The cucumber crisis which is sweeping across Germany is now allegedly an act of bio terrorism as this article states:

The contamination with the pathogen E. coli EHEC serotype O104 is very likely a bio-terrorist background.

At least, leave the original documents of the Robert Koch Institute and other authorities interpreted.

In addition, the data show microbiological Shiga toxin on (syn. verotoxin)-producing _E. coli_ (STEC / VTEC), the bacteria must have been bred antibiotikareistent.

The most important for lay people and consumers understand and sign:

In the interior of contaminated tomatoes and cucumbers nachgeweisene EHEC bacteria can not naturally be to get there.

(Translated from German).

Press TV – Budget cuts, CCTV’s, bail-outs, unemployment and police brutality. Welcome to Europe! a continent that they themselves claim practicing free-market policies and being more democratic than most other countries.

Interestingly however, these past years they have all experienced a downward trend in most sectors, but of course not in military operations abroad.

Up until the Second World War, the European nations had colonized huge parts of the world. Even after the war, when the global decolonization had commenced, their presence was felt all over the world, as they had their corporations in most countries extracting resources. So when the price of oil and other natural resources began to increase some years ago, these nations were naturally first to cash in on the profit.

In a free-market economy, this should mean an increase in wealth and job opportunities for the entire society. Yet a 2008 UN report paints a different picture. The gap between the rich and poor households has witnessed a dramatic increase since 1990, despite the economic growth and creation of million jobs prior to the current financial crises.

The reason for this can be summed up in one much talked about term, inflation! Meaning that either prices have risen, or the purchasing power of money has decreased.

So when the employees wish to enjoy their income, they have to do this on credit. Consequently, debt increases, and now people are even more in debt. Being in debt however, is equal to a lack of wealth. Still people keep spending with their illusionary wealth, or what most of us would call, a credit card. What else could they do? After all, the same UN report tells us how the only way to save an ailing economy is to consume more.

And right now, everyone is in debts. Even companies and governments have debts they cannot repay. This has happened to some of the largest multinational companies, in some of the “wealthiest” European countries, such as the UBS of Switzerland or Northern Rock of England. Despite being bailed-out, they are still cutting down on certain expenses with the claim that they have to balance their financial statements. Unfortunately, it is only the man in the street that feels these cuts, lower wages and/or working conditions, longer hours of work and yet major bonuses are paid out to the elite.

This burden is clearer on ordinary citizens when the governments are faced with debts. In order not to default, which really is only a nicer way of saying not to have their regimes collapse, these governments have to both raise taxes and cut budgets.

The European governments have practically cut budgets in all sectors, except for bailing out big corporations, paying bonuses to the elite and of course in expanding their military operations abroad. No wonder people have again turned to the streets, protesting at their governments. 1st of May saw clashes between demonstrators and the police in England and Germany again. And now there are once more clashes in Greece. These clashes have been on and off for over a year now.

After all, why should military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya continue, when unemployment has reached 15.9% in Greece? Or when Northern Irelands Health department has to sack 4000 of its employees? When an increasing number of tenants in England are having problem paying their rents? When the UK national debt has reached the incredible amount of £ 1’000’000’000’000, and is increasing by £ 7’000 a second? When tuition fees have risen so much that education may soon become a luxury service? And who would ever believe that BBC would be in such a bad shape that it has to cut 25% of its budget? And yes, the same goes for most European multinational companies, downsizing their operations, shutting down factories and offices, cutting budgets, sacking people and most are happy if they have a better month than the previous month.

I suppose you could say it all started in Greece in early 2010, when its government declared the country is going bankrupt. And later, Portugal together along with the IMF and EU agreed to a €78 billion bail-out plan.

Now, this one little act of being bailed out, something so many companies and now more and more countries are faced with in a part of the world that claims to be enjoying a free-market economy, shows how these countries do not practice free-market policies at all. As in a free market, if a company is doing badly, it will lose its market share to a more successful company, and it might even be eliminated by this other company.

So, there is no free market in these countries. Instead what we have is a Casino economy. Where, you will literary gamble your own money, hoping to cash in big, but you lose. Now you are too scared to go home to tell your spouse that you have lost all your savings, so instead you go to the bank hoping that with the credit you might win your money back and even enjoy a small profit. But instead, you lose the banks money too. And now you are really scared to go home. Not only did you lose your savings, which was meant to pay for your children’s education, buy you that new car so you could have better transportation and pay for your sunny holiday trip because you need to recharge your batteries, but you also lost the banks money.

Hence, you will have to pay interest each month till this new debt is gone, so your monthly expenses have risen and you will have to cut back on your other expenses, less leisure, cheaper clothes and food, no new toys for the kids and so on. And instead of doing the right thing, which would be leaving the casino, letting your spouse know what you have done, and working together to get through this crises to be back on your feet as soon as possible, you go to the bank to spend some more of the money that is not yours, simply because the United Nation tells you that spending is good.

This ‘gambleholic’, is your employer in the company that you are working for. It is the members of parliament and the government that are running your country. The savings that has been gambled away was meant to create more job opportunities for youths, make it easier for youths to financially survive while undertaking a university degree, reduce inflation, improve health services, increase public safety and make life better for the retired.

The employer, the politician, and the leaders of the European nations have not done what they had to. They did not tell their people how they lost the people’s money. Instead they told them everything is fine and the economy is recovering, so you can go out and spend more. They even told their people if they are out of money, they could always take a loan. Then they told them, from now on everyone should save their money in pension funds, or, you will have no money when you are retired. All so the leaders could hit the slot machines. Most citizens that have retired these past years in Europe cannot even pay their own rent, as share prices in all stock exchanges all over Europe have gone down.

Now the situation is really bad in most of Europe. There have been so many cuts that hospitals, prisons and courthouses are not only sacking some employees, but closing down several branches. Universities are no longer being built to support the growth in population, but they are instead either being shut down, tuition fees are increasing, financial aid to university students are diminishing and filters are put into place to filter away unwanted students-to-be to never be accepted for a degree.

So it should not come as a surprise, when Greeks have once more turned to the streets, demonstrating against their governments spending spree. The question that remains is when will these leaders listen to their people?

• The world population will rise dramatically; every 13-15 years there will be one billion additional people: In 30-40 years the planet will no longer be able to sustain the population; this will have distressing effects for humankind.
• 10 billion people are manageable only with dictatorship and military suppression; culture, individual development and life of free spirit will no longer be allowed, it will be impossible and definitely not open to discussion.
• Exorbitant spending on military, wars, large industries and state administration together with corruption do not allow for any solutions.
• The incredibly hyped up weapons and car industry will drain the earth of its resources and lead the planet to total collapse resulting in the complete destruction of life.
• Due to huge debts and speculation the next financial crisis will lead to a complete breakdown of the system and destroy with it entire countries and nations resulting in widespread anarchy and suffering.
• The unequal distribution of wealth and natural resources of the earth will mean the end of supra-millionaires and billionaires as well as their children’s future.
• Increasing and ever more unpredictable change in the climate will bring enormous destruction to continents resulting in incalculable damage and costs; not to mention hideous suffering.
• We have to expect more drought, floods, heat waves, fires, heavy rainfall, storms, tornadoes, cyclones with the worst imaginable aftermath for the environment and people.
• Sea levels will increase by 20-60 cm. in the next 20-60 years; some experts predict an increase of 90-150 cm. By 2100, all this will wreak havoc.
• Beaches, landscapes, entire islands and natural habitats will be completely destroyed or simply disappear; there will be overwhelmingly more contamination and pollution.
• Natural resources (e.g. fish, drinking water, natural food, water for agricultural productions, healthy farm land) will decrease spectacularly and become more and more contaminated.
• Mega-cities and widespread construction as well as pollution, littering, contamination and radiation of the earth, air, water, seas and food will increase.
• All variations of cancer and serious illnesses will increase dramatically as a result of pollution, poisoning, fine dust and radiation: What the chain reactions in the human body will be nobody knows. No one has been there before.
• 1-2 billion people will fall into poverty in the coming 10 years; in 30-40 years this will be 80% of the population; completely without or at best with minimum medical provision.
• The sewage water (with poisonous substances) of 2.5 billion people flows directly into the oceans and seas today; this amount will double in the next 25 years and in 40 years will completely destroy nature.
• Several hundred million people will migrate in search of a new home as a result of unemployment, wars, climate change and natural catastrophes.
• All kinds of rubbish and waste, especially nuclear, electric and car waste, will take on gigantic dimensions and totally poison land, oceans and seas.
• The price of oil, wheat, corn, rice, coffee, sugar and soya will rise dramatically and thus become unattainable for 30% of the world’s population; 80% will have to live under the bread line.
• Most people in industrialized nations will have significantly less disposable wealth which will curtail holidays. Tourism around the globe will collapse.
• Unemployment statistics fail to reflect reality. Around the world today there are over half a billion people who have no work or too little work; this will result in massive social unrest.
• Crises, unrest, revolutions, wars, tax hikes and martial laws will completely choke the human experience; religious conflict will form part of everyday life.
• The explosive hotspots and conflicts will increase and totally change the world; WWIII is imminent, ongoing and can begin any moment; they are all ready.
• Humanity and all religions have lost the Archetypes of the Soul, also Love, the Truth, Trust, as well as genuine inner needs and the inner Spirit.
• The truth has no chance today. Lies, perversion, lunacy, religious psychosis, narcissism, arrogance, ignorance and stupidity have replaced the truth.
• Humanity is (nearly) completely brainwashed and manipulated, degenerated in its inner being. It has become soulless; therefore driven by illusions, greed and repression of guilt.
• The world will collapse beyond repair in 30-40 years with 9-10 billion people. The “end” is foreseeable and will become reality for those alive today and especially for the coming generation!

Download the World Report 2011…

BBC – The president of the World Bank has warned that the world is “one shock away from a full-blown crisis”.

Robert Zoellick cited rising food prices as the main threat to poor nations who risk “losing a generation”.

He was speaking in Washington at the end of the spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Meanwhile, G20 finance chiefs, who also met in Washington, pledged financial support to help new governments in the Middle East and North Africa.

Mr Zoellick said such support was vital.

“The crisis in the Middle East and North Africa underscores how we need to put the conclusions from our latest world development report into practice. The report highlighted the importance of citizen security, justice and jobs,” he said.

He also called for the World Bank to act quickly to support reforms in the region.

“Waiting for the situation to stabilise will mean lost opportunities. In revolutionary moments the status quo is not a winning hand.”

At the Washington meetings, turmoil in the Middle East, volatile oil prices and high unemployment were also discussed.

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn raised particular concerns about high levels of unemployment among young people.

“It’s probably too much to say that it’s a jobless recovery, but it’s certainly a recovery with not enough jobs,” he said.

“Especially because of youth unemployment… there is now a risk that this will be turned into a life sentence, and that there is a possibility of a lost generation,” he said.

The Economic Collapse Blog - In case you haven’t noticed, the world is on the verge of a horrific global food crisis.  At some point, this crisis will affect you and your family.  It may not be today, and it may not be tomorrow, but it is going to happen.  Crazy weather and horrifying natural disasters have played havoc with agricultural production in many areas of the globe over the past couple of years.  Meanwhile, the price of oil has begun to skyrocket.  The entire global economy is predicated on the ability to use massive amounts of inexpensive oil to cheaply produce food and other goods and transport them over vast distances.  Without cheap oil the whole game changes.  Topsoil is being depleted at a staggering rate and key aquifers all over the world are being drained at an alarming pace.  Global food prices are already at an all-time high and they continue to move up aggressively.  So what is going to happen to our world when hundreds of millions more people cannot afford to feed themselves?

Most Americans are so accustomed to supermarkets that are absolutely packed to the gills with massive amounts of really inexpensive food that they cannot even imagine that life could be any other way.  Unfortunately, that era is ending.

There are all kinds of indications that we are now entering a time when there will not be nearly enough food for everyone in the world.  As competition for food supplies increases, food prices are going to go up.  In fact, at some point they are going to go way up.

Let’s look at some of the key reasons why an increasing number of people believe that a massive food crisis is on the horizon.

The following are 20 signs that a horrific global food crisis is coming….

#1 According to the World Bank, 44 million people around the globe have been pushed into extreme poverty since last June because of rising food prices.

#2 The world is losing topsoil at an astounding rate.  In fact, according to Lester Brown, “one third of the world’s cropland is losing topsoil faster than new soil is forming through natural processes”.

#3 Due to U.S. ethanol subsidies, almost a third of all corn grown in the United States is now used for fuel.  This is putting a lot of stress on the price of corn.

#4 Due to a lack of water, some countries in the Middle East find themselves forced to almost totally rely on other nations for basic food staples.  For example, it is being projected that there will be no more wheat production in Saudi Arabia by the year 2012.

#5 Water tables all over the globe are being depleted at an alarming rate due to “overpumping”.  According to the World Bank, there are 130 million people in China and 175 million people in India that are being fed with grain with water that is being pumped out of aquifers faster than it can be replaced.  So what happens once all of that water is gone?

#6 In the United States, the systematic depletion of the Ogallala Aquifercould eventually turn “America’s Breadbasket” back into the “Dust Bowl”.

#7 Diseases such as UG99 wheat rust are wiping out increasingly large segments of the world food supply.

#8 The tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis in Japan have rendered vast agricultural areas in that nation unusable.  In fact, there are many that believe that eventually a significant portion of northern Japan will be considered to beuninhabitable.  Not only that, many are now convinced that the Japanese economy, the third largest economy in the world, is likely to totally collapse as a result of all this.

#9 The price of oil may be the biggest factor on this list.  The way that we produce our food is very heavily dependent on oil.  The way that we transport our food is very heavily dependent on oil.  When you have skyrocketing oil prices, our entire food production system becomes much more expensive.  If the price of oil continues to stay high, we are going to see much higher food prices and some forms of food production will no longer make economic sense at all.

#10 At some point the world could experience a very serious fertilizer shortage.  According to scientists with the Global Phosphorus Research Initiative, the world is not going to have enough phosphorous to meet agricultural demand in just 30 to 40 years.

#11 Food inflation is already devastating many economies around the globe.  For example, India is dealing with an annual food inflation rate of 18 percent.

#12 According to the United Nations, the global price of food reached a new all-time high in February.

#13 According to the World Bank, the global price of food has risen 36% over the past 12 months.

#14 The commodity price of wheat has approximately doubled since last summer.

#15 The commodity price of corn has also about doubled since last summer.

#16 The commodity price of soybeans is up about 50% since last June.

#17 The commodity price of orange juice has doubled since 2009.

#18 There are about 3 billion people around the globe that live on the equivalent of 2 dollars a day or less and the world was already on the verge ofeconomic disaster before this year even began.

#19 2011 has already been one of the craziest years since World War 2.  Revolutions have swept across the Middle East, the United States has gotten involved in the civil war in Libya, Europe is on the verge of a financial meltdown and the U.S. dollar is dying.  None of this is good news for global food production.

#20 There have been persistent rumors of shortages at some of the biggest suppliers of emergency food in the United States.  The following is an excerpt from a recent “special alert” posted on Raiders News Network….

Look around you. Read the headlines. See the largest factories of food, potassium iodide, and other emergency product manufacturers literally closing their online stores and putting up signs like those on Mountain House’s Official Website and Thyrosafe’s Factory Webpage that explain, due to overwhelming demand, they are shutting down sales for the time being and hope to reopen someday.

So what does all of this mean?

It means that time is short.

For years, many “doom and gloomers” have been yelling and screaming that a food crisis is coming.

Well, up to this point there hasn’t been much to get alarmed about.  Food prices have started to rise, but the truth is that our stores are still packed to the rafters will gigantic amounts of relatively cheap food.

However, you would have to be an idiot not to see the warning signs.  Just look at what happened in Japan after March 11th.  Store shelves were cleared out almost instantly.

It isn’t going to happen today, and it probably isn’t going to happen tomorrow, but at some point a major league food crisis is going to strike.

So what are you and your family going to do then?

You might want to start thinking about that.

A shocking “urgent” update to the Russian Agricultural Ministries February (2011) report that warned our world’s ability to feed itself had been “doomed”because of the growing number of superstorms that have pounded our planet’s most abundant agricultural areas this past year, is now warning that the over 7 meter (21 feet) tsunami generated by the 9.1 Magnitude Japanese Megaquake has “virtually assured” an outbreak of Total Global War within the next 12 months.

In our 6 February 2011 report “New Superstorms Warned Have ‘Doomed’ World Food Production” we had detailed the Ministries previous warnings which, in part, said:

“…when the damage caused by these Superstorms is combined with the cataclysmic destruction of over one-third of Russia’s crops due to historic fires and drought, the historic drought in China that is now being warned could cripple their entire winter wheat crop, the Superstorms that have pounded Southern Africa leaving their agricultural sector in ruins, the Superstorms that have virtually destroyed Sri Lanka’s ability to feed itself, the Superstorm that killed over 2,000 in Pakistan and destroyed its agriculture sector, historic fires and drought in Ukraine that destroyed 20% of their crops, the record cold and snow hitting a European Continent after their worst flooding in decades, catastrophic Superstorms hitting Brazil that has left nearly 700 dead, and a catastrophic drought in Argentina….to all of these, and more, the damage done in the past 12 months to our world’s ability to feed its 6.8 billion human beings has been “completely destroyed.”

According to this “urgent” update, however, what was grim before has gotten downright scary as new reports from Japan are warning that meltdowns are “now underway” at two of their nuclear plants as the death toll from this unprecedented catastrophe has reached 10,000 and millions are left struggling to find food and water.

Even though Japan has ordered up the largest mobilization of their Self-Defense Forces since World War II to deal with this unprecedented crisis, this “urgent”update continues, the destruction caused by the combined effects of the Megaquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Meltdown is nothing short of “catastrophic” due to the regions being most affected is this Pacific island Nations small, but critically vital, agricultural region and fishing ports.

Important to note is that Japan is an archipelago of 6,852 islands with the four largest of them being Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, which together account for 97% of Japan’s total land area, and which holds our planet’s tenth-largest population of over 127 million people and has the world’s third largest economy after the United States and China.

Even more critical to note is that only 15% of Japan’s land is suitable for cultivation, meaning they have to import about 50% of their requirements for grain and fodder crops and rely on imports for most of their supply of meat.

Japan is, also, our world’s 2^nd largest fishing nation having over 2,000 fishing ports and one of the most advanced aquaculture (sea farming) industries on the planet.

With these facts known, this “urgent” update continues, it is critical to note that the main destruction that has been wrought upon Japan was centered on that 15% of their cultivatable land and has destroyed what little ability they had to feed themselves to begin with, along with totally annihilating over three-quarters of their vast fishing fleet, ports and food processors.

Not to fear, though, this “urgent” update continues, the Japanese people will not be left starving as this First World Nation has more than enough monetary resources to feed itself; but, the “critical danger” lies in their entering the Global market to feed themselves at a time when food prices have skyrocketed to historic highs and Josette Sheeran, the UN World Food Programme’s executive director, has warned that “If people don’t have enough to eat they only have three options: they can revolt, they can migrate or they can die.”

According to Britain’s Telegraph News Service these revolts are now underway and are being countered as authoritarian governments across the world have begun aggressively stockpiling food in order to stop the rapid rise of riots threatening their regimes, but according to the Telegraph’s report is “too little, too late” as our world had been previously warned was just “one poor harvest away from total chaos”.

And with the catastrophe that is now Japan, that “one poor harvest” is now upon us all.

To those in other First World Nations believing they will be immune to the “total chaos” to come as food prices continue skyrocketing and shortages loom they couldn’t be more mistaken, as one of America’s top trend forecasters, Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, has warned “that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.”

Karen Ward, a senior economist at the Worldwide bank of HSBC, further warned this past week (before the Japan Megaquake) that food riots will soon hit Britain too, and as we can, in part read from her report: “In the Northern city where I live poverty is already a way of life, for too many adults and children. Jobs are few are far between and young people face an uncertain future.  Imagining unrest and food riots on the streets of the UK may be hard for those living in other countries. For me it is not. The new generation of British people will not be as easily led as previous generations may have been.”

In Sister Adalsinda Bachmeier’s seminal work “The Great Famine Of 2009-2012” the basis for what is happening now was laid to those who cared to listen, and she stated “that hidden within each and every human beings DNA is a “Great Famine Gene” that upon its activation by future events it knows will occur, but seldom in today’s ‘modern’ World acknowledged, begins excreting its power over our bodies leading to rapid and sustained weight gain, feelings of hopelessness, depression and acts of self destruction.”

As has been proven many times over, however, and sadly, the many warnings being shouted to people by organizations and groups such as ours are drowned out by those who call us liars, hoaxers, disinformation agents, etc., with no truth being given to substantiate what they say.

The US media, in particular, is the guiltiest of making baseless charges against all those who fail to obey the regimes orders to keep their citizens ignorant, but are more accurately described by Israeli thinker Uri Avnery as “a mixture of propaganda, news and entertainment” , and in testimony last week before the US Congress, the American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was forced to admit that there is“no real news” in the United States anymore.

So with the void of “real news” being available to those seeking truth, those like us (and our numbers are growing fewer by the day) continue our efforts to inform and advise, and which in the case of our 9 March report “March Mega Quake Warning Issued For United States” saved at least 10 of our Japanese readers and their families who heeded our warning and moved themselves to safety before the catastrophe struck.

And to these times we live in, and as we had stated in our 8 March report “Global Resource War Warned Has Begun Between East-West”, the Pentagons 2004 top-secret report released to the British press, but still banned in the US, gives us all this stark warning “once again, warfare will define human life.”

© March 13, 2011 EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com.

By Chris Hedges

March 07, 2011 “Truthdig” – - I have walked through the barren remains of Babylon in Iraq and the ancient Roman city of Antioch, the capital of Roman Syria, which now lies buried in silt deposits. I have visited the marble ruins of Leptis Magna, once one of the most important agricultural centers in the Roman Empire, now isolated in the desolate drifts of sand southeast of Tripoli. I have climbed at dawn up the ancient temples in Tikal, while flocks of brightly colored toucans leapt through the jungle foliage below. I have stood amid the remains of the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor along the Nile, looking at the statue of the great Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II lying broken on the ground, with Percy Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias” running through my head:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Civilizations rise, decay and die. Time, as the ancient Greeks argued, for individuals and for states is cyclical. As societies become more complex they become inevitably more precarious. They become increasingly vulnerable. And as they begin to break down there is a strange retreat by a terrified and confused population from reality, an inability to acknowledge the self-evident fragility and impending collapse. The elites at the end speak in phrases and jargon that do not correlate to reality. They retreat into isolated compounds, whether at the court at Versailles, the Forbidden City or modern palatial estates. The elites indulge in unchecked hedonism, the accumulation of vaster wealth and extravagant consumption. They are deaf to the suffering of the masses who are repressed with greater and greater ferocity. Resources are more ruthlessly depleted until they are exhausted. And then the hollowed-out edifice collapses. The Roman and Sumerian empires fell this way. The Mayan elites, after clearing their forests and polluting their streams with silt and acids, retreated backward into primitivism.

As food and water shortages expand across the globe, as mounting poverty and misery trigger street protests in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, the elites do what all elites do. They launch more wars, build grander monuments to themselves, plunge their nations deeper into debt, and as it all unravels they take it out on the backs of workers and the poor. The collapse of the global economy, which wiped out a staggering $40 trillion in wealth, was caused when our elites, after destroying our manufacturing base, sold massive quantities of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities to pension funds, small investors, banks, universities, state and foreign governments and shareholders. The elites, to cover the losses, then looted the public treasury to begin the speculation over again. They also, in the name of austerity, began dismantling basic social services, set out to break the last vestiges of unions, slashed jobs, froze wages, threw millions of people out of their homes, and stood by idly as we created a permanent underclass of unemployed and underemployed.

The Mayan elite became, at the end, as the anthropologist Ronald Wright notes in “A Short History of Progress,” “… extremists, or ultra-conservatives, squeezing the last drops of profit from nature and humanity.” This is how all civilizations, including our own, ossify and die. The signs of imminent death may be undeniable. Common sense may cry out for a radical new response. But the race toward self-immolation only accelerates because of intellectual and moral paralysis. As Sigmund Freud grasped in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” and “Civilization and Its Discontents,” human societies are as intoxicated and blinded by their own headlong rush toward death and destruction as they are by the search for erotic fulfillment.

The unrest in the Middle East, the implosion of national economies such as those of Ireland and Greece, the increasing anger of a beleaguered working class at home and abroad, the growing desperate human migrations and the refusal to halt our relentless destruction of the ecosystem on which life depends are the harbingers of our own collapse and the consequences of the idiocy of our elite and the folly of globalization. Protests that are not built around a complete reconfiguration of American society, including a rapid dismantling of empire and the corporate state, can only forestall the inevitable. We will be saved only with the birth of a new and militant radicalism which seeks to dethrone our corrupt elite from power, not negotiate for better terms.

The global economy is built on the erroneous belief that the marketplace—read human greed—should dictate human behavior and that economies can expand eternally. Globalism works under the assumption that the ecosystem can continue to be battered by massive carbon emissions without major consequences. And the engine of global economic expansion is based on the assurance that there will always be plentiful and cheap oil. The inability to confront simple truths about human nature and the natural world leaves the elites unable to articulate new social, economic and political paradigms. They look only for ways to perpetuate a dying system. Thomas Friedman and the array of other propagandists for globalization make as much sense as Charlie Sheen.

Globalization is the modern articulation of the ancient ideology used by past elites to turn citizens into serfs and the natural world into a wasteland for profit. Nothing to these elites is sacred. Human beings and the natural world are exploited until exhaustion or collapse. The elites make no pretense of defending the common good. It is, in short, the defeat of rational thought and the death of humanism. The march toward self-annihilation has already obliterated 90 percent of the large fish in the oceans and wiped out half of the mature tropical forests, the lungs of the planet. At this rate by 2030 only 10 percent of the Earth’s tropical forests will remain. Contaminated water kills 25,000 people every day around the globe, and each year some 20 million children are impaired by malnourishment. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere now are at 329 parts per million and climbing, with most climate scientists warning that the level must remain below 350 ppm to sustain life as we know it. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the measurement could reach 541 to 970 ppm by 2100. At that point huge parts of the planet, beset with overpopulation, droughts, soil erosion, freak storms, massive crop failures and rising sea levels, will be unfit for human existence.

Jared Diamond in his essay “The Last Americans” notes that by the time Hernan Cortés reached the Yucatán, millions of Mayan subjects had vanished.

“Why,” Diamond writes, “did the kings and nobles not recognize and solve these problems? A major reason was that their attention was evidently focused on the short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with one another, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all these activities.”

“Pumping that oil, cutting down those trees, and catching those fish may benefit the elite by bringing them money or prestige and yet be bad for society as a whole (including the children of the elite) in the long run,” Diamond went on. “Maya kings were consumed by immediate concerns for their prestige (requiring more and bigger temples) and their success in the next war (requiring more followers), rather than for the happiness of commoners or of the next generation. Those people with the greatest power to make decisions in our own society today regularly make money from activities that may be bad for society as a whole and for their own children; those decision-makers include Enron executives, many land developers, and advocates of tax cuts for the rich.”

It was no different on Easter Island. The inhabitants, when they first settled the 64-square-mile island during the fifth century, found abundant fresh water and woods filled with the Chilean wine palm, a tree that can reach the size of an oak. Seafood, including fish, seals, porpoises and turtles, and nesting seabirds were plentiful. Easter Island’s society, which split into an elaborate caste system of nobles, priests and commoners, had within five or six centuries swelled to some 10,000 people. The natural resources were devoured and began to disappear.

“Forest clearance for the growing of crops would have led to population increase, but also to soil erosion and decline of soil fertility,” Paul Bahn and John Flenley write in “Easter Island, Earth Island.” “Progressively more land would have had to be cleared. Trees and shrubs would also be cut down for canoe building, firewood, house construction, and for the timbers and ropes needed in the movement and erection of statues. Palm fruits would be eaten, thus reducing regeneration of the palm. Rats, introduced for food, could have fed on the palm fruits, multiplied rapidly and completely prevented palm regeneration. The over exploitation of prolific sea bird resources would have eliminated these for all but the offshore islets. Rats could have helped in this process by eating eggs. The abundant food provided by fishing, sea birds and rats would have encouraged rapid initial human population growth. Unrestrained human population increase would later put pressure on availability of land, leading to disputes and eventually warfare. Non-availability of timber and rope would make it pointless to carve further statues. A disillusionment with the efficacy of the statue religion in providing the wants of the people could lead to the abandonment of this cult. Inadequate canoes would restrict fishing to the inshore waters, leading to further decline in protein supplies. The result could have been general famine, warfare and the collapse of the whole economy, leading to a marked population decline.”

Clans, in the later period of the Easter Island civilization, competed to honor their ancestors by constructing larger and larger hewn stone images, which demanded the last remnants of the timber, rope and manpower on the island. By the year 1400 the woods were gone. The soil had eroded and washed into the sea. The islanders began to fight over old timbers and were reduced to eating their dogs and soon all the nesting birds.

The desperate islanders developed a belief system that posited that the erected stone gods, the moai, would come to life and save them from disaster. This last retreat into magic characterizes all societies that fall into terminal decline. It is a frantic response to loss of control as well as despair and powerlessness. This desperate retreat into magic led to the Cherokee ghost dance, the doomed Taki Onqoy revolt against the Spanish invaders in Peru, and the Aztec prophecies of the 1530s. Civilizations in the last moments embrace a total severance from reality, a reality that becomes too bleak to be absorbed.

The modern belief by evangelical Christians in the rapture, which does not exist in biblical literature, is no less fantastic, one that at once allows for the denial of global warming and of evolution and the absurd idea that the righteous will all be saved—floating naked into heaven at the end of time. The faith that science and technology, which are morally neutral and serve human ambitions, will make the world whole again is no less delusional. We offer up our magical thinking in secular as well as religious form.

We think we have somehow escaped from the foibles of the past. We are certain that we are wiser and greater than those who went before us. We trust naively in the inevitability of our own salvation. And those who cater to this false hope, especially as things deteriorate, receive our adulation and praise. We in the United States, only 5 percent of the world’s population, are outraged if anyone tries to tell us we don’t have a divine right to levels of consumption that squander 25 percent of the world’s energy. President Jimmy Carter, when he suggested that such consumption was probably not beneficial, became a figure of national ridicule. The worse it gets the more we demand illusionary Ronald Reagan happy talk. Those willing to cater to fantasy and self-delusion are, because they make us politically passive, lavishly funded and promoted by corporate and oligarchic forces. And by the very end we are joyfully led over the cliff by simpletons and lunatics, many of whom appear to be lining up for the Republican presidential nomination.

“Are the events of three hundred years ago on a small remote island of any significance to the world at large?” Bahn and Flenley ask. “We believe they are. We consider that Easter Island was a microcosm which provides a model for the whole planet. Like the Earth, Easter Island was an isolated system. The people there believed that they were the only survivors on Earth, all other land having sunk beneath the sea. They carried out for us the experiment of permitting unrestricted population growth, profligate use of resources, destruction of the environment and boundless confidence in their religion to take care of the future. The result was an ecological disaster leading to a population crash. A crash on a similar scale (60 percent of the population) for the planet Earth would lead to the deaths of about 1.8 billion people, roughly 100 times the death toll of the Second World War. Do we have to repeat the experiment on this grand scale? Do we have to be as cynical as Henry Ford and say ‘History is bunk’? Would it not be more sensible to learn the lesson of Easter Island history, and apply it to the Earth Island on which we live?”

Human beings seem cursed to repeat these cycles of exploitation and collapse. And the greater the extent of the deterioration the less they are able to comprehend what is happening around them. The Earth is littered with the physical remains of human folly and human hubris. We seem condemned as a species to drive ourselves and our societies toward extinction, although this moment appears be the denouement to the whole sad show of settled, civilized life that began some 5,000 years ago. There is nothing left on the planet to seize. We are now spending down the last remnants of our natural capital, including our forests, fossil fuel, air and water.

This time when we go down it will be global. There are no new lands to pillage, no new peoples to exploit. Technology, which has obliterated the constraints of time and space, has turned our global village into a global death trap. The fate of Easter Island will be writ large across the broad expanse of planet Earth.

Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. MORE

A grim report issued today by the Russian Agriculture Ministry warns that wheat plantings in the country, once the World’s second-biggest exporter, will drop 2.3 percent to 64.2 million acres for this year’s crop due to last summers historic drought and the soaring cost of oil and the fertilizer made from it.

The Bloomberg News Service further warns about this report that this absence of Russian supplies comes as the US says Global grain inventories will drop 13% this year and have led to riots that has toppled leaders in Tunisia and Egypt and more governments around the World have starting hoarding food.

This dire news comes at the same time the Wall Street Journal News Service is warning that our World is now consuming more grain then it is producing and London’s Telegraph News Service is warning that American farmers are now fearing a return of the apocalyptic 1930’s Dust Bowl as the Ogallala Aquifer, the World’s largest underground body of fresh water, begins to run dry.

Even more ominous in this report is its stating that a Global Resource War has now begun between the East and West, with the Middle East being the “first battleground”, specifically the vast oil and water resources belonging to Libya.

The distinguished American Professor and Human Rights Watch board member Michael T. Klare first coined the term “resource wars” in his 2001 book “Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict” wherein he warned that our World was on the cusp of a century of warfare over access to the dwindling supplies of oil and fresh water every Nation needs, but there is not enough of to go around.

Interesting to note is that in Publishers Weekly review of this seminal and prophetic book they forecast that “Klare’s message is important, but it probably won’t be heard by many beyond readers of the handful of major newspapers that will review it.”

Though this forecast has proven accurate among the masses of Western people, the same cannot be said of their leaders, most important of them being the former British Defense Secretary John Reid who, likewise, in 2006 warned that Global weather changes and dwindling natural resources were combining to increase the likelihood of violent conflict over land, water and energy.

Most important to note about Reid’s 2006 warning was that it came at a time that the United States was securing its own energy future by taking the vast oil wealth of Iraq in covert partnership with Iran, but since that time has been moving away from its traditional European and Middle Eastern allies as it further retrenches into its own hemisphere.

Being left out in the cold, so to speak, with America’s retrenchment, the British, under their former Prime Minister Tony Blair, began actively courting Libya dictator Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, in 2007, allowing the release of Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent and the only man convicted in the Lockerbie Bombing, in exchange for oil drilling rights for British Petroleum (BP).

The New York Times News Service further reported about this “deal” between Blair and el-Qaddafi:  “A senior British official, Sir Gus O’Donnell, formally acknowledged that BP had lobbied the British government in pursuit of its oil interests and the British government, in turn, resolved to “do all it could to facilitate an appeal by the Libyans to the Scottish government” for Mr. Megrahi’s release.”

Not just to Libya’s oil were the British after either, as in the early 1980’s, drilling teams in this North African Nations southern parts discovered one of the largest water systems in the World in four major underground basins, these being the Kufra basin, the Sirt basin, the Morzuk basin and the Hamada basin.

In order to utilize this massive underground water wealth the Libyan’s began construction of the “Great Man-Made River”, which aside from being the largest water transport project ever undertaken on our Planet has, also, been described as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

In late August, 1991, “turned on the tap” of their Great Man-Made River in a ceremony attended by nearly all Middle Eastern leaders, including former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak who encouraged his countrymen to “go to Libya” to begin growing food for the entire region.

Important for the reader to note about Libya’s Great Man-Made River is that with a population of barely 6.4 million people, the food resources being grown since the early 1990’s (estimated that by 2012 could feed 50 million) could only be done so with the importation of over 1 million migrant workers, many of whom the UN now reports are either trapped or now fleeing.

Most important of these migrant workers were the nearly 40,000 Chinese who were saved by their Nation’s “epic evacuation” and who were working on vastly improving Libya’s ability to market grains and fresh foods to Asia and various other projects, and by far posed the West’s biggest threat to their “claim” over Libya’s vast oil and water wealth.

Unfortunately for el-Qaddafi, however, was that instead of cementing firm defense relations with either Russia or China he became a “ripened plum” ready to be picked off by the West, especially after his storming out of the Arab League meeting in Qatar in March, 1999, after calling the Saudi King “a liar” and further stating that the Saudi ruler was a “British product and American ally.”

Not being told the Western people about el-Qaddafi, his regime, or his family, is that the vast amount of Libyan oil and water wealth has been given to the Libyan people themselves, and even though like all other oligarchs (especially those in the US where just 400 people control over half of that country’s wealth) pale in comparison to the Billions of Dollars stolen from the peoples of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Tunisia, Iraq, Jordan and Djibouti by their Western backed despotic rulers.  That is not say, however, that el-Qaddafi, his regime, or his family, were not despotic, they were just less so than all the others by a wide margin.

So, with the Middle East now seeing its greatest turmoil since the early part of last century when the Arab people began throwing off the yoke of colonial repression, and with Libya being the “main prize”because of its vast oil and water wealth, it was no wonder that the new British Prime Minister, David Cameron, became the first Western leader to visit Egypt, a visit that was quickly followed by Egyptian Special Forces troops storming into Libya to aid the rebels.

Those Egyptian Special Forces troops were then quickly followed into Libya by British Special Air Services (SAS) troops and MI6 agents who arrived “in the dead of night, armed with weapons, maps and explosives while dressed in plain black clothing”, but “not to worry” said the British, “they were just looking for hotel rooms”.

Though these British SAS troops were quickly captured by the rebels and kicked out of Libya, one would have to be in complete denial to not know that there are other teams of Western military and intelligence agents directing the war against el-Qaddafi and his forces to gain control over this most coveted of Middle Eastern Nations.

Most appalling in all of these events are that the American people are not being allowed to know the truth of what is truly happening, the reason being, and as the United States own Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, told the US Congress last week, “American media outlets do not offer real news despite their being the most technologically advanced” in the World.”

To support Secretary Clinton’s assessment of how far the once free US news establishment has fallen in telling the American people the truth was the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health report released this week detailing how US Military Forces have killed over 1 million Iraqis, a staggering number of deaths not reported to these people by their “mainstream” media even though it took these university researchers just hours to compile this information from the Pentagons own reports.

As we have reported on many times, the still top-secret Pentagon report released to London’s Telegraph Newspaper in 2004 detailing the World we are now entering is still being ignored by the American people, but its warnings should be heeded now at all costs as these dreaded Resource Wars are now beginning in full, including its dire findings that:

Britain will be ‘Siberian’ in less than 20 years

Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

Once again, warfare will define human life

©March 8, 2011 EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com.

Press TV – Researchers are trying to identify the reasons behind honeybee colony collapse, which significantly affects the global agricultural market.

Mass deaths of honeybees affect more than 30 percent of bee colonies in the US and over 20 percent in some European countries, Reuters reported.

Scientists have found some probable causes of colony collapse disorder (CCD), such as blood-feeding parasites, bee viruses, fungi, pesticide exposure and decreased plant diversity, which leads to poor nutrition for honeybees.

“It’s a complex interaction of several different factors that are causing bees to die, resulting in quick colony decline,” said entomologist and chief researcher at the US Department of Agriculture’s Bee Research Lab in Beltsville, Maryland Jeff Pettis.

Some 52 of the world’s 112 leading crops rely on pollination and honeybee losses can greatly affect the world economy as the value of insect pollination, mainly by bees, is put at about USD 212 billion.

Experts believe the increase in human population and the bee decline will lead to a global crisis with limited crops and soaring food prices.

No definite solution has been found for the problem but some scientists blame commercial agricultural pesticides such as clothianidin, which they believe is responsible for the death of millions of bees near farming areas.

Another threat can be parasites such as the varroa destructor, which clings to a bee, feeds on its blood and spreads dangerous viruses.

Major infestations can also be responsible for destroying beehives, as well as a combination of a virus and a fungus, which was found in all collapsed US colonies last year.

The viral-fungal combination can destroy the bee’s memory or navigation functions.

This is while commercial apiaries are the main victims of honeybee colony collapse.

“Most of those reporting heavy losses run large operations and are focused on migratory pollination for their income,” said small producer and owner of 700 hives in South Deerfield, Massachusetts Dan Conlon.

According to Keith Delaplane of the University of Georgia, early bee reports are poor throughout the US, including Georgia, which appears to be losing about one-third of its colonies.

Managed US hives were 2.68 million last summer, which is only about half of the country’s five million hives tallied back in the 1940s, the United States Department of Agriculture announced.

By Djelloul (Del) Marbrook (Editor/Mentor)

“If honey bees become extinct, human society will follow in four years.” Albert Einstein.

He was speaking about the symbiotic relationship of all life on the planet “all part of a huge interconnected ecosystem, each element playing a role dependent on many other elements, working in concert as a symphony. Should any part of the global body suffer, the whole body suffers.

Many people would be surprised to know that ninety percent of the feral (wild) bee population in the United States has died out. Recent studies in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have shown that bee diversity is down eighty percent in the sites researched, and that bee species are declining or have become extinct in Britain. ”

The studies also revealed that the numbers of wildflowers that depend on pollination have dropped by seventy percent. Which came first, the decline in wildflowers or the decline in pollinators, has yet to be determined. If bees continue to die off so will the crops they support and that would cause major economic disruption and possibly famine. But we are more focused on oil because its immediate profits are staggering. Indeed so obsessed are we with oil that the press isn`t even inquiring into the possibility of disguising price gouging behind a scarcity scare.

How much time and space have the media devoted to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill?

Compare that to how much time and space they have devoted to the worldwide collapse of honey bee communities. They treat the story as they might a feature about archaeology when in fact it is a life-and-death matter.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster offers up a villain, BP. It`s about the appearance of something, in this case oil, not the disappearance of something. We pay bills for oil, but our deeper dependence on honey bees is not as apparent.

The gulf spill threatens widespread unemployment, the destruction of fisheries and wetlands, and other disasters. But the loss of the honey bee threatens worldwide famine. Which is the bigger story? How to account for this disconnect? Beekeepers pay the press no advertising money, but oil companies do. Money shapes the news. This in itself is a much bigger story than the breaking news, but don`t expect the press to cover it, and do expect the press to cover it up.

BP is responsible for the gulf catastrophe, but the cultures of all the developed countries of the world are responsible for the collapse of honey bee communities. The collapse is a much bigger story than the spill “and much harder to fathom. In some ways our attitude is analogous to the way we view Somali pirates. They must be stopped, we say, they must be punished, but what about the European corporations that poisoned Somalia`s fisheries with toxic wastes and impoverished the Somalians? Those corporations apparently will no more be punished than will our own predatory lenders.

Media unwillingness and incompetence points up a much larger issue, the nature of news itself. We have by and large allowed the state to define news. Capitalist societies would dispute this, but I would argue that capitalism is the state, for better or worse. And capitalist exploitation requires, demands that we turn a blind eye to the butterfly effect, to the scientific fact that a small local event may have catastrophic global implications.

News is defined by commercial and state elites that have a vested interest in what we know and what we do not know, what we understand and what we do not understand. This situation poses a threat almost as great as the demise of the honey bee, because it means we are again and again preoccupied with superficial issues while issues of our survival are neglected. As long as the media themselves frame the questions the answers will be inadequate.

A parallel situation plagues the book publishing industry. So little foreign literature is translated for American readers that we are incapable of seeing the world through any eyes but our own. We are unable to see ourselves as foreigners do and consequently we don`t give a damn. But giving a damn is precisely what all of us “the whole of humankind “must do in order to survive and prosper.

We were in trouble during the housing bubble, not just after it. But we didn`t know it because the media had a very special reason for not instilling in us a recognition that predatory lenders were screwing us “the media were deriving massive advertising revenue from lenders and developers. Our ignorance was their bliss. Our ignorance is always the bliss of politicians and their corporate bosses. If it weren`t so, our schools would be succeeding and our news would enlighten us.

When the housing bubble burst the media feigned surprise. How could it have been a surprise when every small-town banker knew people were buying homes they couldn`t afford? How could all those sleazy loan officers not have seen their customers couldn`t afford the houses they were buying? Insurance companies, after all, are quick to deny policies to the sick, so how could the lenders have been so stupid? They weren`t stupid, they were amoral.

In the United States, beekeepers are experiencing unprecedented die-offs of bees, some losing as much as eighty percent of their colonies. Commercial beekeepers in twenty-two states have reported deaths of tens of thousands of honeybee colonies. So far the cause remains unexplained and somewhat mysterious. It is being called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and is causing agricultural honeybees nationwide to abandon their hives and disappear, raising worries about crops that need bees for pollination. A British researcher writes in Science that there are probably many causes, from loss of foraging grounds to viruses, parasites, chemical pollution, and other pathogens that spread quickly from continent to continent. It`s a kind of mass suicide in the bee world. There have been cases where there have been these die-offs of bees before, but we have never seen it to this level, ” said Maryann Frazier, a Pennsylvania State University entomologist. One operation after another is collapsing. ”

Bees have done quite well for millions of years; in the last sixty years that began to change. In recent years,beekeepers have been losing thirty percent of their hives each winter. Thirty years ago, the rate was five percent to ten percent, said Keith Tignor, the state apiarist for Virginia. The unusual phenomenon was first noticed by eastern beekeepers. Researchers, including some connected with the Penn State University College of Agricultural Sciences, have identified some of the possible contributors, but have not yet found a single cause. Initial studies on bee colonies experiencing the die-offs have revealed a large number of disease organisms, with most being stress-related ” diseases but without any one agent as the culprit. Climate chaos and extreme weather seem to be a major factor. That being the case, this winter may well accelerate CCD.

It`s hard to tell if wild honey bee populations have been affected by the CCD disorder because Varroa mites have pretty much decimated the wild honey bee population over the past years, ” said Maryann Frazier of The Pennsylvania State University Department of Entomology. This has become a highly significant, yet poorly understood problem that threatens the pollination industry and the production of commercial honey in the United States ” Because the number of managed honeybee colonies is less than half of what it was 25 years ago, states such as Pennsylvania can ill afford these heavy losses. ” Dennis van Engelsdorp, an apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, said, Every day, you hear of another operator, It`s just causing so much death so quickly that it`s startling. ”

Media insistence on isolating events and failing to connect the dots to present the big picture dogs contemporary society. Take, for example, coverage of the unrest sweeping over the Middle East and North Africa. Reporter and pundit alike raise the same question again and again, as if it were paramount: How does it affect Israel? But Israel is part of the Middle East and the world, and surely the aspirations of its Arab neighbors are as important as the Israeli security which we have guaranteed with billions of tax dollars and pledges of blood. Why then do the media insist on reducing the hopes of many millions to the safety of a few million?

By any standard the bees are a bigger story than Deepwater Horizon. But it didn`t have the kind of smart-ass Briton Americans love to hate who made BP look like an even bigger villain than it is. And a collapsed bee colony hardly offers the sound bite and visual possibilities a scuzzy Gulf of Mexico offers. In other words, our media, unable to get their minds around the butterfly effect, licenses us not to give a damn. And yet large segments of our culture are smarter and better informed than the media. While George W. Bush and his pals were lying our way into Iraq, a project costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars, there were scholars in nearby Georgetown and Baltimore who knew perfectly well the foolhardiness of invading Iraq, but the press treated them as quaint exotics. After all, the bullshitters in high office were more important, just as advertising revenue is more important than newsroom integrity.

And while all this is going on some politicians kept on yakking about family values and integrity and American grit. Where was the integrity and grit? Certainly not in the White House or the newsroom.

Djelloul Marbrook is a retired newspaperman. His second book of poems, Brushstrokes and Glances, will be published by Deerbrook Editions on December 20, 2010. His first book of poems, Far From Algiers, won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University in 2007 and was published in 2008. It won the International Book Award in 2010. His novella, Artemisia`s Wolf, will be published by Prakash Books of India in December. His novella, Saraceno, was recently published as an e-book. His story, Artists Hill, adapted from the second novel of an unpublished trilogy, won the Literal Latté first prize in fiction in 2008. The pioneering e-book publisher, Online Originals (UK), published his novella, Alice MIller`s Room, in 1999.

Del`s book, Far From Algiers: http://upress.kent.edu/books/Marbrook_D.htm