I'm completely changing the publishing system on Cryptogon at the moment. I might need to lock everyone completely out for some period of time.

Thanks for your patience.

The Mexican government has released a long-awaited report that for the first time officially blames "the highest command levels" of three former presidencies for the massacres, tortures and slayings of hundreds of leftists from the 1960s to the early 1980s.

Based partly on declassified Mexican military documents, the report, issued Saturday, ends a five-year investigation by a special prosecutor to shed light on past crimes, including a 1968 student massacre.

The report states that "the authoritarian regime, at the highest command levels," broke the law and "committed crimes against humanity" that resulted in "massacres, forced disappearances, systematic torture and genocide to try to destroy a sector of society that it considered ideologically to be its enemy."

How far away are we from reality? Don't worry about it, because the numbers don't mean anything anymore. HA!

This derivatives game is like trying to build a skyscraper out of playing cards. As long as the wind doesn't blow, and the ground doesn't move and you have a very steady hand, maybe that makes sense. Or, not so much:

The use of derivatives grew at the fastest pace in eight years during the first half of 2006, boosting earnings at securities firms and reducing costs for investors.

The face value of derivatives based on corporate bonds, currencies, interest rates, commodities and stocks jumped 24 percent to $370 trillion, according to the Bank for International Settlements. It was the biggest percentage rise since the bank began keeping records in 1998.

Trading in credit-default swaps, the fastest-growing derivatives market, helped spur record earnings for banks including New York-based Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. At London-based Barclays Capital derivatives accounted for more than 60 percent of revenue and profit, Chief Executive Officer Bob Diamond said in May.

Jeff Wells' latest post reminds me of one of my favorite Robert Anton Wilson quotes:

"There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already."

Here's to not maintaining appearances:

I love that. I love the look on McCarthy's anguished face. It's not, it's over. It's at last it can begin. The disheveled kook is suddenly the most credible person in the room.

The only epitaph I could manage for Milton Friedman was to ask in anyone could think of any individual who was responsible for more death and destruction in the world.

While not one person bothered to send in any suggestions, Sam Smith wrote a more informative epitaph for the diabolical Friedman:

We have paid a terrible price for this corruption of our culture by the new robber barons egged on by Friedman and his ilk. We so accept their foul standards that we don't even discuss or debate them. We have become prisoners of their lie.

Research Credit: MM

Is Tony Blair a rocket scientist, as well as an international war criminal:

Tony Blair has publicly agreed with the opinion that the violence in Iraq since the 2003 invasion has been a disaster.

The UK prime minister was responding to a question by Sir David Frost in an interview on the new al-Jazeera English-language Arabic TV channel.

Google is going to force all current Blogger users to migrate to the new, fully Googleized platform. I actually read the Terms of Service on the new system:

10. Termination; Suspension. Google may, in its sole discretion, at any time and for any reason, terminate the Service, terminate this Agreement, or suspend or terminate your account. In the event of termination, your account will be disabled and you may not be granted access to your account or any files or other content contained in your account although residual copies of information may remain in our system for some time for back-up purposes.

Google already considers Cryptogon a "hate" site. They won't let me run paid AdWords campaigns or display AdSense. Now, if I agree to their new terms, Google may, "at it's sole discretion" terminate my account.

The good news is that all of the Cryptogon content is stored on my server.

Long ago, Blogger worked well and wasn't owned by evil criminals. Those days are long gone. I have to move away from Blogger. I've known this for years, but I've just kept putting it off to avoid the pain.

The real point of this message is to let you know that if Cryptogon goes down, it means that I'm trying to put the new system together. I'll try not to break anything too badly.

Is there no limit to what the British people will accept?

Parents could be forced to go to special classes to learn to sing their children nursery rhymes, a minister said.

Those who fail to read stories or sing to their youngsters threaten their children's future and the state must put them right, Children's Minister Beverley Hughes said.

Their children's well-being is at risk 'unless we act', she declared.

And Mrs Hughes said the state would train a new 'parenting workforce' to ensure parents who fail to do their duty with nursery rhymes are found and 'supported'.

The call for state intervention in the minute details of family life followed a series of Labour efforts to reduce anti-social behaviour and improve educational standards by imposing rigorous controls on the lives of the youngest children.

Mrs Hughes has established a national curriculum to set down how babies are taught to speak in childcare from the age of three months.

Her efforts have gone alongside a push by other ministers to determine exactly how parents treat their children down to how they should brush their teeth.

Israel is using nanotechnology to try to create a robot no bigger than a hornet that would be able to chase, photograph and kill its targets, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday.

The flying robot, nicknamed the "bionic hornet", would be able to navigate its way down narrow alleyways to target otherwise unreachable enemies such as rocket launchers, the daily Yedioth Ahronoth said.

With mainstream news like this, who needs tinfoil?

BANKS in the UK have been ordered by financial regulators to assess how they would cope in the event of house prices crashing by 40 per cent.

The instruction to include a housing slump scenario in their stress-testing models comes after the Financial Services Authority found that some banks were failing to include gloomy enough assumptions in their modelling.

The FSA said yesterday that an "appropriate" benchmark was to assume property prices fell by 40 per cent and that 35 per cent of mortgages in default ended with homes being re-possessed. It stressed that this was not a forecast but a "severe but plausible scenario" and one that banks should examine when deciding how robust their balance sheets were.

In a speech to the British Bankers' Association yesterday, Clive Briault, the FSA's managing director for retail markets, remarked on banks' differing views over the size and impact of a house market downturn, hence the need for reference points.

He also warned bankers to ensure that they have properly stress-tested their mortgage portfolios in the wake of decisions by some to lend people greater multiples of their incomes.

Random ID checks in libraries? Take a look at what happens if you refuse to produce your papers:

A cell phone captured video of a 23-year-old student being administered multiple Taser shocks by UCLA police on Tuesday.

The UCLA student was hit with the Taser shocks multiple times while he was in the Powell Library Computer Lab.

Another student recorded the incident on a camera phone. On the video, Mostafa Tabatabainejad can be heard screaming during the incident, which took place at about 11:30 p.m., the Daily Bruin reported.

According to the paper, Tabatabainejad did not show ID to community service officers who were conducting a random check. UCLA police said Tabatabainejad was released by police after he was cited for obstruction/delay of a peace officer in the performance of duty.

I continue to receive questions from terrified people about how to proceed as we move into collapse.

But first, a little story.

In high school, I took a basic psychology class. The instructor had all of us take the Myers-Briggs personality test. I remember thinking that the entire thing was a bit presumptuous. After all, how could a multiple choice test provide any meaningful insight on an individual's personality? I was curious, and skeptical at the same time.

My good friend's mother happened to be a psychologist. I told her that we had been given the Myers-Briggs test at school and chuckled about it a bit.

She looked at me for a moment and said, "You're an INTJ."

* pause *

I was, in fact, an INTJ. That was pretty weird, I thought, for her to be able to guess my "type" on the first try.

That was twenty years ago. I just typed INTJ into Google to see if my "result" still seemed accurate.

In addition to the, "disregard for authority," and needing to, "learn to simulate some degree of surface conformism in order to mask their inherent unconventionality," you'll find this critical trait:

When it comes to their own areas of expertise -- and INTJs can have several -- they will be able to tell you almost immediately whether or not they can help you, and if so, how. INTJs know what they know, and perhaps still more importantly, they know what they don't know.

Now, people are asking me questions like this:

What should I do with my money?

To where should I move?

Will my family be able to leave the U.S. once the travel restrictions are in place?

How long will fascism last in the U.S.? Can I just wait it out?

Folks, believe me when I tell you: I don't know the answers to these questions.

Additionally, if someone is purporting to provide specific answers to questions like these, questions with potentially life altering consequences, watch out.

Why?

Because questions such as these are not answerable with precision. The complexity of the situation we're facing makes doing that impossible.

I've been writing about these issues on Cryptogon, at length, for years, but the message either isn't sinking in, or it's too disturbing and people want something different from me, something... easier to stomach.

While I don't know if this is easier to stomach, this is the most concise way I have ever put it:

Get into a situation that eliminates your reliance on luck and minimizes the impact of factors that are completely beyond your control.

That sums it up, and that's as far as I'm willing to go in the personal advice category.

For my wife and I, that meant a nearly wholesale rejection of what most people consider "normal" and moving to one of the most remote areas of the planet. Obviously, and thankfully for us, most people can't (and wouldn't want to) do that. There are lots of options. There are options that I can't even to being to conceive of. Everyone is different, so how silly would it be for one person to try to suggest a course of action for everyone else? To do so would be as dangerous as it would be silly.

If you have questions about how to proceed, that's great, but don't look for clarity by trying follow someone else's footsteps too closely. As I've tried to demonstrate in the past, seeking too much clarity is not often rewarded.

Looking for another one sentence summary?

Devise a strategy and embed it with many tactical pathways; remaining flexible provides options.

Footnote

People have also asked me whether I think Mike Ruppert's swan song from Venezuela provides a solid justification to simply stay where they are.

I'll try my best to remain calm as I write my response:

Ruppert goes off, half cocked, to a third world country and, surprise, surprise, it's not easy.

What did he expect?

And so because his experience abroad has been bad, the great epiphany from Mike Ruppert is to just stay where you are!? After all, if his experience is bad, he's Mike Ruppert, and it must apply to everyone...

Get a day job, Mike. You're personal catastrophe shouldn't dissuade others from exploring their options.

Harsh?

Another INTJ profile says that the INTJ mindset, with regard to other people, could be summed up as: "'If you don't want to be called an idiot, don't do stupid things.'"

Well, you asked!

Can anyone think of a single individual who is responsible for more death and destruction than Miltion Friedman?

Rest in pieces, Milty:

Milton Friedman, one of the most influential economists of the past century and winner of a 1976 Nobel Prize, died on Thursday morning of heart failure at a San Francisco area hospital, a spokeswoman for his family said. He was 94.

A free-market economist, Friedman preached free enterprise in the face of government regulation and advocated a monetary policy that called for steady growth in money supplies.

His ideas played a pivotal role in informing the governing philosophies of world leaders like former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Related: Cryptogon's Farewell to Ronald Reagan

I don't read many stories that are so chilling that the hair on my arms actually stands on end. This is one of those stories.

These people are stark raving mad, and they're making more of themselves as fast and their biology will allow!

Wolfson, Moore and thousands of mothers like them call themselves and their belief system "Quiverfull." They borrow their name from Psalm 127: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate." Quiverfull mothers think of their children as no mere movement but as an army they're building for God.

Related: Left Behind: Eternal Forces

Research Credit: Life After the Oil Crash

A little over a year ago, buyers couldn't wait to sign contracts to purchase homes. Now, many can't wait to get out of them.

With real-estate prices falling around the country and even pro-industry trade groups predicting further declines over the next year, buyers are backing away from deals in droves. At a semiannual housing forecast conference in Washington, D.C. recently, economists reported that contract-cancellation rates for big builders were running around 40 percent --- about twice as high as last year's levels. Anecdotally, real-estate professionals say they are seeing a similar dynamic in existing-home sales.

Some of the cancellations are by people who signed new-home contracts at one price months ago, haven't yet closed, and are now stunned to see the builder drastically cutting prices on identical properties. Some are by speculators caught short by other investments they can't unload. And some are by people trapped in a chain reaction: They can't sell their old home --- or the buyer has canceled the contract --- so they are being forced to cancel the deal on a new house they are buying somewhere else.