The United Nations released part of their World Economic Situation and Prospects 2009 today. The chapter Global Outlook is available here (pdf) and the slide show summarising the Outlook is available here (pdf). I strongly recommend reading the slide show which should take about 5 minutes, and then continue to the chapter if you like. …
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Category:Risk and Terror
Save the banks, but let the biosphere die.
The planet is now so vandalised that only total energy renewal can save us is a passionate article highlighting the urgency of changing our consumption patterns by George Monbiot in The Guardian. The article outlines the accelerating climate change that has now reached beyond the modest changes discussed a decade ago. Today the volatility in …
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Don’t believe you can trust these people …
Its a small thing. Not a big deal you might say. The Pentagon altered a photo of the newly appointed 4 star general for media release. General Dunwoody is the first female to reach that top rank. Not only was the photo’s background edited, but the general’s features were tidied up. It was a well …
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End of Iraq War – New York Times published by Yes Men
The Yes Men do it again. Over a million copies of a fake NYT dated 4 July 2009 were handed to commuters in New York and Los Angeles with the headline Iraq War Ends. Brilliant. You can see the fake New York Times website, which has articles like Ex-Secretary Apologizes for W.M.D. Scare and USA …
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World in crisis …
We may be feeling the financial crisis, but the destruction of our planet is of greater concern. Thanks to Kevin Kallaugher of The Economist for showing us the reality:
World Food Day 2008
World Food Day 2008 provides an occasion to once again highlight the plight of 923 million undernourished people in the world. Most of them live in rural areas where their main source of income is the agricultural sector. Global warming and the biofuel boom are now threatening to push the number of hungry even higher …
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Financial meltdown dwarfed by economic destruction of nature.
While the collapse of credit markets around the world is bearing on our minds, and curtailing our consumption today, the destruction of the earth’s biosphere by humanity’s footprint is so massive and immediate that its effects will compound the economic dislocation now and be felt directly within a year. The global economy is losing more …
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Living in Hebron: A work of fiction. But only just.
A new film shows the reality of life for people in the middle east. A simple story of students breaking curfew to go to a school reunion it brings to life the tension and impossibility of humanity in the middle east. It will not be released till April, but this review gives a sense of …
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Moral hazard, bailing out the rich and more trouble to come.
It is exasperating to hear that US regulators and policy makers have decided to bail out the principals responsible for the gross uncertainty and risk that prevails in financial markets. Hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent on buying bad debts in order to reliquify financial markets. It doesn’t sound like a smart investment …
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South Ossetia, Georgia, Russia, US – a dirty mess
It is not esay to decipher what is going on in the “breakaway state of South Ossetia”. You can draw your own conclusions by reading the various news reports and summaries in this section of the BBC news website. It seems that the solution is for everyone to pull their fingers out of the pie …
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