Bill Clinton: Blow Up The Well
June 28th, 2010Via: CNN:
RBS: “Get Ready for the Cliff-Edge”
June 28th, 2010Buy U.S. Treasuries? Anyway…
Via: CNBC:
The credit team at RBS in London are getting very bearish and warning clients to “get ready for the cliff-edge,” where prices of stocks and commodities will “collapse.”
RBS credit chief Andrew Roberts said the edge is just around the corner for the European banking industry and the economies of Europe and the US.
“Surely risks associated with us being wrong are low, i.e. rates stay where they are,” Roberts wrote in a research note.
“But risks associated with us being right are 10 percent returns in (10-year US Treasurys) and at the same time that equities/commodities will collapse far beyond what even some equity bears anticipate.”
As a result Roberts is advising investors to get into maximum long-duration bonds in safe-haven markets.
“This means the US, UK and Germany in that order,” he wrote. “Be long gold, think the unthinkable. Get ready for (sub-2-percent yields on two-year Treasurys, sub-2-percent on 10-year bunds) and the UK will not be far behind.”
A Quiet Crisis Whispers of Impending Poverty
June 28th, 2010Via: Automatic Earth:
“The ECRI leading indicator produced by the Economic Cycle Research Institute plummeted yet again last week to -6.9, pointing to contraction in the US by the end of the year. It is dropping faster that at any time in the post-War era.”
The latest data from the CPB Netherlands Bureau shows that world trade slid 1.7% in May, with the biggest fall in Asia. The Baltic Dry Index measuring freight rates on bulk goods has dropped 40% in a month.”
…
$2,5 trillion hasn’t done the trick, and neither will $5 trillion. Money velocity is way down and so is M3 broad money supply. How would Bernanke turn that around? The money simply isn’t going anywhere. Except into a deep dark void. It’s disappearing faster than Bernanke can print.
Once the deflation has run its ugly course, and it will be horrendous, printing presses may cause inflation, and given the level of ass-clowniness among economists it’s highly likely that they’ll pick such a course. They’ve never seen a crisis they couldn’t make worse.
Research Credit: dagobaz
Supreme Court Strikes Down Chicago Handgun Ban
June 28th, 2010The 2nd Amendment has anything to do with “self-protection”… Unless they’re talking about protection from the government.
Via: CNN:
In another dramatic victory for firearm owners, the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional Chicago, Illinois’ 28-year-old strict ban on handgun ownership, a potentially far-reaching case over the ability of state and local governments to enforce limits on weapons.
A 5-4 conservative majority of justices on Monday reiterated its two-year-old conclusion the Constitution gives individuals equal or greater power than states on the issue of possession of certain firearms for self-protection.
So Far, 400 Have Sought Medical Care After Visits to Escambia County Beaches
June 28th, 2010Via pnj.com:
The Escambia County Health Department lifted a health advisory on Pensacola Beach on Friday on the advice of a beach official and against the advice of a federal environmental official.
But the advisory was not lifted for Gulf Islands National Seashore’s Fort Pickens beach, immediately west of Pensacola Beach or Johnson Beach on Perdido Key.
And hours after the Pensacola Beach advisory was lifted, the health department asked for state approval to issue an oil-impact advisory that leaves the decision to swim in the Gulf of Mexico up to the discretion of individual beachgoers.
The signs would be posted on 41 of the 43 miles of Escambia County beaches — from the Florida-Alabama line to just west of Portofino Beach — impacted by oil.
Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency plans to put decontamination stations along the beach, possibly as early as this weekend.
These moves send conflicting signals about how safe it is to swim in the Gulf of Mexico as the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill broadens.
Dr. John Lanza, director of Escambia County Health Department, said the reason for leaving the decision up to beachgoers on whether to swim is because the oil situation on the beach is “very dynamic.”
“We have a situation that changes from one hour to the next, from one tide to the next, from wave to wave, from one wind direction to another,” he said.
Lanza said this ever-changing environment is something “we’re going to face for weeks or months in the future.”
The oil impact signs would be posted indefinitely and warn beachgoers that oil has washed up on the beaches. But the impact advisory would not prohibit people from going swimming as the health advisory for Pensacola Beach issued from Wednesday to Friday morning did.
Similar to the health advisory, the impact advisory would warn beachgoers to avoid touching oily product on the beach and in the water, and it would advise them leaving the beach and seeking medical help if they experience respiratory problems.
So far, 400 people have sought medical care for upper or lower respiratory problems, headaches, nausea, and eye irritation after trips to Escambia County beaches, Lanza said.
…
Swimmers who did venture into the water questioned whether it was really safe to wade, swim and play in the Gulf, especially when they had to walk through a line of tar balls and stay clear of skimmers scooping up oil just 25 and 50 feet from the shore.
“I only went into the water up to my ankles. That’s as far as I wanted to go,” said Joe Chambers, 28, of West Pensacola as he scrubbed off oily residue from himself and his son, Ethan, 4, in the public showers at Casino Beach. “It doesn’t smell like the beach. It smells like a gas station. There are no fish in the water. There’s nothing alive in the water. I don’t know how public officials can just look at the water and make a call to reopen it for swimming.”
Carol Doster of Grand Isle, Miss., said her son Dallas, 12, was frightened by the oil that streaked his legs and arms after a five-minute swim in the Gulf on Friday. “It won’t rub off,” Doster said.
She said the two were not going to get in the water again.
Eating Leaves and Lizards to Survive in Niger
June 27th, 2010Via: BBC:
Aid organisations are warning that millions of people are facing starvation from drought and crop failure in the West African country of Niger, and some people are turning to desperate measures to survive.
If you look up “bo” on the internet, nothing that makes sense comes up. But we were looking at a bo, or rather looking for it.
We were walking along the bank of the Niger river, searching for the tracks of a hippopotamus that was ravaging the corn on Karim’s farm.
All of a sudden, a lizard about the size of a small crocodile hurtled out of the undergrowth and raced up a nearby baobab tree.
“It’s a bo,” everybody cried, racing to the foot of the enormous tree.
Now I had never seen a bo before, so I was interested out of pure curiosity.
The handful of villagers with us had other ideas, though. “The bo is delicious,” explained Karim. “It has the taste and texture of fish, and the inside of it is all white.
“You don’t see them very often. There are not that many about.”
Moustafa, Karim’s head man, was talking excitedly into his mobile phone. “He’s calling the kids from the village,” explained our host.
“He wants them to climb the tree and get the poor creature down.”
It was hardly surprising, I thought, that the bo was scarce. It is rotten luck to be a delicious animal in a land where people are hungry.
Obama Internet Kill Switch Plan Approved by U.S. Senate
June 27th, 2010Via: Techworld:
A US Senate committee has approved a wide-ranging cybersecurity bill that some critics have suggested would give the US president the authority to shut down parts of the Internet during a cyberattack.
Senator Joe Lieberman and other bill sponsors have refuted the charges that the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act gives the president an Internet “kill switch.” Instead, the bill puts limits on the powers the president already has to cause “the closing of any facility or stations for wire communication” in a time of war, as described in the Communications Act of 1934, they said in a breakdown of the bill published on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee website.
The committee unanimously approved an amended version of the legislation by voice vote Thursday, a committee spokeswoman said. The bill next moves to the Senate floor for a vote, which has not yet been scheduled.
The bill, introduced earlier this month, would establish a White House Office for Cyberspace Policy and a National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications, which would work with private US companies to create cybersecurity requirements for the electrical grid, telecommunications networks and other critical infrastructure.
The bill also would allow the US president to take emergency actions to protect critical parts of the Internet, including ordering owners of critical infrastructure to implement emergency response plans, during a cyber-emergency. The president would need congressional approval to extend a national cyber-emergency beyond 120 days under an amendment to the legislation approved by the committee.
The legislation would give the US Department of Homeland Security authority that it does not now have to respond to cyber-attacks, Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, said earlier this month.
“Our responsibility for cyber defence goes well beyond the public sector because so much of cyberspace is owned and operated by the private sector,” he said. “The Department of Homeland Security has actually shown that vulnerabilities in key private sector networks like utilities and communications could bring our economy down for a period of time if attacked or commandeered by a foreign power or cyber terrorists.”
To Reach Afghans, Pentagon Drafts Mimes, Storytellers, Wizard of Oz
June 27th, 2010In summary, the U.S. military is aware that “American Culture” is a strategic weapon that is capable of defeating an enemy, or entire populations, without necessarily having to kill them. The U.S. military, however, must and will kill in order to allow “American Culture” into a society in order to repurpose it. Military failures will result from failing to thrust, “that bayonet into an enemy’s heart.”
—The American Culture Bomb: Satire from the Onion and a Long Forgotten U.S. Army War College Essay
Via: Technofascism Blog:
The technocrats need to make Afghanistan a safe place for all the future mining corporations but how can that be accomplished when the entire population hates the fake modern society that they know will be imposed upon them?
Simple solution: employ the same kind of mind-control, social engineering nonsense that keeps the masses in line back home: endless television advertising, control of media, polls, worship of celebrities and sports figures, financial desperation, and “democracy”.
If you are a well-adjusted, participant in modern society, you are already quite familiar with the techniques the US military will use to convince the Afghans that “our” way is the best way. Indeed, it must be the only way.
Routing Solution for Multiple Mobile Broadband Links in New Zealand
June 27th, 2010Off topic post, you may want to skip it.
—
I’ve decided that it’s not OK that we were dumped off the Internet for several days. So, short of moving, what can I do to make sure that the Internet is available here?
Becky and I both run Internet based businesses and Telecom just really screwed us by taking us down like that. If it wasn’t for Vodafone, we’d still be down. I tried dialup here, but it’s unusable now. Even with image loading turned off, many pages simply time out without loading. It’s because the copper infrastructure here is finished. Put a fork in it. Done. I get 20kbits per second if I’m lucky with dialup.
So, I’m thinking about running two mobile broadband connections here, Telecom XT, if they ever manage to pull their head out (it might not happen), and Vodafone. It would be really nice to find a dedicated hardware routing solution that could handle failover on these networks. I looked and couldn’t find any information about doing this in New Zealand. It’s a pretty weird thing to want to do here, but I think I came up with a solution that doesn’t cost too much, or require a bunch of linux glue and duct tape.
Before I get to my idea, though, a couple of dog legs:
The CradlePoint MBR1200 is exactly what I’d want to get, but it’s not officially supported for New Zealand, or for one of the two devices that it would have to work with here. My ZTE668+ is supported, but Vodafone’s K3765 isn’t. It’s possible that the MBR1200 would work properly in New Zealand, but I’m not going to go through the rigmarole of getting the thing shipped here and then find that it doesn’t work.
Next, for those of you who want the ultimate in redundancy and load balancing for your mobile antics, the Pepwave Max mobile router is the bat shit insane solution for you. How many different types of Internet connections do you have? Plug ’em all in there.
Ok, back to the story, for those of us in New Zealand who need to pull this off without breaking the bank.
I checked around and found that the NetComm 3G17WN is available for about NZ$170. It has both ethernet and 3G USB modem WAN ports that can be configured for failover. If I bought two 3G17WNs, I could use both USB modems, one on Telecom XT and the other on Vodafone.
To make failover work, it would just be a matter of using a LAN link on the first router (running the primary mobile broadband connection) as the ethernet WAN on the second router. The clients would be LANned into the second router, which would be using the ethernet WAN as the primary connection. If that connection dropped, the second router would failover onto the other mobile broadband network.
It wouldn’t be as elegant as the CradlePoint unit, but it would do the trick for redundant connections. It wouldn’t load balance, though.
If you have any better ideas for dealing with this situation, let me know. And, no, moving to an area where semi-developed world style Internet connections are available doesn’t count.
Lady Gaga Will Perform on Stage Decorated with Human Corpses
June 27th, 2010Vigilant Citizen has done several reports on Illuminati symbolism and Lady Gaga.
Also, don’t miss their Sinister Sites series.
Via: MTV:
Will Lady Gaga be working with the dead on the upcoming leg of her Monster Ball Tour?
In a story published Wednesday (June 23) in British tabloid The Sun,, the newspaper reported that Gaga has reached out to Gunther von Hagens, a controversial anatomist who invented a technique for preserving cadavers called plastination and is responsible for the popular traveling exhibition “Body Worlds.”
The Sun quoted “a friend” of Gaga as saying “she is fascinated by Gunther’s work and life … [Gaga] sees a kindred spirit and is hoping to meet him in New York. They have spoken over e-mail and it’s gone well. She is keen to have some Body Worlds element in one of her shows.”
The source went on to say that Gaga is aiming to incorporate von Hagens’ work into her tour by the time it gets to Las Vegas, which doesn’t happen until March of 2011.
“It would be good to top this tour — which is already out-there — with something nobody has done before, using dead bodies as part of a gig,” the source said.
