Starting to get doubts about QE3? Don’t tell that to the official Chinese rating agency Dagong, who in traditional uber-pragmatic fashion, has the following summary observation on US monetary policy, and any imaginary changes thereto: “The second round quantitative easing policy ongoing in the United States can not change its weak domestic demand in the short term.
In fact, it can only lower the interest rate of US Treasuries so as to maintain stable interest rate in the capital market in the long term, playing the indirect role of clearing some obstacles for a stable recovery. However, the plan of purchasing 600 billion US dollar Treasury bonds can not realize its predicted goal; and therefore, the United States will hardly change its predetermined monetary policy in 2011.” What does this mean for China and the rest of the world: “The continuous implementation of such unconventional monetary policy in the United States will lead to the escalation of world credit war and inflict greater losses for related parties in the world credit system.” Any questions?
Full Dagong report from 01/2011
April 2011
64 posts
The one retailer prepared to cut costs to the bone to save money for consumers now warns that prices will rise very soon — no matter what. Retailers have generally managed to hold prices low despite rising raw materials costs. They had little choice: High U.S. unemployment and lack of credit has kept people out of stores. That’s over, says Wal-Mart CEO Bill Simon. Prices will now rise across the board for all retailers, Wal-Mart included. He called the situation “serious.”
“We’re seeing cost increases starting to come through at a pretty rapid rate,” Simon told USA Today in a meeting with the newspaper’s editorial board.
David Barton is the leading promoter of a brand of falsified American history altered to support the claim that America was founded as a Christian, rather than a secular, nation. As Chris Rodda, who has authored an entire book debunking Barton’s brand of pseudo-history, writes,
I was quite surprised… to come across a video clip from this conference on the People for the American Way (PFAW) Right Wing Watch blog with the headline “Huckabee: Americans Should Be Forced, At Gunpoint, To Learn From David Barton.” I had watched Huckabee’s speech. How on earth could I have missed a statement like that? Well, I didn’t. It had been edited out of the webcast that I had watched.
Kyle Mantyla over at PFAW’s Right Wing Watch had recorded Huckabee’s speech when it was streamed live on Thursday, and posted the ‘forced at gunpoint’ clip on Friday. By Saturday, when I watched the webcast on the United in Purpose website, that part of Huckabee’s speech had been edited out.
The webcast that I saw showed Barton leaving the stage as he ended his presentation, then the screen going black for a moment, and then what appeared to be the beginning of Huckabee’s speech. What was edited out was Barton returning to the stage to introduce Huckabee, and the first two minutes and forty-five seconds of Huckabee’s speech, during which Huckabee made his ‘gunpoint’ comment and praised David Lane, the man behind all of the American “Renewal” and “Restoration” projects that have popped up across the country during the past few elections.
Posted July 10, 2010 in the Wisconsin State Journal
Q: The recession has focused increased attention on the unemployment rate. Critics say the rate doesn’t adequately capture the breadth of the labor problem. How is it calculated?
A: One of the primary misconceptions about the unemployment rate is that the federal government somehow counts every single unemployed person individually.
To do so would be impractical and expensive — akin to doing a census every month instead of every decade.
So the federal government surveys about 60,000 households each month. Wisconsin’s portion of the sample is just over 1,000 households, said Eric Grosso, a senior economist with the state Department of Workforce Development.
Only those people without a job who have tried to find work in the prior four weeks are considered unemployed, Grosso said.
“People who drop out of the workforce aren’t counted,” he said. “You need to be actively searching for a job.”
That’s because the government, in order to figure out the unemployment rate, needs to know how many total people are either employed or available to work right then, Grosso said. This is called “the labor force,” and it eliminates those who are imprisoned, confined to nursing homes, under age 16 or otherwise not employable.
People who aren’t looking for work because they’ve given up all hope also are among those considered “not in the labor force,” according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
To capture those people, the government does a separate calculation, one that rarely gets publicized. It counts people “marginally attached to the labor force.” This figure includes individuals who say they still want a job and have looked for work in the last year. They just haven’t actively searched in the last four weeks.
In June, the official U.S. unemployment rate — the one we all heard about — was 9.5 percent. Meanwhile, the rate of total unemployment, including those marginally attached to the labor force, was 16.5 percent.
March 2011
204 posts
Note: This is an opinion piece. Maybe even a rant. I try to avoid these, but I see so many survivalist types trumpeting the End Times bit that I have to say this for my own relief. So take it with a grain of salt.
Our planet and our species are definitely going through some rough times, likely as a result of the following activities and attitude:
Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Gen. 1:28
If The End Of The World As We Know It comes about, it’s going to be because we humans had the hubris to think we have dominion over the earth we live on and that there would be no repercussions for unchecked exploitation of natural resources. It will be because of massive population overshoot, rampant pollution, and the implicit permission of the docile masses given to the rich few to exploit them for personal gain.
It will be a result of the hatred and bigotry of intolerant zealots of all religions and our inability to move past tribal, racial, and superficial differences in opinion. It will also stem from an over extension of the world-wide dependence on the global trade system for food, water, energy, and shelter such that if a disaster ever did happen on a large scale the majority might perish because so few of the resources they need to survive are actually available in their geographic area.
I don’t know if we could have foreseen all the things that could go wrong. We’re still such a young race of beings. Barely out of the jungle really. So happy with our new toys and powers and giddy with the wealth they bring us.
When I was a boy I would sometimes come home from playing to find our home empty, the lights on, and no one there. I would run through the house looking for my parents or siblings. Sure that I had been left behind in the Rapture, several times I was brought to tears and prayed for the Lord not to leave me behind.
Inevitably my parents would come back from the barn or the neighbors home and I would see that whatever little sin I might have forgotten to ask forgiveness for had not resulted in an eternity of pain and agony in a pit of Hell. You might be thinking, “Well it still could” and I wouldn’t argue. If that perceptual framework should by some strange chance of fate be the reality of the universe, then I’ll surely be assigned a special room in a hot place.
I shook off the shackles of Abrahamic religion 18 years ago and have never looked back. Unlike Lot’s wife I have no desire to linger on the memories of guilt imposed rules, angry preachers spitting vitriol from the pulpit, or saccharine-sweet, emotional testimonies of the Lord’s Grace.
Obviously I can’t prove that an event involving the true child of God, born of a virgin two thousand years ago, who died, was resurrected, and plans on coming back to raise all the believers from the dead and carry up the remaining living believers in an event that will spark a dramatic Apocalyptic showdown will not happen.
To each his own as long as I’m left to my own devices and no one tries to tell me I’m wrong because I don’t share their belief system.
So, while I know that the evangelicals and Christian fundamentalists are having an End of the World Field Day with the things that are happening now, I also know that they were preaching that same sermon back in 1999. And a decade before that. And decades before that.
So, quit thinking about how the Lord’s going to save you from all this, and start working on saving it for your children and mine. Maybe they can do better with it than we have.
More than two weeks after the triple disasters flattened Japan, the devastated country, while trying every effort to rebuild itself, has to face another challenge—the increased activity of its 13 volcanoes. A Japanese language news article in MSN reported that tremors near Mount Fuji, Mount Hakone and Mount Yake had been felt even until 25 March.
An English translation of the above story said that there is renewed activity of at least 13 volcanoes according to the Meteorological Society of Japan. Shizuoka University’s volcanologist Makoto Oyama said, “As a result of the Great Earthquake, the strain in many regions of the Earth’s crust have been released. “On the other hand, strains have accumulated in other regions and unfortunately the Earth’s crust under the whole of eastern Japan is now in an unstable condition.”
This article about Lester Brown’s book and documentary is well worth reading. It’s an interview with LB and covers climate change, food shortages, Japan’s nuclear problems, political instability, and more. Read the full version here.
“How many failing states before we have a failing global civilization?” asks environmental pioneer Lester Brown in Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, premiering March 30 on PBS as part of its continuing Journey to Planet Earth series. It’s a Gordian knot of a question with no simple answer and nothing but complex, demanding solutions, fearsomely put forth as the fate of humanity totters in the balance.
Based on Brown’s book of the same name, Plan B is likely the scariest horror film that was ever disguised as a documentary, despite its calm narration from superstar Matt Damon. That’s because the acclaimed environmentalist has deeply studied the variety of environmental and geopolitical tipping points we are fast approaching, and found that we’re headed for a seriously dark dystopia if we don’t turn civilization as we know it around, and fast. A catastrophic confluence of food and water shortages, overpopulation and pollution, collapsed governments and communities and more natural disasters than Roland Emmerich can dream up await us on the other side of Plan A, which Brown calls “business of usual.”
More fish kills attributed to winter temperatures and oxygen deprivation. I can’t help but be intrigued with this phenomena, natural or otherwise. Like I’ve said before, in some cases it’s pollution/poisoning and in others oxygen levels, but whatever the case, it’s happening a lot all over the world.
What intrigues me most is that the locals very frequently state that they have never seen anything like it while living there. To me that says it’s a new event, and even if it’s natural, what is triggering it?
I started to blog a few of the stories and then found enough that I’ll just do a round-up to save you time. Some of them are from a few weeks back. It takes the search engines a bit to index them all.
Kansas fish kill - oxygen levels blamed - March 21, 2011
When Newton resident Melissa Barns spotted what she thought were an abnormal number of dead fish floating in Sand Creek, she snapped a photo and then asked, “Has anyone found out why there are so many dead fish floating along the Sand Creek banks?” on the Kansan Facebook wall.
The answer isn’t nefarious. It’s actually mundane.
“Wildlife and parks came and said it was from a lack of oxygen,” said Burke Lewis, park superintendent for the city of Newton. “They took water samples and e-mailed us results within hours.”
The fish died when ice was thick, water levels were low and they ran out of oxygen.
“It’s part of nature,” Lewis said, “and nature will consume them.”
Ravenna Nebraska Fish Kill larger than previously thought - oxygen deprivation blamed - March 25, 2011
RAVENNA — A recent fish kill at Ravenna Lake was more severe than initially thought.
On March 4, Nebraska Game and Parks Commission counted 350 fish killed by low dissolved oxygen, commonly called winter kill this time of year. A second count of dead fish on March 16 found about 3,800 dead fish, said Brad Eifert, a fisheries biologist.
“There was still a percentage of ice on the lake when we did the first study,” Eifert said of why they missed so many dead fish. He also noted that after fish die they float at first, but then sink until they start to decompose.
The first investigation found about 120 largemouth bass, 80 blue gill, 30 channel catfish, and seven common carp. The second fish kill count included about 450 largemouth bass, 3,100 bluegill, and 200 channel catfish.
Eifert said although it was a major kill, he believed there is still some small fish left in the lake. He also said that in talking to people who fished the lake this winter, he believes the kill did not occur until February.
Eifert said winter kill is relatively common but he believes this kill-off is due to the substantial amount of vegetation growing in Ravenna Lake.
“There is a lot of vegetation, which is good for fish populations, but (the plants) require high levels of sunlight,” he said, adding that if a lake gets a thick layer of ice, it blocks sunlight needed by the vegetation. “Once the organic material dies, it uses oxygen, taking it away from the fish.”
Thousands of Gizzard Shad dead in Milwaukee rivers - March 17, 2011
The sky above the Menomonee River by the Harley-Davidson Museum is filled with sound of loud and hungry seagulls. They’re feeding on the thousands of dead Gizzard Shad fish floating down Milwaukee rivers.
Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Tech Tom Burzynski believes the situation isn’t cause for alarm. He says, “It’s been a one species event. When that happen, you kind of expect it had to do with their history rather than it’s something environmental, or something that’s a pollutant some point source that did it.”
Instead, the reason so many fish are dying right now seems to be a change in their immediate environment. Burzynski says, “All it can take for survival is, you know, a little temperature swing one way or the other like we’re seeing here. Which is likely what happened here is temperature.”
Another Pennsylvania Fish Kill with possibly thousands dead - oxygen deprivation blamed - March 25th, 2011
SOUTH SHENANGO TOWNSHIP — Mary Miller said it wasn’t long after she and her husband, Jim, started walking by the 17-acre, semi-private lake near their Jamestown-area home earlier this week that they noticed a lot of fish — all dead — along the shoreline.
What appeared to be hundreds, maybe thousands — bass, carp, perch, bluegill, sunfish and other species — were “everywhere,” Miller said. “We have never seen anything like that” in the 17 years they’ve lived at Colonial Estates, she added, where the spring-fed lake (officially unnamed but known to homeowners there as Colonial Lake) is located.
The die-off was reported Monday to Officer Matthew Visosky, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s Crawford County waterways conservation expert. After investigating at the lake, Visosky said it appears the die-off was natural and likely the result of depleted oxygen levels in the water caused by months of thick ice and snow cover.In this case, Visosky said, it’s “looking like the same thing that has happened in the past,” and, more recently, similar to what “happened this week up (at Presque Isle State Park) in Erie.”
Mass fish kill in Pakistan - poisoning blamed but no evidence yet - March 28th, 2011
UMERKOT, March 28: A large number of fish were found dead in the Nara Canal and its tributaries near Farash regulator on Sunday.
People of the area believed the cause of their death was use of chemicals in the canal by greedy fishermen to maximise their catch.
A fisherman Ghulam Hussain Mallah told this correspondent that he found scores of dead fish floating in water when he was filling a pitcher from Thar Wah near Tio Mail regulator and warned his fellow villagers against using the canal water for drinking.
He said the fish might have died because of presence of some poisonous substance in water.
Small fish kill in Massachusetts - oxygen deprivation blamed - March 19, 2011
Thursday’s mild temperatures and sunshine laid bare dozens of dead fish floating along the shore of the small murky pond adjacent to Bliss Bros. Dairy on Route 118, their silver and gold-colored scales glinting in the sunlight as geese bobbed for food.
While the view of many fish belly-up can be distressing to passersby - and was for one person who called the newspaper - it’s often a natural occurrence during this season, according to the Massachusetts Department of Fisheries and Wildlife’s website.
Mass ‘winterkill” in Greece - March 20, 2011
It was quite a sight to see this weekend — hundreds of dead fish piled up on the shorelines of Cranberry Pond, off of Edgemere Drive in Greece.
The Department of Environmental Conservation says it’s nothing more than a natural phenomenon. But some people aren’t so sure.
Peter Privitera and his buddies weren’t catching much of anything Sunday.
“[I’ve] never seen anything like this. There’s gotta be a couple of thousand dead fish right along the shoreline,” said Privitera. “I makes me sad and kind and makes me concerned. It makes me wonder what killed them off and what’s going to be done as far as testing the water to make sure it’s safe.”
Longtime angler Glen Krull thought it might be some sort of contamination, because so many species of fish are dead.
“I don’t know what would do that — gasoline or oil, or something someone dumped in from their hut — they’re ice fishing out here all the time,” said Krull.
While the DEC says spills and disease are concerns when there large numbers of dead fish, what’s happening in cranberry and long ponds is nothing but “Winterkill.” Region 8 Director Paul D’Amato tells News 10NBC this phenomenon happens when heavy snow and ice cover the bodies of water for a long period of time. All the available oxygen in the water is used up, and the fish die.
Fish kill in Australia - warm weather blamed - March 30, 2011
Wait. So cold temperatures cause oxygen deprivation and warm weather does as well? Seems like water is a bad place for fish these days…
DEAD mullet have been found floating on the surface of a Taree waterway for the second time in less than two months.
The fish could be seen at the wetland near Nulama Village at Taree North yesterday, also the site of a similar fish kill in February.
The heat and subsequent loss of oxygen from the water was blamed on that occasion but does not seem likely this time due to the much milder weather conditions.
Some of the fish were found on the banks of the wetland, suggesting they may have jumped from the water.
Experts from the Department of Fisheries were not available for comment yesterday.
Arizona Senate votes down bill to review impact of poisoning exotic fish before doing it - March 25, 2011
This type of activity has been documented in numerous locations in Japan after the earthquakes.
Well, thank you very much. I appreciate the feedback. :) I’m glad my obsession with following this stuff benefits someone besides me. I live deeper in the southern states now, but I dearly miss the mountains of my youth. Finally got to move out of the city and into the country again.
One step closer to the fall of the dollar as the worlds reserve currency?
BEIJING (Reuters) - Dollar dominance is sowing the seeds of financial turmoil, and the solution is to promote new reserve currencies, a Chinese government economist said in a paper published on the eve of a G20 meeting about how to reform the global monetary system.
Although not an official policy statement, the paper by Xu Hongcai, a department deputy director at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, offered a window onto the domestic pressures bearing on Beijing to move away from a dollar-centric global economy.
Xu’s paper, “Reform of the international monetary system under the G20 framework,” was published in Chinese on the center’s website this week (www.cciee.org.cn).
“Nations around the world have no way of restricting dollar issuance by the Federal Reserve. The current international monetary system lacks both stability and fairness,” Xu wrote.
He said the global monetary system had fallen into a “dollar trap.” While it would be sensible to reduce dollar holdings in official currency reserves, nations cannot easily cut back, because doing so would only lead the dollar to weaken and so hit the value of their assets, he said.
Gerald Celente on Russia Today news talking about the war in Libya and the hypocrisy I wrote about a few weeks ago in a post titled “Why Libya and NOT DARFUR? Bahrain? Sierra Leone? Nigeria?”
Experts say that these are all due to winter conditions and oxygen deprivation. Other folks who live near the fish kills will say they have never seen it like this before. We had some severe winter weather this year. Not a sign of the end of the world, but in my mind, definitely a sign of climate change. And then there are the ones from pollution and oil spills….
Small fish kill in Bangladore
Oxygen deprivation again…
About 150 fish were found dead at a pond in JP Park of Mathikere on Tuesday night. Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) officials said that the fish were choked to death owing to excessive evaporation of water in the stagnant water body.
Another small kill in a pond in Missoula
Visitors to the duck pond on the south side of town will find a pretty gross scene: more dead fish than actual ducks.
Roughly 50 dead fish are visibly floating on the surface of the small pond. Neighbors first noticed the issue and reported it to Missoula Parks and Rec yesterday. This morning, Parks and Rec recovered one of the fish and sent it to Fish, Wildlife and Parks for testing.
Small Fish Kill in Minnesota
ALEXANDRIA, Minn. (KSAX) - Around 300 dead fish were found in Lake Agnes and Lake Henry earlier this month in open water areas after ice had melted. But both residents and experts said they’re not sure why.
“All winter long, I’ve been fishing the lake (Henry), and I ran into a situation where we had a four to six foot column of fish, and all of the sudden, they disappeared. I could not find a fish on the lake,” Lake Henry resident and fisherman Rick Colden said.
Colden isn’t the only one who’s had a hard time on the lakes, as more than 2,000 anglers failed to catch a fish at a tournament on the adjoining Lake Agnes on Feb. 12.
But the recent evidence of fish kill may be to blame.
“A lot of game fishes; walleye, bass, bluegill, some crappie, (were found dead). So certainly a concern,” Minnesota Department of Natural Resources area fisheries supervisor Dean Beck said.
Beck said it’s hard to pinpoint a timeframe or reason for the fish kill because both fish and water samples can no longer provide accurate readings.
Small fish kill in Connecticut
Wallingford, Conn (WTNH) - It’s happening in a lot of fresh water around Connecticut right now. Dozens of dead fish are turning up, floating on the surface. The DEP says it’s a common occurrence after the kind of winter we had.
North Farms Reservoir in Wallingford is very large, but it is also very shallow. It’s just six feet deep at most, and that may be a factor in what’s happening.It is a peaceful spot off Route 68 in Wallingford. Lots of swans and ducks paddle around with no particular concerns, but it didn’t take long for our cameras to find dead fish including big bass and tiny sunfish.
It was worse just a few days ago. Photos were sent to us by Nick Santillo, who found dozens of dead fish piled up in the reservoir.
Smaller kill in west Texas
With nets in hand, city staff were continuing Monday to remove dead fish from Wadley Barron Park after a pond ‘turnover’ that created a lack of oxygen for the organisms living inside.
Parks & Recreation Manager Scott Swigert said they were alerted Thursday fish were dying and have been working on the issue each day since, having seen a decrease in the rate at which fish were dying by Monday.
“We are currently experiencing what’s known as a pond turnover,” Swigert said, explaining why hundreds of fish have died. “It’s a naturally occurring event … It’s happened in the past and we’re confident it will occur again in the future.”
When sediments build up at the bottom of a pond, the water eventually will flip, causing the oxygen on the top of the water to mix with the carbon dioxide and other chemicals at the bottom, creating a lack of air.
1000’s of dead fish and a few turtles and gulls on Misery Bay on March 22nd
Cathy Pedlar and Kathryn Hamilton were walking by Presque Isle State Park’s Misery Bay on Tuesday afternoon when they spotted thousands of dead fish along the north shore.
Pedlar said she’s seen dead fish before, but never like this.
“I haven’t seen this density before,” she said.
Park and state officials were notified and a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection official investigated.
“This is a natural fish kill, no cause for alarm,” Jim Grazio, a Great Lakes biologist with DEP’s Office of the Great Lakes, said after inspecting the dead fish.
He said 99 percent were gizzard shad and he believed their death was a natural event caused by temperature change.
Grazio said the gizzard shad, a freshwater herring, is notoriously sensitive to cold temperatures and temperature changes.
He also said more than the usual number of the fish were born in 2010 for unknown reasons.
Thousands of Dead fish in Michigan blamed on cold
Michigan officials say thousands of dead fish found in the Lake St. Clair area likely died because of the cold weather.
The state Department of Natural Resources and Environment says Friday that large numbers of gizzard shad probably died because of the lengthy, cold winter. State officials say they’ve collected samples and had them analyzed, and they don’t suspect a fish virus or bacterial disease is to blame.
Thousands of dead gizzard shad were found earlier this year in Lakes Erie and St. Clair, the St. Clair River and the Detroit River. Shad deaths are typical in the winter.
Winter fish kills on numerous lakes in Iowa
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has received numerous reports of dead fish in lakes and ponds across Iowa as the ice cover disappears for another year.
These winter fish kills have been reported at Swan Lake (Carroll), Badger Creek Lake (Madison), Clark Lake (Cerro Gordo), Kuhn Wildlife Pond (Cerro Gordo), Pilot Knob Pond (Winnebago), Alice Wyth Lake (Black Hawk), Middle Sabula and Green Island lakes (Jackson), Credit Island Lagoon (Scott), and a storm water retention pond in Guttenberg.
Number of dead whales and dolphins in the Gulf at least 50 times higher
Many more dolphins are dying in the Gulf than are officially counted. New research released today shows that the average number for most species is at least 50 times higher than what’s reported now, a conservative figure according to the authors.
The death toll of animals that perished as a result of the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may be 50 times higher than presently believed, according to a new study in the latest issue of Conservation Letters.
Until now, fatality figures have primarily been based on the number of recovered carcasses. Data on this varies depending on the source and the date of the count, but the authors report that as of Nov. 7, 2010, 101 whale, dolphin, and porpoise carcasses had been detected across the Northern Gulf of Mexico.
Past numbers of carcasses reflect just 2 percent of actual animal deaths, according to the study, so the true number of fatalities for cetaceans alone as a result of the spill could be in the thousands.
15-20 dead gulls monthly at San Fran pier - mold to blame
Earlier this month The Bay Citizen published a story about the alarming number of western gulls that are dying near San Francisco’s industrial Pier 94. The article, “Mold Mystery Surrounds SF Bird Deaths”, states a preliminary investigation by the California Department of Fish and Game may have found the cause.
According to the article, “The department found 15 to 20 dead or dying gulls monthly, according to California Fish and Game Warden William O’Brien. It performed autopsies on a number of dead gulls and found that growing inside their lungs was a mold called Aspergillus, which suffocated the birds.”
Thank you caffeinatedennui for following and reading.
As a librarian I have to first give a quick disclaimer about using authoritative sources. I have to do this because some of the sites I follow are NOT authoritative in and of themselves.
Authoritative sources have several elements. Not all of them are always going to be met, but I do the best I can to not just pass on conjecture and opinion, but rather the original story as reported by the source. There will always be a question of who counts as an expert, as an authority on a subject.
Articles on news sites, in scientific journals, as reported on television, by eyewitnesses, etc that report the findings from research studies and experiments, that are first hand accounts of events as researched by a reporter, or reports from ‘experts’ are considered “primary” information sources, because they are “first hand” accounts of the actual research and the results, i.e. the original evidence.
The various original sources described above generate a range of “primary evidence” that can be gathered, organized, and assessed by other researchers to give us a sense of the current information on a given topic. These types of review or opinion articles are considered a secondary source because they are “second-hand” accounts which integrate the reports from a number of original research sources.
Even though I try to share information from primary sources, there are many secondary sources that provide valuable insight into a topic, so I sometimes share those as well. My individual comments and writing would almost always be considered secondary sources unless it’s something I know enough about to write authoritatively.
Because I have also studied Philosophy, I tend to question everything, which can lead to it’s own problems, but we must have a healthy skepticism, tempered with some standard of what we can accept as “truth”, in order to not fall into the traps laid by conspiracy theorist type thinking, faulty logic, and blind trust of authority.
That being said, here’s how I scan sources and the sites I check often. I created a Netvibes dashboard and import a wide range of RSS feeds and keyword searches into that page via widgets.I have them categorized by general topic so I can look at numerous sources at the same time.
Here are the General areas I’m watching now and some of the sites I use. I’ll link to the ones that are harder to find and that are less mainstream. I don’t agree with what many of these sites put forth, but I do find interesting stories on them that don’t get a lot of coverage. I have to warn you that many of these sites are very conservative, and even fringe right-wing (Tea Party) in perspective. I don’t have to agree with their politics to get good information and facts from the things they comment on.
Main Stream Media
- New York Times - World
- The Atlantic
- San Francisco Bay Area News
- Chicago tribune
- Reuters World News
- BBC - World
- Al Jazeera English
- Mother Jones - Politics
- LA Times
- Reuters Science News
- New Scientist
- Scientific American
- Nature Magazine
- The Economist
- USA Today
- International Herald Tribune
- Wall Street Journal
- Washington Post
Finance and Economy
- CNN Money
- Forex Trading News
- Financial Times
- Nouriel Roubini - economist who predicted the housing crash in 2008
- Marc Faber Blog - blog with lots of info from Faber, an economist who has also earned the title Dr Doom
- Zero Hedge - kind of Tea Partyish site with more conservative views than I hold, but they do pull some interesting stories.
- Peter Schiff Blog - another economist who thinks things don’t look so good for the future
Environment, Earth Changes, & Peak Oil
- Energy Bulletin
- The Oil Drum
- SkyTruth
- Peak Oil News
- RSOE EDIS - real time updates of global disasters of all types
- USGS Liver Internet Seismic server - heliplots of earthquake monitors all over the world
- Earth Changes & the Pole Shift - this site is run by a real kook; thinks she’s channeling aliens and Planet X is causing the pole shift. HOWEVER, they dig up some of the wildest news stories about all the shit that’s happening all over the world with regard to earthquakes, landslides, cracks, sounds, flooding, etc. I use the stories but never link to them because of the stigma of their bias.
Alt News Sources
- Before It’s News
- Alternet
- DiscloseTV
- Project Censored
- Natural News
- The Raw Story
- Global Research
- Unexplained Mysteries
Survivalist News
- SHTFPlan - I read Mac Slavo daily. He’s a bit more edgy and alarmist than I am, and many of his readers are fucking nuts, but he has an interesting perspective and covers topics I’m interested in. All in all a good site.
- Chris Martenson - well educated wall street insider turned survivalist. One of the most well known names in the survivalist community. Fairly doom and gloom, but a smart guy and I watch what he has to say - skeptically. ;)
- The Daily Crux
- The Warning Signs - tea party-ish
- Activist Post
- What Really Happened
- The Intel Hub
- World Wide Wake Up Now - angry Tea Party
- The Daily Sheeple
- Redacted news
Survivalists
- Suburban Survivalist
- Modern Survival Online
- Survivology 101
- Survival Podcast - Rick Spirko is by far the survivalist/prepper that I like the most. Rational, positive, and yet pragmatic and full of good stuff. Best example of what survivalism can be. If you’re going to start somewhere in this Topical area, start here.
- SHTF Times
- The Survivalist Blog
- Bison Survival Blog
- Survival Blog - Jim Rawles wrote the book on hardcore survivalism - the super religious, conservative, grab your gun and head for the hills kind. He has a huge following to prove it. But he knows his skills.
- Save Our Skills - great blog on skills that aren’t much in use any longer
- Wilderness Survival Forums
Conspiracy Theorists
- Above Top Secret
- GodLike Productions
- Disinfo - one of the more ‘reputable’ ones
- Death By A Thousand Papercuts
- Dutchsinse - video feed - this guy has some amazing earthquake and weird weather footage, but he thinks HAARP is behind it all. I think he is sincere, and I kind of crack up when he gets all alarmed and issues alerts, but he finds interesting stuff, even if I don’t agree with his conclusions.
Keyword Searches
I use Twitter and Google News keyword searches that feed into the dashboard. I follow these topics:
- survival or survivalist or prepper or emergency preparedness
- food shortage or food prices
- peak oil or oil prices or gas prices or oil slick or oil sheen or oil spill
- poleshift (mostly reports from the followers of the blog listed above)
- earthquake or weird weather or ground cracks
- mass fish kill or mass animal deaths or dead fish or beached whale or whale strandings or beached dolphins
- collapse of the dollar or reserve currency
- homeland security or FEMA
Well, those are a few of the things I watch. Like I said, be skeptical and don’t believe it just because someone thinks it makes sense - even if that someone is me. :)
John Coster-Mullen. A former truck driver with no college education, Coster-Mullen taught himself how to build an A-bomb. “The secret of the atomic bomb,” he says, “is how easy they are to make.”
Last year, Motherboard visited Coster-Mullen to talk with him about his life project: reverse engineering the atomic bombs America dropped on Japan. His findings are available in a book he continuously updates and publishes himself called “Atom Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man,” which has received rave reviews from the National Resource Defense Council: “Nothing else in the Manhattan Project literature comes close to his exacting breakdown of the bomb’s parts.”
After years of research into the bomb’s classified plans, Coster-Mullen has been able to create an intensely technical history of the atomic bomb, centered around a detailed explanation of how the bombs were built, including exact dimensions and configurations, inside and out. For almost 10 years, Coster-Mullen painstakingly analyzed photographs and interviewed more than 150 scientists, engineers and others involved in their development. The result is an unprecedented and highly accurate recreation of the bomb on paper, both in its mechanics and history.
Certainly Coster-Mullen’s ambitious project is a neat example of the ingenuity that led America to be the first to develop the atomic bomb. But it’s also a stark reminder that our most powerful technologies can end up being reworked and used in other ways, by people much less friendly than truck drivers with lots of time on their hands.
Looks like the US plan for meeting the energy crisis takes the next step. Bravo! However, this will also keep corn prices high unless production is increased. No easy answers.
President Barack Obama outlined a plan Wednesday to cut America’s imports of foreign oil by a third by 2025 — a response to growing global energy demands and instability overseas.
The president’s proposal relies primarily on increased domestic production, conservation, and a shift to biofuels and natural gas.
Among other things, Obama said he will push for an increased use of natural gas in trucks and buses, as well as the construction of commercial-scale biofuel refineries over the next two years.
The president also announced that he is directing the federal government to ensure that all of its vehicle purchases are alternative fuel, hybrid, or electric cars by 2015.
Higher fuel efficiency standards for cars will be announced this fall, he said. This summer, a new fuel efficiency standard will be proposed for heavy-duty trucks, he added.
The White House previously announced a decision to raise fuel efficiency standards for automobiles at a faster pace than required under the 2007 energy act — boosting them to 36 miles per gallon by 2016.
$105 per barrel oil. Cotton prices at record levels. Food prices at 2008 highs. Typically, such commodity price increases would send central banks running to the U.S. Dollar to secure the value of their savings. After all, the dollar has been the reserve currency since World War I.
But not this time.
Central banks are shedding dollars, reducing their holdings by about $9 billion in previous quarter, according to Nomura Securities’ Jens Nordvig, global head of G10 FX Strategy.
What are they buying instead? Gold
The yellow metal hit a fresh record high this morning, while the dollar index dropped to a 15-month low. The news had Fast Money’s Brian Kelly looking to add more gold and silver longs to his portfolio Thursday morning.
“What is working is gold, silver and oil ” said Kanundrum Capital’s Kelly. “I wish I had more.”
Gold and silver have become the inflation hedges of choice for some investors. Gold hit an intra day high today of $1,448 per ounce. Silver is trading at 31-year highs, hitting an intra day high of $38 per ounce.
Thousands of Marines from Camp Lejeune, Cherry Point and New River are preparing to head to waters off Libya.
Nearly 2,200 Marines and sailors with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit are preparing the ships they will be deploying with during their mission to the Mediterranean Sea. The USS Bataan is currently docked at the Morehead City State Port.
The 22nd MEU will relieve the 26th MEU which has been involved with Libyan air strikes and with the rescue mission of a downed Air Force pilot last week.
Colonel Eric Steidl, commander of the 22nd MEU, would not say if they will have any missions in Libya but the colonel says the 22nd MEU has the ability to perform a wide variety of missions.
Whatever you think of Michael, at least the Wall Street Journal gave the film a good review:
Directed by documentarian Chris Smith (“American Movie”), the film consists mostly of Mr. Ruppert speaking about the dangers of peak oil and the looming catastrophe that declining oil reserves could bring. The film opens Nov. 6 [2009] in New York and on the new video-on-demand channel FilmBuff.
“The power of ‘Collapse’ is that Ruppert … never sounds like a crackpot,” Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman wrote after the movie’s Toronto International Film Festival premiere in September. “You may want to dispute him, but more than that you’ll want to hear him, because what he says—right or wrong, prophecy or paranoia—takes up residence in your mind.”
But as with “Fog of War,” the Oscar-winning documentary about former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, Mr. Ruppert comes across in the film as both authoritative and dubious, leaving the audience open to make its own judgment of the man and his ideas. The Wall Street Journal sat down with Mr. Ruppert to discuss oil, Wall Street and the “imminent collapse of human industrialized civilization.”
I’m not a gold & silver hoarder, but a LOT of survivalist types are. I don’t think precious metals (PM) are the answer, but they should be a part of your portfolio if you’re into the market.
Here’s the deal, simply put, the silver and gold in your coins are worth more than the face value of the coin. But, the PM’s are only valued relative to the amount of dollars they can be traded for. If the dollar isn’t worth much, that means you still get less for your PM.
Some survivalists keep large supplies of gold and silver because they believe that when the dollar collapses, or if the Shit Ever Really Does Hit The Fan, PM’s will be the only thing you can use as money (besides food, water, and bullets).
You’ll have to figure out where you stand on all this on your own, but Utah is obviously working from this same mindset with their new bill. They even mention “preparedness”. :D
It may not fold as conveniently as dollar bills, but the Utah House took a first step Friday to recognize gold and silver as legal tender.
It voted 47-26 to pass HB317 by Rep. Brad Galvez, R-West Haven, and sent it to the Senate. The measure would recognize as legal tender gold and silver coins issued by the federal government — not just their face value, but also their value in gold and silver or to a collector.
It also would order the state to study whether Utah should establish an alternative form of legal tender, such as one backed by silver and gold.
“This is a step in preparedness, a step in security,” Galvez said, “that allows us to be able to help hold up our economy as the dollar continues to shrink.”
