20.08.2019

Links August 2019

There are a myriad of interesting, useful, necessary, and satisfying things which one could do in this much too short life and it seems good practice to regularly re-evaluate the most obvious options in order to focus one’s limited time and energy on activities which clearly have an impact, help to alleviate suffering, bring peace and happiness.

Is writing posts on a blog which is marked by US agencies as “fake news,” omitted in Google searches, and read by just 193 followers — who once accidentally stepped by — helpful?

Only if the opinions, analyses, notions, questions, and ideas presented here are convincing and applicable in the daily life of the readers. Only if they help readers to confirm intuitive assumptions (“gut feelings”) by a rational thought process.

A high bar, set even higher by the information overflow of our technicized life, the virtual reality of electronic media, an artificial urban environment (of plastic, steel, and concrete), and the specialization / alienation of the workplace.

A bar, set even higher by a relentless bombardment with advertising, good old propaganda (the public relations of Edward Bernays), indoctrination, reeducation, cheating, lying, and the strict ban (or dismissal as conspiracy theories) of opinions which contradict the officially approved narrative.

The last two paragraphs are based on assumptions and critical (skeptical) assessments which the reader must not necessarily share. I cannot go into details here, but I explained these assumptions and assessments in many earlier blogposts. I’m not alone with my suspicions and skepticisms, I’m in good company. In the company of Caitlin Johnstone, Tim Hayward, Stephen Gowans, Vanessa Beeley, John Chuckman, Eva Bartlett, just to randomly name a few of the free spirits, heretics, critics, skeptics, dissidents, standing on the shoulders of Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Howard Zinn, Arundhati Roy, and other giants, making their voices heard, sowing the seeds of doubt.


So I raise my tiny voice along the choir of enlightened angels which the powers to be desperately try to drown with a cacophony of lies and badly written nonsensical fairy tales. They tried and failed to blind us, mislead, cheat, deceive, dupe, fool us. Their mind control formulas didn’t work.

One may ask, why they (the powerful) should try to cheat and deceive us in a society based on respect, compassion, care, kindness, and brotherly (sisterly) love for one another?

Only a cynic can ask this question. And don’t get me started on the state of our Western consumer society, on flagrant and evident hypocrisy, falsehood, self-righteousness (smugness), egoism / narcissism, delusions of grandeur or exceptionalism (the shining city on a hill), and plain male aggression.

What I wrote just now includes the main assumptions in this blogs analyses ad judgements.

So, is this a blog about conspiracy theories?

Caitlin Johnstone writes: Indeed, I think it’s fair to say that everyone is a conspiracy theorist if they’re really honest with themselves. Not everyone believes that the official stories about 9/11 and the JFK assassination are riddled with plot holes or what have you, but I doubt that anyone who really sat down and sincerely grappled with the question “Do powerful people conspire?” would honestly deny it. Some are just more self-aware than others about the self-evident reality that powerful people conspire all the time, and it’s only a question of how and with whom and to what extent.

And Cornell University professor Dave Callum tweets: I am a ‘conspiracy theorist’. I believe men and women of wealth and power conspire. If you don’t think so, then you are what is called ‘an idiot’. If you believe stuff but fear the label, you are what is called ‘a coward’.



Back to the start: What ideas and questions may be applicable in the daily life of the readers?

Do we need all the stuff which is offered to us in the supermarkets and shopping malls? Is it necessary to neatly wrap and pack everything in plastic? How is our food grown, harvested, and processed? Can we be sure that it is not contaminated with microbes (E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria), pesticides, heavy metals, and POPs (persistent organic pollutants)?

Where do the 320 million tons of plastic go which are produced every year? Why are only 9 percent of plastic recycled? Why do we need bottled water — is tap water contaminated and not safe to drink?

Is the air that we breath healthy? If not, why don’t we move to a place with better air quality? Why don’t we reduce and, if possible, avoid activities which contribute to air pollution, like traveling by car or plane, buying industrial produced goods, buying things which are made in faraway places and shipped across the oceans?


If our sleep is disturbed by traffic noise why don’t we look for a more quiet place? (Unfortunately quiet, idyllic places, not threatened by forest fires, floods, pipeline spills, mining, fracking, and waste dumps, are hard to find.) 

Is there really no possibility to reduce our consumption of electricity and fossil fuels? Are convenience and habit preventing us to aim for the smallest possible carbon footprint?

Is our job fulfilling, take we part in producing absolutely necessary goods and services? Or are we involved in the production and the selling of crap, in fraudulent schemes, in the theft of public goods (water, land, mineral resources), in the enrichment of parasitic rentiers (the owners or shareholders of our company)?

If our job is not clearly necessary and beneficial, why don’t we quit it and found or join a co-op? Or become self-employed? There’s a need of gardeners, farmers, foresters, craftsmen, technicians, engineers, educators, counselors, organizers, caregivers, nurses, medics, doctors, just to name a few beneficial and fulfilling vocations, it should be possible to find something which fits our talents and helps the community.

Do we have friends, do we know people whom we trust completely? Do we know somebody whom we like, who’s company we enjoy, and who evidently also enjoys our company?

Do we love and are we loved in return?


Feline news:



Environmental news:

Deforestation in the Amazon has dramatically increased since former military officer Jair Bolsonaro became president. Brazil has lost more than 1,300 square miles of forest cover this year, and the pace of deforestation is increasing. There are estimates that the equivalent of three soccer fields are being deforested every minute in the Amazon. In June, deforestation increased by 88 percent over the same month last year. The drastic spike is due to President Bolsonaro’s rolling back of regulations and allowing illegal land invasions, logging, and burning.



https://consortiumnews.com/2019/07/19/as-costs-of-climate-crisis-grow-protest-movement-escalates/
https://dgrnewsservice.org/civilization/ecocide/runaway-population-growth-the-crisis-behind-the-climate-crisis/ Recommended reading.
https://www.businessinsider.de/chernobyl-children-international-vacation-radiation-2019-7?r=US&IR=T
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2019/08/371_273618.html Cheap and save nuclear energy.
https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/its-the-second-dirtiest-thing-in-the-world-and-youre-wearing-it/ Using second-hand clothes and washing them less frequently alleviates the environmental damage.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-cheapest-way-to-save-the-planet-grows-like-a-weed/ Is hemp the solution?
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jul/30/el-salvador-water-crisis-privatization-gangs-corruption
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/08/article/the-developing-worlds-water-crisis-has-arrived/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/31/climate-crisis-already-causing-deaths-and-childhood-stunting-report-reveals
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/30/toxic-america-families-seek-answers-childhood-cancers Childhood cancers rise. Cancers in any age group rise. For decades we were told, that the increase in cancer cases is a result of improved diagnoses, greater statistical accuracy, and higher life expectancy. Then they told us, that cancer will be defeated in the next ten years. All nonsense, they mislead us so they could continue producing and selling their toxic stuff.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/aug/02/turf-it-out-is-it-time-to-say-goodbye-to-artificial-grass This is insane, this is hard to believe, and yet, it is not hyperbole from the Onion or another satirical magazine, it is real news. Astonishing, how far we have come in our quest for the holy plastic grail, astonishing, how far we have come in building our clean and neat plastic world.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/455779-researchers-say-firefly-populations-are-dying-out-due-to-human It is the same here. Just a few years ago, one could see many of them while walking in the woods or sitting in the garden on a quiet evening. They were magical, they were tiny mysterious orange or green lanterns, inciting feelings of wonder and calm, or reflective and contemplative thoughts, if one was in the right mood.
But it’s all gone, now there are hardly any fireflies to find in the forest or garden.
https://www.businessinsider.de/pfas-bottled-water-whole-foods-cvs-2019-7?r=US&IR=T
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/05/environmental-activist-murders-double?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco
https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/08/17-countries-home-one-quarter-world-population-face-extremely-high-water-stress
https://www.rt.com/news/465348-brazil-pesticides-regulation-banned/
https://www.globalresearch.ca/pesticides-cocktail-toxicity/5686153 The steadily increasing chemical contamination of soil, water, food, and air may be an even deadlier threat to life on earth than global warming.
https://www.consumerreports.org/food/how-to-eat-less-plastic-microplastics-in-food-water/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/12/us-forests-pests-risk-climate-crisis-resource
https://www.organicconsumers.org/blog/devil-we-know-how-dupont-poisoned-world-teflon 
Economic news:

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan charged that Japan “is stealing our future” “by counterfeiting or copying of American products. Today US President Trump targets China, igniting a trade war.


On July 1, Trump said that China had not fulfilled a promise to buy large volumes of US farm products and vowed to impose a 10 percent fee on 300 billion US$ of Chinese imports starting September 1 (in the latest move Trump though delayed the 10 percent tariffs on cellphones, laptop computers, toys, and other consumer goods until December 15 to let the retailers stock up for the holidays).

China in turn did let its currency weaken past the key 7-yuan-per-dollar level for the first time since 2008. The US Treasury Department subsequently accused China of being a “currency manipulator” and threatened to use the IMF (International Monetary Fund) to end the “unfair competitive advantages” of China.

China also will suspend the purchase of US agricultural goods in response to increased tariffs. “It has been agreed that the State Council’s Customs Tariff Commission does not rule out import levies on newly acquired US agricultural products after August 3, and related Chinese companies have suspended the purchase of U.S.agricultural products,” the Chinese Commerce Ministry stated.

The trade war fueled by President Trump has already had adverse effects on US agriculture. China purchased about 14.3 million tons of last season’s soybean crop, the smallest purchase in the least in 11 years. In 2017 China bought 32.9 million tons of soybeans.

US foreign service agent Julie Eadeh, the political unit chief of the US Consulate General, met (and maybe conspired) with Hong Kong protest leaders. When China released details of Eadeh, US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus spoke of “a thuggish regime.”

The US administration has appointed Elnigar Iltebir, a Harvard Kennedy School-educated academic and daughter of a prominent Uighur intellectual and journalist, as director for China at the National Security Council in a symbolic move that certainly will negatively impact relations between the two countries.


Forbes currently lists 607 billionaires in the United States, 99 in Russia, and 71 in Hong Kong.

According to real estate agency Savills New York has 85 billionaires, Hong Kong 79, Moscow 71, Beijing 61, and London 55. “It is no coincidence that many of the cities with the largest number of billionaires are also among the most expensive in the world for ultra-prime residential property,” a Savills report states:
https://www.savills.co.uk/blog/article/283491/residential-property/global-billionaires–a-world-city-love-affair.aspx
http://evonomics.com/optimizing-human-well-being-rushkoff/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/29/the-coming-savings-writedowns/Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid. This fundamental truth will eventually cause severe economic instability. So what to do about it? “Quantitative Easing and bailouts of the One Percent can only be a temporary solution.” Michael Hudson writes. He advocates debt cancelation instead, but debt cancelation is also only a band-aid measure, because the parasitic rentier class will continue to suck dry individuals and companies alike via banks, insurers, stock traders, equity firms, and real estate brokerages.
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/07/article/trumps-next-trade-war-target-vietnam/ 2 million Vietnamese died in the war against the US occupation forces, and yet Vietnam tries to be an obedient sweatshop country, producing cheap consumer goods for the US market — while legendary President Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap are turning in their graves.
https://monthlyreview.org/2019/07/01/imperialism-in-the-anthropocene/Long read, but worth it.
https://wolfstreet.com/2019/08/05/what-plunging-global-chip-sales-just-said-about-autos-it/ Just a personal note: The newest Apple Mac Mini is quite good, though the 2009 Mac Mini is still my all time favorite. The newest OS X Mojave is also the best since OS X Snow Leopard, while everything in between was terrible. Just when I mulled abandoning Apple, they put out a decent machine with stable and intuitive software — they clearly understand, that a loyal customer base in the PC market will be necessary to keep Apple afloat when the smartphone craze finally ends.

Media and technology news:

https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2019/07/17/londons-media-freedom-conference-smacks-of-irony-critics-barred-no-mention-of-jailed-assange/
https://www.globalresearch.ca/tulsi-gabbard-vs-google-goliath/5685139
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/14/neurotoxic-organophosphate-chemicals-in-your-mobile-tablet-laptop-sofa-and-even-bed/ Testimony of a suffering laptop user.
https://gowans.blog/2019/07/26/once-again-chomsky-and-achcar-provide-a-service-to-the-us-global-dictatorship/
https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/5gs-waveform-is-a-battery-vampire High power consumption, another downside of 5G. People will have to constantly recharge their smartphones and ten times more base stations will need three times more power each. Well, as long as electricity is cheap and abundant and power generation has no environmental impact….


Imperial news:

US-citizens own 40 percent of all guns in the world, more than all civilians combined in 25 other countries.
Countries with the highest gun ownership rate, per a survey by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva:
1United States: 120.5 per 100 people
2 Yemen: 52.8 per 100 people
3 Montenegro: 39.1 per 100 people
4 Serbia: 39.1 per 100 people
5 Canada: 34.7 per 100 people
6 Uruguay: 34.7 per 100 people
7 Cyprus: 34.0 per 100 people
8 Finland: 32.4 per 100 people
9 Lebanon: 31.9 per 100 people
10 Iceland: 31.7 per 100 people


Bloomberg: “The top 10 percent of US-citizens hold almost about 70 percent of the national wealth, the top 1 percent hold 31percent. The bottom 50 percent hold 1.3 percent.”
https://ahtribune.com/us/3382-jeffrey-epstein-rip.html The most thrilling and captivating crime story from the land of the free (free of moral constraints) and the home of the brave (the high risk, high reward gamblers of Wall Street). Sex, organized crime, spies, philanthropic tycoons, secret societies and cults — very entertaining.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/08/10/jeffrey-epstein-dies-of-suicide/
https://www.mintpressnews.com/shocking-origins-jeffrey-epstein-blackmail-roy-cohn/260621/
https://www.mintpressnews.com/mega-group-maxwells-mossad-spy-story-jeffrey-epstein-scandal/261172/ Only in US-America.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49312746 Establishment media damage control.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/08/13/pers-a13.html Right to the point and the definitive comment to the Epstein affair. Everybody who still trusts mainstream mass media reporting should read this and overthink it thoroughly.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/08/17/epst-a17.html
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/465336-rats-baltimore-trump-democrats/
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/07/18/puer-j18.html Corruption and racism in Puerto Rico.
https://truthout.org/articles/rossellos-gone-but-puerto-ricos-fight-against-police-repression-continues/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49026273 Homeless in Florida get “musical” treatment.


https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/02/trump-and-black-misleadership-class-collaborators-in-the-defense-of-white-power/
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/07/31/pers-j31.html? It maybe is not only racism, the media onslaught, advertising, constant noise, and distraction from technological gadgets makes people mad. Western consumers are constantly pushed, prompted, stimulated, aroused, they are not allowed to slow down and relax. They are not even allowed to get enough sleep.


https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/07/31/conventional-politicians-are-infinitely-weirder-than-marianne-williamson/ Calling out the madness.
https://fair.org/home/the-dangerous-austerity-politics-of-the-washington-post/ The environmental aspect of austerity politics is never mentioned. Austerity means in essence less industrial output and lower GPD. It means less pollution, less production of toxic substances, less resource extraction (resulting in less habitat loss), less conspicuous consumption, less travel, less garbage going to overflowing landfills or into the oceans.
Austerity of course has to be accompanied by budgetary shifts like: no (or at least significantly less) military spending, no tax exemptions for the rich and for big corporations, progressive taxation, a thrifty, efficient, no-frills administration, more money for education, social welfare, culture, scientific research, communal services (water, sewage, electricity, public transport) and basic infrastructure.
There have to be bold and inventive programs and initiatives to support local economies, co-ops, small-scale farming and gardening, community owned workshops for mending, recycling, repurposing devices and machinery.
Such ideas never seem to cross the minds of economists, who insist that we need to jumpstart the economy and increase spending on all levels so that everybody gets work, no matter how useless or destructive it may be, and can use the monthly paycheck to buy new fancy things suggested by advertising and social media.
These economists are trapped, living in their artificial world of statistics, equations, charts, and graphs. No useful advice can be ever expected from them, it is best to just ignore them.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/families-drowning-in-debt-to-stay-in-the-middle-class.html What if couples just adopt a more frugal lifestyle?
https://www.mnn.com/money/personal-finance/blogs/more-boomers-are-going-bankrupt?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-balloons-surveillance-midwest
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/08/07/mura-a07.html
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/15/our-lords-their-flies/ Why do they hate us? Why do they fear us? Why do they call us “the Great Satan”? Why do they dance in the streets when US soldiers have been killed?

Imperial conquest news:

The UK is set to join the US “international maritime security mission” in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. It has already deployed a destroyer, the HMS Duncan, and a frigate, the HMS Montrose, to the Persian Gulf to escort UK-flagged vessels (about 50 until now) through the Strait.

The Trump administration’s provocative move, in the guise of “protecting shipping lanes” through the crowded 21-mile-wide sea lane through which one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies passes, establishes a patrol of warships aimed at blockading Iran.

The secret locations of US nuclear weapons in Europe were accidentally included in a report from NATO. The subsequently deleted document confirmed a long-held open secret: US nuclear weapons are being stored in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.
https://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176596/tomgram%3A_william_astore%2C_military_strength_is_our_national_religion
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/07/18/americas-indefensible-defense-budget/
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/08/01/propagandists-are-freaking-out-over-gabbards-destruction-of-harris/
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/08/03/wapo-publishes-gabbard-smear-piece-filled-with-blatant-lies/ Detailed and comprehensive. Follow the links to get hard facts about US destabilization efforts in Syria.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-us-empire-has-been-trying-to-regime-change-syria-since-long-before-2011-40d4e6648d54
https://www.rt.com/usa/464336-marshall-islands-radiation-testing-study/
https://fair.org/home/western-media-losing-enthusiasm-for-failing-coup-in-venezuela/. The media may losing enthusiasm but regime change is not off, because: “The empire never retreats or compromises.”
https://gowans.blog/2019/07/27/the-untold-truth-about-us-foreign-policy/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/31/venezuela-disturbing-echoes-of-history/ A useful compilation.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/driving-venezuela-towards-famine/
https://www.globalresearch.ca/omission-atrocities-committed-venezuelan-opposition-discredits-un-human-rights-report/5685622
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bolton-Ross-Lima-Group-Seek-to-Put-Venezuela-in-Quarantine-20190803-0001.html
Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez has denounced a ship seizure by the USA in the Panama Canal. The ship is reportedly packed with 25 thousands tons of Soya and was entering the canal, when its progress was halted in an event which Venezuelan officials condemned as a “serious aggression” that impedes the country’s “right to food”.
Rodriguez tweeted: “Venezuela denounces before the world that a boat that holds 25 thousand tons of Soya, for food production in our country, has been seized in the Panama Canal, due to the criminal blockade imposed by Donald Trump.”
Venezuelan media subsequently explained that the undisclosed owner of the vessel was informed by the insurance company that it must cease moving the cargo through the canal.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/31/with-criticism-crushed-in-the-west-israel-can-enjoy-its-impunity/ 


Armageddon news:

The Ebola outbreak in Congo has been declared a Global Health Emergency by the World Health Organization. More than 2,500 people have been infected and 1,700 have died until now.

https://time.com/5629548/almost-30000-species-face-extinction-new-report/
https://thewire.in/the-sciences/heat-wave-climate-crisis-copd-ckd-dehydration
Air conditioning for all, because we need it to survive the increasing heat. Air conditioning unfortunately consumes plenty of electricity and increased power consumption will in turn accelerate climate change. Which means we then need even more air conditioning. We are screwed anyway, so let’s talk about something more pleasant.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/brazils-massive-crime-against-humanity-bolsonaro-has-decided-to-destroy-the-amazon/5685023
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/28/amazon-gold-miners-invade-indigenous-village-brazil-leader-killed

Uncategorized news:

https://aeon.co/essays/beyond-the-animal-brain-plants-have-cognitive-capacities-too?utm
https://www.localfutures.org/variety-survival-and-the-revenge-of-the-luddites/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/09/atomic-bombs-are-not-lifesavers/
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/responding-love-civilization-crisis/ No, this is not idle talk and it contains interesting viewpoints. The question remains, how this discussion applies to the real world. Preparing for the collapse and trying to avoid or mitigate it at the same time is tough if not impossible. One example: Should you arm yourself and join a local militia to defend the village or town against roaming gangs and rogue security forces who may be on the loose after the crash or should you be an advocate and an example for a peaceful society without weapons and violence?

News from cat land:

The cats are fine, enjoying summer. No drought here, it rained regularly. A torrential rain (a rain bomb) flooded the garage, but caused no major losses, only lot of work.

Rita is overjoyed. This is paradise, this is more than what she ever would have imagined or expected in the dreary days at the animal shelter. She now fortunately has shifted her focus from blindworms to mice (not sure, that there are any blindworms left), I only have to make clear to her that she shouldn’t bring the living mice into the house and let them loose there.

Rita once caught and killed a baby grass snake. At first glance, I mistook it for another blind worm, but at closer inspection it was clearly a grass snake. This was bad, because grass snakes are endangered like all other reptiles and amphibians (and all other wildlife in general). It was good, because grass snakes eat (the even more endangered) frogs and toads, which I’m glad to host in a few small garden ponds.

Gandhi Jr. is still Rita’s mentor. She mimics him and emulates him in every aspect as good as she can. Rita will remain a small cat, but at the moment that doesn’t seem to bother her and she appears to be confident and content.

Lucia, the other small cat in our family, doesn’t take it that easy. Every day I have to lift up her spirits and show her that she is my favorite cat companion. And she indeed has become my favorite cat, my little cat angel, the little but bright light guiding my dreams.

It’s good to have such a thrustful, truthful, unassuming, grateful friend. 

Thank you, Lucia! And thank you to the whole pack! 


Posted by Keine Kommentare:

15.07.2019

Links July 2019

A recent blog post on the Deep Green Resistance blog started with the words:

 Nothing in human existence has had a more profoundly negative impact on our quality of life than civilization. As we have already seen, it introduced the unnecessary evil of hierarchy; it introduced the difficult, dangerous, and unhealthy agricultural lifestyle; it introduced endemic levels of stress, a diet and lifestyle maladapted and deleterious to our health, war, and ecological disaster, but it has given us nothing to counterbalance those effects.

 The text continued to compare the supposedly carefree life of our early ancestors, who were hunting and foraging, with our dismal present existence. 

 https://dgrnewsservice.org/civilization/civilization-reduces-quality-of-life/

It is an interesting point of view and it undeniably has some merits, but the main assumption of the post could not be left unchallenged and I wrote the following comment:

 Making a living by hunting and foraging is only possible in a healthy and stable ecological system, where nature maintains itself and human activity is too small to upset the ecological balance. When human populations increase, their combined activities will also increase and soon reach a level where nature cannot absorb the impact anymore. Humans then will either destroy the ecosystem (overgrazing, deforestation, overfishing, overhunting) or migrate to areas which are still pristine and able to feed them.

 Ecosystem collapse, famine, and migration waves happened countless times in human history. Even if they appeared to be the consequence of agriculture, civilization, technology, and war, the underlying basic cause was always overpopulation.

 Agriculture, complex civilization, urbanization, and advanced technology emerged because of population growth and there’s no turning back. Hunting and foraging would not feed todays 7 billion people and there are also only small isolated patches of pristine nature left.

 Anyway, we now have reached a point where global ecosystems are collapsing and their human designed artificial replacements are completely inadequate. Technological solutions (nuclear power, genetic modification, geo-engineering) make matters only worse. The only remedy one could think of is a significant reduction of human population and the universal adaption of an extremely modest lifestyle.

 Less humans, and the remaining ones living modestly. It will happen in one way or the other — either intelligently managed by ourselves or forced upon us by resource scarcity, natural disasters, pandemics, mass poisoning by human introduced environmental toxins, and wars (about water, land, minerals, fossil fuels).

 We don’t have the technological means to maintain current population levels and preserve nature at the same time, but we certainly have the means to wipe out life on this planet. This is also a possibility and unfortunately a highly probable one.

As I accidentally found out a few days ago, the comment elicited quite a few responses, some supportive and others dismissive. Interestingly all responses focused on the issue of overpopulation, while the issue of our wasteful and destructive lifestyle was universally ignored.

 The idea, that we personally maybe have to change our habits and scale down our consumption of natural resources is seemingly even for readers of the Deep Green Resistance blog such an anathema that mentioning and discussing it is impossible.

 Feline news:

 https://www.boredpanda.com/funny-cat-veterinary-clinic-signs/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/survey-suggests-cat-breed-behaviors-are-largely-inherited-180972438/
https://gizmodo.com/a-common-household-chemical-may-cause-thyroid-problems-1836252202
https://www.boredpanda.com/kitten-four-years-one-eye-found-home/
http://hatchingcatnyc.com/2019/07/12/cigar-shop-cat-bushwick-brooklyn/
https://gizmodo.com/scientists-talked-to-cats-to-figure-out-if-they-know-th-1833785466

Environmental news:

 BloombergNEF found that global investments in solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources was 117.6 billion US$ during the first half of 2019, a 14 percent decline from the same period last year and the lowest six-month figure since 2013.

 China saw a 39 percent drop in investments, as the nation reduced its solar subsidies to get costs under control. Spending declined 6 percent in the US and 4 percent in Europe, partly because of policies that are being phased out but also because of weak demand for additional energy generation in saturated markets. Private investments into clean energy companies declined 2 percent down to 4.7 billion US$.

 https://www.globalresearch.ca/behind-scenes-elections-koch-oil-big-lies-ecocide-writ-large-canada/5680807
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/india-water-shortage-drought-chennai-1.5181641
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/this-city-in-india-is-running-out-of-water/
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/07/article/india-staring-at-a-water-apocalypse/
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/25/watr-j25.html
https://news.mongabay.com/2019/06/shift-to-renewable-energy-could-have-biodiversity-cost-researchers-caution/
https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/fake-food-fake-meat-big-foods-desperate-attempt-to-further-industrialisation-food/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/19/plastic-wrapped-in-plastic-the-wasteful-reality-of-americas-grocery-stores
https://investigatemidwest.org/2019/06/19/on-your-dinner-plate-and-in-your-body-the-most-dangerous-pesticide-youve-never-heard-of/
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-refinery-acid-20190622-story.html About hydrofluoric acid, used in US refineries.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/26/the-monkeys-face/
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/ancient-peruvian-engineering-could-help-solve-modern-water-shortages/
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26062019/midwest-flooding-algae-blooms-dead-zone-climate-change-fertilizer-livestock-gulf-mexico-lake-erie
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/07/article/japan-resumes-commercial-whale-hunts/ Reprehensible. Japan will lose many sympathies.
https://www.wastedive.com/news/scrap-collector-japans-environmental-record-scrutinized-ahead-of-g20-mari/557846/
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/07/plastic-watch-g20-issues-pathetic-declaration.html
https://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/forest-garden-500-edible-plants-takes-few-hours-work-month.html Forest gardens are a great idea and I like this idea especially because that is what I’m doing. It is also the principle of tropical rainforests, adapted to a more moderate climate. But: “only lightly managed?” And “a few hours of work a month?”
What about irrigation? Or building up a humus layer on a ground of clay and rubble? what about invasive weeds, about fungal, viral, and bacterial diseases? What about insect pests (aphids, wood lice, mites), caterpillars, slugs, and snails?
What about pruning, clearing pathways so that all parts of the garden can be accessed? What about cleaning up the leaves in fall? If the leaves are not removed, the ground cover vegetation (moss and strawberries in my case) will die.This is a well intended but unrealistic and misleading article. All the people who are indeed enticed by this text to start a forest garden project will encounter a myriad of problems and they may give up dispirited and disillusioned. If they are made aware of possible problems and setbacks they will prepare themselves thoroughly, gather information, and brace themselves for the coming years of backbreaking work.

https://modernfarmer.com/2019/06/the-modern-farmer-guide-to-small-space-gardening/ A more down-to-earth article with some useful advice.
https://heated.medium.com/iowa-crops-look-like-food-but-no-ones-eating-9360661c3664
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/07/opinion/burned-workers-the-newest-wave-of-climate-casualties/
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/07/article/chinas-busy-roads-getting-busier/
https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic-aftermath-of-rare-earth-mining The environmental costs of China’s rise.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/adding-1-billion-hectares-forest-could-help-check-global-warming Plant trees, please!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/10/japans-famous-nara-deer-dying-from-eating-plastic-bags There are so many idiots around. Steep fines would be the only way to reign them in, but that of course requires constant intrusive surveillance. 

 Economic news:

 http://www.cadtm.org/Theoretical-lies-of-the-World-Bank,2190
https://www.globalresearch.ca/mechanism-economic-sanctions-changing-perceptions-euphemisms/5681547
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/28/ford-j28.html If companies are producing less cars, there will be less traffic pollution. New cars, on the other hand, though with better mileage and reduced emissions, will probably be larger and heavier, neutralizing thereby any improvements from new technologies. If an old car is sparsely used, its carbon footprint is probably still less than that of a brand new vehicle, where the heavy environmental burden of its production has to be added to the carbon footprint of fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions.
And the fired workers? Don’t they really have no other option than producing gas guzzling cars? Are assembly line jobs even desirable? What about learning new skills (for example mending appliances and gadgets, repurposing, recycling, or upcycling discarded things, developing tools and machines which work without fossil fuels, organizing co-ops and alternative distribution networks)?
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/07/02/phil-j02.html Again, are jobs in polluting or otherwise damaging industries (weapons production) really worth defending? Air quality in Philadelphia will improve significantly, if the refinery shuts down. Some workers will take the chance to find more meaningful and beneficial occupations, while others will sell their work and health for peanuts to another fossil fuel corporation. Maybe they are proud of their profession, maybe they love their cars and regard oil refining as absolutely necessary to keep up Western ways of life.
http://evonomics.com/value-of-everything-mariana-mazzucato/
http://johnhelmer.net/the-kolomoisky-pyramid-started-with-hillary-clinton-and-victoria-nuland-of-the-state-department-plus-christine-lagarde-of-the-imf/
https://mk0eeborgicuypctuf7e.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Decoupling-Debunked-FULL-for-ONLINE.pdf
https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-pay-it-all-option-candidates-missed/5683275 Creating money out of thin air (fiat money) to achieve unlimited economic growth on a limited planet, what an ingenious idea!
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/07/deutsche-bank-highlights-society-risk/
http://evonomics.com/steve-keen-nordhaus-climate-change-economics/

Media and technology news:

 “No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine.” (The late, great William Blum)

One really has to wonder: What are they so desperately trying to hide?

 Do White House officials maybe have no clue about the consequences of their policies, making crucial decisions just by rolling the dice? Are they occupied with petty intrigues with no time left for serious considerations and reflections?

 Are there connections to organized crime? Exist communication channels and business ties (revenue sharing) to street gangs (MS-13, 18th Street Gang), to Mexican drug cartels, European and Asian Mafia and Mob organizations, and the global financial Mafia (also known as Wall Street)? Are there extortion / protection rackets set up with the State Department as facilitators and the Pentagon as enforcers?

 Or does the president have to wear diapers, because he otherwise, troubled by an enlarged prostate like many other men in his age, would wet his pants all the time? Do female White House interns have to uplift the president’s spirits with regular blow jobs? (don’t dismiss this as over the top, it has happened before).

 Are there satanical rituals where immigrant children, fresh from detention centers at the Mexican border, are first gang raped and then, while still alive, cut into pieces to be barbecued and served as exquisite delicacy?

 If none of this applies, why are the White House gates bolted and locked, why is there a thick dark shroud of secrecy, why are the inner workings of the administration completely off limits, and why are whistleblowers and leakers being snuffed out, persecuted, and hunted down?

How naive, how gullible, the establishment proponents will argue. How can we disclose our plans to the Maduro’s, Assad’s, and Putin’s of the world, who mercilessly butcher their own people and threaten global peace and stability?

 Transparency, openness, and honesty would be utterly detrimental. In our fight against the dark forces of evil we have to mislead, deceive, dupe, fool, cheat, and trick them. We have to soothe and assuage them with a friendly face, our iron fist hidden behind our back.

 Don’t forget, we are the chosen people who will bring democracy, stability, and prosperity to the nations of the world, but in order to do that we have to defeat the evil regimes and install leaders which share our values. This is no easy task even for the worlds undisputed superpower and it necessitates the use of subterfuge and propaganda.

 It’s lying of course, but it’s lying for a good cause — for our cause.

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/19/the-omnipresent-surveillance-state/
http://johnhelmer.net/reuters-is-now-a-unit-of-us-info-war-command-reporters-and-investors-revolt/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/bret-stephens-warmonger/
https://thenextweb.com/podium/2019/06/17/the-unforeseen-trouble-ai-is-now-causing/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-csyber-yandex-exclusive-idUSKCN1TS2SX  
https://theholisticworks.com/2019/06/25/glastonbury-festival-goers-are-walking-into-an-emf-minefield/ 5G guinea pigs.
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/06/24/new-york-times-media-us-government-approval/ New York Times self censorship.
https://lobelog.com/when-npr-is-more-dangerous-than-fox-news/
https://truthout.org/articles/the-mainstream-media-wont-name-us-military-aggression/  We all know, that New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Guardian, Telegraph, and every other newspaper are propaganda outlets of the reigning plutocrats. And we know that for a long time. How come, that Tom Engelhard and other dissident journalists still waste their (and our) time referring to these papers and discussing their content?
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20190625-the-jobs-where-liars-excel“Everyone lies at work, but in some professions it’s expected and rewarded,” are we told by the BBC.
And: Lying is natural, to some extent. “Nature is awash with deceit,” philosopher David Livingstone Smith writes early in his book Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind.
Now we know about the BBC’s ethics standards, though their positive attitude towards lying was obvious before. If BBC journalists lie, it is just the natural way, it’s just the way human society functions.
The article headline “The jobs where liars excel,” implies already the positive attitude, and — though never explicitly mentioned— journalism is certainly one of these jobs.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/07/how-to-spot-a-twitter-troll/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/12/the-journalists-do-the-shouting/
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/07/09/government-that-tortures-journalists-bans-rt-from-media-conference/

Imperial news:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/23/chicago-latest-news-life-expectancy-rich-poor-inequality
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-united-states-and-human-rights-a-long-and-violent-history/5682620
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/07/02/50-million-adults-are-uninsured-every-single-year/
https://truthout.org/articles/10-ways-andrew-wheeler-has-decimated-epa-protections-in-just-one-year/

Imperial conquest news:

 Caitlin Johnstone: There’s an ever-growing, globe-spanning, oligarch-run power alliance with the United States at its center, an alliance which functions as a single empire and works relentlessly to bully other nations into either joining it or collapsing. Iran is by far the strongest nation in the region that has refused to allow itself to be absorbed into the blob, so its government has found itself in the imperial crosshairs being commanded to either submit or be toppled.

 https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/07/opinion/americas-economic-blockades-and-international-law/
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/21/euro-j21.html More war preparations.
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/06/opinion/the-hybrid-war-against-iran/
http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/us-provoking-iran-again-66-years/
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/sanctions-tanker-iran-syria-uk-jeremy-hunt-us-gibraltar-a8990316.html
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/19/annexation-israel-already-controls-more-than-half-of-the-west-bank/
https://www.mintpressnews.com/international-watchdog-finds-israel-has-nearly-100-nuclear-weapons/259274/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/24/sorting-out-reality-from-fiction-about-venezuela/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/19/what-about-venezuelas-hacked-power-grid/
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/06/17/from-coup-leaders-to-con-artistry-juan-guaidos-gang-exposed-for-massive-humanitarian-aid-fraud/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/19/guaidos-star-fades-as-his-envoys-to-colombia-allegedly-commit-fraud-with-humanitarian-funds-for-venezuela/
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/weaponizing-human-rights-un-high-commissioner-bachelets-venezuela-report-follows-us-regime-change-script/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/08/faulty-by-design-the-un-report-on-human-rights-in-venezuela/

https://truthout.org/articles/washington-meddling-in-haiti-neglected-by-u-s-press/ Haiti has no oil, so why should anybody be interested in what’s going on there? And if something goes terribly wrong (like the emergence of another Aristide-like president), the USA will just again send in some UN-mandated Brazilian troops.
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/06/iraq-health-basra-cancer.html
https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2019/07/05/voices-from-syrias-rukban-refugee-camp-belie-corporate-media-reporting/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/25/bill-clinton-in-kosovo/
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/07/06/us-foreign-policy-is-a-war-on-disobedience/
https://theconversation.com/us-military-is-a-bigger-polluter-than-as-many-as-140-countries-shrinking-this-war-machine-is-a-must-119269
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/11/give-peace-a-chance-dont-believe-the-war-profiteers/
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176583/ 

Armageddon news:

 A few days ago I woke up after dreaming about an unexploded nuclear warhead near a town with several million people. The function of atomic bombs is not routinely tested for obvious reasons and nobody really knows if they will actually detonate in case of a nuclear war.

Calm down, there will be no nuclear war, no launch of intercontinental missiles, no mushroom clouds, no radioactive contamination, and no nuclear winter, told me the officially authorized expert in my head. There is no need to worry, the atomic bombs are only for deterrence.

 And the intercontinental missiles, the ballistic missile submarines, the bomber jets are also only for deterrence? Why have they built and are still building, even at an accelerated pace, nuclear bomb shelters? Why spend the major powers billions of dollars to upgrade their atomic weapons?

 If only the atomic bombs were dummies or decoys, if only the nuclear threat would be just pretension! But it is called Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), not mutual pretended destruction.

 Conventional ammunition regularly fails, but sometimes it is also triggered unintentionally, accidentally, and untimely. Ammunition depots are blowing up and devastate the surrounding area, this is a regular occurrence in war zones.

 Could an atomic warhead be ignite similarly? How would the area around the missile silo look? What about a nuclear bomb detonating deep under sea?

 The officially authorized expert in my head tells me: The trigger mechanism is quite complicated, so an accidental explosion is nearly impossible. In a fission bomb a uranium bullet is shot at the main uranium load, and as the two parts meet the critical mass for a chain reaction is reached and the bomb explodes. A fusion bomb is set off by a fission device, so it is even one additional step.

 But could the uranium bullet maybe triggered accidentally? Could there be a short circuit or a failing electronic switch, could there be corrosive or oxidative wear of critical parts? Materials deteriorate over time, their elasticity and conductivity changes. What if the uranium bullet gets stuck just one millimeter before reaching the main mass, and even the softest knock against the bomb will move it this last millimeter?

 In my dream the town with several million people is spared annihilation, but the threat remains. Should the millions of inhabitants evacuate or simply abandon the town? Where could they go in this crowded world? How could the bomb be defused?

In 2011 the Russian nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine K-84 (Ekaterinburg) caught fire in dry dock. It was likely loaded with 16 R-29RM nuclear missiles carrying 64 nuclear warheads. The fire burned for 20 hours and the submarine finally had to be submerged to put out the flames.

 In 2009 the French submarine Triomphant and the British submarine HMS Vanguard, both with nuclear warheads, collided. Both had nuclear missiles on board.

 In 1980, an accident in a missile silo in Arkansas sent a thermonuclear warhead hurtling a hundred feet into the air.

 https://dgrnewsservice.org/civilization/ecocide/climate-change/climate-change-why-is-it-so-often-sooner-than-predicted/
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/In-Climate-Apartheid-Worlds-Poor-Will-Be-Left-to-Suffer-UN-Report-20190625-0030.html
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/one-hundred-years-after-world-war-i-are-we-heading-back-abyss/
https://befreedom.co/2019/07/05/doubling-down-the-military-big-bankers-and-big-oil-are-not-in-climate-denial-they-are-in-control-and-plan-to-keep-it-that-way/
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/07/article/boomerangs-to-a-bombs-australia-debates-acquiring-nukes/ Making the world safer with more nukes.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/07/completely-terrifying-study-warns-carbon-saturated-oceans-headed-toward-tipping-point-that-could-unleash-mass-extinction-event.html

Uncategorized news:

 https://news.sky.com/story/seals-can-copy-human-speech-and-sing-star-wars-theme-tune-new-study-says-11745715
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-ruler-of-dubai-condemns-his-runaway-wife-princess-haya-on-instagramin-a-poem Dependable Western allies. Shared values?
https://aeon.co/essays/if-we-talk-about-hurting-our-planet-who-exactly-is-the-we Ecological colonialism and exploitation.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/07/03/remember-the-goal-is-always-to-make-dissident-ideas-mainstream/ Highly recommended reading.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/07/08/fire-j08.html
https://truthout.org/articles/american-dark-money-is-fueling-the-rise-of-europes-far-right/ Promoting Western values.

 News from cat land:

 It is raining since three days, giving me ample time to write this blog post. June was hot but the hyped heat wave was rather underwhelming. I intended to clean up and reorganize my little workshop in the basement during the hottest days, because the cellar rooms are aways a few degrees cooler than the rest of the house. Yet, as temperatures never got hot enough to justify an all day retreat into the basement, clean up and reorganization will have to wait. 

 There’s still the chance of a really hard hitting heatwave in August.

 At the moment I live from strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, jostaberries, and currants. The raspberries and strawberries are especially delicious, but I nevertheless will be glad when the main harvest is over, because I desperately long for some different food. My only lonely cherry tree, still suffering from a fungal infection, delivered for the first time fruits. Some tomatoes are ripening in one of the green houses, I planted just a few because I get sufficient amounts of tomatoes, together with salads and carrots, from a nearby organic gardener. It will though take another week before the first tomatoes are ripe.

The cats are healthy and happy, they regularly bring me little gifts (mice and voles). Fortunately there were no dead frogs, toads, and blindworms for quite some times, though these species surely still exist here. I discover tiny toads and frogs nearly every day. Two days ago I saw a frog, not bigger than two centimeters, busily hopping around. With only two centimeters, it should have still been a tadpole, but this one was obviously an “early bloomer.”

 Environmental disaster is deferred still (at least in my corner of the world), but a lot of people in the neighborhood and some acquaintances got severely sick and are in hospital care. Could a sedentary lifestyle, ubiquitous environmental toxins, or the industrial food from supermarkets be possible causes?

 I still buy too many things and keep too much stuff. Old habits die hard, as Mike Jagger used to sing in 2004, 15 years ago. It takes a long time to shed old habits, maybe even more than 15 years, maybe even more time than we have left. But this is another story for another post.

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