A NEW WORLD ORDER REVEALED

OK, I've been waiting for this moment for a long time. Recently I wrote that a lot of cards were going to be shown very soon. This is a big one. To my knowledge, no one from the right or elsewhere, predicted the emergence of this in this fashion. I could be wrong and, if I am, I give due credit to whoever predicted this. There are several really important things to consider:

1. This entity is apparently not yet constructed or in place. We need to see if it appears like the Patriot Act did; all ready to go. Just add water!

2. As I have been suggesting for years, the enslavement will not be with guns, but by money. On the other hand, in a controlled, fast-crash this might be an effective attempt to do a controlled demolition and shut things down in an "orderly" fashion. Again, I remain sceptical of the faith in technology. One way or another, by watching this, we will begin to see the curtain pulled back, revealing entities we've been wondering about for a long time. This is serious and it bears a close watch.

On the other hand, today President Obama and Joe Biden made a very convincing statement in support of the Middle Class -- that the door is wide open. Mr. Biden was resonatingly clear in promoting a new web site for input from the People. He convinced me that they are looking for answers and it almost felt as if he was speaking directly to us.

We have some answers.

http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-Davos2009/idUSTRE50T60420090130?sp=true

IF ANYTHING CONFIRMS THE MAP!!!!!!!! -- PUTIN JUST DID

Every bit of this was in Rubicon and FTW going back five years. This is another stunning confirmation that we got it right.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/davos/4376315/Russian-prime-minister-Vladimir-Putin-calls-for-end-of-dollar-stranglehold.html

--MCR

**************************************************************************************

JO adds:


Just when the US becomes a candidate for intervention by the IMF, Gordon Brown says it's outdated; we need a different approach. Hence the unveiling of the economic New World Order at Davos where the US, by its absence, stuck out like a missing thumb.

Brown warned against protectionism which the Obama stimulus plan, with its stipulation that the goods and equipment used be "American made," is accused of fostering.

So who's on whose side? Stay tuned.

Another Confirmation of Oil Depletion

"Most of the new categories of hydrocarbon resources (including “tar sands”) are not worth developing unless world prices are higher than the current $45 per barrel of oil equivalent. The decline of hydrocarbon resource development guarantees deficient supplies when the world economy recovers. Oil supplies will again be tight, leading to another round of upward price volatility."
JPMorgan Exited Madoff-Linked Funds Last Fall
Treasuries Headed For Full-Blown Bear Market, Citigroup Says
Transition Towns
Albert Bates' Permacultural Blog
Gates Sees Potential for US-Russian Cooperation

Ben & Jerry have created a new flavor, known as "Yes Pecan!" for Obama. For George W. they asked for suggestions from the public.

Here are some of their favorite responses:

Grape Depression, The Housing Crunch, Abu Grape, Cluster Fudge, Nut'n Accomplished, Good Riddance You Lousy Motherfu***r... Swirl, Iraqi Road, Chock 'n Awe, WireTapioca, Impeach Cobbler, Guantanmallow,
ImPeachmint, Heck of a Job, Brownie!, Neocon Politan, RockyRoad to Fascism, The Reese's-cession, Cookie D'oh!, Nougalar Proliferation, Death by Chocolate... and Torture, Freedom Vanilla Ice Cream, Chocolate Chip On My Shoulder, Credit Crunch, Mission Pecanplished, Country Pumpkin, Chunky Monkey in Chief, WMDelicious, Chocolate Chimp, Bloody Sundae, Caramel Preemptive Stripe, I broke the law and am responsible for the deaths of thousands . . . with nuts

SALAZAR THROWS A BODY PUNCH -- MIKE RUPPERT SINGS

Interior Secretary threw a major mody blow today to the enegry indisutry and its rampant duplicity. Interior's Minerals Managment Service (MMS) is perhaps the most important place in the government where reserves estimates and production data for everything from coal, to oil, to natural gas is compiled and reported. It has been one of the biggest fountainheads of lies giving the naysay to Peak Oil. In the last year a series of stories broke about how, throughout the Bush years MMS was lobbied by the enegry giants with ounces of cocaine, gaggles of prositutes and lavish getaways to spew the lies now so deeply rooted in the general American consciousness. You know, we'll vere run out of anything and we've been using everything for a hundred years and there's still plenty left.

You can bet that at least a dozen from MMS deserve to go to prison... and they will. Salazar made it pretty clear that he's going in with steel wool to do some scouring. The energy industry is on notice. I dunno. I expected this from Salazar and I have to say that after the first eight days, I'm pretty impressed with the Obama administration. We, you and I, along with other will take him to task on clean coal and increased domestic oil production and whatever other nonsense positions. But I can't help feeling that Mr. Obama wants to be forced to give up unattainable campaign promises. To do that he needs someone to hold his feet to the fire so he can say ouch before letting go.

KEEPING MY PROMISE

We talk a lot about music here and I've shared some of my background. Businessman put up a track and dared me to do the same. Here it is. It's all me, with me doubling on parts of the vocals. We did it in-studio last night in about a half an hour. Enjoy!

http://fromthewilderness.com/Rosie.mp3

--MCR

**************************************************************************************

Jenna Orkin adds:

Tokyo Rethinking Alliance with US in Multipolar World
Et tu, Tokyo?
Brazil May Look to US, Canada for Wheat
Brazil (the film)
"Now they've got the whole country sectioned off and you can't move without a form."
Russia and Iran Get Strategic
Gates Says Iran Bigger Worry than Russia in Latin America
Alberta's Tar Sands Pose Messy Challenge for Investors and Ducks
70% of Uranium Deposits Under Native Lands
How Long Will the World's Uranium Supplies Last?
High Fructose Corn Syrup Commonly Tainted with Mercury

A CONTROLLED FAST CRASH AND BARACK OBAMA'S FIRST OFFICIAL ENERGY "LIE"

January 26, 2009, 1:30 PM PST -- I've been hinting at it for weeks now. But events of the last 72 hours have pretty much convinced me of something which adds enormous new regions to our map. Historically, by definition, we have always spoken of a fast crash as a collapse of both the economic and political systems within a two-to-ten year range. We also defined a slow burn as something occurring over a ten-plus year span; hopefully between twenty and thirty years. At the current rate of economic, political and social deterioration I would estimate that the bulk of the current collapse will be over by the summer of 2011 or roughly three years after oil prices peaked at $147/bbl. It now appears that we have a controlled fast crash. In other words, there is a systematic plan underway ATTEMPTING to shut down the global economy in advance of the most serious phases of die-off. Someone else is trying to preserve critical infrastructure and societal cohesion. In "Lord of the Flies" it took a long time for the boys to revert to savagery and -- once they did -- most were irredeemable. That's why a slow burn is particularly dangerous; everything deteriorates so slowly that you don't know it's gone until it is too late. You can't go back to the garden. ("You don't know what you've got till it's gone. Pave paradise, put up a parking lot." Love ya Joanie.)

Previously I observed how all major economies appeared to be imploding at the same rate; i.e., a real controlled demolition. That's a far cry from 9-11 controlled demolition theorists because this is a controlled-demolition for which there is abundant, admissible evidence. Last week I wrote about how Europe's, and in particular Britain's economies were losing consciousness. The most dramatic symptom of this was the fact that the pound was racing downwards towards parity with the dollar. That would have ended the government and possibly, eventually the Monarchy. Today suddenly -- as more catastrophic news hits the U.S. economy, the pound and Euro are soaring. I smell a new and improved version of the Plunge Protection Team here. As long as there are no apparent discrepancies; as long as all nations look at each other and see no parachutes being opened, there is hope that the world stage might be held stable enough to function in for a while. What we are witnessing is a grand, global disengagement where the Indians fleeing vanishing jobs in Dubai are leaving their cars abandoned at the airport; and where Poles and other late-comer EU arrivals flee the UK and Ireland to go home. I am certain that by this point in the collapse of industrial civilization, every sentient nation understands that it is going to be on its own very soon. Instinctively, most animals go home to die; whether they be salmon or wolves or elephants. They may die or they may not, but instinctively they return to the place where they have the most power and support, the most connectedness with life and a piece of ground.

It is a survival instinct that works and it should be nurtured. The global stage will hold together until the first major economy pulls its ripcord. Then all the chutes will start opening.

So that leaves us with that question about whether this is intentional or not; whether the PA fires are a government plan or an outbreak of Jungian mass psychosis. I have climbed high in my mountains and from my perspective I see what the species homo sapiens is doing in response to a life and species-threatening event. What is being revealed now is the soul of our species. Someone once told the story of a stubborn man on the Titanic. He was last seen standing on the
stern as it began it's death plunge shouting, "I am not getting off this ship until I find out why this happened?"... Those of us on this list and from FTW days know why this happened. Whether this is being coordinated or not doesn't change the fact that our first task is to survive it. As we move, as we gather more data, maybe we'll pick up more clues that will reveal new trails. We must be good dancers.

BARACK OBAMA'S FIRST OFFICIAL ENERGY "LIE"

At today's press conference, Secretary Robert Gibb stated categorically that President Obama was certain that domestic oil production was going to increase. I don't think that anyone in the Peak Oil movement from Matt Simmons, to Colin Campbell, to Richard Heinberg, to me would believe that was remotely possible -- except in one case and one case only: Oil at $100. As we all know, that increase would be short-lived and perhaps the last great flicker of a candle. Yet Gibb immediately followed that comment by saying that he was certain that energy prices were going to rise... and soon. Thus arrives, as I wrote some months ago, the last heartbeat of the bumpy
plateau. Those of us who can read the map just got, at best, a five month head start on the rest of those who haven't got a clue.

At present I see only a few signs of what the bottom will look like. We're still too high above the ground and the free fall distorts vision. But I can see global unemployment in excess of 25%. I can see the Dow in the 4000 -5000 range. I can see gold at $10,000 or more. I can see an absolute patchwork quilt of regions in this country with various levels of civil unrest, from paradises to the "no-man's lands". I can see Green Zones being carved out around vital infrastructure where life will remain good for at best five years. Those inside the Green Zones will be lucky. As an example, I can easily see that Los Angeles International Airport, the San Pedro Harbor and north to Malibu will likely be a Green Zone. Green Zones could be protected by regimental to division-sized military units depending on the region's size. Same with San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Houston... But not all major cities will be so lucky. Not enough personnel... Put a fence around it! I see eventual mass migrations along geographic corridors of unrest and lawlessness. These will become the fault lines for regional disintegration. I see state and local governments dumping their flight plans and assuming massive emergency powers on an ad hoc basis in an increasing vacuum. I see hunger. I see that there are six new bird flu cases in China. And I see all of that regardless of whether the government, or The Powers That Be, or the New World Order, or whatever you want to call it is orchestrating it or whether it is just happening as a result of our unenlightened ways. This is what mankind is doing to itself, right now.

We have a new genius to add to our discussion: Joannie Mitchell (who I once had the pleasure of hanging out with for a few hours). I'm not sure she's human though.

Express your highest good today. Love something... I'm going to play with Rags.

MCR

Could Some of the Nafta Superhighways be Defining Future Borders of Wastelands and Protected Zones?

It certaintly looks true for key coastal regions in the northeast, southeast and west. But, as this map suggests, we can see how CONUS is divided north-to-south. But what will happen east-to-west? Any one got the graphics capability and the data to superimpose a map of FEMA's ten regions over the Superhighway map? That would tell us bucketsfull.

http://open-roadblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/nafta-super-highway-map-httpwww.html


I JUST HAD TO SHARE THIS

So, Rags and I go to our dogpark right after hitting SEND on the last one. While we're there a regular comes up with a clipboard. She's a nice lady... Occasionally I suspect there's a little vacant space between her ears. Anyway, she's all fired up about this petition. It's a petition to complain to the City of Santa Monica about not putting in enough wood chips, not enough lighting and asking for more benches. She was really angry about it... No shit! I really think this falls into the Clueless Beyond Belief category. Imagine my relief when one of my buds who does read the map said, "Yeah, we could use a drinking area with a wet bar." I immediately chimed in, "And a hot tub!"

For some reason, I feel much better now... I'd like to pay public homage to three men who greatly influenced my life. Forgive me guys if I have any of the details wrong. It's been thiry years. Jim Vojtecky was my first LAPD training officer. He had been a 1st Lieutenant/company commander with the 101st Airborne in a place called the Au Shau valley. After I got off probation I had a roommate and occasional partner named Fred Fogarty. Fred had been a LRRP sniper with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in I Corps. And then there was Jack Hoar.If I remember this right Jack had been a Marine with the 5th Marines in a city called Hue. Jack is a legend I don't have words for here. These are the men -- and others -- who taught me how to face death and have an absolutely fanfuckingtastic time doing it.

Can I have my hot tub please?

*************************************************************************************

Jenna Orkin adds:


2011? I'll take the relative cheeriness of the Mayan calendar.

BTW, the government of Iceland threw in the towel today. Thanks for the heads-up, Nihil Matters. And apparently Great Britain came within three hours of collapsing on October 10.

As some of my foreign students once said, thinking they were proposing a toast, "Up yours!"


Fema's Ten Regions

In the NAFI map, all roads lead to Mexico City. But you're right; there does seem to be some correspondence between the two jigsaw puzzles.
Peak Oil Production in Russia Suggests Worldwide Supplies on the Brink
Crisis Talks on the Slopes of Davos
Russia Calls For Global Financial Watchdog
Russia Stops U.S. On Road To Afghanistan
25 People At The Heart Of The Meltdown
Among the culprits: The American people.
Among those who saw it coming: The ubiquitous Nouriel Roubini, next to Warren Buffett.
What You Need To Know About Gold
Wall Street Journal article referencing experts familiar to many on this blog, such as Chuck Butler of Everbank. Actually, Everbank is more known for offering access to accounts in foreign currencies, a subject that hasn't been discussed here. Feel free to share information thereon, anyone out there who has it.
GAO High Risk Report Urges Action on EPA, Last Minute Bush Rules Add Insult to Injury

ASYMMETRICAL CIVIL UNREST IN TRANSITIONAL ECOSYSTEMS

by Michael C. Ruppert
(C) Copyright 2009, Michael C. Ruppert. All Rights Reserved.


Sunday Jan 24, 2009, 1 P.M. PDT -- It seems my muse is giving it to me to coin new terms lately. I thank my friend Doug and the musicians I touched last week for that. Creativity is contagious. -- A few days ago I came up with "Transitional Ecosystems". After looking at the two following stories I was struck (by a small lightning bolt) with the term "Asymmetrical Civil Unrest". There is no doubt that the brilliance of this concept originated in the magnificent writings at FTW and elsewhere by our Military Affairs Editor Stan Goff. Stan is a retired Master Sergeant from U.S. Army Special Forces. During his career he taught at West Point and he has been much on my mind of late. Colleague, friend, teacher... brother. That term may actually be in some of his writings but he most certainly is its father. Almost universally in all my years of participating in discussions on the subject, everyone was operating under the assumption that "civil unrest" would unfold under a paradigm defined by roughly the Watts riots in 1965 to the L.A. Insurrection of 1992. I happen to know a great deal about both events. Intuitively I have felt and said that this was the wrong approach. A dear friend, sometimes mentor, who was also one of the first ER physicians on scene on 9-11, Dr. Faiz Khan said something profound that applies. "A paradigm is what you think about something before you think about it." That is why the French assumed that World War II would be a replay of World War I. Faiz is also an assistant Muslim Imam and it was with him that I first knelt and prayed in a Mosque. I found the same God I have found in all other places. He/She welcomed me.

What we see in these two events affirms several long-held suspicions. Through much of my writings about civil liberties and government preparations for Orwell's "1984", I saw TPTB going for technology and algorithms and A.I. and, of course PROMIS to C3 the future. I have always felt that they were preparing in large measure for the old riot paradigm. But how do you plan for 14 fires in one month that are terrorizing a Pennsylvania community, now pushed to the brink of
martial law; and someone opening up full-auto, in a ski mask no less, in Miami? Could this be the "Shadow Government" provocatuerism so many have so well documented and predicted all these years? Yes, it could... But is it?

I don't know but I suspect that it is not. Is there anyone trying to tell me that the U.S. government or some New World Order has planned for Asymmetrical Civil Unrest in Transitional Ecosystems? Doh! -- Whatever happened to Occam's Razor? The simplest explanation is usually correct. Let me spell it out in five letters: C-H-A-O-S. But what will appear to be chaos to most will not be to us. What I love about this blog and the way Madam Jenna runs it with an occasional tweak of the helm from me, is that I'm not telling us what you see. We're all seeing the same thing from many vantage points and reaffirming the map with each new day.

The remainders of long division are unpredictable and the number of remainders swells daily. Unlike 9-11 we do not have what now seems even the luxury of comparing hundreds of mainstream stories to look for inconsistencies. That's how 9-11 was really broken and a lot of
great people helped to do that. We were the pioneers of that highly-effective technique. So whether it is provocateurism --COINTELPRO/AGITPROP/AMADEUS/GARDEN PLOT/TIA etc. (pant, pant, pant) -- or not is irrelevant. We have a map and we -- together -- are the guides into a new era. We can "read sign" as Skip Mahawk would say. We can smell the wind. We CAN listen to the earth and to each other.

I am extremely worried about Ohio. The fires in Pennsylvania aren't that far away... in too many ways.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/25/pennsylvania.fires/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/01/24/miami.shooting/index.html

As guides, our only real priority is to see where smouldering piles of kindling are becoming forest fires and to see which way they will burn. We dot not have the power to put any fires out but one day maybe we will.

On top of all this, 4th Quarter earnings come in next week and I swear there are no more hyperboles left to paraphrase what business news sources are saying. Places like Reuters and others are writing such stories of doom I think the cliff is here... YIPPEE!

-- Now before you all accuse me of being demented, remember this: Long ago we all understood that a fast crash was the best-possible scenario for human survival. That was the only thing that would leave enough functioning infrastructure in place to jump-start the next era. These are moments in the life of man that will decide what the next era - perhaps a hundred thousand years - will look like. We are in our rafts, such as they are, right now. We have whatever life vests and protective gear we could muster. We have trained. We have oars... especially in each other. We have helmets and we are rightly oriented.

It's time to run some rapids.


FOR THE RECORD...

BUISH NSA SPIED ON JOURNALISTS

... and NSA Director Michael Hayden refused to answer whether journalists opposed to the Bush administration were targeted. I believe I can answer that question. They did a lot more than spy. Everything... and I mean EVERYTHING in this breaking story was in From The Wilderness and "Crossing the Rubicon"... Been there, done that, got the scars to prove it.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/01/nsa-whistlebl-1.html

MCR


*************************************************************************************

Jenna Orkin adds:


Another day, another collapse. Sigh. The action junkey in us wants the plot to pick up speed. But that's because it's all still happening somewhere else, on the news, not to us.

These days I think often about a friend who once saw ominous strangers with flashlights outside her house.

There was a knock at the door.

Unable to bear the suspense she flung the door open, wanting to get the murder over with.

The visitors turned out to be the police who were looking for a thief.

But her behavior suggests how a part of us feels about collapse. The anxiety of waiting for the other shoe to drop can become unbearable.

For those who don't know, that expression originates from the phenomenon of listening to the upstairs neighbor getting ready for bed. He takes off one shoe. Then you can't help listening for the inevitable.

Only in our case it won't only be the other shoe that will fall. It will be the ceiling.

Last Chance to Save Mankind: Bury Charcoal - Lovelock

[B]etween the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It's happening again.

Then again....
Coming Chaos? Maybe Not
Russian Tycoon Lebedev Buys Russian Evening Standard
A refreshing change from Mr. Murdoch?
Obama's Rescue Plan Is Doomed to Fail: Moscow Times
Russia To Help Cuba With Oil Projects
Iran Inks 23 Maritime Deals in 10 Months
Executive Order rescinds Bush Order to restrict access to Presidential Records
Secrecy News cautions:

[S]everal caveats are in order. A "presumption of disclosure" really only applies to records that are potentially subject to discretionary release, which is a finite subset of secret government information. Vast realms of information are sequestered behind classification barriers or statutory protections that remain unaffected by the new policy statements.
Steel Output Drops
The US is Destabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan

GATHERING THE REINS

PLUS, A FREE BILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS IDEA

by

Michael C. Ruppert
(C) Copyright 2009, Michael C. Ruppert. All Rights Reserved

Jan 22, 2009 4:30 PM, PDT -- I will be the first to admit that President Obama's got some real egg on his face with respect the revolving door leading into his administration. His noble and absolutely proper decision to control what government insiders do after leaving leaves him wide open now. On the other hand, like I asked once before, who else can you find to run a government as large and screwed up as this except people who've been there before? I think that everyone who worries about this being an omen of things past becoming things future misses a very big landmark on our map.

When an an evolutionary paradigm shifts it is the same thing as the chemical composition of seawater and the atmosphere changing. The same is true in all areas of life, and politics and economics are no exception. We have about 6,000 years of recorded history that says so. All who live in the "transitional ecosystem" (I hope I didn't just coin that term. It's a good one.) must change and adapt -- including the elites -- or they will die. Just because many old hands, some with checkered pasts, are returning doesn't mean that they will operate the way they used to. They can't! There's no money. The political climate will not tolerate it. The economy is collapsing and soon the ground under the feet of rulers will be shaking. By no means should we fail to keep close eye. But these people know that every move is being watched and reacted to instantly as at no other moment in human history. We must judge by actions, not assumptions. Too many things are changing too quickly.

(As I wrote this paragraph Don Henley was singing in the background, "I will not lie down. I will not go quietly.)

The State Department performance today was brilliant, especially for a so-beleaguered, worn-out, and trodden upon Foreign Service. It was imperative that Mr. Obama move quickly on the international stage. The whole world has been waiting for an affirmation of what it has been hoping for, to -- in small measure -- undo an evil wrought as rape on the world for the last eight years. I don't know about you, but I can hear and feel a sigh of relief easing from almost everything, even the tree in my back yard. Still, we are all cautious now and we have learned at great price not to release joy too easily.

(Now I'm listening to Dave Matthews... another genius for our list. Let's see, so far we have Debussy, Henry Miller, Don Henley and Dave Matthews. Good list! Any other candidates? This might be fun. Your comments have placed me in this company and, so far, I like the party.)

A BILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS FOR THIS ECONOMY

If I was a selfish man I'd sit on this till after the new book is out. I'd never forgive myself. I'm going to be fine.

SOIL RESTORATION BUSINESS -- ESSENTIAL IN THIS ECONOMY

Those of us who've been at this for a while understand that urban soil that now supports lawns fed by oil and gas has become useless for growing food. How difficult would it be to find soil and ag experts. I'm sure that test kits already exist to analyze soil. After analysis the question then becomes, "OK, how do we fix it organically?" It couldn't be that difficult and I'd just bet that one of those local cable spots for a business like that in L.A. right now would bring in hundreds -- if not thousands -- of calls. Soil restoration could (and should) become the new chic! Right along with the composting toilet. "Have your own producing fresh, organic, vegetable garden started in as little as a few weeks!" The Chia Pet of the survivalist era! One of the best features of capitalism is that it quickly mobilizes productive energy. I am not a pure capitalist but damn there's parts of it work real good. It is the way that money works that is the enemy. But here are self-startable businesses that one doesn't have to be an expert to run. The infrastructure and capital costs are minimal. The end result is that the business owners get fed and and they make others able to feed themselves healthier food than most have ever known. Sounds like a win-win to me. Do not worry about the logistics of enough water or any of that. Those in urban areas who will have enough water to pull it off won't be able to grow anything if they don't have healthy soil first. This will teach people how to farm again and no matter what happens to that land, the knowledge and experience is transportable once acquired.

I know we've got some hot-dog, cracker jack farmers on this list. What say you?


PS: Globalization is dead in more ways than one. Indians and other foreign nationals are fleeing Dubai as its economy implodes. Thousands of cars are being abandoned outside the airport with keys in the ignitions. You see, when it comes time to face death, is is every animal's instinct to go home. It is what I did.

http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=55704&n_tit=Indians+Flee+Dubai+as+Dreams+Crash++-+Fall+out+of++Economic+Crisis
--

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THE NUMBERS GAME

Jenna Orkin

It's a little dizzying to read the headlines these days: Two trillion here, three trillion there... In between you go to the store, pay for your coffee and walk out, just the way you did three orders of magnitude ago.

"Freefall" reads another headline. I guess we really are at the legs-spinning-above-the-abyss phase, oblivious to said freefall until we land.

Between conception and realization falls the shadow. And that's a good thing. It's coming into the light that's going to hurt.

Global Banking Losses to Hit $3.6 Trillion

Quote of the day:

"'Secretly, bankers are already being advised about how to handle a bank holiday,' says Terry. 'There will be limits on how much money you can take out of a bank. And probably limits on what you can do with it.'

There will probably be controls on trading gold .. that was one of Roosevelt's plan too. And probably a national health care program. And who knows what else." www.dailyreckoning.com

US Housing Sector in Freefall

B of A and Citi Shares Sink As Investors Fear More Losses

Japan's Economic Gloom Deepens As Exports Plunge
Oil Surges; Ends Over $43 a Barrel
Gold to Gain Through 2012, Morgan Stanley Forecasts
They must be consulting the Mayan calendar too.

US Gets Other Routes For Afghan Supplies
Russia is assisting in this effort to bypass Pakistan. F. Kamilov, we await your comment.
India's Nuke Cruise Missile Test Fails
While India's getting help with its missile program from Russia, Israel and France, Pakistan is teaming up with China. The US, of course, is playing with both sides.
Rule Change Would Allow Ottawa To Buy Bank Stock

"Ottawa is looking at changing little-known rules that prevent governments from owning shares of Canadian banks and insurers, according to sources.

Doing so would not only allow the government to inject capital into banks if that ever became necessary, it could also make it easier for Canadian financial institutions to pull off foreign takeovers, and ease the way for sovereign wealth funds to invest in institutions here."

Drug Conspiracy Plea in Dirty Bomb Case

THE DRAMA HEIGHTENS, THE TENSIONS MOUNT

by

Michael C. Ruppert
(C) Copyright 2009, Michael C. Ruppert. All Rights Reserved.

JAN. 21, 2009 -- 9 PM PST -- What a day. OK, the good news: Obama is doing as much or more than I had hoped. By his repudiation of Bush-era FOIA policies today he made it a one-two after his inaugural (well-deserved) bitch slap of Bush over the Constitution. It looks like he has his priorities straight and is acting like a commander. (His salute is pretty good, but I've seen better.) But look, I'm as hardened a cynic as they come. In thirty-two years at this crap I have seen just about every kind of "let down" imagineable. The fact is that the force majeur of global economic collapse may make these efforts symbolic only; stillborn. But otherwise I could not be more encouraged over the last 36 hours. I know, that's a small sampling to judge an entire presidency. What will count most immediately -- and what will show us the Heart of Barack Obama -- will be what he does on the economy and he is going to have to make some very UGLY decisions within two weeks at most.

I was reading a piece today by Captain Hook at Financial Sense. It said that gold was like a beach ball being held underwater. That's a perfect analogy. My only minor disagreement was with Dr. Hook's assumptions about a recovery. There isn't going to be any recovery. And, knowing that, I say that gold will rise orders of magnitude higher. It all has to do with currencies and it looks like they are all going FUBAR at once... in several different directions. Hook made the point that the massive currency instability which is rocking the planet has made it difficult and/or impossible to negotiate trade contracts or even to ship commodities. That's just the tip of the iceberg. The British pound is plummeting and even approching parity with the dollar. British banks are -- according to some -- insolvent. Russia has devalued the Rouble five times in six weeks. A credible report says that hyperinflation is about to ravage China. The Gulf Cooperation Council has just approved the establishment of a single currency by 2010. The dollar is becoming a sea anchor to some of the biggest currencies and economies in the world and EVERYBODY has their
parachutes on; they're hooked up, and they're standing in the door. When no currencies are trustworthy there is nothing else to trust to keep ANYTHING going... EXCEPT GOLD. I think we see the behemoth holding the beach ball down losing its grasp. But the behemoth knows that the beach ball will pop out. Shoot, everybody knows that after age 4 or 5. The behemoth is trying to control the when and... of course to profit from it. Hence the massive hoarding of gold. I know
there's a lot of talk about Ameros and all these "newfangled" currencies. I don't care if there's a new currency called a "Bullwinkle" (I love Bullwinkle); without energy whatever you call it is just useless fiat paper. Currencies are becoming like the Tower of Babel.

In the meantime the second-largest Tar Sands developer in Canada, Suncor, has just announced it is cutting back Tar Sands costs by 50%. Even the OLD energy infrastructure necessary to fuel a recovery won't be there to enable it, let alone any alternative energy options. They're all shutting down too.

Energy and Money; Siamese Twins.

At this moment, all we can do is pray and exert our influence as much as possible to make people listen. We know that we have the right map here. Time has vetted it again and again. What we must make sure that those deciding our immediate future are reading this map too. Our lives are all at stake, here and now; and it is the last half of the ninth, two outs, and we're behind by three with one man on base. This is not over yet, not by any stretch so I'll resort to a cliched -- but very appropriate -- quote from Winston Chruchill. As far as collapse goes, "It may not be the beginning of the end; but it is the end of the beginning"... of the collapse.

REQUEST TO REGULARS -- Hey guys, I am going to be getting seriously busy... seriously soon. It's all very good stuff that will really help all of us get through some damn doors. There's no big red "S" painted on my chest anymore and you guys are super sharp. I need to ask you to follow closely and stark tracking anything you see out of Prez. Obama's first executive orders and report back what you find in the comments. Why should I use my fingers and toes when we -- combined -- are a super computer. Those EOs will be the best predictor we'll have this early.

The worse this gets, the more I read Henry Miller.

--
MCR
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VARIATIONS ON A THEME

by

Jenna Orkin


Not a moment too soon, the new occupant of the White House has thrown open a few windows.

It has been breathtaking, the swift, sure dismantling of Executive Orders whose only purpose was to serve not the people of the country but the people who had issued the Executive Orders in the first place.

The secrecy that for eight years, in the interest of 'national security,' has been invoked across the board - even to the EPA, where Policy Analyst Hugh Kaufman, railed, "We're the country's janitors, for God's sake!" - is going into reverse.

Guantanamo is being closed and the United States is forgoing policies of torture or rather, since we never officially espoused them in the first place, 'enhanced interrogation.'

Scientists are sighing with relief that once again their disciplines will be considered objectively rather than twisted to serve industry's needs.

And an insidious practise of inbreeding between lobbyists and government employees just got harder. The one-hand-washing-the other, inbred military-industrial complex (originally referred to by Eisenhower as 'the congressional, military industrial complex' before some antsy speechwriter intervened) is not going to have such a smooth ride.

No question: This guy's showing what he's made of. He's got good intentions.

Ah, but the road to Hell....

Will this inspiring start turn out to be no more than a wistful salute to idealism before reality returns from its heady few days or weeks of euphoria?

So far, Obama's got the wind at his back, universal approval for his reforms.

That won't be the case when it comes to the economy. The inevitable correction that must follow the parade we've witnessed of ever larger bubbles is not going to be popular. The biggest bubble, in Treasuries, is going to make the biggest pop. Were Obama to tell the truth, much less do what needs to be done which is to say, allow nature to take its course, he would be booed, Congress would vote down his initiatives and the people would vote him out of office ASAP.

Americans, being the most spoiled people in the history of mankind, not only want the good life back; they want it now. Man-on-the-street interviews by CNN reveal that some people expect the President to be able to turn things around in a matter of months. The more circumspect allow him a second term. But unless there's some major editing going on (as there may well be,) no one dreams that perhaps it is the President, not to mention we the people, who will be turned around.

What we have lost in the period of ease since World War II is a sense of time, investment and history. Having never known lack, we believe it's obsolete, like, oh, getting places on horseback. Why should it return, now that we have so much cool stuff like cellphones and computers?

Because what goes up must come down, especially if the 'up' part was artificial. Everything returns to equilibrium, reverts to the mean. Taking in the big picture, the balance of our consumption with the depletion of resources somewhere outside of frame and therefore consciousness, this abundant garden is turning out to be mortal. It could have nourished us forever but not without some stewardship on our part.

We are learning this, but too little too late.

And Obama, being the people's hero, is not far enough ahead of us. Rather than offering us what we need, he is offering us what we crave. Now that the birthday boys have gotten their supersized bailout, it's time for party favors for everyone else.

There's something goofily fitting about the stimulus package, like balancing the loss of a leg by cutting off the other one. But the tragedy of it is that it is throwing - I want to say 'good money after bad' but by now it's worse money. (I'm also tempted to call the stimulus package a kneejerk response but for the two amputated legs of the previous metaphor.)

The point is: Obama has the potential to be a great president. The question is: Will we let him?

JO


PS: Re the twaddle that I (not Mike) at times allow into the comment section of the blog. This is also in the interest of the big picture. It helps to know who your correspondents are. It can shed retrospective light on their other comments which may or may not also contain a certain amount of twaddle.

There's a lot if understatement here but this admission was inevitable.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=aUq6leFyb1uY&refer=africa

-- MCR

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JO adds:

Cheap Water Filters
Heavy Duty Solar Flashlights - Buy one; they donate one to the Third World.
Multi-Function Solar Rechargeable Light/Charger
Rice Farmer's Blog
Insights with links from one of the premier analysts.

A DAY OF DAYS

Well, it is accomplished... It will take me weeks to realize that Bush/Cheney are really gone. And I have to keep reminding myself that I did see Barack Obama bitch slap ol "w" over what he did to the Constitution. And I'm chuckling that an instantaneous order was issued to freeze and/or reverse all Bush presidential directives over the last month re: the environment and other issues. Rahm Emmanuel was right on top of that and I'd bet it was executed (excuse me Rahm) with German military precision. That's a good sign. I don't think that Mr. Obama wasted a micro-second in letting everyone know that he's his own man. What man that is remains to be seen but these two small signs are good ones.

Look guys, things are falling apart so fast I can't keep up. Forget that the Dow lost 300+ today. B of A is going down. Citigroup is going down... again. (Go back and see, I called this one too.) Global mining (of almost anything) has come to a virtual standstill. The business bankruptcies won't really begin for a week or two and they'll tsunami by March, April and May. Europe has declared itself in a Depression... I did note one interesting sign today. For the last four months or so, completely out of synch, as the Dow fell, so went gold. Not only counterintuitive but to me a sign that the panic was intense and that whoever is controlling the gold price suppression was thinking, "We can't let gold rise even three per cent aginst the markets. The panic is so intense that if people see even that spread it'll start a stampede." But today the Dow tanked and gold soared. Sign of a breakout?... Could be.

Every day Rice Farmer and others send me links to stories from around the world... in addition to the ones I find. There's good news and bad news. The bad news is that the list grows longer and scarier each day. I must take two long breaks and play with my dawg for twenty minutes to get through the lists. The good news is that more and more media outlets -- some of them very reputable -- are starting to tell it like it is.

I got a wonderful compliment today. Stan Goff would really appreciate this. I was talking to an Army returnee today. He was a medic with the 10th Mountain Division in the Iron Triangle. He told me that "Crossing the Rubicon" is on the Division's recommended reading list.

Hoo Ah!

-- MCR
*************************************************************************************

JO adds:

Asian cellist, Jewish white guy on violin, disabled, to boot! Venezuelan woman on piano; African-American on clarinet. The signal came through loud and clear: This is going to be a truly ecumenical administration, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, even women. Which is to say, we're all going down together.

Pity Obama. He will be viewed as the knight, ("Obamalot") who rode in with such promise, yet whose advent in fact ushered in disaster such as the world has never known.

Does he know he's been set up? Have they minced words in telling him what's in store? He seems awfully serious these days. And his speech started off on a grim note of warning.

But soon enough we were back on the familiar track of hope triumphant.

Perhaps eventually, depending on one's definition of 'triumph.' But to quote T.S. Eliot, "Between the conception and the realization falls the shadow." Between now and then is going to be an awful lot of TSHF.

For starters:

India Sends Message to Pakistan With New Missile Tests
Hu's Proposals for Taiwan Discussed with US, Russia, Norway
Doomers Go Mainstream
New Yorker article on Dmitri Orlov and Jim Kunstler, also touching on goldbugs and with a nice plug for Carolyn Baker's new book.
Saudi Intelligence Chief Meets Zardari, Gilani
Brazil Least Affected By Global Economic Crisis
Another Inauguration Not To Be Missed

KSM CONFESSES! -- WHY NOT?

You know, we passed chutzpah with Bush/Cheney when they stole the 2000 election. So, after the planned and executed attacks of September 11th, coordinated by Dick Cheney; after the bogus inavsion of Iraq; and after the planned looting and destruction of the U.S. economy; it makes perfect sense that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed allegedly confesses along with Ramsi Bin al Shibh on the very last day of the Bush administration. It doesn't matter that the one photo they show of him reportedly taken right after his 2003 capture isn't him (Thanks again Paul Thompson). It doesn't matter that he was reported killed by multiple news sources days before his "capture". It doesn't matter that not once since his capture has he been seen in any photograph or by any witness outside Guantanamo. None of it matters much anymore. They got away with all of it. And when the five presidents had their photo taken, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. had Obama surrounded like a gangland kidnapping with Clinton and Carter standing off to the side. It looked to me like they were grateful for the distance.

Like I said, the Bush base was always going to steal Iraq's oil, loot the economy, transfer the wealth, break a million laws, destroy tens of millions of lives... and we're going to give them a parade just to get "rid" of them.

T'was the night before inauguration and all through the house...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090119/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_guantanamo_sept11_trial

MCR
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JO adds:

Thanks for that link, Jeff!

Quote of the day:

When America’s economy was young and competitive it survived slumps and crashes without medical intervention. Now, every passing cold requires feeding tubes. And this latest bout of influenza has the doctors in a panic. They are casting aside warnings and giving the patient masses doses of the old quack treatments. They’ll increase the dosage – until they run out of supplies – and then switch to those new, experimental medicines that have recently been used in field trials by Dr. Gono in Zimbabwe. Since they cannot leave well enough alone – the public won’t stand for it – they will keep giving bigger and bigger doses, of more and more dangerous medicines, until the patient dies. The Daily Reckoning

Russia Likely To Join OPEC Soon: Pickens
Pirates Through a Different Lens
More Americans Join Military as Jobs Dwindle
Soylent Oil in Beverly Hills
Gangs of America
Excellent analysis of the rise of corporations in the US; their role in the Civil War and their appropriation of the constitutional rights afforded individuals.
Allusions to "from the wilderness" on Donna Brazile

CIVIL UNREST

It Seems as if The World is Holding Its Breath for The Inauguration But…

By

Michael C. Ruppert

(c) Copyright 2009, Michael C. Ruppert. All Rights Reserved.

Jan. 18, 2009 – Perhaps we should be holding our breaths for something else; something that is breaking out all over the world. Civil unrest now moves from a back to a front burner as a landmark on our map and a pressing issue for our discussion.

On January 16th and 17th I saw (either) cowardice or duplicity on the part of mainstream media. Chesley Sullenberger is a great pilot. Coming from an Air Force/aviation family I would be honored to shake his hand. The U.S. Air miracle on the Hudson was indeed that. But for almost 36 hours I watched in rage as the mainstream media, especially CNN, played the same four of five clips endlessly, over and over, rehashing the rehash – hour after hour. The anchors and their producers were either taking a break or regrouping. Several looked very bored. Not since 9-11 have I seen American media shut down news coverage of other important events to such a degree. But the US Air crash landing wasn't a 9-11 was it?

On January 16th the United States shed another 21,000 jobs… in one day. Globally, the economic collapse is hitting other industrialized countries much harder than here. Around the world "emerging" bourses are imploding at a faster rate than ours. Perhaps we should rename them as "disappearing markets" now. The disappearing act has hit turbo charge in Europe as a result of a now three-week old lack of Russian natural gas. Triggered by the economic collapse and compounded by human suffering in unheated, near-zero weather, riots – big ones – have erupted from Latvia in the North, to Sofia in the South. There is serious street fighting. Around the world, from China, to India, to Europe, industrialized nations are "frantically" preparing for civil unrest (China at a very rapid pace). Of course our map says that the US, the UK, Russia and a few others have been preparing for this for years.

Arab nations have lost $2.5 trillion (40% of their investments) thus far in the collapse and have postponed or cancelled 60% of their new development projects… You know? Those hotels where you can snow ski inside when it's 112 outside? That kind of a shutdown will cause the Arab oil-producing nations to explode in civil unrest as aggravated poverty, starvation and disease hit home in short order. Collapsed oil prices have exposed the lack of economic stamina in the region. (You thought Americans were foolish spenders.) The luxuries of the princes will now stand starkly contrasted against the barren desert of their subjects' lives. Thus, geography is giving us our first major political tectonic fault line. From the Baltic south, through Greece, into Turkey, then fanning out across the Middle East is a new frontier of soon-to-be flaming unrest

Unrest will happen here and it will happen in an earthshaking fashion within the next year. Could the evidence supporting this conclusion have been missed as we watched footage on the Hudson for the thirty-second time in 36 hours? Couldn't they have squeezed any of this other news in… somewhere?

WHILE WE WERE SLEEPING great folks like Rice Farmer continued to cull the world press to document the accelerating global collapse and send out stories on a daily basis. Good grief can that man read a map! When meshed with the research from both me and Jenna, the last three days have been an absolute horror show.

As examples:

The EU has effectively nationalized Britain's gas production to cope with the shutdown of Russian gas to Eastern Europe. Over the last two or three years I have received first-hand confirmation from North Sea oil and gas workers that – as a result of the North Sea's serious
decline and depletion – many nearly-empty oil fields are being converted to suck out whatever methane remains in now-depleted oil reservoirs. This has allowed geologists and owners to extend field life (profitability) for maybe a few more years. Now however, for the first time, British natural gas is flowing out to help Bulgaria, Bosnia, Croatia and many other east European countries which are shattering like ice crystals in the cold. British heating rates are soaring and there may be thousands more "excess deaths" there by freezing this winter. Already, a debate is underway urging UK withdrawal from the EU. It remains to be seen whether the heat from public opinion will warm policy making. Britain is a major candidate for imminent riots.

This current reversal is directly opposite to the map I drew at FTW between 2003 and 2006 which said that Britain would surrender its energy sovereignty to Europe. It did in 2006. But the combination of the sudden (if short-lived) surge in British gas production with the crisis in Eastern Europe has turned a few things on their heads. What is happening in Eastern Europe and the many other places around the world where riots are breaking out will give us clues as to what to expect here. I am afraid that we will be seeing civil unrest in the U.S. very soon and this is the gloom the media is cavalierly trying to "spare" us from so that Americans may have their inaugural moment.

As for Britain and the EU, the Russian gas shut-off will end, hopefully by the end of this next week. A human can freeze to death in a matter of minutes. At present I see no substantial progress. The EU is almost blatantly capitulating by throwing Ukraine back to Moscow. Here! We don't want it! The shut off will pass. Britain's momentary ability to act as a swing producer for Europe cannot last. Public opinion in Britain will likely surge towards secession. But Her
Majesty's government knows clearly that this is suicide. Britain will ultimately remain at the end of the Russian natural gas pipeline. But in what condition is anyone's guess. Britain sits along another fault line – the one separating Europe from North America. As Mexico will decide whether it is a Latin American nation or a North American nation, Britain will be compelled to choose whether it is a European nation or a part of the United States, Canada and its far-flung
Commonwealth. As I write, the Russian gas shut off continues and the crisis in Europe nears catastrophic proportions. Please, any regular readers who live in or near the region, send us your reporting, local stories you and find, and your analysis. Artificial conditions in Europe have given us a glimpse of our near future. In Sofia, Budapest and elsewhere people and factories have, as a matter of survival, turned to burning coal and wood to stay alive. This is not as simple as just
a return to the Middle Ages because there are hundreds of times more people, concentrated in smaller areas. Already major cities in Eastern Europe are choking on air and water pollution from these "alternative fuels".

CIVIL UNREST IN THE UNITED STATES

This is little more than hunch at the moment. The three likeliest states to have civil unrest first are Michigan, California and Ohio. These are the states hardest hit by job cuts. Ohio is of most concern to me. California is just huge and fragmented. The "fires" here would be rapidly "extinguished" by a state that has well-developed and longstanding historical plans for civil unrest going back to the 1960s. There are really probably five states in California and the fire is unlikely to spread from one "region" to another because each region has a different economic base and a different culture. Michigan is geographically off to the side of the board and already something of a "wasteland". There are no densely-packed masses of dry kindling nearby.

But Ohio is entirely different. Already devastated by auto layoffs and other massive corporate failures, Ohio's industrial areas border and are in close proximity to Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania. Lots of kindling in those states. At the same time as Ohio is devastated by DHL, auto and other layoffs, much of the nation's high-tech wind turbine industry in Ohio is also shutting down at the same time… just when we need it. The snake eats its own tail
for nutrition. It is the way money works… for now.

Civil unrest in Ohio could easily infect across state lines here, and cross another fault line that runs east and west, separating north from south; the Mason Dixon. Other earthquakes might be triggered. Eastward from Ohio are Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I wonder how much inter-agency advance planning DHS and FEMA have gone through so that they might operate fluidly across many borders, radio frequencies and jurisdictions. Those contingencies were planned for in the Patriot Act which congress didn't or couldn't read before voting on it. I described all of this in detail in my essay, "The 'F' Word" in 2001: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/nov202001.html.

There isn't even ten per cent of the military manpower required to impose national martial law in the Continental U.S. (CONUS). But my guess is that there will be an expansion of troop deployment in the region around Ohio soon. We should all be watching where troops are stationed as they (and if) they start coming home.

We all will have a clear understanding of who Barack Obama is and what he represents in short order. He, his administration, and whatever his base is are going to have to show their cards soon. Very soon. What we know is that many of the so-called energy and economic "solutions" espoused by Barack Obama during the campaign and since the election will fail abysmally, at or near the gate. What we pray for are more frequent and stronger signals that ears are open to any who might have some real answers… namely the Peak Oil/Sustainability movement.

In the meantime… In looking at how civil unrest will unfold in the United States it has become pretty apparent that martial law, as we understand it will not be marked by either large numbers of troops/police in the streets or the oh-so-beloved concentration camp myths of the Far Right. The reason I have made this statement consistently for at least nine years is the same in both cases: lack of resources. There are not enough troops and there is also not enough money, food and manpower to put millions of Americans in expensive concentration camps… AND feed them.

The current economic paradigm's approach will be to leave as many displaced Americans as a self-mobile migrant work force that will feed, clothe and house itself on its own. That is much less expensive! Plus, when massive labor is needed it will take the labor pool to the work like a man dying of thirst will run for fresh water. The basic expense here is just to police and contain the mess, sort of put a fence around it.

I am one of the few fools to have read all of both the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act, I mean every word. I dissected both at FTW.

All these landmark pieces of legislation are really preparing for is two things. First, the absolute protection of critical infrastructure (e.g. water, power, telecommunications, Internet, hospitals, police and fire stations, airports, military bases, etc.). This is where the military will be used. Second, the maximized control of civilian populations through technology which can deprive them of access to both cash and credit (i.e. food and mobility). That coupled with nearly ubiquitous electronic surveillance and some very effective, non-lethal, area-denial weapons. Already I can see that millions of Americans are locking themselves into their own "die-off" prisons and the realization will not hit them for several years. I would not want to be locked in that virtual prison knowing my fate there.

I think it is much less likely that TPTB are interested in us… or even me. I think they more fear a Spartacus now – or many of them – emerging from those who are about to die. Those of us here who followed the map and changed our lives have removed ourselves from that demographic. We will be needed, and soon. We must be ready.

So MY FIRST RECOMMENDATION is this:

Unless you live in a place surrounded by concrete canyons, and if you have family or a close network, a real neighborhood, go out and buy 5 watt FM walkie-talkies with rechargeable batteries. It's been a few years since I've done research but these radios, which can reach up to
two-and-a-half miles, are important for two reasons. First, they do not require any kind of licensing. Neither do they require the use of a satellite or a microwave relay tower. They can't easily be jammed or shut off. They are direct point-to-point and they will work when everything else fails.

A few on this blog were talking about Ham and shortwave. Both are going to be important but (repeating myself) we must survive the transition stage first. In all thinking now, start locally and work outward. If you do not command the ground under your feet you will never command the ground beyond it.

In an emergency you and your family might be forced to move in a mass exodus with large crowds. How will you know where your family is? How will you keep them together? How will you find one who is lost? How can you use your family to do things that others can't? Remember that if a bear attacks your campsite you do not have to be faster than the bear. You only have to be faster than the slowest camper. (Wink to Barry Silverthorne.) Quick, effective, close-in intelligence and reconnaissance will allow you to keep your heads while others are losing theirs.

Now I know that the Army Signal Corps and Army Security Agency have equipment capable of jamming all these FM frequencies in any battlefield condition. If you have this kind of communications at your disposal, however, you'll probably be far away by the time anything like that happens.

From now on start all of your immediate thinking from the local outward. Those of us who have tried so hard to save the world must also seriously think about saving ourselves from it as well.


MCR
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Jenna Orkin adds:


And it's another exciting Sunday evening at the OK or rather, the O-Shit blog.

I hope Barry's metaphor of the bear attacking the campers is apt. If it's not a bear but a tsunami that's coming, we're all screwed.

Along with the benign echo of 9/11 with the happy ending in the Hudson, the other story looping endlessly is of the First Couple-(elect), that paragon of beauty, intelligence and good will finally, the day after MLK day, overcoming. Photo-ops abound. The 'circuses' half of the Roman formula for keeping the people happy thrives. Soon enough we'll be clamoring for the 'bread' half and that'll be harder to come by.

When, oh when will someone get on prime time news with the truth? When are we getting our "blood, sweat and tears" speech? Churchill didn't give his until the Battle of France was underway; even then the people had to be confronted with brutal realities before they were willing to entertain his offer.

Not long ago this country, indeed this world, seemed more enlightened than any in history. So accepting were we of differences, so flexible, so open to new discoveries in the social as well as the hard sciences, so inquisitive and eager for knowledge. Francis Fukuyama seemed almost plausible, if a tad puffed-up, when he described the period as "the end point of mankind's ideological evolution."

Of course each era thinks that about itself. But at least we didn't feel like an exception.

Then it changed.

The barbaric behavior of various groups and governments, even individuals (Lindsay England) has made hatred of those groups and whatever they purportedly represent acceptable again. The longing for simplicity, for good guys vs. bad, induces a black and white picture that allows for distortion as well as catharsis.

More circuses, once again lacking the 'bread' of substance.

Although we're on the eve of a historic inauguration and it seems as though we can never go back, the truth may turn out to be the opposite.

What if - and on this blog we believe the 'if' is only a matter of 'when - things get a whole lot worse? How long will it take to blame the guy whose face is associated with the greatest disaster in the history of mankind? And the 'horse' - equality - he rode in on?

The backlash may be worse than any of us have ever known. In a dog-eat-dog world, people will look for reasons to justify killing. The hatred is ready and waiting, speaking of tinder.

Fukuyama's quote begins by describing the era in question, the 1980's, as 'the end of history." He may not have understood how literal that description could turn out to be.


Monetary Union Puts Half of Europe in Depression
An EU debt union is being created, in breach of EU law. Liabilities are being shifted quietly on to German taxpayers. What happens when Germany's hard-working citizens find out?

India Faces More Terror Attacks: US Study
Looks like we need to divert more troops to that region, eh?
North Korea Claims To Have Weaponized Plutonium
Obama To Face Iran Nuclear Crisis In First Year, ex-US Official Warns
The Big Idea For 2009 as Discussed at JP Morgan
Biotechnology

Gas-deprived European nations shivering

Everyone needs to read this story closely. As a journalist, I have to say it's some of the best reporting I have ever seen. It is ominous and it will fit in nicely with the next piece I'm working on.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28692207/

MCR
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Burning Coal at Home Is Making A Comeback
EROI Educational Resources
Former Bank Of England Official Expects Dollar Collapse
Confidential Information on South African Banking Posted on Wikileaks

--JO

GOOGLE'S IMMORTAL COOKIE -- DATA MINING GONE WILD

Be vewy, vewy cawful!... He, He, He... Don't fall for the trap here. What this says about data mining is absolutely mind boggling. The standard knee-jerk reaction for newbies to this game would be to panic and start uninstalling everything Google. OK, that might protect you from one of maybe twenty serious back-doors into your PC that you don't know about. Removing Google will only slow you down with workarounds that are awkward and unfamiliar. You see, newbies
automatically assume that they're the ones under the microscope, as if every evesdrooping device was aimed at them personally. I have always just assumed that everything I ever did online was always monitored and adjusted my behavior accordingly for security and good judgment. We have touched on this theme before here. I avoid anything that slows me down at a time when quick reaction and efficiency (minimal energy expenditure) are required to dodge the falling trees of collapse. It's a time of crisis when rapid response and flexibility is essential; when survival of the transition period will go to the swiftest and most agile.

I'm not uninstalling Google anything. And I don't think you should either. If you start dodging one possible vulnerability without discriminating, pretty soon all you wind up doing is standing in place on an open field of fire, dodging bullets, and NOT moving forward. This is the world we live in. Frankly I have much less faith in the technology of the old paradigm than it does.

When we first made our "map" at FTW and in "Rubicon" we saw things three, four and five years in advance. That gave us a luxury of planning and thihnking. But now we are adding huge chunks to the map just days, weeks and months ahead of the time we must decide where to stand next. I figure that over the course of my career I've been right in about 80% of my predicitions. That means I have been wrong 20% of the time. Now, the steps we take in response to new developments will have progressively higher stakes. I take seriously the possibility that the things I say here, the recommendations I offer, the analyses that I make, might save eight and yet doom two. I know and understand how many out there trust me. Jenna most certainly does too.

A colleague wrote to me that he saw little chance of Cheney/Bush attempting anything on inauguration day. My point is that, because I wrote what I wrote, there is even less chance of it now. Has anyone seen that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed confession yet?... We must get swift!

MCR


(Posted with permission, Jim Baldauf)

1. Google's immortal cookie:

Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don't already have one.
If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.

2. Google records everything they can:
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."

3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.

4. Google won't say why they need this data:
Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whetherGoogle ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.

5. Google hires spooks:
Keyhole, Inc. was supported with funds from the CIA. They developed a database of spy-in-the-sky images from all over the world. Google acquired Keyhole in 2004, and would like to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.

6. Google's toolbar is spyware:
With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf, and yes, it reads your cookie too. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you connect to Google (which is many times a day). Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google. Any software that updates automatically presents a massive security risk.

7. Google's cache copy is illegal:
Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google's cache copy appears to be illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page on his site. Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don't. Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."

8. Google is not your friend:
By now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to most websites. Webmasters cannot avoid seeking Google's approval these days, assuming they want to increase traffic to their site. If they try to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, they may find themselves penalized by Google, and their traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Google, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time Google doesn't even answer email from webmasters.

9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
With 200 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly- commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.
************************************************************************************

JO adds:

Somehow the thought that the man behind the curtain is in fact an omnipotent cookie doesn't evoke the same chills as other observations aired recently on this page. Ignorance in these matters is, if not bliss, at least respite.

SEC FOIA Secrecy Increased
India To Ink Largest Ever Defense Deal With US Soon
Washington to Force Moscow to Cancel S-300 Deal With Iran
US Warning of Strikes By India on Lashkar-e-Taiba
CIA Uses Viagra To Buy Off Afghan Warlords
Presentations from the ASPO Conference
Fish Gotta Swim; Bird Gotta Dance
He's got rhythm. Who could ask for anything more?

READ THIS STORY NOW

U.S. MILITARY WARNS THAT SUDDEN COLLAPSE OF MEXICO IS LIKELY
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3689510

Great catch by our blogger Vincent!

Someone recently commented and asked "So what's the border fence for?" I suspect we're about to find out. This article (now scrubbed from the El Paso Times but reposted widely) says that Mexico is as unstable as Pakistan. That wall is to help defend against incursions by a massive displaced population. I suspect that we might also find out what some of the so-called concentration camps are intended for too. The far right has never gotten that part correctly. (Yep, I predicted all this too.)

I am also concerned by Vincent's other find, the fact that President Bush has just declared Barack Obama's inauguration an "Emergency". If you have not read "Rubicon", go and find what I wrote about National Special Security Events (NSSE). There was an NSSE in effect on September 11th. NSSE's transfer all command, control and communications to the Secret Service; even the military. On 9-11 Dick Cheney was running the Secret Service. He will be on January 20th also. I can guarantee it.

By definition a presidential inauguration is an NSSE.

OK, I'm getting goosebumps.

MCR
*************************************************************************************

Jenna Orkin adds:


Those goosebumps spread as fast as the internet can carry them.

As always, the devil lurks in the details. While the rest of us are lulled to sleep by the compendious prose of bureaucratic protocol, we miss the drama of what all that legalese actually means. Like the innocent, if avarous, homeowner wannabes who heeded the siren song of adjustable rate mortgages, we learn that once the script comes to life, it's too late.

The other tragi-comedy is that we keep making the same mistake. What is that? We're trying earnestly to do the right thing. Having learned that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it, we remember our history.

The problem is that we expect it to repeat itself verbatim.

Students of 9/11 wait for another terrorist attack. New Yorkers who lost someone in the towers look for jobs on low floors. Far more people distrust the EPA now than in 2000. But have they extrapolated to OSHA, to state agencies?

The repetitions of history adapt to their time. The structure repeats itself. The devil in the details is infinitely mercurial.

Bank of England Gets Money-Printing Secrecy
Next Crisis for US Banks? Integration
China Preparing for Post Peak With New Aircraft Carrier

NOW THIS IS BEAUTIFUL... AND SO RUSSIAN!
WHY RUSSIA SHUT OFF THE GAS TO THE EU

by

Michael C. Ruppert
(C) Copyright 2009, Michael C. Ruppert. All Rights Reserved

Russia is carving geoplitical turf like a Thanksgiving turkey. It's electric knife is powered by geography. Both Georgia and Ukraine -- under highly-transitory, pro-Western regimes -- were actually trying to join NATO. Think of that!... Military buffs, think of a bridge at Eindhoven. The U.S. commanded this strategy in hopes of weakening Russian influence in a post-industrial world. The Russians have played a great game of "rope-a-dope" here. Their primary objective is to reassert control over the most Russian country that is not inside Russia herself: Ukraine. Ukraine is almost surrounded now but the following new report on the effects of the gas shut off explains the grander strategy. The countries hardest hit by the shutoff are the eastern European EC member like the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, etc... These are old Warsaw pact regions and they are hurriedly sending ministers on emergency missions to Moscow... To beg!

Let me take a shot at what Medvedev/Putin might convey. (For some reason I just love writing about Russians. They are actually straightforward in ways incomprehensible to the west. They are vastly more efficient from a geopolitical standpoint.)

To the minister from the Czech Republic:

"Tovarich, good to see you again. We are so terribly sorry that Ukraine has caused all this trouble... By the way, how have you enjoyed your experience in the West? Did you find it profitable? How are your prospects looking? This was a mistake made by the government in Ukraine. It chose to commit to the West, and as the West collapses it brings their troubles for all of us. Don't you think so? There is a possibility that we might help restore gas flows to your (small, landlocked, energy-poor) nation. It would be expensive for us and we would expect some concessions. Are you amenable? We can do what they cannot, Tovarich. We can keep you warm and we can feed you... especially if the productive wealth of the Ukarine is not shipped to Western markets. By making Ukraine belong to Mother Russia we will all eat."

Ukraine, regardless of those who might wish otherwise, is, and will always be Russian turf. At the end of the Age of Oil, geography is proving the mightiest force of all and "relocalize" has many meanings.

As someone else said, "The Russians are playing chess and the Americans are playing Monopoly".

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5062Q520090113?sp=true

--
MCR
*********************************************************************************

Jenna Orkin adds:

Russia To Build More Missiles
Did Speculation Fuel Oil Price Swings? Sixty Minutes report

"[M]any people believe it was a speculative bubble, not unlike the one that caused the housing crisis,"

...except that it didn't pull the rug out from under the global economy.

The people being able to hold only one idea in their heads at a time, the media shape their soundbites according to the outrage du jour.

Speaking of which, considering the proposed solution to our economic ills - the hair of the dog that bit us ie, piling on still more debt - today The Daily Reckoning proposed for Treasury Secretary the guy who best understands Ponzi schemes, Bernie Madoff.

Too bad Gono's already taken.

Terrorist Attacks in Mumbai, India, and Implications for US Interests
Congressional Research Service
World's Biggest Refinery Poised To Start in India
India To Invest in Uranium Mines In Russia, Kazakhstan
Afghanistan: Troops Lured By Drug Trade, Report Warns
Green Military Bases
Middle East Map Quiz
Censored Chapter from Catholic Orangeman of Togo which forced the author, Craig Murray, to self-publish.

Ruiz, a frequent commenter on this blog, says about the book:

Craig Murray was sacked as the British embassador to Uzbekistan in 2004, after accusing the Karimov administration of human rights abuses and denouncing the use of intelligence gained by torture there. That was the subject of his first book, Murder in Samarkand (2006).

His new book, Catholic Orangemen of Togo, deals with... his adventures in West Africa from 1997 to 2001 as a functionary of the British diplomatic service, from which he retired in 2005 to pursue active opposition to the present UK government.

The book details British mercenary involvement in Africa and its motives. Notably, it addresses the row that erupted over illegal arms shipments from the UK to Sierra Leone and the involvement of the UK High Commissioner Peter Penfold and Tim Spicer in those shipments.

Link for the actual book: http://vencentral.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/catholic-orangemen-of-togo-murray-2008.pdf

If it doesn't work, Ruiz recommends downloading one of the following versions:

Rapidshare:
http://rapidshare.com/files/182465064/catholic-orangemen-of-togo-murray-2008.pdf.html

Cryptome:
http://cryptome.org/cot-murray.zip

Huey P Muslim:
http://hueypmuslim.blogspot.com/2009/01/craig-murrays-new-bookavailable-here.html

"THIS DAY OF RECKONING"

-- Obama's Speech on the Economy and Signals of What's Coming
-- Economic Collapse Accelerating
-- Leon Panetta as DCI Scares Me to Death
-- Is the Economic Collapse a Controlled Global Demolition?
-- Mike Ruppert Videos on Sale Again At FTW Site

By

Michael C. Ruppert
(c) Copyright 2009 Michael C. Ruppert. All Rights Reserved

Jan 9, 2009 – It's not possible yet for any world leader to tell people that the collapse of industrialized civilization is coming but it appears as though the Obama administration is preparing to say it… at least from what we can see. (It's going to become obvious soon enough.) What is not known are what secret plans are being made and what contingencies are being prepared for. There are some clues.

As our first Chief Performance Officer, Nancy Killefer is extraordinarily qualified for the job of going through the federal budget line by line and seeing which programs work and which don't,
determining which can be cut to save money. But I believe Barack Obama put her brief to her in a public-consumption version and also in a confidential one that was a bit more direct. It might have sounded something like this: "Nancy I want you to determine in what order we shut down the United States government. Tell us which switches to turn off, in what order, so that we don't shut the wrong things down too soon."

In Thursday's speech the President-elect, in my opinion, began weaning the American people, from their so-deeply ingrained sense of entitlement to wasteful excess. He called this the end of an era of "profound irresponsibility". He set the right tone initially about the gravity of the crisis but stopped short of Peak Oil and the fact that there can and will be no recovery. He chided us for living beyond our means and flatly said that there will be cutbacks in government services. He predicted double digit unemployment. (I see 20% or greater unemployment by January 2010.) He continues to talk about recovery but I'm sure he knows there won't be one. In fact he said that this could be a recovery that it might not be possible to recover from. We are being prepared.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a couple of days with 700+ point losses in the Dow over the next ten days to two weeks. The data is just horrendous and it is also becoming torrential around the globe as the Gaza crisis diverts attention.

So we're still waiting to see how the Obama Administration is going to conduct itself. I can pretty much bet that as many as 50-75 new Executive Orders will be announced within 72 hours of the
inauguration. That's going to require some heavy reading on my part. The actions of the administration will tell us much more than the public statements and appointments which have given me grounds for optimism.

In the meantime WHILE EVERYONE WAS WATCHNG GAZA the stories of a global implosion are mounting. -- Europe's economy is contracting at a faster rate than in the 30s. In the meantime the Russian shut-off of European gas supplies is wreaking havoc, especially in the Balkans, the Czech Republic and elsewhere, causing factories to be shut because there isn't enough energy to run them and keep people from freezing. Corporate pension funds in the U.S. are facing serious shortfalls. Unemployment Claims have crashed three state web sites. Every major industrialized nation (including the U.S.) is preparing for civil unrest. And we haven't seen Q4 earnings reports yet.

China has just announced that it is holding onto its cash and not lending as much to the U.S. It has its own bailout package to fund. It needs that cash for its own bailout and thus can no longer lend anywhere near as much to the U.S. at a time when we are borrowing or printing money at rates about a hundred times higher than in World War II. Reports have suggested that China may dump half of its $1.4 trillion dollar holdings within the next two months. A global dollar dump will follow shortly thereafter bringing all those greenbacks back home. That could be the trigger for Weimar-style inflation.

Starting back as far as late 2003 FTW was predicting these developments. One of my best essays from the period was "As the World Burns" (FTW's third economic alert) from Dec. 2004 is available at the FTW site: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/120104_world_burns.shtml

Manufacturing has hit a 28-year low and today's jobs report is the worst since 1945 with the biggest job losses yet to come. Officially, unemployment now exceeds 7%. Fourth-quarter earnings reports are due soon and that will be one of the biggest buckets of cold water in the face we've seen in a couple of months.

As I correspond with a number of key friends and researchers around the world we have all concluded that it may be just a matter of weeks before we start seeing major disruptions in everyday life. It's hard to keep up with the torrent of ominous news.

But Mr. Obama has made one appointment which absolutely scares me to death. He has nominated Leon Panetta to become the next DCI (Director of Central Intelligence).

PANETTA AT CIA? – RUN FOR THE HILLS!
IRAN-CONTRA II… ON STEROIDS

Omigod! Has Barack lost his mind?

I have individual research files, accumulated over a decade, on maybe 300 of the government's top movers and shakers for the past 30 years. The first thing I did after hearing Panetta's name for Director of Central Intelligence was sit down and catch my breath. Then I went through my 6 Gigs of research files and searched out everything I could on him.

What I found was that (IMO) Leon Panetta is a pretty decent guy. He has taken the right stands on many important issues from the drug war, to torture, to Iraq. The biggest "offense" I could find was his direct role in the pardon of Marc Rich. (Rich is/was a heavy and very dirty intelligence/black op player.) Look, everybody at that level has skeletons and that history isn't even worth discussing now. It's what I didn't find that so worries me.

I was looking for anything that suggested Leon Panetta might have had clandestine experience or even some remote exposure to Agency operations. That's what scares me to death. George H.W. Bush was billed as an outsider when appointed as DCI in Jan., 1976. However, there's a mountain of excellent research that establishes that "Poppy" Bush had been a covert player and CIA hand his whole life. One tiny example is that he owned a company called Zapata Oil in the 50s and 60s. The code name for the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 was "Operation Zapata". Paper records throughout Bush I's life link him to the CIA. CIA's headquarters is named after him fer crying out loud.

Let's think of a couple of other "outsiders" who went into CIA. James Schlesinger was an abysmal failure, short-tenured, and a major nerd. Then there was John Deutch… need I say more?

The one prior CIA director which reminds me of Panetta, however, is Admiral Stansfield Turner who was appointed by Jimmy Carter and confirmed in March 1977. And if it turns out the same way there is going to be some serious bloodshed, an evaporation of civil liberties and a ten-fold expansion of covert operations… "off the books". (It eliminates all those messy oversight problems. Saves money on hearings and things like that.)

Turner arrived at CIA as a retired Navy Admiral who had been outside the intel community. His mandate was to clean house and get rid of all those dirty-rotten scoundrels who had committed assassinations, overthrown governments and operated outside the law. The Church and Pike committees had released mountains of incriminating data from the 50s, 60s and 70s. What did Turner do? He fired all those clandestine service people right away.

What did they do?

Well they took all of their knowhow, the black budgets that were off-the-books, their ability to smuggle stupefying amounts of drugs and guns and they started a parallel or "shadow" government that Congress didn't touch until Iran-Contra was a full blown scandal and tens of thousands of Central Americans had been murdered by death squads and American surrogates. (I miss Warren Zevon.)

Names like Shackley, Clines, Wilson, Singlaub, Poindexter, Clarridge, Abrams, Armitage, Negroponte and many more came to public light. Who can forget the most visible off-the-books crook Oliver North? I interviewed Shackley. I helped get Edwin Wilson out of prison when the CIA cut him loose and denied he was working in the Agency's behalf. These are the people who ruined my career at LAPD by smuggling drugs. Poindexter, Armitage, Negroponte and Abrams all came back into official power under Bush/Cheney.

The bottom line is that you cannot put someone in as DCI who doesn't know how black ops work, tell him/her to clean house and expect to generate anything except a massive off-the-books, bloody and very dangerous parallel covert capacity that the DCI will be helpless to prevent.

In the years since 9-11 U.S. intelligence capabilities have mushroomed. The use of proprietary software with "back doors" (PROMIS) has exploded and the degree of outsourcing of intelligence functions to corporations has exploded. So what can anyone expect of the legions of Bush-Cheney-era spooks who will now be unemployed to do? The term "rogue" may be about to acquire a whole new definition.

It is unfathomable to me that Barack Obama's staff, Senator Feinstein (who I am not a great fan off) and all of congress have forgotten or are unaware of the bloody and criminal legacy of Iran-Contra. Why are they apparently setting things up for it all to happen again? We will all wait with baited breath to see if these questions come up in the confirmation hearings for Mr. Panetta and his designated boss as DNI, retired Navy Admiral Dennis Blair (also a relative outsider). If the Iran-Contra question is not answered then we might have the best signal yet that the Obama administration has ulterior or malevolent agendas. The current economic collapse, however, is happening so fast that this lingering and very important question may be moot. It took from January 1977 through roughly 1980 for the off-the-books covert capacity to establish itself in way that resulted in coups, deaths squads and the usurping of the U.S. government. In 1979 domestic U.S. cocaine consumption was around 50 metric tons per annum. By 1988 it reached 600 metric tons.

I see only three possible explanations:

1. Obama and company have no clue of Iran-Contra history.
2. They do know the history and are intending to recreate it on a fast
track. In other words, the U.S. is preparing for a no-holds-barred
fight to keep things together.
3. They do know the history and have a plan to prevent it from happening again.

THINGS COMING DOWN UNIFORMLY – A CONTROLLED DEMOLITION?

What follows is only a partially-formed impression rather than a conclusion. It is looking to me as if the downward pressure on all economies is hitting fairly uniformly around the world. For a long
time those of us who looked forward assumed that economic collapse would hit first one major power and then another in varying degrees. I left open the possibility that it might be a controlled fast crash and spread evenly to avoid international conflict and tension. That's the way it is starting to look.

That leaves open the question as to whether or not there might be an agreement to collapse the global economy uniformly so as to let each nation manage its own die off. There's logic to that but I can draw no conclusions as yet.

COMING TOPICS – Soon it will be necessary for me to look at topics which we've mentioned in passing. These include civil unrest, camps, emergency communications and preparedness as the threat of societal breakdown becomes imminent. It's time to start doing that.

LARRY FLYNT – A big High Five to HUSTLER Publisher Larry Flynt – the guy who saved the first amendment for us by beating Charles Keating (of the Keating Five) in the Supreme Court. I was HUSTLER's interview of the month twice and actually met Flynt in his office. He was the best-looking corpse I have ever met and God bless him… his sense of humor is still alive. Asking for a bailout for the porn industry made me laugh harder than I have in weeks. I'm not worried about the industry. Sexual activity always increases in hard times.

HIGH FIVE to poster AGAPE. You've been putting up some great stuff.

MIKE RUPPERT VIDEOS BACK ON SALE AT AMAZON. – I have recently signed a contract with a major fulfillment and international promotion house to resurrect my most important videos: "The Truth and Lies of 9-11" and "Denial Stops Here" are available now from the FTW web site. Within a week or two, my best speech ever (The Paradigm is the Enemy) at the Cooper Union in 2006 will be re-released under a new title: "Mike Ruppert at the Cooper Union 2006 – The Coming Economic Collapse". Its original title (which I never liked) was "Fear and Present Danger". Also, coming back is my 2000 USC lecture "Wall Street's War for Drug Money" which lays out the genesis of this economic collapse and the workings of Wall Street in spades.

You can also get them from the FTW web site.

HOLD ON TO YOUR GOLD. I have seen nothing to suggest anything other than a major breakout within three months. After looking into a recent theory proposed here I found it unsubstantiated and based upon some very large assumptions about future actions by the IMF and World Bank for which no supporting evidence was presented. That same poster also sent something which didn't go up about drawing pentagrams to determine where some new unspecified terror attack would occur. Sorry, but we work with harder and better data here. I'm holding my gold tighter than ever.

MCR
*************************************************************************************

THE EGG COMES FIRST

by

Jenna Orkin


Yikes.

Do these articles leave you breathless? Pumped up and wondering what to do with the adrenaline? Tempered by a look out the window where to all appearances, life goes on as it always has, this is just the sort of channelled energy we need to get things done.

Ah, there's the rub: "...as it always has."

When you're a kid, you wake up, have breakfast, go to school, come home, do homework, have dinner, go to bed, wake up....

So it goes day after day and you imagine it will continue forever, an infinite cycle.

But no.

When I was ten, my family moved to England. The infinite cycle broke, as far as I was concerned. (For other people, it can come when they change schools.) Uprooted and transplanted, I'd acquired the third dimension of a past.

One day about a year later I was for some reason contemplating the chicken and egg conundrum, that staple of infinite cycle thinking.

I realized that it lacked a key element. If you factored in evolution, the egg came first. What had laid the egg was not a chicken but something that preceded chickens in the evolutionary scheme of things.

What looks like an infinite cycle in the two dimensions of life while you're living it, looks different when you add the third dimension of hindsight. You see that the cycle was in fact a spiral, with a direction, an agenda.

That's on the individual, micro level.

The macro level: (The Big Picture for those of philosophical bent)

The market goes up; the market goes down. What goes down must come up again. Not because of any law of physics, God knows, but because that is what it has always done. Therefore it will continue to do it, for whatever reason, known only to itself and those nebulous Experts in these things who live in ivory towers and sound as though they know what they're talking about on CNN. Who cares why?

Again, No.

What looks like a cycle of history is also not an actual cycle. It, too, has a direction, an agenda.

And here we are, on the brink of finding out what that's going to look like.

One thing we can see: Whoever is pulling the strings (even if they're doing so in a hurricane) they use us humans with diabolical ingenuity. And we let them.

First they unleash the furies of the Islamist world, ready and willing accomplices in the destruction of the Wicked Witch of the West which is us.

Then they do the opposite, unleashing a backlash in Gaza and on Wall Street.

Hard to know whom to point the finger at more. There's no shortage of candidates.

Like Nature, we humans abhor a vacuum. We rush in to fill it with mischief. The point is not, as some commentators on the recent Madoff debacle have eagerly pointed out, that Madoff's victims were sold out "by one of their own." (So far, no one outside of the most bottom-feeding websites has spelled out what that phrase means.) The point is, deregulation allowed it to happen. Some Madoff somewhere was inevitable. What might have prevented him was a rigorous legal framework. That's why society as a whole constructs laws; to control the appetites, the runaway mayhem of individual sociopaths.

The best way to destroy your enemies, goes the old saw, is to let them destroy each other. It's a great energy saver, at least of your own energy. And they don't seem to mind. As E.M. Forster said, "There is nothing so satisfying as moral indignation."

Things are happening fast. Each change will precipitate other changes in an exponential expansion. The spiral will become a vortex.

Thank God for human curiosity, even if in this case it will be of the morbid variety.


Porn Industry Seeks Bailout
Article Mike referred to above.
Crops [including organic] Absorb Livestock Antibiotics

Quote of the day:

The oldest cast iron [water] pipes, dating from the late 1800s, have an average useful life of about 120 years, while pipes installed after World War II have an average life of 75 years

--JO