Friday 30 May 2014

Headlines


## Airline Death Spiral ##

## Fault lines/flashpoints/powder kegs/military/war drums ##
Leaders of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan on Thursday signed an agreement to create the Eurasian Economic Union, an alliance intended to further boost economic and trade ties between the ex-Soviet neighbors.
AFRICOM’s primary project is to transform the militaries of the continent into dependencies and pawns of U.S. foreign policy. It’s second most import objective is the hide Washington’s actual intentions behind a “humanitarian” mask – such as participating in the search for Nigerian schoolgirls from Boko Haram. Some African journalists are eager to be part of the ruse.

## Global unrest/mob rule/angry people/torches and pitchforks ##
In a spectacle designed to show their resolve against terrorism, Chinese authorities held a public sentencing in a football stadium in the northwestern Xinjiang region of 55 people convicted of violent crimes.

## Energy/resources ##
In what could prove to be an historic turning point for Iraq, the government of Kurdistan – the semi-autonomous region in the country’s north – has delivered its first shipment of oil to the international market, in defiance of the central government in Baghdad.
In its reports Can railroads meet summer US coal demand? the firm says on top of the issue of having stockpiles almost depleted during the past harsh winter in North America, coal companies are now dealing with a rail network unable to increase the rate of deliveries much beyond 2013 levels. This, add the experts, means there is a high probability coal-producing units relying on western coal will not be able to ramp up output despite higher demand.
Read in combination with the following item. -- RF
Questions are percolating if the US is going to have enough natural gas in storage by end of October to last through the winter. People are crunching all sorts of numbers to get a handle on it. But the Energy Department’s EIA remains sanguine. Its predictions concerning natural gas are almost always far off target, and its predictions of a super-low price over the last two years have become – with hindsight – a silly joke.
This is happening because even the US realizes that the world needs Iran's oil and gas, as I have observed. -- RF

## Got food? ##
On this subject, read this classic FTW article from 2004. -- RF
As Oklahoma enters its fourth year of sustained drought, some farmers expect the harvest to be so bad they'll end up calling their insurance agents and declaring this year a total loss.

## Lifestyle Solutions ##

## Environment/health ##
Species of plants and animals are becoming extinct at least 1,000 times faster than they did before humans arrived on the scene, and the world is on the brink of a sixth great extinction, a new study says.
Shocked by the rapid adoption of a new $84,000 hepatitis C treatment, U.S. health insurers are trying to make sure they aren’t blindsided by other drugs being developed and are looking for ways to limit their use from the day they are launched.
About 2.1 billion people, or almost one-third of the world’s population, were obese or overweight last year, researchers estimated after examining data from 183 countries.

## Intelligence/propaganda/security/internet/cyberwar ##

## Systemic breakdown/collapse/unsustainability ##
The number of power outages in the UK has more than doubled in the past year, potentially costing UK businesses hundreds of thousands of pounds, according to Eaton’s latest Blackout Tracker report.
As we can also see from the World Cup, mega sporting events are costing too much. When energy gets too expensive, the costs of all other things skyrocket, especially large-scale projects. -- RF

## Japan ##
Most urgently needed are renovations to Tokyo’s metropolitan expressways, which were built in a rush ahead of the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. Certain sections were built more than 50 years ago, and some roads have subsided and cracked.
Water sampled from a well at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant has been found to contain levels of radioactive tritium that exceeds [sic] the limit for dumping it into the Pacific, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

## China ##

## UK ##
Property price rises will cause the middle classes to disappear within 30 years leaving only a “wealthy elite and sprawling proletariat”, government adviser says
Britain’s wars in Iraq and southern Afghanistan were both strategic failures which between them have cost the UK taxpayer more than £29 billion, a respected think tank has found.
SNP ministers have insisted North Sea oil will generate more than twice the tax revenue impartial economists predict despite admitting their previous forecasts were billions of pounds too high.

## US ##
Can’t arrest a single banker, but police sure are good at stopping citizens from feeding the hungry. Sick.
This is part of a greater destructive trend occurring within U.S. society. As the 0.01% get more rich and more powerful, more aspects of public life will be shut down to everyone else, especially the exponentially growing modern American serf class.

And finally...
Dr Emyr Williams, a psychology lecturer at Glyndwr University in Wrexham, said real vampires are a “global phenomenon”

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