max keiser interviews dmitry orlov

Orlov talks about how the American collapse will be the result of huge military budgets, government deficits, an unresponsive political system and declining oil production.

Dmitry Orlov is a Russian-American engineer and a writer on subjects related to "potential economic, ecological and political decline and collapse in the US," something he has called "permanent crisis".

surviving the cold

survivalblog | Most of us take for granted the fact that if were cold we can find someplace warm to retreat to. In the event of a catastrophe that luxury is going to be one of the first things that goes by the wayside. Animals adapt to their environment or they perish, survival of the fittest. I’ve talked to a few folks that have a couple tons of food and ammo stashed that have never even thought about the clothes situation. So, What can we do as smart animals to prepare for that day?

Unfortunately a lot of people have no clue at all how to dress themselves for cold and inclement weather. Usually we put on what we have that we think is the warmest and hope for the best. That is not going to work when there is no warm house to run to and warm up in! Get rained on and your sol. Yeah that nice brown popular work gear is great but at most it’s used 12 hours and then you have a chance to dry it and you out. Try spending a few days in it without drying it out and see how comfy you are!

The best way to stay dry, warm, and comfortable is layers, and they have to be layers of the correct material. Cotton is pretty much useless for staying warm. It holds moisture, does not breath well, and is not a very good insulator. Cotton is good for warm days and summer time, It’s cheap and easy to obtain. So don’t plan on getting any usable service out of any of your cotton clothes in the winter.

The fundamental key of staying warm is to simply stay dry. Wet clothing dissipates body heat at a phenomenal rate. The saying “If your wet your dead” in the winter is pretty self explanatory. So in order to stay dry we need to fist keep the moisture and sweat our bodies produce away from our skin. We do this by our base layer. It is clothing that is designed to allow moisture to pass through it without absorbing it. One of the early forms of this is silk. Yes, that luxurious cloth does have some functional value! Silk is expensive, and is not very stretchy or conforming. Silk blends however are very conducive to functional base layers! I’ve found silk base layers to be functional and comfortable but they don’t seem to be as durable as I’d like. Just as effective and more affordably priced, and more durable, are base layers made from polypropylene and the like. There are a variety of manufactures out there that each have their own magic blend so shop around. Just keep in mind the intended function of the base layer is to keep you dry, not to keep you warm. Generation III Cold Weather System.

death toll rises as big cold freezes europe

smh | Freezing temperatures left thousands of people stranded without power in the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe on Saturday, as the death toll from one of the coldest winters in years continued to rise.

Blizzards hit the Western Balkans, while heavy snowfalls and gale-force winds were expected to last until Monday. The storms deposited a fresh layer of snow and created tall drifts, further hampering access to many areas in the region. Several villages were without stable electricity supply, as wind and snow knocked down power lines.

In Montenegro, the government declared a state of emergency 24 hours into a blizzard that dumped another two metres of snow across the country and cut off access to northern regions. The death toll was expected to rise from three when rescuers reach isolated areas.

Freezing temperatures left thousands of people stranded without power in the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe on Saturday, as the death toll from one of the coldest winters in years continued to rise.

Blizzards hit the Western Balkans, while heavy snowfalls and gale-force winds were expected to last until Monday. The storms deposited a fresh layer of snow and created tall drifts, further hampering access to many areas in the region. Several villages were without stable electricity supply, as wind and snow knocked down power lines.

In Montenegro, the government declared a state of emergency 24 hours into a blizzard that dumped another two metres of snow across the country and cut off access to northern regions. The death toll was expected to rise from three when rescuers reach isolated areas.
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In Serbia, the authorities reported three new deaths, raising the overall death toll for the country to 19. An estimated 50,000 people remain isolated in remote villages. The energy situation has become critical, prompting the government to extend a two-day holiday next week to five days, keeping schools closed and cut the power supply to non-essential factories.

In Croatia, an average of 50 centimetres of snow were expected to fall during the weekend, while powerful winds blowing from the sea forced local road authorities to close some sections of the Adriatic highway.

Many villages in mountainous regions in Bosnia have been cut off since the start of the cold spell, nearly two weeks ago.

Temperatures dropped to as low as -32C in Poland's southern Bieszczady Mountains, while eight people died in house fires, police said.

A further eight people died in Romania, the health ministry said, raising the overall death toll to 65. Tens of thousands of people remained isolated in the south, where the army, police and firefighters were trying to clear access routes and distribute food and water.

detroit citizens no longer rely on police as self-defense killings skyrocket

thedaily | The people of Detroit are taking no prisoners.

Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own. And they’re offering no apologies.

“We got to have a little Old West up here in Detroit. That’s what it’s gonna take,” Detroit resident Julia Brown told The Daily.

The last time Brown, 73, called the Detroit police, they didn’t show up until the next day. So she applied for a permit to carry a handgun and says she’s prepared to use it against the young thugs who have taken over her neighborhood, burglarizing entire blocks, opening fire at will and terrorizing the elderly with impunity.

“I don’t intend to be one of their victims,” said Brown, who has lived in Detroit since the late 1950s. “I’m planning on taking one out.”

How it got this bad in Detroit has become a point of national discussion. Violent crime settled into the city’s bones decades ago, but recently, as the numbers of police officers have plummeted and police response times have remained distressingly high, citizens have taken to dealing with things themselves.

In this city of about 700,000 people, the number of cops has steadily fallen, from about 5,000 a decade ago to fewer than 3,000 today. Detroit homicides — the second-highest per capita in the country last year, according to the FBI — rose by 10 percent in 2011 to 344 people.

On a bleak day in January, a group of funeral directors wearied by the violence drove a motorcade of hearses through the city streets in protest.

Average police response time for priority calls in the city, according to the latest data available, is 24 minutes. In comparable cities across the country, it is well under 10 minutes.

Citizens like Brown feel they have been left with little choice but to take the law into their own hands.

U.S. Accused of Using Drones to Target Rescue Workers and Funerals in Pakistan

DemocracyNow | The CIA’s drone campaign targeting suspected militants in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to rescue victims or were attending funerals. So concludes a new report by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. It found that since President Obama took office three years ago, as many as 535 civilians have been killed, including more than 60 children. The investigation also revealed that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. We speak to Chris Woods, award-winning reporter with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. "We noted that there were repeated reports at the time, contemporaneous reports in publications like New York Times, news agencies like Reuters, by CNN, that there were these strikes on rescuers, that there were reports that there had been an initial strike and then, some minutes later, as people had come forward to help and pull out the dead and injured, that drones had returned to the scene and had attacked rescuers," Woods says. "We’ve been able to name just over 50 civilians that we understand have been killed in those attacks. In total, we think that more than 75 civilians have been killed, specifically in these attacks on rescuers and on mourners, on funeral-goers."

attack on the drones

The Sun | PAKISTAN yesterday warned Britain to help stop the American "Drone Wars" that are slaughtering hundreds of its innocent civilians.

The nuclear power chillingly declared it "has the means" to retaliate unless the carnage ceases.

Pakistan's High Commissioner to Britain Wajid Shamsul Hasan told The Sun in an exclusive interview that his country's relations with America are at their lowest ebb.

He said: "Patience is definitely reaching exhaustion levels." Mr Hasan said Pakistan backs the War on Terror waged by Britain and the US.

But he urged PM David Cameron to condemn US drone attacks on al-Qaeda and Taliban training camps in the north west of his country — dubbing them as "war crimes" and "little more than state executions".

Tough-talking Mr Hasan also declared Pakistan would have no choice but to support Iran if "aggressive" Israel attacks it.

But his immediate concern is the drones known to have killed 535 civilians, including 60 children, in three years.

Pakistan claims the real death toll is more than 1,000. The unmanned aircraft blast missiles at targets, directed by a computer thousands of miles away.

The High Commissioner said: "I think time is running out until the Pakistan government can take a stand.

"They will have to at some stage take punitive actions to stop them. They have got means to take such actions to defend their own frontier and territories.

US drone in Pakistan kills 'al-Qaeda ally'

aljazeera | The second US drone attack in two days in Pakistan's North Waziristan region has killed four people, including a senior militant commander with links to al-Qaeda, Pakistani intelligence officials and Taliban sources said.

Badar Mansoor, leader of a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, was killed on Thursday in the strike in Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, near the Afghan border.

"He was living in a small rented house with his wife and children in Miranshah. He, his wife and two other members of his
family died on the spot," a Pakistani Taliban commander told Reuters. He declined to be identified.

Pakistani officials painted Mansoor as al-Qaeda's chief in Pakistan.

"He died in the missile attacks overnight in Miranshah. His death is a major blow to al-Qaeda's abilities to strike in Pakistan," a senior official told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.

Intelligence officials said the death toll could rise because buildings next to the one targeted were also damaged and people could have been there.

On Wednesday, a US drone aircraft fired missiles at a compound in a village near Miranshah, killing 10 suspected fighters, Pakistani officials and villagers said.

The Central Intelligence Agency drone programme was apparently halted after a November NATO cross-border air attack killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, sparking fury in Pakistan.

The attacks with the unmanned aircraft in Pakistan's northwestern ethnic tribal areas along the Afghan border were resumed on January 10.

deadly drone strike signals renewed US-Pakistan cooperation

miamiherald | A U.S. drone strike reportedly killed a notorious Pakistani al-Qaida operative before dawn Thursday in a tribal area bordering Afghanistan, the latest sign that the United States and Pakistan are stepping up coordinated intelligence operations despite a downturn in relations.

The apparent CIA drone strike on a compound in Miranshah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal area, reportedly killed four militants, including Badar Mansoor, the head of a small militant outfit that carries his name.

Mansoor wasn't considered a high-value terrorist target by the FBI, but he had been listed at least since 2009 in the so-called red book of terror suspects maintained by Pakistan's Interior Ministry. He also was a close associate of Ilyas Kashmiri, the head of al-Qaida's operation in Pakistan until his death in a drone strike last year.

The attack was at least the fourth drone strike in a month and came a day after American, Afghan and Pakistani military officials met to discuss resuming cooperation on border security, which has been suspended since 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in a friendly fire incident in November.

However, Thursday also marked the expiration of a 10-year agreement between Pakistan and the United States that provided for joint intelligence operations against al-Qaida and the Taliban. The Pakistani military has referred this and other post-2001 agreements to a nonpartisan parliamentary committee that was formed after the friendly fire incident to review Pakistan's foreign policy. The committee is expected to present recommendations to Parliament later this month.

Security analysts in Islamabad said that such pinpoint assassinations are virtually impossible unless the CIA has detailed information from its Pakistani counterpart, the military's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. The analysts asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Pakistan's government denies complicity in the drone strikes and frequently complains about them as violations of its sovereignty. But diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks laid bare in December 2010 the Pakistani government's involvement, and security analysts say that officials complain mainly about U.S. drone strikes carried out without their knowledge.

anti-regime protests attacked in bahrain

presstv | Bahrain’s Saudi-backed forces have attacked anti-government demonstrators as the violent crackdown of protesters continues in the Persian Gulf nation, Press TV reports.

Government forces on Thursday raided protesters demanding the downfall of the ruling Al Khalifa family in the capital, Manama, and several nearby villages.

The latest crackdown comes amid a 10-day sit-in protest held in Moqsha, near Manama, by anti-regime protesters who aim to press ahead with their demands.

The protests are planned to continue until February 14, the day marking the start of the popular revolution in the kingdom in 2011.

The protesters are also demanding the release of political prisoners.

On Thursday, the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights said jailed rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja has gone back on a hunger strike to protest the deteriorating prison conditions.

Khawaja is one of 14 prominent figures who joined an eight-day hunger strike to demand the release of Bahrain’s political detainees.

Bahrain has been hit by a wave of anti-regime protests since mid-February last year, which was immediately met with a brutal crackdown by the Al Khalifa regime.

Dozens of demonstrators have been killed and scores wounded in the popular uprising in the country.

peak oil and the disintegration of industrial civilization

integralworld | Wood and labour of living beings (humans and domestic animals) were the chief sources of energy[2] in the agrarian civilizations. Coal was used in some regions—as in England from 14th century on or in the Song China—but that was exception. So, the vast majority of the population had to live as peasants and in an urban environment—cities and towns—were living only 5-10 % of the population. In favourable circumstances human population rose, depending on available food, and then crashed by hunger and various diseases. Majority of population in agrarian civilizations was living on the brink of hunger and demographic-social crises were often. Many agrariran civilizations—Maya, Roman Empire, ancient Summer—badly damaged ecological foundations of their existence and perished or significantly weakened. Main ideological forms in agrarian civilization were axial religions—christianity, islam, buddhism, confucianism etc.—which were originaly protest against social repression and other anthropogenic problems in their society but quickly became consolation for supposedly inevitable human misery.

Faith in «historical progress»—the fundamental metanarative of all modern secular ideologies[3] —was created due to the discovery of the New World, but became widespread due to new energy sources. Traditional economy, from 17th to the middle of 19th century, often acknowledged natural limits, especially in very influential population theory of Thomas Malthus. But mass urbanization and gradual harnessing of oil and gas, from the middle of 19th century on, created faith in unlimited natural resources or, what was the same, unlimited human power in exploiting these resources. After that, modern enocomy was builded on the negation of natural limits and on faith in free market's capability to overcome all (temporarily) restraints. For sc. scientific economy resources depletion has no meaning, because free market will always find some solution, either by increase of production (and price falling), or finding alternatives. Liberalism, marxism and other modern secular ideologies also proclamate their faith in unlimited power of human „conquest of nature“. For them, nature is just storehouse of resources existing for human exploitation and consumption.

The most common explanation of sc. industrial revolution—lack of wood in the Great Britain—remains the best one, despite many criticisms. Other countries had to follow British example if they didn't want to stay behind in the international competition. Industrial revolution had many deep social and ecological consequences but it was, in the main aspects, deepening and accelerating of fundamental trends of the last several thousand years: expansion of population, agriculture and cities, ecological destruction, centralization and bureaucratization etc. Industrial societies, with mass urbanization and mechanization, in the last 200 years are created by finding and exploiting new energy sources: coal as fundamental mover of the first and oil and gas as movers of the second industrial revolution. New energy sources were crucial factors for vast increase of human population, from below 1 billion around 1800 to cca 7 billions around 2010.[4] Fossil fuels—energy sources with high quality and density and high net-energy value—are the main factor in creating an industrial civilization in the 19th and 20th century, including mass urbanization, mass transportation and consumer society.[5] All industrial megastructure, in the last two centuries, was building on the fossil fuels and their consumption was steadily growing in the last several decades (see graphs I and II). Oil dependence is not „addiction“ (famous sentence of former American president Bush Jr., that „America was addicted to oil“), because drug addict can overcome his/her addiction and leave his/her drug behind. Industrial society can't „leave behind“ oil, certainly not in some easy-going fashion. In some vital parts, like transportation or industrial agriculture, oil is absolutely crucial. Technology is not a some kind of autonomous force, but only a transformer of energy. Technology never creates energy, but only uses up available energy, that is, in industrial society, fossil fuel energy and its derivatives.

war plan iran

globalresearch | The year 2012 may become known as a watershed for humanity – the year when mankind was precipitated into a global conflagration involving nuclear weapons. The signs are indeed grimly ominous as formidable military forces converge on the Persian Gulf in the long-running stand-off between the United States and Iran.

On side with the US are its European allies in NATO, primarily Britain, Washington’s Middle East client states: Israel and the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf – all bristling with weapons of mass destruction. Recent naval exercises by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz have also displayed a fierce arsenal of missiles and military capability, and Iran has strategic alliances with Russia and China, both of whom will not stand idly by if their Persian partner is attacked.

As we have consistently analysed on Global Research, the conflict between the US-led powers and Iran has wider ramifications. It is part and parcel of Washington’s bid to engineer the social and political upheavals across the Arab World in order to redraw the region in its strategic interests. It is no coincidence that fresh from NATO’s conquest of and regime change in Libya, the focus has quickly shifted to Syria – a key regional ally of Iran. As Michel Chossudovsky has pointed out “the road to Tehran goes through to Damascus”. Regime change in Syria would serve to isolate Iran. Subjugating Iran and returning it to Western tutelage is the prize that Washington and its allies have been seeking for the past 33 years ever since their client the Shah, Mohammad Rezā Pahlavi, was deposed by the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Iran is an energy-rich colossus, with oil and, more importantly, natural gas reserves that put it, with approximately 10% of global reserves, in the world’s top three oil economies alongside Washington’s client states of Saudi Arabia and Iraq. In sharp contrast, the US has less than 2% of global oil reserves.

The conquest of Iran's oil riches is the driving force behind America's military agenda.

The US-led conquest of Iraq – costing over a million lives in a nine-year occupation – is part of Washington’s long-held plans to dominate the globe’s vast energy resources that reside in the Persian Gulf and Central Asian regions. The decade-long war in Afghanistan is another flank in this US bid for hegemony over the fuel for the capitalist world economy. For nearly three decades, the US-led Western capitalist world has been deprived of exploiting Iranian energy wealth. The Islamic Republic has remained defiantly independent of Washington’s control, not just in terms of its vast hydrocarbon riches, but also politically. Iran is no puppet of the West as it was formerly under the despotic Shah Mohammad Rezā Pahlavi.

Tehran has shown itself to be a trenchant critic of Western imperialist meddling in the region and fawning over the criminal Israeli persecution of Palestinians. Another important source of Western animus towards Iran and the deeply held desire for regime change is the loss that the Iranian revolution implies for the lucrative American, British and French weapons industry. When Shah Mohammad Rezā Pahlavi was kicked out in February 1979, so too was a massive market for Western arms dealers. The recent $50 billion arms sales to Saudi Arabia – the “biggest-ever in history” – that had the Pentagon salivating, would be easily replicated in Iran, if a similar client regime could be installed there.

From the Western powers’ point of view, Iran is both an elusive prize and a frustrating obstacle. Bringing Iran back into the orbit of Western capitalist control has the added significance of depriving energy and other geopolitical advantages to rival powers, in particular Russia and China. In a strategic review earlier this month, Washington highlighted China as its pre-eminent global competitor in the coming decades. The militarized agenda towards China was also heralded by US President Barack Obama during his Asia-Pacific tour at the end of 2011. China is heavily dependent on Iranian oil. Some 20 per cent of all Iranian crude oil exports are traded with China. The latter has billions of dollars worth of energy investments in Iran, in particular the natural gas sector, which energy analysts view as the primary fuel in forthcoming decades. Washington’s policy of hostility and regime change towards Iran and furthering its hegemony over this vital region is as much about wresting control from its perceived competitors, Russia and China. That factor takes on added importance as America’s economic power wanes.

These issues form the bigger picture that explains the drive for war in the Persian Gulf, which the mainstream media has chosen to carefully ignore. The broader implications of this war are either trivialized or not mentioned. People are led to believe that war is part of a "humanitarian mandate" and that both Iran as well as Iran's allies, namely China and Russia, constitute an unrelenting threat to global security and "Western democracy"

numbers warn of looming collapses...,

ScienceNews | Brains have seizures, ecosystems collapse, economies crash — and it sure would be great if we could predict when. Despite the complexity of these seemingly disparate events, recent research suggests that tipping points are foreseeable.

A study published online February 2 in PLoS Computational Biology offers a way to discern when a complex system such as a fishery may be teetering towards collapse. The new work uses mathematical indicators to help researchers understand systems when there’s not enough data to build the kind of complex supercomputer simulations that are typically used to study things like climate change. And other recent studies have turned up even more mathematical red flags that a system is approaching a point of no return.

“At one end, there’s the brute force approach,” says study coauthor Steven Lade of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany. “You make a very detailed model of the system, try and add everything that’s going on, and run it into the future.”

But scientists often don’t know enough of the details to make such simulations accurate. “The more specific you can be, the better, but you shouldn’t be specific about the things you don’t know about,” says Marten Scheffer of Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

The latest work makes use of generic signals that a system might be going awry but also allows for any specific information that may be available. Lade and his Max Planck colleague Thilo Gross start with that known information, such as the year-end catch numbers for a particular fish and what that species eats. Then they link that information to general math that describes a system at near equilibrium. By adding to their simulation an outside perturbation that might push the system over the edge, such as habitat destruction or a new disease, the researchers can track the stability of the system through time. In the fisheries case the researchers used to test their model, the method revealed a glaring signal when collapse was imminent that became easier to distinguish as the collapse approached.

“It’s making the point that it’s better to use the information that you have,” Scheffer says. “Anything you know about the system can sharpen your search image.”

Surprisingly, when even less data is available than the scant amount used in the new work, there are some simple mathematical clues that can provide a red alert that an abrupt shift is coming, be it in a tangle of brain cells or an entire ecosystem.

“In complex systems it’s really hard to predict anything,” says Scheffer. “But the fascinating thing is there are universal mathematical principles that should hold.” Much of this theory has been around for decades, Scheffer says, but no one knew whether the math would work for predicting major transitions in real systems. Now experimental data is starting to come in —mostly from the realm of ecology — and it suggests that predicting the future may soon be more about science than soothsaying.

In the Jan. 29 Nature, for example, a team led by Scheffer reported success using one mathematical test of an approaching tipping point. Theory says that when a shift is coming, a system exhibits what scientists call a critical slowing down. Normally, a really stable system quickly recovers after being perturbed. But when everything is about to come unglued, the recovery time from even a small perturbation becomes slower and slower.

Whether you’re looking at a timescale of years or centuries for a climate system, or at the scale of milliseconds in the brainwaves of someone about to have an epileptic seizure, this slowing down of recovery time appears to be an important signal that some serious action is about to go down.

social control myths and the corruption of america

oftwominds | We typically think of fractals--structures that are scale-invariant--as features of Nature or finance. For example, a coastline has the same characteristically ragged appearance from 100 feet, 1,000 feet and 10,000 feet in altitude. It is scale-invariant, i.e. its characteristics remain constant whether it is viewed on a small, medium or large scale. This is how Kathy described social fractals:

"This dishonest, self-serving individual behavior is a fractal of what is happening in our society at large: dishonest and self-serving people are extending and pretending, and their complicity keeps the system going."

The concept of social fractals can be illustrated with a simple example. If the individuals in a family unit are all healthy, thrifty, honest, caring and responsible, then how could that family be dysfunctional, spendthrift, venal and dishonest? It is not possible to aggregate individuals into a family unit and not have that family manifest the self-same characteristics of the individuals. This is the essence of fractals.

If we aggregate healthy, thrifty, honest, caring and responsible families into a community, how can that community not share these same characteristics?

And if we aggregate these communities into a nation, how can that nation not exhibit these same characteristics?

If this is so, then how do we explain the complete corruption of America's financial and political Elites? What else can you call a nation that passively accepts financial predation, looting, robosigning, etc. by protected cartels as the Status Quo but thoroughly corrupt?

There are three distinct but highly interactive dynamics in America's social and financial fractals that have led to the nation's corruption. We can think of these dynamics as feedback loops: positive feedback is self-reinforcing, negative feedback offers restraint and opposition. From Wikipedia:

Negative feedback is used to describe the act of reversing any discrepancy between desired and actual output. A simple and practical example is a thermostat. Biological examples include regulating body temperature and blood glucose levels.

Positive feedback is feedback in which the system responds so as to increase the magnitude of any particular perturbation, resulting in amplification of the original signal instead of stabilization. Any system where there is a net positive feedback will result in a runaway situation.

These dynamics also share certain characteristics of the dialectic method in philosophy, a system of reasoning through arguments and counter-arguments (thesis and antithesis) to reach a synthesis or new understanding. The Socratic method is to show that a given hypothesis leads to a contradiction that forces the withdrawal of the hypothesis as a candidate for truth.

The social fractal element is individual behavior: the actions we choose based on our internal values, emotions, worldview and goals, and our belief in social control myths. This is a powerful concept brought to my attention by correspondent Diemos, who cited these examples:

The untouchables in India are told that they deserve to be treated as outcasts because of their karma from bad deeds done in a previous life. Of course, in reality, they are no more or less deserving than any other human being of a good life but as long as they believe that they deserve their station in life they are less likely to agitate for changes that will impact the wealth of the ruling class.

In the US we're told that an all-powerful, all-seeing, perfectly impartial free market gives everyone the wealth they deserve due to their own efforts. So if you're poor it's because you deserve to be poor and if I'm rich it's because I deserve to be rich. So you're more likely to accept your place in the Status Quo than if you believed that the division of wealth was more a function of an individual's political power and ability to participate in various crony-capitalist schemes.

In all cases a social control myth is an idea designed to affect the behavior of the people who believe it to the benefit of the people who are promulgating that idea.

I had a devil of a time understanding economics until I understood that 95% of what gets said in the name of economics is a social control myth rather than science. Economics is actually pretty straightforward to understand once you strip out all the propaganda, self-serving rationalizations, wish-fulfillment and outright misinformation that passes for analysis these days.

There are two key social control myths in America: one, that everyone is equal before the law, and two, that similar fundamental opportunities are available to all.

Using the Socratic method, let's see if these hypotheses are true or false.

Drone Swarms are Here: 1 Minute to Midnight?

global guerillas | The algorithms that enable drone swarms is advancing EXTREMELY quickly. In the next couple of years, the number of advances in technology, deployments, use cases, and awareness of drones will be intense. In 5 years, they will be part of every day life. You will see them everywhere.

Not just one or two drones. SWARMS of drones. Tens. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions (potentially if the cost per unit is small enough)?

How soon will we see that. It's already here.

If you want to learn more about how swarming works as a method of attack, here's an article I wrote about it seven years ago. Benefits of swarming attacks include:

• It cuts the enemy target off from supply and communications.
• It adversely impacts the morale of the target.
• It makes a coordinated defense extremely difficult (resource allocation is intensely difficult).
• It radically increases the potential of surprise

Here's your homework. Think about the swarming tech you see above in the context of the following:

• Drones and US Internal Security (as in: conventional weapons really don't matter).
• Drones in the US of A. Recent example of drones were used in a manhunt (just to prove it could be done).
• How a small group of global plutocrats can use software to control the world (Bots and Drones).
  

a brief history of drones...,

TheNation | It was ten years ago this month, on February 4, 2002, that the CIA first used an unmanned Predator drone in a targeted killing. The strike was in Paktia province in Afghanistan, near the city of Khost. The intended target was Osama bin Laden, or at least someone in the CIA had thought so. Donald Rumsfeld later explained, using the passive voice of government: “A decision was made to fire the Hellfire missile. It was fired.” The incident occurred during a brief period when the military, which assisted the CIA’s drone program by providing active service personnel as operators, still acknowledged the program’s existence. Within days of the strike, journalists on the ground were collecting accounts from local Afghans that the dead men were civilians gathering scrap metal. The Pentagon media pool began asking questions, and so the long decade of the drone began.

The CIA had been flying unarmed drones over Afghanistan since 2000. It began to fly armed drones after the September 11 attacks. Some were used during the air war against the Taliban in late 2001. But by February 2002 the CIA hadn’t yet used a drone for a strike outside military support. The February 2002 attack was a pure CIA kill operation, undertaken separately from any ongoing military operation. The drone operators were reported to have come across three people at a former mujahedeen base called Zhawar Kili—later, officials would never claim they were armed—including a “tall man” to whom the other men were “acting with reverence.” (On one previous occasion, a year before the September 11 attacks, CIA observers thought they’d seen bin Laden: a tall man with long robes near Tarnak Farm, bin Laden’s erstwhile home near Kandahar. This sighting by an unarmed drone was what had led to the first arguments among the White House and CIA about arming drones with missiles, a debate that simmered until it was snuffed out by the September 11 attacks.)

After the February 2002 strike, military officials quickly acknowledged that the “tall man” was not bin Laden. But they insisted the targets were “legitimate,” although they struggled to explain why, using vague and even coy language to cover up what appeared to be uncertainty. Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clark said, “We’re convinced that it was an appropriate target.” But she added, “We do not know yet exactly who it was.” Gen. Tommy Franks told ABC News that he expected the identities of the three to prove “interesting.”

Pentagon spokesman John Stufflebeem spoke of the government’s being in the “comfort zone” of determining that the targets were “not innocent,” noting there were “no initial indications that these were innocent locals,” a curious phrase reflecting a presumption of guilt. “Indicators were there that there was something untoward that we needed to make go away…. Initial indications would seem to say that these are not peasant people up there farming.” Rumsfeld later chimed in, offering his signature pseudo-philosophical analysis to address the allegations that the dead were civilians. “We’ll just have to find out. There’s not much more anyone could add, except that there’s that one version, and there’s the other version.”

goodbye state funding for california libraries

KALW | The bad news is that state funding for California libraries has been completely eliminated. There’s not really any good news about that except that it was expected. This past July, state library funding was sliced in half, and there was a trigger amendment attached to the budget that would eliminate state funding for public libraries at midyear if the state's revenue projections were not met. Needless to say, they weren’t.

Now libraries in the Bay Area, as in the rest of the state, will lose funding for literacy programs, InterLibrary Loans, and miscellaneous expenses such as librarian training programs and books. Libraries in rural areas will be hit the hardest because they receive more state funding than libraries in larger cities with larger budgets.

These cuts are not new. State funding for libraries has been dwindling for the past decade. The Public Library Fund, which provides direct state aid to public libraries for basic service, has never received its full appropriation from the Legislature since it began in 1983 (which was also the end of Jerry Brown’s first stint as governor). State funding lasted a little over twenty years.

The December 2011 monthly report from Berkeley Library Director Donna Corbeil reads, "There will be no immediate impact on the Library as this reduction was anticipated." Keep your eyes on the word immediate. “We’re still pretty concerned about how this will affect our libraries in the long term,” Corbeil said.

The next month’s report, from January 2012, states, "For the last two years as the state's budget situation worsened the Library set aside its Public Library Funds receipts as a temporary alternative funding source.”

In the 1999/2000 fiscal year, libraries received $56.8 million from the state. That was a good year. By the 2008/2009 year, libraries were only getting $12.9 million. That was a bad year, but, in retrospect, still pretty good. Libraries now get nothing.

Corbeil hopes that the California Library Association will help local librarians organize a campaign against the elimination in funding but says it’s not up to her to put out a call for action.

“We’re working on getting our funding back,” Carol Simmons, Executive Director of the California Library Association said. “We’ve had some successful campaigns. We were able to keep some state funding last year.” She says she is hopeful and feels like “the economy might be heading in the right direction.”

illusion of recovery - feelings vs. facts

Zero Hedge | The last week has offered an amusing display of the difference between the cheerleading corporate mainstream media, lying Wall Street shills and the critical thinking analysts like Zero Hedge, Mike Shedlock, Jesse, and John Hussman. What passes for journalism at CNBC and the rest of the mainstream print and TV media is beyond laughable. Their America is all about feelings. Are we confident? Are we bullish? Are we optimistic about the future? America has turned into a giant confidence game. The governing elite spend their time spinning stories about recovery and manipulating public opinion so people will feel good and spend money. Facts are inconvenient to their storyline. The truth is for suckers. They know what is best for us and will tell us what to do and when to do it.

The false storyline last week was the dramatic surge in new jobs. This fantastic news was utilized by the six banks that account for 80% of the stock market trading to propel the NASDAQ to an eleven year high and the Dow Jones to a four year high. The compliant corporate press did their part with blaring headlines of good cheer. The entire sham was designed to make Joe the Plumber pull out one of his 15 credit cards and buy a new 72 inch 3D HDTV for this weekend’s Super Bowl. When you watch a CNBC talking head interviewing a Wall Street shyster realize you have the 1% interviewing the .01% about how great things are.

What you most certainly did not hear from the MSM is that the NASDAQ is still down 42% from its 2000 high of 5,048. None of the brain dead twits on CNBC pointed out the S&P 500 is trading at the exact same level it reached on April 8, 1999. Twelve or thirteen years of zero or negative returns are meaningless when a story needs to be sold. On Friday the hyperbole utilized by the media mouthpieces was off the charts, leading to an all-out brawl between the critical thinking blogosphere and the non-thinking ”professionals” spouting the government sanctioned propaganda. Accusations flew back and forth about who was misinterpreting the data. I found it hysterical that anyone would debate the accuracy of BLS (Bureau of Lies & Swindles) data.

The drones at this government propaganda agency relentlessly massage the data until they achieve a happy ending. They use a birth/death model to create jobs out of thin air, later adjusting those phantom jobs away in a press release on a Friday night. They create new categories of Americans to pretend they aren’t really unemployed. They use more models to make adjustments for seasonality. Then they make massive one-time adjustments for the Census. Essentially, you can conclude that anything the BLS reports on a monthly basis is a wild ass guess, massaged to present the most optimistic view of the world. The government preferred unemployment rate of 8.3% is a terrible joke and the MSM dutifully spouts this drivel to a zombie-like public. If the governing elite were to report the truth, the public would realize we are in the midst of a 2nd Great Depression.

The unemployment rate during the Great Depression reached 25%. Without the BLS “adjustments” the real unemployment rate in this country is 23%. Cheerleading and packaging the data in a way to mislead the public does not change the facts:

There are 242 million working age Americans. Only 142 million Americans are working. For the math challenged, such as CNBC analysts, that means 100 million working age Americans (41.5%) are not working. But don’t worry, the BLS says the unemployment rate is only 8.3%. Things are going so swimmingly well in this country the other 33.2% are kicking back enjoying the good life.
The labor force participation rate and employment to population ratio are at 30 year lows. The number of Americans supposedly not in the labor force is at an all-time record of 87.9 million. A corporate MSM pundit like Steve Liesman would explain this away as the Baby Boomers beginning to retire. Great storyline, but the facts prove that old timers are so desperate for cash they have dramatically increased their participation in the labor market.

The data being dished out by the government on a daily basis does not pass the smell test. The working age population since 2000 has grown by 30 million people. The number of people working has grown by only 4.7 million. A critical thinker would conclude the unemployment rate should be dramatically higher than the reported 8.3%. But the government falsely reports the labor force has only increased by 11.8 million in the last eleven years. They have the gall to report that 17.9 million Americans just decided to leave the workforce. The economy was booming in 2000. It sucks today. Don’t more people need jobs when times are tougher? The Boomers retiring storyline has already proven to be false. The fact that 46 million (15% of total population) people are on food stamps is a testament to the BLS lie. A look at history proves how badly the current figures reek to high heaven:
2000 to 2011 - Not in Labor Force increased by 17.9 million.
1990?s – Not in Labor Force increased by 5 million.
1980?s – Not in Labor Force increased by 1.7 million.

The Not in the Labor Force category is utilized to hide how bad the employment situation in this country really is. They conclude that 17 million out of 38 million Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 are not in the labor force. That is complete bullshit. From the time I turned 16, I worked. Everyone I knew worked. I worked through high school and college. It is a lie that 45% of these people don’t want a job. If you dig into their data, you realize the horrific state of employment in this country:
74% of 16 to 19 year olds are not employed
85% of black 16 to 19 year olds are not employed
31% of black 25 to 54 year old men are not employed
40% of 20 to 24 year olds are not employed
22% of 25 to 29 year old males are not employed
22% of 50 to 54 year old males are not employed
According to the BLS, 11% of men between 25 and 54 are not in the labor force

Not only is real unemployment at Depressionary levels, but those that do have jobs are falling further and further behind. Wages have gone up less than 2% in the last year and have been rising at an annual rate below 3% for the last four years. According to our friends at the BLS, inflation has risen 3% in the last year. This is almost as ludicrous as their unemployment rate. Anyone living in the real world, as opposed to the BLS model world, knows that inflation on the things we need to live has been rising in excess of 10%. It is a fact that if you measure CPI exactly as it was measured in 1980, at the outset of our great debt inflation, it exceeds 10% versus the fake 3% reported without question by the MSM to a non-thinking public. A poor schmuck making the median salary of $25,000 who gets a 2% raise thinks he has $500 more to spend when in reality he has lost $2,000 of purchasing power. Federal Reserve created inflation is an insidious hidden tax that destroys the 99%, while enriching the 1%.

shipping rates go negative

eftdailynews | If the global economy is not heading for a recession, then why is global shipping slowing down so dramatically? Many economists believe that measures of global shipping such as the Baltic Dry Index are leading economic indicators. In other words, they change before the overall economic picture changes. For example, back in early 2008 the Baltic Dry Index began falling dramatically. There were those that warned that such a rapid decline in the Baltic Dry Index meant that a significant recession was coming, and it turned out that they were right. Well, the Baltic Dry Index is falling very rapidly once again. In fact, on February 3rd the Baltic Dry Index reached a low that had not been seen since August 1986. Some economists say that there are unique reasons for this (there are too many ships, etc.), but when you add this to all of the other indicators that Europe is heading into a recession, a very frightening picture emerges. We appear to be staring a global economic slowdown right in the face, and we all need to start getting prepared for that. [Related: Guggenheim Shipping ETF (NYSEArca:SEA)]

If you don’t read about economics much, you might not know what the Baltic Dry Index actually is.

Investopedia defines the Baltic Dry Index this way….

A shipping and trade index created by the London-based Baltic Exchange that measures changes in the cost to transport raw materials such as metals, grains and fossil fuels by sea.

When the global economy is booming, the demand for shipping tends to go up. When the global economy is slowing down, the demand for shipping tends to decline.

And right now, global shipping is slowing way, way down.

In fact, recently there have been reports of negative shipping rates.

According to a recent Bloomberg article, one company recently booked a ship at the ridiculous rate of negative $2,000 a day….

Glencore International Plc paid nothing to hire a dry-bulk ship with the vessel’s operator paying $2,000 a day of the trader’s fuel costs after freight rates plunged to all-time lows.

Glencore chartered the vessel, operated by Global Maritime Investments Ltd., a Cyprus-based company with offices in London, Steve Rodley, GMI’s U.K. managing director, said by phone today. The daily payments last the first 60 days of the charter, Rodley said. The vessel will haul a cargo of grains to Europe, putting the carrier in a better position for its next shipment, he said.

So why would anyone agree to ship goods at negative rates?

Well, it beats the alternative.

This was explained in a recent Fox Business article….

“They’re doing this because you can’t just have ships sitting. If they sit too long, then that’s hard on the ships. They have to keep them loaded and moving from port to port,” said Darin Newsom, senior commodities analyst at DTN.

If the owner of a ship can get someone to at least pay for part of the fuel and the journey will get the ship closer to its next destination, then that is better than having the ship just sit there.

But just a few short years ago (before the last recession) negative shipping rates would have been unthinkable.

Asian shipping is really slowing down as well. The following comes from a recent article in the Telegraph….

Shanghai shipping volumes contracted sharply in January as Europe’s debt crisis curbed demand for Asian goods, stoking fresh doubts about the strength of the Chinese economy.

Container traffic through the Port of Shanghai in January fell by more than a million tons from a year earlier.

So this is something we are seeing all over the globe.

Another indicator that is troubling economists right now is petroleum usage. It turns out that petroleum usage is really starting to slow down as well.

get ready for another round of pain at the pump: $4 (or higher) gasoline

USAToday | After rising 19 cents a gallon in the past four weeks, regular gasoline now averages $3.48 a gallon, vs. $3.12 a year ago and $2.67 in February 2010.

Prices could spike an additional 60 cents or more by May. "I think it's going to be a chaotic spring, with huge price increases in some places," says Tom Kloza of the Oil Price Information Service. Kloza expects average prices to peak at $4.05, although he and other industry trackers say prices could be sharply higher in some markets.

Rising prices are an annual spring ritual, largely because of seasonal demand. Refiners also switch from winter formulations to more expensive seasonal formulations to meet stringent environmental standards, which can tack on 15 cents a gallon, says Brian Milne of energy tracker Televent DTN.

This year's earlier-than-usual run-up is more about anticipation than current supply and demand. Last week, the Energy Department reported anemic U.S. consumption -- the lowest levels since September 2001. Domestic crude oil prices, now about $98 a barrel, are near six-week lows.

Renewed tensions in the Middle East are bolstering crude prices, while speculators are boosting futures contracts, betting on global supply disruptions and tighter refining capacity. Kloza notes that several U.S. and overseas refiners have experienced temporary or permanent closures.

So far, $4 a gallon has proven to be the upper limit consumers will pay. Last April, national prices peaked at about $3.98 a gallon. In 2008, a sharp run-up ended when prices hit an all-time average of $4.11 a gallon that summer.

"Higher demand, Iran, lost refining capacity are all potential problems," Milne says. "We'll get over $4 a gallon, but it's going to be tough to sustain that level. People will drive less."

Energy analyst Patrick DeHaan of price tracker Gasbuddy.com expects prices to rise to about $3.55 a gallon by the end of February and peak around $4 by Memorial Day weekend.

"You could see prices in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Washington and other major metropolitan areas at $4.60 or higher," DeHaan says.

Lisa Margonelli, author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank, says consumers will be vulnerable to rising prices until the U.S. develops alternative fuels such as natural gas.