Tag Archives | Collapse

Are We All Secretly Hoping For The End Of The World?

By on December 22, 2012 in News 9

Via Salon, Daisy Yuhas on the fascination of impending collapse:

Neuroscientist Shmuel Lissek suspects that some apocalyptic believers find the idea that the end is nigh to be validating. Individuals with a history of traumatic experiences, for example, may be fatalistic. For these people, finding a group of like-minded fatalists is reassuring. There may also be comfort in being able to attribute doom to some larger cosmic order—such as an ancient Mayan prophecy.

There’s an even broader allure to knowing the precise end date. “Apocalyptic beliefs make existential threats—the fear of our mortality—predictable,” Lissek says. Lissek, in collaboration with National Institute of Mental Health neuroscientist Christian Grillon and colleagues, has found that when an unpleasant or painful experience, such as an electric shock, is predictable, we relax. The anxiety produced by uncertainty is gone.

Steven Schlozman, drawing both from his experiences as a Harvard Medical School child psychiatrist and novelist (his first book recounts a zombie apocalypse) believes it’s the post-apocalyptic landscape that fascinates people most.

… Read the rest

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On Bringing Survivalism Into Mainstream Suburbia

By on November 20, 2012 in News 7

The New York Times examines the booming business of selling preparedness for societal breakdown, with more and more Americans worried that civilization may be on the verge of collapse in the wake of major hurricanes, blackouts, financial crisis, Iran building the bomb, et cetera. The irony is that the movement’s proponents are so obsessed with “getting ready” for the end of everything that in a sense they have already given up on our world:

The preparedness industry, always prosperous during hard times, is thriving again now. In Ron Douglas’s circles, people talk about “the end of the world as we know it” with such regularity that the acronym Teotwawki has come into widespread use.

The goal isn’t just to sell to the same old preparedness crowd. Red Shed wants to attract liberals and political moderates to a marketplace historically populated by conservatives and right-wing extremists. It’s about showing the gun-toting mountain man in his camouflage and the suburban soccer mom in her minivan that they want the same thing: peace of mind.

… Read the rest

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The United States of Europe Continues its Decline…

By on October 8, 2012 in News 4

Picture: SsolbergJ (PD)

The struggling European Supertstate has demanded an extra £1 billion from a cash strapped United Kingdom. The EU’s central command centre (located in Brussels, the capital city of Belgium) is due to issue its latest demands later in the month.

From Aol.co.uk:

Brussels is to bill Britain £1bn extra because it’s blown its 2012 budget. Brussels will pitch its demand for UK taxpayer cash – £976 million, to be exact – in late October, shortly before MEPs rubber-stamp a 7% hike in the EU’s annual budget.

The move puts more pressure on the UK government’s relationship with Brussels as EU spending strays, again, beyond previous estimates.

American readers who are not familliar with the ins and outs of the EU are directed towards this excellent guide from This American Life:

This American Life: Continental Breakup

If you’re like us, when the words “European debt crisis” pop up in the news you feel a little worried, and a little like taking a nap.

… Read the rest

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Neo-Nazi “Protectors” Fill Power Vacuum Caused by Collapse of EU Superstate in Greece

By on September 30, 2012 in News 47

Picture: Golden Dawn Logo (PD)

“Nation states are a firewall against tyranny” – Alex Jones

Famously left wing UK newspaper, The Guardian, carries an article that reports upon the inevitable collapse of the European superstate:

Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party is increasingly assuming the role of law enforcement officers on the streets of the bankrupt country, with mounting evidence that Athenians are being openly directed by police to seek help from the neo-Nazi group, analysts, activists and lawyers say.

In return, a growing number of Greek crime victims have come to see the party, whose symbol bears an uncanny resemblance to the swastika, as a “protector”.

One victim of crime, an eloquent US-trained civil servant, told the Guardian of her family’s shock at being referred to the party when her mother recently called the police following an incident involving Albanian immigrants in their downtown apartment block.

“They immediately said if it’s an issue with immigrants go to Golden Dawn,” said the 38-year-old, who fearing for her job and safety, spoke only on condition of anonymity.

… Read the rest

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It’s Dark As A Dungeon Deep Down In The Mine

By on October 18, 2010 in News 4
Report from the Epicenter of Fraudclosures: Can There be A Rescue of US Workers Facing Foreclosure & Unemployment?

WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA: In all of the economic issues we are dealing with, there is always a “back story, a deeper context” that is usually missing, “disappeared” like those Allende supporters in Chile in the 1970s who wanted to empower workers, not just rescue them when they get buried in a deep hole.

Most deeper issues go uncovered. Luis Campos, Director of the School of Anthropology at Chile’s Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, points out, “more buried than the miners themselves, the demands and the rights of the indigenous population continue to be flouted and unrecognized in our country.”

Many unsafe mines worldwide are still at risk from China to Zambia.

Who woulda thunk—certainly not the 1300 “journalists” on the scene–that this mine disaster had its origins in the era when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger helped snuff out an emerging popular democracy in the name of protecting what West Palm Beach-based writer and former economic “hit man,” John Perkins, calls the corporatocracy.… Read the rest

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Super Rich Are Stockpiling Gold

By on October 5, 2010 in News 16

goldSo are the mega-wealthy creating another asset bubble, or do they know something that the peasants who invest in stocks, bonds and real estate don’t? From Reuters:

The world’s wealthiest people have responded to economic worries by buying gold by the bar — and sometimes by the ton — and by moving assets out of the financial system, bankers catering to the very rich said on Monday.

Fears of a double-dip downturn have boosted the appetite for physical bullion as well as for mining company shares and exchange-traded funds, UBS executive Josef Stadler told the Reuters Global Private Banking Summit.

“They don’t only buy ETFs or futures; they buy physical gold,” said Stadler, who runs the Swiss bank’s services for clients with assets of at least $50 million to invest.

UBS is recommending top-tier clients hold 7-10 percent of their assets in precious metals like gold, which is on course for its tenth consecutive yearly gain and traded at around $1,314.50 an ounce on Monday, near the record level reached last week.

… Read the rest

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America Is On The Brink Of A Second Revolution

By on October 1, 2010 in News 86

Boston_tea_partyAt least that’s what mega-bear Paul B. Farrell says, adding that it’s going to cost us a whole lot more than we’ve already lost, writing at Marketwatch:

“What’s distinctive about the Tea Party is its anarchist streak — its antagonism toward any authority, its belligerent self-expression, and its lack of any coherent program or alternative to the policies it condemns,” warns Jacob Weisberg in Newsweek. But why not three cheers for the Tea Party Express?

Admit it, something historic is brewing. And yes, it’s good for America, even the anarchy. Revolution is renewal. Tea-baggers want to take on both parties, “restore honor” and “take back the country.” Bring it on, the feeling’s mutual.

OK, maybe most Americans just silently mimic the words, “we’re mad as hell, won’t take it any more.” But watch out: After November the campaign’s shrill rhetoric explodes into action.

Tea-baggers are kicking the revolution into high gear.

… Read the rest

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Peggy Noonan: America Is at Risk of Boiling Over

By on August 6, 2010 in News 6
Peggy Noonan with Ronald Reagan

Peggy Noonan with Ronald Reagan

Author and popular political pundit Noonan says out-of-touch leaders don’t see the need to cool things off in this op-ed for the Wall Street Journal:

It is, obviously, self-referential to quote yourself, but I do it to make a point. I wrote the following on New Year’s day, 1994. America 16 years ago was a relatively content nation, though full of political sparks: 10 months later the Republicans would take the House for the first time in 40 years. But beneath all the action was, I thought, a coming unease. Something inside was telling us we were living through “not the placid dawn of a peaceful age but the illusory calm before stern storms.”

The temperature in the world was very high. “At home certain trends—crime, cultural tension, some cultural Balkanization—will, we fear, continue; some will worsen. In my darker moments I have a bad hunch.

… Read the rest

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The Year America Dissolved

By on July 28, 2010 in News 12

Paul Craig Roberts, an economist who served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, puts to pen the vision of Alex Jones and the Infowars camp (see Alex’s video monologue below too) for a Mad Max type of collapsed society:

It was 2017. Clans were governing America.

Clans organized around families and individuals who possessed stocks of food, bullion, guns and ammunition.

The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.

As society broke down, the police became warlords…

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