Hillary
Obama
Elections
"I'm shocked that there's gambling in this casino!"
Tony Blair To Join JPMorgan
How the U.S. Secretly Helped Pakistan Build its Nuclear Arsenal
Largest U.S. Solar Array at Nellis AFB, Nevada
I.O.U.S.A.
Film Debut at Sundance
Government's Fiscal Exposures Approximately $75 Trillion
“About $895 billion, or 57 percent, of the federal government’s reported total assets as of September 30, 2007, and approximately $740 billion, or 25 percent, of the federal government’s reported net cost for fiscal year 2007…were disclaimed on or not audited...” Think about that statement for a minute. Some $740 billion is being spent each year without any audit or independent third-party review. Why?
As the Comptroller General explains: “The federal government did not maintain effective internal control over financial reporting (including safeguarding assets) and compliance with significant laws and regulations as of September 30, 2007.” He then goes on to highlight a particular problem; there exists “serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense”....
“Considering this projected gap in social insurance, in addition to reported liabilities (e.g., debt held by the public and federal employee and veterans benefits payable) and other implicit commitments and contingencies that the federal government has pledged to support, the federal government’s fiscal exposures [i.e., its aggregate direct and indirect debt obligations] totaled approximately $53 trillion as of September 30, 2007, up more than $2 trillion from September 30, 2006, and an increase of more than $32 trillion from about $20 trillion as of September 30, 2000. This translates into a current burden of about $175,000 per American or approximately $455,000 per American household.”
I encourage all who are interested in Agee's legacy to find back copies of Covert Action Quarterly (www.covertactionquarterly.org). CAQ, in its heyday, was THE CIA whistleblowing publication before the Bush apparatus shut it down. In its more recent incarnations, it has been watered down considerably, and was co-opted by new (asset-infested) contributors, and split apart. Louis Wolf, one of the original editors, is still at it.
Larry Chin, Online Journal
Next Time, Evacuees Subject to Criminal ChecksPerfecting the M.O.
$2500 Cars = $200 Oil?
AFRICA:
From Slate Magazine:
A good resource on the energy conflicts in Africa is the book:John Ghazvinian, "Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil," Harcourt (2007)four excerpts were published by Slate magazine:Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oilfrom: John GhazvinianPosted Tuesday, April 3, 2007, at 1:35 PM ETThe United States now imports more of its oil from Africa than it does from Saudi Arabia. How is oil and the money it brings to the continent's treasuries transforming Africa? For his new book, Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil, John Ghazvinian traveled from the parched dust bowls of Chad and Sudan to the swamps and jungles of Nigeria and the Congo, and from the corridors of Washington to the gleaming offices of "Big Oil." Does oil-producing Africa live up to the hype? Why is it impossible to buy bananas in Gabon, when they grow in profusion in the nation's virgin rainforest? Can an underdeveloped country like Sao Tome and Principe learn from other nations' mistakes and avoid the "curse of oil"? What effect does the establishment of an oil-company compound in the middle of Chad have on the neighboring land and people? This week, we are publishing four excerpts from Untapped that answer these questions.
Does it Measure up to the Hype?
Will Oil Change Sao Tome and Principe?
When Exxon Mobil Came to Chad
Yes, We Have No Bananas
Sharia Banking's Attack on Western Finances
J.O.:
ReplyDeleteFYI...
A Dormant Danger in the Dust
Jon Stewart on the economy:
ReplyDeletehttp://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/02/hot-ladies-talk.html
I had a "Wait, what?" moment today in my Geology class when my professor said something along the lines of "Most of us geologists don't believe in global warming."
ReplyDeleteEverything about global warming today is either "I believe it", "It is a myth perpetuated by eco-Fascists and Big Business that will profit from it", or "It doesn't matter; the Rapture is coming soon."
Personally, I don't believe much of what Alex Jones says, but I would really like to hear MCR's and/or Jenna's opinion on this subject. Does anyone else know any good online documentaries or books on the subject?
johnt, science is virtually unanimous in the belief that global warming is real. see jim hansen of nasa, the leading voice on the subject.
ReplyDeleteI do a lot of translation work in the environmental field. There is little room left for skepticism in this area. Personally, I prefer "climate change" over "global warming," as the latter term is too narrow to describe what is happening.
ReplyDeleteAs for the causes, there is more room for debate.
I believe the global warming dispute is whether it's a man-made phenomnena or if it's a naturally occuring event.
ReplyDeletePersonally, given the political alignments between people like Al Gore and the Rockefeller cabal with global finance and industrial imperialism, I'm more inclined to trust the historic record than the justifications that are presented to regulate the strategic placement of future business enterprises. And to create new forms of taxes.
If the United Nations and the rest of the regular cast of corporatists/globalists (they are one in the same when refering to the ruling class) weren't directing the debate, I might be swayed in my opinion. Unfortunately, I'm a firm believer in "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me". My core beliefs simply won't allow me to place credibility in any of their snake oil, no matter how well it's packaged.
Fear, backed by repetitive propaganda, has a huge psychological impact upon an unwary people. Just look at 9/11 and the "War on Terror" and you know exactly how it's used. The enemy is created beforehand, and the media hypes the potential and repeatedly hypes the fear factor. Movies of terrorists and hijackings, terrorist events broadcasted regularly, etc.
The 9/11 attack takes place and the media immediately starts flashing bin Laden across the screen as the known mastermind. Also, within 24 hours all of the earlier references by most anchors and reporters about controlled demolition, implosions, explosions, etc are removed and the repeated mantra is becomes the "pancake theory".
Even that has been officially abandoned by NIST, but if you walk out on the street and ask almost any stranger, they'll try to sell you on the pancake collapse.
It's called propaganda. Repeatdly telling you something regardless of what you've seen with your own eyes, until you unconsciously dismiss your known thoughts and recollections and simply accept what is presented as the facts. Try to tell people that NIST dismissed the pancake theory and most people will simply say "oh". They've been propagandized to the point that thinking otherwise seems contrary to rational thought.
Man made global warming is the same story. It's the same snake oil salesman as those who delivered us 9/11 and the War on Terror. The "global warming" mantra has been filtered into every component of the controlled media.
Given more time and space I could very precisely explain how the two supposedly different issues (warming and War on Terror) are intimately related as critical components of a single, broader globalization strategy. In short, political and economic domination. Resistant governments get replaced, and controlled governments must convince citizens to surrender economic sovereignty over manufacturing rights. DOHA etc. At length, we could get into the specific policies and show their shared roots.
Warming is real. But don't believe the liars who want to use a historically recorded natural phenomnena to sell their private agenda.
If global warming was fake the biggest polluters in the corporate industry would not spend millions of their so loved cash in attempting to shut up the science. And the current Whitehouse would not censor and rewrite reports on it and call people up an threaten them. mrsp
ReplyDeleteShorebreak makes a good point.
ReplyDelete9/11 happened. Climate change is happening. And all sorts of other "stuff happens." But who or what is behind them, and how they are being used to advantage by various parties, is another matter entirely.
For example, conservation groups may use the "threat of global warming" to insist that we cut fossil fuel use. OK, that I can live with. But at the same time, the nuclear power industry and their politico lackeys use it to push for more nuclear power.
How about 9/11? I doubt that a single government on the globe believes the US government's story. But how many are speaking up? Of course obsequiousness toward the US is one reason. But here's another: what government does not benefit from 9/11 indirectly? 9/11 was an inside job and the whole "war on terror" is phony, but they provide great pretexts for tightening the screws. Now foreign visitors to Japan, and even foreigners who are permanent residents (!), must submit to fingerprinting and photography, and possibly interviews, before being allowed out of the airport. And about the only "terrorist threat" in Japan is the home-grown anti-royalists and others on the extreme left. (Oh yea, and don't forget how they keep hyping the "North Korean threat").
So you can objectively see "stuff happening," but the phenomena are not the whole story. The true causes could be something you never imagined, and parties which had no connection to the "stuff" at all can also figure out ways to benefit from it.
johnt - I have a three suggestions, (2 video clips and 1 audio interview), regarding the climate change issue:
ReplyDelete1) Real News interview with Dr. David Suzuki
2) Australia Broadcasting's Science film
CRUDE the amazing journey of oil which covers the history of oil, climate change, and peak oil.
3) An interview by George Kenney of "Electric Politics" with Dr. Chris Rapley called Anthropogenic Climate Change.
Also, be sure to check out the source of denier stories in the news. More often than not they come from sources funded by big oil/coal or ultra conservative "free market" think tanks.
Best.
johnt - one more video. This one is unique. It is a reasoning exercise in risk management about what the proper response to the climate change issue should be even if you are unsure of the facts.
ReplyDeleteBy a science teacher. Great stuff:
"how it all ends" or "in the test tube"
www.oilempire.us/fake-debate.html
ReplyDeleteFake Debate
binary thinking is a tool of control
The mainstream view of environmentalism suggests that those concerned
about pollution changing the climate should embrace Al Gore's non-
electoral political campaign, even though he helped make the climate
crisis worse while Vice President. And some far-right wing anti-
environmental voices suggest that because Al Gore has some unpleasant
politics, therefore climate change is a hoax -- as if atmospheric
chemistry was dependent upon a particular politician or political
entity. Some media propagandists also claim the energy choices in the
climate change era are between allegedly "cleaner" coal or an
expansion of nuclear power, even though the energy that would be
invested to increase these toxic technologies would be more
effectively used for efficiency, relocalization and renewable energy
systems.
www.oilempire.us/climate.html
The mass media, politicians and most environmental groups do not want
to ask why our society largely ignored the warnings about climate
change. Few of them also consider how Peak Oil and global warming are
two ways of looking at the same problem of overconsumption, since our
monetary system is predicated on ever increasing growth.
The best analyses of Peak Oil and of global warming each conclude that
the problem would have to be addressed a decade or two before it
manifests at full strength - yet both problems are here, now. Perhaps
the truth is that the shadow government (corporations and the military
industrial complex) did not want to deal with these problems because
the solutions are inherently decentralized and would require
relaxation of centralized power control systems. Since we missed the
opportunity to solve these issues as gently as possible, governments
are instituting a global surveillance police state to suppress dissent
as the oil that runs the show becomes more scarce and expensive, and
climate change reduces available food and water supplies.
The US military has conducted experiments to alter the weather for
several decades, and even boasts about efforts to "control the weather
in 2020." An international treaty banning weather modification as a
weapon of war was signed in 1976 -- so this is not a hypothetical
technology that only exists in paranoid fantasies.
But it would be very misleading to suggest that deliberate weather
modification is the primary source for some of the shifts in global
climate. Some of the less-than-reliable websites and other new sources
that promote a variety of other not-quite-real claims about political
topics argue that weather technology is the culprit, not our use of
toxic technologies to power the "American Way of Life" and its
imitators around the world. (One prominent 9/11 "truth" activist told
an affiliate of this website that there was no need to be concerned
about climate change since the military controls the weather!)
The weather is changed through technology every time a car is turned
on or a light bulb is connected to the power grid. While corporations
and governments bear the largest responsibility for the problem,
billions of individual actions need to shift, too.
www.oilempire.us/peakoil.html
A few voices claim that Peak Oil is merely an oil company conspiracy
to hike profits and gain more control. Some of these claims are based
on the theory that oil is "abiotic" (not a fossil fuel), although that
claim predates our understanding of plate tectonics (critical for
understanding the time scale of petroleum geology), and is a
distraction from many other limits to endless growth. The claim that
oil is abiotic implies that it is limitless, but even if it were true,
the rate of extraction is the real issue, not how much is deep
underground. The real conspiracy is that the public is being excluded
from decisions on what to do with the remaining oil (solar panels or
battleships?).
Yea, binary thinking is a trap. A classic is Bush's statement that we're either with him or with the terrorists. Lawmakers applaud, duped citizens cheer in front of their TVs, tears streaming down their faces.
ReplyDeleteLots and lots of energy expended in NOT following the 9/11 money.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2008/012908Hogue.shtml
Well worth a read:
ReplyDelete"Pakistan problem: Washington's perspective"
http://www.energybulletin.net/40147.html