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offsite link Labour is Acting Like Communist China, Says Lloyds Bank Chief Mon Jul 07, 2025 17:00 | Will Jones
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Alarm has set in as Labour grandees and union paymasters push Reeves to bring in a wealth tax to raise spending and plug a yawning ?30bn black hole in Government finances, despite millionaires already fleeing the country.
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offsite link Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en

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offsite link Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en

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offsite link The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en

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Immorality, Journalism and Mayan Meltdown

category international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis author Thursday June 11, 2009 09:47author by Paddy Hackettauthor email rasherrs at eircom dot net Report this post to the editors

Journalism and Credibility

In his article in the The Sunday Business Post David McWilliams dishonestly fails to reference a main source for his article called Moral of the Mayan Meltdown

"The Mayans simply ran out of resources. They cut down all the trees to
transport rocks from the quarries to make their ornate temples.

Competing nobility, with each chief trying to show he was the biggest, got
involved in what could only be described as an ''arms race'' to build the
most splendid palace. This involved huge amounts of labour, which were taken
from the farms and massively reduced the amount of farmers available to keep
their agriculture going.

They also cut down huge amounts of wood, causing massive soil erosion and
flooding. The mad dash to build the most ornate palace used up enormous
quantities of materials. To support this madness, the cities needed to
produce enormous amounts of food and water, and they needed to pay for it.

This was the ancient equivalent of people consuming far more than they could
afford and getting into a monumental ''keeping up with the Joneses'' battle,
which would ultimately bankrupt them. Interestingly, the Mayan currency was
devalued during all this." (Moral of the Mayan meltdown; June 7th 2009;
Sunday Business Post page 23).

A reading of Collapse by Jared Diamond will show that the above "ideas" have been borrowed from "Collapse". In my view David McWilliams should have had the honesty to reference in his The Sunday Business Post article Jared Diamond. His failure to do so, in my view, raises questions concerning the credibility of his journalism in general.

Related Link: http://patrickhackett.blogspot.com
author by Conorpublication date Sat Jun 13, 2009 15:04author address author phone Report this post to the editors

I agree.

 
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