tagged w/ Resources
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"Sadly I agree, we are no longer worthwhile Americans, we are simply a commodity!!!"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101726198
"So how do we turn this around??? Any Suggestions Folks???""Sadly I agree, we are no longer worthwhile Americans, we are simply a... more
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KB723
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26 days ago
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Climate change, largely abstract in the United States, is already shaping conflicts around the world – and not for the better.
Energy security and climate change present massive threats to global security, military planners say, with connections and consequences spanning the world.
Some scientists have linked the Arab Spring uprisings to high food prices caused by the failed Russian wheat crop in 2010, a result of an unparalleled heat wave. The predicted effects of climate change are also expected to hit developing nations particularly hard, raising the importance of supporting humanitarian response efforts and infrastructure improvements.
"There are going to be Darfur's all over the place."
- Bob Corell, Global Environment & Technology Foundation
Here's a look at several geopolitical hotspots that will likely bear the unpredictable and dangerous consequences of climate change and current energy policies.
By Joshua Zaffos
More at the linkClimate change, largely abstract in the United States, is already shaping conflicts... more
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R3zn8D
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2 months ago
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Syria’s current social unrest is, in the most direct sense, a reaction to a brutal and out-of-touch regime and a response to the political wave of change that began in Tunisia early last year. However, that’s not the whole story. The past few years have seen a number of significant social, economic, environmental and climatic changes in Syria that have eroded the social contract between citizen and government in the country, have strengthened the case for the opposition movement, and irreparably damaged the legitimacy of the al-Assad regime. If the international community, and future policy-makers in Syria, are to address and resolve the drivers of unrest in the country, these changes will have to be better explored and exposed.
Out of the blue?
International pundits characterized the Syrian uprising as an “out of the blue” case in the Middle East - one that they didn’t see coming. Many analysts, right up to a few days prior to the first protests, predicted that Syria under al-Assad was “immune to the Arab Spring.” However, the seeds of social unrest were right there under the surface, if one looked closely. And not only were they there, they had been reported on, but largely ignored, in a number of forms.
Water shortages, crop-failure and displacement
From 2006-2011, up to 60% of Syria’s land experienced, in the terms of one expert, “the worst long-term drought and most severe set of crop failures since agricultural civilizations began in the Fertile Crescent many millennia ago.” According to a special case study from last year’s Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR), of the most vulnerable Syrians dependent on agriculture, particularly in the northeast governorate of Hassakeh (but also in the south), “nearly 75 percent…suffered total crop failure.” Herders in the northeast lost around 85% of their livestock, affecting 1.3 million people.
The human and economic costs are enormous. In 2009, the UN and IFRC reported that over 800,000 Syrians had lost their entire livelihood as a result of the droughts. By 2011, the aforementioned GAR report estimated that the number of Syrians who were left extremely “food insecure” by the droughts sat at about one million. The number of people driven into extreme poverty is even worse, with a UN report from last year estimating two to three million people affected.
This has led to a massive exodus of farmers, herders and agriculturally-dependent rural families from the countryside to the cities. Last January, it was reported that crop failures (particularly the Halaby pepper) just in the farming villages around the city of Aleppo, had led “200,000 rural villagers to leave for the cities.” In October 2010, the New York Times highlighted a UN estimate that 50,000 families migrated from rural areas just that year, “on top of the hundreds of thousands of people who fled in earlier years.” In context of Syrian cities coping with influxes of Iraqi refugees since the U.S. invasion in 2003, this has placed additional strains and tensions on an already stressed and disenfranchised population.
Climate change, natural resource mis-management, and demographics
The reasons for the collapse of Syria’s farmland are a complex interplay of variables, including climate change, natural resource mis-management, and demographic dynamics.
A NOAA study published last October in the Journal of Climate found strong and observable evidence that the recent prolonged period of drought in the Mediterranean littoral and the Middle East is linked to climate change. On top of this, the study also found worrying agreement between observed climate impacts, and future projections from climate models. A recent model of climate change impacts on Syria conducted by IFPRI, for example, projects that if current rates of global greenhouse gas emissions continue, yields of rainfed crops in the country may decline “between 29 and 57 percent from 2010 to 2050.”
This problem has been compounded by poor governance. The al-Assad regime has, by most accounts except their own, criminally combined mismanagement and neglect of Syria’s natural resources, which have contributed to water shortages and land desertification. Based on short-term assessments during years of relative plenty, the government has heavily subsidized water-intensive wheat and cotton farming, and encouraged inefficient irrigation techniques. In the face of both climate and human-induced water shortages, farmers have sought to increase supply by turning to the country’s groundwater resources, with Syria’s National Agricultural Policy Center reporting an increase in wells tapping aquifers from “just over 135,000 in 1999 to more than 213,000 in 2007.” This pumping “has caused groundwater levels to plummet in many parts of the country, and raised significant concerns about the water quality in remaining aquifer stocks.”
On top of this, the over-grazing of land and a rapidly growing population have compounded the land desertification process. As previously fertile lands turn to dust, farmers and herders have had no choice but to move elsewhere, starve, or demand change.
by Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell
This article was also posted on Climate Progress, with an addendum by Joe Romm
More at the linkSyria’s current social unrest is, in the most direct sense, a reaction to a... more
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Please repost this video to get the word out there. The people need to know that there is a solution to the mess we have created.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip_ElRKNTUQPlease repost this video to get the word out there. The people need to know that there... more
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There is proposed pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia where Oil will be shipped to China. The film SPOIL is a cinematic experience which shows the world of the potential destruction to native peoples and there lands.
http://www.pacificwild.org/site/dispatches_from_the_rave/1296589563.htmlThere is proposed pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia where Oil will be shipped... more
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This, pretty much, tells it like it is with regard to what capitalism is all about and why we need to end it.This, pretty much, tells it like it is with regard to what capitalism is all about and... more
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To mark the world’s population reaching 7 billion on Halloween 2011, WORLDbytes has launched this hilarious parody of modern day Malthusian thinking. The programme features talented Blood Brothers star and ex-RSC actor James Hirst as the central character, Bill. For Bill the news of 7 billion is a Halloween nightmare. His solutions include: getting rid of ‘thickies’, euthanasia, gelding and paying African women not to have children- a carbon offsetting scheme first proposed by the Optimum Population Trust, now rebranded as Population Matters. Bill is no Daily Mail reader, he gets his over-consumption paranoia from the Guardian and he’s going for the cull. This parody reflects WORLDbytes’ concern to challenge the profoundly anti-human roots of over population ideas.To mark the world’s population reaching 7 billion on Halloween 2011, WORLDbytes... more
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Don't let that title make you think this is something good- it isn't. PNAC, or the Project For A New American Century was a policy paper written by a neo conservative think tank of the same name (with illustrious criminals like Dick Cheney and Richard Perle) and released only two months prior in 2000 to the presidential s-election. It lays out a precise plan for American domination around the world starting with the attack on Iraq following the 9.11 attack on the WTC (which would coincidentally certainly qualify as the "New Pearl Harbor" laid out in the paper needed to facilitate this plan.) And it is still being facilitated today as recently as in Libya. So for those who think this is some "conspiracy theory" I would say you are wrong.
Also don't wonder why Al Gore, the duly elected president of this country in 2000 was not allowed to serve his term. He would not have engaged this agenda, so he too had to be kept from serving the people. Wonder why as well there was such a concerted media attack on him and still is? This had all been planned and it appears the current administration is following through with it. And that goes all the way in my view to the OWS protests which are being silenced now. It is the OILIGARCHY which has such a chokehold on this world that is also behind this. You know, the BP that has just been given permission to once again drill and despoil the Gulf, as well as Shell which is going to be allowed to now despoil the Arctic. Why do you think these companies are never truly held responsible for their crimes and are just allowed to keep going no matter what? In my view nothing will truly change in this world or country until the OILIGARCHY is brought down and we won't do that by continuing to drive our cars everywhere we go and continuing to vote for propped up candidates who approve drilling and pipelines on any side.
This is also why you see no real movement regarding climate change in the U.S. government nor any aggressive move to renewable energy (also mentioned in the video) that could have been accomplished already if this system wasn't rotten to its core. So for those as well who think climate change is some hoax while decrying PNAC, you actually help them in their work. It is not renewable energy and holding these corporations part of this plan accountable that will break this economy, it is the WARS already being fought to accomodate THEIR GREED that have already brought down the world economies.
So listen to this video as it lays out some truth about more than likely why our entire voting system in America was subverted in 2000 as the first step to this takeover and domination of the world oil markets and other resources at any cost and then go from there connecting the dots. You may well be totally surprised at the fact that those you think are on your side don't really care about you in comparison to the true prize they think they are getting at the expense of our planet.
The Bush clan and those who enable them are evil personified and may I say traitors to this country and they still walk free while we were denied a truly good president. Ask how that can happen in a country that is a "democratic republic" and supposedly on the side of truth, justice and the law. And don't wonder why some of us have lost complete faith in both parties. One party that subverts and the other that enables it. Both the same in my book.
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From the video:
Established in the spring of 1997 and funded largely by the energy and arms industries, the Project for the New American Century was founded as the neoconservative think tank whose stated goal was to usher in a "new American century".
Having won the cold war and no military threat to speak of, this group of ideologues created a blueprint for the future whose agenda was to capitalize upon our surplus of military forces and funds and forcing American hegemony and corporate privatization throughout the world.
Their goals:
1) Increase an already enormous military budget at the expense of domestic social programs
2) Toppling of regimes resistant to our corporate interests
3) Forcing democracy at the barrel of a gun in regions that have no history of the democratic process
4) Replacing the UN's role of preserving and extending international order
http://www.newamericancentury.org/Don't let that title make you think this is something good- it isn't. PNAC,... more
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Global poverty did not just happen. It began with military conquest, slavery and colonization that resulted in the seizure of land, minerals and forced labor. Today, the problem persists because of unfair debt, trade and tax policies — in other words, wealthy countries taking advantage of poor, developing countries.
Renowned actor and activist, Martin Sheen, narrates , a feature-length documentary directed by award-winning director, Philippe Diaz, which explains how today's financial crisis is a direct consequence of these unchallenged policies that have lasted centuries. Consider that 20% of the planet's population uses 80% of its resources and consumes 30% more than the planet can regenerate. At this rate, to maintain our lifestyle means more and more people will sink below the poverty line.
Filmed in the slums of Africa and the barrios of Latin America, The End of Poverty? features expert insights from: Nobel prize winners in Economics, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz; acclaimed authors Susan George, Eric Toussaint, John Perkins, Chalmers Johnson; university professors William Easterly and Michael Watts; government ministers such as Bolivia's Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera and the leaders of social movements in Brazil, Venezuela, Kenya and Tanzania. It is produced by Cinema Libre Studio in collaboration with the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation. Can we really end poverty within our current economic system? Think again. http://www.theendofpoverty.com/
More at the linkGlobal poverty did not just happen. It began with military conquest, slavery and... more
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German industrial and engineering conglomerate Siemens is to withdraw entirely from the nuclear industry.
The move is a response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March, chief executive Peter Loescher said.
He told Spiegel magazine it was the firm's answer to "the clear positioning of German society and politics for a pullout from nuclear energy".
"The chapter for us is closed," he said, announcing that the firm will no longer build nuclear power stations.
Mr Loescher also gave his backing to the German government's planned switch to renewable energy sources, calling it a "project of the century" and claiming Berlin's target of reaching 35% renewable energy by 2020 was achievable.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, announced at the end of May that all of the country's 17 nuclear reactors would be shut down by 2022.
Prior to the Fukushima disaster, nuclear power accounted for 23% of electricity production in Germany.
The decision marked a complete U-turn by the chancellor, who only in September 2010 had announced that the life of existing nuclear plants would be extended by an average of 12 years.German industrial and engineering conglomerate Siemens is to withdraw entirely from... more
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Wetdog
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9 months ago
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For graphic designers, using the right style and font is an important aspect of their job. If you are interested in finding new and unique fonts or even want to create your own font, these 20 amazing sites offer that and more. Learning typography takes time to learn and perfect, but these sites are helpful resources for doing just that.
link:http://www.graphicdesigndegree.com/20-amazing-web-sites-to-find-new-and-unique-fonts/For graphic designers, using the right style and font is an important aspect of their... more
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July 22 2011. A date for humanity to remember. NATO hit the Libyan water supply pipeline. It will take months to repair. Then on Saturday they hit the pipeline factory producing pipes to repair it. The Libyan leader Moammar Al Gaddafi informed members of the Security Council in his message that the alliance decided to carry out mass murder against the Libyan people by targeting their only drinking water source, where billions were invested and without it life stops in Libya. He wondered what's the relation between this factory and the protection of civilians that NATO claims it is carrying out? http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/recent-news/42990-nato-attack-great-man-made-riverJuly 22 2011. A date for humanity to remember. NATO hit the Libyan water supply... more
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worrg
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added this
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10 months ago
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Let's expose the structure of violence that keeps the world economy running.
With an entire planet being slaughtered before our eyes, it's terrifying to watch the very culture responsible for this - the culture of industrial civilization, fueled by a finite source of fossil fuels, primarily a dwindling supply of oil - thrust forward wantonly to fuel its insatiable appetite for "growth."
Deluded by myths of progress and suffering from the psychosis of technomania complicated by addiction to depleting oil reserves, industrial society leaves a crescendo of atrocities in its wake.
A very partial list would include the Bhopal chemical disaster, numerous oil spills, the illegal depleted uranium-spewing occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan, mountaintop removal, the nuclear meltdown of Fukushima, the permanent removal of 95 percent of the large fish from the oceans (not to mention full-on systemic collapse of those oceans), indigenous communities replacement by oil wells, the mining of coltan for cell phones and Playstations along the Democratic Republic of the Congo/Rwanda border - resulting in tribal warfare and the near-extinction of the Eastern Lowland gorilla.
As though 200 species going extinct each day were not enough, climate change, a direct result of burning fossil fuels, has proved not only to be as unpredictable as it is real, but as destructive as it is unpredictable. The erratic and lethal characteristics of a changing planet and its shifting atmosphere are becoming the norm of the 21st century, their impact accelerating at an alarming pace, bringing this planet closer, sooner than later, to a point of uninhabitable ghastliness. And yet, collective apathy, ignorance and self-imposed denial in the face of all this sadistic exploitation and violence marches this culture closer to self-annihilation.
Lost in the eerily comforting fantasy of limitless growth, production and consumption, many people cling to things like Facebook, Twitter, "Jersey Shore" and soulless pop music as if their lives depended on it, identifying with a reality that's artificial and constructed, that panders to desire rather than necessity, that delicately conceals the violence at the other end of this economy, a violence so widespread that we're all not only complicit in it to a degree (e.g., if you're a taxpayer, you help subsidize the manufacturing of weapons of mass destruction), but victims of it as well. As Chris Hedges admonished in his books, "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy" and the "Triumph of Spectacle," any culture that cannot distinguish reality from illusion will kill itself.
Moreover, any culture that cannot distinguish reality from illusion will kill everything and everyone else in its path as well as itself.
As the world burns, as species die off, as mothers breastfeed their children with dioxin-tainted breast milk, as nuclear reactors melt down into the Pacific while the aerial deployment of depleted uranium damages innocent lives, it is perplexing that so few people fight back against a system that has horror as a reality for most living on the planet. And those who fight back, who stand in opposition to the culture behind such wholesale abuse and call it what it is - a genocidal mega-state (especially if you believe that the lives of nonhumans are as important to them as yours is to you and mine is to me) - are met with hostility and hatred, scoffed at, harassed, even tortured. With so much at stake, why aren't more people deafening their ears to the nutcases who preach a future of infinite-growth economies? And why do so many people continue to put "the economy" first, to take industrial capitalism as we know it as a given and not fight back, defend what's left of the natural world?
More at the linkLet's expose the structure of violence that keeps the world economy running.... more
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Climate change is only going to get crazier, because of our existing dependence on resource like oil. We can't change because our existing technology totally relies on oil. We've dug the whole and we can't get out of it and we just keep digging...Climate change is only going to get crazier, because of our existing dependence on... more
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You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?
“The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.” “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”
Gilding cites the work of the Global Footprint Network, an alliance of scientists, which calculates how many “planet Earths” we need to sustain our current growth rates. G.F.N. measures how much land and water area we need to produce the resources we consume and absorb our waste, using prevailing technology. On the whole, says G.F.N., we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. “Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,” says Gilding.
This is not science fiction. This is what happens when our system of growth and the system of nature hit the wall at once. While in Yemen last year, I saw a tanker truck delivering water in the capital, Sana. Why? Because Sana could be the first big city in the world to run out of water, within a decade. That is what happens when one generation in one country lives at 150 percent of sustainable capacity.
(more at link)You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the... more
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The four Black Hawk helicopters sweep down on this remote river valley, flying fast and single file. Snow covers the mountains' peaks, but the lower slopes look like rust -- dry, rocky, and bare. As we bank around the river bend, we see our first flash of green in the fields below and then the rectangular mud huts of the village, where hundreds of Afghans mass to greet us.
"That's the mine over there," one of my companions says, pointing to the cliffs rising above the village.
That's it? That's the gold mine? It doesn't look all that different from the forbidding country we've been traversing: just another pile of rocks and scree. The jet-lagged man in the seat across from me knows better. His sleepy eyes are suddenly alert. If anyone can wrest a fortune from Afghanistan's rubble, it is this man, Ian Hannam.
Arriving in a developing nation with his iPad and his enigmatic smile, Hannam personifies the soft side of Western power. He doesn't bend people to his will with weapons or threats. But there is no mistaking the dealmaker's impact: In his wake, mountains are razed, villages electrified, schools built, and fortunes made.
To Hannam, chairman of J.P. Morgan Capital Markets, Afghanistan represents a gigantic, untapped opportunity -- one of the last great natural-resource frontiers. Landlocked and pinioned by imperial invaders, Afghanistan has been cursed by its geography for thousands of years. Now, for the first time, Hannam believes, that geography could be an asset. The two most resource-starved nations on the planet, China and India, sit next door to Afghanistan, where, according to Pentagon estimates, minerals worth nearly $1 trillion lie buried. True, there is a war under way. And it's unclear how the death of Osama bin Laden will impact the country's political and economic environment. But Hannam is not your usual investment banker: A former soldier, he has done business in plenty of strife-torn countries. So have all the members of his team, two of them former special forces soldiers who have fought here.
As he flies to the mine for the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Hannam thinks back over the past 12 months. This little mine, where operations have yet to commence, is puny by J.P. Morgan's (JPM) standards, but he knows it might be the project for which he is remembered. A lot of powerful people, including the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, are counting on him to demonstrate that the country is safe for foreign investors. Hannam has chafed at times under the pressure from the Pentagon, and the cold-eyed realist in him wonders whether unrealistic expectations are being placed on this business venture.
Hannam ducks his head and climbs out of the chopper, necktie flapping in the prop wash. As he trudges up the hill, even the jaded, 55-year-old banker seems swept away by the pageantry of the moment: the village elder in a ceremonial robe, the silhouettes of women watching from the ridges, the saluting Afghan soldier. Hannam is enveloped in a crush of local tribesmen chattering excitedly in Dari. One of them puts a garland around his neck. Another hands him a Ziploc bag containing a chunk of Afghan gold. A mullah utters prayers. Afghanistan's minister of mining gives a long speech.
Hannam and his local partner, Sadat Naderi, walk up the hill to pose for photographs. Naderi points to a narrow band of quartz that runs in an east-west line across the cliff side. It shimmers in the sun. That is the treasure, he says.
"Unless," Hannam mutters, "it's fool's gold."
Absurd risks vs. amazing rewards
Investing in conflict zones is often thrilling, but the great commodities rush that J.P. Morgan and the Pentagon are trying to spark in Afghanistan creates a risk/reward equation of a different magnitude.......
Continue reading at:
http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/05/11/jp-morgan-hunt-afghan-gold/The four Black Hawk helicopters sweep down on this remote river valley, flying fast... more
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Systemic collapse, the coming dark age, the coming crash, overshoot, the die-off, the tribulation, the coming anarchy, resource wars -- there are many names, and they do not all correspond to exactly the same thing, but there is a widespread belief that something immense is happening.Systemic collapse, the coming dark age, the coming crash, overshoot, the die-off, the... more
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...a book for those who want realistic alternatives to the prospect of never-ending growth....a book for those who want realistic alternatives to the prospect of never-ending... more
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Could happen - "population sizes, going from 6.2 billion to 26.8 billion people in 2100." The biggest cause of waste and pollution in the world is the every expanding population of our human race. We are the only species that waste resources and in the end will vanish from this planet sooner than latter because of our massive, destructive, technology driven solutions based on madness and uncontrolled madness.Could happen - "population sizes, going from 6.2 billion to 26.8 billion people... more
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