Sunday, February 26, 2017

Going For Broke

Reliving the Past,

1177 BC, The Year Civilization Collapsed: Thanks Charles, for these first 3 stories
Why did Bronze Age Civilization suddenly collapse? Some answers here may sound somewhat familiar.
This is the entrance to the excavated ruins of the royal palace at Ugarit, which is located in present-day Syria. (Original image by Disdero. Uploaded by Jan van der Crabben, published on 26 April 2012 under the following license: Creative Commons: Attribution.)


Doomstead Diner reviews the new book by Nafeez Ahmed, Failing States, Collapsing Systems
This is the century of the "triple whammy of energy, climate and food crises". 
Reading the review makes me consider buying a hard copy of the book, but the review might be enough. Ahmed writes articles regularly, too.

Why Nothing Works Anymore:
"Technology’s role has begun to shift, from serving human users to pushing them out of the way so that the technologized world can service its own ends. And so, with increasing frequency, technology will exist not to serve human goals, but to facilitate its own expansion...
It’s a fact most easily noticed when using old-world gadgets. To flush a toilet or open a faucet by hand offers almost wanton pleasure given how rare it has become. A local eatery near me whose interior design invokes the 1930s features a bathroom with a white steel crank-roll paper towel dispenser. When spun on its ungeared mechanism, an analogous, glorious measure of towel appears directly and immediately, as if sent from heaven."

Just 8 Men Own The Same Wealth As Half The World (a ratio of about 1 : 450 million, like one man owning the US, Canada, and Mexico) Thanks Tom 
(This seems to be a strange arrangement, based on an extreme enforcement of concepts of "wealth" and "ownership". It makes me feel like a whole lot of owned people are going to die.)

Thanks for this article, Eleni:
"Today, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are once more joining the US and Israel in an alliance to prolong the six-year-old ongoing war against Syria, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and the Arab Nations, in order to destroy their infrastructures, economies, armies, institutions, civilizational heritage, and cultural identity...
We can conclude that the tools used against Arabs since the 1950s remain the same. These tools are Arab States loyal to America and Israel, whether in secret or in public, and at every historical juncture, new schemes are contrived to destroy Arab civilization and drain Arab resource in order to weaken all Arabs, both resistors and collaborators." 

(yet another) Fresh Start for Afghan peace process, with Russia, China, Pakistan and India engaging together in a regional initiative. (This could get the US off the hook, too, if the military industrial complex can just take "bye-bye" for an answer for once.)

Kim Jong Nam, Kim Jong Un's big brother was murdered in Kuala Lumpur Airport by a young woman from Java and a young Vietnamese woman, each apparently paid about $90 to star in a reality show, where they pull the gag of each smearing a little oil on a man's face and walking away. Each of them had half of the binary VX Nerve Gas, which only becomes fatal when the two parts mix, as they did on Mr Kim, who never made it home for Valentine's Day. These two guys are said to have put the girls up to it. Authorities say the girls knew what they were doing all along. They have to say that. I think they probably did think $90 was pretty good to do a little Candid-Camera schtik...

Democratic National Committee votes to take as much donation money as corporations will give, undoing the "Obama ban".

New Democratic National Committee leader, Tom Perez vows to "be Trump's Worst Nightmare", which is bound to really scare President Donald awake all night (except that it sounds like the same old bullshit from another Clintonista corporate shill. The DNC learned nothing at all from stealing the nomination from Sanders to give it to Queen Hillary, who was always the worserer-evil against anybody out there, and lost, even with the best vote-rigging and media manipulation money could buy.)

The "Bernie Sanders wing of Democrats" feels screwed again, but where to go? 
"Progressives favored Keith Ellison, who was backed by Bernie Sanders, and see Perez as another establishment tool that conspired to boost Hillary Clinton over Sanders in the 2016 primary. As The Intercept noted, Perez was overly friendly to big banks as secretary of labor under Obama, granting privileges to banks that plead guilty to market manipulation."
(DNC has obviously not reached bottom yet. What's happening with all that child molestation investigation? Maybe that can get them there. It worked for Denny Hastert.)

David Stckman, Director of Management and Budget under Reagan, says that "After March 15, Everything Will Grind to a Halt" (I think he really means the federal budget will go into a long, uncontrolled skid for half a year when the 2 year $20 Trillion debt-ceiling agreement, reached by Obama and Boehner finally times out. It's the biggest debt any president ever faced. It's locked-in, and growing, growing, growing, with no legal way out. 
Heyyy, what about that $trillion-platinum-coin idea? Remember that one?)

$90 Actress

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