Posts
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Airline Death Spiral ##
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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.
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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.
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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
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Got food? ##
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.
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Lifestyle Solutions ##
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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.
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Intelligence/propaganda/security/internet/cyberwar ##
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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
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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.
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China ##
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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.
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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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