The Collapse

[pan]

OK, I'm an idiot - how do you upload video?

Watch this

[BO]

I wonder if Americans might be willing to park their SUV's for awhile so the rest of the world can eat. Seems we've reached the point where our consumption habits have a direct impact on whether other folks live or die...

Focus on World Food Prices, Market Woes
Sunday April 13, 7:50 am ET
By Harry Dunphy, Associated Press Writer
Global Financial Crisis, Food Prices Dominate International Financial Talks

WASHINGTON (AP) — Finance ministers and central bankers are focusing their spring meetings on ways to deal with the unfolding financial crisis that has roiled economies around the world and led to higher food and energy prices.

Sessions of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank end Sunday with a look by the bank’s policy-setting committee at the effect on developing countries, especially poor ones where the bank is trying to reduce poverty.

“We must respond to the immediate emergency situation,” Robert Zoellick, the bank president, said before the meeting, but in a way that helps developing countries achieve objectives such as improved health care and reduced malnutrition and infant mortality.

The officials are also talking about climate change, investment in Africa and rising food prices.

“In the U.S and Europe over the last year we’ve been focused on the prices of gasoline at the pump,” Zoellick said. “While many worry about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs. And it’s getting more and more difficult every day.” The poor already spend up to 75 percent of their income on food in many developing countries, he said.

Zoellick has said that to deal with the immediate crisis, the international community must fill a food shortage valued at a minimum of $500 million by the U.N. World Food Program.

A similar warning was sounded Saturday by the head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He said there would be dire consequences if food prices remain high in developing countries, especially in Africa.

He added that the problem could also create trade imbalances that would hurt advanced economies, “so it is not only a humanitarian question.”

Governments in Haiti, Egypt and the Philippines are among those already facing social unrest because of food prices and shortages. If the price increases continue, Strauss-Kahn said, “Thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will be suffering from malnutrition, with consequences for all their lives.”

The development group Oxfam, a frequent IMF critic, said rich countries are largely responsible for the food crisis because they have been cutting aid to developing countries and encouraging biofuel production, which the IMF says is responsible for almost half the increase in the demand for food crops.

“Rich countries demand for biofuel is driving up food prices and is a big part of the problem,” said Elizabeth Stuart, an Oxfam policy adviser. “Meanwhile, by cutting aid levels, they are doing precious little to be part of the solution.”

Germany’s development minister urged greater regulation of the global biofuels market to prevent its expansion from driving up food prices. “It is unacceptable for the export of agrofuels to pose a threat to the supply situation of the very people already living in poverty,” Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said in a statement.
Associated Press writer Desmond Butler contributed to this report.

[littleoldme]

Why Costs Are Climbing
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19725.htm

Let Them Eat Ethanol!
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19728.htm

[littleoldme]

An Economy Built On Lies
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19735.htm

[littleoldme]

The U.S. Healthcare System Has Collapsed.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19732.htm

[waldopaper]

Check out Stone's latest post (if you haven't already): "I Can Smell Hope and it Smells Like Bullshit." I know I'm mostly preaching to the choir here... but abandon ye the hope of "Their intentions are always honorable, if not divinely inspired." Bullshit. At this point the (very few) who have "honorable intentions" are at best deluded fools. There are the usual (traditional) self-serving porky-pigs.

So now... the (overly simplistic) choice between deluded-fools and porky-pigs. How does one explain to friends (if you still HAVE any) the difference? And which is better? You will have no trouble proving the existence of porky-pigs. Everybody knows about them. The question: how do you get deluded-fools to face the tact that they are deluded-fools? The key-word, methinks, is: "electability." The deluded fools still believe "electability" is important: ie: yeh, I'M hip... but the REST of the simplistic twits want to hear... yabba yabba blah.

I wonder what would happen if you pointed out that if they believe "electability" is important... ie- "elections are real-- make any difference," then THEY are very little different from the "simplistic twits" to which they attempt to pander. Much as I dislike saying in favor of shill o' the wisp "Obama," he said something important about "small-town mentality," and as-to-be-expected... the Hillary et-al snakes hit him on it. But the "small town mentality" believes it's unrealistic... yea, even SINFUL to believe the "government" has anything to do with their income... so they focus on guns and god... (like the "government has anything to do with that shit EITHER).

What is YOUR experience talking to "clueless peopls?"

[littleoldme]

That they are clueless. But i don't subscribe to the much used factoid that it's all their fault.
I think they have been brain washed by our gubberment and the mass media and I believe it has been going on for years. Some are really rock stupid and know no better. Some are ignorant because they want to be. But they have had their "buttons" pushed by people who get paid and are good at the "button pushing" . Of course our government has plenty to do with the guns and god crowd. They have been letting the NRA do as it damn well pleases forever. Now Fl has the dubious distinction of allowing ya ta bring themthere guns ta work ya'll. YEEHAW! How over the top fucking stupid is that? Boss pisses your ass off, shoot the bastard. Guns at work, gotta love the south.
And don't even get me started on the cloud guy and his brain midgets.

[BO]

I believe the vast majority of people need defense mechanisms such as active denial and willful ignorance in order to cope. They are a drug substitute for those not already doing drugs.

This is an escapist society. We need our fantasies because reality is too painful to deal with. Of course the media tells us everything is going to be alright because the alternative to doing so would bring down the house. So people believe the crap they hear because they need to. They want to stay drugged.

I can't blame them to some extent. Life is painful. Living consciously is a tough way to live.

Much easier to count the people who do live consciously than those that don't.

[Mouse]

My experience talking to clueless people is that they soon realise that I'm completely nuts and there's no need to pay attention to what I'm suggesting they might look up.
My friends are few and far between, except for a little cluster just here.
I asked a journalist the other day if he had heard of building 7 and after a no, then a reminder of the context, he remembered and said he hadn't been aware that it had any particular significance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was a professional journalist here in England.
It's staggering, the way that all this is unfolding, with the people who ought to be keeping tabs on things just not believing that they should follow the clues because it isn't done to give credence to any conspiracy theories.

As for the internet, piffle and balderdash, clearly. Just yesterday I checked out an old friend and suggested she watched a couple of youtube videos I'd lined up, and she told me that she had no desire to watch anything on youtube, having had a small prang with some virus years before. And I thought of my video education, how much I've learned in the last few years since I got a Mac. So many different reasons why people don't look. Mostly it's much more comfortable for them not to. Perhaps we're more comfortable opening the blinds.
My cousin insisted I didn't send her any links in case she was traced reading them.
People don't come round, they don't invite me anywhere, good thing I've got a strong sense of purpose, work ethic based on surrender to inspiration.
Lonely though. Wish I could say more here. Will try harder. Like this.

I became a non-believer in the bath, washing my hair, submerged. Thinking of my brother drowning in an aircrash off the coast of Vietnam, near Nah Trang a few days before. As I'd been told. Submerged I imagined his lifeless body impossibly wet, it was quite impossible. I rose from the waters energised, a non-believer, sure he was still alive.
And he was for a few days more, while trade interests came first and the locals waited for the wreck on the mountaintop to quieten down.

What I really have been wondering is what seeds did Waldo buy?

[BO]

Waldo's busy planting seeds of wisdom...

Saw a bumper sticker today on the back of an old pick-up:

"Religion is what keeps the poor from killing the rich."

Perfect.

But my favorite is:

Jesus is Coming!
Look Busy.

BTW, I love your recent photos EM.

[waldopaper]

corn, beans and squash. Acorn squash and sugar/ pie pumpkins... not the jack o lantern kind- the eating kind. I'm a horticultural gerbil... know NOTHING about gardening- even tho i've had a few. the idea... to cultivate these critters mound-fashion like the indigenous Americans did... using a shovel instead of a plow or roto-tiller.

Today the accountant told me we owe taxes... and haven't told ms. waldo yet. we can't pay it. i won't pay it. not the feds anyway. had another brain fart about a week ago. went nearly blind. practicing denial and willful ignorance in my own way. Now I gotta watch rabbits being cleaned without wanting to barf... as i imagine i will be doing it right soon (rabbits- not barfing). Helped grandpa make hasenpfeffer as a boy.
Em- what was your dear brother doing in Nah Trang?

[Mouse]

Inspired by those mounds, the three sisters of beans, corn and squash, I've just bought lots more seeds from an English seed company who have a fine ethos, but cannot get seeds to the States, sorry.
http://www.realseeds.co.uk/
So nice to read about I think.

Taking it easy having slowed down even more (except on the bike of course) have been saving cardboard to try out this method
http://www.permaculture-magazine.co.uk/articles/archive/article_15a...

Sorry your brain has been misbehaving Waldo. Had good news about my heart last week, getting used to the idea that I may have a lot more time ahead this stay than I had thought. Just the dis-synchronous septum (muscle in the middle) source of pain, can be managed fine.

My brother went to Vietnam on holiday with his French wife, a doctor. They lived in the United Arab Emirates. She did a lot with Medicin Sans Frontieres. He traded in machinery, fire engines during the first gulf war, having started on the rigs while studying philosophy at university in Scotland. Working on North Sea rigs funded his mountaineering in Scotland, the Alps, the Andes and the Himalayas, where he met his wife.

They usually went to Nepal whenever they could. It was the scuba diving off Nah Trang that attracted them to Vietnam. I thought it was a rotten idea, and said so.

[Mouse]

Thought this was good and clear, about No Dig preparation.

http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s867068.htm