A Drop of Rain

Amazing stuff. I can’t confirm if this suicide was all at once or if it happened over a period of time, but that’s just nitpicking details.

This is part of the larger global story of drought and corresponding drop in food production (read that article, it contains links to more specific articles about different parts of the planet’s food and water situation) which is fast proving the fantasy that human population will keep expanding to 9 billion is just that, a fantasy. 6 billion was already probably 6 times more than the long term maximum carrying capacity of the planet. Also check out the recent PBS report on glaciers and climate change (one hour episode of NOW, flash video).

Thank god this isn’t an ideological matter, no matter how people try to paint it.

Here’s the original article on the Indian farmer’s mass suicide:

Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today.

The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels.

“The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago,” Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine

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What can you say? Things aren’t looking good.

Recently, in Barrons we have this interview with William Black:

Barron’s: Just how serious is this credit crisis? What is at stake here for the American taxpayer?

Black: Mopping up the savings-and-loan crisis cost $150 billion; this current crisis will probably cost a multiple of that. The scale of fraud is immense. This whole bank scandal makes Teapot Dome [of the 1920s] look like some kid’s doll set. Unless the current administration changes course pretty drastically, the scandal will destroy Barack Obama’s presidency. The Bush administration was even worse. But they are out of town. This will destroy Obama’s administration, both economically and in terms of integrity.

Yep, that’s about that. Or we can read to a recent winner of the (fake) nobel prize in economics (created because, as you hopefully have figured out by now, economics doesn’t merit a prize for anything), Joseph Stiglitz, Stiglitz Says Ties to Wall Street Doom Bank Rescue :

“All the ingredients they have so far are weak, and there are several missing ingredients,” Stiglitz said in an interview yesterday. The people who designed the plans are “either in the pocket of the banks or they’re incompetent.”

The Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, isn’t large enough to recapitalize the banking system, and the administration hasn’t been direct in addressing that shortfall, he said. Stiglitz said there are conflicts of interest at the White House because some of Obama’s advisers have close ties to Wall Street.

A bit more of this interview under the fold.
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Well, if you’re curious to hear what Ilargi sounds like, here’s a direct download of a recent interview (direct link to mp3 of just the Ilargi part of the episode) he gave on ecoshock.

Here’s the actual blog posting page so you can read the intro too, or hear the entire show, not just the Ilargi interivew. Click the top header of the article to hear the interview.

Nothing new or ground breaking, just cool to hear his voice in real life for once.

Keep up the good work Ilargi and Stoneleigh.

You have to watch these two videos, the more I hear, the more I realize that this has always been simple, and has always been a fraud.

Also make sure to watch the recent Bill Moyers interview with William K. Black, another eye-opener, as if we aren’t getting the point by now.

For months now, revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of Wall Street have reminded us that “The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.” In fact, the man you’re about to meet wrote a book with just that title. It was based upon his experience as a tough regulator during one of the darkest chapters in our financial history: the savings and loan scandal in the late 1980s.

Here’s Part 1 of the talk by Salbuchi – Global Financial Collapse. He’s an analyst from Argentina, a country that has seen its share of full economic collapses.

And here’s Part 2 of the talk