Obama may not be trustworthy, but I won't fault him just because his middle name is "Hussein". Juan Cole explains the obvious to the troglodyte racists. Beautiful to watch an educated man spank the riff-raff.
Barack and Hussein are Semitic words. Americans have been named with Semitic names since the founding of the Republic. Fourteen of our 43 presidents have had Semitic names (see below). And, American English contains many Arabic-derived words that we use every day and without which we would be much impoverished. America is a world civilization with a world heritage, something Cunninghamism will never understand.
Barack is a Semitic word meaning "to bless" as a verb or "blessing" as a noun. In its Hebrew form, barak, it is found all through the Bible. It first occurs in Genesis 1:22: "And God blessed (?are?? ) them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth."
Here is a list of how many times barak appears in each book of the Bible.
Now let us take the name "Hussein." It is from the Semitic word, hasan, meaning "good" or "handsome." Husayn is the diminutive, affectionate form.
Barack Obama's middle name is in honor of his grandfather, Hussein, a secular resident of Nairobi. Americans may think of Saddam Hussein when they hear the name, but that is like thinking of Stalin when you hear the name Joseph. There have been lots of Husseins in history, from the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, a hero who touched the historian Gibbon, to King Hussein of Jordan, one of America's most steadfast allies in the 20th century.
Survivalacres on people's level of doom-prep. Long, and worth the time. Read it at work, that way your boss is paying for it.
Proof that modern animation has fallen a long way since the golden age - a now banned Disney cartoon about Southern Rednecks. Amazing stuff; be sure to watch the dancing scenes two-thirds in - mind-boggling work. (Thanks Nanbullen).
This is a must-read: the story of Nauru, a Pacific Island which was once rich - thanks to the mining of phosphates for fertilisers.
The mining collapsed, and so did the country...an object lesson for all of us. We are all Nauruans now.
The locals reminisce about the days of reckless extravagance. "After independence, it was like we suddenly won the lottery," said Mathew Batsuia, the health minister, over dinner at a Chinese restaurant. His wife, Tricia, said: "It was like there was a pot of gold and it would never run out. The Kiribati people [from a neighbouring Pacific nation] worked in the mines, and served us and cooked for us, and we just went shopping. It was mad with a capital 'M'."
But as Nauruans splurged on foreign travel and consumer goods, a trust fund established from mining revenues – intended to secure the country's future post-phosphate – was shrinking.
Nauru bought showpiece properties around the Pacific. However, millions were frittered on harebrained schemes including a West End musical about Leonardo da Vinci. The entire cabinet flew to London for the opening night. Panned by the critics, it swiftly closed.
After being swindled by foreign powers, the Nauruans were swindled by their own leaders, who raided the trust fund, and by "consultants" of dubious repute. The island became a money-laundering centre and at one point had 400 offshore banks, all of them registered to one government mailbox.
In 2004 the government defaulted on a A$236m loan to an American financier, which seized its properties. Nauru had no assets, and no money. Without the Pacific Solution, things would have been grim. But Australian aid is believed to have been wasted. Up to A$40m, for instance, has gone on improving the electricity supply – yet power is still rationed to 12 hours a day.
A study from WWF claims that converting the forests and peat swamps of just one Sumatran province into plantations for pulpwood and palm oil is generating more annual greenhouse gas emissions than the Netherlands, and is endangering local elephant and tiger populations.
The fastest rate of deforestation in Indonesia is occurring in central Sumatra's Riau province, where some 4.2m hectares (65%) of its tropical forests and peat swamps have been cleared for industrial plantations in the past 25 years, the study shows.
Since 1982, about 30% of the province's natural forest has been cleared for palm oil plantations, 24% for industrial pulpwood plantations, and 17% has become so-called wasteland – land that has been deforested but not replaced by any crop cover. Twenty-five years ago, according to the report, forest covered 78% of the Riau province. Today it covers just 27%. In just one year, 2005-06, it lost 286,146 hectares – 11% of forest cover.
The reliability of electronic devices is going down. This is because of a two-year-old ban on lead solder in electronics. The ban was instituted by the EU, but since electronics is a worldwide industry, most manufacturers have complied and virtually anything you buy today has lead-free solder. The new solder, from what I understand, contains tin, silver and bismuth.
The problem is that this type of solder grows "tin whiskers" - single crystals that mysteriously grow from pure tin joints.
More:
Nobody knows how or why these whiskers grow and nobody knows how to stop them, except through the use of lead solder. Whiskers can start growing in a decade or a year or a day after manufacture. They can grow at up to nine millimeters per year. They grow in any atmosphere including a pure vacuum. They grow in any humidity condition. They just grow. And when they get long enough they either touch another joint, shorting out one or more connections, or they vaporize in a flash, creating a little plasma cloud that can carry for an instant hundreds of amps and literally blow your device to pieces.
FDIC is staffing up, in anticipation of bank collapses.
Safehaven: The early innings of a gold boom. I don't know; I read conflicting pieces about PMs all the time. $10,000 an ounce would set me up nicely though.
The Democrats are not going to withdrawal from Iraq, nor from Afghanistan; and should Saint Obama become President Saint, there is no way in hell the U.S. leaves. The last thing a newly-minted imperial manager does is undermine, much less destroy, the imperial project. Streamline it? Sure. Re-brand it for domestic consumption? Of course. Trash it? Go back to your meth pipe.
English readers will get a kick out of this: Beadle's dead. Jeremy Beadle was host of "You've been Framed" - a prank show in which he played elaborate hoaxes on his victims. His right hand was deformed - being very small. Read the comments and weep!
Beautiful African headdresses. A reminder that a return to the paleolithic era doesn't have to be ugly.
Touching: Fake doors in Egyptian tomb. I've seen these before - the souls of the dead would commune with their next of kin through portals carved in tomb walls.
Pawar had made a five-minute power-point presentation before the prime minister, they said, depicting food scarcity in 85 to 100 countries and the measures they had taken to control food riots. Pawar had said the situation in India was comparatively safer, they added.
WFP officials say the extraordinary increases in the global price of basic foods were caused by a "perfect storm" of factors: a rise in demand for animal feed from increasingly prosperous populations in India and China, the use of more land and agricultural produce for biofuels, and climate change.
The impact has been felt around the world. Food riots have broken out in Morocco, Yemen, Mexico, Guinea, Mauritania, Senegal and Uzbekistan. Pakistan has reintroduced rationing for the first time in two decades. Russia has frozen the price of milk, bread, eggs and cooking oil for six months. Thailand is also planning a freeze on food staples. After protests around Indonesia, Jakarta has increased public food subsidies. India has banned the export of rice except the high-quality basmati variety.
Via latoc: Anti-depressants don't work. Actually, they DO work - they make lots of money for pharmaceutical companies...which is their primary function.
The boars have long scurried away. The trees have been reduced to a heap of pulp. The gooseberries have been bulldozed, replaced by rows of explosives. Just past the "Do Not Enter" sign, the mountain has been brought to its knees – cut down like a giant tree. Instead of gazing 200 metres up to its peak, as Gibson once did, you peer down at its rubbly remains, clawed at by giant shovels and trundled off by bucking yellow dump trucks.
There are no birdsong or rustling leaves – just beeping and grinding, and sounds like a 747 taking off.
A small sliver of the former mountain slumps to one side of the construction, like the last piece of Black Forest cake left amid the deflated balloons and streamers. On top are the trees and soil, then sandstone and shale, and at the bottom, a thick chocolate layer – coal.
"They say they can make the land better than it originally was," says Chuck Nelson, gazing down sorrowfully from his friend's property, hands in his pockets. "Who can do a better job than God? This land will never be no good for nothing."
Except of course, electricity.
The energy from sunlight falling on only 9 percent of California's Mojave Desert could power all of the United States' electricity needs if the energy could be efficiently harvested, according to some estimates. Unfortunately, current-generation solar cell technologies are too expensive and inefficient for wide-scale commercial applications.
A team of Northwestern University researchers has developed a new anode coating strategy that significantly enhances the efficiency of solar energy power conversion. A paper about the work, which focuses on "engineering" organic material-electrode interfaces in bulk-heterojunction organic solar cells, is published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Historically the price of gold has been around 16 times the price of silver. So, for example, based on the long-term historical average ratio, with the price of gold around $650, the price of silver should be around $40. It’s not, of course. It’s around $12.50
Today then, the silver ratio is more like 50. What explains the difference between hundreds of years of history and today? Simple – demand for silver as money. During periods of history when silver has been used as a currency, it has almost always been valued ~ 1/16th the price of gold.
When silver has been “demonetized,” supplies soar as people sell silver for gold and currency. On the other hand, during periods of monetary crisis, the price of silver tends to increase far more than the price of gold as demand for silver is once again created by monetary needs.
This influences the silver to gold ratio heavily in silver’s favor. For example, the ratio returned to its historic range (16) during World War I. It happened again in the early 1970s when Nixon abandoned the gold standard. It also happened most famously in 1979/1980 when gold briefly soared to $800 an ounce and it seemed as if America was really entering a severe money crisis.
Spare a thought for poor Karl Donitz, Hitler's successor for, oh, five minutes. I'd advise the current candidates for the American presidency to watch this clip, as they're going to know how he felt come next January.
Americans starting to heat their homes on credit. Anyone see a potential problem here? Here's a thought: what happens to all the abandoned MacMansions this winter? Will they be kept warm by the banks who own them? How many will be annhialated when water pipes burst? Should be interesting...
This LEGO MMORPG sounds astounding. Must - not - buy - it.
Gold Fields said output at its South African mines would fall by up to 25 percent in the quarter to end-March, and by up to 20 percent in the fourth quarter onwards.
reports say.
Unions reacted angrily to the job-cut threats.
reports say.
"The NUM will take to the streets if companies carry out their retrenchments threats. It is not our members who brought about the electricity crisis," said Lesiba Seshoka, spokesperson for the National Union of Mineworkers.
"We are facing a big challenge in front of us. Mexico has been a big oil producer for the last 30 years, but the lifetime of the reservoir [Cantarell] is coming to an end," says Ruben Camarillo, a member of Calderón's center-right National Action Party (PAN) and secretary of the energy commission debating the reform in the senate. "At this point in time, PEMEX does not have the [needed] technology."
Mexico's crude production has fallen since 2004, a record year with 3.38 million barrels per day (b.p.d), according to the US Department of Energy. Production fell to 3.25 million in 2006, and the DOE predicts that it will decline by another 130,000 b.p.d in 2008 and 110,000 b.p.d in 2009. The decline parallels dramatically depleting reserves at Cantarell, which for 30 years was Mexico's biggest source of oil. At the same time, the number of Mexico's proven reserves fell from 49.3 billion barrels in 1986 to 12.4 billion last year.
Page 2 of the article contains this gem:
Most scientists agree that there are plentiful reserves in the Gulf of Mexico, but Mexico lacks the technology to head such exploration.
The expected introduction of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles could cut U.S. gasoline use but could increase deadly air pollution in some areas, two reports say.
That's because a plug-in's lower tailpipe emissions may be offset by smokestack emissions from the utility generating plants supplying electricity to recharge the big batteries that allow plug-ins to run up to 40 miles without kicking on their gasoline engines. Plug-ins, called PHEVs, are partly powered, in effect, by the fuel used to generate the electricity.
About 49% of U.S. electricity is generated using coal, so in some regions a plug-in running on its batteries is nearly the equivalent of a coal-burning vehicle. The trade-off is one that even plug-in backers acknowledge. It could undercut the appeal of vehicles that appear capable of using no gasoline in town and hitting 50 to 100 mpg overall fuel economy.
Wheat, soybeans, corn and palm oil are among commodities that have touched records this month, stoking prices of bread, pasta and noodles worldwide. The gains have driven up costs for food companies from Kellogg Co. to Nissin Food Products Co. and complicated efforts to curb prices in China, India and Malaysia.
Kazakhstan has become the latest country to put export restrictions on wheat as it battles against inflation.
Russia and Argentina have already imposed similar export restrictions.
The 25% rise in Minneapolis on Monday came after all trading restrictions were scrapped.
The March futures contract closed at up $4.75 at $24 a bushel, the record price for any US wheat contract.
The price of spring wheat has more than doubled since January.
Reports of a drought in Northern China, where most of the country's wheat is grown, also pushed prices higher.
Extreme weather has already damaged crops in other parts of the world and US wheat inventories are expected to fall to their lowest level for 60 years.
Chinese analysts have grown uneasy about the country’s increasing dependence on imports to satisfy demand for soybeans. Driven by its growing demand for meat in recent years, the country has emerged as the world’s biggest importer of soybeans and vegetable oil.
Before 1995 China was a net exporter of soybeans but in 2007 China imported more than 30 million tonnes of the commodity, which it uses mainly for animal feed. The demand reflects the country’s dietary changes resulting from greater prosperity in cities and towns where people these days consume more meat.
But the Chinese diet’s shift towards more meat has also boosted grain consumption, raising expectations that the country may be soon forced to import corn too. It takes four kilograms of grain to produce one kilogram of meat.
Sentiment in the marketplace is changing from, ‘buying just-in-time’ to one of, ‘buy what you need at any price’ and then to ‘buy even more to restock the shelves’.
In other words, there’s evidence to suggest that we’re beginning to enter the hoarding phase of the inflationary cycle.
Very serious questions from survivalacres. I advise all readers of this site to take the threat of food shortages and financial collapse seriously. Take any precautions that you deem necessary - I advise buying food supplies (minimum 1 year per person); take substantial percentage fo your cash out of your bank; assemble a collection of books for post-crash life. Do it NOW.
Well done France - you managed to elect an even bigger oaf than the Americans. The fact that he doesn't drink wine should have been a FLAG, no?
The Pentagon admits that the "retarded Iraqi suicide bomber" story is false. To be fair, someone IS retarded - namely the US press corps and the TV bobbleheads who yet again act like poodle-stenographers. Tippity tap, tippity tap...keep cashing your paychecks, and try not to look yourselves in the mirror for too long, lest you catch a faded glimpse of the idealistic young students that you once were.
Back in 2005 I attended a lecture at Caltech by Nathan Lewis, titled powering the planet. It give an excellent rundown of the Energy/Climate change crisis, and what would be required to mitigate both. He's fairly clinical, dealing strictly with numbers - very interesting stuff. You can download a video of the lecture at the linked site. He really gets cracking about 40 minutes in, though I recommend watching the whole thing. Runtime about 1 hour.
A more recent lecture by David Rutledge on the subject of coal, which also deals with mitigation towards the end. The first 20 minutes are graph-heavy; it you don't like you might skip, although I'd also recommend the whole thing. Rutledge has interesting things to say about solar thermal. His explanation of the futility of conservation in the short term towards the end is fascinating. In essence, it matters not whether we burn coal in 1850 or 2050 - the end result will be an 800 year spike in global temperature. Best solution: don't burn the stuff at all.
Finally, a candidate for the Presidency that I can support. HINT: he doesn't have any members of "skull and bones" or the CFR/Bilderberg-group/Trilateral-Commission on his staff. I'm talking about YOU, obamahilarymccain.
The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, for instance, could have to raise tolls again because of increased borrowing costs, a spokesman said. It's now paying an additional $300,000 a month on $126.7 billion in interest because of a delay in refinancing the debt due to the bond market's volatility.
"The result of a destabilized bond insurance market is that some governments, already facing reduced income due to the slowing economy, will have higher borrowing costs," said New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, testifying before Congress last week. "That means shifting funds from schools and police to pay interest."
New York state is paying an additional $823,000 in weekly interest costs due to recent failed auctions, a state budget spokesman said. New York is looking to convert some or all of that debt to variable-rate demand bonds, which are not subject to auctions.
For a "Christian" nation, there sure are a lot of people indulging in USURY - which is forbidden by the Bible, as I recall.
Palladium, Platinum, Gold and Electricity. Bullish predictions on the future value of precious metals are predicated on the assumption of economic growth. In the event of a recession, the following statements will NOT be reliable. Otherwise, interesting:
The price differential between Palladium and Platinum has now reached historic proportions; if one goes back all the way to 1977 the price differential between the two metals was never more than 550. Today the price differential is over 1300 dollars; Palladium is trading at roughly 420 and Platinum is trading at roughly 1800 dollars. It is more than double that of the prior price differential which stood roughly at 550 dollars. Just this one fact alone is enough to suggest that Palladium is going to go ballistic...
...The second massive anomaly is the fact that Gold is selling for more than Palladium when in fact Palladium is the rarer and thus essentially more valuable of the two metals. Now we have what amounts to a double intra market positive divergence signal; these signals are very rare and so we hardly speak of them. Basically when you get such a signal it indicates that one of the markets is oversold relative to the other to such a point that in most cases it’s a result of massive manipulation. This manipulation always comes to an end and when it does the resulting move is huge to say the least. We also have several massive positive divergence signals and so when one adds all these factors its all but a given that Palladium must and will have its day in the sun.
With the advent of the 2500 dollar car from India and a whole plethora of sub 3000 cars which are on the drawing boards of almost all major car manufacturers, palladium is going to be the top metal of choice to use in Catalytic converters. If you have to cut costs down to the last penny are you going to pay 1800 dollars an ounce for platinum or 420 an ounce for Palladium?
What did Jebus say? "The Imbeciles Ye shall have always with you"? This article against organic food claims that it is no healthier than food sprayed with pesticides, insecticides and herbicides.
Pull the other testicle, Poindexter.
Note that NOWHERE in the article is NITROGEN RUN-OFF, Oceanic Dead Zones or the use of FOSSIL FUELS IN ARTIFICIAL FERTILISERS mentioned by the hack writer.
Hey, whatever it takes to keep the paychecks coming in from your corporate overlords, eh? I wouldn't want the facts to get in the way of your mortgage payments.
Don't be fooled by the "Poor Kosovo" BS being spewed by the MSM. They couldn't give a rat's ass about the Kosovans. This is all about tweaking Putin's nipples and nothing else. Jesus, when will people cop on? It's about THE ENERGY, stupid!
When you hear about US support for the independence and freedom of "Govenia" or "Timbukstan", do yourself a favour: to go google and do a search for "Govenia Oil Natural Gas" or "Timbukstan Oil Natural Gas", and see what you find. This will put you ahead of ALL of the bobbleheads on the Prime Time "News" shows. Here: try it yourself! Ain't research a hoot? They should teach it in journalist stenography school!
THE GLOBALIST WALL ST. FAT CATS WHO ARE MANAGING OBAMA. I'm not sure if I agree with the writer's implication that Obama is about to become America's version of Mussolini (not that it's impossible). I certainly disagree with his preference for Hitlery Clinton. Nevertheless, some choice datapoints:
Since 9/11 America has certainly turned into a top-down police state, but true post-modern fascism requires a popular movement to usher it into power. Bush has created a dictatorship out of the Presidency, now the next step towards fascism is being marketed to exploit the desire for change. The depressed national mood, due to the war and economic recession/depression has compromised sane reasoning and courageous opposition needed now more than ever. This has created the conditions for a newcomer to magically appear with a message of hope, using the mantra 'Change', wrapped in a swooning fever that has infected the young and left liberal excuse machines, such as 'Move On' who were never serious about stopping Bush/ Cheney and the war.
Since he passed his audition at the Democratic convention in 2004, Senator Obama has been taken over by George Soros and other hedge fund millionaires to launch a campaign out of nowhere, based on nothing but rhetoric and Wall Street millions. As darling of the rich elitist Kennedy/Kerry/Dean wing of the Democratic Party, Obama's pseudo-Camelot will deliver Wall Street and the Anglo-American financiers the goods while disguised in a patina of racial teflon and faux populism from the upper crust. For substance ask, where is the bill in the Senate by Kennedy/Kerry/Obama calling for a freeze on all foreclosures? Where's their filibuster against the war? Where is a real minimumn wage in the form of a living wage? Where is impeachment of Bush-Cheney? Why did Senator Obama move against raising heating oil assistance to the poor in the recent spending bill?
The answer to this last question, besides Rohatyn, is Obama's top economics controller, Austan Goolsbee, a sinister Skull & Bones, Friedmanite Chicago School free trade/free market economist...
Each adult fish filters about four gallons of water a minute. Purging suspended particles that cause turbidity, this filter feeding clarifies the water, allowing sunlight to penetrate. This in turn encourages the growth of aquatic plants that release dissolved oxygen while also harboring a host of fish and shellfish. Even more important, the menhaden's filter feeding prevents or limits devastating algal blooms. Most of the phytoplankton consumed by menhaden consists of algae. Excess nitrogen can make algae grow out of control, and that's what happens when overwhelming quantities of nitrogen flood into our inshore waters from runoff fed by paved surfaces, roofs, detergent-laden wastewater, over-fertilized golf courses and suburban lawns, and industrial poultry and pig farms.
This can generate deadly blooms of algae, such as red tide and brown tide, which cause massive fish kills, then sink in thick carpets to the bottom, where they smother plants and shellfish, suck dissolved oxygen from the water, and leave dead zones that expand year by year. In the natural ecosystem, the bonanza of phytoplankton stimulated a tremendous profusion of another filter-feeding consumer of algae: oysters. These two wonderful filter feeders kept inshore waters clear, clean, balanced, and healthy: oysters clinging to the bottom and menhaden cruising through all the upper layers. But oysters have been driven to near extinction in many bays and estuaries by overfishing and pollution. Clams and mussels also filter-feed on the algae, but neither has the enormous mass of the bygone oyster reefs or the gargantuan menhaden schools.
The only remaining significant checks on the phytoplankton that cause algal blooms and dead zones are those menhaden schools, and they are now threatened by the ravages of unrestrained industrial fishing. By the end of the twentieth century, the population and range of Atlantic menhaden had virtually collapsed. The estimated number of sexually mature adult fish had crashed to less than 13 percent of what it had been four decades earlier. Although northern New England had once been the scene of the largest menhaden fishery, adult fish had not been sighted north of Cape Cod since 1993.
Arguably the single most destructive human action for the world's oceans, bottom trawling, a practice commonly used to dredge up deep water fish, leaves behind a trail of destruction that can clearly be seen from space. The above image of the Gulf of Mexico, captured by the Landsat satellite in late 1999, shows the sediment trails left behind by individual ships (the bright spots) - a testament to the utter devastation the practice exerts on vast seafloor ecosystems.
Les Watling, a zoologist at the University of Hawaii who was interviewed by LiveScience's Andrea Thompson, said that bottom trawling drags the equivalent of an area twice the size of the combined lower 48 states each year. The sediment plumes arise as ships drag their nets across the ocean floor, moving rocks, crushing reefs and stirring up various marine organisms.
But it is in areas like the production of biocides and RFID (radio frequency identification) devices where the real growth in industrial usage may be seen. Silver is beginning to be used in wood preservatives now that some other harmful chemicals are being legislated out of use in this sector. This could lead to strong demand. In the medical sector, wound dressings utilising the metals biocidal properties is another area likely to show major growth, as are other medical uses in the fight against hospital borne bacteria.
But even bigger could be the RFID factor with admittedly minute amounts going into built in chips in passports, ID cards etc. China, for example is producing huge numbers of ID cards for its population utilising silver, and the RFID usage in total could soak up as much as 90 million ounces by 2013. What is perhaps more encouraging for silver is that these uses are unlikel to become significant sources of recycled material.
Nauseating: The 20 worst foods in America. 3,000 calories for Outback's Aussie cheese fries? An appetiser? Those meals look truly disgusting.
Last week, a Harvard economist opined to an energy conference in Texas that when we are through tallying up the credit crunch losses from real estate loans, car loans, credit card loans, and business loans all going bad at the same time, the total will be over $1 trillion. Now this is just an abstract figure until you learn that the total capitalization of all the banks in America is about $1 trillion.
It gets still worse. We recently learned about an arcane new financial product called the credit default swap. These are sort of marketable private insurance policies that you buy to cover financial assets that you suspect might go bad. This is all very nice until we learn that these “insurance polices” have been sold and resold so that the insured has no idea who is supposed to pay off his claim and whether or not the current insurer has any money. The scary part is that these things are now said to have a total value of $45 trillion.
If these credit default swaps start going bad and somebody is liable for even a tiny fraction of their supposed value, there is not enough money in China or all the sovereign wealth funds in the world, or the US Treasury to bail this out. All this is by way of saying that $100+ oil may turn out to be the least of our problems.
In an interview with lastoilshock.com and Global Public Media, Robin West said it would be very difficult for the oil industry ever to produce more than 95-100 million barrels per day, and that when output growth stops the oil price will go "through the roof". This will cause "massive demand destruction, a huge recession, and only then will you see very substantial substitution".
Really, why is it that the so-called “immigration debate” in the US is often tied up with terms of race and seldom tied into the discussion of depleting resources and declining infrastructure? If the immigration debate was framed in the latter terms of resource depletion and infrastructure, people would focus on the point that the nation is “full.” The irrefutable fact is that the US resource base is fast-depleting and the infrastructure system is overloaded. There is no more room at this inn. It’s time to hang out the equivalent of the “No Vacancy” sign for very some practical reasons.
The US is already a net food-importer, yet the nation willl now — according to the Pew Research study — grow its population from 300 million to 438 million within the next 43 years? In what soil will the food grow? How much food will be imported, and from where, and how will the nation pay for it? With the national credit card, that is now broken?
And while we are discussing eating, let’s wash it down. Water is in critical shortage in many regions of the US, so what will all of these “new” people drink? For that matter, what will the existing population drink?
A 20-kilogram bag of white flour that cost $8.85 last October now costs $19, Dinner said. Hilton Dinner, owner of Bon Ton Bakery, says he will be forced to raise prices in response to the rising cost of flour.
The bakery uses about 20 bags of white flour a day. The same amount of rye flour that cost $9.60 last fall now costs $24.
"Up until now we've been absorbing it but it's costing me hundreds of dollars a day not to put our prices up and we're going to have to put up our prices within days."
"It is mostly driven by world population growth, which is about 75 million people per year, and also by the more protein-rich nutrition trend in Asia," said Jochen Hitzfeld, a commodities strategist at Unicredit in Munich. He predicts a 50 percent rise in wheat, with prices to average $15 a bushel in 2009.
The trend, in fact, is not a new one. In seven of the past eight years, demand for wheat has been greater than supply, according to Unicredit, though so far that demand has been met by drawing down existing stockpiles.
The Department of Agriculture now expects wheat inventories in the United States to fall 40 percent by June. That would take stocks to the lowest level in 30 years and the lowest ever in terms of days of supply, according to Merrill Lynch...
...And, unlike other commodities that are sensitive to overall economic activity, like metals used in manufacturing and homebuilding, wheat should be fairly well supported within the United States and Europe, even in a recession. People still have to eat, even if they lose jobs and consume less gasoline or buy fewer electronics or appliances.
As the Kish bourse picks up momentum, more and more oil and gas trading will happen in a basket of currencies – and more and more the US dollar will lose its paramount status. Quite a few Middle East analysts expect the Persian Gulf petro-monarchies to end their dollar peg sooner rather than later – some say as early as next summer, as their black gold will increasingly not be traded in dollars. Iranian economist Hamid Varzi stresses that the “psychological effect” of Iran’s move away from the US dollar is “encouraging others to follow suit.
Iranian officials have always maintained Washington has threatened to disrupt the oil bourse – via an online virus, attempting regime change or even the dreaded, unilateral pre-emptive nuclear strike. On the other hand, the possible success of the bourse may be crucial to signal the US’s waning power in a world evolving towards multi-polarity. The Saudis and the Persian Gulf petro-monarchies have already decided to reduce their US dollar holdings. It’s not far-fetched to imagine Washington, sooner or later, having to pay for its oil and gas imports in euros...
...It may be a long way away, but ultimately the emergence of a new oil marker in euros in Kish will lead the way to the petroeuro global oil trade. It makes total sense. The European Union imports much more oil from OPEC than the US, and 45% of Middle East imports also come from the E.U.
The symbolism of the Iranian oil bourse is stark; it shows that the flight from the US dollar is irreversible – and so would, sooner rather than later, the capacity of Washington to launch wars on credit. But at this early stage in the game, only one thing is certain: the Empire will strike back.
Uranium One Inc., the developer of South Africa's largest deposit of the nuclear fuel, cut its 2008 output forecast by a third and said Chief Executive Officer Neal Froneman quit. The shares lost almost a quarter of their value.
A slower-than-expected rate of underground development at the Dominion mine in South Africa was the main reason for the revision, the Toronto-based company said in a statement to Johannesburg's stock exchange today. Uranium One now estimates production this year at 3.15 million pounds, and cut its 2009 forecast 15 percent to 6.8 million pounds...
...Dominion has suffered power rationing since November because of a national electricity shortage, Uranium One said in the statement. Diesel generators that will render the mine ``completely independent'' have been ordered, Nortier said.
They're trying to decouple themselves from the grid in order to be free from the decay of that nation's power supply. Note that these articles mention the power crisis without giving any indication of the severity. Funny.
The situation for Germany's public banks has become so dramatic that it threatens to topple what has been one of the key pillars of the country's banking system. The state-owned banks are supposed to bail each other out when necessary, but the problem is that many are in trouble themselves and hardly in a position to help their peers. And things could get even worse.
If an industry giant like WestLB were forced to its knees -- which almost happened two weeks ago -- at least two other state-owned banks and a dozen savings and loan associations would crumple along with it. The member banks of the German Savings Banks Finance Group (Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe) are closely interlinked, and they are required to vouch for each other -- as long as they are in a position to do so, that is. The failure of a major state-owned bank like WestLB would also inevitably affect corporate customers, even forcing some into bankruptcy.
It is a nightmare scenario that the government financial supervisory authority now believes is increasingly likely.
How the South African power crisis is affecting platinum/palladium production. Article blames the problems on the failure of the energy companies to keep up with economic growth in SA - the truth is that SA's infrastructure is falling apart.
The most amazing thing happened the other day. I was home and there was a knock at the door. Two young giggling women opened their introduction with: “Hi. We’re a little short on Rent this month, and were wondering if you had any soda cans you might want to donate?”.
I must be turning into a bit of a scrooge, because while I invited them to go through my recycling containers, I certainly wasn’t about to give them money. Not after they showed up on my front porch with their cell phones in hand.
So it makes me wonder - just how are clueless dolts in America going to handle the severe lifestyle changes that are coming? Many people have never dealt with Trauma, choosing rather to tune out into whatever entertainment experiences have kept them distracted from dealing with pain. It’s always the easy way out, trying to take pills to mask symptoms rather than getting in shape.
Much of the project will showcase a network that makes the house "smart" and follows family members from room to room — even adjusting artwork — to preset personal preferences.
When a resident clicks a TV remote, for example, lights will dim, music will shut off and the shades will draw as the network realizes a movie is about to start.
The system will allow residents to transfer digital photos, videos and music among televisions and computers in different rooms at the click of a button. Other applications still in development could include touch-screen technology built into appliances, furniture and countertops, said Joe Belfiore, Microsoft's vice president for entertainment services.
In the kitchen, for example, touchpad software on the countertop would be able to identify groceries and produce recipes and meal suggestions. Similar programs could turn a desktop into a computer screen, allowing residents to load photos, music or e-mail onto a cell phone by placing it on the desk.
Maybe the house will also feature an arse-wiping machine.
Imagine a gigantic, inflatable, sausage-like bag capable of storing 160 million tonnes of CO2 - the equivalent of 2.2 days of current global emissions. Now try to picture that container, measuring up to 100 metres in radius and several kilometres long, resting benignly on the seabed more than 3 kilometres below the ocean"s surface...
...The use of containment is necessary because CO2 will tend to dissolve in the ocean, which could adversely impact marine ecosystems. Fortunately, says Keith, the cost of containment is quite minimal with this solution. He and his colleagues calculate that the bags can be constructed of existing polymers for less than four cents per tonne of carbon.
Yeah - and those bags will defy ENTROPY and remain intact forever...or at least until the idiots behind this scheme are safely in the grave, or the madhouse.
I guess I maxed out on Jesuscamp - but if you're in the mood for more, here are baby bible bashers. Creepy little things.
Sounds like a day in the life (and death) of typical American Joe Q. Sixpack and his dear wife Sue...minus the erectile bit. Spare a thought for Joe and Sue...and think of all the pills they pop, just so that they can crawl to their dead-end jobs - pulling the oars of the corporate slave-galley, until they limp home at night, drugged from dawn till dusk. Mmm. Ambien makes me sleepy...
The sad thing is that all of the above are symptoms of Magnesium Defiency.
Drumroll:
68% of Americans are magnesium deficient. I'm not saying that Magnesium Deficiency is the cause of ALL of the above; what I'm saying is that it's fascinating that people feel that they should treat the symptom, rather than the cause. Little Bobby has ADD? Give him some Ritalin. God forbid you stop him from drinking High Fructose Corn Syrup sodas and increase the vegetables and fruit in his diet. If he's "depressed", put him on a course of Paxil...don't even dream of restricting his 50 hour a week XBOX/PS3 habit, or take him out of his suburban hell-hole for a trip to the countryside.
Meanwhile the plebs continue to chow down on Xanax, Ambien, Vi4gra, Cial15 or whatever drug the shitstains in the Pharma-Medical industry want to flog. All hail our Brave New World.
Side affects may include...
Over 1,400 professionals (including a Nobel Laureate) call for a ban on flouride. I recently paid my first visit to a dentist in 15 years. I haven't used flouride toothpaste for the last 2 or 3, and brushed irregularly - once a day. In the past few years I've stopped consuming meat, chicken, port, sodas, most dairy, and have cut back on chocolates, sugars and carby foods like breads and potatoes. I had No cavities. Make of that hearsay evidence what you will.
Why we're doomed: How to train a husband. How about couples treating one another like human beings?
Luaipou Futi and a nurse banged on a locked door at Honolulu International Airport Friday morning and begged for medical help for Futi's 14-day-old son, who had flown here from American Samoa for heart surgery and was becoming distressed in the warm room.
According to Futi's attorney, from the other side of the door, the women heard voices telling them to remain calm.
After 30 minutes in the room, Futi, her son, Michael Tony Futi, and the traveling nurse, Arizona Veavea, were released, attorney Rick Fried said.
City paramedics took Michael to Kaiser Permanente's Moana-lua Medical Center, but he died later that morning.
So, we've got these brownshirts chucking quadraplegics out of wheelchairs, and killing infants. At what point, dear reader, will citizens stop seeking justice through the courts, and start creating REAL consequences for these pieces of human filth?
Of course, if you want to start killing REAL numbers of people, picking off babies one at a time is child's play. Professionals use AUSTRIAN methods: Pesticides over San Francisco. Fuhrer Schwartzeneggar knows how to punish hippies and queers. HEIL!
It's going to be depressing to watch the reaction of "liberals" if and when Barack is (s)elected as Preznit. Given that most of them still regard Clinton and Gore as heroes, we can expect eight long years of delusion. That's why I'm praying for McCain/Giuliani to win in '08. A citizen’s guide to Barack Obama. I'm curious as to what will happen to the demographics of this site if I start attacking the (presumably Democratic) President to be. Will conservatives start sending me fan mail? The mind boggles...
I hate to post big blocks of text, but this is a must-read for anyone labouring under the delusion that we can grow our way out of our problems with "Green" biofuels:
But the Investors Business Daily article really started to pique my interest when it turned to phosphorus -- the "P" of NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium), the main macronutrients required for plant growth...
...NPK mentality neglects micronutrients and forgets that healthy soil relies on teeming populations of microorganisms, whose function we don't fully understand. Lashing the soil with industrial fertilizer doesn't renew life in the soil; it squeezes life out. Someday, I predict, NPK dogma will crumble and seem as absurd as relying on a bowl of Total for nourishment.
For now, though, we live in an NPK world -- and biofuel production relies absolutely on mined and synthesized macronutrients.
OK, back to the Investors Business Daily article and phosphorus. Toward the bottom, we find this:
Phosphates shot to $300 and then to $400 a ton last year, and are now on track to break $800 ... Out of 50 billion tons of potential phosphate rock reserves worldwide, the USGS estimates the U.S. holds only 3.4 billion tons. Morocco owns 21 billion, China has 13 billion. All are keen to closely manage the resource.
Wow, so our big "renewable," domestic energy source relies heavily on a mined substance, of which we own a tiny reserve. The biggest store lies in an Islamic nation, representing a religious group our government has antagonized. The second-biggest store is lodged within the borders of a budding geopolitical rival. Hmm.
Then we get this:
Global consumption of phosphate rock is projected to grow 2.3% a year. But that rate of growth could increase due to demand for biomass used in biofuel production.
Farmers are harvesting larger shares of the plant rubble left after harvest -- a natural source of potassium and phosphate when turned back into the soil. The loss of that natural fertilizer means more P & K demand.
What the article is saying is this: If we transition to cellulosic ethanol -- which utilizes whole plants, not just the seeds, as in conventional ethanol -- we'll need even more phosphorus. And demand for this finite resource, located mainly in geopolitically troublesome places, will grower at an even faster clip than the current 2.3 percent compounded annual rate.
I should note here that phosphate mining, as I laid out in the above-linked post on Mosaic, is environmentally ruinous. It leaves behind radioactive waste.
Gasoline use over the next two decades is expected to soar as developing nations get richer and more people there buy cars, but gas alone won't be able to shoulder the burden.
Along with their surging economies, the number of cars in India and China is expected to jump to 1.2 billion by 2050 from 20 million just a few years ago.
"Will oil be able to supply this increase in demand?" Jim Dalton, a director at Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), asked at the group's annual energy conference here in Houston.
It will certainly supply a lot of it, he said. Dalton expects oil use in the worldwide transport sector to jump 50% by 2030. But it will need some help to meet the world's energy needs.
Experts here say the fuel mix of the future must rely not just on gasoline, but a variety of sources - everything from biofuels and electric power to synthetic fuels, natural gas and greater efficiency will all help meet this growing demand...
...CERA predicts biofuels in the U.S. will go from about 2 percent of the current fuel mix to 15 by 2022, as mandated in the new energy law. In South America, biofuel use could make up 25 percent of the continent's fuel mix, led by Brazil's sugar-based ethanol industry. The Europeans, long fans of diesel engines, are also expected to boost their biodiesel use.
Good luck finding enough phosphorous, you cancerous vermin.
An engineer has promised that within a year he will start selling a car that runs on compressed air, producing no emissions at all in town.
The OneCAT will be a five-seater with a glass fibre body, weighing just 350kg and could cost just over £2,500...
...Mr Negre has been promising for more than a decade to be on the verge of a breakthrough. Independent observers are more convinced this time because he recently secured backing from the giant Indian conglomerate Tata to put the finished touches to the engine.
Tata is the only big firm he'll license to sell the car - and they are limited to India. For the rest of the world he hopes to persuade hundreds of investors to set up their own factories, making the car from 80% locally-sourced materials.
"This will be a major saving in total emissions," he says.
"Imagine we will be able to save all those components travelling the world and all those transporters."
Poor sod; clearly he's not a total idiot, but it makes one wonder how he got this far without hearing about Jevon's paradox, or the rebound effect. MORE:
But he said he was interested to see how the car would fare with safety tests and how much it would appeal to a public conditioned to expect luxury fittings adding to the weight of the vehicle.
Mr Negre says there's no issue with safety - if the air-car crashes the air tanks won't shatter - they will split with a very loud bang. "The biggest risk is to the ears."
Being deafened by exploding airtanks IS an issue with safety. Imagine what happens when every fender-bender results in ruptured eardrums...
Algerian accused of training 911 attackers = NOT GUILTY, M'LUD! He should thank his god that he was British, not American.
Great stuff - a newly found solar system, a bit like ours. Hopefully the race of Marshmallow-Men who inhabit it will be a bit smarter about husbanding their finite resources than Homo-Erectus.
In case you missed it, yesterday's post Utter Collapse turns out to have been a hoax - many fell for it. Call off the apocalypse, eh? It's not like there's such a shortage of REAL doom that anyone would need to invent some - unless they wanted to discredit us doomers.
Why would anyone want to do that?
Iran's oil bourse seems to be set to open on February 27, assuming that the subs stop cutting the internet cables on the seabed. This should be interesting.
Americans may be no more ignorant about evolution than they are about other aspects of science. According to surveys conducted for the National Science Foundation over the past two decades, more than two-thirds of adults are unable to identify DNA as the key to heredity. Nine out of 10 Americans - nearly 63 years after the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima - do not understand what radiation is or its effects on the body. One in 5 believes that the sun revolves around the Earth.
This knowledge deficit has nothing to do with religion, but it does point to a stunning failure of American public schooling at the elementary and secondary level. One should not have to be an intellectual or, for that matter, a college graduate to understand that DNA contains the basic biological instructions that make each of us a unique human being or that the Earth is not the center of the solar system.
The most recent assessment by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based agency that conducts regular education evaluations in the world’s most industrialized nations, found that American 15-year-olds ranked 24th out of 29 countries in mathematical literacy (and it is tough to understand science without basic competency in math). In science, the United States is not among the worst performers but is merely mediocre - 14th out of 25.
The Taliban have taken over more than half of Afghanistan. They have conducted military operations in the capital of Kabul. They're dug in at Logar, Wardak and Ghazni and control vast swathes of territory in Zabul, Helmand, Urzgan and Kandahar. Now they are getting ready to step-up operations and mount a Spring offensive. That means the hostilities will progressively intensify.
The Taliban's approach is methodical and deliberate. They've shown they can survive the harshest conditions and still achieve tactical victories over a better-equipped enemy. They are highly-motivated and believe their cause is just. After all, they're not fighting to occupy a foreign nation; they're fighting to defend their own country. That strengthens their resolve and keeps morale high. When NATO and American troops leave Afghanistan; the Taliban will remain, just as they did when the Russians left 20 years ago. No difference. The US occupation will just be another grim footnote in the country's tragic history.
The United States has gained nothing from its invasion of Afghanistan. US troops do not control even a square inch of Afghan soil. The moment a soldier lifts his boot-heel; that ground is returned to the native people. That won't change either. General Dan McNeill said recently that "if proper US military counterinsurgency doctrine were followed; the US would need 400,000 troops to defeat Pashtun tribal resistance in Afghanistan." Currently, the US and NATO have only 66,000 troops on the ground and the allies are refusing to send more. On a purely logistical level; victory is impossible.
I have said many times that we're close to, or past Peak Oil - the halfway point of oil production. This will lead to global economic disaster. However, some good news. Scientists have found organic hydrocarbons in vast numbers - over 100 times the amount discovered to date. The catch:
They're on Saturn's moon Titan. Coincidentally, Titan happens to be ruled by an evil dictator called Zorgon Husseeny...an evil evildoer with a tentative plans for a program of weapons of mass destruction. He hates freedom. Operation "Titanian Liberation" is on the way!
Las Vegas strip could run dry by 2021 (or 2014). The tragedy! Where will the lumpenproles go to throw away their life's savings?
Holy hell. I've posted about Dubai before, but seeing the whole series of images laid out like this is mind-blowing. It makes a mockery of an individual's attempts at conservation - and shows the sheer futility of single actions, in the face of state/corporate insanity.
Bad news: Defense Secretary Robert Gates has broken his shoulder after falling on ice. Don't worry though - he's got a good health insurance plan (basically the nearest thing the US has to a National Health Service, for our fearless political leaders). He'll be back on his feet, supervising the War on brown people in no time.
More than a third of Earth's ice-free land area is now being used for farming. Europe, south Asia and the eastern US have the greatest proportion of arable land, while South America, China, the western US and tropical Africa have the largest proportion of pasture (see Map).
Navin Ramankutty from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and colleagues compared agricultural inventories from all countries with satellite land-cover data for the same areas, and wrote a computer program to recognise pasture and crop land.
Examining satellite data from 2000, they estimate that 28 million square kilometres (22 per cent) of ice-free land surface is covered in pasture and 15 million square km (12 per cent) is used to grow crops.
What do you think happened to all the animals and plants that used to inhabit that landmass? (Hint: they're no longer alive). Is veganism/vegetarianism better than meat-eating? Almost always. Is it a way to "save the planet"? Um, not even close.
Here's your daily dose of fascism: Cops dump quadraplegic man on ground. Note that all the cops are about 60LBS overweight - justifying their designation as "pigs" (which is an insult to pigs).
Pakistan is stockpiling wheat and using its military to guard flour mills. Indonesian consumers have taken to the streets to protest rising soy prices. Malaysia no longer lets people take sugar, flour or cooking oil out of the country. North Dakota, the top U.S. wheat-producing state, may import from Canada due to tight supplies.
The world is facing the most destabilizing bout of food inflation since the "Great Grain Robbery" of the early 1970s when the former Soviet Union bought massive quantities of U.S. grain, sending prices soaring. That episode helped fuel a Farm Belt boom — and later bust — as soaring exports soured and record agricultural land prices fell.
Soaring demand, rising oil prices and government-mandated biofuel use have sent many commodity prices to their highest levels in history. The impact is hardest in the developing world: The United Nations says increasing prices will make it tougher to meet international goals of reduced hunger. Rising prices are squeezing food aid budgets that were already falling far behind growing need caused by war and increasing weather disasters. Worse, soaring costs are adding to political instability in countries such as Afghanistan, where flour prices are up more than 60% in the past year, and as much as 80% in some areas.
Insect explosion a threat to food crops. So much for the "C02 will allow us to grow more food" argument...
Food crops could be ravaged this century by an explosion in the numbers of insect pests caused by rising global temperatures, according to scientists who have carried out an exhaustive survey of plant damage when the earth last experienced major climate change.
Researchers found that the numbers of leaf-eating insects are likely to surge as a result of rising levels of CO2, at a time when crop production will have to be boosted to feed an extra three billion people living at the end of 21st century.
Scientists found that, during one of the last great episodes of global warming 55.8 million years ago, there was a significant increase in both the amount of damage caused by leaf-eating insects and the variety of injuries they inflicted on plants.
They believe that the 5C rise in global temperatures caused by a tripling of CO2 levels during the palaeocene-eocene thermal maximum (PETM) period sent insect numbers soaring and left an indelible impression on the fossilised leaves preserved since that time.
Obama is not, however, the product of the civil rights struggles against racial oppression, nor is he associated with any popular movement from below. His career has far more in common with those of Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, individuals selected and groomed by the American ruling class to carry out its policies. Like them, he is being used to put a new face on fundamentally reactionary policies and institutions...
Important sections of the ruling elite have concluded that, particularly for the overseas interests of American imperialism, a President Obama would provided important advantages. He would at one stroke put a “new face” on American foreign policy, and make it more likely that Washington could overcome the international isolation and global hostility created by the arrogant unilateralism of the Bush White House and its failed intervention in Iraq. And it may well require a Democrat in the White House to reinstate the draft and provide the manpower required to sustain and expand the US drive for military domination of the oil-rich Middle East and Central Asia...
An Obama presidency (or a Clinton presidency, should her campaign ultimately prevail), would thus represent a fine-tuning or adjustment in American foreign policy, but no let-up in American imperialism’s drive to war and conquest, which arises not out of the brains of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, but out of the historical crisis of American and world capitalism.
Obama is merely the product of an effective marketing campaign which has utilized media outlets ranging from Rupert Murdoch to The Nation to sell this new version of a very old product—the Democratic Party “friend of the people,” previously incarnated in the “insurgent” candidacy of Jimmy Carter in 1976, then in the “man from Hope,” Bill Clinton himself, in 1992. An Obama presidency would no more represent a fundamental change in American politics than the election of Carter and Clinton did, and if Murdoch & Co. feared it would, he would never have been allowed anywhere near the White House.
The typical Obama speech is a mass of nebulous phrases about uniting America, without the slightest acknowledgement that social and economic interests of working people, the vast majority of Americans, are diametrically opposed to those of the corporate and financial elite. In perhaps his most noteworthy comment, after the South Carolina primary, he explicitly rejected the notion that the wealthy don’t care about the condition of ordinary people.
Obama’s mantra of bringing everyone together may appeal to the naïve illusions of youth who are making their first political experiences, but Obama and the Wall Street bankers and media moguls who are promoting him know exactly what they are doing. Theirs is a conscious policy of blurring social and political differences and denying class divisions in a society more deeply divided along economic lines than ever before in its history.
Amazing find on Survival Acres - a letter from a citizen in South Africa, describing the energy crisis, and the continuing breakdown in the nation's physical infrastructure. From the comments section on the page, South Africa's neighbours won't be in a position to send any juice south, as they're reliant on that country's energy exports.
Approximately 80% of the world's Platinum, Palladium and Rhodium is mined in South Africa, not to mention gold.
Platinum is used in catalytic converters, catalysts in fuel cells, chemotherapy, thermometers, electrodes in electrolysis and electrochemical measurements, jewelry, silicone elastomers, glow plugs, crucibles for high temperature melting of glass, archival printmaking and watchmaking.
Palladium is used in dentistry, watch making, blood sugar test strips, aircraft spark plugs, surgical instruments, multilayer ceramic capacitors, electrodes in multi-layer ceramic capacitors, platings in consumer electronics, plating of electronic components, soldering materials, hydrogen purification, carbon monoxide detectors, hydrogenation and dehydrogenation reactions, petroleum cracking, catalytic converters, homogeneous catalysis, hydrogen storage, jewelry, photography and manuscript illumination.
Rhodium is used in optical instruments, jewelry, catalytic converters, catalytic carbonylation of methanol, silicone rubbers, chiral synthesis and mammography.
Whew.
Make of that what you will.
G7 approves IMF gold sales. Hm. Sounds like they want to milk the golden bull rather than slaughter it, but who knows?
Flash animators, pay attention! Here are some fantastic extensions for that awful program. I especially like "jump keyframe", which saves many a minute of tedium. Amazing that the boys at Macromedia/Adobe couldn't have added that feature as a default.
Nelson "you should have seen the one that got away" Mandela just got a New Statue. Good to see that Maddame Tussaud's is still in business.
Tourists are harassed in Dubai. Serves 'em right for going there in the first place!
...the FDIC has begun the “death watch” on the many banks which are currently drowning in their own red ink. The problem for the FDIC is that it has never supervised a bank failure which exceeded 175,000 accounts. So the impending financial tsunami is likely to be a crash-course in crisis management. Today some of the larger banks have more than 50 million depositors, which will make the FDIC's job nearly impossible.
Good luck.
GULP.
This week, Fitch Ratings announced that it will (probably) cut ratings on the 5 main bond insurers (Ambac, MBIA, FGIC, CIFG,SCA) “regardless of their capital levels”. This seemingly innocuous statement has roiled markets and put Wall Street in a panic. If the bond insurers lose their AAA rating (on an estimated $2.4 trillion of bonds) then the banks could lose another $70 billion in downgraded assets. That would increase their losses from the credit crunch--which began in August 2007---to $200 billion with no end in sight.
MORE:
According to Reuters: “Dozens of U.S. banks will fail in the next two years as losses from soured loans mount and regulators crack down on lenders that take too much risk, especially in real estate and construction," predicts Gerard Cassidy, RBC Capital Markets analyst. Apart from the growing losses in commercial and residential real estate, the banks are carrying over $150 billion of “unsyndidated” debt connected to leveraged buyout deals (LBOs) which are presently stuck in the mud. Like CDOs, there's no market for these sketchy transactions which require billions in cheap, easily available credit. They've just become another anvil dragging the banks under.
HAHHAHAHA! THAT'S NOT THE WORST PART!!!
Surprisingly, there's an even bigger threat to the financial system than these staggering losses at the banks. A default by one of the big bond insurers could trigger a meltdown in the credit-default swaps market, which could lead to the implosion of trillions of dollars in derivatives bets. [I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS VOLCANO TO BLOW SINCE 1996]. The inability of the under-capitalized monolines (bond insurers) to “make good” on their coverage is likely to set the first domino in motion by increasing the number of downgrades on bond issues and intensifying the credit-paralysis which already is spreading throughout the system.
MSN Money's financial analyst Jim Jubak summed it up like this:
"Actually, I'm worried not so much about the junk-bond market itself as the huge market for a derivative called a credit-default swap, or CDS, built on top of that junk-bond market. Credit-default swaps are a kind of insurance against default, arranged between two parties. One party, the seller, agrees to pay the face value of the policy in case of a default by a specific company. The buyer pays a premium, a fee, to the seller for that protection.
This has grown to be a huge market: The total value of all CDS contracts is something like $450 trillion..... Some studies have put the real credit risk at just 6% of the total, or about $27 trillion. That puts the CDS market at somewhere between two and six times the size of the U.S. economy.
COAL WILL SAVE US! CLEAN COAL: IT WILL BE SAFE, ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY, and NICE TO ENDANGERED FROGGIES IN THE AMAZON! G.E. WILL LEAD US TO A BRAVE NEW WORLD OF CARBON NEUTRAL COAL AND ALTHER JASKLEWF KJSF SLEW RWERLR S FOI43EWO EW``O O OIGFG OL DFODSDSF`
