What I Think Is Going To Happen

Predicting the future is a fool’s game, and I have often been proven to be a fool, so I feel qualified to give it a whirl.

1. The price of gasoline is going to continue going up, with occasional gaps up and slower declines from time to time. As $3 and then $4 per gallon is approached, consumption will show a small but increasing decline. Conservation will catch on.

2. Commerce will contract during this decline as the cost of doing business for all oil driven enterprises, e.g. farming, transportation and plastics, increases and more companies go under.

3. Increased joblessness, homelessness, hopelessness, suicide rate, and crime, all as natural consequences of the noose tightening on the necks of the workers, with stagnant wage increases, and in many cases, wage decreases, as illegal aliens continue to flood into the US.

4. The price of gold will continue to try to go up, but will be held back by bullion banks and their cohorts at all nations’ central banks. To say that the gold market is rigged is to understate the case. Of course it’s rigged, that’s why they call it the central bank.

5. Eventually these banks will be unable to offset the rising demand. Gold will gap up in an eye-popping fashion. Silver will do the same, and eventually outpace gold in terms of percentage gain. The silver demand growth is much greater than that of gold and will continue to grow.

6. Electrical brown-outs and then rolling blackouts will increase, and become the norm in the US.

7. Housing prices will continue their slow slide down, foreclosures will jump (46% of mortgage holders have some form of Adjustable Rate Mortgage), and homes will be boarded up.

8. Eventually Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, and the Federal Pension Insurance Program will go under. Huge accounting “frauds” will be unearthed.

9. An event will occur which will be the tipping point of a major currency, financial and stock market crash; NASDAQ 800, DOW 4000. Even the hyper-hedgefunds will stop buying Treasuries.

10. This event will probably involve the global oil distribution network. Gasoline will gap up to $8 to $10 per gallon.

11. As petrochemical fertilizer becomes too expensive to use, The Great American Breadbasket will return to its original condition as The Great American Desert.

12. Global delivery of goods to the fat American consumer will cease. Wal-Mart will collapse as Chinese goods become very expensive, especially when the remimbi is un-pegged from the dollar. (Are the Chinese waiting to unpeg as the coup de gras to the crashing dollar?

13. The dollar decline will have continued throughout this unfolding, and inflation will have jumped up at some point, prompting the Fed to jump interest rates to 1980’s levels, and higher.
World-wide recession, and then depression, will set in.

14. Today’s third-world countries will suffer less shock, as they are less dependent upon oil.

15. Regional wars will continue and increase.

16. The “Only Superpower in the World” will be stretched so thin it will collapse, as long supply lines become untenable. Long before this, however, the draft will have been reinstated and the people will take to the streets.

17. As food disappears from the grocery store shelves, riots break out in the cities, police attempt but are unable to quell, and there is no National Guard to call in as they are all abroad fighting the Oil Wars.

18. People begin to flee the cities as the store of resources is used up.

19. Those currently living the furthest from the high-rise high-tech centers will fare the best. Communities currently off the grid will thrive.

20. The human and domestic animal die-off will begin. Corporate enterprise will cease.

21. High level organization will cease and power will descend to the tribal level. Warlords with gangs will roam freely.

22. Those currently living with the land and off the grid will have to organize to protect their holdings. Trespassers will be shot.

23. Those with survival skills will survive. Self-sufficiency will be key.

24. All solar panels will wear out.

25. Centralized electricity generation and distribution will cease.

26. Globalization will cease.

27. The 100-year Fossil Fuel Frenzy will come to an end.

28. Global warming will continue, sea levels will rise up to 19 feet, but the natural balance will out. This will take hundreds of years, but life on earth will continue and thrive.

29. Off the grid will be the norm, as the grid will devolve.

30. Humans who band together in tribes will rediscover their humanity. The extended family will form the basis for the tribes.

31. All knowledge will not be lost, and we will not all live in caves.

32. Barter and trade will be the standard, but gold and silver money will still be currency. US dollars will be tinder.

33. Just as all other civilizations have failed, so will ours. What evolves to replace it will be interesting, but the Fossil Fuel Frenzy civilization was a one-off phenomenon, and will not reoccur.

34. As 90% of the humans die, peace and tranquility will eventual come to the planet. The human cancer with its uncontrolled growth will be defeated. Humans will again be part of nature. Tribal war will become ceremonial, and the coup stick will be popular.

34. It's all good...except for one thing. Depleted uranium. The entire globe will suffer "gulf war syndrome" due to the 2000 tons of atomized uranium placed in the atmosphere by the US during this war.

35. Cancer rates will climb to 50% by 2020.

36. Most babies born will die from their deformities. Those that do not may have evolved immunity.

We can only hope.

Note: These are not my original ideas. Original sources are contained in past blogs.

New Format

As you can see, I've changed the format of this blog. More space for text. Hope you like it.

Even the Mainstream Press is Starting to Get It

Experts: Petroleum May Be Nearing a Peak

By MATT CRENSON, AP National Writer
5-28-2005

Could the petroleum joyride — cheap, abundant oil that has sent the global economy whizzing along with the pedal to the metal and the AC blasting for decades — be coming to an end? Some observers of the oil industry think so. They predict that this year, maybe next — almost certainly by the end of the decade — the world's oil production, having grown exuberantly for more than a century, will peak and begin to decline.

And then it really will be all downhill. The price of oil will increase drastically. Major oil-consuming countries will experience crippling inflation, unemployment and economic instability. Princeton University geologist Kenneth S. Deffeyes predicts "a permanent state of oil shortage."
According to these experts, it will take a decade or more before conservation measures and new technologies can bridge the gap between supply and demand, and even then the situation will be touch and go.

None of this will affect vacation plans this summer — Americans can expect another season of beach weekends and road trips to Graceland relatively unimpeded by the cost of getting there. Though gas prices are up, they are expected to remain below $2.50 a gallon. Accounting for inflation, that's pretty comparable to what motorists paid for most of the 20th century; it only feels expensive because gasoline was unusually cheap between 1986 and 2003.

And there are many who doubt the doomsday scenario will ever come true. Most oil industry analysts think production will continue growing for at least another 30 years. By then, substitute energy sources will be available to ease the transition into a post-petroleum age.

"This is just silly," said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research in Winchester, Mass. "It's not like industrial civilization is going to come crashing down."

Where you stand on "peak oil," as parties to the debate call it, depends on which forces you consider dominant in controlling the oil markets. People who consider economic forces most important believe that prices are high right now mostly because of increased demand from China and other rapidly growing economies. But eventually, high prices should encourage consumers to use less and producers to pump more.

But Deffeyes and many other geologists counter that when it comes to oil, Mother Nature trumps Adam Smith. The way they see it, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway and other major producers are already pumping as fast as they can. The only way to increase production capacity is to discover more oil. Yet with a few exceptions, there just isn't much left out there to be discovered.

"The economists all think that if you show up at the cashier's cage with enough currency, God will put more oil in ground," Deffeyes said.

There will be warning signs before global oil production peaks, the bearers of bad news contend. Prices will rise dramatically and become increasingly volatile. With little or no excess production capacity, minor supply disruptions — political instability in Venezuela, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico or labor unrest in Nigeria, for example — will send the oil markets into a tizzy. So will periodic admissions by oil companies and petroleum-rich nations that they have been overestimating their reserves.

Oil producers will grow flush with cash. And because the price of oil ultimately affects the cost of just about everything else in the economy, inflation will rear its ugly head.

Anybody who has been paying close attention to the news lately may feel a bit queasy at this stage. Could $5-a-gallon gas be right around the corner?

"The world has never seen anything like this before and so we just really don't know," said Robert L. Hirsch, an energy analyst at Science Applications International Corp., a Santa Monica, Calif., consulting firm. Still, he added, "there's a number of really competent professionals that are very pessimistic."

The pessimism stems from a legendary episode in the history of petroleum geology. Back in 1956, a geologist named M. King Hubbert predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in 1970.
His superiors at Shell Oil were aghast. They even tried to persuade Hubbert not to speak publicly about his work. His peers, accustomed to decades of making impressive oil discoveries, were skeptical.

But Hubbert was right. U.S. oil production did peak in 1970, and it has declined steadily ever since. Even impressive discoveries such as Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, with 13 billion barrels in recoverable reserves, haven't been able to reverse that trend.

Hubbert started his analysis by gathering statistics on how much oil had been discovered and produced in the Lower 48 states, both onshore and off, between 1901 and 1956 (Alaska was still terra incognita to petroleum geologists 50 years ago). His data showed that the country's oil reserves had increased rapidly from 1901 until the 1930s, then more slowly after that.

When Hubbert graphed that pattern it looked very much like America's oil supply was about to peak. Soon, it appeared, America's petroleum reserves would reach an all-time maximum. And then they would begin to shrink as the oil companies extracted crude from the ground faster than geologists could find it.

That made sense. Hubbert knew some oil fields, especially the big ones, were easier to find than others. Those big finds would come first, and then the pace of discovery would decline as the remaining pool of oil resided in progressively smaller and more elusive deposits.

The production figures followed a similar pattern, but it looked like they would peak a few years later than reserves.

That made sense too. After all, oil can't be pumped out of the ground the instant it is discovered. Lease agreements have to be negotiated, wells drilled, pipelines built; the development process can take years.

When Hubbert extended the production curve into the future it looked like it would peak around 1970. Every year after that, America would pump less oil than it had the year before.
If that prognostication wasn't daring enough, Hubbert had yet another mathematical trick up his sleeve. Assuming that the reserves decline was going to be a mirror image of the rise, geologists would have found exactly half of the oil in the Lower 48 when the curve peaked. Doubling that number gave Hubbert the grand total of all recoverable oil under the continental United States: 170 billion barrels.

At first, critics objected to Hubbert's analysis, arguing that technological improvements in exploration and recovery would increase the amount of available oil.

They did, but not enough to extend production beyond the limits Hubbert had projected. Even if you throw in the unexpected discovery of oil in Alaska, America's petroleum production history has proceeded almost exactly as Hubbert predicted it would.

Critics claim that Hubbert simply got lucky.

"When it pretty much worked," Lynch said, "he decided, aha, it has to be a bell curve."
But many experts see no reason global oil production has to peak at all. It could plateau and then gradually fall as the economy converts to other forms of energy.

"Even in 30 to 40 years there's still going to be huge amounts of oil in the Middle East," said Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis.

A few years ago, geologists began applying Hubbert's methods to the entire world's oil production. Their analyses indicated that global oil production would peak some time during the first decade of the 21st century.

Deffeyes thinks the peak will be in late 2005 or early 2006. Houston investment banker Matthew Simmons puts it at 2007 to 2009. California Institute of Technology physicist David Goodstein, whose book "The End of Oil" was published last year, predicts it will arrive before 2010.

The exact date doesn't really matter, said Hirsch, because he believes it's already too late. In an analysis he did for the U.S. Department of Energy in February, Hirsch concluded that it will take more than a decade for the U.S. economy to adapt to declining oil production.

"You've got to do really big things in order to dent the problem. And if you're on the backside of the supply curve you're chasing the train after it's already left the station," he said.

For example, the median lifetime of an American automobile is 17 years. That means even if the government immediately mandated a drastic increase in fuel efficiency standards, the conservation benefits wouldn't fully take effect for almost two decades.

And though conservation would certainly be necessary in a crisis, it wouldn't be enough. Fully mitigating the sting of decreasing oil supplies would require developing alternate sources of energy — and not the kind that politicians and environmentalists wax rhapsodic about when they promise pollution-free hydrogen cars and too-cheap-to-meter solar power.

If oil supplies really do decline in the next few decades, America's energy survival will hinge on the last century's technology, not the next one's. Hirsch's report concludes that compensating for a long-term oil shortfall would require building a massive infrastructure to convert coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels into combustible liquids.

Proponents of coal liquefaction, which creates synthetic oil by heating coal in the presence of hydrogen gas, refer to the process as "clean coal" technology. It is clean, but only to the extent that the synthetic oil it produces burns cleaner than raw coal. Synthetic oil still produces carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse warming gas, during both production and combustion (though in some scenarios some of that pollution could be kept out of the atmosphere). And the coal that goes into the liquefaction process still has to be mined, which means tailing piles, acid runoff and other toxic ills.

And then there's the fact that nobody wants a "clean coal" plant in the backyard. Shifting to new forms of energy will require building new refineries, pipelines, transportation terminals and other infrastructure at a time when virtually every new project faces intense local opposition.
Energy analysts say coal liquefaction can produce synthetic oil at a cost of $32 a barrel, well below the $50 range where oil has been trading for the past year or so. But before they invest billions of dollars in coal liquefaction, investors want to be sure that oil prices will remain high.
Investors are similarly wary about tar sands and heavy oil deposits in Canada and Venezuela. Though they are too gooey to be pumped from the ground like conventional oil, engineers have developed ways of liquefying the deposits with injections of hot water and other means. Already, about 8 percent of Canada's oil production comes from tar sands.

Unfortunately, it costs energy to recover energy from tar sands. Most Canadian operations use natural gas to heat water for oil recovery; and like oil, natural gas has gotten dramatically more expensive in the past few years.

"The reality is, this thing is extremely complicated," Hirsch said. "My honest view is that anybody who tells you that they have a clear picture probably doesn't understand the problem."

Skype Now

If you haven’t heard, Skype is the latest internet telephone which enables you to make long-distance phone calls for free to other Skypers, and for a competitive rate, to non-Skypers with land or cell phones. You’ll need a microphone attached to your computer. A headset mic with earphone works well. Make sure its plugged into the correct place.

1. Go to Skype.com and download the free program to match your operating system, e.g. Windows.
2. Install and test as directed.
3. Call me at geraldtrumbule.

Millions have signed up and you should too.

In Memoriam

Dedicated to our thousands who were "methodically deceived" and to those millions that they killed.

"But during the last half century -- when, for days or months or many years, U.S. troops and planes assaulted the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq again -- the rationales from the White House were always based on major falsehoods, avidly promoted by the U.S. mass media. In the light of real history, the U.S. soldiers who are honored each Memorial Day were pawns of methodical deception. Media spin and the edicts of authorities induced them to kill "enemy" combatants and civilians, for whom Pentagon buglers have never played a single mournful note."

Fossil Fuel Frenzy

Continuing Cracks - Part 11

Since I started this blog I've been documenting the "Continuing Cracks" in the US dollar domination of global finances. The diminishing sale of our Treasuries to Japan and China (and now Norway) and the hint of trouble in the hedge funds (which have gone exponential). This article ties them together and reveals Federal Fudging of the Data (FFD).

"This is news. This is deadly serious and has extremely dire implications for each and every American citizen – no – how about each and every person in the industrialized Western World? Remember, folks, the American Dollar currently still enjoys global reserve currency status. This is a privilege – not a god given right. As such, the dollar’s fate is of grave and utmost concern to many beyond US borders.

I do not understand how a “press” that claims to be the freest in the world can remain stone silent on this issue. Don’t you think we all deserve better? Does anyone really believe that ignoring this issue and failing to report it altogether will alter the stark, dark and disturbing reality outlined in the Treasury’s own published numbers?

Better put your mitts on folks – and get in the game. In absence of an explanation to the contrary, it sure looks like somebody’s monetizing debt and printing money – and lots of it. The silence on the part of officialdom on this issue is truly deafening. Remember folks, the shenanigans outlined above are all brought to us by the same swashbuckling clowns who claim the economy is doing fine, there are lots of jobs, are adamant that the gold market is not rigged and oh, yes, they perpetually remind us that inflation is a non issue too. What a mess."

(Click on title for complete article.)

Smoking Gun Found - Left Lying on Ground

(from www.rebelgraphics.org)

and from Molly Ivins, by way of www.TomDispatch.com

Published on Wednesday, May 11, 2005 by Working for Change

They Lied to Us

Memo proves leadership knew Saddam was not a threat

by Molly Ivins

Meanwhile, back in Iraq. I was going to leave out of this column everything about how we got into Iraq, or whether it was wise, and or whether the infamous "they" knowingly lied to us. (Although I did plan to point out I would be nobly refraining from poking at that pus-riddled question.)

Since I believe one of our greatest strengths as Americans is shrewd practicality, I thought it was time we moved past the now unhelpful, "How did we get into his mess?" to the more utilitarian, "What the hell do we do now?"

However, I cannot let this astounding Downing Street memo go unmentioned.
(Click title to continue)

Another One Bites the Dust

America's drug plan collapses in chaos
By Hugh O'Shaughnessy
15 May 2005

"Washington's "war on drugs" in Colombia is collapsing in chaos and corruption, and the drug producers are winning. The so-called Plan Colombia, which has cost the US more than $3bn (£1.6bn) in the past five years, is being abandoned, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has announced.

Last year, the hugely expensive effort to poison coca bushes - whose leaves are the source of cocaine - by aerial spraying ended in failure. More bushes were flourishing in January this year than in January 2004."

Attack on Iran Coming in June

To date this is the third reference (see archives) I have found that Bush intends to bomb Iran in June. We shall see. Click on title above for full article.

"Buried down in today’s New York Times report on President Bush reaffirming his unqualified support for John Bolton as U.N. Ambassador is the reason why almost all of you are ready to vote for his confirmation.

“Republicans are hoping to shame Democrats into a quick vote on Mr. Bolton. They argue that he needs to be in place by June so that the United States will have the latitude it needs to press its concerns about Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program before the Security Council.”

Why the big rush? My reliable sources tell me it is because there is a timetable that makes it urgent for Bolton to be ready for action in June in order to cripple the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as part of the plan to bomb the Iranian nuclear-power plant at Bushehr. That’s because Bushehr, under construction with Russian supervision, will soon be ready to receive the Russian fissionable material enabling it to produce power. In 1981, remember Republican Senators, Israel bombed the Osiraq nuclear power plant near Baghdad just before it was to be fueled by its French contractors. Once fueled, bombing is out of the question because of the radiation that would be emitted, with clouds traveling who knows where."

Continuing Cracks

Watch for similar events on this side of the pond.


City Hedge Funds Head for Domino Collapse
Peter Koenig and Louise Armitstead
The Times, LondonSunday, May 15, 2005

Bad investments by some of the biggest hedge funds in London have triggered unprecedented losses, record demands for money back, and talk of a death spiral weighing heavily on stocks and bonds. GLG, a hedge fund started in 1995 by a group of former Goldman Sachs bankers, has in recent weeks had demands for more than $500m(£270m) from investors wanting to pull out of its $4 billionmarket-neutral fund.

The predicament of GLG, the biggest group in Europe, with $13 billion under management, highlights the stress being felt at many hedge funds in Europe and America after four months of deteriorating results. Prime brokers and the credit departments in investment banks have been calling clients to check their capital strengths as rumours of a big hedge-fund blow-out grip the industry.

London-based Cheyne is thought to be down by at least 10% in its credit fund after the downgrading of debt at General Motors and Ford. Ferox, another of London's most successful funds, isthought to be down nearly 20%. Bailey Coates, Polygon, Rubicon, Vega, Moore Capital, and Brevan Howard are all nursing heavy losses of about 5% each in April.

Bailey Coates, whose losses reported in The Sunday Times three weeks ago first alerted the wider market to the industry crisis, has had yet more redemption calls. "What you're seeing is like a run on the bank," said Narayan Naik,director of hedge-fund studies at the London Business School. "Selling forces more selling and there's a cascade effect."

You've Got to Laugh Once in a While

Click the title above for some of the best internet videos I've seen in a while. Most are funny but some (Bunker Buster) are quite sobering.

So This is the Culture of Life

I spend considerable time trying to educate myself in the big-picture issues. About a month ago, I saw President Bush on TV and he looked sick, or badly hung over. I wondered if anybody else noticed, so I created a Google Alert on the phrase “is Bush sick”. Every day I’ve been getting at least 6 articles containing Bush and sick, and the variety has been sometimes amusing and sometimes sickening.

Today’s batch brought a resource so devastating I just had to pass it on to you. Here I present excerpts from 3 of the reports. Dick Chaney is, apparently, the most evil person ever, and he and his have unleashed enough Depleted Uranium (DU) to kill off all life on the planet. By 2020 the cancer rate will be 50%.

Various quotes from Iconoclast-Texas.com:

"Yeah, the concentration of the depleted uranium particles in the atmosphere all around the globe is increasing. There are indications that the U.S. will go in June and bomb the heck out of Iran. We’re monitoring the U.S. Army ammunition factories. They have very large orders for those huge bunker buster bombs that have 5,000 lbs. of DU in the warhead."

"The soldiers from Gulf War I in a group of 67 soldiers who came back, they had DU in their equipment, in their clothes, in their bodies, in their semen, and they had normal babies before they went over there to war. They came back, and the VA did a study. Of 251 Gulf War I veterans in Mississippi, in 67 percent of them, their babies born after the war were deemed to have severe birth defects. They had brains missing, arms and legs missing, organs missing. They were born without eyes. They had horrible blood diseases. It’s horrific."

"If they were in Bradley Fighting Vehicles, they’re coming home with rectal cancer from sitting on ammunition boxes. The young women are reporting terrible problems with endometriosis. That’s the lining of the uterus malfunctioning, and they just bleed and bleed and bleed. Some of them have uterine cancer — 18 and 19 and 20 year olds. The Army will not even diagnose it. They send them back to the battlefields. They won’t treat them or diagnose them. A group of 20 soldiers pushed from Kuwait to Baghdad in 2003 in all the fighting. Eight of those 20 soldiers have malignancies."

"The simple thing is, you take tons and tons of solid radioactive waste, and you spread it all over the world, both here in the states and overseas, in combat situations and non-combat situations, do it into the ocean, then refuse to clean it up and provide the medical care. It’s that easy."

"What we have is deliberate use of solid radioactive materials all over the place and the deliberate refusal to provide the medical care that’s mandated by Army orders and regulations, Department of Defense directives, and a simple refusal to clean up all the environmental contamination that must be done by the direct Army regulation. It’s that easy. There’s no accountability. Anybody that speaks up becomes persona non grata and the attacks just come flying your way beyond comprehension."

Downwinders Be Damned

"Just as the Bush administration contemplates ordering up a new generation of nuclear weapons, which may in turn spark a new round of nuclear testing in the high deserts of Nevada, the Center for Disease Control, a federal outpost in Atlanta charged with supervising the nation's physical well-being, pulled the plug on a long-term study into the dire health consequences from nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s on people living in the American southwest." (click title to continue)

Peak Oil Revisited

This from the weekend version of The Daily Reckoning, a free daily newsletter which I highly recommend.

Received this today from our friend Bob Gibbs in Cleveland. Bob has his own company and sells transformers and switch gear to power companies and others who operate their own power plants. I think he knows what he's talking about.

Nuclear Power is having a rebirth. The newer design does away with these cooling tower types of installation. It is called a PBMR (pebble bed modular reactor) which is smaller and cheaper, takes about 24 months to build and lasts about 40 years. They are much safer. Inside a PBMR, there is a bed of high temperature silicon graphite balls each about the size of a billiard ball. About 70 % of the balls have flecks of uranium. When they interact, the bed of graphite balls gets hot. The gas carries the heat to a turbine. If the core hits peak temperature of about 1600 deg. C, it starts to cool itself down automatically. There is no uncontained chain reaction to cause a meltdown as in the existing type of plants. Also they are built to store their own waste in the basement with storage space for forty years of operation. Of course, the Sierra Club and others will still find fault with this.

In the next 15 years, China will need to generate at least six times what it already generates or at least two of these nuclear reactors per year. India has the same expected growth. You hear a lot about the wind power being so clean, etc., but it is small potatoes. Four of these nuclear reactors could generate more than all of the existing wind power turbines in California and use very little real estate to do so.

Surprisingly enough, this rebirth of nuclear does not mean the demise of coal because there also is new coal technology. The world has about a 300-year coal supply. China now generates about 70% of their power with coal. Coal presents two problems: Transportation and dirty burning. Both of these are being solved by liquefying coal for cleaner burning and it will be a lot easier for the Chinese to get coal via a pipeline from the north of China to where the factories are in southern China. This technology is like turning coal into oil.

Uranium has been rising in costs because of the rebirth of nuclear. It is now about $20/lb. At that price, relative present fuel costs are:

Coal - $1.25 per million BTU
Natural Gas - $3.5 per million BTU
Oil - $6.00 per million BTU
Uranium - $0.055 per million BTU

Let's assume that Uranium increases to 50 times the current price as demand picks up again. The new PBMR nuclear plants would provide energy at the equivalent to buying gasoline at 1/2 cent per gallon.

Most of the world's untapped coal reserves are in the U.S., northern China, Australia and Canada.

The U.S., Canada and Australia have the greatest part of the world's uranium.

The best news of all is that there is one place in the world that does not have much of these reserves and that is the Middle East. Wouldn't it be nice to be around when we don't need them anymore and they have to fend for themselves.

Now We're Getting Somewhere

ITHACA, New York (AP) -- Not just anybody can say he has a slime-mold beetle named in his honor. But George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld can.

Entomologists Quentin Wheeler and Kelly B. Miller, who recently had the task of naming 65 newly discovered species of slime-mold beetles, named three species after the president, vice president and defense secretary.

Votes for Food

A lady at the polls yesterday (in Denver) expressed her dismay that so few citizens were voting. “Why in Iraq, 70% of the people turned out.” she said. I guess she hadn’t seen this report.

February 1, 2005

Will Vote for Food?
by Dahr Jamail

BAGHDAD - Voting in Baghdad was linked with receipt of food rations, several voters said after the Sunday poll.

Many Iraqis said Monday that their names were marked on a list provided by the government agency that provides monthly food rations before they were allowed to vote.

"I went to the voting center and gave my name and district where I live to a man," said Wassif Hamsa, a 32-year-old journalist who lives in the predominantly Shia area Janila in Baghdad.

"This man then sent me to the person who distributed my monthly food ration."
Mohammed Ra'ad, an engineering student who lives in the Baya'a district of the capital city, reported a similar experience.

Ra'ad, 23, said he saw the man who distributed monthly food rations in his district at his polling station. "The food dealer, who I know personally of course, took my name and those of my family who were voting," he said. "Only then did I get my ballot and was allowed to vote."

"Two of the food dealers I know told me personally that our food rations would be withheld if we did not vote," said Saeed Jodhet, a 21-year-old engineering student who voted in the Hay al-Jihad district of Baghdad.

There has been no official indication that Iraqis who did not vote would not receive their monthly food rations.

Many Iraqis had expressed fears before the election that their monthly food rations would be cut if they did not vote. They said they had to sign voter registration forms in order to pick up their food supplies.

Your Next New Car

car

Easy Access to Blogs

If you have a few bloggers that you read regularly, you can add them to your browser, where you can easily check to see if they have added any new articles. Find the “add content” button on your browser and follow the easy steps. You will need to know the “RSS feed” for a particular blog. For example, to add this blog to your browser you will need to type in www.astoundingnews.blogspot.com/atom.xml. The “atom.xml” part might be different for specific blogs, but you can usually find this info on the blog itself. Good luck!

The $6.66-a-Gallon Solution

By SIMON ROMERO
New York Times
April 30, 2005

OSLO, April 23 - Car owners in the United States may grumble as the price of gasoline hovers around $2.25 a gallon. Here in Norway, home to perhaps the world's most expensive gasoline, drivers greeted higher pump prices of $6.66 a gallon with little more than a shrug. (Click title to continue...)

Get Your News Close to the Source

I have followed a number of Iraqi bloggers for some time now, and "Raed in the Middle" is, in my estimation, the best and the most consistent. I reprint the entire text from yesterday's blog.

"I didn't find a SINGLE news item in any of the mainstream media about what happened in Iraq two days ago.Not a single news item about it!

The Sunni Arabs Front, that includes both The National Front and The National Dialogue Council, announced their withdrawal from the Government, just few hours after Jaafari finished his "partial" announcement.

Jafari's partial announcement didn't declare 7 of the most important positions: oil minister, defense minister, electricity minister, industry minister, human rights minister, and two vice-prime-ministers. Other Sunni Iraqis, like the PM Mishaan Al-Juburi the head of The Reconciliation and Liberation party, asked the rest of the Sunni Arabs to withdraw from Jaafari's government.

The story behind the mass Sunni withdrawal from the government is that Sunni Arabs had a clear deal with Jaafari about announcing a national political agenda before announcing the government, including "very important" points like asking the occupation forces to schedule their withdrawal from Iraq.

Jaafari decided to announce the government with what seems to be a side agreement with Ghazi Al-Yawer alone.Sheikh Ghazi Mash'al Ujail Al-Yawer, a Sunni Arab with no party affiliation and the head of the Iraqiyun List, appears to be the last Sunni in the government now. Al-Yawer seems to be trying to fill the Sunni Arabs gap himself.

In his official statements Al-Yawer said that Sunni Arab leaders may pull out from the new government if they aren't given more cabinet seats, and then he called for quick completion of the formation of the new Iraqi government and to appoint two Arab Sunni ministers in the ministries of defense and human rights who remained unoccupied in the new formation. Elyawer expressed his hope that this will be made within the two coming days.

Clearly the Sunni Arab Iraqis now are not a part of Jaafari's government.I don't know whether this Sunni withdrawal would be just another nail in the coffin of the US project in Iraq, or a coup de grâce."

$300,000,000,000 for War and ....

A small sampling of the programs being slashed by the Party of the Rich:

Vocational education
Head Start; Even Start
Teen Drug and Alcohol Abuse
Perkins student loan program
Upward Bound
Student Talent Search
Medicaid
Doctor training programs for children's hospitals
Spinal cord injury treatment and rehabilitation programs
Low income community housing
Low income energy assistance
Single mothers housing; Section eight voucher program
Housing assistance for AIDS
Housing assistance for native Americans
Housing assistance for disabled Americans
Job training for farm workers
Nutration programs for children of migrant farm workers
Nutrition programs for single mothers
The Community Food and Nutrition program;
Environmental Protection Agency
Land restoration funds
The Superfund
Mining Waste Cleanup
Department of the Interior natural lands management
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Department of Energy nuclear waste cleanup
Amtrak rails service (in the states that did not vote for George Bush)
Veterans health maintenance programs
Disabled veterans programs
Veterans nursing home program
Women, Infants and Children nutrition program (WIC)
Temporary Aid to Needy Families, (TANF)

Thank you President Bush, for getting our priorities straight.

In the United States, there are 34.9 million people who go hungry or are food insecure, an increase of 3.9 million people since 1999—12.9 million of these are children. What this says is: not only has our government failed, but also that you and I have failed. Unless we are like the Republicans (who have declared time and again that there is no reason whatsoever why they should be their brother's keeper) we must call it our own personal failure as humans.

Bird's Eye View

Take a look at Google Maps for the next generation in spatial location. Advances:

1. You can grab the map and move it.
2. You can switch to satellite to see the actual photographic view. In cities, you can zoom in quite close. You can find your house!

Once again, Google moves ahead of the pack.

Obstruction of Justice

Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict 16, appears to be guilty of obstruction of justice.

"Pope Benedict XVI faced claims last night he had 'obstructed justice' after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church's investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret.
The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001.

It asserted the church's right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II's successor last week.

Lawyers acting for abuse victims claim it was designed to prevent the allegations from becoming public knowledge or being investigated by the police. They accuse Ratzinger of committing a 'clear obstruction of justice'."

"It orders that 'preliminary investigations' into any claims of abuse should be sent to Ratzinger's office, which has the option of referring them back to private tribunals in which the 'functions of judge, promoter of justice, notary and legal representative can validly be performed for these cases only by priests'.

Peak Oil Revisited

I've been honking on this issue for a few weeks now (see The Red Pill below) and I've learned one thing. No one wants to hear or read about this. Those I've spoken with seem to fall into one of two camps: 1) okay, we're all going to die, so there is nothing I can do, or 2) something will save us. I also spent a week reading those with opposing views and although I’ve calmed down a bit, I still think the predictions are right on. How long it will take to unfold, I don’t know, but unfold it will.

Here, for your enjoyment, is an article which points out that it has already started. $3.00 gasoline, here we come!

"No one questions why the U.S. is occupying the Middle-East: the Administration is there for the oil. But the true gravity of the situation is only scarcely beginning to come to light. The 'markets' have already accepted the long-term "bull market" in oil prices due to increasing demand. What they don't accept yet (or understand) is the mounting "supply" problem. When this begins to dawn on them, and it could absolutely happen as quickly as within the next few months, then seemingly overnight the world will start to come apart at the seams.

Because as soon as it is recognized that for all practical purposes the situation is already upon us, then a fast and vicious "resource grab" will be initiated. The price of oil in the markets will begin to rise dramatically. This will initiate a circular hedging / hording mentality in large end-users, governments, and multi-nationals. This will then have a myriad of devastating effects, but all average Joe Consumer is going to notice is that the price at the pump will experience a brief and dramatic blip upward, gas lines will form for a short time at the corner-stations, and then suddenly the corner gas-stations will go dry altogether...perhaps getting a few sporadic deliveries, but more likely simply for good. Gasoline will not be available to individual drivers, as precedence is given to heating oil, critical government and commercial uses, public transportation, transport of food and goods, etc. How the situation unfolds after that you can imagine just as well as I...." (click on title to read entire article)

A Second Holy War from Our Own Far Right

"Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost," Kennedy says. "As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."

"Meet the Dominionists -- biblical literalists who believe God has called them to take over the U.S. government. As the far-right wing of the evangelical movement, Dominionists are pressing an agenda that makes Newt Gingrich's Contract With America look like the Communist Manifesto. They want to rewrite schoolbooks to reflect a Christian version of American history, pack the nation's courts with judges who follow Old Testament law, post the Ten Commandments in every courthouse and make it a felony for gay men to have sex and women to have abortions. In Florida, when the courts ordered Terri Schiavo's feeding tube removed, it was the Dominionists who organized round-the-clock protests and issued a fiery call for Gov. Jeb Bush to defy the law and take Schiavo into state custody. Their ultimate goal is to plant the seeds of a "faith-based" government that will endure far longer than Bush's presidency -- all the way until Jesus comes back." continue reading article

No Child's Behind Left

Thanks to Barb H, who knows what she is talking about:

"In response to the Federal No Child Left Behind Act, students will have to pass the test to be promoted to the next grade level. In the hopes that it will be uniformly adopted by all the states, thus illuminating Florida to a glorious front-runner position in education, it will be called: The Federal Arithmetic and Reading Test (FART).

All students who cannot pass a FART in the second grade will be retested in grades 3-5 until such a time, as they are capable of achieving a FART score of 80%.

If a student does not successfully FART by grade 5, that student shall be placed in a separate English program, the Special Means Elective for Learning Language (SMELL). If with this increased SMELL program the student cannot pass the required FART, he or she can graduate to middle school by taking a one-semester course in Comprehensive Reading and Arithmetic Preparation (CRAP).

If by age fourteen the student cannot FART, SMELL or CRAP, he or she will earn promotion in an intensive one-week seminar. This is the Preparatory Reading for Unprepared Nationally Exempted Students (PRUNES). It is the opinion of the Texas Department of Public Instruction that an intensive week of PRUNES will enable any student to FART, SMELL or CRAP."

And the Good News Is ....

After the Empire

I just ordered this book from Amazon. Here is a quote from one of the reviewers:

"A good primer on how the "Old Europe" looks at us these days. Emmanuel Todd, a French demographer, argues that the United States' "global war on terror" (or "terror war on the globe") is not a demonstration of American military prowess as much as a result of our encroaching weakness as a superpower. Faced with the loss of the Soviet Union as an ideological enemy, the US political-and-military establishment has shifted to a series of small aerial wars against largely defenseless countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama) to justify its continuing dominance of the world's resources - even as we go further and further into hock with our foreign creditors and progressively mortgage away our long-term economic viability."

Click on the title above to go to Amazon.

Lest We Forget The Big Lie

If it doesn't fit, you must submit.

RIP Karol Wojtyla

I was going to try to get through the media gush of Dead Popery without comment but in surfing other blogs I was heartened to find at least one reference to a site that was not afraid to identify the Sins of the Father.

I have to conclude that humans must have evolved with a virus in their brain cells which dooms them to belief in outrageous God forms. How else to explain the mourning of the subjugated millions upon the death of this gigantic global fraud.


Head of World’s Largest Evil Organization Dies, Goes Straight to Hell

Pope John Paul II died today. Although his front organization, the Roman Catholic Church, has been demonstrated to be responsible for the murder of millions of innocents throughout the ages, and continues today with a special high-ceremony known as BFB (Butt-Fucking the Boys), the world mourned the passing of this "infallible" fake.

“How soon they forget”, said an atheist, wishing to remain anonymous so as to avoid retribution. “Starting with the systematic rape, torture, and burning at the stake of millions of innocent pagan women in its early years, the twisting of the teachings of the radical Jesus into a money-making scheme, the continuing murder and torture during the Inquisition of the Dark Ages, the support of the Nazi-led extermination during WWII, and recently including the genocide in Rwanda, the Roman Catholic Church has been, perhaps, the most evil organization ever to exist on the face of the planet.”

As the world’s largest private land-owner, oppressor of the poor, and proponent of the spread of AIDS in Africa, the Roman Catholic Church continues to be held in high esteem by some, including the US government's blessing of tax-exempt status on its land holdings and bingo activities.

In addition to its unusual practice of ritual cannibalism, called communion, the Roman Catholic Church has also been said to have produced the world’s funniest costumes for men in skirts.

Free Market Fraud

This article requires some concentrated reading, but it is well worth the effort.

"The Bush administration is comparable to a group of corrupt trustees for the family fortune of a lazy and incompetent heir. They siphon the money out by selling off the inheritance while the heir is too stupid or drunk to notice. He still has his mansion, his fleet of big cars and his monthly check, and he doesn’t notice that the assets are shrinking. He may not for a while. This family’s fortune is big and there are a lot of assets still to sell off."

Now This is Getting Good

"DEEP in the basement of a dusty university library in Edinburgh lies a small black box, roughly the size of two cigarette packets side by side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream.

At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators.

But, according to a growing band of top scientists, this box has quite extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the 'eye' of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future and predicting major world events. " continue article

Forbidden Pixels

Boy, oh boy.

Strange, but certain patterns of pixels lighting up on your computer screen can get you thrown in jail. Or perhaps it’s certain patterns of bits streaming through your RAM.

As usual, rights are taken away “to protect the children”. This poor schlump sits in the dark and beats his meat to a forbidden pixel pattern. Douglas Sovereign Smith Jr. is arrested for receiving and sending forbidden images from his home computer. Pixels devoid of inherent meaning that add up to a forbidden image and forbidden lust in Mr. Smith’s brain.

As Bill Maher pointed out on his Real Time show last night, any child abuse that may have occurred was done at the time the pictures were taken, and their were no children involved in Smith's sending or receiving the bits. I don’t think he is being charged for looking at the pixels created by the bits, just for sending and receiving. What if he had some forbidden files that he hadn’t gotten around to looking at?

What if 001011010101000011010101010010110001010101001 actually looks like a child’s wee-wee and he didn’t even know it? What if these images came from computer generated forms and not from light bouncing off of “real” children? How can you determine the age of a screen-image?

Didn’t the Supremes rule that computer generated images were okay? Now there’s a latent market that should take off like a rocket…computer generated porno involving forbidden images.

No real people were involved in the making of this video. Completely safe…for now.

Oil Spike to $105 Possible

Oil tops $55 a barrel level; Goldman ups price outlook
NewsStand - Thursday, March 31, 2005

MarketWatch, Inc
Ciara Linnane

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures climbed back above the $55 a barrel level in premarket trade Thursday, extending the prior session's late gains, after Goldman Sachs raised its oil price outlook. "We believe oil prices have entered the early stages of a superspike period," said analyst Arjun Murti, who raised his superspike range to $50-105 a barrel from $50-80. Investors are also awaiting the release of weekly natural gas supply data. The crude contract for May delivery was last trading up 2 percent at $55.09 a barrel. May natural gas was up 1.1 percent at $7.55 per million British thermal units. Enercast analysts are expecting the Energy Department to report a withdrawal of 49 billion cubic feet.

(c) 1997-2005 MarketWatch.com, Inc. All rights reserved.

United States of North America

I had this idea in the seventies to create a new country called The United States of North America, and I wrote a screen play entitled “The Third American Revolution”, explaining how we get there. Somehow I have lost the original, but the idea is straightforward.

Nicely convince Mexico and Canada to join us, each bringing its respective states with it (already conveniently organized.) to form the United States of North America, a federation of even more states. Card every last citizen of these states and allow freedom of travel throughout and then staunchly defend the new borders. Build entire cities in the North to harvest the vast mineral resources. Let there be three capital cities for a period of time, and then build a brand new hub capital city somewhere in the middle of the entire land mass, or for that matter, anywhere that we would agree on..

This new union would have a fighting chance against the European Union and other such entities which will form in the future. (Instead, by the way, we are standing by while China either buys outright or partners with Canadian commodity producers. Instead of taking positive action we continue to dig ourselves a deeper hole, now net $7,000,000,000,000 , that’s right trillion, mortgaged to foreigners. If we don't soon change our ways, we will become a third world country if and when China pulls our chain.)

I was a kid when Alaska and Hawaii suddenly became states. I was astounded. How could you just declare that these two lovely but non-contiguous entities were now states? I guess I hadn’t been reading the newspapers I delivered back then.

So let's do it again, but even bigger. Canada has 10 provinces, Mexico has 31 states, and the US 50. Okay 91 STATES! Great. Or, let some of the territories become states until you have 100. That’s even better ….100 STATES STRONG.

New roads, less wasted border bullshit. Let the free markets boil and bubble. You can spend hours imagining how this might work, and solve many of our current problems. For example, let the Mexicans send their hard-earned money back to our own country, the USNA. [1] We could pronounce it us nah.

Back to the screen play; the only way I figured this could get done was if a really famous rock star wrote a song that would convince the populace that this was a good idea. So that was the movie's story; a rock star gets this idea and etc. Also, all voting was done by encrypted telephone (I didn’t discover the internet until 1980). There were a few other niceties to make it what I thought was a cool story.

I made the mistake of giving the only hard copy to a lady named K.G. Cribbs who wanted to show it to a professor at Metro State College. Later she said he didn’t like it and never returned it to me. (She went on to marry her 6th husband and moved to the North East, I’m not sure where. I think she and her husband were going to finance a bird/wildlife preserve on his estate. I don’t know her married name but if you happen to know her tell her to get in touch with me. You know, 6 degrees.)

Anyway, that’s the idea. The United States of North America. A Federation of 100 States. I’m sure it is not a new idea. Every idea I’ve ever had has always proved to have already been had or just being had at the same time. Even my arcane Ph. D. thesis involving a pineal gland pathway mediating the Liske Effect in rats, was, it turned out, being done contemporaneously by a guy in California and another in Tokyo. So I’m not claiming any glory here. Just an idle thought for this afternoon.

[1] If memory serves, the USA was actually called the United States of North America for a year or two before it became the USA. Please comment if you know the history.

Continuing Cracks in the US Dollar - part 8

By B.K. Sidhu, Muguntan Vanar,and Ruben Sario
The StarPetaling Jaya, Malaysia
Wednesday, March 30, 2005

KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia -- The U.S. dollar is facing an imminent collapse, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad warned yesterday. The former prime minister told a conference of some 650 chief executives from 30 countries in Kota Kinabalu that a standard gold currency was the best alternative for international trade. The dollar was only retaining some value because of fears of a global economic catastrophe if it was rejected as a currency of trade, he said in his keynote address, "Leadership in the Age of Uncertainties -- The Effect of Global Events in Business."

"But the catastrophe will come one day, because even the most powerful country in the world cannot repay loans amounting to US$7 trillion," Dr. Mahathir said at the closing of the three-day international CEO conference.

"The uncertainty is with the timing, not whether it will collapse."

Life After the Oil Crash

Eldorado Springs, Colorado, Water Supply Intake, 2004

Maybe I was too obscure in my "Red Pill" blog of a few days ago. Here I refer you again to the same article, by Matt Savinar:

"Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse bible prophecy sect, or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is the scientific conclusion of the best paid, most widely-respected geologists, physicists, and investment bankers in the world. These are rational, professional, conservative individuals who are absolutely terrified by a phenomenon known as global “Peak Oil.”

I noticed that Matt has updated this site recently, and has added a third item at the end of the article under the heading of What Can I Do To Prepare. That item:

Number 3: Pray to whatever God or higher intelligence you believe in.

After the Thrill is Gone

I was going to write an article about how everything seems to be going wrong for the Bushies these days, and in the pursuit of additional information I found an article (A Fall From Grace) better than what I would have written, and then I read a number of this guy’s articles and was soon laughing out loud. He is a very good writer.

But before I turn you over to him let me mention that I think the impending “crash” of the Bush façade will center on "turd blossom" (Bush’s nickname for King Karl Rove) and as yet unknown damage which may have been done to him by the Guckert/Gannon fake-reporter thing with its sexual perversion overtones. And let’s not forget the still-looming Valerie Plaine outing.

In fact John Dean has made a list of these looming “secrets” about to explode in his Worse Than Watergate. But who would have thunk that a brain-dead woman would be the poster child for the wedgie that split the Republican’s ass into two stupid butt-cheeks.

Also note the rapid rehiring of Karen Hughes, another part of Bush’s Brain, who, after apparently having had enough of her family, returns to be – what? – The Arab World PR Person? What is going on in there? Are they nuts?

Perhaps there was something to that internet rumor that Bush’s jacket and shirt wires were a prosthetic device worn by Graves disease sufferers, and that his mental capacity is, like his surrogate father Ronald Regan before him, turning to mush.

Some have postulated that Bush and some of his supporters act like they think the rapture is coming and there is no need to worry about the environment, the budget, or the future as they will soon ascend to the right hand of God.

I think their fiscal suicide mission for this country is fueled by the certain knowledge of the coming of Peak Oil, permanent global warfare, with impending marshal law for the USA, and who knows, maybe even brain rot.

Comb Licker

Wolfowitz - The man who licked his comb on national TV before combing his hair (yes, I actually saw it), left Iraq a day early and $9,000,000,000 short, and is now being proposed by Bush to be the head of the World Bank, seems about to be outed, or is it ousted.

“His womanizing has come home to roost,” a Washington insider told reporters. “Paul was a foreign policy hawk long before he met Riza but it doesn’t look good to be accused of being under the thumb of your mistress.”

But then again, maybe not ...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is no longer in the running to head the World Bank, outgoing bank president James Wolfensohn said Thursday. "Mr Wolfowitz is no longer part, I think, of the exercise, so I don't think there is any need to comment," Wolfensohn told reporters after meeting European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in Brussels.

What Did He Really Say?

For a transcript of a recent speech by Churchill, click on the title link (thanks Amy!). That way you can read what he is actually saying, instead of a silly soundbite.

Today's Denver Post reports that Churchill will not be fired for his two-year old essay, but that allegations of plagiarism and his Indian heritage will be further investigated. I’ve researched this issue extensively and read many of his essays and publications (available on-line; the guy is very prolific).

The Indian heritage issue is pure bullshit, created by the Federal government in 1887 by the Indian Allotment Act when they forced the Indians to give up communal ownership of their tribal lands (against their will) and divided it up among those who could prove a certain percentage of Indian “blood”, varying from tribe to tribe. And guess what, after these sovereign lands were divided up into tiny parcels, anything left over was sold to whitey. Harhar! http://www.ilwg.net/impact.htm

Imagine having to try to prove your heritage with documentation; German, Irish, Scottish, English, Italian, Serb, Croat, Russian, whatever, and being told that just having one grandmother of one heritage won’t make it for you. Nope. You are not an Indian, you’re just a mongrel.

An aside: Funny how it works just the opposite for Blacks. Oh, you had a Black great-grandfather, you be Black! No percentage calculations here. And you have kinky hair, so you must have some Black blood in you! Do the math. Eventually there will be no Indians, and everyone will be Black!

Likewise, the plagiarism issue is also a non-issue, often raised in academic circles to discredit a despised colleague. As I understand it, the suspect reference was in a footnote to a chapter written by Churchill. Oh woe is me, an un-attributed footnote.

And by the way Mr. Churchill, if I may presume to give you some advice; do watch your back. They murdered Black Panthers in the 60’s for saying what you are saying; for lining up the consistent record of mass murder which is the history of the USA. And if you do consider a “buyout” of your contract at this University, don’t settle for anything less than $1,000,000. You are definitely worth that for them to get rid of you, and then you will be able to get an appointment at a much better institution which values independent thought, and maybe with your new wealth and influence you will be able to do something about getting back the BILLIONS owed to you and your brothers by the Federal government, which has been holding this money in trust (sic) for you.

Estes Park - Fall 2004

The Red Pill

If the world we live in is a fossil-fuel powered "matrix," this article is the "red pill."

Boy, am I glad there are some really smart people around. I spent today reading extensively from some of their writings and I'm telling you, the future is not as murky and unclear as your buzzing brain may think.

The 2000 coup, the secret oil meetings, the neocons, 9/11, Dick Cheney, The War in Iraq; It all fits together.

The title link is A MUST READ! (And yes, I was shouting.) I know you don't have time to read this stuff and it's all so dreadful and you need to go watch American Idol right now, but I'm telling you, you’ve got to read this article. And read the links too.

I'm doing the best I can to alert you to the facts, and I hope you are taking heed. It’s all coming down, friends. Get ready.

Clarification

Please note that if the title to a section is underlined, it is linked to a source for the story. And thanks for your visits and comments. No matter what your opinion, I appreciate the feedback.

Continuing Cracks - Part 7

Inch by inch. From the Daily Pfenning.

"Finally, a story was printed in the Beijing Daily yesterday which said China will change the yuan's peg from the dollar to a basket of eight currencies and widen the band in which it is traded starting in May. The Beijing Daily said, citing unnamed financial sources, that the government will allow the renminbi (yuan) to fluctuate in a range of between .6% to 1%. Currently the currency is only allowed to fluctuate .3% above and below the pegged currency rate. This is what we have thought China would do all along; ease the currency upward on a slow but steady appreciation using a basket of currencies to regulate its value. The timing is all that is left. We still think investments in other Asian currencies such as the Thai Baht, Singapore Dollar, or Japanese Yen are going to perform just as well if not better than investments in the Renminbi. I haven't been able to find any other stories on this, so take it as just another indication of what will eventually happen."

How Low Will They Go

Frist, DeLay, and Bush apparently know no limit to the depths they will go to energize their fanatical base of religious zealots. Dragging this brain-dead woman Terry Shiavo around for their political purposes is possibly the worst case of the misuse of power I have ever witnessed. The fact that it violates their own stated beliefs; states rights, individual rights, and is in fact unconstitutional seems not to matter if they can get the Jesus Jerks riled up. This woman is not in a coma and has no hope of ever “waking up” from her permanent vegetative state. Her delusional father appeared this morning on TV reporting that he told her they were going out to breakfast and she smiled in response.

The Democrats who joined this travesty so as to not be left out of the “values” game are even more despicable. A pox on all of your houses.

Fifteen years of living death and they now use her as a political football.

Huffington Gets It

Thank you Arianna, for your insightful analysis. Nobody else seems to get it.


"Even heroes of mine like Jon Stewart and my buddy Bill Maher have hopped on the Bush bandwagon. "I've been supportive of President Bush," Maher told Wolf Blitzer this week, "now that I think Iraq is turning around. . . . He had a bigger and better idea than the rest of us. (What color is the kool-aid, Bill?)

"How did this cozy unanimity come to pass? Is it something in the water, a byproduct of Bush gutting the EPA? But then I thought back to my time at Cambridge, taking a course in elementary logic, studying the Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle.

For those of you in need of a refresher on the concept, here's an example from the first chapter of my Logic 101 textbook: "All oaks are trees. All elms are trees. Therefore, all oaks are elms." See how easily you can go from point A to point Z, jumping over all the important steps in between?

So: We invaded Iraq. Change is afoot in the Middle East. Therefore, the Middle East is changing because we invaded Iraq. Q.E.D. G.W.B.

See how simple it is? And how illogical? The Bush White House has been masterful at this infantile reasoning: America is free and democratic. Terrorists attacked America. Therefore, terrorists hate freedom and democracy. And that's all anyone needs to know."

Direct Action

I had been attending my local neighborhood association meetings for about a year when I brought up a subject which I thought would be appropriate for consideration: unsightly telephone poles covered with outdated posters and flyers. Since posting these flyers is illegal in Denver, I suggested that the association could write a letter to the (ir)responsible party (a local band promoter) and suggest that they stop putting them up, or at the least, take them down after the event. The president of the association stated that she liked the way they looked because they made Denver look like a “real city”. When I mentioned that they were illegal, her reply was that she didn’t like that law anyway.

So I gave up. I gave up on the association, that is, and decided to take direct action. I stopped attending the meetings, and instead spent an hour every Sunday morning walking around my neighborhood removing the signs. (One pole had over 30 signs dating back a year).

I have to admit, it was therapeutic. After a few weeks, the number of signs dropped dramatically. Then I noticed that the signs were being taken down before I could get to them on Sunday. Someone else had also started to take direct action. Hmmm….direct action is contagious?

World Bank Nominee

An imaginary White House scenario.

“Let’s see, who can we get to head the World Bank?”

“Ah….I know a guy who would be great! How about Paul Wolfowitz!”

“But didn’t he sneak out of Iraq a day early with $9,000,000,000 in Iraqi reconstruction funds unaccounted for? Didn’t he say they didn’t have time for normal accounting practices?”

“Yeah…exactly…that’s why he would be great!”

“Alright then…Wolfowitz it is!”

Christianity is a Jewish Cult

"Dear President Bush,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's law and reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging. I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can, but I need some advice from you regarding God's laws and how to follow them.

For instance, when someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination, however:

1. A friend of mine feels that, even though eating shellfish is also an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there "degrees" of abomination?

2. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not to Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

3. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

4. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states that he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

5. I know from Lev. 11:6 -8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

6. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the town together to stone them (Lev. 24:10 - 16)? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)?

Mr. Bush, I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging. "

Author Unknown

Continuing Cracks - Part 6a

The momentum builds.

You Can't Bet Bottom Dollar
By Tom Plate
The Korea Times, Seoul
Sunday, March 13, 2005

LOS ANGELES -- Fasten your seat belts and get ready for a major test of the core stability of the global financial system.

How do we know that a jolt is coming? It's simple. Just consider:

-- How world markets went into a serious dipsy-doodle dollar tailspin the other day after Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi raised the specter of his treasury "diversifying" its foreign-currency holdings. Implicitly referring to Japan's huge savings pile of $840 billion, Koizumi bluntly told a Diet parliamentary committee: "I think it's necessary to have diversity." The prime minister's candor then triggered a selloff of U.S. treasury investments by foreigners (who feared a plunge in the value of the dollar) that jacked up some U.S. bond prices to a seven-month high.

Today's markets are nervous about excessive foreign capital flows into the United States -- and they should be. Imagine an alcoholic whose friends "help him out" by delivering vodka instead of milk bottles to the door every day for breakfast. This is what in effect Japan (solid ally) and China (sometime economic partner) are doing by providing foreign funds to an American culture that is overspending and under-saving.

-- How Japan and China will continue to act this way, right up until the dollar breaking point, because the practice is in their economic interest. The large-scale dollar-buying keeps the exchange-rate value of their countries' own currencies from rising too high, which would raise the price tags of their exports in the all-important U.S. market.

-- How so many officials moved so quickly to poo-poo the selling frenzy as a minor overnight down-tick. All rally-round-the-currency syndromes rightly make us extremely nervous. For starters, Japanese economic officials quickly sought to downplay the prime minister's comment. Said Hiroshi Watanabe, vice minister of finance for international affairs, "We don't plan to take action now at all" to diversify out of dollars. Although Japan "is always considering if it's appropriate in the long run" to hold its reserves in certain securities, he added, "nobody is considering" a shift out of dollars now. Notice, though, the qualification "now" -- twice in those two sentences alone.

And note the feel-good debt-serving comment of U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, who said, "The U.S. remains the best, safest, most secure place to invest in the world. Our markets here are the deepest, the most liquid, and most efficient anywhere in the world. We produce the best risk-adjusted returns, so no, I'm not worried.

"Well, I am.-- How a nightmare scenario -- of a possible stampede from the dollar -- would play out emotionally in a place like Asia. Remember, China and Japan together account for about 77 percent of these foreign dollar holdings. Both countries benefit enormously from strong American consumer demand and a strong dollar. But they also remember how crudely and rudely the United States conducted itself during the Asian financial crisis (1997-98). Washington let troubled Asian countries stew in their own negative economic juices, prevented Japan from taking a strong role, repeatedly offered China bad currency advice, and didn't pitch in to help until the currency virus was almost on its own doorstep.

To conclude: Asians remember things; Americans do not. "One of America's biggest strengths is that it is a nation with limited memories," writes the astute Kishore Mahbubani in his new book "Beyond the Age of Innocence," a truly timely and essential volume of Asian political wisdom. "Asians, by contrast, have long memories. They can recall important historical events. The Asian financial crisis will be remembered for a long time. The lessons will be complex. But one clear strand will emerge in the historical memory: how a generous country walked away from them in their hour of need.

"The Bush administration is scarcely responsible for the sins of the predecessor administration. But, like it or not, it inherits those Asian memories, and even though it is very much in the interests of Asia to not see the U.S. economy fall on its face, Asians are human like the rest of us. Just as Osama bin Laden punched America in the face on Sept. 11, 2001, and some people in the world cheered, don't be surprised if Asia were to be forced into executing a serious run on the U.S. dollar and few tears are shed in Asia.

Perhaps the only question is which Asian nation will be the first to "diversify" from the dollar in large quantities. The truth is that no one wants to be the first out the door in the selloff. But it is also true that no one wants to be the last out the door when and if a dollar panic sets in. Keep those seat belts in sight.

Continuing Cracks - Part 6

Could it be this week?

By Tom Dyson
DailyReckoning.com
Saturday-Sunday, March 12-13, 2005


"At some point the other afternoon, Addison Wiggin approached our desk with a twinkle in his eye."The Japanese are about to start dumping their dollars," he said.We didn't even bother asking for details; the dollar/yen chart we quickly pulled up said it all. The rate had moved from 104.67 to 103.70 in a matter of minutes...The spike was caused by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, we found out later, as he answered questions before a parliamentary committee."I think it's necessary to have diversity," was all he said, answering a question on Japan's reserve.

But when you have the international currency markets hanging on your every word -- currency markets that are extremely sensitive to the idea of central bank diversification -- these were big words.Immediately following Koizumi's comment, top officials at the Ministry of Finance denied there were plans to dump the dollar -- but Addison didn't believe a word of it. He thinks they've let the cat out of the bag.

So does Dennis Gartman. He writes, "We suspect that Mr. Koizumi gave voice to the one truly great concern that the monetary authorities in Japan have quietly been discussing amongst themselves over the course of the past several months: 'How do we get ourselves out of the positions we (and the Chinese) have gotten ourselves into regarding these bulging foreign currency reserve positions so heavily skewed to the dollar?'""As we have long said, it takes buying and a lot of it to put a market up; it takes a mere lack of buying to send at market down. We fear the lack of buying ... and that is a fear far large enough!"

Dennis Gartman fearful? What if he had a $700 billion long position in U.S. Treasury bonds to worry about?Japan does. And on Thursday they had to swallow news of a $113.9 billion budget deficit in February, the biggest monthly gap ever seen.On Friday, fingernails would have been gnawed again. January's trade deficit came in at $58.3 billion, the second largest one-month shortfall in history.This news didn't escape the bond market. The 10-year note jumped 24 basis points last week, representing the largest one-week down-move in government bond prices since the week ending April 26, 2004.How much longer can the Japanese maintain their composure?

We don't dare to blink."

Continuing Cracks - Part 5

Sorry, the chart keeps disappearing. Check the link above.

"Note how the dollar index has broken out of the uptrend channel formed during its recent bear market rally. Note too that this index - currently at 81.42 - is just 89 pips, or a mere 1.1%, above its December 30th low of 80.53. It could break through that low at any time, and if it does, the dollar could plummet.

At some point or another, the dollar will indeed plummet, which is the conclusion of my book, The Coming Collapse of the Dollar. I thought that we might have more time to prepare for this coming debacle, but the above charts suggest otherwise. They are signaling profound weakness in the dollar. We know from the growing federal government deficits, the trade deficits and the mountain of debt in the US that the dollar is indeed sick. But these charts suggest that the dollar is on its deathbed.

In my alert of February 14th I advised: "It will be worthwhile to watch the Dollar Index carefully here. Any sign of weakness will be an indication that the bear market rally in the dollar is finished, and that its long-term downtrend is about to resume." The long-term downtrend in the dollar is about to resume.

I find it hard to believe that the dollar cannot mount any meaningful bear market rally, but it hasn't. So get ready. The dollar looks ready for another waterfall decline, like the one we saw last Fall. Another waterfall decline in the dollar would mean that gold is ready to soar."

Spreadocracy

We constantly hear the refrain that we are “spreading democracy” as if democracy were a form of jam which we can spread over the bread of the countryside. In itself, this is a very dubious concept, given the slow evolution of democracy in places where it has thrived.

But let’s get real … we are spreading capitalism, with a thin coating of democracy, to ease the insertion of capitalism into the yet un-enrolled parts of the globe.

As usual, it’s “follow the money” when trying to understand the current Bush foreign policy.

Has everyone forgotten that Iraq had just switched from accepting US dollars to Euros for payment for its oil just before we attacked, and that switching Iraqi oil sales back to US dollars was one of the first things we did after we took over? Have we forgotten that Wolfowitz privatized all of the businesses in Iraq (including the successful health care system), not just oil, and then awarded contracts to US firms instead of Iraqi? (And BTW, what happened to that 9 BILLION dollars that went missing when Wolfowitz ducked out a day early? Oh, I forgot, they “didn’t have time for normal accounting procedures”.)

The fact that our own democracy has been completely taken over by corporate interests and that our current government no longer represents our wishes in any way, should make the concept completely clear. What we are spreading is consumerism cake with democratic frosting.

I haven’t been able to come up with a good name for this combo of global exploitation … Democracy and Capitalism ….democrapitalism, democratism, depatalism…any suggestions?

Wiley Coyote

As reported on Democracy Now! (Free Speech TV) today by Amy Goodman, testimony is (finally) being taken in a civil suit filed in 2001 against that old war criminal, Henry Kissinger. Strange, I couldn’t find anyone else reporting the story.

This could be the start of a long haul for Dr. K, guilty of war crimes dating back to the 1970’s. Maybe what goes around does come around.

"An indictment of Henry Kissinger for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes would include (but not be confined to) the following:

VIETNAM: Kissinger scuttled peace talks in 1968, paving the way for Richard Nixon's victory in the presidential race. Half the battle deaths in Vietnam took place between 1968 and 1972, not to mention the millions of civilians throughout Indochina who were killed.

CAMBODIA: Kissinger persuaded Nixon to widen the war with massive bombing of Cambodia and Laos. No one had suggested we go to war with either of these countries. By conservative estimates, the U.S. killed 600,000 civilians in Cambodia and another 350,000 in Laos.

BANGLADESH: Using weapons supplied by the U.S., General Yahya Khan overthrew the democratically elected government and murdered at least half a million civilians in 1971. In the White House, the National Security Council wanted to condemn these actions. Kissinger refused. Amid the killing, Kissinger thanked Khan for his "delicacy and tact."

CHILE: Kissinger helped to plan the 1973 U.S.-backed overthrow of the democratically elected Salvador Allende and the assassination of General René Schneider. Right-wing general Augusto Pinochet then took over. Moderates fled for their lives. Hit men, financed by the CIA, tracked down Allende supporters and killed them. These attacks included the car bombing of Allende's foreign minister, Orlando Letelier, and an aide, Ronni Moffitt, at Sheridan Circle in downtown Washington.

EAST TIMOR: In 1975 President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger met with Indonesia's corrupt strongman Suharto. Kissinger told reporters the U.S. wouldn't recognize the tiny country of East Timor, which had recently won independence from the Dutch. Within hours Suharto launched an invasion, killing, by some estimates, 200,000 civilians."

Let Fly

You, dear reader, may be forming the impression that I am a broken record, preacher of doom and gloom, and predictor of impending global financial disaster. It’s true, I am. But only because I feel obligated to alert those around me that it is time to take precautions now. I am taking precautions as if the scenario painted in “As the World Burns”, which I consider to be a realistic worst-case scenario, were going to happen. If you haven’t read this document, PLEASE DO SO NOW. And if you do read it and think it is totally loony, please comment and let us know what parts you think are incorrect.

Also, for your own edification, please visit The Daily Reckoning and sign up for their free daily newsletter. The writing is entertaining, diverse, and with interesting guest essays. A quote from today's:

"We pause, pull out our sextant and take a sighting. For many months now we have been at sea. We wonder where we've come to. The sun, the moon, the stars are all we have to steer by. But we see nothing. Overhead, the clouds of news are so vast that they obscure our view.

So, the best we can do is dead reckoning.

We reckon today that we are near the end - finally - of the great rally. We have reckoned this before; we don't deny it. But it has to come someday. Stocks have been in a bear market rally since October of 2002. They are destined to go down. Like death, we don't know when exactly it will come. But it is the sort of thing you want to be prepared for all the time. You do not want to go to your grave after saying an unkind word to your mother. Neither do you want to wake up to a market crash with a portfolio of junk bonds and tech stocks. So, we avoid unkind words and unsound investments - and wait.

Americans are getting poorer. They don't realize it. No newspaper tells them. No politician dares even to whisper the truth. No Fed economist proposes a remedy. Still, real wages are less today than they were a year ago...and no higher than they were at the bottom of the recession in November 2001. Worse, unmentioned in the "real" calculation is the cost of housing. Depending on where you live a house today could cost twice as much as it did in November of 2001. This, of course, is taken as good news to most people. But it is only good news if you are ready to leave the country or die. Otherwise, you are going to need some place to live. And it will cost you a lot more than it did a few years ago.

GDP figures are not bad. Inflation is under control. Consumers keep spending. Unemployment is low. And stocks are high. But beyond the fog of numbers, the stars put the U.S. economy at a completely different latitude. Each day, Americans spend 5% more than they make. That is the implication of a $600 billion current account deficit in a $12 trillion economy. And every day that passes, workers in India, China, Indonesia and many other countries become more skilled - readier to compete with Americans for the world's resources. Oil goes up. Copper soars. Soon it will be meat.

Jobs are created in America...but they are poor-paying jobs, most of them merely helping to pave the road to ruin, as almost all of them are on the consumption side of the ledger. We build houses. We work in health care. We finance houses and business mergers. We lend. We sell. If ever you want to go into debt, dear reader, there are plenty of people to help you do it."

P.S. The markets did not react as violently to the "arrow to the heart" of the dollar from Japan mentioned in yesterday's blog as I thought they would. Although the DOW is down only 75 today, the slide has begun. Often these foreign verbal arrows take a few days to reach their target. The market often seems myopically focused on the ground in front of it, but the arrow is already in the air. I can hear it whistling.

Outsourcing Found Wanting

I recently had to call Netgear for support in getting their router to work with a new modem. I did eventually get to talk to a real person, a real Indian person. His accent was very thick and somewhat difficult to understand, and his social skills were nil. He was not reacting to a human on the other end of the line. I could hear him turning the pages of a manual and following a script.

“How many lights are on the front panel?”
“Three.”
“How many lights are on the front panel?”
“There are three lights on, on the front panel.”
“How many lights are on the front panel?”
“One, two, THREE lights!”

After about a half-hour of this he gave up, gave me a case number, and said someone would call me within an hour. Four hours later, as I was dozing off, the call came. I had an even greater difficulty in understanding this guy, and he ran me thru an amazingly arduous series of plugging this into that, and me with my back killing me.

“Have you done that yet?”
“No, I’m doing it now?”
“Have you done that yet?
“NO, I will tell you when it is done….Okay, its done.
Silence.
“Have you done that yet?”
“Yes, its done.”
Sound of page turning….

After 45 minutes he gave up and said someone would call me in a half-hour. That call never came.

I solved the problem myself the next day, after undoing all of the parameter changes that I had been instructed to make.

Conclusion: Outsourcing isn’t working.

Continuing Cracks - Part 4

If you have been reading these “Crack” blogs you know that I am anticipating a sudden and dramatic drop in the value of the US dollar that will have dramatic and perhaps even cataclysmic consequences. This could be it. The necessary conditions may be about to converge. Watch out in tomorrow’s stock market.

11p ET Wednesday, March 9, 2005

Argument over excessive holdings of U.S. dollar reserves has broken into the open again at the highest levels of an Asian government. The other day it was South Korea. Tonight, as you’ll see by the news stories appended here, it’s Japan. Whatever governments and central banks end up doing about it, their nervousness about their growing expropriation by the United States through the devaluation of their dollar reserves is on display almost everywhere.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer, Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

Koizumi Says Japan Needs to Mull Diversifying Reserves
By Mayumi Otsuma
Bloomberg News Service Thursday, March 10, 2005
TOKYO—Japan should “in general” consider the necessity of diversifying the investment of its foreign reserves, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said. ”I think it’s necessary to diversify the investment destinations” of foreign reserves, Koizumi said today at the budget committee of the upper house of parliament in Tokyo. “At the same time, we have to make a judgment in general, considering what’s profitable and what’s stable.”

Japan’s official reserve assets, the world’s largest, totaled $840.6 billion at the end of February. The government projects that unrealized losses in its foreign reserve holdings will reach about 11.4 trillion yen ($110 billion) by March 31. U.S. dollars account for a majority of the world’s foreign-exchange reserves, which are holdings of foreign currency at central banks. The dollar share was 63.8 percent at the end of 2003, down from 66.9 percent two years before, according to International Monetary Fund figures released in April last year.

The yen was at 104.05 to the dollar at 11:49 a.m. today in Tokyo, compared with 103.93 late yesterday in New York.

Japan Finance Minister Tanigaki: Be Very Cautious On FX Reserves
By James Simms
Dow Jones Newswires

Thursday March 10, 2005 TOKYO—Japanese Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said Thursday that the government must be very cautious when discussing the issue of the nation’s foreign exchange reserves portfolio. ”With (foreign exchange) reserves this large, we must consider various factors, and we must take serious consideration of the markets as well,” Tanigaki told reporters after an Upper House budget committee session. ”We have been very cautious in the decisions we have taken on foreign exchange reserves,” he added.

Tanigaki was speaking shortly after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told a parliamentary committee that in general, it is better to diversify investments. The finance minister said the prime minister’s remarks may have been taken as meaning there has been a change in Japan’s policy regarding foreign reserves. The dollar fell against the euro and the yen following Koizumi’s remarks. The dollar, which was trading above Y104.00 before the comments, tumbled to a low of Y103.70, while the euro rose to $1.3458 from just around $1.3400. But the U.S. currency regained ground a bit after that. As of 0316 GMT, it was trading at Y104.02 and $1.3409.

How long can this keep going on?

Unless you have a loved one in Iraq, the cost of our war there might seem be a remote abstraction. Recall how this war was supposed to pay for itself with Iraqi oil profits. Well that hasn't quite worked out, so what is it costing us? Go to the above link and select your state and/or city. For Denver, it works out to $463 for every man, woman and child. No wonder we can't afford paper and pencils for our elementary school children.

Superpower Stretched Thin

"The Pentagon continues to plead poverty in spite of a budget now in excess of $500bn (larger than the defence budgets of the next 20 countries combined). Such is the state of its recruiting shortfalls that a draft is quietly being considered: Rolling Stone magazine reported in late January that two of Mr. Rumsfeld's deputies met with the head of the Selective Service Agency in February of 2003 to “debate, discuss and ponder a return to the draft.” According to a memo from that meeting made public under the Freedom of Information Act:

“Defense manpower officials concede there are critical shortages of military personnel with certain special skills, such as medical personnel, linguists, computer network engineers, etc. The potentially prohibitive cost of ‘attracting and retaining such personnel for military service,’ the memo adds, has led ‘some officials to conclude that, while a conventional draft may never be needed, a draft of men and women possessing these critical skills may be warranted in a future crisis.’”

Similarly, USA Today reported last week that the US Army and some elite commando units "have dramatically increased the size and the number of cash bonuses they are paying to lure recruits and keep experienced troops in uniform." For some special elite units, the Pentagon is offering up to $150,000 in bonuses, while more than 49 percent of the job categories in the Army can now receive $15,000 bonuses, and "16 hard-to-fill job categories, including truck drivers and bomb-disposal specialists" are eligible for $50,000 bonuses."

Iran Attack Set for June

"In his speech, Ritter claimed that President George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005, citing an anonymous official as the source of this information who -- according to Ritter -- was involved in the manipulation of the election outcome in Iraq, which reduced the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56 to 48 percent. Ritter also stated that "this would soon be reported by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist in a major metropolitan magazine," an allusion to New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh, believes the UFPPC."

Taxation With Misrepresentation

Let's see... shall we keep our tax on income with its endless ability to be tweaked and manipulated for control purposes, or ... shall we start all over with a national sales tax? I've got an idea, let's do both! That way we can start at the regressive end of the sales tax and yet keep the corporate loopholes in the income tax that we love so much. Alan, you are such a genius!

DVR Now!

If you haven't gotten your Digital Video Recorder yet, read this article. Imagine time-shifting without constraint or skipping ads with the single touch of a button. Don't look back!

Iraqi Bloggers Silenced?

I heard that Iraqi bloggers were being silenced. The three that I was following seemed to have all stopped.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/
http://avengerredsix.blogspot.com/

Does anyone know of any that are still active?