Empires on the Edge of Chaos
By Niall Ferguson, InformationClaringHouse.info
“Summary: - Imperial collapse may come much more suddenly than many historians imagine. A combination of fiscal deficits and military overstretch suggests that the United States may be the next empire on the precipice.
There is no better illustration of the life cycle of a great power than The Course of Empire, a series of five paintings by Thomas Cole that hang in the New-York Historical Society. Cole was a founder of the Hudson River School and one of the pioneers of nineteenth-century American landscape painting; in The Course of Empire, he beautifully captured a theory of imperial rise and fall to which most people remain in thrall to this day…
More recently, it is Jared Diamond, an anthropologist, who has captured the public imagination with a grand theory of rise and fall. His 2005 book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, is cyclical history for the so-called Green Age: tales of past societies, from seventeenth-century Easter Island to twenty-first-century China, that risked, or now risk, destroying themselves by abusing their natural environments. Diamond quotes John Lloyd Stevens, the American explorer and amateur archaeologist who discovered the eerily dead Mayan cities of Mexico: “Here were the remains of a cultivated, polished, and peculiar people, who had passed through all the stages incident to the rise and fall of nations, reached their golden age, and perished.” According to Diamond, the Maya fell into a classic Malthusian trap as their population grew larger than their fragile and inefficient agricultural system could support. More people meant more cultivation, but more cultivation meant deforestation, erosion, drought, and soil exhaustion. The result was civil war over dwindling resources and, finally, collapse…”
…Deja vu”
By Josh Rushing, Aljazeera.net
“I had just returned to the States from my sixth trip to Iraq where I expected to film a preview of the elections for an episode of my show Fault Lines, but instead found a civil war in the making.
Iraqis are going to the polls in a democratic election, but most will vote along ethnic lines and that could spark conflict, especially in troubled areas like Kirkuk.
For some reason I’ve started receiving Newsweek in the mail. No wonder the industry is facing tough times if this is how they handle their subscription base, because I’m sure I’m not paying for it.
Nonetheless, I was shocked at the cover this week which proclaims “Victory at Last: the Emergence of a Democratic Iraq” with a photo of Bush and his infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner in the background.
I had just returned to the States from my sixth trip to Iraq where I expected to film a preview of the elections for an episode of my show Fault Lines, but instead found a civil war in the making.
If democracy means getting to vote then, yes, that is happening in Iraq. But the results of this process may be far from what the US wants or even what’s best for the people of Iraq.
I spent most of my time this trip in the Kirkuk region. Every time I asked a Turkman, Sunni Arab or Kurd who he or she was planning to vote for, the answer - 100 per cent of the time - was the party that represented his or her ethnic or religious affiliation. And every time a tone forgiving my naivety for even asking such a question accompanied the answer.
In Iraq minorities seemingly have no protection, so a vote for any party other than his or her ethnic or sectarian group is seen as a vote for his or her respective future oppressor…
The US desperately wants next week’s elections to be accepted as legitimate, so it can move forward with it’s plans to leave Iraq. A repeat of the laughable Afghan elections earlier this year won’t do. But with the shenanigans in Baghdad and the foregone acceptance by the Iraqis I met of voter fraud, it’s easy to see why even CentCom commander General David Petraeus jokes about the process, calling it “Iraqracy” rather than democracy.
And in a flashback to 2003, as the Newsweek cover story indicates, it seems that some US media are willing accomplices to the US government for the story it needs.
Indeed, it does feel like “Mission Accomplished” all over again.”
The only way to take back our country and economy is to buy locally…
The Power of Local
Local businesses are educating communities, changing economic policies, and even outperforming chain competitors.
by Jeff Milchen
Brought to our attention by; CommonDreams.org
“The 2009 holiday season was a tough one for retail businesses. In November, their sales increased just 1.8 percent over low 2008 numbers—failing to keep pace with inflation. December was worse, with sales actually falling three tenths of a percent from 2008.
But in more than a hundred communities across North America, independent community-based businesses had a more positive story to tell. A nationwide survey of more than 1,800 independent businesses by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) found them outperforming chain competitors. Most notably, the survey found independent retailers in communities with active “Buy Independent” or “Buy Local” campaigns reported an increase in holiday sales three times stronger (up three percent) than those in cities without such campaigns (up one percent).
Given the current inflation rate of 2.7 percent, the benefit of such campaigns could mean the difference between success and failure for many store owners. “Amid the worst downturn in more than 60 years, independent businesses are succeeding by emphasizing their community roots and local ownership,” says Stacy Mitchell, who executed the survey.
Jennifer Rockne directs the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA), a nonprofit organization supporting 70 “Independent Business Alliances” across North America. She concurs with Mitchell, saying “When executed well, these campaigns are making a huge difference for local businesses and their communities.”
The increased interest in buying local isn’t lost on store owners. In a recent survey of its members, the Portland Independent Business and Community Alliance in Maine found 84 percent of its member businesses reported its “Buy Indie / Buy Local” campaign and related activities had positively impacted their business—that number has increased with each year…”
The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. And the winners are:
1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.
6. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul
flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
The life threatening growth of corporatism…
Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle
by Matt Taibi, RollingStone.com
“The setup: By early 2009, the banks had already replenished themselves with billions if not trillions in bailout money. It wasn’t just the $700 billion in TARP cash, the free money provided by the Fed, and the untold losses obscured by accounting tricks. Another new rule allowed banks to collect interest on the cash they were required by law to keep in reserve accounts at the Fed — meaning the state was now compensating the banks simply for guaranteeing their own solvency. And a new federal operation called the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program let insolvent and near-insolvent banks dispense with their deservedly ruined credit profiles and borrow on a clean slate, with FDIC backing. Goldman borrowed $29 billion on the government’s good name, J.P. Morgan Chase $38 billion, and Bank of America $44 billion. “TLGP,” says Prins, the former Goldman manager, “was a big one.”
Collectively, all this largesse was worth trillions. The idea behind the flood of money, from the government’s standpoint, was to spark a national recovery: We refill the banks’ balance sheets, and they, in turn, start to lend money again, recharging the economy and producing jobs. “The banks were fast approaching insolvency,” says Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a vocal critic of Wall Street who nevertheless defends the initial decision to bail out the banks. “It was vitally important that we recapitalize these institutions.”
But here’s the thing. Despite all these trillions in government rescues, despite the Fed slashing interest rates down to nothing and showering the banks with mountains of guarantees, Goldman and its friends had still not jump-started lending again by the first quarter of 2009. That’s where those nuclear-powered balls of Lloyd Blankfein came into play, as Goldman and other banks basically threatened to pick up their bailout billions and go home if the government didn’t fork over more cash — a lot more. “Even if the Fed could make interest rates negative, that wouldn’t necessarily help,” warned Goldman’s chief domestic economist, Jan Hatzius. “We’re in a deep recession mainly because the private sector, for a variety of reasons, has decided to save a lot more.”
Translation: You can lower interest rates all you want, but we’re still not fucking lending the bailout money to anyone in this economy. Until the government agreed to hand over even more goodies, the banks opted to join the rest of the “private sector” and “save” the taxpayer aid they had received — in the form of bonuses and compensation.
The ploy worked. In March of last year, the Fed sharply expanded a radical new program called quantitative easing, which effectively operated as a real-live Rumanian Box. The government put stacks of paper in one side, and out came $1.2 trillion “real” dollars.
The government used some of that freshly printed money to prop itself up by purchasing Treasury bonds — a desperation move, since Washington’s demand for cash was so great post-Clusterfuck ‘08 that even the Chinese couldn’t buy U.S. debt fast enough to keep America afloat. But the Fed used most of the new cash to buy mortgage-backed securities in an effort to spur home lending — instantly creating a massive market for major banks.
And what did the banks do with the proceeds? Among other things, they bought Treasury bonds, essentially lending the money back to the government, at interest. The money that came out of the magic Rumanian Box went from the government back to the government, with Wall Street stepping into the circle just long enough to get paid. And once quantitative easing ends, as it is scheduled to do in March, the flow of money for home loans will once again grind to a halt. The Mortgage Bankers Association expects the number of new residential mortgages to plunge by 40 percent this year…”
Tim Geithner’s “Star” Turn: Obama Stands by the Bank-Bailout Champion
by Aaron Task in Newsmakers, Finance.Yahoo.com
“Ahead of his Congressional testimony on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal chronicles the political pressures facing Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
The thrust of the story is about how Geithner is facing pressure from Democrats who feel he’s out of sync with the party’s populist push, leaving him politically vulnerable. Two tidbits caught our attention:
For all the talk about Geithner being an albatross to the administration, “the president’s view is that Tim is one of the stars,” Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel tells The WSJ.
54% of Americans either don’t know who Tim Geithner is or have no opinion of the current Treasury Secretary and one of the chief architects of the 2008-09 bank bailout bonanza.
Perhaps Geithner’s poor name recognition among average Americans explains his ability to withstand some withering criticism from Beltway politicians of both parties and pundits nationwide. There’s “safety in anonymity,” as Henry says in the accompanying clip.
But at the end of the day, no “charm offensive” can change the fact Geithner championed policies which, to date, have disproportionately benefited banks and bondholders at the taxpayers’ expense.
Either Barack Obama is serious about taking on the “fat cats” on Wall Street or he’s sticking with Tim Geithner. You can’t have it both ways, Mr. President. ”
Undisclosed Desires, YouTube
I know you’ve suffered
But I don’t want you to hide
It’s cold and loveless
I won’t let you be denied
Soothing
I’ll make you feel pure
Trust me
You can be sure
I want to reconcile the violence in your heart
I want to recognize your beauty’s not just a mask
I want to exorcise the demons from your past
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart
You trick your lovers
That you’re wicked and divine
You may be a sinner
But your innocence is mine
Please me
Show me how it’s done
Tease me
You are the one
I want to reconcile the violence in your heart
I want to recognise your beauty’s not just a mask
I want to exorcise the demons from your past
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart
Please me
Show me how it’s done
Trust me
You are the one
I want to reconcile the violence in your heart
I want to recognize your beauty’s not just a mask
I want to exorcise the demons from your past
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart
Muse - Undisclosed Desires Lyrics, LetsSingIt.com
The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
Here are the winners:
1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxicaton: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon : It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things which are good for you.
13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.
The Monopolization of America
by Russell Mokhiber, Corporate Crime Reporter
Brought to our attention by CommonDreams.org
“You walk into your local convenience store and head to the cold walk-in beer room in the back. The choice is overwhelming.
Budweiser, Michelob, Bud Light, Busch Light, Stella Artois, Grolsch, Kirin,Tsingtao, Corona, Negra Modelo, Rolling Rock, Widmer, Miller and Coors.
In fact, all of these beers are controlled by two companies.
MillerCoors under the direction of South African Breweries (SAB) and AnheuserBusch In Bev.
Two multinational corporations controlling the beer choices of 300 million Americans.
And it’s not just beer.
One single multinational corporation dominates the world supply of eyeglass stores.
One dominates the milk supply.
Barry Lynn goes down the list of industries.
And he finds a similar story across the board.
A handful of multinational corporations controlling each industry - or the supply chains of each industry…”
*
What is the antidote for the growing metastasizing?
Go to a local brewery for a pint and mingle with the locals
Shop and eat at mom and pop places
Open an account in a credit union or local community bank
Buy your veggies at the farmers market
Use the Net set up sites to promote the local economy and community interaction…
The soldier and the nun:
A soldier ran up to a nun.
Out of breath he asked, “Please, may I hide under your skirt. I’ll explain later.”
The nun agreed.
A moment later two Military Police ran up and asked, “Sister, have you seen a soldier?”
The nun replied, “He went that way”.
After the MP ’s ran off, the soldier crawled out from under her skirt and said, “I can’t thank you enough Sister. You see, I don’t want to go to Afghanistan.”
The nun said, “I understand completely”.
The soldier added, “I hope I’m not rude, but you have a great pair of legs!”
The nun replied, “If you had looked a little higher,
you would have seen a great pair of nuts…
I don’t want to go to Afghanistan either.”
The Case Against Corporate Speech
by Ralph Nader and Robert Weissman, The Wall Street Journal
Brought to our attention by CommonDreams.org
“Last month, by a vote of 5 to 4, the U.S. Supreme Court gave carte blanche to the world’s largest corporations to spend unlimited sums of money to support or oppose candidates for elected office. Big Business domination of Washington and state capitals will now intensify.
The case of Citizens United portends dire consequences for the nation’s constitutional premise of “we the people,” not we the corporations. Our constitution, at its origins and through all of its amendments, makes no mention of corporate entities, only human beings and their government…
As Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the minority in Citizens United, demonstrated, the Framers did not intend for the First Amendment to confer protections on businesses beyond freedom of the press. The robust guarantees of the First Amendment are vital for real, live human beings, to ensure their expressive and democratic participative rights are protected. There can be no level playing field between the giant multinational corporations and individual citizens without such differential rights.
It is worth recalling that representative democracy is rule by the people. Corporations, first chartered into existence over 200 years ago by the states, were meant to be our servants, not our masters. Especially in the aftermath of Citizens United, it is time to right this relationship.”
iBailout: Pocket Activism, YouTube.com
Brought to our attention by TruthDig.com
Homeowner Defaults: The Inevitable Truth Behind the Mystery
By Bill Bonner, Daily Reckoning
“Here’s a mystery: Homeowner defaults. Not that there are so many…the mystery is why there are so few…
In Nevada, for example. Two out of three homeowners are underwater…which is hard to do in the desert. Some of them owe hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that doesn’t exist anymore – the equity on their houses. Still, most of them continue making mortgage payments. What gives?
It’s a case of “asymmetrical ethics,” says The New York Times. Lenders don’t hesitate a minute to maximize their earnings – using every tool available to them and every trick in the book (including some tricks that have never been published). They default whenever it suits them.
But homeowners? They plod along. Maybe they think their house will come back in price. Maybe they think they’ll suffer some awful penalty if they default. Maybe they are just too proud and too honest to take advantage of the non-recourse mortgage provisions. So, they keep paying.
But for how long? Mortgage rates are based upon past behavior. In the past, people regarded mortgage payments as an inescapable, moral obligation. You paid as long as you were able.
It won’t be long before the ethics of Wall Street catch on all across the country. Gaming the mortgage system will become as common as signing up for food stamps. When people see that house prices won’t go back up…and when they see their neighbors shedding hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of mortgage debt – and getting away with it – they won’t be far behind.”
If you have not sent your email to Congress yet now is the time…
“More than 1.7 million people have already called for support of Net Neutrality. If we can reach 2 million people, we’ll send a resounding message that Washington can’t ignore.”
We called this type of activity malignant growth, or cancer. The term parasite seems to be a more palatable expression for a more conservative audience. Either terms nonetheless describe the same end result.
The frog, the scorpion and Goldman Sachs
By James Rickards, DailyCaller.com
“Now consider another example of data mining, not done by retail firms, but by giant investment banks such as Goldman Sachs. These banks have thousands of customers transacting in trillions of dollars in stocks, bonds, commodities and foreign exchange daily. By using systems with anodyne names like SecDB, Goldman not only sees the transaction flows but some of the outright positions and whether they are bullish or bearish. Data mining techniques are just as effective for this market information as they are for Google, Amazon, Wal-Mart and others. It’s not necessary to access individual accounts to be useful. The data can be aggregated so that the bank can look at positions on a portfolio basis without knowing the name of each customer.
One need not be a market expert to imagine the power of this information. You can see which way the winds are blowing before the storm hits. You get a sense of when momentum is draining out of a trade so you can get out of it before the market turns. You can see when bullish or bearish sentiment reaches extremes, suggesting it may soon turn the other way. This use of information is the ultimate type of insider trading because it does not break the law; you are not stealing the information, you own it.
So what do Goldman and others do with this mountain of market information? Do they send coupons to customers or text them with great trading ideas? A few lucky customers, usually giant hedge funds, may get a call on some insights, but this mountain of immensely valuable market information is used mainly to power their giant proprietary trading desks allowing them to rack up consistent excess returns. Economists have a name for this also. It’s called “rent seeking,” which means taking value from others without any contribution to productivity. The difference between value-added behavior and rent seeking is like the difference between Amazon trying to sell me a book or planning to steal my library. In nature, the name for a rent seeker is parasite…
And that is the nature of Goldman. Gather up as many customers as possible, aggregate the available information to achieve a superior market view and then relentlessly extract rents from the marketplace. Better yet, tell yourself you’re smarter than everyone else and you’ve earned the rents from the symbiosis…”
Also: Jim Rickards on The King World News - Broadcasts
California Schools New Practical Math Program
Los Angeles Schools are finally starting to teach practical math that these kids can use in real-world situations! It’s about time!
NAME_____________________
GANG/CREW NAME__________
CRIB______________________
1. Ramon have a AK-47 with a 200-round clip. He usually miss 6 of every 10 shots and he use 13 rounds per drive-by shootin.. How many mofos Can Ramon ice on a drive-by befo he gotta reload?
2. Leroy have 2 ounces of cocaine. If he sell an 8 ball to Antonio for $320 and 2 grams to Juan for $85 per gram, what be the street value of the rest of his shit?
3. Dwayne pimps 3 ho’s. If the price is $85 per trick, how many tricks per day must each ho turn to support Dwayne’s $800 per day Crack habit?
4. Raul wants to cut the pound of cocaine he bought for $40,000 to make 20% profit. How many ounce bags will he need to make to gets the 20% Upside?
5. Desmond gets $2000 for a stolen BMW, $1500 for stealing a Corvette, And $1000 for a 4X4. If he steals 1 BMW, 2 Corvettes and 3 4X4’s, how many more Corvettes must he steal to make the 10k for his brother’s bail?
6. Pedro got 6 years for murder. He also got $10,000 for the hit. If his common-law wife spends $100 of his hit money per month, how much money will be left when he get out?
7. If an average can of spray paint covers 22 square feet and the average letter is 3 square feet, how many letters can be sprayed with three 8 oz. Cans of spray paint with 20% paint left over?
8. Tyrone knocked up 4 girls in the gang. There be 20 girls in his gang. What be the percentage of bitches Tyrone knocked up?
9. LaShaunda is a lookout for the gang. LaShaunda also has a Boa constrictor that eats 5 rats per week and a cost of $5 per rat. If LaShaunda makes $700 a week as a lookout, how many weeks can she feed her snake with one week’s income?
10. Marvin steals Juan’s skateboard. As Marvin skates away at 15 mph, Juan loads his .357 Magnum piece. If it takes Juan 20 seconds to load his piece, how far away will Marvin be when he gets whacked?
Help EFF Research Web Browser Tracking
by Peter Eckersley, EFF.org
“What fingerprints does your browser leave behind as you surf the web?
Traditionally, people assume they can prevent a website from identifying them by disabling cookies on their web browser. Unfortunately, this is not the whole story.
When you visit a website, you are allowing that site to access a lot of information about your computer’s configuration. Combined, this information can create a kind of fingerprint — a signature that could be used to identify you and your computer. But how effective would this kind of online tracking be?
EFF is running an experiment to find out. Our new website Panopticlick will anonymously log the configuration and version information from your operating system, your browser, and your plug-ins, and compare it to our database of five million other configurations. Then, it will give you a uniqueness score — letting you see how easily identifiable you might be as you surf the web.
Adding your information to our database will help EFF evaluate the capabilities of Internet tracking and advertising companies, who are already using techniques of this sort to record people’s online activities. They develop these methods in secret, and don’t always tell the world what they’ve found. But this experiment will give us more insight into the privacy risk posed by browser fingerprinting, and help web users to protect themselves…”
A Message From Transport Canada on Flights to The US, YouTube
Rick Mercer Report