capitalism if they are left to play out to their inevitable conclusion, something Chomsky calls “really existing capitalist democracy” or RECD for short.

First, Chomsky proclaims the obvious fact that RECD is incompatible with true democracy and that civilization cannot survive under RECD with its corporate-run government passing as faux democracy. He then asks whether a functioning democracy under a capitalist system would make a difference.

For the litmus test, Chomsky confronts the most apparent and grave danger facing mankind – environmental catastrophe, an unfolding crisis we here at this site are very familiar with. As is often the case in an RECD, what the public wants and what the corporate forces ruling the country demand are two very different things. To illustrate this divergent reality, Chomsky quotes from recent studies by Kelly Sims Gallagher in the current issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In contrast to well over a hundred countries which have enacted renewable energy policies and targets, the U.S. “has not adopted any consistent and stable set of policies at the national level to foster the use of renewable energy.”

And it’s not by lack of public desire that such renewable energies have not been enacted. On the contrary, the vast majority of Americans have favored such action in order to avert the very environmental catastrophe currently threatening life as we know it. But as Chomsky wryly comments:

The fact that the public is influenced by science is deeply troubling to those who dominate the economy and state policy.

Now to combat this influence of science on the minds of the common people, our corporate overlords have used one of their lapdog lobbyist groups, ALEC, to enact legislation with the Orwellian title “Environmental Literacy Improvement Act” which would actually cast a cloud of doubt over the science of climate change by forcing schools to allow alternative interpretations, i.e. climate change denial:

The ALEC Act mandates “balanced teaching” of climate science in K-12 classrooms. “Balanced teaching” is a code phrase that refers to teaching climate-change denial, to “balance” mainstream climate science. It is analogous to the “balanced teaching” advocated by creationists to enable the teaching of “creation science” in public schools. Legislation based on ALEC models has already been introduced in several states.

Of course this “balanced teaching” won’t include the views of those much more astute scientists who have accurately said that the IPCC’s climate models and forecasts have been and continue to be much too conservative and optimistic. The corporate intrusion into America’s classrooms will undoubtedly include viewpoints from people who say that CO2 is good for the planet and that God would not allow man to destroy himself.

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Again, Chomsky explains that such dumbing down of the populace is done intentionally to serve the short-term profit motives of our corporatocracy. Keeping the masses ill-informed and living within a cloud of propaganda and infotainment is the primary objective of the ALEC legislation. Creating a country full of Al Bundys and Homer Simpsons has been an ongoing process since the inception of a post-World War II Consumer Culture. When the primary tool for constructing a nation’s identity – “The Media” – is motivated by money, society is destined for a meltdown. We are following the doctrine of ‘preordained destiny’ right into the annals of extinction alongside the dinosaurs and the Dodo bird.

Snap 2013-03-07 at 01.17.18

…Within the RECD system it is of extreme importance that we become the stupid nation, not misled by science and rationality, in the interests of the short-term gains of the masters of the economy and political system, and damn the consequences.

These commitments are deeply rooted in the fundamentalist market doctrines that are preached within RECD, though observed in a highly selective manner, so as to sustain a powerful state that serves wealth and power.

Chomsky compares the corporatocracy’s willful ignorance on human-induced climate change to that of the ongoing banking crisis and the financial sector’s criminal behavior in disregarding “systemic risk”, i.e. the risk of collapsing an entire financial system or entire market. The systemic risk of continuing to exploit fossil fuels is more blatantly obvious every week, month, and year that passes. Enjoying 20/20 hindsight and taxpayer-funded bailouts won’t be an option for a crash of the global biosphere.

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Environmental catastrophe is far more serious: The externality that is being ignored is the fate of the species. And there is nowhere to run, cap in hand, for a bailout.

In future, historians (if there are any) will look back on this curious spectacle taking shape in the early 21st century. For the first time in human history, humans are facing the significant prospect of severe calamity as a result of their actions – actions that are battering our prospects of decent survival.

Those historians will observe that the richest and most powerful country in history, which enjoys incomparable advantages, is leading the effort to intensify the likely disaster. Leading the effort to preserve conditions in which our immediate descendants might have a decent life are the so-called “primitive” societies: First Nations, tribal, indigenous, aboriginal.

The countries with large and influential indigenous populations are well in the lead in seeking to preserve the planet. The countries that have driven indigenous populations to extinction or extreme marginalization are racing toward destruction.

Over four centuries of commodifying the planet and two centuries of wallowing in a fossil fuel high have turned the industrialized world into crazed drug addicts marching towards their own destruction. It is only the planet’s unindustrialized “primitive people’ who remain clear-minded enough to act rationally and wisely. By all estimations, having even a semi-functioning democracy under a capitalist system would exponentially improve our odds of survival; but under the current regime, no living thing will get out alive when glorified apes dressed in suits are flinging shit and wielding weapons of mass destruction.

This observation generalizes: Throughout the world, indigenous societies are struggling to protect what they sometimes call “the rights of nature,” while the civilized and sophisticated scoff at this silliness.

This is all exactly the opposite of what rationality would predict – unless it is the skewed form of reason that passes through the filter of RECD.

nuke2

Our present predicament is best described by a commenter in regards to the short film ‘Time Enough at Last‘:

Snap 2013-03-07 at 10.37.51 Time Enough At Last

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The Next Four Years: the Wear and Tear of Reality

07 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by xraymike79 in Climate Change, Corporate State, Empire

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

American Biologist Ernst Mayr, Barack Obama, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Corporatocracy, Economic Collapse, Empire, Financial Elite, Gross Inequality, Inverted Totalitarianism, Mitt Romney, Neoliberal Capitalism, Noam Chomsky, Obomney 2012, Police State, Poverty, Regulatory Capture, The Elite 1%, unwashed public

Bloomberg Businessweek’s rendition of the toll taken on the President dealing with the stress of the next four years. King Romney was the alternative cover:

…the road ahead for President Obama as he faces the fiscal cliff and crucial decisions for the future of the economy, business, and defense,” writes Businessweek. “The opposition remains considerable, and no matter how successful he is, the hardest job in the world will take its toll.

…and the fate of the human species (you wouldn’t expect Bloomberg Businessweek to mention this, would you?):


Train wrecks, even one that appears to be happening in slow motion, usually are ‘shocking’. Great speech by Chomsky, especially the climate change segment:

…maybe humans are somehow trying to fulfill a prediction of great American biologist who died recently, Ernst Mayr. He argued years ago that intelligence seems to be a lethal mutation. He—and he had some pretty good evidence. There’s a notion of biological success, which is how many of you are there around. You know, that’s biological success. And he pointed out that if you look at the tens of billions of species in human—in world history, the ones that are very successful are the ones that mutate very quickly, like bacteria, or the ones that have a fixed ecological niche, like beetles. They seem to make out fine. But as you move up the scale of what we call intelligence, success declines steadily. When you get up to mammals, it’s very low. There are very few of them around. I mean, there’s a lot of cows; it’s only because we domesticate them. When you get to humans, it’s the same. ‘Til very recently, much too recent a time to show up in any evolutionary accounting, humans were very scattered. There were plenty of other hominids, but they disappeared, probably because humans exterminated them, but nobody knows for sure. Anyhow, maybe we’re trying to show that humans just fit into the general pattern. We can exterminate ourselves, too, the rest of the world with us, and we’re hell bent on it right now…

I’ll have to read up on Ernst Mayr.

…more of Chomsky on Mayr and the extinction of man:

…organisms that do quite well are those that mutate very quickly, like bacteria, or those that are stuck in a fixed ecological niche, like beetles. They do fine. And they may survive the environmental crisis. But as you go up the scale of what we call intelligence, they are less and less successful. By the time you get to mammals, there are very few of them as compared with, say, insects. By the time you get to humans, the origin of humans may be 100,000 years ago, there is a very small group. We are kind of misled now because there are a lot of humans around, but that’s a matter of a few thousand years, which is meaningless from an evolutionary point of view. His argument was, you’re just not going to find intelligent life elsewhere, and you probably won’t find it here for very long either because it’s just a lethal mutation. He also added, a little bit ominously, that the average life span of a species, of the billions that have existed, is about 100,000 years, which is roughly the length of time that modern humans have existed.

With the environmental crisis, we’re now in a situation where we can decide whether Mayr was right or not. If nothing significant is done about it, and pretty quickly, then he will have been correct: human intelligence is indeed a lethal mutation. Maybe some humans will survive, but it will be scattered and nothing like a decent existence, and we’ll take a lot of the rest of the living world along with us.

So is anything going to be done about it? The prospects are not very auspicious. As you know, there was an international conference on this last December. A total disaster. Nothing came out of it. The emerging economies, China, India, and others, argued that it’s unfair for them to bear the burden of a couple hundred years of environmental destruction by the currently rich and developed societies. That’s a credible argument. But it’s one of these cases where you can win the battle and lose the war. The argument isn’t going to be very helpful to them if, in fact, the environmental crisis advances and a viable society goes with it…

By all accounts, we appear to be racing toward our own expiration date.

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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.

Preserving the Status Quo

There is no right wing or left wing, only the aristocracy and the serfs (a vertical paradigm). To know this is to be like a fish who has broken the surface of the water, realizing he was in water the whole time.

A Kabuki Play

"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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  • (2019) UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’
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RSS Breaking the Set

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RSS Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

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  • Biden administration curtails drone strikes amid major policy review March 4, 2021
  • Watchdog says Elaine Chao, ex-transpo secretary and Mitch McConnell's wife, misused office including making staff edit her dad's Wikipedia page March 4, 2021
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RSS C-Realm

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  • Maine DOT’s Celebration February 16, 2021
  • Automakers Now Openly Admitting to Haloware Ops January 14, 2021
  • Museum of Impending Carmageddon: Piece #2 January 7, 2021

RSS Decline of the Empire

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

RSS Deep Green Resistence News Service

  • India’s Farmers’ Protests Are About More Than Reform — They Are Resisting The Corporate Takeover Of Agriculture March 3, 2021
  • “Interesting” Times: Capitalism Kills Everything March 2, 2021
  • The History Of Thacker Pass [Dispatches from Thacker Pass] March 1, 2021
  • The Gender Identity Industry, Transhumanism and Posthumanism February 28, 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

  • House passes expansive police reform bill named in honor of George Floyd March 4, 2021
  • U.S. suspends federal agent who joined crowd outside Capitol during rampage, lawyer says March 4, 2021
  • Self-Proclaimed Billionaire Trump Now Begging Small-Dollar Donors For Money March 4, 2021
  • GOP Senate hopeful in Ohio takes aim at Republican governor over mask mandate March 4, 2021
  • Water crisis continues in Mississippi, weeks after cold snap March 4, 2021
  • Inspector General's Report Cites Elaine Chao for Misuse of Office March 4, 2021
  • First Lady Jill Biden visits Meriden to tour elementary school with new U.S. education secretary.... March 3, 2021
  • GOP Sen. Ron Johnson to force Senate clerks to read text of $1.9 trillion covid-relief bill March 3, 2021
  • House to adjourn early over intelligence that groups may be planning another Capitol attack March 3, 2021
  • Greg McDermott offered to resign, but that's not what Creighton's players wanted March 3, 2021

RSS Democratic Underground – Good Reads

  • Trump, hush-money payments, and a New York City ice rink March 4, 2021
  • Chatelain: Even in Omaha, the word 'plantation' carries 400 years of 'dehumanization' March 4, 2021
  • How Marjorie Taylor Greene Won, And Why Someone Like Her Can Win Again March 3, 2021
  • BTRTN: Biden Back Better - The Political Maturation of Joe Biden March 3, 2021
  • CPAC, conservatives and the culture war: Why Republicans will become more extreme in Trump's absence March 3, 2021
  • The Memo: Is Trump mounting a comeback -- or finally fading? March 3, 2021
  • Dutch Protocol for transgender children/teens doctor issues caution March 3, 2021
  • Shatel: What happens now with Creighton coach Greg McDermott? March 3, 2021
  • Democrats must decide whether they want to govern or let Republicans hold them hostage March 3, 2021
  • Dystopian 'Digidog'- Robo-Dog Now Patrols New York City, The Last Thing We Need March 3, 2021

RSS Democracy Now

  • Latinx Farmworkers Risk Their Lives During Pandemic. Many Now Struggle to Access Vaccines March 3, 2021
  • Cuomo Must Go: Calls Grow to Remove NY Governor over COVID Nursing Home Cover-up & Sexual Harassment March 3, 2021
  • Asian American Communities Organize Against Rise in Hate Crimes, Say More Policing Is Not the Answer March 3, 2021
  • Headlines for March 3, 2021 March 3, 2021
  • Anti-Choice Forces Use Pandemic to Slash Abortion Access in Preview of Post-Roe v. Wade World March 2, 2021
  • Black People Face Higher COVID Infections & Deaths. Should They Have Lower Age Cutoffs for Vaccines? March 2, 2021
  • A New Form of Jim Crow: Ari Berman on the GOP's Anti-Democratic Assault on Voting Rights March 2, 2021
  • Headlines for March 2, 2021 March 2, 2021
  • Burmese Scholar: Military Junta Using Terror Against "Entire Population" to Keep Power After Coup March 1, 2021
  • Rep. Ro Khanna: Democrats Should Ignore the Senate Parliamentarian and Pass $15 Minimum Wage Hike March 1, 2021

RSS Derrick Jensen

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RSS Desdemona Despair

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RSS Desertification

  • The Great Green Wall: Implementation Status and Way Ahead to 2030 February 26, 2021
  • Round table discussion on good land governance for land degradation neutrality February 25, 2021
  • Cattle and citizens in Nigeria February 25, 2021
  • Monitoring landcover change and desertification processes in northern China and Mongolia using historical written sources and vegetation indices February 25, 2021
  • Expanding Gum Arabic production to combat desertification February 25, 2021

RSS deSmog Blog

  • UK Climate Diplomacy Staff Cut Again as Post-Brexit Links to Trump and US Deniers Strengthen November 24, 2016
  • UN Human Rights Experts Condemn Expanding Petrochemical Industry in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley as 'Environmental Racism' March 4, 2021
  • Pennsylvania Families Exposed to Unusually High Levels of Oil and Gas Industry Chemicals, Report Finds March 3, 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

  • Two-State Delusion: Israel Is A Racist One State Nightmare February 28, 2021
  • Texas Catastrophe Is A Result Of Neoliberal Rot February 19, 2021
  • Discussing the failed impeachment soap opera with Anya Parampil February 17, 2021
  • US Meddles In Ecuador As Region Resists Imperialism w/ Ben Norton February 13, 2021
  • Watch the full episode of Left Bitches with Katie Halper February 12, 2021

RSS Dissent Magazine

  • India’s Muslim Journalists Are Under Attack March 3, 2021
  • Legacies of Cold War Liberalism March 1, 2021
  • The “Make Me Do It” Myth February 26, 2021
  • Future Monetary Theory February 24, 2021

RSS Dissident Voice

  • Creating a Safe Space at Work for Discussing Social Justice Topics March 4, 2021
  • “Engaging the World”: The “Fascinating Story” of Hamas’s Political Evolution March 3, 2021
  • Delusions of Self-Defense: Biden Bombs Syria March 3, 2021
  • Blood for Oil March 2, 2021
  • Small Acts Can Become A Power No Government Can Suppress March 2, 2021
  • Breaching Digital Rights: India’s Platform and Media Ethics Code March 1, 2021
  • Charter Schools’ Obsession With Test Scores Deliberately Misses the Point March 1, 2021
  • Coup Leaders, Aung San Suu Kyi Betrayed Democracy in Burma March 1, 2021

RSS Do the Math

  • Eclipsed, Lately September 11, 2017

RSS Dollars & Sense Blog

  • For Black History Month: The Economics of the Great Migration February 28, 2021
  • GameStop and the Mechanics of Inverted Totalitarianism February 18, 2021
  • 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

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

  • A Second Holocaust? March 3, 2021
  • Avoid the Pfizer Covid Vaccine March 3, 2021

RSS Dredd Blog

  • If The Straw Man Had A Brain February 27, 2021
  • On The Origin Of The Home Of COVID-19 - 21 February 16, 2021
  • On The Origin Of The Home Of COVID-19 - 20 February 9, 2021
  • Will Elections Cure The Disease? - 5 February 5, 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

  • Radio Ecoshock: Billion Dollar Black Out Climate Disasters March 3, 2021

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

  • Here Are the Landmines Utah Renters Need To Look Out for in Lease Agreements March 3, 2021
  • It’s a Myth That Asian-Americans Are Doing Well in the Pandemic March 2, 2021
  • How (Un)compassionate Conservatism Failed Texas March 1, 2021
  • How Did You Sleep Last Night? Darin Mann, Salt Lake City. February 26, 2021
  • Asian American Food Aid Expands To Address Hidden Hunger During Pandemic February 24, 2021
  • ‘I Thought It Was Going To Break Me’: COVID’s Brutal Toll on Working Mothers February 24, 2021

RSS Economic Undertow

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RSS EcoWorldView

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RSS Empire Burlesque

  • On the Acquittal of the Murderous Thug Donald Trump February 13, 2021
  • Impeachment Cave-in: Dems Plumb New Depths of Perfidy February 13, 2021

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

  • The Passport and the Antifa Hunt: The Militia Counter-Stories Emerge
  • Josh Hawley Shocked and Alarmed to Discover the FBI Would Follow the Money behind Right Wing Terrorists
  • Journalists May Be Most at Risk (as Described) from a Presumed January 6 GeoFence Warrant

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

  • UK budget: coming out of COVID March 3, 2021
  • Thinking of Paddy Cullen: Prisoner of War March 3, 2021
  • Poetry: She Was Beautiful March 2, 2021

RSS Fair: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

  • States Have No Inherent ‘Right to Exist’—but It’s a Media Fixation on Israel/Palestine February 12, 2021
  • Factchecking NPR’s Attempted Takedown of Bernie Sanders February 18, 2020
  • Wired’s Gee-Whiz High-Tech Militarism August 7, 2019

RSS Fairewinds

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RSS Fairfax Climate Watch

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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

  • Podcast: health, justice and the environment – the core issues February 27, 2021
  • Patrick Noble: a tribute February 27, 2021
  • 2020 Feasta Annual Report February 26, 2021

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

  • Very Good News about the Polar Vortex Breakdown February 17, 2021
  • Trump began the incitement towards armed insurrection in Wilmington, NC on 9 August 2016 February 10, 2021
  • Trump's ICE/CBP dumped U.S. citizen newborns & moms on Mexican streets February 5, 2021
  • 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

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

  • Mapping intersectionality: Empowering youth addressing plastics March 3, 2021
  • Pennsylvania’s Waste Disposal Wells – A Tale of Two Datasets February 26, 2021
  • California Oil & Gas Setbacks Recommendations Memo February 23, 2021

RSS George Monbiot (Alternet)

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RSS George Monbiot (Official Home Page)

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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

RSS Global Occupy News

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RSS Global Oneness Project

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RSS Global Research

  • Selected Articles: C.Y.A. and “Fraudulent Marketing”: The Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine is an “Unapproved Product” March 3, 2021
  • C.Y.A. and “Fraudulent Marketing”: The Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine is an “Unapproved Product” which is “Permitted for Use” March 3, 2021
  • Video: Armenia Lost the War against Azerbaijan. Calls for Resignation of PM Pashinyan March 3, 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

  • The World Finally Started Cutting Climate Pollution. Now It Needs To Multiply That By 10. March 3, 2021
  • Susan Collins Will Vote For Interior Secretary Nominee Deb Haaland March 3, 2021
  • U.N. Human Rights Experts Say Environmental Racism In Louisiana’s Cancer Alley Must End March 2, 2021
  • Weekslong Water Crisis Continues In Mississippi, Hitting Black Residents Hardest March 2, 2021
  • Biden Administration Wades Into Major Fight Over Green Building Codes March 1, 2021
  • Manatee Deaths Are Spiking In Florida February 27, 2021
  • Monarch Butterfly Population In Mexico Drops By More Than A Quarter February 27, 2021
  • Hundreds Of Cows Have Been Trapped At Sea In 'Hellish' Conditions For 2 Months February 27, 2021

RSS Greenpeace Blogs

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RSS Greg Palast

  • Texas Gets Lay’d: How the Bush Family turned off the lights February 20, 2021
  • Squash The Vote: The GOP Plan to Thwart DemocracyPalast on the Bill Press Pod February 16, 2021

RSS Gregor Macdonald

  • Oil Fall December 31, 2018

RSS Grinning Planet

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RSS Grist

  • Are nutritional supplements the best choice for people, their pets, and the planet? March 3, 2021
  • Mississippi lifts COVID restrictions while thousands of residents can’t wash their hands March 3, 2021
  • As coal dies, the US has no plan to help the communities left behind March 3, 2021
  • ‘Climate Neutral’ products are now a thing. What’s behind the label? March 3, 2021

RSS Growth Busters

  • Finding Common Ground (podcast episode 53) February 4, 2021
  • 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

RSS Guernica Mag

  • Hamilton’s Familiar Sound March 3, 2021
  • Men I Hate: The Stasi Men March 2, 2021
  • Chaos Theory March 1, 2021
  • The Idiots February 26, 2021

RSS Guy McPherson’s Blog

  • Science Update: Backtracking on Geoengineering? March 3, 2021
  • How We Live, How We Die: Short Video March 2, 2021

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

  • Reminder March 1, 2021
  • We Are Our Story February 24, 2021
  • Has Our Diet, and Too Many Antibiotics, Made Us More Vulnerable? February 23, 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

  • Farewell Milford Graves February 14, 2021
  • 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

RSS Ian Welsh

  • Our Society, The Slave Factory March 2, 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

  • Call for US to End Support of Saudi-Led War
  • Tenants and Advocates Block Eviction Hearings in Santa Clara County
  • Vacaville Police Target Mutual Aid Event, Arrest and Assault Activists
  • People's Park in Berkeley Faces Greatest Danger Yet

RSS Indybay Newswire

  • Spring 2021 National Immigrant Solidarity Network News Alert!
  • Does Corona policy threaten our fundamental rights? Scientist warns of "creeping process"
  • End Sanctions on the "Troika of Tyranny", and Learn from the World
  • Remembrance culture and the Cold War
  • San Francisco Bay Area school districts push to reopen schools

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

  • Thirty Years of Bombing Iraq March 3, 2021
  • Withdrawal of Tanden Nomination March 3, 2021
  • Tax Billionaires to Pay for Pandemic Recovery March 2, 2021
  • Biden Bombing Syria: “Illegal” February 26, 2021
  • Mars Mission Had 1-in-960 Odds of a Plutonium Release February 26, 2021
  • New Report Calls on Biden to Put an End to Program That’s “Not Far From Slavery” February 25, 2021

RSS International Debt Observatory

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RSS io9

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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

  • Labour MP Jon Trickett: “A Divided Movement Will Not Win the Next Election” March 3, 2021
  • How Bernie Sanders, an Open Socialist, Won Burlington’s Mayoral Election March 3, 2021
  • Oren Cass Is Insisting That Starving Some Kids Is Important for Society March 3, 2021
  • Bernie Is Right: We Shouldn’t Let the Senate Parliamentarian Block a $15 Minimum Wage March 3, 2021
  • The Tide of Feminist Organizing Is Rising in Chile March 3, 2021
  • Placing the Proud Boys on Canada’s Terrorism List Is a Threat to the Left March 3, 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 Joe Bageant

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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

  • President Joe Biden and the False Promises of Immigration Reform and Raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $15 February 20, 2021
  • The Billionaires Have Programmed Too Many of Us Into Opposing Teams February 13, 2021

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 03 02 2021 March 3, 2021
  • Anarchy Radio 02 23 2021 February 23, 2021
  • Anarchy Radio 02 16 2021 February 16, 2021

RSS Jonathan Turley

  • A Golden Calf Lawsuit? Controversy Erupts Over Doctored Photo of Republicans Praying At Trump Statue March 3, 2021
  • Boston Suspends Advanced and Gifted Programs Over “Equity” Concerns March 2, 2021
  • Sweden Moves To Protect Academic Freedom After Professor Quits Covid Research Due To Harassment March 2, 2021
  • Philosophy Professor Faces Calls For His Firing After He Attended Trump Rally March 1, 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 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

  • A New World Apocalyptic Eschatology February 13, 2021

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

  • Declining sperm counts: Nature's answer to overpopulation? February 28, 2021

RSS Lack of Environment

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RSS Law and Disorder

  • Law and Disorder March 1, 2021 March 1, 2021
  • Law and Disorder February 22, 2021 February 22, 2021
  • Law and Disorder February 15, 2021 February 15, 2021

RSS Le Monde diplomatique – English edition

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RSS Le Monde diplomatique – Open Page

  • In Iraq, breaking up is hard to do March 3, 2021
  • The UAE's seven emirates March 2, 2021
  • Sahel: shifting enemies, enduring conflict March 2, 2021
  • How much of a threat is Alexey Navalny? March 2, 2021
  • Myanmar's military coup March 2, 2021

RSS Leaving Babylon

  • Even Iran is laughing at us November 9, 2020

RSS Lee Camp

  • Gov’t Secrets #30 – Breaking News on The Assassinations of Malcolm X and Fred Hampton March 4, 2021
  • We’re Weaponizing Outer Space – Which Is A Terrible Idea (Redacted Tonight) March 3, 2021
  • MOC #55 – Facing Prison For Fighting Injustice (w/ Lillian House) March 3, 2021
  • MOC #54 – Big Oil Is Really Scared! with Steven Donziger March 1, 2021
  • Redacted Tonight #324 – Corporate America Has Weaponized Being ‘Woke’ February 27, 2021
  • MOC #53 – The TRUTH About China (w/ Danny Haiphong) February 26, 2021

RSS Lee Fang

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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.

  • Balloons March 3, 2021
  • Yawn February 26, 2021
  • A PLEA FOR AN EXISTENTIAL ETHICS OF THE ENVIRONMENT February 23, 2021

RSS Link TV – Earth Focus

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RSS Low-Tech Magazine

  • How Sustainable is High-tech Health Care? February 18, 2021
  • Vertical Farming Does Not Save Space February 17, 2021

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

  • Sins of omission vs sins of commission March 3, 2021
  • Wednesday assorted links March 3, 2021
  • Why Didn’t Congress Fund Operation Warp Speed!? March 3, 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

  • 20 Years Of Media Lens: A Selection Of Remarkable Replies From Journalists February 23, 2021
  • ‘Our Indifference To Ourselves’ – Beyond The ‘Virtue’ Of Self-Sacrifice – Part 2 February 11, 2021
  • ‘Our Indifference To Ourselves’ – Beyond The ‘Virtue’ Of Self-Sacrifice – Part 1 February 10, 2021

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: The Oswald Institute of Virology, COVID-19 Origins & US Military Biowarfare w/ gumby4christ February 26, 2021
  • Empire Files: Truth Behind SNL’s Controversial Israel Joke February 22, 2021
  • Empire Files: Haiti’s Century of US Coups, Invasions & Puppets February 21, 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

  • The Democrats Role in Distracting with Identity Politics February 22, 2021
  • At the Oxford Economics Society February 4, 2021
  • The rentier resurgence and takeover: Finance Capitalism vs. Industrial Capitalism January 27, 2021

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

  • ICC launch of investigation of Israeli war crimes enrages AIPAC and Netanyahu — ‘undiluted antisemitism’ March 3, 2021
  • ‘NY Times’ erases Jewish Americans’ support for Israeli settlements March 3, 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’s Oil Revenues Hit 13-Month High In February 2021 March 3, 2021
  • This Day In Iraqi History - Mar 3 March 3, 2021
  • Security In Iraq, Feb 22-28, 2021 March 2, 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 3/3/2021 March 3, 2021
  • How the NATO Alliance Is Fighting Russia’s Sputnik V Vaccine With Subsidies From State Budgets and the Gates Foundation, Hidden by bhe Financial Times March 3, 2021
  • Links 3/3/2021 March 3, 2021
  • The Bullshit Economy: Homebuying “Help” March 3, 2021
  • Department of Pre-Crime: Left-Wing Protester Arrested by FBI for Being on a “Path to Radicalization” March 3, 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

  • Naomi Klein on CIA Project MK-ULTRA February 28, 2021
  • John Pilger February 21, 2021
  • Where Does The Left Go After Trump? February 6, 2021

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

  • January 2021 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

  • Green New Deal IX: Learning Lessons about Equality and Education from Finland February 19, 2021
  • Post-Brexit Scrapping of Erasmus Student Exchange Harms Economy and Undermines UK Relations with Europe February 17, 2021
  • 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

RSS Occupy las Vegas

  • TONNELLATA gratuita per fondersi con Dune Network in un accordo di M&A decentralizzato February 3, 2021
  • 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

RSS Occupy Wall Street

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RSS Oddity Central

  • Company Sells Bottled Fresh Air for Over $100 a Bottle March 3, 2021
  • Hard to Swallow – Japanese Student Creates Delicious-Looking Stone Sushi March 3, 2021
  • Man Spends $15,500 on “Love Island” to Win Back Ex-Girlfriend, Gets Shot Down March 3, 2021
  • These Two Islands Are Just 2.4 Miles Apart, But Have a 21-Hour Time Difference March 2, 2021
  • Teen Turns 11-Years-Worth of Eraser Shavings Into Giant Ball March 2, 2021
  • The Gunthers – The Incredible Story of the World’s Richest Dog Dynasty March 2, 2021

RSS Of Two Minds

  • When Does This Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham Finally Implode? March 3, 2021
  • About That +6.8% GDP Forecast: Remember That GDP = Waste March 2, 2021
  • What "Normal" Are We Returning To? The Depression Nobody Dares Acknowledge March 1, 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

  • Florida Must Resist Becoming A Testing Ground For State Repression! February 8, 2021
  • 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

RSS Orion Magazine

  • VIDEO: Dr. Imo Nse Imeh, Artist in Motion February 16, 2021
  • Five Articles to Celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science February 11, 2021
  • Editor’s Choice: “This Land Was Made” February 9, 2021

RSS Our Finite World

  • Why Collapse Occurs; Why It May Not Be Far Away February 25, 2021
  • Where Energy Modeling Goes Wrong February 4, 2021
  • 2021: More troubles likely January 12, 2021

RSS Pando Daily

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RSS Paul Haeder

  • American Exceptionalism: Private Wealth and Public Squalor February 23, 2021
  • The Eye of the Wolf: Measuring Myself through Death February 19, 2021
  • Dreams Outside the Hopes of the Neuronormal February 6, 2021

RSS Paul Kingsnorth – Elswhere

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RSS Paul L. Street

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RSS PBD – Progressive Blog Digest

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

RSS PeakOil.com News

  • Everything Is About To Get More Expensive. This Is Good March 3, 2021
  • Why Collapse Occurs; Why It May Not Be Far Away February 28, 2021
  • Don’t Believe the US Energy Independence Hype February 28, 2021

RSS Peak Prosperity Blog

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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

  • The Anatomy of Backsliding: Why is Democracy Consuming Itself? March 3, 2021
  • You Can’t Get There from Here: Biden Negotiating the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict March 2, 2021
  • Digitally Fueled Civil Resistance and Repression in Myanmar March 1, 2021

RSS Popular Resistance

  • Joe Biden Is Following A Blueprint for Forever War March 3, 2021
  • Coup-Supporting Academics Spread Lies To Censor The Grayzone March 3, 2021
  • Coup Leaders, Aung San Suu Kyi Betrayed Democracy In Burma March 3, 2021
  • Against Big Tech’s Algorithmic Cancel Culture March 3, 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

  • The Gary Null Show – 03.03.21 March 3, 2021
  • Leid Sotries – 03.03.21 March 3, 2021
  • The War on ‘Misinformation’ Claims Two Victims. Truth. And the Right to Treatment. March 3, 2021
  • The Gary Null Show Notes – 03.03.21 March 3, 2021
  • It’s All About Food – Dan Pucci and Craig Cavallo, AMERICAN CIDER: A Modern Guide to a Historic Beverage March 3, 2021
  • Nature Bats Last – 03.03.21 March 3, 2021

RSS ProPublica

  • After a Wave of Violent Threats Against Election Workers, Georgia Sees Few Arrests March 3, 2021
  • Hours After an Employee Accused Him of Sexual Misconduct, Prominent Alaska Executive Resigns March 3, 2021
  • A Las Vegas Judge Approves $1.4 Million Payment to Wrongfully Convicted Man Who Served More Than Two Decades March 2, 2021
  • Oregon’s Logging Industry Says It Can’t Afford New Taxes. But Prices Have Never Been Higher and Profits Are Soaring. March 2, 2021
  • ProPublica Wins 19 Awards in Society for News Design Competition March 1, 2021

RSS Project Censored

  • Luminaries Join Peace Studies Class for Tribute to Pentagon Papers Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg March 3, 2021
  • John K. Wilson and Abby Martin March 1, 2021
  • Scholar John K. Wilson February 17, 2021

RSS Public Intelligence

  • (U//FOUO) Maryland Fusion Center Bulletin: Islamic State Propaganda Video Encourages Incendiary Attacks in the Homeland
  • 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 Emboldened in Aftermath of Capitol Breach, Domestic Terrorism Threat Likely Amid Political Transitions
  • Operation Warp Speed Therapeutics: Monoclonal Antibody Playbook Version 2.0
  • Asymmetric Warfare Group Study: Russian Private Military Companies in Operations, Competition, and Conflict
  • Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Mail-In Voting in 2020 Infrastructure Risk Assessment
  • (U//FOUO) DHS Bulletin: Russia Likely to Continue Seeking to Undermine Faith in US Electoral Process
  • (U//FOUO) DHS Bulletin: Some Violent Opportunists Probably Engaging in Organized Activities
  • (U//FOUO) DHS Bulletin: Violent Opportunist Tactics Observed During Civil Disturbances 26-31 May

RSS Pulse

  • “Undignified”, “humiliating”, “belittled”—BAME experience at the BBC June 13, 2020
  • How Disinformation Works April 2, 2020
  • Satis House: On a Women’s Revolution January 7, 2020
  • Bosnia, Kosovo, Syria: Western Inaction and Radicalisation December 1, 2019

RSS Quartz

  • Molotov cocktails March 3, 2021
  • The oil market’s wild pandemic ride is about to take another turn March 3, 2021
  • Live sports betting is coming to your TV screen March 3, 2021
  • How Walmart, Target, and Etsy compete online with Amazon March 3, 2021
  • Rooftop solar could kill—or save—the Texas electric grid March 3, 2021
  • Why UK finance minister Rishi Sunak put a “super-deduction” in his budget March 3, 2021
  • These are America’s 10 most overpaid CEOs March 3, 2021
  • The pesky pandemic wall March 3, 2021
  • Vaccines for all, canceling student debt, Egyptian pet cemetery March 3, 2021
  • India’s restaurants and hotels are not giving online aggregators enough credit March 3, 2021

RSS Question Everything

  • Starting a New Blog: Rethinking Everything December 31, 2020
  • Merry Winter Solstice 2020 December 21, 2020
  • Autumnal Equinox Greetings September 22, 2020

RSS R-Squared Energy

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