Collapse: Portrait of a Loner
By: GRITtv Thursday November 12, 2009 10:30 am
Michael Ruppert is a former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter, and he gained some credibility after predicting the financial meltdown that most politicians claimed no one had seen coming. Ruppert has plenty of other apocalyptic theories, from peak oil to drugs to, yes, 9/11.
In the new film Collapse, filmmaker Chris Smith follows Ruppert and looks into his theories. Is he a genius, or just paranoid? The film allows you to make your own judgments, while showing the risks and rewards of having–and publishing–unpopular opinions. Smith joined Laura in the studio to discuss his film and whether or not he believes Ruppert.
Hat Tip dpacheco chelsea GREEN
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The Race Goes Not Always To The Fastest
http://chelseagreen.com/blogs/genelogsdon/2009/10/22/the-race-goes-not-always-to-the-fastest
I am not a real farmer, my neighbors say, because I don’t do it for money. That’s almost funny because the economists are saying that nobody’s farming for money this year. Although the corn crop is good in most of the midwest, there’s not much profit in it. Some go as far as projecting that on average, corn farmers will lose $8 per acre over the whole midwest. If that is the case, I’m not a real farmer for sure because I figure on netting $550 an acre on my corn......Those ears of corn in the photo are from my crop this year. They measure up to 14 inches long, as you can see by the foot long ruler beside them. The longest one has 20 rows of kernels. It will shrink a little as it dries, but as far as I can learn from researching, this is as big as any ear of yellow dent corn has ever gotten and is almost twice the size of any of today’s hybrids. (There are strains of maize in Mexico that produce ears two feet long but are very skinny.) I’ve had in previous years one or two 16-inch ears but they were frowzy on the tips, with only 16 rows of kernels. The fatter, slightly shorter ears in the photo above contain 22 and 24 rows of kernels, and I know from experience that the kernels will weigh as much per cob as those from the 14-inch ears. There will be about a pound of kernels on each of these ears. If I had an acre where all the stalks produced one such ear and I planted 18,000 stalks per acre, which is about right for open-pollinated corn, (hybrid growers are planting as many as 30,000 stalks per acre) the yield would be 300 bushels per acre, right up there with the world records for corn. If I could live 200 years maybe I could produce a crop of all fourteen inchers. After all it took the Mesoamerican Indians thousands of years to get ears of maize up to five inches long.
Pop Star Joss Stone Under Attack for Marijuana Comment
http://www.chelseagreen.com/content/pop-star-joss-stone-under-attack-for-marijuana-comment
( Remember where the Brits dropped their science advisor for saying that - just as the campaign to make 'enforcement' harsher got underway ? )
How to Abort the Recovery
http://chelseagreen.com/blogs/robertkuttner/2009/11/02/how-to-abort-the-recovery
Robert Kuttner
Tweet this story! Support our efforts for a sustainable world.
Share ShareThis
As unemployment continues to rise, deficit hawks are upping their efforts to use the economic crisis as a pretext for gutting basic social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. The idea keeps surfacing for a bipartisan deficit-reduction commission, supposedly insulated from politics, which would agree to mandatory caps on spending and perhaps increased taxes as well. Social programs would take the biggest hit. Congress would then take an up or down vote on the whole package.
The latest ploy to promote such a commission is to use the upcoming vote on increasing the national debt, scheduled for late November. Democratic deficit hawks such as Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota are working with Republicans such as Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, to condition an increase in the debt on creation of a panel. They have some allies in the White House such as Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, who has intermittently signaled support for such a plan. The Senate Budget Committee will be holding hearings on this idea in mid-September, according to The New York Times.
The whole approach is bad economics and bad politics on several grounds. First, there is no evidence for the premise that financial markets are anxious about the rising debt. As Dean Baker observes, they keep buying the Treasury's long-term bonds at a low 3.5 percent interest rate. If there were worry that the increased debt would spike inflation, investors would be demanding higher interest rates.
Secondly, it is not "entitlements" that have caused the big increase in the deficit and the debt. The cause is plummeting tax collections as a consequence of the recession. Social Security will be surplus for another generation, and both the House and Senate versions of the health reform bill do not add to the deficit, but help cut costs.
Third, obsessing about debts and deficits when the economy is still losing jobs has it exactly backwards. We probably need bigger deficits for a year or two, to propel a strong recovery. Higher growth will then bring the debt back down to tolerable scale. In World War II, deficits averaged about 25 percent a year (compared to under 10% this year.) But all of that war spending rebuilt the economy and powered three decades of economic boom and the big wartime debt was soon paid off.
Finally, the idea that such a commission could be "above politics" is a deception. The politics–very conservative politics–would be baked into the cake.
Congress Should Not Reject the Goldstone Report
http://chelseagreen.com/blogs/michaelratner/2009/11/03/congress-should-not-reject-the-goldstone-report
On Tuesday, November 3, Congress is poised to vote on H.Res.867, which calls on the “President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' in multilateral fora.’ ”
The Resolution instructs the Obama Administration to prevent further consideration of the Goldstone Report (as it is informally known) in any international body. For Congress to do so, without a hearing where Judge Goldstone can testify and based upon a Resolution rife with factual errors, makes a mockery of assertions by the United States that fundamental protections of human rights laws law apply equally to all. It leaves the United States, and especially Congress, without a thread of moral authority.
( Damn. It will pass in a heartbeat. )
Related articles by ZemantaThe Race Goes Not Always To The Fastest
http://chelseagreen.com/blogs/genelogsdon/2009/10/22/the-race-goes-not-always-to-the-fastest
I am not a real farmer, my neighbors say, because I don’t do it for money. That’s almost funny because the economists are saying that nobody’s farming for money this year. Although the corn crop is good in most of the midwest, there’s not much profit in it. Some go as far as projecting that on average, corn farmers will lose $8 per acre over the whole midwest. If that is the case, I’m not a real farmer for sure because I figure on netting $550 an acre on my corn......Those ears of corn in the photo are from my crop this year. They measure up to 14 inches long, as you can see by the foot long ruler beside them. The longest one has 20 rows of kernels. It will shrink a little as it dries, but as far as I can learn from researching, this is as big as any ear of yellow dent corn has ever gotten and is almost twice the size of any of today’s hybrids. (There are strains of maize in Mexico that produce ears two feet long but are very skinny.) I’ve had in previous years one or two 16-inch ears but they were frowzy on the tips, with only 16 rows of kernels. The fatter, slightly shorter ears in the photo above contain 22 and 24 rows of kernels, and I know from experience that the kernels will weigh as much per cob as those from the 14-inch ears. There will be about a pound of kernels on each of these ears. If I had an acre where all the stalks produced one such ear and I planted 18,000 stalks per acre, which is about right for open-pollinated corn, (hybrid growers are planting as many as 30,000 stalks per acre) the yield would be 300 bushels per acre, right up there with the world records for corn. If I could live 200 years maybe I could produce a crop of all fourteen inchers. After all it took the Mesoamerican Indians thousands of years to get ears of maize up to five inches long.
Pop Star Joss Stone Under Attack for Marijuana Comment
http://www.chelseagreen.com/content/pop-star-joss-stone-under-attack-for-marijuana-comment
( Remember where the Brits dropped their science advisor for saying that - just as the campaign to make 'enforcement' harsher got underway ? )
How to Abort the Recovery
http://chelseagreen.com/blogs/robertkuttner/2009/11/02/how-to-abort-the-recovery
Robert Kuttner
Tweet this story! Support our efforts for a sustainable world.
Share ShareThis
As unemployment continues to rise, deficit hawks are upping their efforts to use the economic crisis as a pretext for gutting basic social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. The idea keeps surfacing for a bipartisan deficit-reduction commission, supposedly insulated from politics, which would agree to mandatory caps on spending and perhaps increased taxes as well. Social programs would take the biggest hit. Congress would then take an up or down vote on the whole package.
The latest ploy to promote such a commission is to use the upcoming vote on increasing the national debt, scheduled for late November. Democratic deficit hawks such as Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota are working with Republicans such as Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, to condition an increase in the debt on creation of a panel. They have some allies in the White House such as Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, who has intermittently signaled support for such a plan. The Senate Budget Committee will be holding hearings on this idea in mid-September, according to The New York Times.
The whole approach is bad economics and bad politics on several grounds. First, there is no evidence for the premise that financial markets are anxious about the rising debt. As Dean Baker observes, they keep buying the Treasury's long-term bonds at a low 3.5 percent interest rate. If there were worry that the increased debt would spike inflation, investors would be demanding higher interest rates.
Secondly, it is not "entitlements" that have caused the big increase in the deficit and the debt. The cause is plummeting tax collections as a consequence of the recession. Social Security will be surplus for another generation, and both the House and Senate versions of the health reform bill do not add to the deficit, but help cut costs.
Third, obsessing about debts and deficits when the economy is still losing jobs has it exactly backwards. We probably need bigger deficits for a year or two, to propel a strong recovery. Higher growth will then bring the debt back down to tolerable scale. In World War II, deficits averaged about 25 percent a year (compared to under 10% this year.) But all of that war spending rebuilt the economy and powered three decades of economic boom and the big wartime debt was soon paid off.
Finally, the idea that such a commission could be "above politics" is a deception. The politics–very conservative politics–would be baked into the cake.
Congress Should Not Reject the Goldstone Report
http://chelseagreen.com/blogs/michaelratner/2009/11/03/congress-should-not-reject-the-goldstone-report
On Tuesday, November 3, Congress is poised to vote on H.Res.867, which calls on the “President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' in multilateral fora.’ ”
The Resolution instructs the Obama Administration to prevent further consideration of the Goldstone Report (as it is informally known) in any international body. For Congress to do so, without a hearing where Judge Goldstone can testify and based upon a Resolution rife with factual errors, makes a mockery of assertions by the United States that fundamental protections of human rights laws law apply equally to all. It leaves the United States, and especially Congress, without a thread of moral authority.
( Damn. It will pass in a heartbeat. )
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