Auto sales tumbled 38% in January ... worst levels since 1982 ...
General Motors-49% Ford-40% Toyota Motor 32% decrease in its U.S. sales, Honda Motor (HMC) -28%. Nissan -30%.
In as much as this is a car civilization, this pretty much wraps it up...
cnn
Wind up
Last year America ramped up wind-power capacity to 25 gigawatts (GW) in 2008, overtaking the previous leader, Germany, according to new data from the Global Wind Energy Council. America added 8.4GW of installed power in 2008,
The new rightist regime in NZ is "gutting" (sic) some environment regulations. One that we wont miss: the local council persists in blocking Wind Turbines because they arent pretty.
Central Govt will allow them if "Nationally Important"
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Omid
February 2, 2009--Iran's Omid--or "hope"--blasts off aboard the rocket Safir-2 at an undisclosed location. The spacecraft is Iran's first domestically made satellite, said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The Irianian press rather coyley says the launcher has a range of "155 miles" - but its that 1957 feelin... its over your head
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Relocalization
Mike Rupert is singing "relocalization" -millions of guest workers are heading back home
Even in China, with all of it's ethnicities, the result will be the same... relocalization. And woe to those who are trapped in unfriendly regions.
Indians fleeing vanishing jobs in Dubai are leaving their cars abandoned at the airport; and where Poles and other late-comer EU arrivals flee the UK and Ireland to go home. I am certain that by this point in the collapse of industrial civilization, every sentient nation understands that it is going to "relocbe on its own very soon. Instinctively, most animals go home to die;
It looks like NZ will fare ok for the first phase og AGClimate Change
Westerlies are dumping snow on glaciers and "spillover" the mountains is filling the rivers.
The Canterbury plains are dry but, so when the remnants of Aus wheat are priced out by PRC, expect those rivers to be sucked up by irrigators.
No more braided Salmon rivers,
obrag
the Whole World Is Rioting … Why Aren’t We?
So far unrest hasnt appeared in english speaking nations... Only France, Greece, Russis China et al are up in arms
Violent Unrest Rocks China as Crisis Hits
indiatimes
"Transitional Ecosystems". "Asymmetrical Civil Unrest".
cnn
cnn
\independent
Shaun Walker in Moscow
Monday, 2 February 2009
Supporters of the banned National Bolshevik party protest against Moscow's rulers
The Kremlin's rule is beginning to look much shakier than at any time since Vladimir Putin came to power, after a series of protests in cities across its vast landmass this weekend by Russians ..
...Tiger, an acronym for The Society for Proactive Russian Citizens, is an online community of anti-government activists based across Russia's 11 time zones. ...
..."Everyone serious knows that in six months, things will be catastrophically bad here," says Mr Oreshkin.,,,Russia's 2009 budget is based on an oil price of $95 and will be in deficit if oil averages less than $70 this year.
Captn Watson of the SSSteve Irwin reports that Jap Whalers have mounted Sonic weapons - seems these are widely distributed protest-dispersants
I recall as a boy admiring the Soviet whale factory ships that docked in Wellington Harbour. Much later we learned that the CCCP was secretly killing lots of Blue whales ... whalers, you cant trust them.
Fiji Coup
I recall in 1986, the first Fiji military coup (Rambuka) In Auckland, A white (Viennese) sympathaser of Maori Land rights tried to explain to me how the coup was a good thing, because the "Non Indigenous" Indian population had too much economic power in Fiji. None of my Maori or Fiji friends put that to me, guess I was too whitebread.
Energy
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Manas
MOSCOW — ..the president of Kyrgyzstan announced that he'd shut a U.S. airbase in his country and insurgents in Pakistan blew up a bridge, disrupting the main U.S. supply route into Afghanistan.
..
Bakiyev made his announcement in Moscow, not in his own capital, shortly after the Russian government reportedly agreed to lend Kyrgyzstan $2 billion, write off $180 million in debt and add another $150 million in aid...
Manas is the main transit point through which U.S. troops fly into and out of Afghanistan. .
In Pakistan, meanwhile, Islamic insurgents allied with the Taliban blew up a bridge in the Khyber Pass, disrupting one of two truck routes from the port of Karachi by which U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan receive about 80 percent of their supplies.
mcclatchydc
Gaza is far from the biggest tragedy ,numerically ... (2M in Darfur camps, 5M killed in DRC) but something about the callousness of those West Bank settlers and the high tech torture of Gaza makes it somehow prominent in grotesquery
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The orca, regular visitors to the Taranaki coast, paid little attention to the surfers at Stent Rd surf break
[images from Stuff.co.nz evidently dont last]
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Transit Tracker
transittracker
keep tags on buses and trains so you can track them online or on your cell phone.
The system follows your ride's actual location — not an estimated schedule — so you know exactly when it will arrive at your station or stop
This gps system is the future of transPort.
in NZ, Rakon makes the world¹s smallest GPS oscillator and specialises in GPS products, which can be used in navigation products and weaponry."
So gps systems in cabs and buses could be a local goer
However, Rakon got paint-bombed recently, because their oscillators are inside JDAM bombs dropped on Gaza. A hard moral call - should Rakon refuse USA/Zion work?
engadget