Speaking Truth to Power
State College, Pennsylvania, home of Penn State University, is ensconsed in a somewhat bucolic region of the commonwealth called Happy Valley. The name exquisitely connotes tranquility, American values, and the smiling faces of guileless, hard-working citizens. It is also home of the Nittany Lions, a name long synonymous with Penn State’s football team. The Nittany lion was adopted by the student body in 1907 as the official football mascot and was taken from the name of nearby Mount Nittany, which derived its name from a Native American word meaning “protective barrier.” Since then, Penn State has become synonymous with football and all of that sport’s infinite sexual connotations such as “penetration,” “tight end,” and “wide open in the...
Posted: Sunday, November 20, 2011 - 11:28
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Food&Health
Humanity is entering an age of accelerating decentralization and complexity. The turmoil we are witnessing globally is a manifestation of this and suggests a turning point altogether as cataclysmic as the transition from the agricultural age to the industrial age. The forces of centralization and control (governments, corporate and labor structures, any hierarchical structures really) are in full panic mode because they are being rapidly upended by the decentralization trend.
If you want to see the violent death throes of centralization and control in action, look no further than our food production and distribution systems. Mac Slavo shared an outrageous story yesterday that will make your blood boil. It was about a group of private...
Posted: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 15:22
ORIGINAL BLOGPOST
The economic news of the last few weeks has not been encouraging. In Europe, the various national debt crises remain unresolved, with a continued monopoly of banker-friendly austerity programs, and their predictable consequences of rising unemployment and stagnation. Debtor countries are being forced into the same financial orthodoxies that prolonged the depression of the 1920s and 30s, so we shouldn’t be surprised at the failures they will bring. More recession may also be the future of the countries enforcing these once-discredited policies, as weak demand across the region represses consumer demand, investor confidence, and government spending. In the United States the details are different, but the main story...
Posted: Tuesday, June 7, 2011 - 13:10
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Here’s the good news about energy: thanks to rising oil prices and deteriorating economic conditions worldwide, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that global oil demand will not grow this year as much as once assumed, which may provide some temporary price relief at the gas pump. In its May Oil Market Report, the IEA reduced its 2011 estimate for global oil consumption by 190,000 barrels per day, pegging it at 89.2 million barrels daily. As a result, retail prices may not reach the stratospheric levels predicted earlier this year, though they will undoubtedly remain higher than at any time since the peak months of 2008, just before the global economic meltdown. Keep in mind that this is the good news....
Posted: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 - 18:31
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Is anything in America more faithfully followed than economic growth? Its movements are constantly watched, measured to the decimal place, deplored or praised, diagnosed as weak or judged healthy and vigorous. Newspapers, magazines, and cable channels report endlessly on it. Promoting growth may be the most widely shared and robust cause in the United States today.
If the growth imperative dominates U.S. political and economic life, what happens when growth hits some serious stumbling blocks?
When I was in school in England, the dean of my college told us when we first arrived that we could walk on the grass in the courtyard — but not across it. That helped me love the English and their language. Here is another creative...
Posted: Monday, May 23, 2011 - 11:40
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
According to alarming new figures released Monday by the U.S. Census Bureau, the nation’s population of mature adults has been pushed to the brink of extinction, with only 104 grown-ups remaining in the country today.
The endangered demographic, which is projected to die out completely by 2060, is reportedly distinguished from other groups by numerous unique traits, including foresight, rationality, understanding of how to obtain and pay for a mortgage, personal responsibility, and the ability to enter a store without immediately purchasing whatever items they see and desire.
“Our grown-ups are disappearing at a much faster rate than we previously believed,” said Census Bureau chief Robert M. Groves, who...
Posted: Thursday, May 12, 2011 - 11:11
http://carolynbaker.net/2011/05/11/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-by-matt-taibbi/
They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.
Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag,...
Posted: Thursday, May 5, 2011 - 22:37
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE (Free Story)
May 5, 2011, 1400 PST, SEBASTOPOL – I have personally interrogated under aged criminal suspects who could lie better than White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. It has been four days since the P.T. Barnum (“There’s a sucker born every minute”) proclamation of the death of Osama bin Laden (OBL). President Obama’s account of the firefight has had zero credibility from the outset and it continues to fray and wear thin as each day passes.
First, bin Laden was shooting. Then he wasn’t. Now, no pictures are going to be released. Ridiculous arguments on CNN, by House members stating that releasing photos would inflame and invite retaliation, flatly contradict what I suspect every grunt who ever...
Posted: Monday, May 2, 2011 - 11:49
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Author's noteThe following article was first published on the 9th of September 2006, in the context of the 2006 commemoration of the tragic event of September 2001. September 11, 2008
"Going after bin Laden" has served, over the last five years, to sustain the legend of the "world's most wanted terrorist", who "haunts Americans and millions of others around the world."
Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly claimed that the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden remain unknown: "It is like looking for a needle in a stack of hay".
In November 2001, US B-52 bombers carpet bombed a network of caves in the Tora Bora mountains of eastern Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden and his followers were allegedly hiding. These caves...
Posted: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 - 14:46
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
[If this analysis seems too "dire," check out today's article by Paul Farrell on Marketwatch: "2008 Crash Deja Vu: We'll Relive It And Soon."--CB
The cars are coming off the rails. This is a big market move and a signal that Apmex and many others see Fukushima's impact on the global economy, our civilization, and the Old Paradigm. Put another way, they see pm's going absurdly hot very shortly which is exactly what I have written about consistently for over a decade. This fits with my analysis predicting immediate (there is no better term) apocalyptic events. Having left a record of maybe three million words I have never used that word before.
What I have said consistently in many university lectures in...