army's giant fake silver nutsack lightning bolt shooter

Wired | There was a time, not all that long ago, when the Pentagon sank tens of millions of dollars into remote-controlled lightning guns that it hoped would fry insurgent bombs before they killed any more troops. Now, disassembled parts from the one-time wonder-weapons are being sold on eBay. At least one buyer snatched up the gear, hoping to use it in his latest art project for Burning Man.

All of which would make for a funny little story, if that buyer didn’t discover that the multimillion dollar “Joint Improvised Explosive Device Neutralizers,” or JINs, were kluged together from third-rate commercial electronics, and controlled by open Wi-Fi signals. In other words, the Pentagon didn’t just overpay for a flawed weapon. On the off-chance the JIN ever worked, the insurgents could control it, too.

“This is the hack of all hacks,” says Cody Oliver, a freelance technologist in San Francisco. “And this is what they were selling to the government? Holy shit.”

OK, that story is kind of funny, too. In it’s own dark way.

It started one day last April, Oliver says. He was brainstorming with sometime-employer, Elon Musk, about their next project for Burning Man. For the last three years, Oliver had built for Musk “art cars” — tricked-out jalopies — in the shape of rocket ships that Musk then drove around the festival. (Musk is the founder of the rocket-maker SpaceX, among other firms.) This year, Oliver suggested something different — a remote-controlled art car. Musk liked the idea. So Oliver started trolling eBay for robotic control systems.

He figured he’d get something industrial grade, that already had all the safety and interference issues sorted out. Oliver quickly found a pair of Omnitech Robotics NGCM1 controllers — the kind of high-end electronics that ordinarily sold for tens, if not, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oliver bought a pair for a thousand bucks. He sent his dad down to a nondescript warehouse in Tucson, Arizona to pick the stuff up.

Oliver knew there was something different about these controllers almost as soon as he took them out of the crate. The steering wheel was outfitted with black buttons labeled “Enable Weapon” and “Weapon On.” In the center was a big red button marked, “STOP!”

Things got more curious when he started poking around the software. There was no password on the gear that was supposed to be outfitted on the robot, so he was able to type “root,” and get right in. Then he checked out the operator’s equipment, which ran a Java app on Windows XP. He decompiled it, and found a string in the code: “IONPaysBills=true.”

ION was the stock market symbol for Ionatron, the company that managed to convince Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defense Secretary during the early years of the George W. Bush administration, to give the firm $30 million for its bomb-zappers. Shaped like golf carts, the remote-controlled JINs were supposed to use short-pulse lasers to carve conductive channels in the air. Electricity could then be sent down those channels, frying bombs from a safe distance. A company press release quoted Brig. Gen. Joseph Votel, head of the Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Task Force as saying, “The Ionatron system was just the type of out of the box, new technology solution we’re looking for.”

But the JINs never quite lived up to their overheated claims. In early 2006, the Washington Post recounts, two JINs were flown to Afghanistan. At one point, “the kill switch failed and the device continued to fire bolts of electricity. Steep mountain terrain and poor roads also proved difficult; one JIN rolled downhill and flipped over.”

Eventually, the Pentagon soured on the JINs. Ionatron lost most of its cash, changed its name, and got wrapped up in a series of shareholder lawsuits and insider trading scandals. A couple of years ago, the broken firm reached out to Tuscon’s Southwest Liquidators, who helped clear the Ionatron warehouse of its useless inventory of electronics. “We took it all,” says Southwest’s Keith Tearne. Then they put it on eBay.

putin tells young nashis u.s. is like a "parasite"

Reuters | Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States Monday of living beyond its means "like a parasite" on the global economy and said dollar dominance was a threat to the financial markets.

"They are living beyond their means and shifting a part of the weight of their problems to the world economy," Putin told the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi while touring its lakeside summer camp some five hours drive north of Moscow.

"They are living like parasites off the global economy and their monopoly of the dollar," Putin said at the open-air meeting with admiring young Russians in what looked like early campaigning before parliamentary and presidential polls.

US President Barack Obama earlier announced a last-ditch deal to cut about $2.4 trillion from the U.S. deficit over a decade, avoid a crushing debt default and stave off the risk that the nation's AAA credit rating would be downgraded.

The deal initially soothed anxieties and led Russian stocks to jump to three-month highs, but jitters remained over the possibility of a credit downgrade.

"Thank god," Putin said, "that they had enough common sense and responsibility to make a balanced decision."

But Putin, who has often criticized the United States' foreign exchange policy, noted that Russia holds a large amount of U.S. bonds and treasuries.

"If over there (in America) there is a systemic malfunction,

this will affect everyone," Putin told the young Russians.

"Countries like Russia and China hold a significant part of their reserves in American securities ... There should be other reserve currencies."

U.S.-Russian ties soured during Putin's 2000-2008 presidency but have warmed significantly since his protégé and successor President Dmitry Medvedev responded to Obama's stated desire for a "reset" in bilateral relations.

you bishes know what you have to do now....,

Guardian | Anarchists should be reported, advises Westminster anti-terror police, Islamist terrorists also mentioned in briefing, as anarchists complain of being criminalised for their beliefs.

What should you do if you discover an anarchist living next door? Dust off your old Sex Pistols albums and hang out a black and red flag to make them feel at home? Invite them round to debate the merits of Peter Kropotkin's anarchist communism versus the individualist anarchism of Emile Armand? No – the answer, according to an official counter-terrorism notice circulated in London last week, is that you must report them to police immediately.

This was the surprising injunction from the Metropolitan Police issued to businesses and members of the public in Westminster last week. There was no warning about other political groups, but next to an image of the anarchist emblem, the City of Westminster police's "counter terrorist focus desk" called for anti-anarchist whistleblowers stating: "Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police."

The move angered some anarchists who complained that being an anarchist should not imply criminal behaviour. They said they feel unfairly criminalised for holding a set of political beliefs.

The feeling of disproportion was compounded by the briefing note author making a similar request about Islamist terrorists a few lines further down. Under an image of flag with a gold dot beneath some Arabic script it added: "Often seen used by al-Qaida in Iraq. Any sightings of these images should be reported to your local police."

"It unfairly implies that anyone involved in anarchism should be known to the police and is involved in an dangerous activity," said Jason Sands, an anarchist from South London. "There is nothing inherently criminal about political philosophy whatever it is. The police work under the convention on human rights which disallows discrimination against people because of their political beliefs and even the request for information would seem to be in breach of that. It also seems to be a bit useless as a way of gathering intelligence. It isn't focused on anything specific and they are just asking for general information. Imagine calling up and saying 'there's an anarchist in my building. What should I do?' It doesn't make sense."

15 reasons to avoid college student loan debt...,

Video - RT u.s. students drowning in student loan debt.

endoftheamericandream | America has created a student loan debt bubble that is inflating at a staggering pace and that is destroying hundreds of thousands of lives. For the first time in U.S. history, Americans owe more on their student loans than they do on their credit cards. Millions more young people are getting sucked in to the student loan debt trap each year. They are told that "an education" is the key to achieving the American Dream and that they won't be able to get a good job without going to college. They are told that they should get into the best school that they can and that they will surely get a good enough job to easily pay off their student loans. In fact, most American high school students don't have anyone warning them about the dangers of the student loans that they are about to commit to paying off. But they should, because the system of higher education in the United States has become a money making scam. Those who get sucked into the student loan debt trap often end up regretting it for the rest of their lives.

Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if there were plenty of good jobs available for college graduates and if the education our college students were receiving was of a decent quality.

But unfortunately, most colleges in the United States are a total joke. I know. I have three degrees. I have an undergraduate degree, a law degree and another degree on top of that. I went to what would be considered "good" schools.

But the education that I received (and that millions of other young Americans are receiving) is of such poor quality that it is almost unimaginable.

Most college students spend two to four hours a day in the classroom and maybe an hour or two outside the classroom studying. The rest of the time they are out drinking beer, partying, chasing after sex partners, going to sporting events, playing video games, hanging out with friends, chatting on Facebook or getting into trouble.

For most Americans, the most free time that they will ever have is when they are in college.

On top of that, the actual "education" that goes on inside college classrooms is absolutely and totally pathetic. Take it from someone who spent close to a decade in those classrooms - even a trained monkey could pass most of those courses.

Today, going to college is all about having a good time and getting that piece of paper that says you are a college graduate so that you can put it on your resume.

Shockingly little actual learning goes on inside America's college classrooms in 2010.

Meanwhile, big financial institutions are making an absolute killing on the massive amount of student loan debt that Americans keep piling up.

The following are 15 reasons why young Americans should do whatever they can to avoid getting sucked into the student loan debt trap....

you stay where america lets you stay...,

WCAX | You might never know it but when you drive along the Williston Road interchange there are homeless camps all around you.

That's where we found Artie Hill-- a former diesel mechanic who now is on disability.

Reporter Gina Bullard: So what are you doing out here?

Artie Hill: I'm having a drink and smoking my whatever but I'm not homeless.

Hill was homeless for years until an advocate helped him find housing. He now comes back out to where he once lived and reflects.

"For one thing it's my church," he said. "But I come back here because I love nature and it reminds me of what I went through."

He was the only one in this patch of woods in South Burlington, but in a camp just across the street it's a whole different world. There are driveways and paths leading to tents and even more advanced structures with windows. They even have their own landfill.

"People are prepared for winters. They have tents, heat and depending on how bad the winter is people can survive it pretty well," said Matt Young, an advocate for the homeless.

For an outsider coming in it was almost like organized chaos or a commune.

"Many people are very discreet when living in the woods," Young said.

Young is a community outreach leader working for the HowardCenter. Part of his job is to reduce the reliance on the police when it comes to the homeless population. He was on Church Street in Burlington checking on a homeless man he had received calls about.

"Some people are not interested in staying out of trouble, getting jobs, being housed. So we see if we can meet people halfway," Young said.

Bill, who didn't want to give his last name, has been homeless and on the move for 20 years.

Bullard: Where do you stay?

Bill: Every night's different. It's where America lets you stay, not where you want to stay.

sustainable civilization from the grassroots up

Video - Creating a new model and making the old one obsolete.

OilCrash | Our predominant industry, political, and personal paradigms developed in an era of cheap abundant energy, expanding population, and what seemed to be unlimited resources. We have gone forth and multiplied (well beyond sustainable numbers) and subdued (perhaps fatally) the Earth. Our ability to operate our infrastructure is ending. Belief in or dedication to a particular ideology may alter individual perceptions, but not physical facts. We need to re-think our civilization from the grass roots up, not bumble blindly on.

We need to set aside the rigid mindset that separates and sees our infrastructure as distinct aspects of biological, structures and other engineering, and information and intellect. It all needs to work together.

There are many treatises with theories on how many people could live on the Earth based on some minimum life support per person. I propose though we ask also, what is the minimum for new healthy generations, maintaining community, and the benefits of an educated technical and developing civilization, with an eye toward providing the best living conditions per person and opportunities for continued advancement of civilization, while reducing our impact on such as remains of nature.


INTRODUCTION

As we enter a new millennium, human civilization faces numerous challenges. Much of our present infrastructure and processes are not sustainable. Much of what we do threatens not only us, but all life on the planet.

* Industry pollutes with enduring toxins that not only kill but alter our DNA.
* Fission reactors provide power for a few decades, all the while “threatening” to release a radioactive cloud, then require storage of the dismantled parts for perhaps a hundred thousand years.
* We arguably divert one half of the renewable resources of the planet to human uses.
* We use non-renewable resources in manners that destroy them.
* The apparent abundance of hybrid crops is dependent on non-renewable resources.
* The farming and food infrastructure depletes the groundwater, mineral, and biological base essential for soil to grow healthy natural food.
* Easy to mine metals and mineral resources are already "on the table".
* The economy of many nations is based not on actual capability and production of the nation, but on borrowing and inflation of currency.

Close your eyes for a moment, and imagine you are traveling on a multi-generation spacecraft, powered by energy radiated from a fusion reactor.

You have only the biological diversity and resources put on board by the builders. Awhile back people found accumulations of long-stored complex molecular feedstock that work as convenient fuel, and can help certain crops grow more abundant. The burning strains the air recycling system, but people love the extra food, products and services it allows.

The dramatic but obviously temporarily increase in the growth of food is met by expanded numbers until even these sources are strained, and continue to increase the population even in the face of facts that the food surplus cannot last the natural lifespan of the present population.

It’s where we are today.

For the moment, our farms still grow sufficient food to feed everyone. But each new belly to fill, and each less gallon of fertilizer and pesticide, moves us closer to “peak food”. From that point on, the food infrastructure becomes less and less productive. Without reliable food, such veneer of civilization as holds back the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" could easily crumble.

The world may appear large, but it is finite. We can calculate the available land, water, and other resources, even incoming solar energy. We know the minimum calorie and nutrition required per person, and can calculate the area to grow food based on plant selection and growing conditions.

We can calculate the area required to grow industrial materials and fuel, and the tradeoff in food area. We have calculated that we are already diverting to human use one-half of the productive life of the Earth. When you have estimated some basic footprint area per person, multiplying by 6 billion provides a sobering comparison to the available renewable resources of the Earth.

The concept of determining the "footprint", or area of naturally recycled resources required to provide for the uses of a person, city, nation, or the global population shows that in almost every defined area whether political or physical, we are beyond a sustainable population [1]. Eliminate all human resource use that is not "life-support" for a fixed population, and you still find sustainability is at best questionable. The present infrastructure is producing food beyond that which is calculable for the sustainable input. In general, it would take several additional planets to provide for humanities present resource use rate.

How is this possible? How are we providing for 6+ billion people? Our infrastructure is dependent on non-renewable input. The timeframe when the first non-renewable yet essential input fails to meet demand is the lifespan of our present civilized infrastructure.

Since the fossil fuel era really began, the global human population has increased six fold, now standing at more than six billion. We have a deadline and the clock is ticking. Business as usual is suicide. But those who see the problem and speak of it are maligned. Nevertheless those who can be awoken must be. To make the best decisions and implement the best courses of action we need the best minds at work. It will take time and significant effort to implement change.

the light bulb conspiracy

Video - The Lightbulb Conspiracy 2010 documentary on planned obsolescence. Fist tap Umbrarchist.

orthodox spirituality compared and contrasted with other religious traditions

Video - Cash Rules Everything Around Me CREAM Wu Tang Clan

The stronger and more powerful have always preyed on the weaker, from the earliest African tribes to the banksters of today. It's human nature and you cannot change that. It's a jungle out there, always has been, always will be. Nice guys finish last...Big Don

Strannik | To best understand why there are these vitally important differences and what they mean, let us follow the Fathers of the Church, according to whom, there are the following possible three states of human existence, of the soul, and all its faculties. These three states are:

1. the sub-natural or contra-natural state, also known as the “contrary to nature” state, and fallen subsistence,
2. the natural state, also known as the “according to nature” state, and life as created in the Image, and
3. the supra-natural state, also known as the “beyond nature” or “according to grace” state of ascending participation in the Uncreated Energies, and deified eternal life after the Likeness.

There are two things to point out about these states. First, originally, we were created in the natural state in the divine Image but were meant to grow in synergy with the Uncreated Energies into the deified Likeness of God.

Second, we are in the contra-natural state. So, of course, it is the better known state. The natural and supra-natural states are less well known, even to the Fathers of the Church. Accordingly, there is more agreement between all three traditions, not surprisingly, about the nature and problems of the contra-natural state than there is about the natural state or about our ultimate supra-natural destiny. As a result, while there is much agreement about the nature and problems of the beginning stages of the spiritual life from the contra-natural state to the natural state, this consensus rapidly disappears. Despite the alleged superficial and deceptive similarities of the peak of the spiritual life that has been created by those who engage in highly selective quoting and juxtapositioning of bits and pieces of texts from various mystical traditions in an effort to support the view that all religions are one at the top, what we actually find is that both the nature and purpose of the more advanced phases of the spiritual life are topics where there is an increasing divergence of opinion. But as we can see with the Fathers, particularly in how the Cappadocians treat and weigh what is true and of value in Greek philosophy, and following their lead, especially with the Syrian Fathers dealing with what was true and what was error in Buddhist practice (as represented inBactria), even the agreement about the nature of the contra-natural state is more limited than is apparent at first sight. This is because you can only fully agree about exactly how the contra-natural state is contra-natural only if there is shared knowledge of what the original design plan of purpose of human life intended us to be.

Differing conceptions of the ultimate nature and purpose of human life provide differing cures for the contra-natural disease we all suffer from. But as the meaning of the Greek word “phármakon” reveals in ancient Greek medicine, depending on the exact nature of the disease as diagnosed in terms of some exact conception of health, the very same substance or treatment can either serve as a medicine (phármakon) or poison (pharmákion). To be a medicine, a substance or treatment has to be given in the right amount, at the right time, and under the right conditions for a correctly diagnosed disease in order to have the right effect. The same holds true for spiritual treatments, techniques, and cures. We need to understand the vastly different purposes, serving different diagnoses of what is wrong, based upon different views of what human life is supposed to be, that similar, or even, exactly the same spiritual techniques are made to serve. It is not similar techniques that we need to look at but their purpose, their actual function within a larger operational context, and thus, their intended effect.

Distinctive Characteristics of Orthodox Christianity

It is to these purposes we will turn to examine in order to reveal the very real differences in function and outcome behind the apparent similarities of even the same spiritual techniques. But in order to do that, we first need to note two very distinctive characteristics about Orthodox Christianity that determine the fundamental purposes, functions, and outcomes of any spiritual techniques that may make the Hesychast tradition superficially appear similar to Buddhism or Yoga.

The first characteristic of Orthodoxy is the emphatically important truth for spirituality that God is Trinity. The spiritually relevant meaning and implication of this fact, for our purposes, is that reality is ultimately and inescapably interpersonal communion.

Intimately stemming from the fact that God is Trinity is the second distinctive characteristic of Orthodox Christianity. Christianity is not a religion; it is a Church - the Church, the Kingdom come, God’s people called out of the world unto Him, and the Communion of Saints. That is, Christianity is not my personal and private salvation through Jesus. As the Body of Christ, it is a deifying process of becoming a communion of persons mutually participating in the Uncreated Energies of the Life of the Trinity and increasingly after its Likeness.

Plato sought the ideal polis. Aristotle defined the human creature as intrinsically the social and political animal. In Judaism, a relationship to God is to be called and chosen, ex nihilo fashion, out of nothing, out of Ur of the Chaldeans, out of Egypt, out of the world, as a people covenanted to God. The people, the Church, the Body of Christ (through whom all things were made, in whom all things have their being, and will find their fulfillment) - that is, the covenant - is the inner purpose of creation. Creation is the outer staging. The Church is the fruit from which the tree that bore it was born first, as the Syrian Church is fond of reciting, for what shall be last is the very realization of what was first ordained. This is simultaneously a cosmological and inward truth. Those who inwardly shall be last spiritually participate in that fruit from which the tree that bore it was itself born.

Contrary to the (schismatic, Roman Catholic derived) Protestant sensibilities that are dominant in our culture and affect too many Orthodox, the spiritual life and our salvation have everything to do with Church membership. The Church is God’s ideal polis. To say, in contrast to the nature deities of paganism, that our God is the God of history who intervenes in human affairs is also to say he is the supreme politician. God’s economia of salvation is God’s career in politics in history. God’s politics is the outward missionary expansion of his Church and the inner building-up of his Church into a perfected Communion of Saints after the Likeness of the trinitarian communion of divine persons. Syneidesis or conscience is naturally the innate prefiguration of the Church as that which ought to be, but which is faded in our contra-natural condition. For Orthodox Christianity, conscience is our innate inward call to become part of the Body of Christ.

While these two distinctive characteristics of Orthodox Christianity may appear to be abstractions that are apparently remote from our daily lives or the life of the spirit, they immediately determine the differences in purpose, function, and outcome of similar or or even the same spiritual techniques that may be found in the Hesychast tradition, in Buddhism, and Hindu Yoga. The main difference between Hesychasm and the other two traditions is now before us waiting to be spelled out. We turn now to examine the status of ethics in these traditions.

sustainability excludes growth...,

ecoglobe | "Sustainability" is a state of societal organisation that can be maintained unchanged for a very long time, thousands of years.

This working definition differs from soft definitions of Sustainable Development, such as "forms of progress that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs" in line with the Brundtland report of 1982.

Sustainability excludes growth. Any development that entails growth is not sustainable, cannot be carried on for a long time. Humanity has lived sustainably for some 200000 years till the invention of agriculture, i.e. for 8000 generations.

Modernity started with the invention of the steam engine, leading to modern technology, allowing population to grown tenfold in only 12 generations of 25 years each. Humanity has now overshot the planet's carrying capacity by far, one can arguably say some 400 times overshoot: population 10 times, GDP per capita 40 times, since 1712.

All development means physical growth and thus an increase in the use of renewable and non-renewable resources. Non-material growths are fictions only, including the acclaimed transition to a services society. Many services are very resource intensive. At the end of the day growth is counted in GDP figures, which represent material resources.

No argument can justify further expansion (GDP and population growth) on a planet that is already hugely overloaded by hyperactive people. Environmental scientists as well as the media are reporting year after year on the increasing depletion and destruction of our habitats, nature, and resources. There is no need to get into details. We all know.

The acclaimed need of the poor countries to develop must be put within the environmental boundaries of resource availabilities and damage done to the lands.

Given the undeniable facts that humanity's burden on the planet is far too high, any development in poorer areas (NOT countries!) must be offset by contraction and frugalisation in the overdeveloped areas.

It goes without saying that growth is a suicidal policy for humanity on a planet that is not flat and not limitless. No Hope, nor Optimism nor Technology can counter these facts. Technology will not be able to revive extinct species, restore deforested areas, replenish spent aquifers, repair a spoiled climate, clean chemically polluted environments, or replenish depleted resource stocks, and so on and so forth.

A World Trade Organisation that works to increase trade and to maintain economic growth, but without considering these environmental facts and trends, has no future at all. Its old buildings on Geneva's lakeside and the extension under construction in the same public park will become void and useless when resource scarcities start to bite in the overdeveloped world as well. This time is not far off.

We are at peak oil, since 2003, as the International Energy Agency finally admitted, in their 2010 World Energy Outlook.
(Cf. http://www.ecoglobe.ch/energy/e/outl0n09.htm ).

Since there is no equivalent replacement for fossil fuels, not in quantity and not in quality, the post peak oil era, probably starting within the next few years, will lead to a decline in agricultural and industrial production, as well as the rolling back of globalistation.

Renewable energies are mainly electricity, all subsidized by fossil fuel for the generation plant, equipment, infrastructure, and human labour. We cannot eat electricity, nor use it as raw material for a host of modern products and fertilisers.

Even IF we had alternative energies, this would only confirm the false believes that we could continue our exuberant lifestyles and depletion of the world. The UNEP's "Green Economy", the WBCSD's "Vision 2050", The Swiss "CleanTech" so-called "Master Plan", and many more projects are all based on the belief in HOT, especially Technology, to save our modern souls. This HOT world cannot survive, because of physical resource realities.

The post peak oil era will entail a decline of the usefulness of the WTO for Business As Usual, i.e. furthering growth, because the physical resources will be lacking. The trade functionaries will be repatriated on the last flights that are then still possible with some remaining kerosene. Mr Pascal Lamy will be forced to retire in France. Geneva will have to try and survive with locally grown potatoes and heat its homes - with what exactly?

Remember that HOT - Hope Optimism Technology - cannot change physical facts and that we can only work with the ideas and techniques to live, with the means that we do have now. Tomorrow can not feed us today.
So, rather than worry about DOHA, BAU, and our jobs in whatever organisation, we should think of the effect of our work on the immediate future of our family, our children who have their eyes scared of environmental destruction.
Compare the eyes painted by a child, taken from a UNEP brochure.

These eyes of our own children should help us sit back, think for a while, and to refocus on those things that matter most to us.

why are banks bulldozing foreclosures?

The Atlantic | If you can't sell 'em, demolish 'em. This appears to be a new strategy adopted by some big banks struggling with a glut of foreclosed homes on their books. A new report indicates that some houses are being leveled by bulldozers, rather than revitalized and sold. Is this really a smart strategy?

Lindsey Rupp from Bloomberg reports on the phenomenon. The idea is that a bank donates a foreclosed home and possibly even pays for its demolition. One recent example is Bank of America donating 100 foreclosed homes to a Cleveland-area agency that will revitalize the property for other uses. From the article:

"There is way too much supply," said Gus Frangos, president of the Cleveland-based Cuyahoga County Land Reutilization Corp., which works with lenders, government officials and homeowners to salvage vacant homes. "The best thing we can do to stabilize the market is to get the garbage off."

Bank of America had 40,000 foreclosures in the first quarter, saddling the Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender with taxes and maintenance costs. The bank announced the Cleveland program last month, has committed as many as 100 properties in Detroit and 150 in Chicago, and may add as many as nine cities by the end of the year, said Rick Simon, a company spokesman.

The lender will pay as much as $7,500 for demolition or $3,500 in areas eligible to receive funds through the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Uses for the land include development, open space and urban farming, according to the statement. Simon declined to say how many foreclosed properties Bank of America holds.

Other servicers involved in such initiatives include other big names like Wells Fargo, JPMorgan, Citigroup, and even Fannie Mae. That's right: the government is indirectly bulldozing foreclosures.

The motivation here is pretty straightforward. They get out of ongoing maintenance costs and taxes that they would have to pay as long as the property remains on the market. But the even better news is that the banks can often write-off these properties as a result. An accounting analyst the article refers to says that in some cases, banks can deduct as much as the homes' fair market value from their income taxes.

From the real estate market's standpoint this strategy is also positive. With less supply, prices will stabilize more quickly. Disposing of these foreclosures will make the market clear sooner.

And yet, the idea of bulldozing homes does seem rather unsavory, does it not? Perhaps some of these homes are condemned and/or beyond repair. In those cases, it might turn out to be more expensive to try to get them back up to code than it would be to knock them down and start over. But does this really describe all of the cases? This is reportedly happening to thousands of homes across the U.S.

My concern is that banks are using this as an easy out to minimize their loss with little concern about what's best for the U.S. economy. If some of these homes could be converted to perfectly adequate rental properties at minimal additional cost at some point in the future, for example, then this would make a lot more sense than knocking them down and building new homes from scratch.

Unfortunately, if banks are better off bulldozing than attempting to sell these homes, then that's their prerogative. After all, they own the homes and can do as they like with them. It's just pretty incredible that the market has come to this.

new data shows sharp slowdown in growth rate

NYTimes | The economy slowed to a snail’s pace in the first half of 2011, underscoring a growing risk that the recovery itself may hang in the balance with budget and debt decisions in Washington.

The broadest measure of the economy, known as the gross domestic product, grew at an annual rate of less than 1 percent in the first half of 2011, the Commerce Department reported on Friday. The figures for the first quarter and the second quarter, 0.4 percent and 1.3 percent respectively, were well below what economists were expecting, and signified a sharp slowdown from the early months of the recovery.

The government also revised data going all the way back to 2003 that showed the recession was deeper, and the recovery weaker, than initially believed.

“There’s nothing that you can look at here that is signaling some revival in growth in the second half of the year, and in fact we may see another catastrophically weak quarter next quarter if things go wrong next week,” said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight, referring to the debt ceiling talks.

With so little growth, the economy can hardly withstand further shocks from home or abroad, and worrisome signals continue to emanate from heavily indebted European countries.

If the domestic economy were to contract, any new recession would originate on President Obama’s watch — unlike the last one, which began a year before he was elected.

If Congress leaves existing budget plans intact, some of the government’s economic assistance, like the payroll tax cut, will phase out and thereby act as a drag on growth.

And by many economists’ thinking, whatever additional budget cuts Congress eventually agrees to (or does not) will weaken the economy even further.

overture to america's sea of silent peasants

Video - Sissi I belong to me.

Benjaminsmess | In “Sissi,” the richest .0001 percent of the people in the empire have no physical or social contact with the subjects they’re supposed to be in charge of, except for a handful of blank-faced servants who rush off-camera as quickly as their legs can carry them.

Were there poor people in Austro-Hungary in the19th century? Was there hunger? Was almost everyone illiterate? Was there injustice? Did as many as half of newborns die before reaching the age of three? Did the royal family of Franz-Joseph tax the poor, and squeeze tradesmen, to underwrite their masked balls, their boar hunts and their psychosomatic ailments? Was Austro-Hungary the corrupt relic of Europe’s parasitic feudal past? Was Austro-Hungary, in fact, the reactionary cesspool of incestuous aristocracy and lese majesté that triggered World War I, annihilating a generation of young men and spawning the bad seed that became Adolf Hitler?

Well, probably. But who knows? From this movie, you couldn’t get a clue that there was carbon-based life anywhere in Austro-Hungary outside the castle — where every room was pretty and everyone was happy. And why shouldn’t they be happy? These folks had so much money and power that they never had to think about money. They were so high up the mountain, in the upper rooms of the tallest building in the empire that, even if they looked out and saw ordinary people, those people seemed like ants.

As I watched director Ernst Marischka’s idyll of good-old-days Austro-Hungary, it occurred to me that my very own countrymen have been working tirelessly, over the past 30 years, to turn America into the same movie. Indeed, Republican progress toward re-creating the court of Franz-Joseph in the land of the free is outright awesome. Although the U.S. has never really been a model of financial equality, we are now the second least-equal democracy on earth, just behind Switzerland. We stand on the brink of creating our very own crowned and castled upper crust, suitable for filming.

In the last 30 years, tax policy and spending priorities have made America a little more Austro-Hungarian every day. Our median household wealth, for instance, has dropped 36 percent just since 2007. In other words, most of us have lost a third of what we had just four years ago! Sixty percent of American households earn less than they earned in 1979, the year before Ronald Reagan (the Franz-Joseph of the GOP) told us it was “morning in America.” Today, more than 24 percent of U.S. households have no marketable assets. In other words, a quarter of us own, literally, nothing. This is the highest percentage ever recorded. Three decades of upward wealth redistribution, promoted by Republicans and enabled by Democrats, is creating a sea of silent peasants. We wash up against but never disturb the sound stage where Romy Schneider floats from ballroom to throne-room in organdy and petticoats, and has babies who magically appear without requiring her to even drop her lace knickers or suffer through childbirth.

Of course, if the future consigns most of us to peasanthood, a few of us will have to be the Romy Schneiders. So far, this is working out real good, too. Between 2006 and 2007, average income for the 400 richest Americans soared 31 percent — in one year! — from $263 million to $345 million. This was before Congress extended the Bush tax cuts for the aristocracy and showered them with even more welfare.

mass socialist unrest in the garrison state?

972Mag | Huge protests in cities across Israel signal they are a growing political force

The housing and social protests tonight reached a huge crescendo, with throngs flooding streets in over 10 cities across the country Israel. Haaretz is reporting roughly 150,000 people around the country in Hebrew (most conservative estimate in the morning papers belongs to the pro-Netanyahu free paper, Israel Hayom: 100,000 protesters).

Compared to the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 who demonstrated last week, the number of protesters around the country may have more than quadrupled.

In Tel Aviv, the roar of frenzied euphoria mixed with anger preceded the crowd as the parade rounded a major intersection on its way to the Tel Aviv museum. Screams of “revolution” were echoed all over the country. Estimates speak of 10,000 in Jerusalem, similar numbers in Haifa and Beer Sheva, along with demonstrations in Kiryat Shmona, Nazareth, Ashdod several other locations.

Like last week, the Tel Aviv demonstration ended with a large and loud sit-in at a major traffic intersection (Dizengoff and Kaplan streets); police formed human chains to block streets, mounted police appeared, and eventually called to break up the protesters. Eight were arrested and released in the following morning.

At first glance, it appeared that the crowd’s demands were not significantly different from last week. The main rallying cry was still: “The people! Want! Social justice!” with a generous dose of “Bibi go home,” as well as anti-capitalism, pro-welfare state slogans, all laced with dripping sarcasm along the lines of: “The market is free, but we’re slaves.”

Over the last two weeks, the protests have been criticized as unfocused and lacking concrete demands. Tonight there were new signs of a plan taking shape. In the final speeches, after a lineup that included celebrity musicians, the organizers wrapped up with several quite specific demands. In what sounded very much like an ultimatum, they said that Netanyahu has until Wednesday, the day the Knesset goes on recess, to do two things: Withdraw the pending law for national housing committees – which they consider deeply damaging - and prevent the privatization of the Israel Lands Administration, which holds the vast majority of land in Israel.

On Sunday, Netanyahu has announced that a team of ministers would meet the representatives of the protest movement. The director of Israel’s finance ministry has resigned in the morning following the protest, citing the protest among his reasons.

And if the demands are not met? In a not very subtle innuendo, the organizers asked people to take note of the symbols starting to appear – a triangle with the letter “bet” inside it, hinting their intention to form or to join a political party, or at least to the attempt to bring down the government .

sharia law zones in british cities?

DailyMail | Islamic extremists have launched a poster campaign across the UK proclaiming areas where Sharia law enforcement zones have been set up.

Communities have been bombarded with the posters, which read: ‘You are entering a Sharia-controlled zone – Islamic rules enforced.’

The bright yellow messages daubed on bus stops and street lamps have already been seen across certain boroughs in London and order that in the ‘zone’ there should be ‘no gambling’, ‘no music or concerts’, ‘no porn or prostitution’, ‘no drugs or smoking’ and ‘no alcohol’.

Hate preacher Anjem Choudary has claimed responsibility for the scheme, saying he plans to flood specific Muslim and non-Muslim communities around the UK and ‘put the seeds down for an Islamic Emirate in the long term’.

In the past week, dozens of streets in the London boroughs of Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets and Newham have been targeted, raising fears that local residents may be intimidated or threatened for flouting ‘Islamic rules’.

Choudary, who runs the banned militant group Islam4UK, warned: ‘We now have hundreds if not thousands of people up and down the country willing to go out and patrol the streets for us and a print run of between 10,000 and 50,000 stickers ready for distribution.

‘There are 25 areas around the country which the Government has earmarked as areas where violent extremism is a problem.

why the old white dudes keep winning

Video - Bob Roberts trailer

Bucky-GandhiDesign | To replace the Old White Dudes we have to replace the vision of the world which they have been guardians of, in which a strong, mostly-white but not racistly so, liberal elite with nuclear weapons held down the world’s despotisms and communism. Cheney and the lads may well have slept well in their beds at night comparing themselves to Chairman Mao and his successors, and indeed when one looks at Putin and the mafiaization of Russian society, you might well want Cheney standing between you and that. Until we are ready to shoulder the burden of protecting Liberty globally, and with it Nature and the Poor, we are in no way, shape or form ready to overthrow the old guard and usher in a golden age.

Social policy is an easy problem compared to national security. But it is national security which has bankrupted America, perhaps through poorly chosen 21st century wars, but more likely through the decision not to half the Pentagon budget in the 1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union. No amount of reinvestment can refloat an economy which spends half of its tax dollars on war, and spends more than the entire world combined on arms. Until we talk about a comprehensive demilitarization of American society, coalition-based global stabilization, and a true, deep reform of our attitudes and action relative to nuclear weapons, we are going to be broke, and stay broke, in all probability.

The Old White Dudes are the last bastions of the power structures built up in the age of the Cold War. Haque and Hine are a little too young to remember the cold fear which was so much a part of my generation’s consciousness – the experience, at the age of 8 or 9, of realizing that the adults are holding the entire future to ransom, and that Nobody Is Doing Anything About It. The men in power saw that system come into being, lived through it and under it, and remember it etched into their bones. They fathered children expecting them to die with the world in the final nuclear exchange, and they soldiered on anyway, towards a brighter future, red button in hand. You must respect the generation which maintained global stability through the latter part of the 20th century, monsters though they may appear to be in the peace which they have created.

Now they are old, and suffer the faults of old men. But I do not have big enough shoulders to replace them, and I do not blame them for hanging on to power, seeking for safe hands to cast off their burdens to. These Cold Warriors maintain the defense industry, which maintains the media (got a better link?) to a frightening degree, and thereby shapes much of what our culture regards as real. The people control the press by what they will buy and what they will watch, but none-the-less the editorial pencil is still in the hands of the military-industrial complex. They do not shape our taste, but they can still spike a story.

The reinvention must be a demilitarization, an end to the age of war, not simply gilding the lily of capitalism with a new tier of social values. A less evil capitalism will still be anchored in space and time by nuclear weapons policy, and shaped by the hands of those who must maintain a society in a certain shape to maintain nuclear weapons capability. The fatal mistake is to assign malign motives to the nuclear bureaucrats: they do what they do because they sincerely believe it to be the best thing they can do under the circumstances.

So I am content to work incrementally, trying to round off the worst parts of the hard end of human life over, perhaps, a 20 or 40 year project. I don’t know what to do next, and I don’t know how to unpick the Gordian knot of the world. And this is not to say that there is no room for young turks, but a little humility goes a long way. Haque does not cite sources for most of his thinking, and has little connection to what is old, solid and true. Blathery demagogues do sometimes get things done, but given the complexity of our situation, there is no time or space for easy answers. And Haque’s answers are easy answers: we can do more of the same but better, we don’t have to cut our environmental consumption by 75% to 90% within twenty or forty years, we don’t have to make space at the table for the poor or face their armed wrath. It’s not that radical to suggest making money while not being an asshole, Umair!

The truth is that it’s all coming down. A hard truth, but the real truth: between shifting global balances of economic power, the massive need to cut our over-consumption by at least 75%, and the enormous amounts of money we all owe the fundamental truth is it cannot go on like this. Haque’s failure of imagination, to conceive of a world which is on the other side of these massive shifts in economic, political and military power, and call it “the future” is dangerous enough on its own, but sold as The Great New Future, it joins Thomas Barnett‘s work as a dangerously misleading brand: to sell “more of the same” as radical innovation crowds out the space for radical innovation. Chiapas is radical innovation, not the next generation of leaders at Harvard Business School.

Lest you think this is simply a brutal takedown of Umair Haque, it is not. It is a call for renewed political awareness, not in the simple party-politics sense, not the dumb left-versus-right debates which have left us unable to govern ourselves without paralyzing clouds of rhetoric obscuring all sense, but a real sense of the hard problems of the world as the ones to which we should be addressing our power to create a better future for humanity. Let me frame five of those hard problems for you.

1. Environment – US is at 8+ times footprint, Europe at 4+ times. We have no sane development path for 5 billion poor people trying to get a foot on the ladder.
2. Poverty – one billion are regularly hungry, 9 million children a year die of preventable disease.
3. Freedom – can free societies make tough decisions, or will authoritarian states like China endure hardship more effectively? What about creeping fascism and legalized torture in our democracies?
4. Democracy – has failed, to a substantial degree, when combined with Imperial Power. Can the world be governed by democracies?
5. Technological Risk – we have essentially no mechanism to regulate global risks from nuclear, biotechnology and nanotechnology. All three are spreading like a plague. Now what?

Working on these problems is radicalism. Working on how to keep Americans rich is not. We need to get real global perspective, and I’m singling out Umair Haque for a beat down because he’s telling people what they want to hear and dressing it up as radical truth.

outlaw conservatism in black run america

Video - Leadbelly Midnight Special

Occidental Dissent | National Review - The key to understanding Anders Breivik is that he measured himself as a man against the Knights Templar and the Teutonic Knights.

What would a Templar Knight do in this situation? I’m quite sure that Breivik wrestled with the question and followed it to the logical conclusion.

Do you know who Breivik didn’t measure himself against? The gelded little eunuchs in BRA’s media like Roger Cohen, these disgusting little cultural termites, who really are eunuchs and traitors and worms who are only fit to be thrown off the digital equivalent of the Tarpeian Rock.

Killing them is a complete waste of time. No one believes their bullshit anymore. Ridiculing them, labeling them for what they really are, and mocking them relentlessly will suffice as a solution to destroy their legitimacy – if conservatives would only do that, then men like Anders Breivik wouldn’t be forced to resort to more desperate measures. Let’s take a page out of Breivik’s book and measure ourselves against the great men of the past. Why not start with the greatest man in Western history, Caesar Augustus:

Video - Film glorifying the first Roman emperor Augustus Caesar

The Breivik Action: The First Archeofuturist Victory

Video - Odetta Midnight Special

Majorityrights | In a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action, what is often called ruthless, but may in many circumstances only be clarity, seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, looking at it. – Kurtz

As of this date, July 27, 2011, the military action carried out by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway has altered and shifted drastically the socio-political and cultural struggle of Occidental White Europids (WE™) to retake their ancestral territories, heritage and future history from Globalist-sponsored incursion, colonization and possible genocide. There will be serious setbacks. There will be serious blowback. There will also be considerable and, what was unimaginable opportunity prior to July 22, 2011, to exploit, at a sophisticated and dangerous level, for those White Ethno Nationalists with the political imagination, courage and resolve to do so.
As of this date, the initial burst of media coverage and all related conspiracy theories, second-guessing, conjecture, projection, etc. circulating in cyberspace are superfluous and, all things considered, useless. WE™ are left with an event that is now part of the political and historical fabric and discourse. The event exists only because of the action which birthed the event. Nationalists are left with fielding and dealing with the action itself, a host of both negative and positive consequences, and a flock of political Black Swans that are busy hatching as this is being read.

As was brought into public discourse by Rahm Emanuel when he was the White House Chief of Staff, the political maxim of “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” cuts both ways. For the cut to benefit the struggle of WE™ activists, this will require a certain degree of political sophistication and a clear perception of what can be done…and what cannot be done, and should not be done. The political leadership of global nationalist organizations and parties will be challenged to blunt an onslaught of institutional, media and political demonization, while at the same time probing for and implementing the opportunities that simply did not exist prior to July 22, 2011.

Much of the global nationalist political leadership, especially in NAmerika, will be severely challenged to make the shift to this next plateau. Some will not be challenged. This essay is addressed to the latter, those prepared to take the struggle of White liberation to the next level as forced by the Breivik action while simultaneously putting the goose-stepping and reactionary imposters out to pasture once and for all.

One of the first positive consequences (as opposed to the many negative consequences) that Breivik’s action will generate is that it will flush out the neo-con and Bible-thumping political illiterates and light-weights in the NAmerikan Nationalist community. This is already happening; it is to be welcomed. As pointed out by my Russian colleague, Alexander Mezentsev, “The Oslo ‘massacre’ is a harsh blow against all these malicious Trojan Horses, all these Geert Wilders.” Via their own statements to distance themselves from Breivik, this self-induced purge is already underway.

Much as with the stunted NAmerikan interpretation of European National Socialism, the NAmerikan interpretation of European New Right is a philosophical abortion. The Breivik action opens the door for all Occidental Whites to fully explore and begin to implement the political map as has been laid out by Guillaume Faye with his identification of Archeofuturism.

Anders Breivik as a Nordicist

Video - Creedence Clearwater Revival Midnight Special

Occidental Observer | It’s been noted, particularly on the racialist, paleoconservative right, that Anders Breivik’s ideas closely resemble the ideas usually associated with the neoconservatives: Strong support for Israel and opposition to Islam. For example, in his book, Breivik cites Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, and he includes several excellent articles from the Gates of Vienna site. My article, based on his web comments, may have contributed to this perception.

However, unlike the great majority of neoconservatives who are focused mainly on supporting Israel and for whom any other conservative attitude is a position of convenience, Breivik comes across as someone who is mainly motivated to preserve Europeans and their culture. (For example, neocons are typically very soft on immigration (see here, p. 26 and passim, including Muslim immigration; Breivik includes an article by “Fjordman” that questions neocon Daniel Pipes‘ idea of promoting moderate Islam.)

And, despite condemning cultural Marxism as the main villain, in the end Breivik realizes that it’s a biological battle. In his book, Breivik comments several times on the eventual extinction of the Nordics if something isn’t done. Breivik’s view is that a poisonous, maladaptive culture may result in evolutionary death just as surely as a genocidal military invasion. His ideas imply what I take to be correct, that evolutionary conflict is now mainly taking place in the arena of culture—the view of The Culture of Critique. Because cultural Marxism has resulted in natural selection against the Nordics, Breivik views it as a racist ideology of hatred toward Nordics: “Multiculturalism IS as evil and racist as Nazism and as brutal as Stalinism.” This strongly suggests that his web comments where he condemns ethnocentrism are strategic and don’t go to the heart of his thinking.

Breivik: sending a message to the elites

Video - John Fogerty Midnight Special

Occidental Observer | Is this the very first time that a gathering of leftists in a Western Nation, post 1960, has been made to pay the ultimate price for their anti democratic multicultural impositions?

If so, then I suspect that the pictures of dead young adults will have a rather powerful deterrent effect on parents who might otherwise encourage their kids to be leftists.

It is hard to imagine a more powerful and socially compelling deterrent than to inject the sort of horrific risk that these pictures implant into the minds of multiculturally inclined parents .

Viewed without emotion, this incident implies a multi-layered level of calculation that I find quite remarkable - an example not to be emulated to be sure – but remarkable nonetheless.

Thus far, Islamic terrorism has been confined to subway commuters in Spain, Street car commuters in Britain, and primarily, office workers in Manhattan – all nobodies that the elites could, quite frankly, care less about losing.

imposing costs on the multicultural elites...,

Video - Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie Midnight Special

Occidental Observer | The following is from an article in Al-Jazeera by Robert L. Lambert, the co-director of the European Muslim Research Centre (EMRC) at the University of Exeter (“Nationalists pose a bigger threat than Al-Qaeda“). Judging by his editorials in The Guardian, Lambert is pro-Muslim.

The fact is that Breivik very carefully chose his target. The victory of the left has meant that there is nothing but personal upside for Whites who administer the slow death of their own people. These are the Whites who are the public face of the entire mainstream political spectrum, from far left to neoconservative right. They have wonderful careers as university presidents, politicians, government bureaucrats, heads of major corporations, talking heads in the media.