I stumbled across this quote from Leon Trotsky. (I'm not a Trotskyite, yet anyway. Just thought it was fitting).
Today, not only in peasant homes but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside of the twentieth century the tenth or the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms. The Pope of Rome broadcasts over the radio about the miraculous transformation of water into wine. Movie stars go to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man’s genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance, and savagery! Despair has raised them to their feet, fascism has given them a banner. Everything that should have been eliminated from the national organism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of the normal development of society has now come gushing out from the throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism.
That guy should get his own blog.
Finally saw the new X-Files movie...the first since ~1999. Worth it just for this clip:
the basic facts are stark: the world has been discovering less and less oil for the last 40 years; for every barrel we discover we now consume three; output is already in terminal decline in 60 of the world’s 98 oil-producing countries; and hundreds of billions of dollars in upstream investment since the turn of the century have failed to stem declining production at many of the world’s biggest oil companies.
As a result, it is now widely agreed that oil production in the non-OPEC world will “peak” - reach its maximum possible level - within about two years, if indeed it has not already done so. This means that the huge profits being made by multinationals such as Shell or ExxonMobil may turn out to be their last hurrah. “The days of the international oil companies are coming to a glorious end”, said Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency last month. “Their reserves are declining and they will have difficulty accessing new ones.”
It’s a useful exercise to locate a city directory from the first half of the twentieth century and flip through the pages, noting the businesses that existed then but are nowhere to be found today. Those that meet actual needs, however unpopular they are as career tracks today, are likely to be more viable and more lucrative in a deindustrializing future than many professions fashionable today. The pundits and publicists of our economic system never seem to tire of explaining that tomorrow’s jobs will not be the same as today’s, and I suspect they may just be right; what they don’t expect, and I do, is that many of tomorrow’s hottest jobs will have more than a little resemblance to the careers of yesterday.
He also said reducing carbon footprints and becoming more active locally is good both for the psyche and for breaking the consumer cycle that fuels the rise in greenhouse gases, but concentrating only on those aspects is simply too little, too late.
"Because of the time pressure, doing what seems like practical work is essentially symbolic at this point. There's no way to make the math of that," he said. "It's an enormous challenge, but this is the only target that really and honestly will leave us with a livable planet."
I think we have to face up to the paradox that while the environmental community has become stronger and more sophisticated over the years, the environment is going downhill so fast that we’re facing a potential calamity down the road. All we have to do to leave a ruined world to children is just keep doing what we’re doing today—the same emissions of pollutants, the same destruction of ecosystems, same toxification of the environment—and we’ll ruin the planet in the latter part of this century.
Another study on electronic smog. More "he said-he said". I don't know.
Mobile phones, Wi-Fi systems, electric power lines and similar sources of "electrosmog" are disrupting nature on a massive scale, causing birds and bees to lose their bearings, fail to reproduce and die, a conference will be told this week.
I know there are a lot of good people who are Libertarians - but golly gee whillickers, some Libs are the dumbest, meanest creatures on two legs. Here's an account of one of them, arguing that it's better for the environment to eat tomatoes grown on the other side of the planet...
By the same logic, trees grown locally that are used to make clubs to kill children are worse for child welfare than ones grown by child slaves. Indeed, people can do terrible, environmentally irresponsible things locally that outweigh the benefits of having done them locally.
Nate Hagens wrote this excellent article about the state of the world - resource depletion, human psychology, over population, etc. Nate is clearly one of the good guys. Here is his video presentation at ASPO in Cork last year. What does he get from the Libertarians of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute? Comparisons to Hitler! Fortunately, people not suffering from mental illness appear on the comments section, and take the deranged poster to pieces.
Anyone nuts enough to think we can keep up this rate of consumption needs a reality pill. Here's a mind-warping photographic exhibit of everyday items, showing how many are used in a set period of time. (Don't forget to recycle!)
Over the next several months I will be converting this old school bus into a family camper and documenting each step of the conversion process here.
Now the project has begun! Herein you will find the details of each step of the process of my school bus conversion into a family camper. This is a low-budget project, wherever possible materials will be re-used and recycled.
Palin organized a campaign against Measure 2, and funded it with $400,000 of state money. For most of us, the idea of zooming around in a private airplane over snowbound wilderness just for the chance to spot a terrified wild dog and blow it apart with a high-powered rifle is insane. But there’s a whole culture out there in love with the idea. Palin did her part by playing the tired old Alaskan pioneer card, saying that lower-48 naysayers who dared to object to the idea of divebombing wildlife didn’t “understand rural Alaska.”
Vice presidential candidate Bush talked publicly about the potential for Carter pulling an "October Surprise" by freeing the hostages. But the evidence is now overwhelming that the Republicans also were contacting senior Iranians behind Carter's back to make sure that Carter failed in that effort.
Over the past 28 years, more than a score of witnesses - including senior Iranian officials, top French intelligence officers, U.S. and Israeli intelligence operatives, the Russian government and even Palestine leader Yasir Arafat - have confirmed the existence of a Republican initiative to interfere with Carter's efforts to free the hostages.
OK, this one comes with a health warning, but - wow: Biden and 911.
In his much-ballyhooed acceptance speech, Barack Obama declared that he would "finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11". If Obama wishes to be true to his promise, he could begin with his own running mate, Senator Joe Biden.
Biden was one of several top Washington officials who met with Lieutenant General Mahmoud Ahmad, the head of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) on and around September 11, 2001.
The ISI is a foreign branch of the CIA. "Al-Qaeda" is a covert operation that is managed by Anglo-American military-intelligence. Ahmad, the "9/11 money man" who delivered funds to alleged lead suicide hijacker Mohammed Atta prior to the attacks, met personally with Biden on September 13, 2001.
This case, detailed in Michel Chossodovsky’s Political Deception: Missing Link Behind 9/11, remains one of hundreds of smoking guns revealing direct US connections to 9/11, for which Biden has never provided a credible explanation.
At the same time that he was meeting with a man directly connected to the alleged hijackers, Biden was among the loudest and most bellicose voices joining Bush-Cheney for the bombing of Afghanistan, in retaliation for 9/11. Biden expressed an interest in "personally shooting Osama bin Laden". Not surprisingly, John McCain expressed the same post-9/11 bloodlust, in his infamous editorial, "War is hell. Let's get on with it."
Biden’s tune has remained unchanged, to this day. He wants to "finish the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban", and (in language that appears to be the new neoliberal "talking point") "take out the ones who actually attacked us on 9/11".
The Richland County, South Carolina Sheriff's Department (that's them above) just obtained an armored personnel carrier, complete with a belt-fed, .50-cal turreted machine gun. Sheriff Leon Lott has charmingly named the vehicle "The Peacemaker," and insists that using a caliber of ammunition that even the U.S. military is reluctant to use against human targets (it's generally reserved for use against armored vehicles) will "save lives."
Will someone please take away the DVD box sets of "24" from these clowns? They're going to cause an accident...
The daily said it had obtained documents from the United States and the European Parliament which "show that that plane flew several times to Guantanamo, Cuba, presumably to transfer terrorism suspects." It said the European Parliament was investigating the private Grumman Gulfstream II, registered by the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation, for suspected use in CIA "rendition" flights in which prisoners are covertly transferred to a third country or US-run detention centers.
Fitch analysts said they now expect roughly $29 billion in option ARMs to recast to higher monthly payments by the end of 2009, and an additional $67 billion to recast in 2010; of this, approximately $53 billion is attributed to early recasts.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is on the brink of bankruptcy and taxpayers may be forced to pony up hundreds of billions to bail it out—for the second time in a generation...
...FDIC reported last week that its assets stand at $45.2 billion, a puny 1.01% of the nation’s insured deposits, the lowest level since its bankruptcy twenty years ago.
This is not an opportune moment for FDIC to be short of cash: the bigger news from its report is that the list of “problem” banks has jumped to 117 from 90.
Exposure to bisphenol A, the hormonally active chemical used to make the linings of most tin cans and hard plastic bottles, may be able to alter brain function, impairing the ability to learn and remember, according to a new study by researchers from Canada and the United States.
The study, conducted on monkeys, whose brain development is similar to that of humans, raises the possibility that ailments such as depression, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia may be linked to the controversial chemical.
Almost all people living in industrialized societies are exposed to BPA as a result of trace amounts leaking from food and beverage containers.
Strong evidence that some of the violent "protestors" at the conventions are, in fact, police officers. Check out the matching boots. Ooh - pay no attention! It's all a crazy "conspiracy theory"! (The Devil is in the details).
Correction to photo below - it's from recent demonstrations in Quebec. Nonetheless, my point stands. Men who'll kick women to the ground will think nothing of staging acts of "violent resistance"
Here's an amazing clip of a cop trying to arrest a protestor, then being tackled, resulting in the captive's escape. The response of the cop is brutish: he pepper sprays everyone in the vicinity, then runs away like a coward. Human filth.
Oh wow. Richard Smitheman, a friend and former co-worker has sent me a cartoon that I did back around 1994. Richard, Gavin and I shared an office in a small animation studio in LA, which produced the cartoons for many of the Disney Interactive CD-Roms. Over time the three of us became a strange symbiotic hive-mind - a "folie-a-trois" of sorts.
Our lunch ritual was to go to the Glendale Galleria to ogle girls (OK, so I was a fucking mall-rat. DON'T LOOK AT ME!). Anyhow, here's a cartoon I did - me as Dracula, Richard as The Monster, and poor Gavin as Igor. Both Richard and Gavin have gone on to great careers - whereas I have chosen a life an as obscure internet scribe of doom. (Click on the image for larger link). Thanks Richard!
Just caught this. I don't have TV - if it weren't for youtube, I'd miss stuff like this. Watch McCreepy ogle Palin. I love the way he tries to pull his wedding ring off his finger! Paging Doctor Freud, paging Doctor Freud!
Thank Allah for Juan Cole. He cuts through the bullshit about Iraq being "pacified" with funny things like Cold-Hard-Facts.
In the Lebanon Civil War of 1975-1990, it is estimated that at least 100,000 persons were killed, 75,000 civilians and 25,000 military.
If we extrapolated out Iraq's August death rate for civilians over 15 years, that would be 64,000 or not far from the toll in Lebanon's war.
Let me repeat: The level of violence at this moment in Iraq is similar to what prevailed on average during one of the 20th century's worst ethnic civil wars! It is still higher than the casualty rates in Sri Lanka and Kashmir, two of the worst ongoing conflicts in the world.
Only in an Orwellian society could our press declare the relative decline in monthly death tolls in Iraq to constitute "calm" in an absolute sense.
And that is if the August levels are taken as the baseline and if the numbers continue to be that low. If we averaged deaths during the previous 12 months, the baseline would be much higher.
The current Iraq Civil War is one of the world's most deadly continuing conflicts, worse than Sri Lanka and Kashmir and on a par with the 15-year long Lebanon Civil War!
More fun links:
Oh man, this is a lovely photo - riot cops relaxing after a hard day's work, beating the shit out of women.
Look guys, I know I've said many disrespectful things about our glorious boys in black...but I do know that it's a hard, thankless job. I beat up a woman once, and let me tell you - IT WASN'T EASY! Slut scratched my face, the bitch. Fuck, that cow knew how to hit! She got in a couple of good slugs, but I finally got the better of her, and knocked out half her teeth. Know why? Cause I'M A MAN! Damn, I felt so BIG and STRONG when I finally beat that slag into a crying, bloody pulp - and I didn't have any FAG body armor! You go girls! Freedom isn't Free!
If you know the enemy and know yourself,
you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy,
for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself,
you will succumb in every battle.
This video may or may not be staged (though I fear it's real): Emotional Hippies. If it is genuine, all I can say is: less pot, more booze.
I know some of you guys think I'm kidding when I say I want McCain to win. I'm not kidding! Read this account of his future VP's recent history. Could you pick a better pair to run the Empire into the ground? 3 years of McCain, and 9 years of Palin, and it's "mission accomplished".
My nipples are tingling already!
Look, it's not as though I want to see America destroyed - I don't - that would be a catastrophe - I really like this country, and I really like Americans - well, some of them. All I want is for the American superpower to fall back to the rank currently enjoyed by the UK and France. It'll still have teeth; it'll still have loads of nukes (just like Russia). It will be in no danger of being invaded - get real! What it won't have is the ability to straddle the globe like an ass-raping colossus.
AND, the US will always have Hollywood.
Then, the healing will begin. Speed the day.
Oh crap - almost forgot - the global financial system still teeters on the brink of collapse!
"I looked at the calendar yesterday, and I couldn't believe my eyes—9/11 is almost here!" a rosy-cheeked Cheney said upon returning to the White House Sunday with two giant bags overflowing with gift-wrapped boxes and big red bows. "It's the most wonderful time of the year."...
Cheney, however, lamented the fact that he has seen a recent decline in the nation's 9/11 spirit.
"I don't know what's happened," Cheney said. "Less than seven years ago, 9/11 seemed like a huge event for every American. Back then, on Sept. 11 morning, everyone would dart downstairs at 8:46 a.m. sharp, shouting and screaming, and the ground outside would be blanketed in the most beautiful gray as far as the eye could see. I especially loved the streets of New York during this season—the lights, the sounds, people rushing every which way, the sidewalks so crowded you could barely move, the wide-eyed looks on the people's faces. The whole New York skyline was lit up like a Christmas tree."
Cheney then sighed happily, adding, "I wish every day were 9/11."
Young men who die suddenly after being arrested by the police may be victims of a new syndrome similar to one that kills some wild animals when they are captured, Spanish researchers said on Tuesday.
Manuel Martinez Selles of Madrid's Hospital Gregorio Maranon reached the conclusion after investigating 60 cases of sudden unexplained deaths in Spain following police detention.
In one third of the cases, death occurred at the point of arrest, while in the remainder death was within 24 hours, Selles told the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology.
The days of a rational empire are ending. McCain must win: finish the job!
Whether McCain wins or not, Sarah Palin is a harbinger of the future. The fact there was no one able to prevent McCain from choosing such an obviously inadequate imperial manager, and choosing her in such a bizarre, panicked way, indicates that—as during the decline of Rome, or the last years of Saddam’s regime—everyone sane has already been eliminated from the power structure. And thus we’re left with nothing but the whim of whoever’s clambered to the top of the Crazy Pole.
In Palin's case what she can do for a McCain administration is all too obvious. She can help turn Alaska into one giant oil field quickly and without any concern for the environment. She can redefine the term"fast track". She knows the state and can wheel and deal in the places that will most quickly open up protected areas for drilling.
One of my pals posted this elsewhere - I don't think she'll mind me using it:
We just got rid of umpteen million godawful Escalade-driving snotweasel tourists from New Jersey who want to see "quaint Vermont" over Labor Day weekend. They fling trash all over, cause traffic problems, insult the natives and generally act like we are here solely for their entertainment. Grrrrr.
Hub and I take eight or ten dozen eggs to a little local grocery every Friday. This Friday it was, of course, infested with tourists. Here's my exchange with one of them.
Her (Loudly, as though perhaps I can't understand English and volume might increase my understanding): Where'd you get those eggs?
Me: They're from my chickens.
Her: Chickens? Where do you have chickens?
Me (thinking, OK, be nice - patience is a virtue): They live in a coop next to my house.
Her: You mean you have real chickens? And they lay eggs?
Me: Well, the fake chickens don't generally work out so well.
Her: Well, can you eat the eggs? I mean, are they edible?
Me (Blinking at the stupidity of it all): Um, yes. We sell them here.
Her: Oh. Well I would never eat an egg from a real chicken.
Why do I take pleasure in seeing Amy Goodman arrested by brownshirts?
I don't think Amy's a bad person, and she certainly didn't deserve to be arrested...so why the schadenfreude? Matt Savinar wrote about Amy back in 2006. This sums it up:
In my opinion, Goodman's niche within the petroleum-banking matrix is to keep the 1%-5% of the population that considers themselves "dissidents" invested within what Jeffery Brown calls the "iron triangle" formed by the media, housing, and banking industries.
Now don't get me wrong, I'd prefer 30 minutes of Amy Goodman over 30 minutes of Rush Limbaugh any day of the week but I'm not a fool. Limbaugh's niche is to keep a certain (perhaps) 25%-to-33% of the population who identify themselves as "conservative" squarely trapped within the iron triangle. The Al Frankens and Randi Rhodes of the world exist to keep the 25-to-33% of the population who identify themselves as "liberal" trapped within the iron triangle. Goodman exists to keep the 2.5-3.3% of the population who identify themselves as "radicals" or "dissidents" within the iron triangle.
I've been to the suburban homes of people who listen to Limbaugh, Franken, and Goodman respectively. To be quite frank, somebody from Mars would not be able to distinguish the listener of one show from the listener of another. They all had the following:
1. Moderate to severe weight problem(s)
2. Giant mortgages on overbubbled homes
3. Two or more cars in the garage/driveway
4. Jobs they either hated or were indifferent too
5. Neighbors they did not know
6. Multiple credit cards they were carrying balances on
The only differences were superficial. The Goodman listener might have a hybrid with a Che Guevara bumper sticker where the the Limbaugh listener has an SUV with a "W" sticker but, in the end, their respective lifestyles were far more similar than different. They're just located in within different corners and/or opposite sides of the "iron triangle."
I've never seen or heard anything on DN [Democracy Now - Goodman's radio show] that would have helped the listener/viewer deal with numbers one-through-six listed above. The best I could tell, these things would vaguely be solved by getting some slightly greened-up Democrats into office.
Not that being arrested by filth will open her eyes to the full scope of the neo-fascist horror show now unfolding. Nope; this will merely confer "Martyr of Democracy" status on her, and the show rolls on to the next sorry chapter. Be sure to invest your money in a 6 month CD, with a guaranteed interest rate of 3%...
Israeli Professor Shlomo Sand has written a fascinating work on Jewish Identity. This is a mind-blowing read - but this is the ultimate irony:
Though most contemporary Jews are utterly convinced that their ancestors are the Biblical Israelites who happened to be exiled brutally by the Romans, truth must be said. Contemporary Jews have nothing to do with ancient Israelites, who have never been sent to exile because such an expulsion has never taken place. The Roman Exile is just another Jewish myth.
“I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land” says Sand in an Haaretz interview [11], “but to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century. From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled.”
Indeed, in the light of Sand’s simple insight, the idea of Jewish exile is amusing. The thought of Roman Imperial navy was working 24/7 schlepping Moishe’le and Yanka’le to Cordova and Toledo may help Jews to feel important as well as schleppable, but common sense would suggest that the Roman armada had far more important things to do.
However, far more interesting is the logical outcome: If the people of Israel were not expelled, then the real descendants of the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah must be the Palestinians.
“No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years” says Sand. [12] “But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendents. The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-9], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don’t leave until they are expelled. Even Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, ‘the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.’”...
...One may wonder, if the Palestinians are the real Jews, who are those who insist upon calling themselves Jews?
Sand’s answer is rather simple, yet it makes a lot of sense. “The people did not spread, but the Jewish religion spread. Judaism was a converting religion. Contrary to popular opinion, in early Judaism there was a great thirst to convert others.”
I regard myself as Irish, but I don't kid myself that it means much. If I go back 2 or 3 generations, strange names appear in the family tree - Robinson (English) and Ebbert - a corruption of a Dutch/North German name. That's just going back to my Grandparents. People get around, and shag a lot. No need to have Holy War or a Holocaust about it.
Rush Limbaugh - Hypocrite! Ah, maybe the drugs fried his memory.
I've been churning through 570 pages of shorpy.com, a spectacular photo archive. Here are some of my favorite images (click photos for link):
Evelyn Nesbit: 1901
Born too early, or too late: the bane of my life. Gibson girls - so much more attractive than 21st century ladies.
Should I get a tramp stamp tattoo over my ass crack?
Please don't...Think of the great-great-grand-children.
Flower Lady: c. 1902
If we must return to a new Feudal Age where the lower caste regain their status as peasants, then surely our Overlords can do better than Paris Hilton?
See how far we've fallen in only 106 years.
Lady Libertine: 1902
Ah, a smoke and a drink. Well, I'll take the beverage, thanks, toots! Make mine a laudanum.
Detroit Electric: 1921
And then, you could drive your Gibson Girl around the early 20th century in your Electric Car.
OK, so there weren't Gibson Girls in 1921. Stop pissing on my time-travel fantasy, you schumcks.
Beach Policeman: 1922
On the one hand, Officer Perv is a spoilsport.
On the other hand, he is upholding standards of decency (and trying to prevent the Age of Britney). So cut him some slack.
Syne of Ye Krazy Kat: 1921
When the wormhole sucks me into the past, I'll be propping up the bar at the "Krazy Kat" speakeasy. Is it asking too much for a time machine?
All soap abandon: 1921
Come on Tardis...
Throck and the Kats: 1921
Bohemians!!! More from "Krazy Kat".
Avant-Garden: 1921
The beautiful people.
Branch Office: 1921
Hm. A tree-house for prohibition era drinkers. The stairs down might present a challenge at night's end...
Krazy Kat Klub: 1921
Apparently, "Krazy Kat" is a Gay Bar now. Go figure.
Titanic Survivors: 1912
The little tyke on the right holding the stuffed cat is very cute. In another photo in this series, some tool had given him a little metal cruise ship to hold, instead of the cat. Sir, the boy's Dad just drowned. Show some nous.
Blacksmith: c. 1900
Now that's a Man of Iron.
Migrant Daughter: 1936
Why is it that the poorest people during the Depression had so much more dignity than most affluent folks today?
535-07-5248 and Wife
This guy should have been in Hollywood (the wife too). The tattoo on his arm is his social security number. Check the comments below the photo - his name, and information was dug up by shorpyites.
On the Road: 1939
Another victim of the Depression.
Maybe, to answer my previous question, the reason why these people have more dignity is because they hadn't yet been trained to think of themselves as mere "consumers" - gaping maws to be stuffed with junk.
Harry McShane: 1908
The dark side of unregulated capitalism: child labor.
Harry McShane, Cincinnati. 16 years of age... Had his left arm pulled off near shoulder, and right leg broken through kneecap by being caught on belt of a machine in Spring Works factory in May 1908...No attention was paid by employers to the boy either at hospital or home according to statement of boy's father. No compensation.
Tiny Ferris: 1914
Seven years old? GET A JOB, you HIPPY.
Our society prolongs childhood permanently - producing man-children and princesses, whereas in the early 20th century, childhood practically non-existant. Both extremes are dehumanising. I wonder if we'll ever figure out a happy middle?
Breaker Boys: 1911
To the brainwashed victims of the modern American "educational" system:
Thank your stars that you were born AFTER the Unions had fought bloody battles to save children from a life like this. Now return to your happy consumer pod, and rattle off Pavlovian pablum about the evils of socialism.
Breaker Boys: 1911
A wider shot of these victims of "Free Market" capitalism.
The "Invisible Hand" of the market at work again, eh, Adam Smith?
What's the market price of a crushed soul?
Ewen Breaker: 1911
Just another day in Hell.
Luckily, this kind of human misery doesn't happen in the US anymore.
We outsourced it to Asia.
Happy motoring!
The nearest thing you'll find to a Time Machine is Shorpy.com - a photo blog that - I warn you - will suck you in. The images range from the earliest Daguerrotypes to the 1970s. The comments that follow the images are often very insightful. Some posters even look up census data to try to find out what happened to the subjects! These pictures also made me realise that Hollywood hasn't done a very good job of portraying the 1920s in particular.
On the same theme, photos of old soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary war!
In the other Georgia, another bank fail. Friday is becoming known as "FDIC Friday". If you hear your bank's in trouble, don't leave it until the weekend to get your cash, is my advice.
Wa-a??? Kim Jung-Il died in 2003.This would be tinfoil-hat territory, but for the credible person making the claim. I report, YOU decide!
If true, the implications are potentially vast. Among them: former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s summit partner during one or both of his landmark visits to Pyongyang in 2002 and 2004 was not Kim himself but a dummy—the stand-in Shigemura claims has been fooling the world for at least five years.
Just when you think the Brits have plumbed the depths of awful politicos, they reach down and scrape another human abortion from the bottom of the political barrel. Up this time from the fetid depths, hanging from a stick like the afterbirth of a cow, dangles David Miliband - the man who would be the next Prime Minister (God save England). This preening martinet struts onto the Ukrainian stage, and proceeds to - wait for it - threaten Russia!
Well David, seeing as how North Sea oil production is falling off a cliff, and the UK gets ever increasing amounts of its energy from Russia, I'd think twice before puffing up your chest and pretending to be Winston Churchill. If I were you, I'd pray for a mild winter - and learn how to say "I'm sorry" in Russian - in case PLAN-A fails...
NOTE: "David Miliband" makes nice anagrams. I like: BAD INVALID DIM
At the beginning of the year, 90 banks were on the FDIC watch list. There are now 117, FDIC chairwoman Sheila C. Bair announced at a news conference this afternoon. That is the highest number in five years, but some analysts expect the list to grow even more in coming months.
"I think there's going to be a steady drip, drip, drip of bad news," said Sean Ryan, a banking analyst with Sterne Agee. "We've only seen the very tip of the iceberg in terms of bank failures."
Even though only nine banks have failed so far this year, Ryan expects that to quickly climb with more than 100 failures before the end of 2009.
"I fully expect the FDIC insurance fund to be depleted," Ryan added. "The FDIC is going to be one of what is going to be an increasing string of government bailouts."
Thanks Uncle Duke for the following clip (ye filthy bastard!):
Yesterday I posted about the mysterious black helicopters flying over Portland. We've got a discussion thread going about it at the latoc forum. (I'm a mod there - you'll see me posting as "dermot"). This is legit, and has been verified by mulitiple sources. FYI - Bush Snr. hates this city, and has described it as "Little Beirut". It's one of the most left-wing cities in North America...which lead me to describe these reckless fly-overs as "Operation Hippie Mindfuck".
NOTE: I think this is just the usual 24/7 US Govt mindfuck crapulence - however, one of the new posters found something quite sinister. A Harvard Stanford study on the effects of a 10 kiloton terrorist bomb on an American city. The sinister thing is that up to page 8 the pdf shows the effects on Washington DC, but on page 9, the map strangely becomes Portland, Oregon (and IS NOT NAMED AS SUCH). Here it is, as it appears:
I've marked my approximate location with the X...two blocks North of Alberta, about 5 blocks West of 33rd. What to make of this? Like I said, most likely it's a mind-fuck. In the event of this lovely city disappearing in a flash of light, I thought I'd be wise to post this as a posthumous "Fuck you GWB".
Sometimes us animators find interesting snips of information. "My Medicated Cartoon Life" has a blast from the past from 2001:
Actually, it was in Germany last time I was there too - in 2001, just after the Trade Tower attack. The only radio station in English I could pick up was one for a local US Army base. They had a news story saying that the US Government had found definitive proof that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attack. I came home wondering why nobody at home seemed to be reporting this - the Army radio seemed so sure. They weren't reporting it as speculation. It was fact.
It was only years later that I realised the Army radio station was priming their troops for an attack as far back as then. They had always just been waiting for their excuse to put the invasion in motion. And they found it.
Quite a title, eh? “The Pain Game.” That really says it all. The author is supposedly talking about how a Georgian insurgency could “pain” the Russian army in this Aug. 14, 2008, piece, but he may as well be cheering the unimaginable pain that such a course would inflict on the Georgian population. It’s that childish callousness that makes this such a classic of Neocon prognostication: “Why don’t you Georgians start a guerrilla war against the Russians? It’d be fun!” Fun, that is, for Koehl, in his living room. Koehl’s advice to the Georgians is almost unbelievable in its stupidity. Like a typical Tom Clancy fan, he reduces the problem to hardware, starting with a long, loving list of the armored vehicles the Russians are using, followed by a list of U.S. weapons that will supposedly neutralize these vehicles. Then, getting really excited, he fantasizes in true Clancy style about how a few cool new weapons can force Russia out...
...What’s most dismally typical of Neocon thinking here is the mad nonchalance with which this suburban hobbyist urges Georgia to let itself in for the sort of slaughter that has been going on in Chechnya for years. The Chechens have lost a substantial part of their total population in a losing insurgency. And the Russians didn’t defeat the Chechens by tinkering with this or that weapons system; they went in and kidnapped, tortured and killed all the young males they even suspected of being insurgents, just like we’re doing in Iraq. That’s how this kind of ugly war is fought. So prescribing guerrilla warfare means telling the Georgians to start a process that will lead to the death of most of their families. That’s what insurgency means.
I strongly suspect that Dolan is, in fact "Gary Brecher" - that being an alias. Brecher's written identical critiques of Clancy and the hardware obsessed maroons of the far right many times.
Here's an excellent article on "The Gospel of Consumption" - it argues for a 6 hour work day/30 hour work week. It's all worth reading, but here's a nice clip:
...in 2004, one of the leading legal theorists in the United States, federal judge Richard Posner, declared that “representative democracy . . . involves a division between rulers and ruled,” with the former being “a governing class,” and the rest of us exercising a form of “consumer sovereignty” in the political sphere with “the power not to buy a particular product, a power to choose though not to create.”
...According to this elite view, the people are too unstable and ignorant for self-rule. “Commoners,” who are viewed as factors of production at work and as consumers at home, must adhere to their proper roles in order to maintain social stability. Posner, for example, disparaged a proposal for a national day of deliberation as “a small but not trivial reduction in the amount of productive work.” Thus he appears to be an ideological descendant of the business leader who warned that relaxing the imperative for “more work and better work” breeds “radicalism.”
It's not as though I wake up and think: "I'm going to find the most depressing stuff online today." Sometimes, it just happens that way. Anyway, doom-alert ahoy:
Goodchild: Transition Silliness. A critique of ecovillages and "transition towns" as realistic coping mechanisms for Energy Descent. Discussion here.
Goodchild: Sorry, no gas. Very long, very grim prognosis for The World.
J.M. Greer: The tempo of change. A more positive view of collapse - though Greer still expects a new Dark Age a hundred years from now. In the doomerverse, he's regarded as one of the optimists!
Britain's bunkers are rusting into ruins. Ironic, for a country that's so paranoid about the threat of terrorism that it's turning itself into an Orwellian police state.
Freaky: Intel's wireless electrical system. Trasmitting electricity through the ether? Very spooky. I'm off to my Faraday cage, to make a tinfoil hat...
