Wednesday, August 12, 2009

China to Beat Us at Our Own Game; Who'll Get the Last Laugh?

From Jenna Orkin:

US/Global
US Consumer Credit Shows Steepest Contraction in Over 5 Decades
Consumer Bankruptcies in U.S. May Reach 1.4 Million on Job Losses, Credit
Underwater Mortgage Holders Approach 25% as Home Prices Fall, Zillow Says
Deflation Hits Porn Industry, Canadian Grocery Stores, Newspapers, Firefighters, Lawyers, High Tech
A hollow joke during the Depression went: "Once there was a family that was very poor. The father was poor; the mother was poor; the cook was poor; the butler was poor..."
Fed's Proposed Framework for Addressing "Systemic Risk" Misses the Moving Target Government Bailouts and the Stock Market - The Seen and the Unseen
The Market Bubble Is About to Pop
Dismal Unemployment Situation in Chart Form
Banks come up with new tricks (from Rice Farmer)
Who's most likely to secede? (from Rice Farmer)
IATA warns of ‘de-globalisation’; latest traffic casts doubt on the bottoming of air travel declines (from Rice Farmer)
Pathogenic flu 'increases risk of Parkinson's disease'
How Secure Is Our Food Supply?

China
China's Growth an Accounting 'Miracle'
Chinese property sales are up over 60% so far this year, their National Bureau of Statistics proclaimed yesterday. That puts the housing bubble here to shame. We've heard a bunch of nosebleed data points outta there in the last few weeks...check these out:

New loan issuance has tripled in the first half of 2009, to $1.1 trillion. That's more than half of the entire Chinese GDP over the same period. 95% of those loans went to state-owned enterprises or provincial entities. The Shanghai Composite is up 79% year to date, the best major market performance in the world. Stocks on the Shanghai Comp. trade for 35.4 times earnings, double that of the MSCI emerging market's index. M2 money supply rose over 28.5% in the first half. The seven largest bond sales in the world this year were domestic transactions in China.Damn near everything is up dramatically in China in 2009...except exports. Strangely, we don't hear a lot of concern that the backbone of their economy has contracted 23% since this time last year.

Europe/Russia
German Bundesbank Puts Gold Reserves in US (in German)
Polish Government Approves Sale of State Assets to Cover Swollen Deficit
Relative Calm May Be at an End
Villains, Oligarchs and One Beekeeper

Asia
Pakistan's nuclear bases targeted by al-Qaeda
Kuwait becomes net gas importer (from Rice Farmer)
"Direct Overt U.S. Aid and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan, FY2002-FY2010

Environment
Dust clouds sap UAE's solar panels’ power (from Rice Farmer)
A Farming Revolution is Needed
...in British MSM
Almost 100 places in Brittany have toxic seaweed
Global warming causing birds to shrink

22 comments:

Unknown said...

RE: Pakistan's nuclear bases targeted by al-Qaeda

Remember WMD?

A "leading British expert" and a PhD with an Indian name have warned that al Qaeda has been targetting "atomic facilities."

Here is all that is presented:

"He said militants had struck a nuclear storage facility at Sarghoda on Nov 1 2007; launched a suicide bomb assault on a nuclear air base at Kamra on Dec 10 2007; and set off explosions at entrance points to Wah cantonment, one of Pakistan's main nuclear assembly plants, in August 2008."

Note that none of the attacks mentioned happened within the last year. That is, we are suddenly being warned of a new problem, but all the details occurred one or two years ago, and no new incidents are reported.

What was stored at the nuclear storage facility? Radioactive waste? Hunks of yellow cake? Aluminum cylinders?

What major air base is NOT a "nuclear air base", with US jets of all description landing and taking off and storing ordnance?

What were they assembling at the "nuclear assembly plant"? Centrifuges? Reactor parts? ICBMs?

How close did the "terrorists" come to any nuclear materials? It sounds like desperate protesters blew themselves up ouside a number of Pakistani/American facilities. Were they targetting nuclear materials? Or did these three (and, amazingly, only these three) places happen to incidentally have something radioactive on site?

The first assumption, not proved, is that it was "al-Qaeda" doing the attacks. It could have been someone whose brother had been killed by Pakistani security forces and who vowed revenge.

The second assumption is that, because nuclear materials were present (they say), the target was nuclear materials.

The thrid shakey assumption is that these amateurs had any chance of penetrating a well-guarded nuclear facility.

The upshot is to suggest that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are not safe from al Qaeda, which wants to control them in order to do damage to "our way of life" or whatever. The obvious solution is to disarm Pakistan of its nuclear weapons, which the Indian dude would probably like a lot. This seems to be the conclusion that the creators of this "news" want us to come to.

This has been a component of the rhetoric on Pakistan as a "failed state". If it cannot protect its nuclear weapons, it has no business being a country. It is our duty to go in there, disarm the country, break it up into more managable pieces and reformat the entire region to reflect the preferences of ... whoever is making this policy.

And we know who that is.

OrwellianUK said...

US testing Drones over Canadian and Mexican Border
Link

What do you make of this Mike and Jenna?

Paul said...

Depopulation - reality?

quote

For the past four months, I have researched the following question: Is there a deliberate attempt on the part of the global elite to eliminate a substantial portion of humanity through the use of a bioengineered swine flu virus and its more deadly accompanying vaccine? As with any murder plot, whether it be a single homicide, or mass genocide, the deadly plot contains the same essential elements: (1) motive, (2) intent, (3) means, and, (4) opportunity. In part one of this series, both motive and intent are examined by presenting the words of the globalists themselves.

and...

There can be little doubt that depopulation is a consistent theme of global leaders and the idea has been around for a very long time. Preaching drastic population reduction may be one thing, but when the actions match the stated intent, all of us would be fools to not pay close attention and act accordingly as circumstances warrant.

unquote

Velobwoy said...

2009 Is Looking an Awful Lot Like 2008

Guess that's why they call it the Fall.

RanD said...

What WE need to Know - #8

All of what WE have been experiencing here on our Universe's Earthen / Gaian planet has always been and will always be integral to our Universe's self-realization; which self-realization is as follows:

Although the foundation of existence is a singularity, dualistic complexity is prerequisite to our Universe's manifestation of itself, and thus of our human selves. Moreover, human kinds' advance into consciousness of our Universe and our human kind selves has always required that WE one day fully understand such matters as expressed here in order to fully actualize our collective human kinds' existential purpose(s) / raison(s) d'etre. And, so it is hereby such linguistically specific means as these that WE begin fully realizing both our Universe's and our human kind potentials. This is the way it is; some things cannot change.

*****

At this stage of our evolution into consciousness of existential matters WE find ourselves caught up in a progressively simultaneous global-wide / Universe-wide virtual whirlwind of thoughts, behaviors, activities, and geo-astro-physical happenings. And so it is that this is how it proves to be for a self-manifesting comprehensively self-existential reality. Thus, evidently, it is an imperative of this / our self-existential reality that WE human kind participants in our self-manifesting existence fully yield to that of and by which WE are begotten and thus given OUR existence. Morever, this tells US that any mentality that cannot -- specifically because it will not -- yield to such realization as is being presented here will soon no longer be able to continue existing. And when that comes to pass, be assured, peace and sanity will be here for Universe and ALL human kind alike; and that is when WE will have achieved existence's existential objective.

Mansoon said...

Tar Sand Oil: SEVEN times the oil under Saoudi Arabia?

http://dailyreckoning.com/the-saudi-arabia-next-door/

Sebastian Ernst Ronin said...

Paul, re "de-population:"

Please take into consideration that there is a drastic difference between a conscious "cull" and an ecological "purge." That the two may very well overlap is our condition...and predicament. The former, as you point out, requires motive and intent. The latter does not; it is merely a systemic, ecological and cybertic correction.

That both point towards a common end result is, again, our condition as we enter this particular intersection of time and space, i.e. the current century.

Unknown said...

Mike Ruppert has said that Earth's human population WILL be reduced by a couple of billion people soon. If he's right, it could come about, as Ronin point out, with or without deliberate human agency. I hear from every quarter -- relic hippies in tie-die, businessmen in suits, students, old ladies -- that we're in for a die-off.

The story goes, that the survivors will have a chance to live in a world that was sized to fit far fewer people. We can be happy again. Culture can go on, technology can increase, and we can still reach our dreams.

Yet I feel that billions dying in a short space of time would leave a long-lasting scar. Worse, it would leave a vacuum into which the best prepared, most strongly empowered could wedge their own interests. With our institutions and economy in a shambles, Main Street would be easy prey for enslavement by techo-repleat, well-armed and -financed elitists, who had been preparing for years, whether or not they actually pulled the trigger. Because this "elite" is profit-driven and bent on exploitation, the biosphere would not be spared just because Africa, India or China shed a billion or two. That would just make THEM's job easier.

You could say I vote NO on radical near-term depopulation. Maybe I should write my congressman or sign a petition. But seriously, what if we really DID get "Permaculture for 9 billion" together, by learning to live simply and appropriately?

What if we learned to voluntarily control our population, even reduce it substantially over a couple of generations? What if old people didn't have to worry about young people paying their bills in old age? What if we fed anyone who needs food, and forbade anyone from hoarding huge amounts of wealth merely for luxury? What if we let the Earth be the Earth, and worked with her instead of against her?

You could say these things will never happen, and it's hard to argue.

So... will it be "naturally", or by human design, that a quarter or a third or a half of us are slaughtered? My impression is that Paul's article, though offering quotes not really attributable in an exact way, presents a realistic impression of TPTB's attitude toward "useless eaters".

The idea, I think, is to promote the lifestyles that support Life, work to mitigate behaviors that harm Life, and try to keep our own loved ones out of the crises possibly scheduled for the herd.

God bless us every one.

RanD said...

Regarding the information from Paul's link to "Depopulation - reality?" (http://www.theflucase.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=91%3Adepopulation-reality&catid=42%3Arokstories&lang=en):

About 8 yrs ago R & D were given a copy of a purported UN meeting's recording which contained pretty much the same information (but with more named dignitaries) as provided at Paul's site given above. The so-called 'official UN info' given us 8 yrs ago seemed so outrageous that we, despite being already well informed skeptical types, were inclined to believe it was more likely mere severe paranoiac anti-establishment disinformation. Since then, however, we've been experiencing ever greater cause to recognize that there's indeed much more devious covert activity routinely going on within the context of our current status quo governing system(s) than even well focused intellects might imagine. So be it as it is.

*****

If, in fact, man-made depopulation (by whatever designs) is a component of tptb's agenda, WE of course will not be able to constructively do much more about it than what WE already are -- which right now is to 1. just keep investigating, monitoring, and communicating such possibilities as WE can inherently only suspect they might be unfolding, 2. begin assimilating quantum knowledge as a key to self-betterment, and 3. not lose sight of such information as given in RanD's post above re specifically What WE need to Know. And, don't forget that beyond whatever hell remains ahead, beyond all hell is where WE're going.

Also, Sebastian's above "de-population" comments are, from RanD's perspective, right on target.

Sebastian Ernst Ronin said...

Re "ecological and cybertic correction."

Should read "cybernetic." I loathe having spelling brain farts! =:-D

Sebastian Ernst Ronin said...

Re "God bless us every one."

And we could also use some of that "God's speed" stuff...however one may understand that to work in one's life...or not.

Paul said...

Sebastian, Eyeballs, RanD:

As I was writing my “Depopulation - reality?” post, I was interrupted by a family crisis - and so posted the two quotes from the article without any personal comment. However, you have surpassed in eloquence and scale anything I would have said, so thank you!

My concern at the article - and the point you make Sebastian - is that there is no distinction made between those who propose, or are actively bringing about, a human driven cull and those who are merely predicting a Gaian purge.

I support the WWF - because I believe that biodiversity and protecting the environment is crucial to our future on this planet in so many ways. However, certain other (more extreme/shrill) websites link the WWF to the globalist elite conspiracy because they point out the unsustainability of current population levels. Likewise, the peakoil movement sees the inevitability of a (perhaps vast and sudden) reduction in population - but that does not make us the moral equivalent of those who may well be planning to bring this about.

Namaste

RanD said...

eyeballs... We also very much empathize with your take on the depopulation issue.

Almost 40 yrs ago now I (D) began realizing that human population was disastrously out of control; petroleum and its ever growing family of increasingly 'essential' applications were approaching threatened status in lock step with the decline of innumerable organismic species; the profit motive demanded being reigned in to serve exclusively non-destructive objectives; and humankind required a significant lift in consciousness re existential matters. It appeared that meaningful human life on Earth was headed straight for directly correlated self-imposed and/or nature imposed inevitabilities. And, back then voicing such observations elicited such awe, rolling eyes, pity, and contempt as would move even a rock to shed tears!

Ironically, however, these days everything's begun improving for RanD in direct relationship to everyone else's 'perceived' deterioration of everything for themselves. So: hang on as WE're heading into the dark, gals & guys, and let's just keep on posting ourselves like WE have been and watch the light grow. And:

Wonderful light in your personal commentary(ies), Paul. So very good to have you on board.

Rice Farmer said...

Intentionally or not, surely we're in for severe population reduction. And if you're not an elite, there is no assurance you'll be among the survivors.

Not a few people are reading the situation this way: A huge population reduction will take pressure off of resources and energy, prices will drop substantially, and the survivors can enjoy (if that is the word) another period of growth and prosperity.

But especially in relation to oil, there is a serious flaw in this thinking. Let's say that "thanks" to a dieoff, oil goes down to $10/bbl or lower. How many new oil fields will be developed at that price? Precious few. How much of the aging oil infrastructure will be replaced at that price? Virtually none. High prices must be sustained to finance these things.

In short, we've arrived at a point where the high prices of resources and energy are a burden dragging down the economy and stifling growth, but the high prices are ironically needed to keep developing the resources and energy.

toner deeski said...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090815/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_prison_violence

I remember thinking about depopulation when I first heard about the prison riots in California - especially how no Corrections officers were hurt at all.
We all know that TPTB have long used race as a wedge issue.
Well, read the last sentence of this article about a prison riot in Mexico:
"La Mesa prisoners argued that officials weren't giving them food and water, but prison officials blamed troublemakers for the violence."

zeusij said...

Rice Farmer said...

"But especially in relation to oil,
there is a serious flaw in this thinking. Let's say that "thanks" to a dieoff, oil goes down to $10/bbl or lower. How many new oil fields will be developed at that price? Precious few. How much of the aging oil infrastructure will be replaced at that price? Virtually none. High prices must be sustained to finance these things."

I believe TPTB understand this as well. They may try to control the die off in a timeline that parallels oil's decrease in order to keep oil at a stable price.

businessman said...

Regarding the dieoff, it would be so risky for the people who really run things to start a true pandemic and hope that they, their friends, and their loved ones would be spared their own lives in the process. There's simply too much scientific and biological guesswork that would be involved in implementing the dieoff this way, and the health ramifications could end up backfiring on the powers that be and their own families.

But a vaccination program where the type of vaccinations given could be completely controlled both person-by-person and geographically, could be their ideal solution. And the people running things could arrange it so that their own family, friends, and loved ones wouldn't even have to get any vaccinations.

Now when you combine this with the perfect propaganda campaign in the media, telling us that millions of people are dying from the swine flu, you really have something that could work very effectively for these people. And of course anyone who claims that the problem is actually inside of the vaccinations will be dismissed by the media as being a total idiot.

So this could become a classic false flag operation, like the famous Operation Northwoods that was proposed in the early 1960s, but this time it would be around the subject of the swine flu and getting vaccinations.

If they design this so that the only harm done to people is from the vaccinations themselves, and the harm isn't contagious from one person to another, this combined with a seamless media propaganda campaign will give them, unfortunately, exactly what they're looking for.

Unknown said...

RE: dieoff

Businessman makes a good point that pandemics are unweildy and unpredictable. In specific cases, his take on malevolent shots might be correct. However, the degree of organization and at the same time secrecy (a tricky combination) required to pull it off on any grand scale could easily cause a backfire. If, regionally, millions of innoculated people became sick and died shortly after the shot, no government could withstand the ensuing rage. If it were a long-term thing, such as a tendency toward sterilization, leading to a a halving of the birth rate, there would still eventually be an enquiry. So something like that would only buy a couple of years, and at a pretty steep price, PR-wise.

If you were TPTB, why waste a lot of organizational effort on 6 billion tailored innoculations? You have stockpiles of neutron bombs and chemical weapons that could halve the population in a matter of weeks. It could be a phony war, blamed later on a glitch in China's computer system, a tragic mistake. A few people could be held up for scorn and "imprisonned" or "killed". End of story.

Tragically, another way, already in motion, is a rise in food prices combined with dwindling access of the poor to cash (as well as clean water). This is a pyramidal die-off, in which the poorest are eliminated first, then the relatively poor, and eventually the precise number chosen to be eliminated. Those who control food prices by their manipulations of meat, biofuel, seeds, water and so forth know what they are doing.

I'm still not getting the shot. But to me, it's the PRINCIPLE that governments can force innoculation that is most dangerous. The forced innoculation of disidents, for instance, would be very convenient. I don't really think they are going to kill off the useless eaters with flu shots this time.

"It would be a pity to be wrong."

(Winston Churchill shortly before WWI, after predicting that Europe would never again go to war.)

businessman said...

eyeballs...We definitely don't know all the answers to how this will be accomplished. We can only make suggestions as to how we think things could play out.

No matter what happens, and how it plays out, the media will run interference for the powers that be, and every single step that can be taken to keep these people's names completely sacred will be taken.

Just as there are thousands of experts who have a story to tell about what they've experienced or what they've discovered about 9/11, if it doesn't make it onto the mainstream news they're just dismissed as being "conspiracy theorists", and the American public will largely buy into this.

The American public, despite the fact that they don't like reporters, feel that if something is really true it will be reported to them in the mainstream media.

So even if something were to happen with tainted vaccinations, people with inside knowledge of this wouldn't get onto the mainstream news, and therefore the American public most likely wouldn't believe the story. I mean, look at all of the YouTube videos, articles, and books around what really happened on 9/11, and still the American people won't believe that they're not being told the truth within the mainstream media about the subject.

So while I definitely agree with you that a tainted vaccination program could backfire on the powers that be, I also believe that if the American public ever became really suspicious about this, Plan B would be to implicate scientists and/or lab workers responsible for the production of the vaccines, and indict them within the mainstream media, so as to forever preserve the sanctity of those people who were really responsible for the program.

Unknown said...

Businessman:

Don't know if you'll come back to this thread, but these issues are REALLY important and I still have something to say.

One very important reason to spread fear about flu is to subsidize drug companies. Whereas important drugs were discovered rapidly in the mid 20th century, the drug industry has had few breakthrough biggies of late, and has had to rely on psych drugs and specialty medications for odd things like alergy meds and stuff to mitigate the terminal conditions of the elderly.

There could be no more lucrative subsidy for the drug companies than to make their products mandatory for every human on Earth. Even if innoculations are not forced, the administration of an expensive drug to even half the world's population would be a huge piece of business. Who pays? Who profits?

You're right about the media being cooperative. And why not? Their boards are filled with the board members of drug companies, and what is good for the drug companies is good for the stock market generally.

The Economy, in common converstation, usually refers to the stock market. If, for instance, The Economy is improving, that has nothing to do with whether common people have satisfying jobs that pay a wage they can live creatively on. It means Goldman is paying dividends.

The stock markets are owned and opperated by a relatively few families, whose profit totally derives from two sources: the materials wrested from the Earth, and the labor of wage-earners.
The idea is to keep the workers busy extracting and refining resources with as much of the resulting wealth concentrating at the top, as possible. There has to be some carrot -- access to a few tawdry consumer goods and mediocre privileges -- but otherwise the workers should get only what it takes to keep them working.

Now, if the workers (those who are working at all) have barely enough to keep going, are straining to provide their children with education and access to Life-enhancing options such as sports, music, art and positive social interaction, what would suck yet a little more cash out of their meager incomes?

Fear of death. And if "the government" pays for the innoculation program, who pays for the government? Is it the titans of Wall Street?

Unknown said...

Businessman:

PART II (sorry it's so long)



Furthermore, even if the cost of the program just gets heaped on the National Debt, the drug companies are paid in cash, and the bond-holders are paid off as the interest on the Debt is paid yearly. Ten cents on the tax dollar now, I think. Even if the principal will never be paid, the interest will, for some time. Like war ($4 billion per month for Afghanistan), an IOU is written and stacked with the others, while cash money goes to big business. Then the interest on the loan is paid out to ... the same people (in large measure).

So I think that, while killing people may be part of the plan, there's enough motivation to create a flu scare JUST to reap a little more of the increasingly scarce cash from the taxpayer and worker.

If the principle of mandatory innoculation can make strong headway, imagine the economic value to drug companies. And if this also gives the "elite" a chance to dose everyone with psyche drugs and keep the masses woozy and off balance, or kill bunches of people, how perfect that must seem to some. So the flu ranks up there with war and recreational drugs as a mainstay of the economy.

So far the diseases they have come up with are fairly mild, and I agree that they'd be nervous about monkeying with anything more serious. So, while it may be impossible to stop the mad rush to innoculate the world, we sighted individuals should resist the shots, knowing that we will die anyway, and that the chances of flu being the cause are relatively small. Much more likely are smoking, traffic accidents, alcohol related fatalities and cancer from the 50,000 man-made chemicals and radioactive substances introduced in the last hundred years.

As chaos leaks out of the egg, and madness circulates around me, I try to stay steady and keep others steady. If we stand unafraid, and steady the others, we may find that there is, after all, enough sanity to prevail. If not, we die as men, not sheep.

businessman said...

eyeballs...I think your comments are right on.