One nation, under your god. Fuck your god. A universe without god.

I want the liberty to end my life with dignity.

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:52:34 GMT

Did I mention I live in the USA where that CHOICE isn't mine. Cognitive liberty is at best paid lip service. Society has in effect silenced me. I'm going mute unless my excuse for a life experiences a quality of life upgrade.

Europe Raises Stakes in Bank Bailout Race as Germany Plans Up to €400 Billion to Aid its Institution

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:41:55 GMT

Germany is set to approve on Monday a plan to prop its banking system that could involve up to €400 billion in taxpayers' money.

Ponzi currencies will soon have new name but no difference.

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 02:28:32 GMT

The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.
We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.
THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL AND THE MELTDOWN by Dr. Ron Paul

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke met with House and Senate leaders to recommend a $700 billion capital injection to purchase bad mortgage debt from financial companies (OGJ Online, Sept. 22, 2008).

slave_to_reason

Problem Profits

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:47:06 GMT

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia this year as inflation has put other meat beyond the reach of poor people, officials said on Wednesday.

Here's my proposition: You remember that garbage boat years ago that was rejected by one port after another? It took a long time to find a port where they could dump their load. Facing this difficulty, municipalities will pay you good money to take away a boatload of their garbage.

Therefore, get a boatload of garbage [with a pocketful of cash for doing the owners of the garbage a favor]. Catch loads of rats and throw them on board with the garbage. Take a leisurely trip to Cambodia. Be received as a humanitarian savior and come home rich. Whadda yuthink?? Love & Blessings, Pondurenga

Energy experts puzzled over oil prices (AP)

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:40:20 GMT

Khelil, the OPEC president, offered no solace to consumers.

"We are very uncertain about the oil prices since it's highly volatile and we don't really know whether it is going to be stabilizing or going to lower levels," he told delegates. "But everybody agrees that oil prices are too high."

slave_to_reason Too high? I don't agree.Oil is cheap. But even the EIA is publicly going peak-oil. The ugly truth? Peak oil isn’t fringe anymore—it’s going mainstream. Living in denial of the warning of Limits To Growth has us needing to consider the order of death. As Bill Hicks would say "what do you say we figure out this food-air deal! Too many people and knowbody wants to say population is the root of the problem. A philosopher said circa "wealth requires an abundunce of the poor." Competing for scraps in a race to the bottom.Old money coupled with exponetial growth has a predictable outcome.
The propagenda machine has the public duped about what drives policy to the point that they are irreleavent as ever.

Goats, Sheep Get City Jobs as Landscapers.

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:39:43 GMT

"It is the year of weed-snackers rather than weed-whackers. As a way of controlling invasive vegetation and renewing the land, the ancient idea of using sheep and goats is finding renewed favor. In Northern California alone, at least 10 companies compete for the business."

Twenty-six of those acres belong to the Mineta San Jose International Airport. If you take De La Cruz Boulevard south from Highway 101, you can see the goats and sheep on the right. They're expected to be on the job until mid-June, chewing through a couple of acres a day. Total cost to the city: $11,700

The advantages lie with a better ecological balance. Instead of using tractors and herbicides, cities and ecologically minded companies like Agilent let the animals do the work, leaving their droppings to fertilize the ground.

"It's post-modern," says another Living Systems manager, Brian Kirbis. "It's not only good for ecology, it's good for business."

Mexico is the world's sixth-largest oil producer, but still has a deficit.

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:11:11 GMT

Congress budgeted for crude oil production of 3.2 million barrels a day this year, and exports of 1.7 million barrels a day.
But production in the first quarter was only 2.911 million barrels a day, down 7.8 percent from the first quarter of 2007. First-quarter exports were 1.5 million barrels a day, down 12.4 percent from first quarter last year.

slave_to_reason No doubt Mexico will fold into NAU, but how will the NAU currency effect the petrodollar hedgemony? Iran's oil bourse is the "crime" and driver behind policy toward Iran. If the US were to leave Iraq, which will NEVER happen, the currency war for dollar hedgemony will destroy the subsidy of the multiplier effect and destroy the dollar. Just how will the currency war play out?

Supercomputer sets record by processing more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second.

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:33:41 GMT

Roadrunner, which consumes roughly three megawatts of power, or about the power required by a large suburban shopping center.

Iraq says it wants to restrict movement of U.S. troops

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:24:22 GMT

What I can confirm now, with no hesitation, is that there will not be freedom of movement for American (forces) in Iraq," Salih told Arabiya television.

Water crisis to be biggest world risk

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:02:57 GMT

Nicholas (Lord) Stern, author of the Government's Stern Review on the economics of climate change, warned that underground aquifers could run dry at the same time as melting glaciers play havoc with fresh supplies of usable water.

... Lord Stern, the World Bank's former chief economist, said governments had been slow to accept the awful truth that usable water is running out. Fresh rainfall is not enough to refill the underground water tables.

Currency collapse?

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:44:56 GMT

Mofaz sees Israeli attack on Iran

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:04:49 GMT

"The window of opportunity is closing," the Israeli transportation minister, a former defense chief, told Yediot Acharonot on Friday

Shura member calls for oil production curbs in Saudi

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:59:27 GMT

Saudi Arabia's Shura council (parliament) will hold a series of meetings over the next two weeks to discuss a controversial proposal by a key member to curb oil production to save reserves for better prices, Saudi media reported

Indonesia says good-bye OPEC, hello peak oil.

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:55:50 GMT

Indonesia has exploited its fattest hydrocarbon targets, and the remaining exploration sites cannot make up for the decline from its existing oil fields.

Oil prices pass $132 after government reports supply drop

Wed, 21 May 2008 16:44:54 GMT

Long on oil futures I say. Nowhere but up.

Thrown under a bus? Sounds like a script to me. Coinsequence?

Fri, 02 May 2008 11:23:50 GMT

[Error: close lj-embed tag without open tag]

Terror talking points

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:09:14 GMT

Terror On The TV < three minutes

Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor studied her own stroke as it happened.

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:20:29 GMT

I grew up in a New York, intellectual, atheistic environment. We were so identified with our logical, sequential, talking brain that the unconscious and subconscious were considered to be The Enemy. Then, in the mid-60s, I went to a weekend seminar on psychedelic substances at Stanford University. The speakers were well respected professionals, delivering brilliantly insightful talks. Many of them were also loaded with psychedelics. Wilson Van Dusen, the chief psychologist at Mendocino State Hospital, spoke excitedly, waving his hands. Suddenly he stopped. "Look at this hand, this beautiful creation," he said. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

I thought to myself, "This stuff makes you crazy. I will never go near it."

Then, for the rest of the week, I could not stop reliving that incident. Van Dusen was stuck in my craw. He had a successful professional life PLUS full freedom of expression. He did not have to shrink himself - to saw off his own ankles - in order to to fit a Procrustean bed of professionalism. I realized I wanted that fullness - that freedom - in my life. Seeing all those capable people who had ventured into the unknown without losing their driver's licenses suddenly seemed reassuring rather than frightening.
slave_to_reason Taking science further has a opaque cost/benefit analysis..

Anybody notice the huge shift to accepting climate change?

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:02:09 GMT

slave_to_reason I'm a broken record. Buy food, gold, silver, guns, ammo, and oil futures. But who is going to buy the legitimacy of claiming the right to tax your pollution? Who has the incentive and what is the propagenda? The timing couldn't be more perfect for global governance. With Mexico's decreasing revenue from oil exports Mexico will fold into the NAU without thinking twice. Canada remains a queen colony as always, and will remain as obedient as it ever was.
I've said before that Chavez is, whether aware or not, being used to unify South America with a strong US polarization which allows obfuscation as to the fundamental reasons why oil will continue to go higher. Peak oil has been carefully kept behind the curtain allowing the "american way of life" to keep on truckin. Thus the US image of a belligerent energy wasting military monger which will ultimately get the rest of the world to recognize a global authority to penalize the US for beer already pissed down the drain.

Consider this headline London To Transform Congestion Charge Into Climate Change Fee

THE VOYAGES OF THE ECONOMIC ENTERPRISE by The Mogambo Guru

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:52:10 GMT

To get a “feel” for how crazy things got, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph reports that Bear Stearns had total positions of $13.4 trillion. This is greater than the U.S. national income, or equal to a quarter of world GDP – at least in ‘notional terms.’”

But Mr. Evans-Pritchard ignores me and my penetrating, poignant analogy, and says that the problem at Bear Stearns was that through using “‘swaps’, ‘swaptions’, ‘caps,’ collars,’ and ‘floors’”, they were able to float $13.4 trillion of this weird financial derivatives crap, and that “this heady edifice of newfangled instruments was built on an asset base of $80 billion at best.”

$13,400 billion was what was leveraged on a measly $80 billion? Leveraged 167 times? Bear Stearns had less than 1% in the pot?

The Onion: Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 08 Election

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:27:59 GMT

The Carlyle Fund got the “Margin Call from Hell” from its bankers. The banks wanted $97.5 million.

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 06:11:43 GMT

That didn’t seem like much a few months ago, but now money is getting hard to come by. Carlyle bet $31 for every single dollar it had in capital. With that kind of leverage, the managers stood to score a fortune if the markets went their way. But if prices went in the wrong direction, and the bets went bad, it didn’t take much bad news before the fund went broke.
So, Carlyle has gone belly up. It couldn’t make its margin call. And all over town, other fund managers are biting their nails...and refusing to pick up the phone. The bankers are pacing the room too.
"In the last 6 months, Merrill Lynch has had to write down an amount equal to almost half its book value? UBS has written off 40%.

Is it a currency war? by Zeenia Satti

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:50:13 GMT

THE UN Security Council’s March 3 sanctions against Iran not only present a diplomatic victory for President Bush but also a major success for Washington in the first phase of its currency war with Tehran. The war began with the commencement of Iran’s oil bourse in mid-February.

Widely known as the Kish bourse, it is intended to bypass London’s IPE and New York’s Nymex, both of which are effectively controlled by Washington.

The Kish bourse is intended to eventually sell crude oil to the international market in euros. By opening its own oil bourse, Iran became the first Opec insider to attempt the further weakening of an already ailing greenback. If joined by other Opec and Caspian producers, it could serve a death blow to the American economy.

The dollar’s predominance as the world’s hegemonic currency has its genesis in the 1972/73 US-Saudi agreement to price oil exclusively in dollars in return for US protection to the House of Saud against external aggression or domestic overthrow. This arrangement led to Opec transacting oil exclusively in dollars ever since.

The ever-increasing use of oil in the world at a rising price led to an ever-rising demand for the dollar as the world’s reserved currency, enabling America to export a cheaply produced good with handsome dividends. Given the relative decline of American industrial output over time, the dollar’s hegemony has become vital for its economy.Once it was established, the Opec kingdoms never challenged the dollar’s hegemony. They put a high value on US protection which guarantees their political survival and their territorial integrity. The kingdoms’ borders are arbitrarily drawn to meet twentieth-century politico-economic needs rather than delineate ethnic patterns. The parameters of Washington’s protection include maintaining the regional status quo plus monitoring the kingdoms’ domestic fronts for rebellion. Because this deal ensures mutual survival, its tenacity remained impervious to secondary political causes.

Whatever happened to good ole LSD?

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:38:40 GMT

It's the gay bomb they be dropping on.

The point beyond which we are into unexplored, unknown territory.

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 04:21:37 GMT

The previous record for oil(adjusted for inflation) had been $102.53 which was set in 1980, after which oil prices fell when the OPEC embargoes ended and North Sea oil and gas (among others) came on stream. For many peak oil watchers, it has been the passing of $102.53 that has been anticipated, not the nice, round, headline-grabbing $100. It leads me though to reflect on what was different when the price was this high before, and how different our situation is now.