Doomers in New Zealand
July 29th, 2010Interestingly, the piece doesn’t mention Transition Towns New Zealand, which would make much more sense to average New Zealanders than wealthy British and American people, like the ones featured in the video. The 2012 woowoo element doesn’t help either. *sigh*
Via: 3news:
Many people believe that a great world catastrophe is going to happen in the year 2012 because of the predictions of the ancient Mayan people.
Others believe we are heading for some sort of environmental meltdown due to peak oil or global warming.
Whatever the reason, plenty of people from the northern hemisphere are flocking to New Zealand to save themselves and plenty of New Zealanders are hunkering down in survival mode for the approaching calamity.
Gulf of Hormuz: Japanese Tanker Damaged
July 28th, 2010Update: Cause Still Unknown
Via: BBC:
An investigation has been launched into the unexplained damage suffered by a Japanese oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz near Oman.
The M Star was damaged on Wednesday while travelling from Qatar to Japan.
Port officials in Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates say the ship was involved in a collision. However, the boat’s owners Mitsui OSK believe their vessel may have been attacked.
Early reports that the ship was struck by a freak wave have been dismissed.
Map
The M Star is currently docked in Fujairah where local officials are inspecting the damage to its hull and its interior, with the help of the British and US navies.
The incident has stirred fears of a terrorist attack in the Strait, the route for 40% of the world’s seaborne oil.
‘Submarine collision’
“What we know is some collision happened. We don’t know what it was,” said Capt Mousa Mourad, a port official in Fujairah.
“It’s possible that it could be a submarine collision, or that it could be a sea mine,” he said.
But Mitsui OSK maintained on Thursday that its oil tanker was probably attacked.
Crew members reported seeing a flash and hearing an explosion during the incident shortly after midnight local time on Wednesday.
“There are some reports saying the tanker was hit by strong waves, but it’s quite unlikely,” said Masahiko Hibino, Mitsui OSK safety management official.
“We have not reached a conclusion, but we still suspect the tanker was hit by a blast.”
At a press conference in Tokyo, Mr Hibino displayed images of the tanker which showed damage to the railings, the loss of a life vessel, a shattered window, and broken furniture and fittings and shattered glass inside a dry cabin.
Pictures of the outside of the vessel, published separately, show an indentation several metres across in the hull, but no obvious burn marks or signs of an explosion.
—End Update—
Take your pick on an explanation at this point.
Monitoring…
Via: Bloomberg:
Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd., operator of the world’s second-largest oil-tanker fleet, said one of its ships may have been attacked near the Strait of Hormuz, deemed by the U.S. to be the most important chokepoint for oil supply.
An explosion, which “may have been caused by an external attack,” occurred at 5:30 a.m. Tokyo time, injuring one of the crew, Mitsui said in a statement. The vessel, M. Star, was on its way to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates to assess the damage and no oil is leaking, Mitsui said. The tanker was damaged by rough seas, the official U.A.E. news agency WAM reported, citing Musa Murad, director of the Port of Fujairah.
Congressional Budget Office: “Growing Budget Deficits Will Cause Debt to Rise to Unsupportable Levels”
July 28th, 2010Via: Congressional Budget Office:
Unless policymakers restrain the growth of spending, increase revenues significantly as a share of GDP, or adopt some combination of those two approaches, growing budget deficits will cause debt to rise to unsupportable levels.
…
Beyond those gradual consequences, a growing level of federal debt would also increase the probability of a sudden fiscal crisis, during which investors would lose confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget, and the government would thereby lose its ability to borrow at affordable rates. It is possible that interest rates would rise gradually as investors’ confidence declined, giving legislators advance warning of the worsening situation and sufficient time to make policy choices that could avert a crisis. But as other countries’ experiences show, it is also possible that investors would lose confidence abruptly and interest rates on government debt would rise sharply. The exact point at which such a crisis might occur for the United States is unknown, in part because the ratio of federal debt to GDP is climbing into unfamiliar territory and in part because the risk of a crisis is influenced by a number of other factors, including the government’s long-term budget outlook, its near-term borrowing needs, and the health of the economy.
Be Aware of This Prevalent Corporate Scam in Life Insurance Payout Situations
July 28th, 2010Via: Bloomberg:
Lohman, a public health nurse who helps special-needs children, says she had always believed that her son’s life insurance funds were in a bank insured by the FDIC. That money — like $28 billion in 1 million death-benefit accounts managed by insurers — wasn’t actually sitting in a bank.
It was being held in Prudential’s general corporate account, earning investment income for the insurer. Prudential paid survivors like Lohman 1 percent interest in 2008 on their Alliance Accounts, while it earned a 4.8 percent return on its corporate funds, according to regulatory filings.
Sony Holographic Display
July 28th, 2010Via: Sony:
Next week at Siggraph in LA, Sony will be demonstrating the prototype of a new 360º Autostereoscopic display. The display allows you to view full colour volumetric objects from all angles, as if objects really exist. The display uses special LED light forces and can show 360 unique images to all directions in 1º separations.
Land Of The Free: Never In The Civilized World Have So Many Been Locked Up For So Little
July 28th, 2010And not a word about the profit incentive to lock people up!
America’s Private Gulag is over a decade old, but worth reading if you’re new to the concept of the prison industrial complex:
To be profitable, private prison firms must ensure that prisons are not only built but also filled. Industry experts say a 90-95 per cent capacity rate is needed to guarantee the hefty rates of return needed to lure investors. Prudential Securities issued a wildly bullish report on CCA a few years ago but cautioned, “It takes time to bring inmate population levels up to where they cover costs. Low occupancy is a drag on profits.” Still, said the report, company earnings would be strong if CCA succeeded in ramp(ing) up population levels in its new facilities at an acceptable rate”.
“(There is a) basic philosophical problem when you begin turning over administration of prisons to people who have an interest in keeping people locked up” notes Jenni Gainsborough of the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
Private prison companies have also begun to push, even if discreetly, for the type of get-tough policies needed to ensure their continued growth. All the major firms in the field have hired big-time lobbyists. When it was seeking a contract to run a halfway house in New York City, Esmor hired a onetime aide to State Representative Edolphus Towns to lobby on its behalf. The aide succeeded in winning the contract and also the vote of his former boss, who had been an opponent of the project. In 1995, Wackenhut Chairman Tim Cole testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee to urge support for amendments to the Violent Crime Control Act — which subsequently passed — that authorized the expenditure of $10 billion to construct and repair state prisons.
CCA has been especially adept at expansion via political payoffs. The first prison the company managed was the Silverdale Workhouse in Hamilton County, Tennessee. After commissioner Bob Long voted to accept CCA’s bid for the project, the company awarded Long’s pest control firm a lucrative contract. When Long decided the time was right to quit public life, CCA hired him to lobby on its behalf. CCA has been a major financial supporter of Lamar Alexander, the former Tennessee governor and failed presidential candidate. In one of a number of sweetheart deals, Lamar’s wife, Honey Alexander, made more than $130,000 on a $5,000 investment in CCA. Tennessee Governor Ned McWherter is another CCA stockholder and is quoted in the company’s 1995 annual report as saying that “the federal government would be well served to privatize all of their corrections.”
In another ominous development, the revolving door between the public and private sector has led to the type of company boards that are typical of those found in the military-industrial complex. CCA co-founders were T. Don Hutto, an ex-corrections commissioner in Virginia, and Tom Beasley, a former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. A top company official is Michael Quinlan, once director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The board of Wackenhut is graced by a former Marine Corps commander, two retired Air Force generals and a former under secretary of the Air Force, as well as James Thompson, ex-governer of Illinois, Stuart Gerson, a former assistant US attorney general and Richard Staley, who previously worked with the INS.
More recently, Pennsylvania judges took bribes to send children to privately owned juvenile detention centers.
Books:
Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration by Tara Herival and Paul Wright
Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits From Crime by Joel Dyer
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Via: The Economist:
Justice is harsher in America than in any other rich country. Between 2.3m and 2.4m Americans are behind bars, roughly one in every 100 adults. If those on parole or probation are included, one adult in 31 is under “correctional” supervision. As a proportion of its total population, America incarcerates five times more people than Britain, nine times more than Germany and 12 times more than Japan. Overcrowding is the norm. Federal prisons house 60% more inmates than they were designed for. State lock-ups are only slightly less stuffed.
The system has three big flaws, say criminologists. First, it puts too many people away for too long. Second, it criminalises acts that need not be criminalised. Third, it is unpredictable. Many laws, especially federal ones, are so vaguely written that people cannot easily tell whether they have broken them.
In 1970 the proportion of Americans behind bars was below one in 400, compared with today’s one in 100.
US-Canada Pipeline Leaks Oil Into Michigan River
July 28th, 2010Via: BBC:
A pipeline carrying oil from the US state of Indiana to Ontario, Canada has spilled more than 800,000 gallons (3m litres) of oil into a creek which flows into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.
A spokesman for the firm running the pipeline, Enbridge Energy Partners, said a malfunction had caused the leak.
The spill has killed fish and endangered wildlife in the region.
Officials said the pumps which feed the pipeline had been shut down as soon as the leak was discovered.
The 30-inch (76cm) pipeline carries 8m gallons of oil per day between the towns of Griffith, in Indiana, and Sarnia, in Ontario.
The pipeline, called the Lakehead System, is one of the largest in the world.
A pungent odour now hangs over the Kalamazoo River valley, local media report.
The oil originally spilled into the Talmadge Creek in Calhoun County, Michigan, north-west of the Kalamazoo River.
Tug Vessel Hits Abandoned Gas Well in Barataria Waterway
July 28th, 2010Via: WWLTV:
The Coast Guard and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office are maintaining a two mile safety perimeter around a damaged wellhead in the Barataria Waterway south of New Orleans.
A mix of natural gas, contaminated water and light crude oil is spewing 100 feet in the air.
According to the Coast Guard, the tug vessel Pere Ana C while pushing a dredge barge struck the abandoned wellhead around one Tuesday morning.
“The issue for the region right now is we have gas coming out of an uncontrolled well head,” said Coast Guard Captain John Arenstam. “We don’t want to introduce into the region is an ignition source.”
The accident happened halfway between Lafitte and Grand Isle, near the very same water polluted by the BP oil spill.
The well belongs to the now defunct Cedyco Corporation of Houston, Texas. It’s one of the many so called “orphaned wells-heads” spread across Barataria Bay.
Mexico: Prison Official Sent Inmates to Conduct Birthday Party Massacre
July 27th, 2010Via: Christian Science Monitor:
A prison director is suspected of arming inmates and sending them on the July 18 Mexico birthday party massacre that killed 17. To some, Mexico’s drug war seems ‘the script of a science fiction movie.’
When gunmen burst into a private birthday party on July 18 and opened fired on guests, killing 17, the attackers were initially suspected to be members of one of Mexico’s drug gangs, which have killed thousands of people in escalating violence over the past several years.
Nobody could have guessed they were jail inmates on assignment from their prison director.
It turns out that the gunmen behind the July 18 Mexico birthday party massacre had already been incarcerated for crimes in Mexico’s drug wars. Prison guards reportedly lent vehicles and weapons to the inmates to carry out a ‘revenge attack’ in the northern city of Torreon. Afterward, the inmates drove back to their cells in the nearby city of Gomez Palacio.
“According to witnesses, the inmates were allowed to leave with authorization of the prison director … to carry out instructions for revenge attacks using official vehicles and using guards’ weapons for executions,” Ricardo Najera, a spokesman from the attorney general’s office, revealed Sunday.
The attack may have been motivated by rival drug trafficking gangs, Mr. Najera said, though innocent people were among the victims. The prison director and security guard, among others, have been put under house arrest.
U.S. Rescue May Reach $23.7 Trillion (???)
July 27th, 2010Via: Bloomberg:
U.S. taxpayers may be on the hook for as much as $23.7 trillion to bolster the economy and bail out financial companies, said Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.
The Treasury’s $700 billion bank-investment program represents a fraction of all federal support to resuscitate the U.S. financial system, including $6.8 trillion in aid offered by the Federal Reserve, Barofsky said in a report released today.
“TARP has evolved into a program of unprecedented scope, scale and complexity,” Barofsky said in testimony prepared for a hearing tomorrow before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
…
Barofsky said the TARP inspector general’s office has 35 ongoing criminal and civil investigations that include suspected accounting, securities and mortgage fraud; insider trading; and tax investigations related to the abuse of TARP programs.
