Sustainable Living in Very Small Homes | Smart Journalism. Real Solutions. Miller-McCune.

I am all into this. I keep picturing in my mind building a small cabin next to the house, maybe 12 by 16 or 12 by 24 feet (25 sheets of plywood, 27 sheets of drywall, 27 sheets of plywood siding, roofing, some windows, doors, plumbing and wiring). I could have a snug little house with running water, and electricity for under $5,000.

Sustainable Living in Very Small Homes

Has the Industrialized World Reached Peak Travel? | Smart Journalism. Real Solutions. Miller-McCune.

Has the Industrialized World Reached Peak Travel? | Smart Journalism. Real Solutions. Miller-McCune.

Monbiot.com � Manufactured Famine

Monbiot.com � Manufactured Famine:

"This is one instance of the food colonialism which is again coming to govern the relations between rich counties and poor. As global food supplies tighten, rich consumers are pushed into competition with the hungry."

Food Colonialism Increasing Africa's Hunger Crisis - Worldpress.org

Food Colonialism Increasing Africa's Hunger Crisis - Worldpress.org:
"'The scarcity claim lacks credibility,' he said. 'In the last few years, food production has kept well ahead of population growth. The crisis has nothing to do with the real capacity of the Earth to feed us, but has everything to do with our mystified notion of the market and our disempowerment to make an economy that's democratically accountable.'"

Global trader Senegal badly exposed to food-price volatility - The Irish Times - Wed, Dec 15, 2010

Why can't these countries feed themselves?

Global trader Senegal badly exposed to food-price volatility - The Irish Times - Wed, Dec 15, 2010:

"Its roots lay 6,500km away, in Moscow, where the Kremlin had taken the decision, two months earlier, to temporarily ban wheat exports as Russia struggled with its worst drought on record.

Since Russia is the world’s third-largest wheat exporter, that immediately caused prices on the global market to soar, and within weeks riots over rising bread prices had broken out in Mozambique and the Senegalese bakers were on strike."

Great comment on neoliberalism

Open Left:: Golden Oldie: Great comment on neoliberalism

Two things on this.
1) This word “Neo-liberalism” is driving me crazy. It is impossible to say what it really means and it confuses the hell out of the issue. It does not mean anything to do with what Americans are used to call “Liberalism” which grew out of the Progressive movement from the turn of the 20th century. I think it is going way back to the English liberalism of John Stuart Mill which means more like “liberal” as in “free” – free markets, libertarianism, etc.. Don’t use that word any more.

2) The last liberal president was Lyndon Johnson. He was a democrat because he was a southerner (Democrats were pro-confederate) and because FDR was a Democrat (only because cousin Theodore was a Republican and he wanted to be differentiated from him). Johnson made the extremely brave but fatal decision (for the Democratic party) to pass the Civil Rights act of 1964. He knew that in doing this he was losing the south for the democrats for the next generation. When Goldwater lost in 1964, carrying only the states of the old confederacy the Republican Southern Strategy was born.

All of Johnson’s “liberal” programs were then tainted as being for black people. The racist democrats north and south voted for Nixon and later became republicans. The Republican party went from being the party of Lincoln and civil rights to being the party of being anti-black, anti-welfare, anti-federal aid to education, anti-progressive supreme court, etc, etc.. The democrats were losing big-time and so they turned to southern conservative democrats and to disengage from all “liberal”, “welfare”, “civil rights”, “affirmative action”, “federal education”, etc, etc..

Carter did some of this, but Clinton made it his all consuming goal and finally accomplished it. He killed “welfare” as an issue that could be used to beat up democrats. The “Blue Dogs” were not strays, but pedigreed new democrat show dogs. Their job was to block and kill off any remnants of the LBJ “liberal” thinking in the Democrat party. They are succeeding as designed and planned.

What was the design of Rahm Emanuel’s congressional election strategy? What is the source of the pulsing energy of the Tea Party? Why does Mr. Obama’s history pass over Kennedy and LBJ and begin with Reagan as the one who “stabilized” and “transformed” the sixties and seventies, that chaotic period that brought Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, HUD low income housing, the Clean Air Act, and the EPA.

Mr Obama’s ethnic origins not withstanding, this political situation we find ourselves is rooted in America’s racism, driven by its energy and manipulated by the wealthy ruling class to divert the common people from noticing how they are really being exploited.

Army edits its history of the deadly battle of Wanat

The war is lost, but the loss will not be the responsibility of the Generals nor the Secretary of Defense or the President. It will be because of the mistakes of soldiers in the field.

Army edits its history of the deadly battle of Wanat:

"Gen. Charles Campbell told family members of the deceased that the letters of reprimand would have a chilling effect on other battlefield commanders, who often must make difficult decisions with limited information, according to a tape of his remarks."

Suicides in India Revealing How Men Made a Mess of Microcredit - Bloomberg

I fear very much that this type of thing that may start to happen in the United States as foreclosures continue and people are pressed into greater and greater desperation.

Suicides in India Revealing How Men Made a Mess of Microcredit - Bloomberg:

"More than 70 people committed suicide in the state from March 1 to Nov. 19 to escape payments or end the agonies their debt had triggered, according to the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, a government agency that compiled the data on the microfinance-related deaths from police and press reports."

First Post

I am starting this post to be a place where I can save material I find on the internet and some commentary.