"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
Below, a photo of Israelis watching the fighting in Gaza - drinking Coke, and having a good time. Clearly their lives are sufficiently safe that they can treat war massacres as entertainment:
And below, the consequences of said entertainment on the innocent:
Since many people have short memories, Robert Fisk gives us a history lesson:
Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?
No Robert, we haven't forgotten. We don't care. We are Monsters.
GWB...asserted that America was addicted to oil, but he failed to take the idea a step further and say that our vaunted "way-of-life" could no longer be taken for granted. If anything, he endorsed the popular idea that a suburban lifestyle and WalMart consumerism was a Jesus-driven entitlement, and his circle in governance did everything possible to replace the industrial economy with an economy based on suburban land development and credit card spending -- which was enabled by fantastic experiments in finance that proved to be nothing more than an impenetrable web of swindles.
Hidden in plain view on the internet are people who actually know what they're talking about. One such is Gail E. Tverberg of theoildrum.com. She has made her forecast for 2009. First, let's look back 12 months ago, and read her 2008 foreast:
Many monoline bond insurers will be downgraded in 2008, and some may fail.
More and more people influential in financial markets will begin to recognize peak oil.
Long term loans, including those for energy companies, are likely to become less available as awareness of peak oil rises.
There is likely to be a serious recession in 2008, deepening as the year goes on.
At least several large banks will fail.
The amount of debt available to consumers is likely to decline.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may need government assistance.
A new class of homes -- those "never to be sold" -- will emerge.
Politicians will continue to make attempts to help homeowners, and perhaps other types of borrowers.
The amount of structured (sliced and diced) debt issued is likely to drop to close to zero.
Besides banks, many other players in financial markets are likely to find themselves in financial difficulty in 2008.
The value of the dollar will fall relative to some currencies, causing the relative price of oil to rise.
The stock market probably will decline during 2008.
Prices are likely to rise in 2008 for food and energy products. Prices may decline for homes and non-essential goods and services.
There is a chance that some type of discontinuity will make financial conditions suddenly take a turn for the worse.
As many as a million American jobs could be lost every month by next spring as businesses struggle to raise capital in financial markets consumed by fear, according to a new analysis.
November was the worst month in the US labour market since the oil crisis of 1974, as more than 500,000 US workers were laid off, according to official figures released on Friday.
But Graham Turner, of consultancy GFC Economics, says the rising cost of corporate debt is now flashing a red warning signal that far worse is to come over the next few months and job losses are heading for levels last seen in the 1930s Great Depression.
Fresh sources of oil equivalent to the output of four Saudi Arabias will have to be found simply to maintain present levels of supply by 2030, one of the world's leading energy experts has said.
Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the developed world's energy watchdog, told The Times that the depletion of existing oilfields meant that vast new investments would be required to satisfy the demand for oil.
"The past eight years of imperial overstretch, hubris and domestic and international abuse of power on the part of the Bush administration has left the US materially weakened financially, economically, politically and morally," he said. "Even the most hard-nosed, Guantanamo Bay-indifferent potential foreign investor in the US must recognise that its financial system has collapsed."
He said investors would, rightly, suspect that the US would have to generate major inflation to whittle away its debt and this dollar collapse means that the US has less leeway for major spending plans than politicians realise.
Yesterday Russia stopped gas supplies through Ukraine to Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, Turkey, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia. The government of Slovakia declared a national emergency; Austria and Italy reported falls of 90 per cent; France said Russian supplies had tailed off 70 per cent, and Germany also reported a decline although did not quantify it.
The experts said the levels found were low under the maximum residue levels allowed for fruit, but they were ‘very high’ and ‘up to 300 times’ the figure permitted for bottled or tap water.
The chemicals detected included carbendazim, thiabendazole, imazalil, prochloraz, malathion and iprodione. They are mainly applied to fruit after harvest to stop it developing fungal infections and rotting.
A total of 19 products were bought in the UK, all made by Coca-Cola.
Comic genius Chris Morris is making a movie about suicide bombers.
"Even those who have trained and fought jihad report the frequency of farce," she said. "At training camps, young jihadis argue about honey, cry for their mums, shoot each other's feet off, chase snakes and get thrown out for smoking. A minute into his martyrdom video, a would-be bomber looks puzzled and says 'what was the question again?' On Millennium eve, five jihadis set out to ram a US warship. They slipped their boat into the water and carefully stacked it with explosives. It sank."
Ms Steed said terrorist cells share the same group dynamics as stag parties and five-a-side football teams. "There is conflict, friendship, misunderstanding and rivalry," she said. "Terrorism is about ideology, but it's also about berks.
Remember the wall that environmentalists (like the 1972 "Limits to Growth" authors) have long been saying that industrial society would eventually hit? Permit me to make the formal introduction: Industrial society, meet wall; wall, meet industrial society.
It's understandably taking a while for the recognition to seep in. We are not accustomed to seeing every indicator of economic well-being, in virtually every country in the world, slam into reverse over the course of a few short months. I still have random conversations with businesspeople and bankers who say we've hit bottom and recovery is at hand; in their view, this is just another business cycle. I see things a bit differently: to my eyes the world situation looks like a slow-motion film of a train wreck, and the sheet metal at the front of the locomotive has only just begun to crumple.
German billionaire Adolf Merckle committed suicide by throwing himself under a train, “broken” as his business empire crumbled under a growing burden of debt, his family said.
The 74 year-old businessman was hit yesterday evening near his hometown of Blaubeuren, 44 miles southeast of Stuttgart, a police officer said in an interview. His body was found on the tracks at around 7:30 p.m. about 300 yards from his home and a suicide note had also been found.
Russia’s natural gas dispute with Ukraine worsened, shutting off fuel shipments to Europe for the first time in three years and driving energy prices higher.
Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for cuts as supplies from OAO Gazprom through Ukraine plummeted, deliveries to the Balkans halted and Slovakia declared an emergency. The spat over prices, transit tariffs and debt caused U.K. gas to jump as much as 27 percent and came amid freezing temperatures across Europe.
An airline passenger forced to cover his T-shirt because it displayed Arabic script has been awarded 240,000 dollars in compensation, campaigners said Monday.
Raed Jarrar received the pay out on Friday from two US Transportation Security Authority officials and from JetBlue Airways following the August 2006 incident at New York's JFK Airport, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced...
...He was told other passengers felt uncomfortable because an Arabic-inscribed T-shirt in an airport was like "wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, I am a robber,'" the ACLU said.
Jarrar eventually agreed to cover his shirt with another provided by JetBlue. He was allowed aboard but his seat was changed from the front to the back of the aircraft.
2008 was a crazy year. Batshit insane, in fact. It was both enjoyable and terrifying. 2009 will be 2008 on steroids. Buckle up!
Tonight has a beautiful celestial show of planets. If you have a low horizon, you may even be able to see Mercury - a planet I've only seen once, as it's usually so close to the sun.
2. AIG (NYSE:AIG - News) "could have huge gains in the second quarter." -- Bijan Moazami, analyst, Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, May 9, 2008
AIG wound up losing $5 billion in that quarter and $25 billion in the next. It was taken over in September by the U.S. government, which will spend or lend $150 billion to keep it afloat.
3. "I think this is a case where Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE - News) and Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM - News) are fundamentally sound. They're not in danger of going under I think they are in good shape going forward." -- Barney Frank (D-Mass.), House Financial Services Committee chairman, July 14, 2008
Two months later, the government forced the mortgage giants into conservatorships and pledged to invest up to $100 billion in each.
They should have found a place for that Creationist clown Ben Stein, who has ridiculed the idea that we were in recession until - was it last week?
In the early months of next year, when the official data are published, the United States will run a serious risk of insolvency. This would involve, in the first place, a valuation crisis for the dollar. After this, the United States could face a social crisis like that in Argentina in 2001. A crisis in U.S. public debt would likely have a severe impact on the Asian countries that are the main exporters to the United States, China first among them. Chinese monetary authorities, thanks to a steeply undervalued artificial exchange rate, by about 55%, have limited imports (including food) and have achieved an export surplus. This has allowed them to accumulate a large stockpile of dollar reserves. In a currency crisis, China risks losing much of the value of its accumulated currency reserves. At the same time, pressure on imports (wheat, other grains, and meat) have led to inflation in the prices of food, the most important expenditure for more than 900 million Chinese.
Why some people have all the luck. It's not some BS like "The Law of Attraction" - more to do with maintaining a relaxed state, an open mind, and the avoidance of habitual behaviour.
After falling every month since January 2007, the closely watched S&P/Case Shiller index of property prices declined 2.2% in October, leaving them 18% down on a year earlier. Six cities - Charlotte, Washington, Minneapolis, Tampa, Detroit and Atlanta - saw record monthly falls, while the biggest annual declines were in Phoenix and Las Vegas, where prices fell by a third.
David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at Standard & Poor's, said: "The bear market continues; home prices are back to their March 2004 levels."
According to Spanish paper El Mundo, this delightful Madrid scene was spotted last Tuesday by sharp-eyed bloggers, who wasted no time in broadcasting it to the world. Within 12 hours, Google responded by scrubbing the image altogether...
Here is the top 10 list of most irresponsible reasons for abandoning a dog:
"My dog doesn't match the sofa."
"The dog looks evil and has different coloured eyes, just like David Bowie."
"My black dog doesn't match new white carpet, can we swap him for a white dog?"
"My current dog is too old, can we swap for a puppy or younger model?"
"My dog ate the Christmas turkey cooling on the worktop."
"My pet guinea pig got worried with a dog in the house."
"The dog opened all the presents on Christmas Eve."
An owner who accidentally knelt in dog mess while cleaning it up brought the dog in the very next day.
A puppy bought as a present for elderly couple with dementia.
The negative image of Staffordshire Bull Terriers because of their perceived resemblance to Pit Bull-style dogs.
Billie Watts said she was tempted but couldn’t bring herself to keep $97,000 she said she found in a Cracker Barrel restroom. The 75-year-old Murfreesboro woman told The Daily News Journal that she discovered the money inside a tapestry bag hanging from a hook on a stall door last Thursday...
A woman called about 15 minutes later and verified she was the owner by identifying pictures left in the bag. Watts returned the bag to the owner, whom she described as an elderly woman, but said she does not have the woman’s last name or phone number.
Watts said the woman told her that the money came from selling her home and her belongings and that she was going to start a new life in Florida with her son. Watts said the woman offered to pay her $1,000, but Watts refused it.
A manager of the Cracker Barrel restaurant, Bill Shupp, said no employees actually saw the money or the elderly owner.
The box of crackers Debra Rogoff bought from the grocery store had some crackerjack in it — an envelope stuffed with $10,000.
Yet the Irvine woman was more curious than ecstatic about her daughter's find. After all, who would leave money in such a place?
"We just thought, 'This is someone's money,'" she said. "We would never feel good about spending it."
Rather than go on a shopping spree, the family called police and was initially told the money could be part of a drug drop.
Police later heard from store managers at Whole Foods in Tustin that an elderly woman had come in a few days earlier, hysterical because she had mistakenly returned a box of crackers with her life savings inside. In a mix-up the store restocked the box rather than composting it.
The Lake Forest woman, whose identity was not released, had lost faith in her bank and decided the box would be a safer place for the money.
Luckily for her, the box of Annie's Sour Cream and Onion Cheddar Bunny crackers were bought by the Rogoffs, who discovered the crisp $100 bills in an unmarked white envelope on Oct. 10.
Colour me cynical, but these glurgy tales reek to high heaven. Both identical in form, with a simpleton's morality mixed in. Whether these events were fiction or fact, you can see how they function as parables of consumerism: the distrust of banks leads to the loss of one's life's savings, and the loser is saved through the honesty of a total stranger - who in each case receives no reward - other than treasure in Heaven, presumably.
Lesson 1: Don't trust the Portland bus system. A FIFTY MINUTE wait caused me to miss the train to LA. Trip now occurs tomorrow. The snow is no excuse, jerks.
Lesson 2: When shivering at a bus stop in -3C (with a vicious wind chill making it feel 20 degrees colder), it's more important to have big thick gloves than a hat...at least if you're blessed with a big fat head like yours truly. Who wants to live without fingers?
Lesson 3: Never buy a product containing "Sucralose", aka "Splenda", unless you enjoy the effect of burning urine. Personally, I prefer my foods to NOT cause a searing pain in my Urethera (and who knows what else at the cellular level)...but your mileage may vary.
McCain/Palin campaign lost blackberries loaded with vital data. Ah, it's that kind of attention to detail and technical know-how that America needed - to deliver the killing blow to the Empire. Shame on you Obama voters. You really blew it.
The crucial element in the transformation underway will be emotion. The American experience for a few generations has produced an adult population with very childish instincts, increasingly worse each decade. For instance, the desperate power fantasies among the younger tattooed lumpenproles -- those with next-to-zero real economic power -- suggest a certain unappetizing playing-out of resource competition when the supply of Cheez Doodles and Pepsi starts to dwindle. But even the heretofore gainfully employed middle classes are pretty lost in fantasies at least of comfort an convenience. For years now, I have wondered how their sense of grievance and resentment will be expressed when the supermarket shelves run bare and the cardboard signs get taped over the local gas pump and the cable TV gets cut off for non-payment. You wonder, to put it bluntly, how far gone we really are.
Snowing in Portland today. Pretty. To Amtrak at 2.30 for another 20 hour train ride to San Jose, arrive tomorrow. Leave San Jose Tuesday morning, 10 hours to LA. Arrive ~9pm Tuesday evening at Union Station. Stay will be ~3 weeks. Updates will be erratic!
Oh, almost forgot: if you do any shopping via amazon, it'd be nice if you did it via the links to the top left of this page. Click on those and shop - and I'll get thrown a few crusty shekels. No extra cost or surcharge. Best not to go crazy this year, but if you're going to buy a copy of "How to survive 2009 on a budget" and "Help! We're Doomed!", then that's the way to do it.
Regarding Gold...Buyer beware - anything could happen at this point. The situation is eery now. Gold is 2 or $300 off its previous high, yet is almost impossible to buy. Hmm.
Hysterical: OUTRAGE! over 'chav' nativity play. For readers unfamiliar with UK terminology, "Chavs" are the English equivalent of Six-fingered Rednecks - the lowest form of human pondscum in the British class system. Scroll down the article for the entire script!
Pupil three: She's like 'Ooo ya looking at?' Gabriel just goes 'You got one up the duff, you have.' Mary's totally gobsmacked.
Pupil two: Innit?
Pupil one: She gives it to him large 'Stop dissin' me yeah? I ain't no Kappa-slapper. I never bin wiv no one!'
Pupil two: Yeah right! Bet she was a right goer.
Pupil three: Well, see the thing is she hadn't bin wiv no-one. Honest! So Mary goes and sees her cousing Liz, who's six months gone herself. Liz is largin' it. She's filled with spirits, Bacardi breezers an' that. She's like 'Orright, Mary. I can feel me bay-bee in me tummy and I reckon I'm well blessed.
Pupil two: Think of all the extra benefits an' that that they are gonna get. Mary goes 'Yeah, s'pose you're right.
Two female employees of the Anderson Kentucky Fried Chicken have been fired for bathing in a deep sink used to clean dishes, while a third earlier quit her job.
One of the young women posted photos on MySpace.com of the trio posing in underwear and swimwear, KCRA-TV reported.
The photos were filed under a gallery called "KFC moments." Captions included "haha KFC showers!" and "haha we turned on the jets."
Never appeal to a mans better nature. He may not have one. Invoking his self interest gives you more leverage."
Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homosapiens are the only animal that voluntarily does this to themselves.
Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.
Belief gets in the way of learning.
I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
In a society in which it is a moral offense to be different from your neighbor your only escape is never to let them find out.
Man rarely, if ever, manages to dream up a God superior to themselves. Most Gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion- in the long run these are the only people who count...
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche.
The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.
Global oil demand hasn't dropped since 1983 when the world's developed economies were struggling on the tail end of a recession. This time around, it's not just the old, big economies that are struggling. China, which has experienced the greatest boom in history, appears to be in economic trouble.
In a separate report, the World Bank said the global economy was teetering on the brink of recession. One sign of the times: here in California, home to Web 2.0, green tech and Silicon Valley, the state's tax revenues came in nearly 20 percent below expectations this month.
“Without giving specific names, most of the significant American banks, the larger banks, are bankrupt, totally bankrupt,” said Rogers, who is now a private investor.
This may be a repost, but Surviving Iceland is a ringside seat in Economic Collapse. Of course, Iceland is racially and culturally homogenous (relatively), and is a fairly peaceful place - so they do have advantages in the current crisis. The food supply chain though ... shudder!
Always keep in mind the basic proposition of peak oil that the world is still burning oil at the rate of 31 billion barrels a year. Seventy five million barrels a day are coming from currently producing fields that with each passing year will produce anywhere from 4 to 8 percent less oil. It is simple arithmetic to show that with current production declining, fewer new oil producing projects under construction, and major declines in demand a dubious proposition, shortages are in the offing. Thanks to the worsening economic situation the effects of declining oil production - much higher prices and shortages - look to be even closer and more severe than before the financial crisis emerged. Falling prices at the gas pumps are only a temporary distraction: the real troubles are getting closer all the time.
If the price of oil and other commodities continues to drop, we are likely to see more and more energy companies going bankrupt. Some of these may be large--we have heard rumors about the financial problems of Glencore, a large privately owned international trading company. The economies of Texas and Louisiana are likely to take major hits, as will Russia and some Middle Eastern countries. Even with the low energy prices, many of the problems the US has are likely to continue (too few houses and cars being built to "pump up" the economy, declining prices on homes and commercial property, and many workers laid off).
The amount of debt we have outstanding is extremely high. The debt shown in Figure 3 is not really all of the obligations of the US public and US government, since it excludes things like Social Security and Medicare liabilities. According to one web site, the amount of debt Americans have outstanding is $53 trillion, plus unfunded governmental promises (including Social Security and Medicare) of $64 trillion, and plus trillions of dollars of related to derivatives. Not counting the derivatives, this amounts to $386,091 per person. I don't know whether these numbers are precisely correct, but it is clear that with limited resources and a declining economy, there is no way that amounts similar to these amounts are going to be paid in full.
Dollar collapsing. Oil rising slowly in the first three months, after an OPEC production cut to try and hide Peak a little longer. Some temporary and illusory signs of a "maybe-sorta" recovery and bottom. Bailouts continuing. (Some like Citi might cry wolf again.) Bailout sending. Bigger banks failing. One of the big three failing (GM or Chrysler) plus maybe one more in Chapter 11. Foreclosures skyrocketing. Layoffs exploding. Then somewhere around June or July, an oil spike up past $100.bbl. That should pretty much finish things off. It's possible that by the end of 2009 the Government of the United States of America will declare itself insolvent.
Remember also that the Federal Reserve is a consortium of privately-owned banks and that it too can fail... It can probably declare bankruptcy which -- carried to its fullest extreme -- would mean that there would be no effective legal tender "for all debts public and private."
The new figures have prompted similar observations [of climate change denial] all over the web. Until now, the "sceptics" have assured us that you can't believe the temperature readings at all; that the scientists at the Met Office, who produced the latest figures, are all liars; and that even if it were true that temperatures have risen, it doesn't mean anything. Now the temperature record - though only for 2008 - can suddenly be trusted, and the widest possible inferences be drawn from the latest figures, though not, of course, from the records of the preceding century. This is madness.
Scrambled up in these comment threads are the memes planted in the public mind by the professional deniers employed by fossil fuel companies. On the Guardian's forums, you'll find endless claims that the hockeystick graph of global temperatures has been debunked; that sunspots are largely responsible for current temperature changes; that the world's glaciers are advancing; that global warming theory depends entirely on computer models; that most climate scientists in the 1970s were predicting a new ice age. None of this is true, but it doesn't matter. The professional deniers are paid not to win the argument but to cause as much confusion and delay as possible. To judge by the Comment threads, they have succeeded magnificently.
A Harvard professor of medical sociology has agreeably warned that increasing hysteria over nut allergies in kids bears the hallmarks of mass psychogenic illness (MPI) - described as "a social network phenomenon involving otherwise healthy people in a cascade of anxiety".
Writing in the British Medical Journal, Nicholas A Christakis cites the extreme example of when a potentially fatal peanut was "spotted on the floor of a school bus, whereupon the bus was evacuated and cleaned (I am tempted to say decontaminated), even though it was full of 10-year-olds who, unlike two-year-olds, could actually be told not to eat food off the floor".
...The facts are these, Christakis insists: "About 3.3 million Americans are allergic to nuts, and even more - 6.9 million - are allergic to seafood. However, all told, serious allergic reactions to foods cause just 2,000 hospitalisations a year (out of more than 30 million hospitalisations nationwide). And only 150 people (children and adults) die each year from all food allergies combined."
He adds: "Compare that number with the 50 people who die each year from bee stings, the 100 who die from lightning strikes, and the 45,000 who die in motor vehicle collisions. Or compare it with the 10,000 hospitalisations of children each year for traumatic brain injuries acquired during sports or the 2,000 who drown or the roughly 1,300 who die from gun accidents. We do not see calls to end athletics. There are no doubt thousands of parents who rid their cupboards of peanut butter but not of guns. And more children assuredly die walking or being driven to school each year than die from nut allergies."
A population of "citizens" - sheeple is a more accurate term - that can be whipped into a frenzy over PEANUTS - is easy prey for the likes of Bush/Cheney and their xenophobic fear mongering. The sad thing is that 'doomers' are ridiculed for being fearful about the environment, oil supply, and the plethora of crises barreling down the highway towards us. The General Public, on the other hand, is scared witless by countless phoney bogeymen - all equally bogus. With that, you may return to watching "24". Apparently there's ANOTHER ticking time bomb, and only a good torture can save us.
Just got back from there and it is dry, dry, dry. And to top it off, most of the populace seem oblivious. I mean they know it doesn’t rain much and they’re in the driest state in Aust (I think it is, anyway), but they think things will be okay - ‘they’ll’ solve the problem as usual. They have a very, very closed media there. Very protective. The SA media is still gearing the subjects up for a new property boom based on some phantom “imminent” mining boom! The radio and TV are awash with home loan and property developers’ tantalizing offers and assurances that everyone must ‘get in now’. The rest of Australia knows that the mining sector is looking very shaky indeed ATM. And no water = no property value at all, I would think, let alone an increase!
"We're in for a pretty serious recession,'' Jeffrey Frankel, a member of the business-cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, said in a Nov. 10 interview with Bloomberg Television. ``There's a chance it'll be the worst postwar recession.''
In addition to gross domestic product, the group tracks changes in payrolls, production, income and sales to make their call. The NBER usually declares a recession 12 to 18 months after it starts. The odds of an official contraction occurring within the next 12 months rose to 100 percent, according to this month's survey, up from 90 percent in October.
After dropping at a 3.1 percent pace in the third quarter, consumer spending will fall 2.9 percent this quarter and 1.3 percent in the first three months of 2009, according to the survey median. Spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy, has never fallen for three consecutive quarters in the postwar era.
A four-year-old software glitch wiped out almost 200 votes from a small California county's November elections tally, causing officials to certify results that are now known to be incorrect.
The bug, which resides in specific versions of tabulation software sold by Premier Election Solutions, caused 197 paper ballots to mysteriously vanish from Humboldt County's final vote count. The error only came to light after a volunteer outfit using open-source software and an off-the-shelf paper scanner audited the results.
Premier, which until recently was known as Diebold Election Systems, first warned of the bug in 2004, but neither the Humboldt Country Registrar of Voters nor Debra Bowen, California's Secretary of State, said they were aware of the problem.
And when Bagpuss was asleep,
All his friends were asleep.
The mice were ornaments on the mouse organ.
Gabriel and Madeleine were just dolls.
Professor Yaffle was just an old wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker.
Even Bagpuss himself, once he was asleep, was just an old, saggy cloth cat,
Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams,
But Emily loved him
Last week I had the good fortune to meet Ran Prieur, who was passing through Portland on his trip around the US. Ran is travelling via rideshare/public transit, and depending on the kindness of strangers as he moves from city to city. Currently in San Francisco, he'll be in LA in a few days. Ran's site has been a source of very interesting reading material over the last few years - and is well worth your time.
A friend shared a story a few days ago, about being in an area that was expecting very bad weather and power cuts. People in the store were stocking up on food and supplies. One lady had a trolley full of frozen and microwaved meals.
"You might want to buy stuff that won't spoil if there's a power cut, you know."
"Wha?"
"And you won't be able to prepare the microwaved food without electricity."
The land-whale was indignant.
"HELLO? You don't need ELECTRICITY to cook microwaved food. They're MICRO-WAVED!!!"
You couldn't make this stuff up...
Went to a nearbly WAMU bank to deposit a check. Got speaking to an accounts manager. The chap was a hardcore doomer! "People have no idea how bad it's going to be..." he said, once we'd established our mutual-doomerism (it involves secret handshakes and code-words. I've already said too much). Anyway, it was interesting to find such a person working for a bank that basically went bust a few weeks earlier, and which is poised to shed over 9,000 jobs in the Pacific NW - where we are. The chap said that I was one of the best prepared people he'd met - which isn't saying much. The masses are screwed.
Some lighter links, before the Grade-A Doomfest that follows:
...a host of common chemicals is feminising males of every class of vertebrate animals, from fish to mammals, including people.
Backed by some of the world's leading scientists, who say that it "waves a red flag" for humanity and shows that evolution itself is being disrupted, the report comes out at a particularly sensitive time for ministers. On Wednesday, Britain will lead opposition to proposed new European controls on pesticides, many of which have been found to have "gender-bending" effects.
It also follows hard on the heels of new American research which shows that baby boys born to women exposed to widespread chemicals in pregnancy are born with smaller penises and feminised genitals.
"This research shows that the basic male tool kit is under threat," says Gwynne Lyons, a former government adviser on the health effects of chemicals, who wrote the report.
Confession: I enjoyed the movie "Children of Men" - up until the point where the pregnant woman was revealed. "Ah, Crap! - why can't the species just shuffle off into the evolutionary night with some small shred of dignity? Is that too much to ask." Apparently so.
If you're eating three meals today and have a roof over your head, you've probably never heard of the 211 service. It's like 411 or 911, except you use it when you're in such financial distress that you don't have enough money for food or perhaps even for a place to live. In this economic climate, those conditions can arise alarmingly quickly.
"We have households that six months ago made $70,000, $80,000," said Michael Flood, chief executive of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, "and then the bottom falls out." This is a consumer guide for the nouveaux poor, individuals and families who suddenly find themselves in financial peril. A good place to start is the 211 referral services, available in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. The L.A. version is available 24/7, including holidays.
Yesterday put the nail in the coffin of a move from recession (small “r”) to Depression (capital “D). Two pieces of news that were absolutely essential came out - and no, neither one was that we’ve been in a recession since last year, or that last week’s stock market rally was yet another sucker rally. The first was the observation that McDonalds is now the second-largest merchant vendor on credit cards - that is, people are now buying their Big Macs on plastic - in part because they don’t have the cash. Credit card balances have risen enormously in the last few weeks, as people attempt to keep going through the holidays...
...The second is the news that credit card companies are planning to pull 2 trillion dollars of personal and small business credit lines over the coming months, to reduce their risk...
As many as a million American jobs could be lost every month by next spring as businesses struggle to raise capital in financial markets consumed by fear, according to a new analysis.
November was the worst month in the US labour market since the oil crisis of 1974, as more than 500,000 US workers were laid off, according to official figures released on Friday.
But Graham Turner, of consultancy GFC Economics, says the rising cost of corporate debt is now flashing a red warning signal that far worse is to come over the next few months and job losses are heading for levels last seen in the 1930s Great Depression.
BBC: Jeremy Clarkson tries to get his co-stars killed in Alabama:
KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.
The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster’s attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster’s secret mobile office nearby.
The attorney was handcuffed and later released when eleven KopBuster detectives arrived with the media in tow to question the illegal raid. The police refused to give KopBusters the search warrant affidavit which is suspected to contain the lies regarding the probable cause.
The heroic officers could be hunting down rapists, thieves and murderers - but that would be dangerous. Much better to beat the stuffing out of stoners, no?
Jeff Rubin, Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets, in a recent report, is now saying that the current recession is caused by high oil prices. Defaulting mortgages are only a symptom of the high oil prices. We should be blaming the underlying cause--higher oil prices--rather than the symptom. These higher oil prices caused Japan and the Eurozone to enter into a recession even before the most recent financial problems hit. Higher oil prices started four of the last five world recessions; we shouldn't be too surprised if they started this one also.
The interface between finance and energy will prove to be the most important determinant of the way the Greater Depression we are rapidly moving toward will play out in practice. For those here who may be unaware of peak oil, the point is that global oil production appears to have reached a production peak that it will not be physically possible to exceed. Oil discoveries peaked decades ago and we have since been increasing production from large existing fields using ever more complicated and expensive technology, in order to supply increasing global demand from decreasing reserves.
The production peak does not mean that oil is imminently running out - in fact there is probably half of all the oil that ever existed still in the ground, but it is the expensive and relatively inaccessible half. We can no longer increase production and production will fall over time as we continue to use up reserves which are not being replaced by new discoveries. Although discoveries continue to be made, they are few and far between, and of much smaller size than the giant fields we have relied on for so long. As they are much more challenging to produce, they rely on high oil prices in order to remain commercially viable.
And the consequences of a commodities collapse? Let's just say that those people who were praying for a fall in the cost of gas should have been careful about what they wished for...
...Already there are many projects with high cost structures which are no longer viable. These are the projects that could have cushioned the down slope of Hubbert's curve (the decline from peak production of oil), but will not now come on line. Although they could in theory be developed at a later date, increasing capital constraints will make financing almost impossible, hence development will be unlikely for a very long time. We will therefore continue to make do with the fields already in production, but many of those are depleting very quickly - Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, Cantarell in Mexico, Burgan in Kuwait and many others.
For a while it will be enough to sustain the much lower level of economic activity that we are headed for, but not for all that much longer, especially since there will be many other 'above ground factors' to consider. For instance, production infrastructure requires expensive maintenance that will be increasingly difficult to perform, separatist movements in producing countries will seek to control resources for their own benefit, productive capacity being fought over will be damaged or destroyed, sabotage by the disaffected with nothing left to lose will increasingly become a factor, and piracy will make delivery much more challenging. Living off our fossil fuel legacy will therefore become progressively more difficult.
The broad American public voted for "change" but they thought that meant a "changing of the guard." Out with the feckless Bush; in with the charismatic Obama... and may this American life now continue just as it ever was. The change actually coming will be much more than they bargained for, namely our transition from a wealthy society to a hardship society. The sharp break is a product of our years-long failure to reckon with the energy realities of our time. We're still confused about that, but it's hard, otherwise, to ignore the massive disappearance of capital, asset values, livelihoods, domiciles, comforts, and necessities.
The price of oil is suddenly down to an astounding $40-odd per barrel. Those of us studying the Peak Oil story have said that the "bumpy plateau" years of peak production would be expressed in tremendous price volatility, and for exactly the reasons now evident -- that the high-price phase would mangle advanced economies, that they would fall back in paralysis, then respond anew to oil price collapses by straggling up again, only to be crushed again when a resumption in demand for oil drove the price back up.
A hoax telephone call almost sparked another war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan at the height of last month's terror attacks on Mumbai, officials and Western diplomats on both sides of the border said today.
Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani President, took a telephone call from a man pretending to be Pranab Mukherjee, India's Foreign Minister, on Friday, November 28, apparently without following the usual verification procedures, they said.
The hoax caller threatened to take military action against Pakistan in response to the then ongoing Mumbai attacks, which India has since blamed on the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), they said.
Mr Zardari responded by placing Pakistan's air force on high alert and telephoning Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, to ask her to intervene.
Ancient techniques pioneered by pre-Columbian Amazonian Indians are about to be pressed into service in Britain and Central America in the most serious commercial attempt yet to reverse global warming.
Trials are to be started in Sussex and Belize early in the new year, backed with venture capital from Silicon Valley, on techniques to take carbon from the atmosphere and bury it in the soil, where it should act as a powerful fertiliser.
The plan is to scale up rapidly into a worldwide enterprise to reverse the build-up of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, in the atmosphere and eventually bring it back to pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
The technique is called "Terra Preta", yet the article fails to mention it by name, for some reason. The bad news is that the precise technique used by the Indians in the creation of Terra Preta is a mystery. Too bad we butchered them all, eh?
Five years ago, it would have been unthinkable for passengers on Japan's crowded trains to witness a female office worker applying make-up on her way to work. But now, grooming in public is commonplace. For some, such behaviour reflects the fact that the politeness and courtesy that was a trademark of Japanese society are fading fast.
Standards are falling so rapidly that Japan Railways has just launched a poster campaign urging women to "Please do it at home" – put their make-up on, that is.
"I would have to say that levels of inconsideration have accelerated in the last five years or so," said Toshiko Marks, a professor of multicultural understanding at Shumei University. "I first saw a young woman applying her make-up on a train about five years ago but now it is an everyday sight," she said. "I even see people on trains eating food that has a strong smell, such as noodles, which means everyone has to put up with it."
Professor Marks said that the worst culprits are youngsters in their teens and twenties, and that women are the greater offenders.
Guess you heard this already: US loses most jobs since 1974. 533,000 in ONE MONTH. Drip, drip, drip. Do be careful this Xmas - PLEASE save your pennies, and put away the credit cards. Girdle your loins!
If you're in the mood for grim, check out the rest of the page below. It's gloomy stuff, so be warned.
The MSM bobbleheads and their dizzy viewers in the peanut gallery is fixated on the Dow, as it undulates like a roller coaster - up 400, down 500, up 600, down 700 - but this isn't what you should be watching. It's analagous to the obsession with the price of oil - which is not the prime mover, but a symptom. Watch fundamentals: production statistics of oil, not the price. To take one regional example: Mexico's oil production has collapsed, and the falling price of oil is going to give their economy a death blow. Implications for the US/Mexican border regions should be dire. Similarly, the UK (once one of the biggest producers/exporters, peaked in 1999 - the same year that Gordon Brown sold off half their gold reserves at $250 an ounce. Good luck to a country with such a luckless PM.
Similarly with the economy, the Dow is the most visible indicator, but the numbers become more meaningless by the day, as the internal organs begin to shut down, one by one. Ditto the price of gold - which is becoming very difficult to purchase, though the price continues to fall! Check out the price of gold on eBay, and the price tends to be closer to $1000 an ounce.
3 vid clips (30 mins total) about the American Economic Time Bomb. The animated graphs are both beautiful and terrifying. Enjoy.
According to LEAP/E2020, if global leaders fail to realize that in the next three months and to take actions in the next six months, as explained in GEAB N°28, the US debt will « implode » by summer 2009 under the shape of the country’s defaulting or the Dollar’s dramatic devaluation. This implosion will follow closely a number of similar episodes affecting less central countries (see GEAB N°28), including the United Kingdom whose already huge debt is ballooning at the same pace as Washington’s. In the same way as the US Federal Reserve saw, month after month, its « Primary Dealers » being swept away by the crisis before it was itself confronted to a real problem of capitalization and therefore survival, the United States in the coming year will witness the implosion of all countries too-closely integrated to their economy and finance, and of their allies financially too-dependent on them.
What consumer spending there is has been fueled in part by credit card: The second-largest merchant-vendor for credit card use is now McDonalds. This suggests that many consumers are in serious distress if they need to get their $4 Big Mac and fries with a credit card.
The price of key industrial metals has fallen further over the last four months than occurred during the worst years of Great Depression between 1929 and 1933, according to research by Barclays Capital.
Kevin Norrish, the bank's commodities strategist, said the average fall in the price of copper, lead, and zinc has been roughly 60pc since the peak in July this year. All three metals were traded on the London Metal Exchange in the inter-war years so it is possible to make a comparison.
Prices for the three metals fell 40pc from their highs in 1929 before touching bottom in 1933, with the bulk of the fall in 1930 as the slump spread worldwide. "Lead and zinc have already lost more than they did in the 1930s," he said.
Prepare psychologically for a sociopolitical climate of anger, grievance, and resentment. A lot of individual citizens will find themselves short of resources in the years ahead. They will be very ticked off and seek to scapegoat and punish others. The United States is one of the few nations on earth that did not undergo a sociopolitical convulsion in the past hundred years. But despite what we tell ourselves about our specialness, we're not immune to the forces that have driven other societies to extremes. The rise of the Nazis, the Soviet terror, the "cultural revolution," the holocausts and genocides -- these are all things that can happen to any people driven to desperation.
If the atrocity now propels the Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi into office at the head of a revived Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), south Asia will once again face a nuclear showdown between India and Pakistan.
Events are moving briskly in China too. Wudu was torched by rioters this month in a pitched battle with police. Violence has spread to the export hub of Guangdong as workers protest at the mass closure of toy, textile, and furniture factories.
"The global financial crisis has not bottomed yet. The impact is spreading globally and deepening," said Zhang Pin, head of the national development commission. "Excessive bankruptcies and business closures will cause massive unemployment and stir social unrest".
Taxpayers are already facing a loss of almost £10 billion on their investment in Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS even before the Government hands over a penny. That is what their languishing share prices are saying.
The recession has barely begun and the banks are on their knees. Scores of billions of pounds of bad debts are yet to come, as companies and individuals default on loans.
When in early October officials mapped out the bailout with banks, they insisted that those banks stress-tested their balance sheets for a serious downturn. In the six weeks since then, the outlook has darkened swiftly. The worst-case scenario imaginable then may well be looking like a central-case scenario now.
Richard Pym, executive chairman of Bradford & Bingley, the nationalised bank, told MPs this week that the bank had already stress-tested its mortgage book to see how it would cope with a 25 per cent drop in house prices (answer: £600-800 million of losses). But he no longer regarded this as sufficient and was busy putting much larger house price falls into his equations.
"I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain ... this all but puts an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the unconditional summits with dictators, and other foolishness that once emanated from the Obama campaign ... [Hillary] Clinton and [James] Steinberg at State should be powerful voices for 'neo-liberalism' which is not so different in many respects from 'neo-conservativism.'"
-- Max Boot, neoconservative activist, former McCain staffer.
A BBC hack thinks that sex slaves 'enjoy the sex'. This nasty little man resembles Baron Harkonnen from David Lynch's "Dune". No chance of him ever being made into a sex slave and finding out the joys of forced prostitution first-hand, which is a shame.
BBC presenter Stephen Nolan issued a live on-air apology yesterday after asking whether the victims of human sex trafficking enjoyed their work...
...Amnesty's Fiona Smith ... was taken aback when the presenter, speaking on his BBC Radio Ulster Nolan show, asked her:
“Would you not say that these girls enjoy the sex?” She told him that the victims of human trafficking had to endure being raped multiple times a day because they had not consented to sex and were being used as slaves.
On August 28, 1859, polar lights glowed and shimmered all over the American continent as darkness fell. Many people thought their city was aflame. The instruments used to record this magnetic fluctuation across the world went off their scales. Telegraph systems malfunctioned, hit by a massive surge in voltage.
This was an actual solar storm. Its results for humankind were small, because civilization had not yet entered a hi-tech phase of development. Had something similar happen in our nuclear space age, destruction would have been catastrophic.
Meanwhile, according to scientific data, storms of such size occur relatively seldom: once in five centuries. But events with half the intensity happen every 50 years. The last one took place on November 13, 1960 and disturbed the Earth's geomagnetic fields, upsetting the operation of radio stations.
Now our dependence on radio electronic devices is so immense that increased solar activity could disable life-support systems all over the world, and not only on the surface.
In spite of being a space nut, the story about the 1859 solar flare somehow slipped through the filter. It must have been spectacular, to trick people into thinking that their cities were on fire. Were it to happen again, there would be a window of opportunity though: we'd be able to attend live musical concerts without hearing celphones beeping every five minutes.
There's some argument as to whether we're going to face a time of hyperinflation or deflation. This Automatic Earth article presumes the latter, and has helpful advice on how to prepare for a deflationary economy. Again, beware the banks:
If we do see a rash of bank failures, each of which weakens the position of others as the sale of their assets and unwinding of their derivative positions can re-price similar 'assets' held by other parties, then deposit insurance will not be worth the paper it's written on. When everything is guaranteed, nothing is, as the government cannot guarantee value. Savings held in these institutions are at much higher risk than commonly thought due to the systemic threats posed by a derivatives meltdown and spreading crisis of confidence. Fractional reserve banking depends on depositors not wanting their money back all at once, in fact with reserve requirements so whittled away in recent years, it depends on no more than a fraction of 1% of depositors wanting their money back at once. This is a huge vulnerability and the government deposit guarantee is a bluff waiting to be called.
Malls from Michigan to Georgia are entering foreclosure, commercial victims of the same events poisoning the housing market.
Hotels in Tucson, Ariz., and Hilton Head, S.C., also are about to default on their mortgages.
That pace is expected to quicken. The number of late payments and defaults will double, if not triple, by the end of next year, according to analysts from Fitch Ratings Ltd., which evaluates companies' credit.
"We're probably in the first inning of the commercial mortgage problem," said Scott Tross, a real estate lawyer with Herrick Feinstein in New Jersey.
That's bad news for more than just property owners. When businesses go dark, employees lose jobs. Towns lose tax revenue. School budgets and social services feel the pinch.
Companies have survived plenty of downturns, but economists see this one playing out like never before. In the past, when businesses hit rough patches, owners negotiated with banks or refinanced their loans.
But many banks no longer hold the loans they made. Over the past decade, banks have increasingly bundled mortgages and sold them to investors. Pension funds, insurance companies, and hedge funds bought the seemingly safe securities and are now bracing for losses that could ripple through the financial system.
Chesapeake Energy Corp., the nation's largest producer of natural gas, seeks to raise up to $1.8 billion through common stock sales in an effort to fund its drilling and exploration activities and mitigate the impact of lower natural gas prices on cash flow.
In two filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Wednesday, the company said it will issue shares worth as much as $1 billion before fees and also registered 50 million shares worth at most $791 million for potential sale.
As Western dissatisfaction with Karzai has grown over his failure to crack down on corruption and govern effectively, the Afghan president, facing elections next year, has hit back over the killing of dozens of civilians in foreign air strikes.
In recent weeks, Karzai has repeatedly blamed the West for the worsening security in Afghanistan, saying NATO failed to target Taliban and Al- Qaida sanctuaries in Pakistan and calling for the war to be taken out of Afghan villages.
"We have no other choice, we have no power to stop the planes, if we could, if I could ... we would stop them and bring them down," Karzai told a news conference.
Nuclear armed India suspects nuclear armed Pakistan of mischief. Great.
India faces tough decisions over the next few weeks and months. Every time India has been hit, there has be no counter reaction. The vast majority of Indians believe that the attacks emanate from Pakistan. While most Indians don’t blame Pakistanis, they do blame instruments and agents of the Pakistani government, specifically the ISI. With the bombing in Kabul, the U.S. confirmed that the ISI was involved adding an independent credible voice to India’s charges of Pakistani involvement.
So, we're already facing what Bryan Lutter calls "the mother of all fertilizer shortages" next spring and on top of that local banks won't lend to farmers.
The local bank was quite willing to lend to a farmer on a crop despite the weather related risks just like they'd lend on a car despite the driving risks. So long as the asset was insured the risk was deemed manageable. There were sure to be losses here and there, but they'd be administrative hassles associated with well known risks. If the auto insurance companies were viewed as untrustworthy no one would be getting a car without 100% down at the dealership and the same rule is now in effect for farmers.
Farmers without financing can't afford nitrogen fertilizer at $1,000 a ton, which translates to $100 an acre at current application rates. They won't be paying $300 for a bag of 80,000 hybrid corn kernels, again a $100 per acre expense. The average farm size in Iowa is four hundred acres and planting to harvesting would run about $120,000.
This looks incredibly bad. Bryan and I are both puzzled as to why the mainstream media isn't covering this. Perhaps the need to sell Christmas season advertising trumps the need for the public to know about the troubles that are brewing.
