Archive for the 'Collapse' Category
U.S. Military Mobilizes Thousands for Haiti Relief
January 15th, 2010Via: Reuters: The U.S. military is mobilizing thousands of soldiers, sailors and Marines along with members of the Air Force and Coast Guard for relief efforts in Haiti. Here are the main military components announced so far: WHO’S THERE ALREADY? * The vast majority of the forces announced for Haiti have not yet arrived, but […]
Haiti, Failed State: Gangs Armed With Machetes Loot Port-Au-Prince
January 15th, 2010Via: CBS: The earthquake aftermath has brought out the best and worst of the people of Haiti. Much like the days after Hurricane Katrina, looting has become a problem very quickly. The looting appears to be isolated to Port-au-Prince’s old commercial center. It’s an area that under normal circumstances would be filled with many shops, […]
Italy: Race Riots
January 12th, 2010Via: New York Times: More than a thousand African workers were put aboard buses and trains in the southern Italian region of Calabria over the weekend and shipped out to immigrant detention centers, following some of the country’s worst riots in years. The clashes began Thursday night in Rosarno, a working-class city amid citrus groves […]
The Recession Generation
January 12th, 2010From the article below: The situation could get even uglier if, as many predict, a depressed post-crisis landscape forces Americans to let go of the mythology of upward mobility. Oh the horror. Things will get worse if people live within their means and refuse to buy crap that they don’t actually want or need? This […]
2.4 Million Pounds of Plastic Pollution Enter the World’s Oceans Every Hour
January 6th, 2010Plasticalypse. Via: Chris Jordan: This new series looks at mass phenomena that occur on a global scale. Similarly to the first Running the Numbers series, each image portrays a specific quantity of something: the number of tuna fished from the world’s oceans every fifteen minutes, for example. But this time the statistics are global in […]
British Pensioners Are Buying Cheap Used Books to Burn for Heat?
January 5th, 2010Via: CNBC: Some cash-strapped British pensioners are buying books from charity shops and burn them to keep warm as freezing temperatures gripped the UK, a London newspaper reported Tuesday. Workers at a charity shop in Swansea, in south Wales, told London newspaper Metro that pensioners were looking for thick books such as encyclopedias — which […]
Living on Nothing but Food Stamps
January 5th, 2010Via: New York Times: After an improbable rise from the Bronx projects to a job selling Gulf Coast homes, Isabel Bermudez lost it all to an epic housing bust — the six-figure income, the house with the pool and the investment property. Now, as she papers the county with résumés and girds herself for rejection, […]
Gunbattle at Las Vegas Courthouse
January 5th, 2010Via: Los Angeles Times: Reporting from Washington and Las Vegas – A 66-year-old retiree apparently upset over losing a lawsuit related to his Social Security benefits opened fire in a federal courthouse lobby Monday morning, killing one person and wounding another in a chaotic shootout. The gunman, identified by law enforcement sources as Johnny Lee […]
Japan: Homeless People Living in Plastic Capsule Hotels
January 4th, 2010Via: New York Times: For Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas, home is a cubicle barely bigger than a coffin — one of dozens of berths stacked two units high in one of central Tokyo’s decrepit “capsule” hotels. “It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep,” he said, rolling his neck and stroking his black […]
Real Estate in Cape Coral Is Far From a Recovery
January 4th, 2010Via: New York Times: FELLOW adventurers, refugees from winter and armchair archaeologists, we are here on this shiny green tour bus to embark on a safari of sorts. We’ll be exploring the local habitat, as upended and reconfigured by an epochal real estate fiasco. Our guide, Marc Joseph, stalks wildlife of the white-elephant variety. A […]
