Media & Communications

Control, and other illusions

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Civilisation is a story. It is a story about where we have come from and where we are going. There are many ways to tell that story, but one version has been very much the dominant one in the West for the past couple of centuries. We know this story: it’s the one about modern, urban industrial culture’s ineffable superiority over all others; the one about human evolution leading inevitably to this point. It’s the one about winning the war against nature, being the only species which thinks and loves and dreams; it’s the one about machines and circuitry and ingenuity and progress. And it’s true, in some ways, at least as far as it goes. But it may not be going much further.

Food & agriculture April 28

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-How can we grow more food locally? Pam Warhurst of Incredible Edible Todmorden speaks in Bath (video)
-Australia’s “Grain and Graze” Farming Method Provides Peak Oil and Climate Change Resiliency
-Organic agriculture: deeply rooted in science and ecology
-Effects of input management and crop diversity on non-renewable energy use efficiency of cropping systems in the Canadian Prairie (report)

The Oil Crunch

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In just a century, we’ve become almost entirely dependent on cheap oil. We rely on oil for just about everything, in fact the global economy is reliant on its free flowing supply. So what would happen if the well started to run dry and demand outstripped supply? Some oil industry experts think we’ve already hit Peak Oil and we should brace ourselves for the imminent Oil Crunch.

The budget-deficit debate: Towards austerity or a peoples budget and good jobs?

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Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute addresses the debate over the federal budget and deficit, counter-posing the need for economic policies that would, in the long term, shrink the deficit through massive job creation, cutting the bloated war budget, and a new social compact that would meet peoples needs and stabilize the economy by limiting the Wall Street speculative casino through a financial transactions tax.

There’s Something Happening Here…

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Put these things together — a tone of hopelessness in the mainstream progressive media, a largely useless outpouring of outrage in the indymedia, a giving up of citizens on the viability of centralized representative governments, reactionary responses to black swan events instead of constructive ones, the ratcheting up of existing systems to prolong the period before tipping points, and a naivete about the powerlessness of even the most powerful in modern complex systems — and what do we have?

The dollar? We’ve got that sinking feeling…

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There is little doubt that a weak dollar is the “unofficial” policy of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Even as I write this, I can hear the feverish, fearful cries of the Dollar Collapsers, the Gold Bugs, the Hyperinflationistas, and many others calling out to me, telling me in no uncertain terms to buy gold, silver, oil, corn, wheat—anything with tangible value I can get my hands on. But like the vast majority of Americans, I am not in position financially to buy any of these things. I must use dollars. As CNBC tells me, if I don’t like a weak dollar, I might as well get used to it. Get used to it?

Global world product will not grow at 4%+ for five years

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You can see that the IMF is basically forecasting five years of pretty good growth – near the top of the historical range, but certainly not above it. They are not projecting any serious global slowdowns, still less an outright global recession (those are rare – 2009 was the only case in the last thirty years)…This requires the world come up with another 17mbd of supply in the next five years, though it only managed to come up with about 3-4mbd over the last five years, and that took a quadrupling of prices to achieve. I don’t see where this much oil can possibly come from.

Walking for Water

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“You have to decide what it is you are going to stand for,” Day explains. “Water is essential to life. We live in the water of the womb of our mother before we come into the world. We are birthed from water, our bodies are primarily water and we can’t survive without clean water. At some time in your life you have to take a stand.”