How Is America Going To End?

Peacenik just came across this game and Peacenik is afraid Peacenik is going to spend all day playing it. It is fun. "Choose Your Own Apocalypse." How could it not be fun? Peacenik played a quick initial game, without looking at all the squares. In game one Peacenik turned out to be a "anthropocentric pragmatist". Play along with Peacenik and tell Peacenik what you were in the game in the comments. By the way, Peacenik choose "peak water", "peak oil", "dirty bombs", "obesity" and "internal guerilla warfare" in game one. Back to "choose your own apocalypse". Have a good weekend.

By Josh Levin

"Choose your own Apocalypse" lets you map out the death of the United States.

If and when America expires, we probably won't agree on the cause of death. For proof that autopsies of empires are inconclusive, consider the case of Alexander Demandt, the German historian who set out in the 1980s to collect every theory ever given for why Rome fell. The final tally: 210, including attacks by nomads on horseback, blood poisoning, decline of Nordic character, homosexuality, outflow of gold, and vaingloriousness.

In tribute to Demandt, I've gone looking for every possible reason why America could fall. I've paged through the work of scholars who have studied the characteristics of declining and failed societies. I also collected theories from futurists, doomsayers, separatists, economists, political scientists, national security experts, climatologists, geologists, astronomers, and a few miscellaneous crazy people. The result: a collection of 144 potential causes of America's future death.

Read on...

Update: Peacenik is addicted. Peacenik goes cold turkey. This is Peacenik's final game. Peacenik hopes. Peacenik doesn't even like online, electronic games. In this final game the result is: "You are a humanitarian internationalist. You're convinced mankind will terminate America—but at least we won't off ourselves in the process. You'll know you're right when: Everyone on Earth pledges allegiance to a world government; the feds default on the national debt." Peacenik chose: China unloads U.S. treasuries, default on debt, deficit spending, state bankruptcies, and FDIC fails. This game comes from Slate's website. The leading causes of Apocalypse on Slate's website are: Loose Nukes, peak oil, Israel-Arab war, China unloads U.S. treasuries, and obesity.

Peacenik repeats, "this is Peacenik's final game."

Honduran Coup: The US Connection

As you read this story you will recognize all the crazies from the last 30 years of Latin American unrest who were probably involved in the Honduran coup. Peacenik did. And what is really scary is that these crazies are entrenched in American politics, society, academia, and military. And lets not forget the media. The media treats these fascist nutjobs with deference. Opus Dei might have been involved. Supreme Court Justice Scalia is a member of Opus Dei. That's right folks. Being a fascist,or a member of an extreme right wing organization doesn't dis-entitle you from participating in American leadership. It is probably an asset. Hell, it's probably a requirement.


Honduran Coup protest

by Conn Hallinan

While the Obama administration was careful to distance itself from the recent coup in Honduras — condemning the expulsion of President Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica, revoking Honduran officials' visas, and shutting off aid — that doesn't mean influential Americans aren't involved, and that both sides of the aisle don't have some explaining to do.

The story most U.S. readers are getting about the coup is that Zelaya — an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez — was deposed because he tried to change the constitution to keep himself in power.

That story is a massive distortion of the facts. All Zelaya was trying to do is to put a non-binding referendum on the ballot calling for a constitutional convention, a move that trade unions, indigenous groups, and social activist organizations had long been lobbying for. The current constitution was written by the Honduran military in 1982, and the one-term limit allows the brass-hats to dominate the politics of the country. Since the convention would have been held in November, the same month as the upcoming presidential elections, there was no way Zelaya could have remained in office in any case. The most he could have done was to run four years from now.

Read on...

Obama Pentagon Plans Speeding Up 'Bunker Buster' Bomb

So on the one hand we've got some modest overtures to Iran on the negotiating front. And on the other hand we've got the steady drumbeat for war from the neocons. Peacenik thought he read somewhere that Obama wants a nuclear free world. Then why is Obama continuing to develop the weapon that George Bush created, and that caused the U.S. to abrogate the nuclear non-proliferation treaty? Peacenik thinks Obama is keeping the neocons happier than he is keeping the peacemakers. Why does Obama care more about the neocons? Why? Why?

Agence France Presse

Boeing's 30,000 pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The US Defense Department on Monday said it wants to speed up production plans for the enormous "bunker buster" bomb.

WASHINGTON - The US military said on Monday it wants to speed up production plans for an enormous "bunker buster" bomb, amid international concern over underground nuclear sites in Iran and North Korea.

The Pentagon has asked Congress for extra money to ensure the massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) would be ready by July 2010, spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

"The department has asked for reprogramming of about 68 million dollars to start production for some of these in 2009," Whitman said.

"This will help it accelerate some if it's approved."

Read on...

Protests as US Air Strike Kills Four Civilians in Afghanistan’s Kandahar

punditman says... A glimpse of reality: the sheeple's governments continue to kill and maim innocent people halfway across the world in an ill-fated war and for no damn good reason. But don't worry, sheeple. NATO has once again promised to investigate. You can get back to your fake reality (show) now.

By Jason Ditz

www.antiwar.com

Residents of Kohat Village in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province marched into Kandahar City with the bodies of four civilians, including three children, to protest their killings in an overnight US Air Strike. The four were relatives, three brothers and an adult cousin.

Witnesses say that a helicopter attacked the four in their sleep. Another brother and the father of the cousin were also wounded in the strike on the family’s compound. The US denied any knowledge of the incident but claimed that four “insurgents” had been killed in the area.

The father of the slain children, who was among the protesters, said two missiles were fired at his home, and asked “what was the fault of my innocent children? They were not Taliban.”

Such incidents have become all too common as the international military effort in Afghanistan has escalated, but this one is particularly embarrassing as it came during the visit of new NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, an advocate of continung the war. NATO has promised to investigate the incident.

DNC Goes All In: Denounces Right Wing Angry Mob [Video]

Remember the extreme right wing conspiracy of Bill Clinton's day. Turns out there was one. And there is one. They same wingnuts who financed Jennifer Jones and Troopergate are financing these mobs trying to disrupt health care town hall meetings. Peacenik never would have believed that John Kerry's military service would become a liability for him. But the swiftboaters succeeded. And now we have goofballs chanting to save their non-existent healthcare from a socializing Obama. By the Way when Lou Dobbs reported this story last night he smirked and suggested it was just people expressing their democratic right. And CNN has refused to carry Media Matters ads attacking Lou Dobbs for his support of the 'birther' fringe. Will mobs shut down health care town hall meetings? Will the media report this as anything other than paid agents of the right wing? Is the health care debate getting turned upside down? Right now it looks to Peacenik like any reasonable healthcare reform is looking most unlikely.


Healthcare town hall protesters

by turneresq

Share this on Twitter - DNC Goes All In: Denounces Right Wing Angry Mob [Video]

Tue Aug 04, 2009 at 08:35:56 PM PDT

Wow. I don't know what to say. This is one of the most hard-hitting ads I've ever seen. It just lays it all out there. No punches pulled. No insuination. Just a full-bore attack. This ad will leave your mouth gaping for sure. It is important to note this is a WebAd, and as such is probably more to get play on cable outlets, than to pay to have it run. Still, given this ad fires with both barrels, it's likely we'll be seeing this on air for the next couple of days.

Read on...

The Scope -- and Dangers -- of GE's Control of NBC and MSNBC

This is a complex story. Illustrative of a simple fact. You cannot trust anything you see or hear on tv or read in the newspapers. The media is corrupt. And the media has a corporate slant. The media is in thrall to conservative/republican ideology. The media willfully participates in the brainwashing of society.

So how does Peacenik get information that Peacenik can trust? How does Punditman? How do you? Peacenik isn't sure. Watch any newscast. Pick any story. And think about who is telling the story and why. Filter it. And filter it again. Were the 3 Americans arrested in Iran really only hiking. Peacenik doesn't know. But it doesn't sound plausible does it?

But back to GE. They told Keith Olbermann to stop picking on FOX news and Bill O'Reilly. In return FOX would stop reporting negatively about GE. GE is the company whose financing arm GE Financial is bankrupt and received a huge taxpayer funded bailout. And of course GE is a huge component of the military industrial complex. Read Greenwald's analysis. Is the corporate media doing their job? Do you trust it? Peacenik doesn't.



by Gleen Greenwald

I want to return to the subject of GE's silencing of Keith Olbermann both because there are new facts I've obtained that shed light on what happened here and because this is one of the most blatant examples yet of pernicious corporate control over America's journalism. The most striking aspect of this episode is that GE isn't even bothering any longer to deny the fact that they exert control over MSNBC's journalism. They've brazenly dispensed with the long-held fiction of the sanctity of journalistic independence from interference by the corporate parents that own America's largest news organizations.

Instead, GE is now openly and proudly boasting of their editorial control over the news organizations they own, and publicly rubbing it in the faces of NBC News journalists that they're subservient to GE's corporate agenda. Look at this smug, creepy quote from GE executive spokesman Gary Sheffer explaining in The New York Times why GE issued its gag order preventing Olbermann from criticizing Fox and O'Reilly, all but mocking NBC and MSNBC journalists as nothing more than GE's office of corporate spokespeople:

"We all recognize that a certain level of civility needed to be introduced into the public discussion," Gary Sheffer, a spokesman for G.E., said this week. "We’re happy that has happened."

Read on...

Scott Horton Interviews Eric Stoner

punditman says...The Afghan War is going badly. The peace movement is going badly too; here is some analysis on what to do.

Eric Stoner, freelance journalist based in New York, discusses the use of nonviolence to force political changes, the decline in the antiwar movement after Obama’s election, the need for more creative and assertive protests, the replacement of soldiers with remote controlled robots and why there is no such thing as a humanitarian war.

MP3 here. (30:25)

Keeping Their Eggs in Their Backyard Nests

Peacenik has been promoting self sufficiency for a while. Urban gardens. Foraging. Solar heat. Getting off the grid. Burying money in your back yard. All kinds of stuff to help you in the dark days ahead. But Peacenik is also a little alarmed by the cavalier attitude of a lot of backyard chicken farmers. Seems everyone wants to get in on the act. Peacenik merely wants to point out once again that bird flu, H1N5, got started in countries where humans and poultry live in close proximity. You might think having some chickens in your backyard is cool, but Peacenik says check out the cost of a bio-hazard suit first.

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

Published: August 3, 2009

As Americans struggle through a dismal recession, many are trying to safeguard themselves from what they fear will be even worse times ahead. They eat out less often. They take vacations closer to home. They put off buying new cars.

And some raise chickens. Lloyd Romriell, a married father of four in Annis, Idaho, recently received seven grown chickens and a coop from a relative. The hens lay a total of about two dozen eggs a week.

“It’s because times are tough. You never know what’s going to happen,” Mr. Romriell said. Although he manages a feed store, he had not kept chickens since he was a child. “If you lose your job tomorrow, you’ve still got food.”

Read on...

Tamiflu causes sickness and nightmares in children, study finds

punditman says...There are tons of media reports on the internet saying that Tamiflu will not work against Swine Flu, and furthermore, that even regular seasonal flu strains are becoming resistant to it. And yet governments have stockpiled billions of dollars worth of it. What a freaking waste of everyone's money (in less of case you own stock in it). Furthermore, Tamiflu may be very bad for you! In 2007, the FDA finally began investigating some 1,800 adverse event reports related to the anti-viral drug. Serious symptoms included convulsions, delirium or delusions, and 14 deaths in children and teens as a result of neuropsychiatric problems and brain infections (which led Japan to ban Tamiflu for children in 2007). And yet they are handing it out to children like candy. What a crime.

-your friendly neighbourhood wingnut.

by David Rose

Children report a range of side-effects, but the official advice is that Tamiflu is safe.

More than half of children taking the swine flu drug Tamiflu experience side-effects such as nausea and nightmares, research suggests.

An estimated 150,000 people with flu symptoms were prescribed the drug through a new hotline and website last week, according to figures revealed yesterday.

Studies of children attending three schools in London and one in the South West showed that 51-53 per cent had one or more side-effects from the medication, which is offered to everyone in England with swine flu symptoms.

The research by the Health Protection Agency emerged as Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer for England, said that swine flu infections “may have reached a plateau”.

Releasing the latest figures, Sir Liam said that an estimated 110,000 new cases of the H1N1 virus were diagnosed by doctors in the week to Sunday. That did not include those using the new National Pandemic Flu Service for England to obtain antiviral drugs without seeing their GP.

Keep Reading...

A Yard Sale in Chernobyl

After a long weekend Joe Bageant is like a tonic to clear the cob webs away. Here Joe is ruminating on what a disaster the U.S. has become. And how the sheeple have been propagandized into submission. Joe has a point. Peacenik is sometimes ridiculed when Peacenik offers a negative perspective on the end of the recession or the world. Negativity is somehow socially unacceptable. Enough said. Read Joe.



C hernobyl

by Joe Bageant

"It's only a system," she said, as we floated through the sprawling supermarket's gleaming commodity lined indoor streets. "THE HELL IT IS! It's a goddamned air conditioned zombie hell of waste and gluttony," I thought to myself, before the usual vertigo completely enveloped me. Just back from Central America's simple, comprehensible mercados, bodegas and street cart vendors, the effect of this most common American shopping venue was, as always, one of vertigo. Head splitting light beats down on pyramids of plastic eggs, as if to incubate their hatching of the ladies stockings within, dozens of kinds of toothpaste, well scrubbed dead chickens, lurid baskets of too-perfect flowers, plastic wraps, tissue for faces, asses and wrapping gifts, row upon row of polished vegetables and fruits standing like soldiers waiting for the annihilation of salads or the ovens of casseroledom.

And all those hushed and not so hushed shopper cell phone conversations, this one consoling someone at the home base pod:

"Oh I am so sorry, baby, but I think they've quit making the Ranch flavored Pringles. Yes I know you don't like the jalapeno Pringles. I am so sorry. Really I am." Both parties seemed genuinely distraught.

Read on...