Zeitgeist the movie

ZEITGEIST, The Movie - Official Release

"They must find it difficult...Those who have taken authority as the truth,
rather than truth as the authority."- Gerald Massey

The definition of the title, Zeitgeist, is "the spirit of the age," This film (1hr 56min) pulls together many valuable ideas, and questions some basic assumptions about our society with research and logic that is compelling, confronting and liberating. This single film makes much of my film library obsolete. It offers excellent quotes from well known characters both dead and alive, and you can get a flavour for this film from its one line teaser that is often used to promote it:

"What does Christianity, 911 and The Federal Reserve have in common?"

I was aware of most of the information offered, but something I was not aware of is the development of the Amero - a currency of the North American Union - the already signed and agreed upon Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America , the Union of Canada, America, and Mexico.

Using any bit torrent software you can download a quality .avi version of the film here.

Willits Economic LocaLisation

Kelpie Wilson Interviews Jason Bradford

Jason Bradford is a PhD evolutionary biologist who studied the effects of climate change on cloud forests in the Andes under the auspices of the Missouri Botanical Garden and other institutions. But in 2004 he switched his focus from study to action by initiating a remarkable community organizing effort in his new home town of Willits, California, called Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL).

Kelpie Wilson: Jason, in a nutshell, what is the mission of WELL?

Jason Bradford: The official WELL mission is to foster the creation of a local, sustainable economy in the Willits area by partnering with other organizations to watch for opportunities and vulnerabilities, incubate and coordinate projects, and facilitate dialogue, action and education within our community.

The greatest challenge we, as a species, face right now is to create a way of life based on the energy flow of sunlight, not fossil or nuclear energy, to do so without destroying our soils, and to enroll others in this transition. We are under no illusion that Willits can tackle this alone, but hope that Willits can be an inspiration to others. If we can do it here, it is possible elsewhere.

Kelpie Wilson: How did you make the decision to switch from a career in climate change and biodiversity research to this hands-on engagement with sustainable living?

Jason Bradford: I became really frustrated and disillusioned as a researcher. I would sit in my office and read the flood of data about the climate system, habitat loss and extinction, soil and fresh water depletion, and the impending peak of global oil production. Then I would listen to the radio or look at the newspaper and these issues were basically ignored, meaning my work was being ignored...

Kelpie Wilson: In his Labor Day speech, President Bush addressed our "oil addiction" and said that the problem is that "dependence on foreign oil jeopardizes our capacity to grow." In your view, is the energy crisis mostly about our dependence on foreign oil from "people who don't like us," as the president said? Or is there a deeper problem?

Jason Bradford: It is extremely important right now to give people heartfelt honesty. The lies of Bush and Cheney make them bigger threats than those swarthy people they like to scare us with. Cheney said the American way of life is non-negotiable. In a bizarre sense that is true. The laws of physics and ecology won't negotiate and can't be unilaterally ignored. And those laws are telling us we need to change how we inhabit this planet very quickly or we may not be around that much longer.

I have an idea. Let's stop blaming others for our problems. The deeper issue is our addiction to growth. Oil has permitted astounding economic growth, and we have become dependent, both structurally and psychologically, upon not just the oil but the growth process itself. Instead of questioning our assumptions, we are going to war for oil and we are looking for substitutes that are very dirty, like coal, tar sands, and nuclear. And while I am in complete favor of developing renewable energy systems as quickly as possible, I don't believe it is either possible or wise to grow our economy using renewable energy.

The problems with growth are easy to understand, but the implications are hard to face. For example, I have two children, twin boys who are seven years old. For now and over the next dozen years or so I'll be happy if they grow. During certain phases of development growth is perfectly good. But our economy is now beyond any reasonable limits, and we are making ourselves sick with more growth - as a society we have obesity and cancer, and the vital organs are starting to fail. Suburban sprawl, highway expansion, military build-up, air pollution, climate change, and mass extinction of species - these all stem from our drive to grow the economy.

Ironically, there exists a counter movement to slow down in life. Enjoy quality rather than quantity. Many are finding that the pleasures of a beautiful home, neighborhood and community are rewarding enough. Spend time building relationships where you are instead of traveling afar and spending money on things. Less is more. Now that is truly economical.

Full article...

Economics 101

I have passed this to a few friends and they all found it to be helpful in understanding the con that is the present economic system. Check it out and see if it doesnt change the way you look at banking and the entire social structure that is built on "modern day economics."

capitalism and other kids stuff

I just watched this one tonight. Happily I found it has already been posted on Google video, so I didn't have to.



From the Indy site where you can buy the film: It explains how the world's economic system operates in terms of a crazy and very unfair game that children are playing, and so it captures the imagination of its viewers.

A fantastic video to help understand the politics and economics of our global society, with an aim to establishing an alternative society based on meeting needs, on cooperation rather than competition, and on democratic forms of decision-making intead of top-down hierarchies.

This is a video on the forefront of those who wish to save this planet from worsening global warming, incessant wars, and either widespread physical poverty or profound feelings of spiritual poverty despite our rapacious consumerism. Its alternative is a very realizable future ready for the taking, not a hodge-podge dream.

Perfect for showing to groups of people, including high school or college students, the politically minded, and pretty much anybody who wants some answers, as a very unique economics lesson that won't be quickly forgotten!

From the Google video page: It was made by four socialists on one freezing Saturday afternoon in a church hall at Hebburn in the north east of England. On a budget of £80 which was spent on travel expenses the cost of hiring the hall and some cold cheese pasties the film may be rough and ready but it's hoped that it says something real to you. The ideas it proposes are one's you're unlikely to see on any TV show, art house play or even the news networks.

changing climate, changing minds

I was so impressed by this, that I have posted it here in its totallity.
This is not my work. Please visit Richard Neville's site for more...

--------

Journal of a Futurist
By Richard Neville - Mar 7, 2007

Cans Seurat, 2007 - Digital C print, 72x110"
Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans
the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

16 reasons to be cheerful

1. The public has long been ahead of politicians in recognising the danger of toxic emissions and will remain the driving force in rescuing the future. Everyone on Earth can play a role, irrespective of age, income or clout. Such a challenge can be strangely empowering, like the Blitz Spirit. (The wrecking of nature is more of a threat than the Luftwaffe). The outcome will redefine what it means to be human.

2. Shopping will cease to enthral. Buy Nothing Day has evolved to Buy Nothing Month. Recovering shopaholics are exchanging pledges to abstain. Some families refuse to buy anything new until something old is given away. But every so often a bright idea will win hearts, such as this 100% biodegradable, solar powered, I-Pod charging, naturally dyed hemp handbag.

3. No longer master of the universe, the “economy” will be its servant. Today's hi-flyers in Ferraris will get mud on their Armani's, as they plant acres of fruit trees and turn weeds into diesel. A new economics promotes the “good life without money stress, overwork and joyless consumption.” The bean counters will lose their status, unless the beans are certified organic and fairly traded. You will be able to discuss communes, creativity and consciousness with you bank manager.

THINKERS, DREAMERS, INVENTORS

Partial Zoom of the cans, Chris Jordan

4. To think and act both locally and globally will become second nature. Already there is a push for a Global Marshall Plan to restore the environment and to close the poverty gap. In the face of an array of threats, people are asking what can we do for our planet … and for our own community (growers markets are more fun than supermarkets). Today's passive spectators are tomorrow's activists.

5. Failing to own a house with a water view is no longer a matter of regret.

6. The urgency of global repair will unleash a boom of innovation and imagination that will dwarf the Renaissance. Tomorrow is about connecting, collaborating, creating. Solutions depend less on finding a Leonardo or an Einstein than on motivating millions of thinkers, dreamers, inventors.

7. Wind surfers will achieve terrifying speeds.

Actual size

8. The quest for carbon neutrality will transform the built environment. Architects have abolished the need for air conditioning by copying the airflows of termitaries. How did train manufacturers in Japan put an end to the sonic booms caused by engines when entering tunnels? By imitating the design of a Kingfisher's beak. Bio-mimicry is more profitable than bio-rape.

9. New kinds of leaders will emerge. The left/right dichotomy will be transcended by a global mind shift, incorporating intellectual fluidity, empathy, adaptability, foresight. Farewell to actor-politicians mouthing platitudes while secretly colluding with lobbyists. (And Farewell to so-called “intellectuals” who write about global warming but never have time to sort their own garbage - Mrs Neville. RNRubbish!).

THE FIRST EARTH BATTALION

Prison Uniforms, 2007
Archival inkjet, 11x23 feet in six vertical panels

Depicts PARTIAL ZOOM of 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal
to the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005

10. The boom in renewable energy will ease the West's addiction to oil and its need to pillage the Middle East. When the human and environmental cost of war is fully revealed, there will be widespread revulsion. Politicians who promote invasions will be run out of town. Tanks will be turned into ploughshares and the only valid mission of tomorrow's military will be to repair the ecosystem.

11. Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib , Bagram, etc, will be re-tooled as renewable energy factories, the labour provided by former war criminals.

12. Fast food will slow down. Vegetarianism will globalise. Obesity will decline.

13. In the race against Global Warming, youth will be the key participants, driven by the knowledge that the future lies in their hands and the joy of Making a Difference. The age of apathy is over.

Actual Size

14. Mass media will play a role in bringing climate change issues home to huge audiences. Instead of entertaining us all to death, they can save species from the brink of extinction. Old warlords are changing their tune. Rupert Murdoch's media empire has long equated environmentalists with reds under the beds, but its editors have been ordered to back flip. News Corp has switched from a state of denial to a state of confusion, which is progress. Murdoch's sons are carbon neutral and the patriarch is learning yoga.

15. Involvement with a cause greater than oneself eliminates depression.

16. Countless uplifting initiatives are happening beyond the orbit of Governments. The change of climate is changing the workplace. Corporate foresight is stretching beyond quarterly reports and limited electoral cycles. People are taking into their workplace what they're discussing at home, such is mapping out a new role for business. Even in toxic industries like cement and waste management, there is a determination to be emissions free. No more greenwashing. Despondency is giving way to resilience, daring and a shared sense of purpose. Blitz Spirit 2.

Finally, a goal for humanity beyond getting rich quick by despoiling our environment - both physical and mental - and calling it income.

Plastic Bags, 2007 - Digital C print, 72x86"
Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.
www.chrisjordan.com

Send comments and suggestions to: futurist@richardneville.com.au

America at risk?

Total U.S. debt is 3.5 times GDP, a level never seen before. The second highest level was 2.9 times in 1929 [does this date ring any bells?]. Read more...

And for a longer article on the current level of US debt, go here.

nanosolar 2

At the beginning of January I posted an article from this company.
It seems that Solar maybe finally becoming cost effective - ie as cheap as grid power!

Thin-film solar films are more than 100x thinner than silicon-wafer cells and thus have major materials cost advantages. Roll-printing production processes are simple, robust, and more than entire order-of-magnitude faster in throughput relative to vacuum-based thin-film deposition techniques.

Higher throughput drives vastly lower labor, capital, and process cost; it also enables unprecedented production volume scalability. The combination of thin films and roll-printing delivers low materials cost plus low process cost; the result is the world's most cost-efficient solar electricity cell:

Technology Wave	I. Silicon Wafer Cells	II. Vacuum-based Thin Film	III. Nanosolar Roll-Printed Thin Film
Process:	Silicon wafer processing	High vacuum (e.g. sputtering)	Roll-to-roll printing
Process Control:	Fragile wafers	Narrow process windows	Built-in bottom-up reproducibility
Process Yield:	Robust	Fragile	Robust
Materials Utilization:	30%	30-60%	Over 97%
Energy Payback:	3 years	1.7 years	<1 mnth
Throughput/CapEx	1	2-5	10-25

today I landed. . .

. . . on "the property" of a person who expressed upset at my sudden appearance. I was bemused by his response to my landing on the big open grassy area in front of his house. In my 11 years of paragliding people are generally intrigued at watching someone swoop around above their homes, and enjoy talking about it when given the opportunity - after all flying like a bird is one of man's oldest dreams.

As I walked away I thought about this brief exchange. I was not particularly bothered - it was far too nice a day to let his mood impact on the fun I had been having - but I wondered if this was symptomatic of the strange assumption of ownership and property rights that seems to have befallen our culture.

Since the time of the industrial revolution, more and more of the commons have been lost to the people, and increasingly ownership has been cornered by a small class of wealthy property owners. Surely the means of production, starting with the textile mills which heralded the industrial revolution, ought to have been the shared property of the people - especially those who worked them. But no, the convention was to continue the models that society had been familiar with on the land, and the wealthy continued to build wealth on the backs of those whose muscle produced the goods.

Is it time yet, to question the old assumptions?

property 'rights'

After posting the last item on the economic takeover of Aotearoa, I got to thinking about property rights and our relationship to this 'concept' we find so mightily defended in the West. After all it is only a convention - albeit one that most Westerners agree on - that if we 'own' property we have certain rights.

Globalisation and Autonomy: "Are there other ways to imagine human-territorial relationships that do not reproduce problematic assumptions about different people's characteristics, property, and autonomy? Is there another way to imagine property relations and autonomy that does not divide and dehumanize people? "

Do we need to accept the current notions, or can we: "refuse notions of competing autonomy and individual rights, and propose complex ideas of relational responsibility for the land and each other."

Are the processes of economic takeover, described in the last post, simply part of a last ditch effort by the elite to control the remaining pristine and life-supporting environments of the planet? Are they based on conventions, that one day will be meaningless, as more basic processes of inter-dependence come to the fore and we learn how to live cooperatively, in a low-energy world, using the resources that exist - but are not, and can never be "owned," by mere mortals?

selling off Aotearoa

When I opened up this email from Christoph Hensch I was more than a little concerned. I am witnessing this trend directly and personally here on Waiheke Island, where I live. Northern hemisphere refugees, wanting to escape the social, political, and environmental degredation of their countries, are arriving with pots of overseas money and buying up large.

Awareness is the first step.

Foreign Control - Key facts

• Foreign direct investment (ownership of companies) in New Zealand increased from $9.7 billion in 1989 to $82.7 billion at September 2006 - over 700% more.
  
  
• Foreign owners now control 41% of the share market. In 1989, the figure was 19%.
  
  
• In 2005, the Overseas Investment Commission (OIC) and its replacement, the Overseas Investment Office (OIO), approved foreign investment totalling $14.3 billion, which was well above the average of $8.8 billion for the previous decade. All but about $3 billion was sales from one overseas company to another. Until August 2005, only company takeovers involving $50 million or more needed OIC approval, except those involving land or fishing quotas. Until 1999, the threshold was $10m. As from August 2005 the government increased it to $100m and replaced the OIC with the OIO in the government department, Land Information New Zealand.
  
  
• In 2005, the OIC approved the sale of 149,473 hectares of rural land to foreigners, of which about 100,000 hectares was from one foreign investor to another. Foreign owned land covers more than one million hectares or about 7% of our commercially productive land area.
  
  
• Statistics NZ figures, as of March 2006, list the biggest foreign owners of New Zealand companies as, in decreasing order: Australia, US, UK, Singapore, Japan, Netherlands, Hong Kong, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.
  
  
• Transnational corporations (TNCs) make massive profits out of New Zealand. These can truly be called New Zealand's biggest invisible export. In the decade 1997-2006, TNCs made $50.3 billion profits. Only 32% was reinvested, and in some years more was sent overseas than was earned or the reinvestment was significantly offset by capital being taken out of the country.
  
  
• The great majority of foreign "investment" is a takeover, not creating new assets.
  
  
• Foreign investors are not great for employment - they only employ 19% of the workforce, despite owning a huge proportion of the economy. Foreign ownership does not guarantee more jobs. In fact, it quite often adds to unemployment. TNCs have made tens of thousands jobless.
  
  
• Foreign ownership does nothing to improve New Zealand's foreign debt problem. In 1984, total private and public foreign debt stood at $16 billion. As of September 2006, it was $182 billion, equivalent to well over 100% of New Zealand's Gross Domestic Product, despite all of the asset sales and takeovers.
  
  
• Ownership means political power. Foreign control means recolonisation, but by company this time, not country.
  
  
• Nearly everything that has been done to New Zealanders in the past decade has been done to "make the New Zealand economy attractive to foreign investment". This is what it all means to ordinary New Zealanders - we are involuntary competitors in the race to the bottom.

CAFCA home

the video compilation

Here is the 34 minute video compilation that Derek and I put together with the help of a dear friend and video editor.



It is a collection of short clips from six current documentary films describing some of the challenges that face us as a species. They are organised under the headings of Peak Oil, Economic Collapse, Climate Change and Responses to these. Here is a list of the films and a description of the specific short clips which are included in this 34 minute compilation:

The Power of Community - A succinct history of Peak Oil and how Cuba came to their own Peak Oil moment with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980's. It shows a little glimpse of the grass roots response to the need to feed their population, when their oil-dependent agriculture was no longer able to do so.

Oil Smoke and Mirrors - Richard Heinburg, author of The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, and the book Powerdown: Options and Action for a Post-Carbon World, expresses how easy it is, even for him, to fall into a level of denial about the significant changes that are almost certainly headed our way. A few other highly reputable politicians, business people and a geologist speak about dependence on Oil, the potential for global economic upheaval, and an explanation of why the media is largely quiet on these subjects.

David Attenborough's BBC documentary, Can We Save Planet Earth - CO2 is made visible in a clever graphic display and explanation of its sources and effects. We hear about China's direction and their part in the growing total of CO2 that is being released into our atmosphere.

Denial Stops Here - Michael Ruppert offers his insights into the global economic environment and makes some startling suggestions about the implications of the current situation.

An Inconvenient Truth - It is hard to go past Al Gore's big CO2 and Global temperature chart for the last 650,000 years, without asking what might be in store for us.

The End of Suburbia - despite this being the oldest film in the line-up, with footage taken from the Paris meeting of ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil) in 2002, it's contribution is valuable. This puts recent world events into perspective, and helps explain some of the lead up to them.

We hope this compilation (in all its amateur and jerky wonder) captures the essence of key issues which are already facing us as we race towards a global population of 7 billion persons. A key message is that each of us needs to learn how to reduce our footprint on this earth, and find ways, through cooperation and mutual support to meet our needs without disadvantaging future generations.

There is nothing refined about this production, but it is our humble effort to share information with you. Now if you know of anyone who wants to throw some money at this project, and have it made into a cleaner presentation, we are more than happy to help. But this was the result of some concerned citizens who squeezed in a few late nights in their busy schedule to put this together with limited technology.

one man, one cow, one planet

Thanks Michael for inviting me over to watch this video with you. Wow!

Peter Proctor is the lie to the belief that "I" can't do much to change things for the better. I would love one day to know that I had done one tenth of what this man has done to benefit the human community.

This film will screen at the Waiheke community cinema on January 30th.

If you are lucky enough to live on Waiheke Island, but you can't wait, then order the DVD directly and support our kiwi producers - well done guys, this is fabulous footage, edited expertly. For the rest of you, if you are beginning to wonder how you might eat when the oil gets too expensive and scarce for driving farm machinery, then order one today.

nanosolar

Nanosolar is on track to make solar electricity:

• cost-efficient for ubiquitous deployment
• mass-produced on a global scale
• available in many versatile forms

Nanosolar has developed proprietary technology that makes it possible to simply roll-print solar cells that require only 1/100th as thick an absorber as a silicon-wafer cell (yet deliver similar performance and durability).

The technology dramatically lowers the process cost and complexity involved in the production of thin-film solar cells and makes it possible to scale production very rapidly.

beginning

Helen Dew in her potato patch - another liberated lawn.

She recently sent me some Leek seeds, with a note to "Sow leeks now, for good sized crop in winter. Love, Helen" I got them in some seedling pots on New Years eve. Thank you Helen for this lovely gesture of support, you are an inspiration.


Here are the pots with Helen's leek seeds in - protected from the birds and the drying effect of the sun. I aded some dry worm castings, harvested a year ago, to the potting mix. I only planted half the seeds, as I recall that the period following the full moon is said to be better for root crops.

People rarely write or talk about their gardens until they have perfected some aspect of them. It is easy to feel daunted by all the volumes of books and articles on the subject. Where do we start! My friend Scott has often expressed the basic truth that "you don't need to know all the answers before you begin."

capitalism 3.0

Here is a clear description of the commons, how they have been exploited, and the importance of reclaiming them as the common asset they are for us and future generations.

I first came across some background to this process which took it out of the abstract in an article by Derek J. Wilson.

From 1770 to 1830 some 3,280 enclosure bills were passed putting into private hands for private gain more than six million acres of commonly-held lands. By 1830 not a single county had more than three percent of its land open to public use.

According to historian George Sturt: “To the enclosure of the common more than to any other cause may be traced all the changes which have subsequently passed over the village. It was like knocking the keystone out of an arch.” (Kirkpatrick Sale. Rebels Against the Future, 1995.)

Review of Capitalism 3.0 by Peter Montague of Rachel's Weekly

Books full of new ideas are rare, but here's one worth chewing on: Peter Barnes's Capitalism 3.0. The book is original, readable and provocative. It will definitely hold your attention.

But let's get one thing straight. Despite the title of his book, Peter Barnes is no radical. He is an entrepreneur and investor who co-founded Working Assets, the telephone company. He says, "As a businessman and investor, I've benefited personally from the primacy of capital and am not keen to end it." (pg. 24) On the other hand, he recognizes that, "Capitalism as we know it is devouring creation. It's living off nature's capital and calling it growth."(pg. 26) So, "to save capitalism from itself," (pg. 66) the book offers a whole slew of new ideas. the goal of which is to give capitalism a "software upgrade" to fix what Barnes sees as the system's three major flaws:

(1) its disregard for nature;
(2) its disregard for future generations; and
(3) its disregard for the poor.

Barnes's analysis of the problem is succinct: the history of capitalism reveals two threads: the decline of "the commons" and the rise of the corporation. These two threads are linked because corporations make money largely by taking things from "the commons" (or dumping wastes into the commons) without paying compensation to its owners (all of us).

By "the commons" Barnes means "all the things we inherit or create together," which none of us owns individually. The commons is like a river with three forks:

1. Nature, which includes air, water, DNA, photosynthesis, seeds, topsoil, airwaves, minerals, animals, plants, antibiotics, oceans, fisheries, aquifers, quiet, wetlands, forests, rivers, lakes, solar energy, wind energy... and so on;
2. Community: streets, playgrounds, the calendar, holidays, universities, libraries, museums, social insurance [e.g., social security], law, money, accounting standards, capital markets, political institutions, farmers' markets, flea markets, craigslist... etc.;
3. Culture: language, philosophy, religion, physics, chemistry, musical instruments, classical music, jazz, ballet, hip-hop, astronomy, electronics, the Internet, broadcast spectrum, medicine, biology, mathematics, open-source software... and so forth. (pg. 5)

The commons is a set of assets that have two characteristics: they're all gifts, and they're all shared. (pg. 5) Taken together, all the assets in the commons are our "common wealth." Furthermore, the commons are essential and indispensable; they provide sustenance for everyone. If we fail to protect them, we're sunk.

Read on...

David Korten video

You may have read the posts on his book: From Empire to Earth Community. Here's a short preview clip from his slide show . . .





The full slide show can be purchased from Peak Moments.

tipping point: energy

Written by Jan Lundberg
PDF of the entire article
Culture Change Letter #145,
November 27-29, 2006

What we can do about passing the energy tipping point?

The energy tipping point has been reached, just as a system such as the climate has been found to have a critical threshold that some scientists believe has probably been reached. Obviously, climate disaster is much more ominous than the enormous consequences of passing the energy tipping point.

As if it's a matter of choice, there are those who don't want to see any concerns about energy supply distract us from the climate challenge. Yet, the two crises are related and inseparable. There happens to be a common approach to mitigate each of them. Meanwhile, the mainstream corporate press is finally hinting at limitations on the economy from the "constraints" of both climate and energy. This is heresy for free marketeers who believe in endless growth. The New York Times ran a guest editorial column on Nov. 29 that said,

The world’s supply of cheap energy is tightening, and humankind’s enormous output of greenhouse gases is disrupting the earth’s climate. Together, these two constraints could eventually hobble global economic growth and cap the size of the global economy. The most important resource to consider in this situation is energy, because it is our economy’s “master resource” -- the one ingredient essential for every economic activity. (Thomas Homer-Dixon's op-ed, "The End of Ingenuity")

This article continues and for the sake of brevity I have cut it here, but it is by far one of the most eloquent summary statements of our situation and I highly recommend clicking here and reading on...

Australia pulling out of US

Costello seeks orderly $US withdrawal
John Garnaut Economics Correspondent
October 18, 2006

TREASURER Peter Costello has called on East Asia's central bankers to "telegraph" their intentions to diversify out of American investments and ensure an orderly adjustment.

Central banks in China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong have channelled immense foreign reserves into American government bonds, helping to prop up the US dollar and hold down American interest rates.

Mr Costello said "the strategy had changed" and Chinese central bankers were now looking for alternative investments. "Of course you can have an orderly adjustment," he told reporters. "And what I would recommend is that these matters be telegraphed well in advance. I think we should begin preparing ourselves for it."

Read full article...

infrastructure not being maintained

Few people know that I truly began my career as an investigative reporter with the 4-1-1 Blackout (it occurred at precisely 4:11pm) of August 14, 2003.

Jack Casazza, lifetime member of the IEEE, told me in a phone interview in 2003 that the commission that investigated the blackout was effectively involved in a cover up. Casazza has been on six such panels investigating blackouts in his career. Not once was he asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. In stark contrast, every member of the panel investigating the 4-1-1 Blackout was sworn to secrecy.

What was the big secret?

It is possible (and I believe highly likely) that the 4-1-1 Blackout was a test for the inevitable – cascading blackouts across the country: The Olduvai Gorge. No one is investing into energy infrastructure because there is not going to be enough energy to make such investments profitable. I will be commenting more on this soon. – MK

Dark Days Ahead

By Jason Leopold
Tuesday 17 October 2006
t r u t h o u t | Report

...On Monday, the North American Electric Reliability Council, an organization funded by the power industry, and that was named by federal regulators in July as the new watchdog group in charge of overseeing the rules for operating the nation's power grid, issued a grim report that confirmed an investigative story first reported by Truthout in August: three years after a devastating blackout left 50 million people in the dark in the Northeastern United States and parts of Canada for nearly three days, and forced the closure of the New York Stock Exchange, nothing substantial has been done to overhaul the country's dilapidated power grid.

"The adequacy of North America's electricity system will decline unless changes are made soon," said Rick Sergel, president and CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Council. "Our economy and quality of life are more reliant on electricity every day, yet the operation and planning for a reliable and adequate electricity system is becoming increasingly difficult. The transmission system requires additional investment to address reliability issues and economic impacts. Expansion and strengthening of the transmission system continues to lag demand growth and expansion of generating resources in most areas."

Today, the US power grid - three interconnected grids made up of 3,500 utilities serving 283 million people - still hangs together by a thread. The slightest glitch on the transmission superhighway could upset the smooth distribution of electricity over thousands of miles of transmission lines and darken states from Ohio to New York in a matter of seconds, bringing hospitals and airports to a standstill and putting an untold number of lives at risk.

urban agriculture

A Growing Opportunity
Urban agriculture takes root in empty lots and abandoned spaces
Don Butler
The Ottawa Citizen Sunday,
June 18, 2006

Argentina's 2001 meltdown hit the city of Rosario hard. Fully 800,000 of its 1.2 million residents were plunged into poverty because of widespread unemployment caused by the economic crash.

To cope, the city, located about 300 kilometres northwest of Buenos Aires, turned to a seemingly quixotic strategy -- urban agriculture.

It turned over public land, offered tax breaks to owners of vacant lots who agreed to let poor residents grow organic produce on their property, and began to supply tools, seeds and other supplies.

Before long, more than 800 community gardens had sprung up, supporting 10,000 farmers and their families. What they didn't need for themselves, they could sell in one of seven new farmer's markets established by the city. Read on...