Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

New shantytowns to be ‘triaged’ in US cities

Slideshow: Inside California’s Tent Cities By JESSE McKINLEY FRESNO, Calif. — As the operations manager of an outreach center for the homeless here, Paul Stack is used to seeing people down on their luck. What he had never seen before was people living in tents and lean-tos on the railroad lot across from the center. […]

Graph of the Day: New Home Sales, 1963-2009

From Calculated Risk: The graph shows New Home Sales vs. recessions for the last 45 years. New home sales have fallen off a cliff. Sales of new one-family houses in February 2009 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 337,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department […]

Mish: America's abandoned cities

Flint Michigan typifies the plight of inner city urban decay. Inquiring minds are wondering what if anything can be done. MLive explores that issue in an article discussing what to do with abandoned neighborhoods in Flint. Look in any direction from Bianca Bates’ north Flint home, and you’ll see graffiti-covered siding, boarded-up windows and overgrown […]

Taibbi: It's over

This is highly refined doomer source material. The global economic crisis isn’t about money – it’s about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution By MATT TAIBBI It’s over — we’re officially, royally fucked. no empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of […]

Chimpanzee massacre in Democratic Republic of Congo

  Poachers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) threaten the existence of the largest remaining continuous population of chimpanzees in the world. This conclusion is based on observations made during a 2007-2008 survey of towns, villages and forests in the Buta-Aketi region of the country. Hicks, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), […]

Twenty years on, some birds still haven't recovered from Exxon Valdez oil spill

Twenty years ago today—at 12:04 AM on March 24th, 1989—the Exxon Valdez tanker struck Bligh reef in Prince William Sound causing 10.8 million gallons of crude oil to spill into the sea. The spill decimated the ecosystem and wildlife for 11,000 square miles and became one of the world’s most infamous oil spills. Twenty years […]

Graph of the Day: Mortgage Equity Withdrawal, 1991-2009

From Calculated Risk: Here are the Kennedy-Greenspan estimates (NSA – not seasonally adjusted) of home equity extraction for Q4 2008, provided by Jim Kennedy based on the mortgage system presented in “Estimates of Home Mortgage Originations, Repayments, and Debt On One-to-Four-Family Residences,” Alan Greenspan and James Kennedy, Federal Reserve Board FEDS working paper no. 2005-41. […]

Kenya security forces fight out-of-control forest fires

By Peter Greste, BBC News, Nairobi Kenya has mobilised 3,500 security personnel to fight a series of bush fires raging out of control in some of the country’s most important forests. The government estimates that more than 4,600 hectares (11,370 acres) of bushland have already been destroyed. At least 10 people have been arrested on […]

Ship-breaking booms as global shipping collapses

By Rina Chandran ALANG, India (Reuters) – A global economic slowdown has hit industries ranging from automakers to investment banks, but in one small town on India’s western coast, business is at record levels and workers can hardly keep up with demand. In Alang, home to the world’s largest ship breaking facility on the coast […]

Pirate logging out of control in Madagascar's rainforest

Armed gangs are logging rosewood and other valuable hardwoods from Marojejy and Masoala parks in Madagascar following abandonment of posts by rangers in the midst of the island nation’s political crisis, reports marojejy.com and local sources. "It is with great sadness that we report the temporary closure of Marojejy National Park to tourism," stated the […]

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