The Economic and Social Losses On The Way

At present, numerous environmental researchers are warning of future resource shortages. The list of them is large and includes water, oil, a variety of minerals and metals, as well as other materials. Yet, most people carry on as if they do not hear the message at all. They refuse to cut back in their dreams of continuing economic growth. In relation, part of the problem with them is perhaps an inability to make connections. For the most part, they seem to have little or no idea about the collective consequences of their... Read article

After Peak Oil, Are We Heading Towards Social Collapse?

Recently, Glen Sweetnam, director of the International, Economic and Greenhouse Gas division of the Energy Information Administration at the DoE, announced that worldwide oil availability had reached a “plateau”. However, his statement was not made known through a major U.S. mainstream media outlet.  Instead, it was covered in France’s “Le Monde” as follows: article in Le Monde. One could assume that the U.S. assessment of the oil decline was exposed through this particular... Read article

Charity CEO’s Get Rich by Taking From the Poor

The greed and selfishness that the free market capitalist economy inspires impact just about every area of social and commercial interaction in consenting societies, it seems. It’s not just Wall Street and government leaders caught in the trap. It’s the entire system in terms of the way that it’s set to run, which moves the money ever more to the top economic tier by siphoning it from the bottom and middle ones. Since there is a relatively fixed supply of money, it stands to reason that the... Read article

Mr. Obama, You Need to Forcefully Take the Lead

Mr. President, It is easy to understand that you are beholden to corporate interests in a number of diverse ways, which could limit your sense of options relative to unrestrained fossil fuel use. Yet, we, all together, cannot face run-away climate change, weak support for constructive energy programs, unbridled economic growth, barely regulated free trade, ever expanding resource wars, critical resource depletions (involving water, minerals, oil and so forth), high extinction rates for multitudinous species, overall environmental... Read article

Congolese Women and Girls Suffering the Insufferable

By Emily Spence and Brian McAfee While in the eastern Congo last summer, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated, “With respect to companies that are responsible for what are now being called conflict minerals, I think the international community must start looking at steps we can take to try to prevent the mineral wealth from the DRC ending up in the hands of those who fund the violence here.” In relation, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s UN supported armed assault against rebels in the eastern... Read article

Wars “R” Us

Making the World Safe for American Domination… In destructive economic systems, there is a feedback loop wherein it becomes self-confirming that greed and aggression lead to gains rather than acts that involve “playing by the rules”, sharing profits, cooperating and helping others to prosper. As activities on Wall Street and in transnational corporations confirm, successful players are expected to produce income by any means possible, pay workers as little as required, charge as much as can... Read article

Ever Expanding Wars: An Appalling New Year Certainty

A message repeatedly making the rounds on the Internet shows a picture of an American airman, John Gebhardt, holding an injured Iraqi child on his lap and the accompanying text explains about his sympathetic provision of comfort to her and others. [1] In addition, the reason that it is all the rage, especially amongst neoconservatives, is that the senders can, in their minds, use the depiction to “prove” that U.S. military personnel undeniably have magnanimous intentions. Subsequently, the message indirectly... Read article

On A Parent’s Death And Minding Your Tongue In The U.S.A.

I’ll be quite frank. I’m never completely comfortable in discussing certain persons, such as Fidel Castro, on the phone, nor forwarding e-mail content concerning them, such as his Visiones Alternativas – Reflections of Fidel:The moment of truth about the recent Copenhagen events. Certainly, it would be so much easier to simply avoid certain topics altogether in communications because there so often are direct or indirect repercussions for involvements in particular matters, as is inferred at Ex-Snoop Confirms... Read article

Resisting An Underlying Moral Vacuum

There are moment in life when one, seriously, wonders whether our species, overall, is mentally ill in some underlying ways. Then again, any definitive determination is likely relativistic since it largely depends on the standards that a given society and culture use to define mental illness, it would seem. In any case, there, certainly, seems to exist some sort of major intrinsic flaws that humans harbor in general. How could there not be when we, continually, have, along with many constructive ones, the same sorts of ugly... Read article

Towards Resolving Thanksgiving Contradictions

Years ago, a friend of mine, when we were discussing goodness and malevolence, casually mentioned that even the worst criminals nearly always thought that whatever they were doing was constructive and the problem, then, became one in which different people hold radically different outlooks concerning whatever stands for benefits. In this sense, Josef Mengele (a human representing the epitome of moral depravity) probably thought that he was advancing scientific knowledge and ultimately helping humankind by his unconscionable... Read article

The Choice Ahead: Entrenched Fossil Fuel Dependence or Climate Change Management

According to Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard economist Linda Bilmes, the Iraq War cost three trillion dollars. While much of the money used to conduct the war was borrowed (most notably from Chinese institutions), ultimately American taxpayers will be responsible for many years to come for footing the bill, including the high interest payments on the funds loaned. This is because the federal budget, especially between the military and big business bailout costs, far exceeded the annual and shrinking amount taken... Read article

The Widening Gap In America’s Two Tiered Society

Americans, particularly ones from the middle class, need to realize that there are no core entitlements imparted by their government representatives, nor any other sources. They have none and should adjust their expectations accordingly. If the U.S. populace somehow imagines that its members are viewed any differently than any other populations across the world that are used to produce maximal profits for the top economic class, there’s a rude awakening in store ahead. Further, most legislators simply do not care whether... Read article

Running Out Fossil Fuels: A Cause For Glee?

John James, one of the writers for Crisis Coalition, Incorporated (http://www.planetextinction.com/) suggests, “It may be that declining oil may save us from climate change. As you know from my Proof article [http://planetextinction.com/documents/Proof.pdf], 1.5 degrees is inevitable, and in another four years — two degrees. Were oil to decline in that time span, we may yet survive. Just as emissions are rising three times faster than a decade ago, so oil consumption is increasing.” Indeed, it does... Read article

The U.S. Federal Budget Pipeline

Where Do The Dollars Drain? In order to raise sales and personal royalty gains, Alan Greenspan, just prior to the release of his book The Age of Turbulence, carried out a public relations blitz dragged out for a whole week in which he made remarks similar to those conveyed in his hardback. These included statements such as “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Indeed, many Americans and people from other countries knew that domination... Read article

Why Won’t Universal Healthcare Be Provided?

The heath-care debate is not about care at all. Instead, it’s about the amount of profits that government, HMO and pharmaceutical leaders are personally willing to give up. Accordingly, it’s clear that many Congressional representatives have no interest in evaluating even a few of the successful models of universal coverage that numerous other countries can provide. Instead, they are, typically, in collusion with big business to stymie any meaningful reforms. Upon receipt of a B. S. degree in biology, an acquaintance... Read article

Chasing Terrorists VS. Chasing Swine Flu

Are inoculations and coercive military intervention the best strategies that the U.S. leadership can muster in response to worries erupting after the initial H1N1 outbreak? No, the innovative Chinese “plan” proves otherwise. == An associate of mine recently returned from being in China for three weeks. Describing some of her experiences, she mentioned that a team of medically trained officials with masks, gloves and assorted paraphernalia came onto her jet after it landed in Asia and individually checked each... Read article

Next Page »