Bageant in tuesday's Guardian.The comments are more illuminating than the editorial piece, but by all means, read it all because it's genuine news that you may really be able to use. Up from the comments there;
The US redneck is downtrodden, exploited, screwed over and spat upon, and he knows it. He's no fool, he can see through the BS better than any fancypants liberal. But there isn't a single molecule of social solidarity, of trust in his fellow man, of faith in collective action, left in his ultraindividualistic body that can transform his lumpenproletarian rage into progressive politics.
The redneck is almost an anarchist except that anarchists believe the state is unnecessary for maintaining social order and cohesion because mankind is innately social and cohesive. But the redneck believes that mankind is innately animal and that the state just a way for the fat and pampered rich and the weak to protect themselves from the law of the jungle, in which otherwise he, the strong individualist-survivalist with all the guns and ammo, would rule.
It wasn't always so. The collective struggle of the granddads and grannies of today's rednecks against the gun-toting robber barons of America was epic. It's that struggle that May Day celebrates. Where today's rednecks revel when the US bombs and destroys other countries, the US working class of the late 19th and early 20th century was resolutely antiwar. The Anti-Imperialist League militated against America's genocidal invasion of the Philippines. The IWW - the so-called "wobblies" - mobilized against the US entry into WWI and its members were carted off to concentration camps or dumped in the desert for "sedition" by Woodrow "make-the-world-safe-for-democracy" Wilson.
But the very successful strategy of the ruling class against America's immigrant poor was to pit them against each other, nation against nation and race against race. As Martin Scorsese epically depicted, the immigrant poor gouged each others' eyes out under the shadow of Lady "give me your downtrodden" Liberty. Factory bosses sent immigrant strikebreakers from another country, speaking another language, on strikers, provoking bloody gunbattles that left lasting divisions in the working class.
The modern redneck is a mutant created by a thousand violent traumas, from the machine-gunning of workers by troops and Pinkertons, Sacco & Vanzetti-style executions, and Bisbee-style mass deportations to starvation during the Depression, red scares, McCarthyism, and mob control of trade unions. He is the ultimate antisocial lumpenproletarian, imprinted with a thousand hatreds and mistrusts, whose ultimate faith is in the survival of the fittest, and whose political ideal has far more in common with fascism than any progressive agenda.
Old girl read the hell out of that teleprompter last night. I'd be lying to you if I claimed that I didn't PIP the "speechifying" into the outstanding tennis. While I had next to no interest in anything written by the GOP counter-narrators - I was very curious about her capacity to function as the embodiment of their identity politics gambit.
On Saturday, I tried to serve up my take on what's going on in these here presidential selections. In that post, I linked to an article by one of the thinkers for whom I have the greatest continuing amount of respect, Joe Bageant. Today, in light of what has transpired in our political theatre over the last five days, and the extent to which underlying critical issues are now completely off the American political table, it's time to share more of Joe's sage socio-political insight.
In the post political world the candidates who can best thrive in it have tremendous appeal to the economic elites; these candidates thrive in a system that does not dwell on issues and will never ask the question, "who has power and why", but simultaneously creates a social and media environment of stupefying distractions while destroying traditional social mores (under-credited as a source of much social solidarity). This can only benefit their continued rule of that society.
In such a setting our political choices like our consumer choices, regardless of the product, are primarily about what makes us more fulfilled and feel better about ourselves.
Have you witnessed anything in the unfolding psychodrama that fits these observations?
Helicopter-borne American Special Operations forces attacked Qaeda militants in a Pakistani village near the border with Afghanistan early Wednesday in the first publicly acknowledged case of United States forces conducting a ground raid on Pakistani soil, American officials said.
Until now, allied forces in Afghanistan have occasionally carried out airstrikes and artillery attacks in the border region of Pakistan against militants hiding there, and American forces in “hot pursuit” of militants have had some latitude to chase them across the border.
But the commando raid by the American forces signaled what top American officials said could be the opening salvo in a much broader campaign by Special Operations forces against the Taliban and Al Qaeda inside Pakistan, a secret plan that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has been advocating for months within President Bush’s war council.
It also seemed likely to complicate relations with Pakistan, where the already unstable political situation worsened after the resignation last month of President Pervez Musharraf, a longtime American ally.[...]
By killing civilians, General Abbas said, there was now a great risk of an uprising by the tribesmen who supported the Pakistani soldiers in the border area. The tribesmen, who oppose the Taliban and support the Pakistani forces, will now be extremely angry, he said.
“Such actions are completely counterproductive and can result in huge losses, because it gives the civilians a cause to rise against the Pakistani military,” he said.
The governor of North-West Frontier Province, Owais Ahmed Ghani, said the helicopter attack occurred about 3 a.m. and killed 20 people. Local residents said most of the dead were women and children, but this could not be confirmed.
One American official said that at least one child had been killed, and that several women who died in the attack were helping the Qaeda fighters. NYTimes - American Forces Attack Militants on Pakistani Soil
Everything that liberal, blue-state America can't stand about her makes conservative, red-state America swoon. It's not just about "Jesus babies and guns," as Rush Limbaugh pithily put it. Palin also wants "intelligent design" - creationism - taught in school. When she was mayor of the small town of Wasilla, "she asked the library how she could go about banning books," according to a local official quoted by Time. Palin was worried about "inappropriate" language. "The librarian was aghast" - and was later threatened with the sack.
In his stirring speech last week, Obama urged America not to "make a big election about small things". Yet here we are, discussing not Sarah Palin's record or programme but Jesus, guns, and as one feminist blogger put it yesterday, "the uterine activity of her family". This is a setback for women, especially in a year that seemed to promise a breakthrough, but it is also a setback for America itself.
Obama made his name four years ago with a speech that called for an end to the civil war of red against blue. In 2008, he urged a different kind of election, one that would match the gravity of the hour. But the naming of Sarah Palin, and the reaction it has provoked, has dashed that hope. Americans are, once again, fighting over the questions that politics can never really settle - faith, sexuality - and pushing aside the ones that it can. And which it must.
I dropped in at this part of his speech because he winds up talking about the folly of the war on drugs and the necessity of cultivating hemp for energy. He warms to this theme after a rousing round of "Go RP, Go RP" at about the 6 minute mark.
He's a superhunky bad-boy ice hockey player from cold country; she's a chestnut-haired beauty and popular high school senior.
The all-American teen twosome will make GOP vice presidential pick and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin a grandma at age 44 - just in time for Christmas.
Doe-eyed Bristol Palin, 17, and ruggedly handsome Levi Johnston, an 18-year-old self-described "f---in' redneck," have been dating a year, locals in Wasilla, Alaska, told the Daily News.
And the pregnancy? An open secret in the close-knit town of 9,780.[...]On his MySpace page, Johnston proudly declares: "I'm a f---in' redneck."
"I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing," he says on the site.
He also warns that if anyone messes with him, "I'll kick ass."
The Web site, before it was removed, appeared not to have been accessed for a year.
On it, he admits to having a girlfriend.
On the part where it asks about children, he wrote, "I don't want kids."
Mark Okeson, the assistant principal at Wasilla High School, told the Chicago Tribune that Bristol started her junior year last fall, in the town where Sarah Palin grew up.
He said Bristol inexplicably transferred to an Anchorage high school midyear, leaving Levi behind.
Oil as the cheap energy source has stoked industrial society for a century. However, ominous signs of oil depletion are beginning to appear, in fulfilment of M. King Hubbert’s “Peak Oil” theory. The implications of increasingly scarce oil supplies are catastrophic for the maintenance of industrial societies’ economic development. Even more, the anticipated economic development of the less developed countries is critically threatened. These less developed countries have set their will towards becoming industrialized, similar to that of the Western more developed countries. However, the stark facts of oil depletion herald considerable barriers to thwart the universalization of economic development to the less developed nations as oil prices skyrocket. This may all come together to facilitate civilization clash, as each political bloc frantically strives to secure the world’s oil resources, or at least the reliable supply of oil at the best price. Cohering nations may forge continent-wide civilization superpowers, for self advantage in the imminent new worldwide post-oil era, when abundant and cheap supplies of oil cannot be taken for granted. This may prove to be a contest of how the newly formed superpowers will cooperatively work together or aggressively compete with each other.
Future world scene and conclusion
Many are predicting the USA, in tragic economic decline, is about to plunge from its zenith position as the world’s voracious and massive consumer that has helped keep the world afloat economically. This free-fall (and possibly terminal) descent of the USA will have dramatic repercussions economically, by producing international financial chaos, as the world’s rapacious consumer, and receptacle for world investment, disappears, along with much of the international capital invested there. Such a massive economic catastrophe will rapidly lead to a rocky transition period. The world will be left without a great politically and militarily pre-eminent superpower. Just as nature hates a vacuum so does the political realm, and so newly forming superpowers will vie for advantage and even supremacy in the newly forming world order.
Out of international mayhem, with severe decline of some nations, and the collapse of the international financial system, a newly world-dominant economic and political superpower may arise, with its currency as the international convertible currency of choice.
This superpower, and any other remaining viable superpowers or civilizations, will need the reliable supply of oil, at cheapest possible prices, and it appears OPEC will be the most likely supplier of significant quantities. It remains to be seen whether the two oil-hungry, but oil-deficient civilization superpowers – Europe and the Asian conglomerate – can secure their supply of oil by the soft power of diplomacy, or whether the hard power of military force will be required – as oil is increasingly scarce against escalating demand.
Without a doubt, these oil-hungry superpowers will go to great lengths to maintain oil supplies and so sustain economic development and the viability of their civilizations.
This is an imminent state of affairs and may prove to be a testing ground for how the superpowers will compete for advantage, and how vociferous they can be for each to maintain, and even improve, its level of economic development, civilization greatness and world influence.
Yet again, the Bush administration has misjudged events. Moscow has drawn a line in the sand over Georgia and Ukraine. To push this issue is to poke the world's biggest energy producer in the eye.
Washington is lucky that China is not taking advantage of this crisis to help Russia inflict a crippling lesson. Russia holds $580bn of foreign reserves. China holds $1,800bn. Together they own a third of the $1.5 trillion stock of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other US agency bonds. They are holding a gun to the head of the US Treasury, and the US financial system.
So how should we handle the bad-tempered bear? Data from the International Energy Agency suggests that oil prices will fall back for a couple of years as the global downturn squeezes demand, and new deliveries come on-stream from Brazil, Africa, Central Asia and the US itself.
Russia's leverage as supplier of 6.5m barrels per day of crude exports will slip, but not for long. But oil may well climb to a new equilibrium price above $150 a barrel once the next global cycle starts in earnest.
If so, Russia will become an even bigger headache. It is willing to use the oil weapon. It cut off 50pc of crude deliveries to the Czech Republic in July after Prague signed a deal with the US on the missile shield.
Obviously, we must cut our reliance on oil and gas even faster than we are already doing. Nuclear and clean power stations must be built with more urgency than we have seen so far. Tide and wave power technology should be given the same strategic priority as aircraft carriers.
If I were an American citizen, I would expect Washington to sponsor a Manhattan Project to harness the solar power on a mass scale. My apologies to the CIA/Pentagon if such a blitz is under way. Jim Woolsey, the former CIA director, told me last week that the US will end its strategic dependence on oil much more quickly than people realise. "We can defeat oil as a transport fuel. Russia won't be able to push us around any more within a decade," he said.
A deus ex machina (lat. IPA: [ˈdeːus eks ˈmaːkʰina], literally "god from a/the machine")[1] is an improbable contrivance in a story characterized by a sudden unexpected solution to a seemingly intractable problem.
High oil prices have helped to bring down the American economy and to devastate Detroit. Politicians are talking about energy policy, although they seem to be talking past each other.
So it is now, and so it was in 1974, after the price shock that arrived after the Arab oil exporters started an embargo in retaliation for America’s support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War, and learned that they could sell oil for a lot more than they had thought.
From the perspective of 2008, what is most remarkable is that in 1975, the country had a president who actually wanted to confront the issue. The answers he proposed seem highly relevant now, even if the steps needed are much larger than would have been necessary if action had been taken back then.
Can you imagine hearing the following statements from either Senator John McCain or Senator Barack Obama?
“To provide the critical stability for our domestic energy production in the face of world price uncertainty, I will request legislation to authorize and require tariffs, import quotas or price floors to protect our energy prices at levels which will achieve energy independence.”
“Increasing energy supplies is not enough. We must take additional steps to cut long-term consumption.”
“Obviously, voluntary conservation continues to be essential, but tougher programs are needed, and needed now.”
Jimmy Carter, great as he was, was NOT the only president who attempted to grab this bull by its horns. Over, and over, and over again, the American people have been exhorted by sensible leadership to do better. Sadly, these exhortations have all fallen on deaf ears. They threaten to do so again.
Speaking near the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Medvedev also said that Russia would not alter its decision to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia. He also said that Moscow's agreements with them envisaged military as well as economic support.
The five points, Medvedev said, were firstly, the superiority of the fundamental principles of international law.
The second point was that the world must be multipolar.
"A uni-polar world is unacceptable," said Medvedev, adding that Russia could "not accept a world order where all decisions are made by one side, even such a powerful one as the U.S."
"Such a world is unstable and threatened by conflicts," he added.
Thirdly, he said, Russia does not seek confrontation with any other country.
"Russia is not looking for isolation," he said. "We will develop, in as much as is possible, friendly ties with Europe, the U.S., and other countries in the world."
Fourthly, Russia will protect the lives of its citizens, "wherever they are."
The fifth point was that Moscow would seek to develop ties in friendly regions.
On the topic of Moscow introducing sanctions against other states, he said that these would be unproductive, adding that sanctions should only be used in "extreme situations."
Medvedev was speaking the day before an EU emergency meeting on Georgia. The 27-nation organization is expected to discuss future relations with Russia. A number of member states, including Britain and Poland, have called for sanctions against Moscow, as well as the postponement of talks on a new partnership and cooperation agreement with Russia. - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev outlined on Sunday the five points upon which Moscow's future foreign policy will be based, and also said that it could if necessary introduce sanctions against other states.
Russia's General Staff said on Tuesday there were 10 NATO ships in the Black Sea - three U.S. warships, the Polish frigate General Pulaski, the German frigate FGS Lubeck, and the Spanish guided missile frigate Admiral Juan de Borbon, as well as four Turkish vessels. Eight more warships are expected to join the group.
"Despite the apparent strength, the NATO naval group in the Black Sea is not battle-worthy," Admiral Eduard Baltin said. "If necessary, a single missile salvo from the Moskva missile cruiser and two or three missile boats would be enough to annihilate the entire group."
"Within 20 minutes the waters would be clear," he said, stressing that despite major reductions, the Black Sea Fleet still has a formidable missile arsenal.
However, Baltin said the chances of a military confrontation between NATO and Russia in the Black Sea are negligible.
"We will not strike first, and they do not look like people with suicidal tendencies," he said.
In addition to its flagship, the Moskva guided missile cruiser, Russia's Black Sea Fleet includes at least three destroyers, two guided missile frigates, four guided missile corvettes and six missile boats.
NATO announced its decision to deliver humanitarian aid to Georgia after the conclusion of hostilities between Tbilisi and Moscow over breakaway South Ossetia on August 12. Moscow recognized on Tuesday both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgia republic, despite being urged by Western leaders not to do so.
Russia's General Staff later said the alliance's naval deployment in the Black Sea "cannot fail to provoke concern", with unidentified sources in the Russian military saying a surface strike group was being gathered there.
According to Russian military intelligence sources, the NATO warships that have entered the Black Sea are between them carrying over 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles and Harpoon anti-ship missiles.
The British chin is falling and that traditionally stiff upper lip is starting to quiver just a little bit. Should be very interesting to see how our traditional alliances hold up in the face of the massive operational failures the U.K. has bound itself to under the rubric of Bushco's middle-eastern misadventure.
"The era of cheap energy is well and truly dead and therefore Britain would do well to get its energy from sensible places and think imaginatively about where those places might be," Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks told BBC's Newsnight.
"There is a huge global grab for energy going on. We've got to make sure that Britain is protected; that we have the energy we need."
Britain is facing "arguably the worst" economic downturn in 60 years which will be "more profound and long-lasting" than people had expected, Alistair Darling, the chancellor, tells the Guardian today.
In the government's gravest assessment of the economy, which follows a warning from a Bank of England policymaker that 2 million people could be out of work by Christmas, Darling admits he had no idea how serious the credit crunch would become.
In the meantime, the geological peaking of world oil production is coming along right on schedule. Last week the Mexicans announced a major drop in output from their flagship Cantarell oil field. Russian production is stagnant and world exports are slowly starting to fall. Unless a major economic crash intervenes to muddy the waters, it should soon be obvious to all but the most biased observers that world oil production will peak within the next few years.
There is a world wide race going to between contracting economies and world oil production, the score of which will be kept in the price of oil. In the last few months OPEC production has increased a bit due to a more stable Iraq, increased Saudi production and scattered increases elsewhere. However, we are likely getting close to the last feasible increase in world oil production. Some OPEC members are already muttering that they deserve prices closer to $150 a barrel than $100 for their oil and hinting that if prices fall much further there will be production cuts.
Those who follow the status of new oil production projects say that if demand holds up, we might see some increases in production for another 24 to 36 months, but then depletion of existing fields will overtake production from new projects, shortages will develop, and prices will rise precipitously.
Starting with the current hurricane, it is going to be an interesting ride.
It is time to seriously contemplate World War III. The most important elements are already in place. Just as so many experts on the Caucasus have predicted, the region has become a power keg and the main source of great-power rivalry.
Obviously, disagreements between great powers go far beyond this region and, in fact, conflicts and war in the Caucasus are rather insignificant in their grand games and calculations. Yet the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and Russia all have important symbolic stakes there - there are promises to local players and fears that abandoning them might hurt reputation and global standing.
Paradoxically, the chances of a major, global armed conflict have increased since the probability of a large-scale nuclear war has declined to zero, in all practical terms. No one fears that the world will be annihilated, and thus the world is now deemed reasonably safe for a conventional war.
Fears are mounting that Russia may restrict oil deliveries to Western Europe over coming days, in response to the threat of EU sanctions and Nato naval actions in the Black Sea.
Any such move would be a dramatic escalation of the Georgia crisis and play havoc with the oil markets.
Reports have begun to circulate in Moscow that Russian oil companies are under orders from the Kremlin to prepare for a supply cut to Germany and Poland through the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline. It is believed that executives from lead-producer LUKoil have been put on weekend alert.
"They have been told to be ready to cut off supplies as soon as Monday," claimed a high-level business source, speaking to The Daily Telegraph. Any move would be timed to coincide with an emergency EU summit in Brussels, where possible sanctions against Russia are on the agenda.
Any evidence that the Kremlin is planning to use the oil weapon to intimidate the West could inflame global energy markets. US crude prices jumped to $119 a barrel yesterday on reports of hurricane warnings in the Gulf of Mexico, before falling back slightly.
Global supplies remain tight despite the economic downturn engulfing North America, Europe and Japan. A supply cut at this delicate juncture could drive crude prices much higher, possibly to record levels of $150 or even $200 a barrel.
With US and European credit spreads already trading at levels of extreme stress, a fresh oil spike would rock financial markets. The Kremlin is undoubtedly aware that it exercises extraordinary leverage, if it strikes right now.
Such action would be seen as economic warfare but Russia has been infuriated by Nato meddling in its "backyard" and threats of punitive measures by the EU. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday accused EU diplomats of a "sick imagination".
Armed with $580bn of foreign reserves (the world's third largest), Russia appears willing to risk its reputation as a reliable actor on the international stage in order to pursue geo-strategic ambitions.
Three and a half years ago, I anticipated and wrote about what's now unfolding in the presidential election. Over the next few weeks, there'll be a lot of mendacious talkabout everything on the periphery of what just happened. But let me spell out the truth of the matter very simply and directly here and now.
John McCain's campaign has just dropped an immense turd into the American political punchbowl. (no offense intended to Sarah Palin who is just being ruthlessly exploited for GOP political gain) So how do I know this? Up until a couple days ago, McCain had only ever had one telephone conversation with Palin over the prior 18 months! It's not as if he even knows her or cares to - instead - Palin is merely a convenient cog in the bottom-scraping GOP political calculus.
The McCain campaign is categorically NOT about issues anymore, at all. Instead, it is a desperate and impulsive fin d'siecle crapshoot rooted in pure identity politics. The writing has been on the wall for a minute concerning the GOP endgame, starting with McCain's attack on Obama's "celebrity". Here now is the gist of what I wrote few years ago, and a couple of very important links that may serve to better illuminate EXACTLY what the GOP strategists are attempting to do with the selection of Palin as McCain's running mate.
First, everyone should read A Guide to the White Trash Planet for Urban Liberals. It is an eye-opening view into the next big job for Americans of good faith. Not only must we Work hard on increasing and enriching the level of interpersonal engagement within our own communities, the next evolutionary push will have to involve education, outreach, and socialization - interpersonal communion - with and among the masses of the poor, white, and pissed. This will not be easy. But it is most definitely necessary.
Not only will this enrich both our respective communities, it will comprise a bulwark against the genuinely evil predations that the backers of the present administration have in store for America. Second, folks need to read The Full Blown Oprah Effect, Reflections on Color, Class, and New Age Racism. This article drives home the necessity of enlarged, renewed, and full engagement on multiple fronts for any genuinely interested in seeing America politically work its way back out of the regressive nosedive engineered by the GOP.
Bottomline - we have all GOT to Work toward being on the same side, or, we will all surely lose in ways and to an extent never previously imagined.
After revealing on his video blog (contains profanity) that two round trips from Los Angeles to New York on the his private jet cost him $200,000, the rap star, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, who came in third on a Forbes list of top hip-hop earners, revealed he was grounding his private jet.
“Gas prices is too motherf---ing high. As you know, I do own my own jet and I have been having flying back and forth to Los Angeles pursuing my acting career,” he said. “Now, if I’m flying back and forth like twice in a month that’s like $200,000 or $250,000 round trip. F--- that. I’m back on American Airlines right now, okay.”
Combs pleaded with his “brothers and sisters” in oil producing countries to send him oil for his private jet. “I want to give a shout out to all my Saudi Arabian brothers and sisters and all my brothers and sisters from all the countries that have oil. If you could all please send me some oil for my jet I would truly appreciate it,” he added. “But right now I am actually – can you believe it, I am actually flying commercial. That’s how high gas prices are, okay, so I feel you.”
Sycophants revel in their programming. The brainwashing the psychopathic entities have administered to American sycophants since a very young age, has them proudly waving the flag of their nation as "the greatest country on Earth," while vociferously avoiding real world facts: Theirs is a nation built on corruption at all levels.
• Mass-murder is our international policy.
• Enforcement of psychopathic edicts by gun and incarceration are standard procedures at home.
• Endless taxation and regulation are the benevolent side of the U.S. psychopathocracy.
The sycophants kiss up to the images the psychopaths have planted in their minds. With servile devotion, sycophants reach for the handouts from their masters, oblivious to the source of the presumed benefits.
As an example, the sycophants have dutifully filed tax returns to receive their economic stimulus tax rebate. Unbeknownst to them, this is just one of the techniques FED Chairman Bernanke will use to dump created-from-nothing cash from his "helicopter." The end result is that the new cash waters down the value of the already existing "dollars" in circulation and causes a devaluing inflation. The FED will then recover this cash drop with the hidden inflation tax: A closed circuit loop designed by psychopaths for psychopaths to extract servile deference from sycophants who are ignorant of the real nature of a fiat economy.
The modern formula for sycophant management is simple: Build roads, manufacture employment, extend credit, provide shopping opportunities, blast them with entertainment, maintain a welfare net, create the semblance of a justice system, pretend to have an election from time to time, provide grants for science, industry, arts "and other purposes" and the sycophants will grovel before the all-powerful psychopathocracy. If all this abundant benevolence fails to entrance and entrain the sycophants to the will of the psychopaths then fear, terror, wars and rumors of wars are the fallback policies of the ages.
Civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been based on slavery and “warfare.” Incidentally, the latter term is a euphemism for mass murder.
The prevailing recipe for civilization is simple:
1) Use lies and brainwashing to create an army of controlled, systematic mass murderers;
2) Use that army to enslave large numbers of people (i.e. seize control of their labour power and its fruits);
3) Use that slave labour power to improve the brainwashing process (by using the economic surplus to employ scribes, priests, and PR men). Then go back to step one and repeat the process.
Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, injure, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse. The inventor of civilization — the first tribal chieftain who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers—was almost certainly a genetic psychopath. Since that momentous discovery, psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non-psychopaths in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies — especially military hierarchies.
Fannie Mae’s workers had $116 million in the employee stock ownership plan at the end of 2006. Today, it’s more like $17.5 million. Ouch.
The employees of Fannie Mae, and those of its counterpart Freddie Mac, are reeling from financial blows themselves as the mortgage finance companies lurch toward what could be a government bailout. Both firms ladled out hefty servings of stocks and options to reward and compensate employees — making them popular employers for years.
The top executive of Freddie Mac, Richard F. Syron, for instance, made about $18.3 million last year, two-thirds of that in stock and options that are worth a lot less today. His counterpart at Fannie Mae, Daniel H. Mudd, made $11.6 million, also much of it in stock.
But midlevel employees were paid in stock, too. Stock and options could account for a fifth of their total compensation, according to former employees and financial planners. Their ability to sell and diversify was often limited by restrictions on the grants, the terms of the specific plans and tighter rules on selling by employees while they addressed years-earlier accounting scandals.
For decades, both companies offered lush benefits, with traditional pension plans, 401(k)s, stock plans and other niceties, like child care plans. That means many employees still have a safety net, though their savings have declined, drastically in some cases.
“If it can happen to Fannie or Freddie, it can happen anywhere,” said Marjorie L. Fox, a certified financial planner in Reston, Va. “This is a cautionary tale you better pay attention to.”
If there were any doubt that the rules of the international game have changed for good, the events of the past few days should have dispelled it. On Monday, President Bush demanded that Russia's leaders reject their parliament's appeal to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Within 24 hours, Bush had his response: President Medvedev announced Russia's recognition of the two contested Georgian enclaves.
The Russian message was unmistakable: the outcome of the war triggered by Georgia's attack on South Ossetia on August 7 is non-negotiable - and nothing the titans of the US empire do or say is going to reverse it. After that, the British foreign secretary David Miliband's posturing yesterday in Kiev about building a "coalition against Russian aggression" merely looked foolish.
That this month's events in the Caucasus signal an international turning point is no longer in question. The comparisons with August 1914 are of course ridiculous, and even the speculation about a new cold war overdone. For all the manoeuvres in the Black Sea and nuclear-backed threats, the standoff between Russia and the US is not remotely comparable to the events that led up to the first world war. Nor do the current tensions have anything like the ideological and global dimensions that shaped the 40-year confrontation between the west and the Soviet Union.
But what is clear is that America's unipolar moment has passed - and the new world order heralded by Bush's father in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1991 is no more.
Well fella’s I’m going against the grain. Martin King was correct, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” I plain and simply have faith-- the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen – in justice. How? When? Where—I have no idea[...]
I personally don’t care if Bush is as old as Byron de la Beckwith and Edgar Ray “Preacher” Killen were when they were convicted, justice must be served. - Bro. Makheru.
One could say all that is happening is that all financial institutions in the world don’t really trust each other, and won’t lend to each other. And that an astounding $50 to $100 billion of weekly infusions from the Fed and the ECB is not fixing the situation, and that we are witnessing the final parabolic peak of the world credit bubble that has built up for the 63 years after WW2 ended. That, and the end of the USD and Yen driven credit/asset/finance bubble which ensued from the early 1970’s.
So, before we continue, it might be said that the present development of the credit crisis, from August 07 to now, is Credit Crisis I. And the present state of affairs is that the Fed and the ECB have to infuse a weekly $50-100 billion plus into their respective financial regions merely to prevent a world finance implosion.
I also have noticed that the Credit Crisis I has had a one year periodicity of major new developments, ie that if one major sector had a problem on a given month, that the next year the same sector seems to reinvent a new worse manifestation. So, when the central banks stop this massive weekly lending, what happens? Massive forced deleveraging and probably world financial Armageddon. This would be Credit Crisis II, or Phase II. We will look into Credit Crisis II in a moment.
This is the conclusion we came to here at PrudentSquirrel, trying to ascertain where we are in the big picture on the Credit Crisis now. It is that the Central Banks are desperately trying to stave off Credit Crisis II, and they are losing, and probably knowing this, they will at some point confer together and pick a time to let the credit system implode, and try to weather the stock/financial crashes that will occur at that time. Likely, some currencies can collapse as well, and a great deal of FX (foreign exchange) chaos and restrictions will ensue for several years after the fatal date.
If it is true, as we suspect, that we are at the peak of a credit/financial bubble that started right after WW2 ended, and it is at a parabolic peak and cannot be sustained, then the world’s central banks already know this too. They probably are trying to decide when to let go…They all don’t have to agree, it only will take one major Central Bank to let go, then the others will be forced to follow. Credit Crisis II…A World Financial Armageddon?
MIT's publicly announced energy initiatives glaringly undervalue the thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen and helium, which use the virtually inexhaustible resources of deuterium, lithium, and (lunar) He3. Gram for gram, fusion of plentiful lighter elements releases ten billion times as much energy as combusting gasoline with oxygen, without producing any greenhouse gases. Thermonuclear fusion powers the Sun, and we have already made it work here on Earth, although few people outside the field know about this work. As fossil fuel supplies are obviously limited, we do have a profound need to bring fusion power plants on line ASAP.
Detractors argue that we don't know how to make fusion work on Earth. These folks evidently don't remember that Edward Teller demonstrated deuterium/tritium (D/T) inertial confinement fusion (ICF) via the reaction D + T → He4 + 14.2 MeV neutron here, on Earth, at more than full scale way back in 1952. Many called this ICF demonstration the "hydrogen bomb" because Edward needed a fission device to heat a capsule of D/T to the 200-million-degree ignition temperature. However, laser-initiated ICF research achieved >50x liquid D/T density at temperatures of 200 million degrees more than a decade ago. Although the U.S. is withdrawing (again) from the European Union's magnetic confinement ITER project in France, the single shot/day Nd:glass ICF National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is nearing completion. Design studies funded by the Department of Energy (DoE) for Prometheus ICF with krypton-fluoride (KrF) laser or heavy ion (HI) ignited ICF power plants were completed in 1992 and released in 1994 for international publication. What Matters: August 2008
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia this year as inflation has put other meat beyond the reach of poor people, officials said on Wednesday.
With consumer price inflation at 37 percent according to the latest central bank estimate, demand has pushed a kilogram of rat meat up to around 5,000 riel ($1.28) from 1,200 riel last year. Spicy field rat dishes with garlic thrown in have become particularly popular at a time when beef costs 20,000 riel a kg.
Officials said rats were fleeing to higher ground from flooded areas of the lower Mekong Delta, making it easier for villagers to catch them.
"Many children are happy making some money from selling the animals to the markets, but they keep some for their family," Ly Marong, an agriculture official, said by telephone from the Koh Thom district on the border with Vietnam.
"Not only are our poor eating it, but there is also demand from Vietnamese living on the border with us."
He estimated that Cambodia supplied more than a tonne of live rats a day to Vietnam.
Rats are also eaten widely in Thailand, while a state government in eastern India this month encouraged its people to eat rats in an effort to battle soaring food prices and save grain stocks.
Viruses in the deepest ocean environments are unexpectedly strong regulators of the deep sea biosphere, according to a paper published tomorrow (August 28) in Nature.
By infecting and killing bacteria and other prokaryotes viruses are the main producers of the organic matter that sustains life at 1000 meters deep and below. By generating this biomass, viruses also make major contributions to the carbon cycle and other geochemical processes.
"This shows that a very large amount of the carbon that reaches the sea floor is going through pathways that were commonly thought to be relatively minor," said Jed Fuhrman, an ocean biologist at the University of Southern California who was not involved in the study. "The whole idea that viruses have any significance in marine systems is only 15 to 20 years old."
Approximately 65% of the Earth is dominated by deep sea, or benthic, ecosystems. The sea floor is one of the hardest environments for research, Fuhrman explained, because of the distances and logistical challenges involved in conducting experiments.
While I've known for years about the role of viruses in the regulation of the atmosphere (why else you think there's a cold and flu *season*?) It comes as a bit of a surprise to have my mind opened even wider to the fact of deep and profound symbiosis in the ocean depths proceeding even to the extreme ends of biogenesis. Does one even classify virii as living organisms?
Methanogens have existed for billions of years, and according to a living planet climate theory, have modulated climate despite a variety of changing conditions. Biogenesis and nucleotide sorting in cloud parasols is one thing, but to take it from end to end in ocean basins, while not altogether surprising, is nevertheless a surprise.
Food riots erupted on Wednesday in Bihar, where more than 2 million people have been forced from their homes and about 250,000 houses destroyed in what officials say are the worst floods in 50 years. One person was killed in Madhepura district when angry villagers fought among themselves over limited supplies of food and medicines at overcrowded relief centres.
The Kosi river in Bihar, one of India's poorest states, smashed through mud embankments and changed course last week, unleashing huge walls of water that inundated hundreds of villages and towns. The floods have since killed nearly 50 people in Bihar.
Stranded villagers waved at passing helicopters and sent text messages to local authorities from rooftops of flooded buildings.
"Time is running out for me and there is no relief in sight and I have not eaten for days," a message from flood victim Sanjeev Kumar read.
Officials said floods had destroyed more than 227,000 homes and damaged about 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of vegetables, wheat and paddy crops.
Last year, floods in eastern India and Bangladesh killed around 2,000 people. Millions were affected and officials fear climate change will make similar disasters more frequent.
Dozens of staff members who had been through the banking crises of the early 1990s retired in recent years. Despite her efforts to bring some seasoned examiners back, her small army of examiners is largely untested.
Meanwhile, there are growing questions about the adequacy of F.D.I.C.’s insurance fund, which guarantees repayment on deposit accounts of up to $100,000 when banks collapse. The fund dwindled to $45.2 billion during the second quarter, from $53 billion in the first quarter.
To replenish its fund, the agency will probably have to raise the fees it charges banks by at least 14 cents for every $100 of deposits, according to estimates by analysts. Ms. Bair declined to comment on the likely size of any increase but said the agency was proposing to revamp its fees so that institutions engaging in high-risk practices would pay higher rates.
“It only seems fair,” Ms. Bair, 54, said. Such a move is expected to draw criticism from banks.
How Ms. Bair navigates the financial and political landmines ahead will help determine the course of the banking industry and, by extension, the broader economy. It will also determine her legacy.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) might have to borrow money from the Treasury Department to see it through an expected wave of bank failures, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The borrowing could be needed to cover short-term cash-flow pressures caused by reimbursing depositors immediately after the failure of a bank, the paper said.
The borrowed money would be repaid once the assets of that failed bank are sold.
"I would not rule out the possibility that at some point we may need to tap into (short-term) lines of credit with the Treasury for working capital, not to cover our losses," Chairman Sheila Bair said in an interview with the paper.
Higher fees? Treasury borrowing? Sounds to me like there's some big, big trouble on the way and the cavalry as non-existent for peeple's money as it was for their flooded out neighborhoods in Nawlins.....,
"We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a new Cold War," Medvedev was quoted as saying Tuesday by the ITAR-Tass news agency. "But we don't want it and in this situation everything depends on the position of our partners."
The statement comes hours after Medvedev recognized the independence of two Georgian rebel provinces, defying the West. The recognition which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described as "extremely unfortunate" follows a short but intense war with Western-allied Georgia earlier this month.
"If they want to preserve good relations with Russia in the West, they will understand the reason behind our decision," Medvedev said.
Tbilisia/Kiev/Moscow - A NATO-Russia naval confrontation in the Black Sea appeared days away on Tuesday, after American officials announced a US warship would attempt to enter a Georgian port controlled by Russian army and naval forces. US fleet elements will in coming weeks unload humanitarian aid in the Russia-controlled Georgian port Poti, US embassy spokesman Stephen Guice said in remarks widely reported by Georgian media.
The American announcement setting the stage for a direct US-Russia naval confrontation came against a background of continuing high tensions in the region in the wake of the Russia-Georgia conflict and with both Russia and NATO rushing warships into the Black Sea.[...]
The Kremlin has harshly criticised the NATO naval buildup, and has repeatedly made public the names and destinations of NATO warships moving into the region, well before Brussels' official acknowledgement.
NATO currently has a total eight warships operating in the Black Sea, with a ninth frigate en route and expected on Georgia station in the next few days, Russian naval officials citing maritime intelligence said Tuesday.
But Moscow also has responded to the apparent - if officially denied - NATO naval challenge by spiking its own Black Sea warship levels.
The flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, the guided missle cruiser Moscow, put to sea on Monday after returning to its home base port Sevastopol, Ukraine.
Lawrence Summers does a little narrative shuffling. With two wars still continuing and violence in Georgia dominating the foreign policy debate; and with the financial crisis and economic insecurity for families dominating the domestic debate, US international economic policy is receiving less attention in this presidential election year than usual. The limited attention it has received has focused on concerns about specific trade agreements, not broader questions of international strategy. That is unfortunate. The next administration faces the prospect of having to make the most consequential international economic policy choices in a generation at a time when the confidence of governments in free markets is being increasingly questioned.
The current distribution of regional economic power is unlike anything that was predicted even a decade ago. The rise of the developing world, its growing share in global output and far greater share of global growth, is perhaps a quantitative but not a qualitative surprise. The qualitative surprise is this: with almost all the industrial world in or near recession, much of the momentum in the global economy is coming from countries with authoritarian governments that are pursuing economic strategies directed towards wealth accumulation and building up geopolitical strength rather than improving living standards for their populations. China, where household consumption has now fallen below 40 per cent of its gross domestic product – which must be some kind of peacetime record – is the most extreme example. Similar tendencies, however, can be seen in other parts of Asia, Russia and other oil exporting countries.
The Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush -- a man still carrying a $1 million reward for capture, the Jack of Diamonds in Bush's famous deck of wanted men -- has been America's secret source on Iraq. Starting in January of 2003, with Blair and Bush watching, his secret reports began to flow to officials on both sides of the Atlantic, saying that there were no WMD and that Hussein was acting so odd because of fear that the Iranians would find out he was a toothless tiger. The U.S. deep-sixed the intelligence report in February, "resettled" Habbush to a safe house in Jordan during the invasion and then paid him $5 million in what could only be considered hush money.
In the fall of 2003, after the world learned there were no WMD -- as Habbush had foretold -- the White House ordered the CIA to carry out a deception. The mission: create a handwritten letter, dated July, 2001, from Habbush to Saddam saying that Atta trained in Iraq before the attacks and the Saddam was buying yellow cake for Niger with help from a "small team from the al Qaeda organization."
The mission was carried out, the letter was created, popped up in Baghdad, and roiled the global newcycles in December, 2003 (conning even venerable journalists like Tom Brokaw). The mission is a statutory violation of the charter of the CIA, and amendments added in 1991, prohibiting the CIA from conducting disinformation campaigns on U.S. soil.
More relevant detail here; National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 254: "The U.S. intelligence community buckled sooner in 2002 than previously reported to Bush administration pressure for data justifying an invasion of Iraq, according to a documents posting on the Web today by National Security Archive senior fellow John Prados.
If the Bush administration proceeds with its plan to deploy its Missile Defense System in Poland, Russian Prime Minister Putin will be forced to remove it militarily. He has no other option. The proposed system integrates the the entire US nuclear arsenal into one operational-unit a mere 115 miles from the Russian border. It's no different than Khrushchev's plan to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba in the 1960s.
Early last year, at a press conference that was censored in the United States, Putin explained his concerns about Bush's plan:
“Once the missile defense system is put in place it will work automatically with the entire nuclear capability of the United States. It will be an integral part of the US nuclear capability....And, for the first time in history---and I want to emphasize this---there will be elements of the US nuclear capability on the European continent. It simply changes the whole configuration of international security…..Of course, we have to respond to that.”
Nuclear weapons specialist, Francis A. Boyle, says the Bush administration's plans represent the “longstanding US policy of nuclear first-strike against Russia." In Boyle’s article “US Missiles in Europe: Beyond Deterrence to First Strike Threat” he states:
“By means of a US first strike about 99%+ of Russian nuclear forces would be taken out. Namely, the United States Government believes that with the deployment of a facially successful first strike capability, they can move beyond deterrence and into "compellence."… This has been analyzed ad nauseam in the professional literature. But especially by one of Harvard's premier warmongers in chief, Thomas Schelling --winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics granted by the Bank of Sweden-- who developed the term "compellence" and distinguished it from "deterrence." …The USG is breaking out of a "deterrence" posture and moving into a "compellence" posture. (Global Research 6-6-07)
Bush's real goal is to force Moscow to conform to Washington’s diktats or face the prospect of first-strike nuclear annihilation. Putin must respond.
The world is showing alarming parallels with the 1930s. Lights are turning to red as the world again approaches depression. The credit crunch and the collapse of world trade talks are making nations introverted. Meanwhile, the defeated power of the last war, Russia, is flexing its muscles and finding them in good working order[...] Has the West misjudged the fault line of an impending conflict? Its global strategy under George Bush, Tony Blair and a ham-fisted Nato has declared the threat to world peace as coming from nonstate organisations, specifically Al-Qaeda, and the nations that give them either bases or tacit support. Western generals and securocrats have elevated these anarchist fanatics to the status of nuclear powers. Policing crime has become “waging war”, so as to justify soaring budgets and influence over policy, much as did America’s military-industrial complex during the cold war.
Might it be that a raging seven-year obsession with Osama Bin Laden and his tiny Al-Qaeda organisation has blinded strategists to the old verities? Wars are rarely “clashes of civilisation”, but rather clashes of interest. They are usually the result of careless policy, of misread signals and of mission creep closing options for peace.
Terrorists, wherever located and trained, can certainly capture headlines and cause overnight mayhem, but they cannot project power. They cannot conquer countries or peoples, only manipulate democratic regimes into espousing illiberal policies, as in America and Britain. By grossly overstating the significance of terrorism, western leaders have distracted foreign policy from what should be its prime concern: securing world peace by holding a balance of interest - and pride - among the great powers.
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
Bageant in tuesday's Guardian. The comments are more illuminating than the editorial piece, but by all means, read it all because it's genuine news that you may really be able to use. Up from the comments there;
