Populism Arising....,

Chris Hedges at TruthDig| The old assumptions and paradigms about capitalism and free markets are dead. A new, virulent populism, still inchoate, is slowly and painfully rising to take their place. This populism will determine the future of the country. It is as likely to be right-wing as left-wing.

I watched these competing populisms flicker Thursday night at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., when I moderated a debate between independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin. The two candidates come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Nader, in essence, is a democratic socialist in the mold of Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas. Baldwin, a founder and minister at the Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., is an evangelical, right-wing populist.

Baldwin, like Nader, rails against corporatism and our involvement in foreign wars, wants to repeal NAFTA and denounces the curtailment of civil liberties. But Baldwin goes on to support the abolishment of whole departments of the federal government, such as the Department of Education. He calls for U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations and NATO, the elimination of the Food and Drug Administration, the outlawing of abortion and removing all restrictions on the purchasing of firearms. One of his catchier campaign slogans is: “To help keep your family safe and your country free, go buy a gun.” He wants to seal our borders, deny amnesty and social services to illegal immigrants and end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. He calls for dismantling the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service, overturning the 16th Amendment and the personal income tax, and returning the American monetary system to hard assets: gold and silver.

These candidates, while marginal figures in the current election, express the two forms of populism that will soon find a wide political currency. The anger toward our elites will morph into rage. These new populisms may not be articulated by Nader and Baldwin, but they will be articulated by people like Nader and Baldwin.

Eleventh Hour Rorschachnoir......,

Comes now my friends Submariner and Bro. Makheru with broadly divergent views on life in the belly and on what a possible Obamamandian management cycle portends....,

You're wrong Makheru. Barack is tougher than all these fools. He is what JayZ would be if he were a politician. He is beating white boys at their own game. Unfortunately, you and many others wouldn't be happy unless Barack said "fuck all y'all" and proclaimed his uncompromised support for Jeremiah Wright, reparations, and mass transfers of wealth. Your criticism is misguided in substance. What you wish to happen is, by definition, revolution. To work and succeed within the political system requires the maneuvers made by Obama. You may call him soft or weak but I got much the same comments while growing up in Jamaica, Queens if I read a comic or novel on the bus. In the final reckoning I was a young resident in charge of the ER when I saw the fellow working in housekeeping. Barack will be your next POTUS. He will make the same concessions and retreats as his predecessors(remember Reagan's response after Beirut or G.W. afetr Tbilisi?). He will commit similar treacherous acts at home and abroad. If you think all our past presidents are waffles then fine. But if you would try to make Obama something uniquely compliant than you are verifiably wrong. JFK, his most similar counterpart in my estimation, reluctantly made LBJ, a man he and Bobby outright hated, his VP. JFK openly stated that if he followed his desire for detente with the USSR that the JCOS would lead a coup against him. Another thing. White people aren't tough. They're just mean brutes. Tough isn't shooting mooses, chopping trees or chewing tobacco. It certainly isn't going out buying guns days before the election. Nor is it the pugnacity of your more sincere racists. That's a cover for anxiety. And Craig's favorite white boy led off with it.

White boys are just so weak and insecure. Never seen a tough one in my entire life.-- Doc Sub Dr. Sub, I assume you must have lived a sheltered life. While moving around Dixie I’ve met a lot of white men who are as tough as nails. I’ve had confrontations with these people; I’ve worked side by side with them, sawing down trees and splitting wood, and I’ve rubbed elbows with them in their bars. I’ve faced these people eye to eye and deep down inside, they respect strong Black men. They would never respect a waffling waffle like Barack Obama, who has no sense of loyalty to anything other than his political career. [Brad, 42, and Margaret Marcus, 47, who were at a Fairfax County shooting range recently with their two children for weekly target practice, said they sped up the purchase of two semiautomatic rifles that had been banned during the Clinton administration because they feared they could become illegal again if Obama wins. The couple, who run an online retailing business from their Ashburn home, said they viewed Obama's remarks about protecting the Second Amendment as campaign trail "pandering."] Personally, I’d rather deal with a redneck, raw-bone Dixie cracker any day, than those back-stabbing paternalistic white liberal elites who support Obama.

fascinating....,

As Gas Prices Go Down, Driving Goes Up

NYTimes | Doug Guidry gave up drag racing and boating last summer when gasoline prices shot up. Billy Castaneda put off trips to Houston to see his grandchildren. Randal Shul stopped playing paintball with his buddies to save gas.

Now, with gasoline prices dropping, all three men are hitting the road again. “Gas going down means freedom, even when everyone is worried about the economy,” Mr. Castaneda said as he filled his 1995 Oldsmobile 88 to drive 125 miles to Houston the other day.

The sharp decline in gasoline use earlier this year — with volume down nearly 10 percent in some weeks — suggested to many people, including the automobile companies, that a permanent change in American habits might be at hand. But with gasoline prices falling drastically in recent weeks, some American drivers are returning to their old ways.

What is happening in this blue-collar bedroom community of refinery, food processing and casino workers reminds energy analysts of what happened the last time the oil price collapsed. The frugality of the 1970s, when oil was high, eventually gave way to an era when people drove longer distances, lived farther from work and traded in their cars for minivans and then sport utility vehicles.

“Driving habits die hard, and they can reincarnate quickly,” said Christopher R. Knittel, an economist at the University of California, Davis, who studies gasoline demand. In the late 1980s, he added: “As soon as gas prices fell, there was no real incentive to drive less anymore. If oil prices continue to fall and the economy recovers, I would expect consumers to return to wanting larger and less fuel-efficient cars.”

World will struggle to meet oil demand

Financial Times | Output from the world’s oilfields is declining faster than previously thought, the first authoritative public study of the biggest fields shows. Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1 per cent, the International Energy Agency says in its annual report, the World Energy Outlook, a draft of which has been obtained by the Financial Times.

The findings suggest the world will struggle to produce enough oil to make up for steep declines in existing fields, such as those in the North Sea, Russia and Alaska, and meet long-term de­mand. The effort will become even more acute as prices fall and investment decisions are delayed.

The IEA, the oil watchdog, forecasts that China, India and other developing countries’ demand will require investments of $360bn each year until 2030.

The agency says even with investment, the annual rate of output decline is 6.4 per cent.

The decline will not necessarily be felt in the next few years because demand is slowing down, but with the expected slowdown in investment the eventual effect will be magnified, oil executives say.

“The future rate of decline in output from producing oilfields as they mature is the single most important determinant of the amount of new capacity that will need to be built globally to meet demand,” the IEA says.

The watchdog warned that the world needed to make a “significant increase in future investments just to maintain the current level of production”.

The battle to replace mature oilfields’ output could even offset the decline in demand growth, which has given the industry – already struggling to find enough supply to meet needs, especially from China – a reprieve in the past few months.

The IEA predicted in its draft report, due to be published next month, that demand would be damped, “reflecting the impact of much higher oil prices and slightly slower economic growth”.

It expects oil consumption in 2030 to reach 106.4m barrels a day, down from last year’s forecast of 116.3m b/d. (This projection is hilarious to me given the fact that global oil production peaked at 85 m b/d in 2005 and has declined annually at a rate of 1.4% ever since)

The projections could yet be revised lower because the draft report was written a month ago, before the global financial crisis deepened after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

All the increase in oil demand until 2030 comes from emerging countries, while consumption in developed countries declines.

As a result, the share of rich countries in global demand will drop from last year’s 59 per cent to less than half of the total in 2030.

This is the clearest indication yet that the focus of the industry on the demand – not just the supply – side is moving away from the US, Europe and Japan, towards emerging nations.

Russia to cut crude output 1-1.5% in 2009

MOSCOW, October 29 (RIA Novosti) - Russia will decrease its oil production by 1-1.5% next year, the vice president of LUKoil, Russia's independent oil producer, said Wednesday.

"Next year knowing in view of companies' plans, production will decline 1-1.5%," Leonid Fedun told a UBS conference in Moscow.

Fedun also said Russia could join the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

"Cooperation has started between Russia and OPEC. Maybe we are even talking about Russia joining OPEC. LUKoil and Rosneft heads are due to take part in the next OPEC session in December," he said.

Fedun said LUKoil believes capital investment by Russian companies needs to reach $100 billion annually for Russia to maintain its current levels of oil production.

The Russian Energy Ministry forecasts in 2008 oil production in Russia will drop 1 million tons, or 0.3-0.4% to 490 million tons against last year.

Earlier Fedun said that LUKoil planned to increase oil production by 1.5% with gas output rising by 3-4% in 2009.

However, Fedun said that the global financial crisis could force the company to cut investment in 2009 which would affect its drilling program and plans to modernize oil refineries.

Left Behind....,

Washington Post | "I know firsthand that this country didn't used to be like this," Collins said.

He grew up "poorer than dirt," he said, but poverty felt different back then. His family bought 35 quiet acres for less than $15,000, and Collins's father, Leon, started his own logging business. Leon invested in a few donkeys to haul the wood, and Collins and his three siblings helped work the land. It was simple, country living -- but it was their life, entirely self-sufficient. They canned the vegetables in the garden, drank milk from their cows and hunted deer on their land. Government and big corporations had little stake in their lives, and they liked it that way.

By the time Collins had finished high school, a big company called Herrman Lumber had pushed Leon out of business. Collins moved into town, became a mechanic, married, divorced and lost an 11-year-old son to cerebral palsy. He started drinking and using crystal meth but quit in 2001 and became a Baptist preacher. Determined to recreate his childhood, Collins returned to his dad's old farm and asked the new owner whether he would sell it. Sure, the owner agreed. For $450,000.

Collins took a job at Regal Beloit, a manufacturer of electronics and mechanics, where he works the night shift because it pays an extra 35 cents an hour. He bought a trailer for $15,000 -- about the same original price as the old farm -- and agreed to manage the mobile home park for a little extra cash.

The worst of it, Collins said, is that he is a man of great faith with little hope that his circumstances will improve. He says he has no hopes for retirement, no alternative career options and nothing but fear about the prospect of an Obama presidency.

"There was a time not long ago where somebody like Obama would have tried to become president, and they would have run him out on a rail," Collins said. "That's back when this country had backbone. Now, we say, 'Okay. He might be different than what we're used to, but maybe we can use a change.' But wait a minute now. What was wrong with the way things were?"

Irrational Exuberance

guardian.co.uk | To most non-Americans, black is still code for being apart from the American establishment. Any visitor these days to Europe, to Africa or to the Muslim world is shocked by the depth of antipathy to the US. It is beyond ideology, a visceral, often racial aversion, unrelated to any personal attachment to individual Americans or their much-envied way of life. The ugly American is reborn.

Yet the same visitor is impressed by how often he is assured that an Obama presidency would "change everything". The reason is not that Obama is anti-war or pro-Palestinian or left or rightwing. It is that his origins render him the one thing he most vociferously denies, not an ordinary American.

To this world, Obama is a supposed representative of an oppressed class, however much his speech, manner and career bespeak the opposite. He is black and his name is confirmation enough. He symbolises the end of the Wasp ascendancy. The reason why his candidacy still discomforts many Americans is the reason the world craves it, that Obama is somehow unreal.

He is a meta-American. It is why there will be an awful unleashing of grief and fury if he is not elected. Yet Obama is real, not just a human being but a politician. In office he knows he must do more than make fine speeches and castigate the government of the day. He must grapple with the wreckage of a world economy whose collapse is in large part due to the mismanagement of American finance, from which as a senator he cannot altogether escape blame.

"Irrational exuberance" is a phrase used by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan in a speech given at the American Enterprise Institute during the stock market boom of the 1990s. The phrase was interpreted by financial pundits as a typical extraordinary economy.

"Obama, Inshallah"

guardian.co.uk | Reports of the slogan "Obama, inshallah", or God willing, appearing in the Gaza Strip - and even some organised telephone campaigning for the Illinois Democrat - look like vivid but untypical examples of active mobilisation on his behalf.

"For the US to vote in an African-American progressive liberal would certainly mark a departure from the hyper and violent conservatism of the Bush-McCain camp," observed Al-Jazeera's Marwan Bishara.

"The rest of the world would certainly embrace a less fearful and more open post-9/11 America," according to the Egyptian intellectual Mona Makram Obeid. "Choosing Barack Obama, a symbol of hope, would do more to restore the image of the United States in the world than anything else."

Sensibly, some have hinted too at the danger of exaggerated expectations. "It is only natural for Arabs to lean towards supporting a black candidate with roots in Africa on the basis that he understands the concerns of the developing world and is aware that there are other nations who have a right to live," wrote Mohammad Salah in the pan-Arab paper al-Hayat. But beware, he said, of "rosy dreams that the solutions to Arab problems will come from the next US president if he is black and a Democrat".

Plausible Deniability and Malign Neglect....,

RC straight spittin fire on this topic. Thank you brother for putting in the hair-raising work. Now in from Bloomberg.com - Virus Spreads in Abandoned California Pools, Jacuzzis ;

Neglected swimming pools and Jacuzzis in homes abandoned after mortgage delinquencies may be spurring an increase of West Nile virus near Los Angeles as mosquitoes move in, a study showed.

Cases of the potentially lethal mosquito-borne virus rose almost fourfold to 140 in the Bakersfield area of Kern County last year, coinciding with a 300 percent increase in home delinquencies in the county, according to the study in the November edition of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

``The recent widespread downturn in the housing market and increase in adjustable rate mortgages have combined to force a dramatic increase in home foreclosures and abandoned homes and produced urban landscapes dotted with an expanded number of new mosquito habitats,'' researchers led by William Reisen, a professor of entomology at University of California, Davis, wrote.

The study also found that 60 percent of mosquitoes captured at unmaintained pools in Kern County this year were of the Culex tarsalis variety, a type usually found in rural areas that is more effective at spreading West Nile virus than the Culex pipiens mosquito commonly found in urban areas. That may increase the risk of future epidemics, Reisen and his colleagues said.

Mosquito-borne West Nile virus has killed 25 people in the U.S. this year and sickened more than 1,100, according to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which publishes the journal. The virus can cause brain inflammation, high fever, headaches, coma and other symptoms, according to the organization.

A total of 140 laboratory-confirmed cases of West Nile were reported in Bakersfield last year, 276 percent more than in 2006, the study said. Bakersfield has the fourth-highest U.S. foreclosure rate, RealtyTrac said Oct. 23.

Locked Out

An aerial photograph of a Bakersfield neighborhood showed 17 percent of the 42 visible pools and Jacuzzis had turned green, as the chemicals used to keep them clean deteriorated, allowing algae to grow and mosquitoes to breed, the researchers said. Locked fences around pools also prevented mosquito controllers from accessing the affected areas, the report said.

``Surveillance continues to monitor the extent of the problem in Kern County and throughout California and its affect on the ongoing West Nile virus epidemic,'' the authors wrote.

Gawd, looking through some of this material reminds me of just how much I hated doing an in-depth study of parasitology. But in my occasionally humble opinion, there's no better way to understand game theory, warfare, and the power of genetic omni-determinism than to explore the furthest reaches of this queasy-making realm of organic experience....,

Aedes Aegypti plus Ebola Equals?

My man RC poses the $64,000 kwestin and simultaneously solves that pandemic preparedness equation as the NYTimes publishes a bold understatement - Bio Lab in Galveston Raises Concerns;

Much of the University of Texas medical school on this island suffered flood damage during Hurricane Ike, except for one gleaming new building, a national biological defense laboratory that will soon house some of the most deadly diseases in the world.

How a laboratory where scientists plan to study viruses like Ebola and Marburg ended up on a barrier island where hurricanes regularly wreak havoc puzzles some environmentalists and community leaders.

“It’s crazy, in my mind,” said Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer in Houston. “I just find an amazing willingness among the people on the Texas coast to accept risks that a lot of people in the country would not accept.”

Officials at the laboratory and at the National Institutes of Health, which along with the university is helping to pay for the $174 million building, say it can withstand any storm the Atlantic hurls at it.

Built atop concrete pylons driven 120 feet into the ground, the seven-floor laboratory was designed to stand up to 140-mile-an-hour winds. Its backup generators and high-security laboratories are 30 feet above sea level.

“The entire island can wash away and this is still going to be here,” Dr. James W. LeDuc, the deputy director of the laboratory, said. “With Hurricane Ike, we had no damage. The only evidence the hurricane occurred was water that was blown under one of the doors and a puddle in the lobby.”

The project enjoyed the strong support of three influential Texas Republicans: President Bush, a former Texas governor; Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison; and the former House majority leader, Tom DeLay, whose district includes part of Galveston County. Officials at the National Institutes of Health, however, say the decision to put the lab here was based purely on the merits. It is to open Nov. 11.

'Flying syringe' mosquitos, other ideas get Gates funding
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded 100,000 dollars each on Wednesday to scientists in 22 countries including funding for a Japanese proposal to turn mosquitos into "flying syringes" delivering vaccines. The charitable foundation created by the founder of software giant Microsoft said in a statement that the grants were designed to "explore bold and largely unproven ways to improve global health."

How these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington

George Monbiot in the Guardian on how the degradation of intelligence and learning in American politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies.

How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and a terrorist?

Like most people on my side of the Atlantic, I have for many years been mystified by American politics. The US has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.

One theme is both familiar and clear: religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing.

But there were other, more powerful, reasons for the intellectual isolation of the fundamentalists. The US is peculiar in devolving the control of education to local authorities. Teaching in the southern states was dominated by the views of an ignorant aristocracy of planters, and a great educational gulf opened up. "In the south", Jacoby writes, "what can only be described as an intellectual blockade was imposed in order to keep out any ideas that might threaten the social order."

The Southern Baptist Convention, now the biggest denomination in the US, was to slavery and segregation what the Dutch Reformed Church was to apartheid in South Africa. It has done more than any other force to keep the south stupid. In the 1960s it tried to stave off desegregation by establishing a system of private Christian schools and universities. A student can now progress from kindergarten to a higher degree without any exposure to secular teaching. Southern Baptist beliefs pass intact through the public school system as well. A survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that one in four of the state's state school biology teachers believed humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time.

Monbiot carpet bombs the recent history of national governance-by-moron in the U.S. From old 666's "there you go again" line to James Earl Carter, all the way up through the current talk-radio culture war in which any possessing a GED would be classified as a "liberal elite".

Don't Hate the Playa.....,

Iran as Political Reality

The distinction between the apocalyptic rhetoric Israeli leaders use publicly in relation to Iran, and the more pragmatic view they hold among themselves on how to deal with Tehran and its nuclear program, has long been clear to anyone paying very close attention. In short, it’s clear that many of Israel’s key leaders don’t believe Iran is a suicidal ideologically-crazed regime that would risk destroying itself in order to destroy Israel, and therefore that even a nuclear-armed Iran would not be an “existential threat” to Israel, although clearly it would present a major strategic challenge by fundamentally reordering the balance of military force in the region. And of late, some of them have begun a gingerly but very clear retreat from the idea that Israel will have to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities if no one else does — President Shimon Peres has said as much, publicly, and outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has echoed that position. I asked Rootless Cosmopolitan’s favorite Iran expert, Dr. Trita Parsi, to weigh in on the basis of his extensive research and interviews with many of the key decision-makers on the Israeli and Iranian sides. Trita’s book Treacherous Alliance — The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S. is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the Israeli-Iranian relationship, and why there’s plenty of room for pragmatic coexistence.

On the eve of his departure from political life, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Olmert delivered a stinging parting shot – putting under question not only the wisdom of holding on to Palestinian land, but also the feasibility of an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“We have to make a decision, one that goes against all our instincts, against our collective memory,” he told the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth. Recognizing that no other Israeli leader ever had uttered these words publicly, Olmert went on to declare that “Israel must withdraw from almost all, if not all” of the West Bank to achieve peace.

On Iran, Olmert argued that Israel had lost its “sense of proportion” when stating that it would deal with Iran militarily. “What we can do with the Palestinians, the Syrians and the Lebanese, we cannot do with the Iranians,” Olmert said, in stark contradiction to his own earlier warnings on Iran as well as the rhetoric of many of his hawkish cabinet members. “Let’s be more modest, and act within the bounds of our realistic capabilities,” he cautioned.

Israel Gets Real on Iran by Dr. Trita Parsi in The Atlantic Free Press.

Iran as Political Theater

While we must never rely on anyone else to do for us what we must do for ourselves in national security, there are multiple threats today that we cannot resolve without the cooperation of others. In fact, when it comes to preventing the worst weapons from falling into the worst hands or defeating apocalyptic terror groups or coping with global health challenges or stopping global warming or avoiding an international depression, we cannot do everything on our own. We need others internationally to accept our objectives and be prepared to join their means to ours.

When I was with Obama in Berlin and more than 200,000 people turned out in the heart of Europe to wave American flags, this was an extraordinary development. It reminded us that an American leader who is admired can lead not only our country but also make it easier for others to follow our lead. And, when I look at the Middle East -- where we face our greatest threats today -- we need others to follow our lead in stopping Iran from going nuclear and discrediting radical Islamists.
Ambassador Dennis Ross, Mark Aronchick, and Rabbi Neil Cooper of Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El, when Ross spoke to over 1000 community members and endorsed Senator Barack Obama. (Photo: Bonnie Squires)

Today, we are in trouble in the Middle East. Everywhere we look -- whether in the Gulf, Iraq, Lebanon or Gaza and the West Bank -- we see Iran challenging American interests and allies. Iran uses coercion and intimidation -- using groups like Hezbollah and Hamas -- to weaken existing regimes and to employ terror. It is Iran that arms these groups and threatens Israel on a daily basis.

Dennis Ross Why I support Barack Obama in The Philadelphia Jewish Voice.

Obamageddon

UK Guardian | With polls showing Barack Obama pulling ahead of John McCain in the US presidential race, the Republican party's hard-right evangelical allies are starting to panic. As the political elites in the movement freak out, they're sowing the seeds of grassroots anxiety that God will punish America for electing Obama.

Theodicy lies at the heart of the evangelical right's political strategy: Christians must perpetually engage in spiritual warfare with Satan, and take dominion over governmental and legal institutions. God will be pleased then; but if these Christian soldiers fail to vanquish Satan, God won't be happy at all. Chaos ensues: socialism, Bible burning, abortions in public schools, boy scouts forced into homosexuality!

Religious-right honchos are girding the troops for political apocalypse. Townhall magazine, owned by Salem Communications, one of the largest Christian broadcasters in the country, ran a September feature, "Obamageddon: Could We Survive a Barack Presidency?" This month evangelical publishing giant Stephen Strang, whose magazine Charisma endorsed McCain, predicted that "life as we know it will end if Obama is elected." Last week, the political arm of James Dobson's Focus on the Family sent out a "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America", a 16-page (pdf) parade of horribles, and talk radio show host Janet Porter imagined that Christians will be imprisoned with Obama in the Oval Office.

Six-Legged Soldiers

Excerpt from Six-Legged Soldiers at the Scientist; Insects have been converted into weapons of war and tools of terror for millennia. A new book asks: Are we ready for the next wave?

Dusk descends on a sweltering New Orleans. A naked man lies moaning in an apartment a few blocks from Canal Street. His jaundiced body is mottled with bruises where vessels have hemorrhaged. The pillow and bedside are caked with blood that he has vomited. The man's breathing is labored as he drowns in his own fluids.

The window of the room is shut tightly, letting in no breath of air - and letting out none of the thousands of mosquitoes that cover the walls and the man's body. Aedes aegypti is not the most common species along the Gulf Coast, but anyone with a course in medical entomology could build a simple trap and conscript a bloodthirsty army.

Across the hall, another man cracks his door and peers out. Seeing nobody in the hallway, he emerges wearing beekeepers' garb. After slipping into the sickroom, he watches as a convulsion wracks the martyr's body. The insects rise in a ravenous cloud, droning their annoyance at having their meal disturbed.

Taking advantage of the moment, the garbed man crosses the room and opens the window... ...Sensing the air currents, a cloud of mosquitoes pours through the window, carrying a payload of yellow fever. The city's tropical heat, stagnant waters, crumbling infrastructure, decrepit health care system, and haggard people - nearly a quarter million resolute souls after Katrina - will provide an ideal setting for an epidemic. The man pulls a cell phone from his pocket and reads the coded text messages from his associates in Houston and Miami. He smiles, brushes a mosquito from the key pad, and dials the news desk at CNN.

Gun Sales Thriving In Uncertain Times

Washington Post | Americans have cut back on buying cars, furniture and clothes in a tough economy, but there's one consumer item that's still enjoying healthy sales: guns. Purchases of firearms and ammunition have risen 8 to 10 percent this year, according to state and federal data. Several variables drive sales, but many dealers, buyers and experts attribute the increase in part to concerns about the economy and fears that if Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois wins the presidency, he will join with fellow Democrats in Congress to enact new gun controls. Obama has said that he believes in an individual right to bear arms but that he also supports "common-sense safety measures."

"Even though [Obama] has a lot going for him, he's not very pro-gun," said Paul Pluff, a spokesman for Massachusetts-based Smith & Wesson, which has reported higher sales. Gun enthusiasts are "going to go out and get [firearms] while they still can."

Gun purchases have also been climbing because of the worsening economy, which fuels fears of crime and civil disorder, industry sources and specialists said.

"Generally, we know that hard economic times always result in firearm sales," said James M. Purtilo of Silver Spring, who publishes the Tripwire Newsletter.

Gary Kleck, a researcher at Florida State University's College of Criminology and Criminal Justice whose work was cited in the District's recent Supreme Court gun-control case, said that although there are no scientific studies linking gun sales and economic conditions, people often buy firearms during periods of uncertainty. People often buy weapons because of concerns about personal safety or government actions to limit access to firearms, causing spikes in sales, Kleck said.

Wealth gap creating a social time bomb

UK Guardian | Growing inequality in US cities could lead to widespread social unrest and increased mortality, says a new United Nations report on the urban environment.

In a survey of 120 major cities, New York was found to be the ninth most unequal in the world and Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington, and Miami had similar inequality levels to those of Nairobi, Kenya Abidjan and Ivory Coast. Many were above an internationally recognised acceptable "alert" line used to warn governments.

"High levels of inequality can lead to negative social, economic and political consequences that have a destabilising effect on societies," said the report. "[They] create social and political fractures that can develop into social unrest and insecurity."

According to the annual State of the World's cities report from UN-Habitat, race is one of the most important factors determining levels of inequality in the US and Canada.

"In western New York state nearly 40% of the black, Hispanic and mixed-race households earned less than $15,000 compared with 15% of white households. The life expectancy of African-Americans in the US is about the same as that of people living in China and some states of India, despite the fact that the US is far richer than the other two countries," it said.

Disparities of wealth were measured on the "Gini co-efficient", an internationally recognised measure usually only applied to the wealth of countries. The higher the level, the more wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer people.

"It is clear that social tension comes from inequality. The trickle down theory [that wealth starts with the rich] has not delivered. Inequality is not good for anybody," said Anna Tibaijuka, head of UN-Habitat, in London yesterday.

The report found that India was becoming more unequal as a direct result of economic liberalisation and globalisation, and that the most unequal cities were in South Africa and Namibia and Latin America. "The cumulative effect of unequal distribution [of wealth] has been a deep and lasting division between rich and poor. Trade liberalisation did not bring about the expected benefits."

Europe on the brink of currency crisis meltdown

UK Telegraph | The financial crisis spreading like wildfire across the former Soviet bloc threatens to set off a second and more dangerous banking crisis in Western Europe, tipping the whole Continent into a fully-fledged economic slump.

Currency pegs are being tested to destruction on the fringes of Europe’s monetary union in a traumatic upheaval that recalls the collapse of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.

“This is the biggest currency crisis the world has ever seen,” said Neil Mellor, a strategist at Bank of New York Mellon.

Experts fear the mayhem may soon trigger a chain reaction within the eurozone itself. The risk is a surge in capital flight from Austria – the country, as it happens, that set off the global banking collapse of May 1931 when Credit-Anstalt went down – and from a string of Club Med countries that rely on foreign funding to cover huge current account deficits.

The latest data from the Bank for International Settlements shows that Western European banks hold almost all the exposure to the emerging market bubble, now busting with spectacular effect.

They account for three-quarters of the total $4.7 trillion £2.96 trillion) in cross-border bank loans to Eastern Europe, Latin America and emerging Asia extended during the global credit boom – a sum that vastly exceeds the scale of both the US sub-prime and Alt-A debacles.

Europe has already had its first foretaste of what this may mean. Iceland’s demise has left them nursing likely losses of $74bn (£47bn). The Germans have lost $22bn.

Stephen Jen, currency chief at Morgan Stanley, says the emerging market crash is a vastly underestimated risk. It threatens to become “the second epicentre of the global financial crisis”, this time unfolding in Europe rather than America.

Eastern Europe Adrift

The Economist | WILL an ex-communist country be the next Iceland? The dramatic collapse of that country’s economy, endangering savings from hapless depositors in Britain and elsewhere, has highlighted other risky but obscure corners of the world’s financial system. The stability of the Ukrainian hryvnia, the implications of the Latvian property crash and Hungarians’ troubling penchant for loans in Swiss francs are among the exotic topics now crowding policymakers’ desks.

Countries such as the ex-communist ones in eastern Europe are particularly at risk during periods of financial turmoil. First, because the counterpart of soaring foreign investment has been gaping current-account deficits (Latvia’s, for example, peaked at 26% of GDP in the third quarter of last year). Second, their central banks and governments are unlikely to be able to muster the financial firepower now being deployed in the big economies of the West. Already a couple of banks have toppled; stockmarkets have plunged, wiping out years of savings and hitting balance-sheets. The price of credit-default swaps—the market’s estimation of a borrower’s creditworthiness—ranges from the reassuring to the alarming (see map). As worries intensified, Hungary’s central bank on October 22nd raised interest rates from 8.5% to 11.5%.

For countries that have benefited from big flows of outside money, delivered by a highly leveraged global financial system, the mix of problems looks scary. Those big current-account deficits in every country save Russia suggest they may be living beyond their means. Some (but not all) have public or private sectors with big foreign debts; these may be hard to refinance. Some (again, not always the same ones) have wobbly banks and large state deficits. At best, the region is in for more nasty shocks that will need external support from lenders such as the IMF. At worst, some countries face debt restructuring, currency collapse and depression; that raises the spectre of political upheaval, too.