MSM: Iceland’s Meltdown

An economic morality play, in 10 acts

“All financial innovation involves … the creation of debt secured in greater or lesser adequacy by real assets,” wrote the economist John Kenneth Galbraith in 1993. And “all crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.”

Cluster Bomb Treaty and the World’s Unfinished Business

The United States, Russia and China are sending a terrible message to the rest of the world by refusing to take part in the historic signing of a treaty that bans the production and use of cluster bombs. In a world that is plagued by war, military occupation and terrorism, the involvement of the great military powers in signing and ratifying the agreement would have signaled – if even symbolically – the willingness of these countries to spare civilians’ unjustifiable deaths and the lasting scars of war.

Atrocity Unlimited: US Seeks to Turn Somalia into Global Free-Fire Zone

Not content with destroying the only vestige of stability that Somalia had known for almost two decades by arming, backing and participating in a brutal “regime change” invasion by Ethiopia, the Bush Administration now wants to turn the ravaged land into an international “free fire zone,” a giant Fallujah where any powerful nation on earth can launch armed incursions on Somali soil, wreaking the usual “collateral damage” in the search for pirates — or for those arbitrarily designated as pirates.

Video: Fukn Newz – Planet Moron Is Doomed

The Die-Off Has Started – It’s The Sun

Every 63-odd million years or so, a massive species die-off seems to characterise the biological record of our planet.

Many postulates have been put forward for the reasons this happens, comet strikes, Earth’s orbit passing through the plane of the Galactic Ecliptic and encountering denser cosmic dust concentrations, etc.

But what about regular process cycles within our Primary, Sol, our Sun?

GM to temporarily close 20 plants to slash output

General Motors Corp. said Friday it will temporarily close 20 factories across North America and make sweeping cuts to its vehicle production as it tries to adjust to dramatically weaker automobile demand.

GM said it will cut 250,000 vehicles from its production schedule for the first quarter of 2009, which includes a cut of 60,000 vehicles announced last week. Normal production would be around 750,000 cars and trucks for the quarter, spokesman Tony Sapienza said.