Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Theory of Everything (Going Wrong)

From Jenna Orkin:

Theory of Everything (Going Wrong)
Bank Crisis Shows Need to Expect the Very Worst: Study
Its 15 extreme risks were ranked in order as of mid-year. They were economic depression, hyperinflation, excessive leverage, a currency crisis, a banking crisis, sovereign default, climate change, political crisis, insurance crisis, protectionism, disunity in Europe, the end of capitalism, the end of fiat money, war and a killer pandemic....

...going long pharmaceuticals/short airlines was seen as combating investment losses from a pandemic.

JO Comment: Reminds me of a joke. An airplane is about to go down. The flight attendant announces, "Would all those who can swim please line up by the exits on the right hand side of the plane. The automatic slides are currently inflating and will be engaged shortly for your safety and convenience. Rescue planes should be arriving within an hour.

Would all those who cannot swim please line up on the left hand side of the plane. At this time we'd like to take the opportunity to thank you for flying Lufthansa."
Unthinkable: Collapse of Bond Markets
"China is Dubai times 1000 if not a million"
Food Stamp Use Soars Across U.S., and Stigma Fades
More seniors go to soup kitchens
Increase of 81 percent last year, USDA reports.
Half of children in 17 U.S. counties live in poverty (from Rice Farmer)
Money Starts to Trickle North as Mexicans Help Out Relatives
Almost Half of Turkish Migrants Want to Leave (Germany)
A Run on the Dollar Starts Soon (from Vantage Point)
China’s economic path is likely to be punctured sooner or later by a crisis
Fears of UK debt crisis
It's the Government, not family, that's falling apart
Militia movement resurfaces across nation (from Rice Farmer)
Angela Merkel alarmed by worsening credit crisis
Dubai debt crisis may end in “major” default
Dubai woes give China chance to buy oil, gold: report
Abu Dhabi will not race to Dubai's rescue
Arab States Move to Stifle Dubai Crisis
'Father of the Poor' Has Triggered Economic Miracle - Brazil
The Madagascar model: conflicts over natural resources will grow (from Vantage Point)
Audit would hurt economic prospects: Bernanke
Entering the Superproject Void
...in the era of infrastructure demise.
Freight Forwards Curve Warns Of Baltic Dry Index Collapse (from Rice Farmer)
Four Police Officers Shot Dead in Washington Coffee House
Cuban nationals land at Florida nuclear plant: NRC
At This School, It’s Marijuana in Every Class
Giving new meaning to the words "high school."
The Incredible Shrinking AOL: 2,300 More Employees To Be Cut
Bob Toll Predicts New Housing Crisis (from Vantage point)
Lou Dobbs Might Run for Senate, White House

War Drums
A Defiant Iran Details Plan for 10 Enrichment Plants
Iranian navy seizes five British sailors
Cuban army holds exercises for U.S. military attack
Increased Violence on the High Seas

Energy/Climate Change/Science
Russia Cuts Coal Exports to Asia
Australian Senate: Peak Oil Motion Defeated
Burning Forests for Electricity (from NYC Peak Oil Meetup)
Asia's Rice Culture Threatened (from Rice Farmer)
Next year may be hottest yet, Met Office says
25 Rivers on Flood Watch (UK)
Demand for locally grown food has farmers building greenhouses and trying cool-weather varieties (from Rice Farmer)
For Forest Kindergartners, Class Is Back to Nature, Rain or Shine
Philadelphia Unveils $1.6 Million Plan to Embrace Storm Water (from NYC Peak Oil Meetup)
Sunshine, sewage to power cities of the future
Scientists make plastic without using fossil fuels
Cost of adapting to climate change
Developing world farmers need an almost unprecedented shift of resources, says Anne Perkins.
KLM Claims First Biofuel Airline Passenger Flight
Meat grown in laboratory
Lab-grown Meat Could Solve Multiple Problems
Flowing air 'could be used to generate electricity for planes and cars'

Pandemic
IMF Funding Fueling TB Rise
H1N1 swine flu mutation spreads, deaths worldwide on the rise
Moldovan soldiers given onions to fight swine flu
Forget gold and silver, invest in garlic
Swine flu again.
New Ukraine Flu Worse than H1N1
H1N1 mutation found in some flu fatalities

Europe
'Who' for President, 'I Don't Know' for Foreign Minister
Swiss voters back right-wing minaret ban
Swiss official hints at reversal of minaret ban

Russia
Government Expects Energy Sway to Decline
Under a plan entitled Energy Strategy 2030, the economy and budget revenues will steadily move away from the reliance on energy exports, spurring the changes.
Russia Cuts Coal Exports to Asia
Russia Moves To Rein In Gas Flaring, Mandating 95% Gas Capture by 2012; Signals About-Face on Climate Change
Producers say North Slope has 'no easy oil left
''Titanic Effect' May Delay Russian Development Plans in Arctic

Intelligence
Malaysian pilgrims issued RFID tags (from Rice Farmer)
After Data Loss, ID Theft Risk Soars
U.S. adults who get a Dear John data letter have a one in five chance of being victimized in the next 12 months, according to the survey, conducted by financial services research firm Javelin Research.
Blair told before invasion Iraq WMD were dismantled
Wikileaks Published 570,000 Messages from 9/11
NYT: Anti-terror air defense reviewed
The commander of military forces protecting North America has ordered a review of the costly air defenses intended to prevent another Sept. 11-style attack.
Watergate investigation reopened
CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception Declassified
CIA goes hiring in heart of Arab America
Ssh.

26 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't know if there's a way to search through all of your comments to check if this a repost. I never noticed the comment function of your blog before now.

Anyway, I was really surprised that something like this slipped out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtJWBcWAeAw

with the most interesting bit starting at 5:57

D3Financial said...

where is collapse playing in san francisco on dec 4? hope to see you there. thx

gamedog said...

At midnight last night, the United Kingdom ceased to be a sovereign state

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100018459/at-midnight-last-night-the-united-kingdom-ceased-to-be-a-sovereign-state/

Arif Hasan Akhundzada said...

"Dubai World" victim of world economic recession

http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=211407

RanD said...

Collapse - a lens through which to learn - #21

Telegraph Media religion editor & Anglican priest George Pitcher tells us "It's...Government, not the nuclear family, that's falling apart". Hm-m... well, yeah. However, presuming that the Anglican Church, and thus its priests, trace their beginnings from the Judaean-Christian Bible, also tells us that journalist and AC priest Pitcher ought to know and remind his readers that, according to said Bible, the human family existentially predates and is thus the foundation of all human social fabrications -- which fabrications include our religious establishments as well as our governing systems.

The point:

We should consider taking a much closer and more open-minded look at how we've been interpersonally conducting ourselves as human females & males producing and rearing children, i.e. conducting ourselves as families, and thereof been spreading ourselves, our ideas, our behaviors and practices across our planet. And, if we see anything going on out there & all around us that isn't going the way we think it ought to, then we need to examine what we're doing at the familial level. For instance:

If what's going on out there and all around us that we're increasingly calling "collapse" is happening, predominantly as the consequence of how we've been doing our "man/woman/family thing", as a species -- which it is -- we then know where to look for causes if we're interested in surviving the likely utter collapse into which our current self-governing status quo's socio-psycho-economic ideas, practices, policies, laws & leaders are daily stubbornly taking us ever deeper.

To paraphrase:

What we're experiencing here is real-time self-actualizing collapse of our own self-devised global-wide/species-wide socio-psycho-economic paradigm. However, by using our current/once-again truly epochal "collapse" as a lens through which to examine ourselves as "Adam & Eve" in our most recent incarnation as "Petroleum Man & Woman", we have another singular opportunity to look at and see "who" we are in terms of "what" we are in terms of "what we are doing" relative to "what we should be doing"; and by securing such knowledge learn how to free ourselves from the critical ignorance which otherwise keeps us securely locked into a situation impossible to escape until it takes us all the way down, once again.

Our failure to learn from this situation of our own fabrication ensures to us a loss of truly cosmic proportions; which loss requires having to once again start from scratch and try getting it right.

Here's wishing us well, again, beginning from where we're at right now.

agape wins said...

I have been constructively criticized by two of our posters who I hold in the highest regard,
I had 2 posts almost completed, when it struck me that ether I have not made myself clearmor they have short memory's. Are others confused about why I post here, what I think our objective should be, and why I write the way I do? Please let me know; I do not write to display how smart I am, to vent my spleen, put anyone down/dominate, or even put my
outdated knowledge on display.

Small World, "The Little Book of Life", I'll have to see if I still have my copy (I do pass
important stuff along),
I discovered "Perfection/imperfection (mine(small) ), when I was 4, while living as a wild child, and seeing my first auto wreck, with 6 dead, smelling the blood, gasoline/oil/hot engine,
& alcohol (a Black 4 door, model A Ford head on into a tree, 2 ft. off the ground; after watching the fireworks on the 4th of July. Explain IMperfection to me & where it is found?

I'll wait several days before posting my responses.

Unknown said...

RE: CIA Magic Manual

For whatever it matters, John Edward McLaughlin, former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence under George Tenet, was an accomplished magician, according to Wikipedia.

I'm reminded of Henry VI, Part II, in which Duke Humphrey of Gloucester beats a man pretending to be lame, and makes him run. The crowd of courtiers congratulates him on a miracle. He turns to the king, his nephew, and says:

"But you have done more miracles than I: You made in a day, my lord, whole towns to fly."

The reference is to a secret deal by which he ended the 100 years war by marrying an attractive French heiress (who is present at the remark, and later persecutes him for his opinions) and incidentally signs away most of England's claims to France.

So magic is a state art from long ago. Complemented on the magic of the internet, Bill Gates might have turned to Bill Clinton and said, "You are a greater magician than I: you made in a day whole economies to fly."

And then there's the old Disappearing Bill of Rights trick ...

Jeff said...

The vatican has teamed up with russia,maybe that's the sudden turn in russian tone on Iran.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/03/world/AP-EU-Vatican-Russia.html

Anonymous said...

http://wweek.com/editorial/3604/13425/

Collapse

The end is near. Have a cigarette.

BY AARON MESH

ILLEGAL SMILE: Michael C. Ruppert.

The last time Michael C. Ruppert appeared in the pages of this newspaper (Rogue of the Week, Oct. 21, 2009), he had been ordered by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries to pay $125,000 in damages to a former employee for sexual harassment including “standing in his underwear in a ‘wide-legged stance’ with a ‘big smile.’” Ruppert’s acolytes—judging from WW’s online comments, he has quite a few—accused the paper of smearing him to distract from his wider political stance: That the world’s oil supplies have reached their peak capacity and are in an irreversible decline that will devastate Western civilization. Chris Smith’s arresting new documentary on Ruppert, Collapse, gives the harbinger of doom a full hearing, and it does cast doubt on BOLI’s ruling—for most of the movie, Ruppert does not appear capable of, let alone interested in, smiling.

Filmed in a Culver City, Calif., basement, Ruppert calls to mind The X-Files’ Cigarette Smoking Man, chiefly because he has an overarching matrix that explains all governmental duplicity, but also because he smokes a lot of cigarettes. “I don’t deal in conspiracy theory,” he says, “I deal in conspiracy fact. ” Even though he’s the only person speaking in Collapse (except for sporadic off-camera queries from the director), his hurried, antagonistic cadence sounds like he’s constantly interrupting somebody whose objections he finds insultingly stupid. A former LAPD cop, he started out accusing the CIA of running narcotics, but a full five years ago he was deploying the phrase “mortgage-backed securities” as an all-too-prescient warning of financial ruin. Now that he has your attention, his current case includes a lifetime supply of insomnia material: Energy supplies are finite, the planet’s population spike cannot continue, and a lot of people are going to starve while Western civilization turns into something else. “You need to survive the transition phase,” Ruppert explains. “Don’t panic. You’re going to be able to get water for a few years.”

It’s hard to say exactly how much Chris Smith buys into this. The director of American Movie (in which a would-be Wisconsin filmmaker feared a future in which he would “suck down peppermint schnapps and try to call Morocco at 2 in the morning”), Smith specializes in profiling men strung out on their own visions. Ruppert’s Collapse predictions often sound not only plausible but incontrovertible. But then he throws out a gem about how he’s ridding his soil of biochemical pesticides: “I’m mixing barbecue and wood ash, and then I go out and pee on everything.” An autodidact immensely unwilling to countenance the idea that any of his conclusions might be wrong, Ruppert seems determined to push himself out of society. After talking for an hour about the end of the world, he finally breaks down crying—because he’s so angry that nobody ever listened to him. Like every self-appointed prophet, he needs the system to break down. Otherwise he’ll always be on the outside.

The other possibility—and it would be unwise of me to rule this out—is that he’s right, and the world is coming to an end.
SEE IT: Collapse plays at Cinema 21 Thursday-Thursday, Dec. 3-10. Michael Ruppert will attend the 4:30 and 7 pm showings on Thursday, Dec. 3.

agape wins said...

Right on eyeballs!

toner deeski said...

excellent post RanD.
the personal is political.
all nations have been founded on top of some sort of class/caste system, and are therefore flawed.
we can do better.

businessman said...

gamedog...I am saddened to see that the U.K. has now officially given up its sovereignty. My father was a Royal Air Force pilot in World War II, one of the men Winston Churchill referred to as being "The Few". And at the end of the War he was awarded the MBE by King George VI.

I am sure that most all of the gallant warriors still surviving from that War and living within the U.K. are saddened by this also.

John Kelty said...

AK Gold,

Lumiere Theatre.

Unknown said...

Only the RFID chip embedded in the cloned human steak will guarantee that it is free of salmonella, I presume. Presumably, specific parts that are prefered could be cloned, such as nipples, and you could buy a sack of them at a baseball game. "Nipples! Fresh hot nipples!"

If we do not collapse pretty soon, we're going to wish that we had.

Sebastian Ernst Ronin said...

eyeballs, re "If we do not collapse pretty soon, we're going to wish that we had."

The technocratic dystopia and effeminate decadence of the Western world is part-and-parcel of the collapse, is it not? The collapse is underway. A decade or two here or there on an historical timeline is nothing; it is the blink of an eye.

The Ummah throbs with anticipation. Mattel recently introduced a Burka Barbie. They should have brought you on board as a consultant: interchangeable, plastic nipples I could see as an added feature. Fortress Europe is a write-off. The Swiss have stood strong on more minarets, but even the BNP finds itself fighting a rear-guard battle.

As I recently posted elsewhere: "IF the pending collapse of industrial civilization is not extreme, complete nor decisive enough to neutralize the globalists and offer us all a level playing field, and; IF the political analysis/organization is wanting or derelict to pre-empt the unfolding condition, then we may as well gather up our marbles and go home. We shall be rendered philosophical or physical grease spots before our heads hit the floor.

I have recently added Guillaume Faye's Archeofuturism to my bag of political tricks. I highly recommend it. It may very well be the door knob on the post-Green door that I have been knocking on.

Complete, unconditional collapse is our only salvation. How odd to be advocating for burnt-earth. The globalist cull and ecological purge run in tandem. Nihilism approaches a place of philosophical legitimacy, while further burrowing into the vacuum of a political null.

The trick, I find, is to take none of it, absolutely none of it, personally.

OregonSurvivor said...

Review From The Oregonian:

I’m not saying that Michael Ruppert is a Cassandra or Chicken Little. I mean, he’s a former LAPD narcotics officer with deep knowledge of the intelligence community and a decades-long record as a muckraking journalist exposing governmental scandals in major publications.

So, no, watching “Collapse,” an 80-odd-minute interview by director Chris Smith (“American Movie”) in which Ruppert lays out what he sees as the inevitable downfall of the global environment, economy, food system, and legal and social framework doesn’t feel like spending time with a kook or alarmist.

But if any of what he says makes sense to you -- and even if it’s only a small piece, it’s terrifying -- then you’ll want to invest in gold and organic seeds and friendly relations with your nearest neighbors. You know: JUST IN CASE.....

Sitting in a tiled basement, chain-smoking, dropping names and statistics and data with chilling certainty, Ruppert makes a compelling case that everything we know is about to end. Actually, believes it’s all already over, and we’re just like cartoon characters who’ve run off the edge of a cliff and haven’t yet realized that we’re in for a hell of a fall.

So, yeah: Happy holidays from Michael Ruppert and Chris Smith. And here’s praying it’s not the last year we can say that.

RanD said...

Brilliantly articulated response there to eyeballs' humorously sincere toying with collapse, Sebastian. And how informing it is to daily see it literarily as well as literally evinced that there are so many geniuses amongst us with such insoluble resistance to seeing the picture, in its whole. A shame? Oh my goodness; of course not! All of those silly things are also but pieces of the whole; alive and ever moving forward one piece at a time; each operating at its own pace.

And as you imply you've only recently discerned, none of it is to be taken personally! Cheers! However, existentially it is.

Ultimately 'tis but a matter of, as suggested, exercising free will; but never from other than one's own personal quarters, as always, of course.

agape wins said...

Resubmission, first could not be processed.

New twist on com trails? Surprise, Ha Ha!!

http://www.newsweek.com/id/224595


We are headed toward the most drastic/catastrophic change in the history of humanity, we have never approached the point of over population, we have always had the
option of moving away/killing/taking away from the powerless!
Our technology now permits us to eliminate all higher forms of life, it appears several of "our" space projects have contaminated the moon & Mars, Accidentally!
The life we live is unlike anything in nature, we are surrounded by the artificial, what we could confine locally by nature or medicine can/Is now kill/ing worldwide. We as a Race/Species have lost any/all natural Immunity, WE have made ourselves dependent on chemicals!
These same Chemicals which save us, also kill us, directly or through their side effects.
As an example: Motor Oil, 1 Qt. will contaminate 25,000 gal of ground water. When I was young and up until 1980 it was common to use Oil as "Dust control", legally, & then illegally; I myself dispensed thousands of qt.'s.while working for a Street Dept..
This is history, we were also constantly checking for illegally dumped chemicals in the sewer water, & at the Landfill; this is history, History is being made today/Everyday, deliberately, and/or accidentally. We will not know for YEARS, which we don't have
anymore.

Just now caught up with Sebastian's 1:26 am post, another reason to be here, fine reasoning, read/think History; the only real advances' made are after a "DIEOFF", call it war, Pandemic, The Flood, or just Chance, there must be a Pruning of the
deadwood, the "Know it all"/complacent, the old way is the only way people that got us here.

There will always be a "Remnant", those who could see/Plan, & those who "just happened"!
There are some here who seem to be stumbling along, as I said I detect 7 "Mind Sets", posting here, we each of us has a style, none fits a "Mold"/box; I have seen a collective change in thoughts, & expectations.
Others can state what they Know, suspect or Think, but that still leaves that big unknown, that-- that we haven't considered, or refuse to Think about/Face.

My awakening began when I watched (on TV) the carpet Bombing of the Rice Paddy's during 1965 in Viet Nam. I had been a Tech. on the on the B52 Bomber (changed from a Defensive to an Attack Aircraft), from 1960 to 1963. I wept in front of the TV, how many innocent Men, Woman, & Children did MY Aircraft Kill? Reflect on where that leads, you have never heard/read me defend America as a nation, just it's deceived/abused people.

As the sides are drawn where will you stand, on Wood burning/Energy conservation?
Is it worth taking a stand on?

http://www.creators.com/advice/annies-mailbox/annie-s-mailbox-r-2009-11-22.html

gamedog said...

Businessman, would you believe there wasn't even a whimper from the public. The fireworks and celebrations in Brussels (which we paid for) were hardly covered in the media, it was all very low key here. Most Brits don't even realise the ramifications. We didn't get a referendum because we would have voted NO to EU.

As an aside, I may have cleaned up some of your trash :) As a RN Clearance Diver in the 80's I had to dispose of a WW2 US 400lb air dropped bomb in the English channel, (few miles out from The Wash, off Skegness). A nice big plume and plenty of fish for the table!

On Agape's wood-burning dilemma. In the UK there are smokeless zones (planning restrictions) where only certain approved woodburners are allowed, it can be difficult to get planning permission in some urban areas. They are manufactured in such a way so as to only burn efficiently, often this involves welding open secondary/primary air controls so they can't be shut down to a smolder. I have converted to woodburner fired heating with back boiler, and a wood fired cooker/stove in the kitchen for radiant heat and cooking, I would offer to extend the flue/stack if my neighbours complained, tho I don't actually have any neighbours within 1/4 mile.
I have also planted 400 willows, a specific variety developed as a real fast grower for industrial biomass plants (Salix-Bowles Hybrid). We've been germinating 3000 Ash keys for a year, for planting this spring (2 year dormant seeds) for future fuel. One day I will be self sufficient in fuel, but we're not quite there yet. I did not choose this system to adjust my carbon footprint, it is a self reliance doomstead prep with sustainability in mind.

RanD said...

Agape Wins, Your 5:48 PM post above is a fine, coherent body of information from start to finish, and provides us with material to which we can confidently and productively respond. You might juxtapose & compare it with the/your 11/27/09"Bets Rise on Rich Countries Defaulting" 9:56 PM post which triggered my 5:23 AM criticism of your slipping back & forth between 'excellent reasoning' and 'self-defeating incoherence'.

You also might consider framing the two, together, in juxtaposition, and hang them on the wall right in front of your 'puter... you know, just for reference, whenever you feel yourself sliding back into thinking you're "insane"! :-)

We love you bro.

OregonSurvivor said...

I find this curious: go to the URL "Illuminati" spelled backwards (www.itanimulli.com)you are redirected to the NSA's website??

Hmmm....

toner deeski said...

saw collapse in berkeley last night. interesting that there were kids everywhere, but the theater for collapse was completely empty 10 min to showtime (i realize that mike was in sf at that exact moment, but i have a two year old, and can't always be where i want to be when i want to be there). there did end up being some people, but it was funny because i could overhear a conversation amoung a group of college students who had no idea what they were about to watch. i could tell by their reactions throughout the movie that they were very receptive, and very engaged.
outstanding job to everyone involved, and mike, i'm glad you stopped holding back on telling us how you really feel.

Hef Lee said...

hey mike!!
thanks for being here in SF last night. the movie was great and you're great. you should be very proud and im glad to hear you're relaxing and enjoying life. hope to see you soon. you're always welcome in my tribe.
thanks again
Luke

Peddler on the Hoof said...

movie tonight in berk was great. thank you!!

interesting here,

http://dailyreckoning.com/the-collapse-of-finance/

Peddler on the Hoof said...

part of financial/commercial collapse

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5B407F20091205

5 more banks bite the dust

F.Kamilov said...

Agape, now that is what I call nice writing. Keep it up!