China’s Communist-Capitalist Ecological Apocalypse

Stephan:  This is a view of China with which you may not be familiar. American corporate media just don't focus on much beyond the superficial. Amazing really inasmuch as the Chinese economy and culture are changing the world. I think you will find information here which may change your perspective.
A pedestrian wearing a protective mask in Beijing, January 17, 2012. Decades of coal-powered industrialization combined with the government-promoted car craze have brought China the worst air pollution in the world.  Credit: Gilles Sabrie/The New York Times

A pedestrian wearing a protective mask in Beijing, January 17, 2012. Decades of coal-powered industrialization combined with the government-promoted car craze have brought China the worst air pollution in the world.
Credit: Gilles Sabrie/The New York Times

This article seeks to explain why China’s environmental crisis is so horrific, so much worse than “normal” capitalism most everywhere else, and why the government is incapable of suppressing pollution even from its own industries. I begin with an overview of the current state of China’s environment: its polluted air, waters, farmland and the proximate causes, including overproduction, overdevelopment, profligate resource consumption, uncontrolled dumping and venting of pollutants. I then discuss the political-economic drivers and enablers of this destruction, the dynamics and contradictions of China’s hybrid economy, noting how market reforms have compounded the irrationalities of the old bureaucratic collectivist system with […]

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19 Intriguing Coincidences Surrounding the Virginia Shooting

Stephan:  I bet you didn't know that the purported murder of TV reporter Alison Parker, and her cameraman Adam Ward was a "false flag operation." You didn't, did you? That is the story from the parallel universe of the Theocratic Right. Here is the argument. Really. This is what the anti-gun control community believes is the truth.

conspiracy-1024x753The problem with repeated false flags and staged events executed for a particular political purpose is that they demand a commitment from the minds of the masses and it has to happen in real-time. You either get it right away that the event is staged or you don’t. That is, you require “proof.” Until you receive that proof or, should I say, until you consciously register a series of information that convinces you that it must have been fake, you will choose to believe mainstream media news and accept it as truth. On the other hand, those who are fully awakened to the overall agenda in full motion now know right away as soon as another staged shooting takes place. They know exactly which signs to look for or, more specifically, which group of signs to look for. Also there is a sequence of events that usually plays out exactly almost every time. Once the working minds of these people see that sequence of events play out their natural brain does not allow them to believe […]

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Obama on Climate Change: Act Now or Condemn World to a Nightmare

Stephan:  President Obama both because he gets it, and also that he has no further elections is really beginning to speak the words that need to be spoken. Catastrophe needs to be articulated by authority; this is good news.

President Barack Obama challenged fellow world leaders in unusually blunt language Monday to act boldly on climate change or “condemn our children to a world they will no longer have the capacity to repair.”

In a forceful address, Obama opened the “GLACIER” conference in Anchorage, Alaska, by declaring: “We are not moving fast enough. None of the nations represented here are moving fast enough.”

That includes the U.S., which Obama said “recognizes our role in creating this problem and embraces our role in solving it.”

Obama is using the three-day GLACIER conference — it stands for Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience — as a way both to highlight the perils of global warming and to cement his environmental legacy. He directly attacked politicians who argue that climate change isn’t real, saying they “are on their own shrinking island.”

“The time to heed the critics and the cynics and the deniers is past,” the president said.

Unless the world acts more aggressively and more quickly, he said, “entire nations will find themselves under severe, severe problems: More drought. More floods. Rising sea levels. Greater migration. More refugees. More scarcity. More conflict.”

In language unusual for a diplomatic setting, Obama contended, “Any leader […]

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Why a Mediterranean diet is good for your brain

Stephan:  I think you should take this diet article quite seriously. A mammal-free modified Mediterranean diet is what Ronlyn and I eat. I think the data is very clear this is the way to go. This report an improved replication of earlier studies.

TomatoesWhenever the fictional character Popeye the Sailor Man managed to down a can of spinach, the results were almost instantaneous: he gained superhuman strength. Devouring any solid object similarly did the trick for one of the X-Men. As we age and begin to struggle with memory problems, many of us would love to reach for an edible mental fix. Sadly, such supernatural effects remain fantastical. Yet making the right food choices may well yield more modest gains.

A growing body of evidence suggests that adopting the Mediterranean diet, or one much like it, can help slow memory loss as people age. The diet’s hallmarks include lots of fruits and vegetables and whole grains (as opposed to ultrarefined ones) and a moderate intake of fish, poultry and red wine. Dining mainly on single ingredients, such as pumpkin seeds or blueberries, however, will not do the trick.

What is more, this diet approach appears to reap brain benefits even when adopted later in life—sometimes aiding cognition in as little as two years. “You will not be Superman or Superwoman,” says Miguel A. Martínez González, […]

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The states that get the most natural disaster aid sent 47 climate-change deniers to Congress

Stephan:  It is a  measure of how dysfunctional our society has become that the situation described in this report  exists.

States_2 getting aidAt the Center for American Progress, Daniel J. Weiss, Jackie Weidman and Stephanie Pinkalla teamed up on a new study of the $62 billion that the federal government sent to the states in disaster aid during 2011-2012. Much of that money was spent to ameliorate the impact of extreme weather events during that period:

There is recent evidence that climate change played a role in the extreme weather events of 2012. The recently released analysis from the American Meteorological Society determined that:

Approximately half the analyses found some evidence that anthropogenically caused climate change was a contributing factor to the extreme event examined, though the effects of natural fluctuations of weather and climate on the evolution of many of the extreme events played key roles as well.

Interestingly, many of the states that received the most federal recovery aid to cope with climate-linked extreme weather have federal legislators who are climate-science deniers. The 10 states that received the most federal recovery aid in FY 2011 and 2012 elected 47 climate-science deniers to the Senate and the House. Nearly two-thirds of the […]

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