From Jenna Orkin
Headlines
North Korea: War "may break out at any moment"
Major Intrigue In North Korea, As Key Leader Is Found Dead Before Possible Power Handoff
UK Parliamentarians for World Governance
San Carlos California Ponders Dissolving Police Department, Outsourcing Duties; Redwood City Mayor says "It's the Wave of the Future"
Economy
FSA Regulation Powers Given to Bank of England
The Scariest Job Chart Ever Just Got Even Scarier
Now everyone's freaking out about Hungary
Britain's inflation warning
UK must cut pensions
Former Soviet Republic Could Be Next to Adopt Euro
NY Nearly Goes Broke Again; Delays Paying Bills
Texas Budget Gap Could Reach 18 Billion
JPMorgan hit by record fine
Terror/Intelligence
EU Company Admits Blame for Phone Snooping Gadgets to Iran
Israel Rejects International Probe from Vantage Point
Treat Palestinians Like Jews - from Vantage Point
The war film that shocked Denmark
In Denmark, the press and public have been stunned by Armadillo, Janus Metz's documentary about a UK-Danish base in Afghanistan.
Lawyers Claim Google Wi-Fi Sniffing 'Is Not an Accident'
Castro speculates Obama might strike Iran to win second term
Swine flu experts tied to big pharma
Army Researchers Find Ebola Vaccine But it Might Only Save Themselves
"Scientists packaged RNA snippets into particles that were then injected into four rhesus monkeys, who’d been infected with a dose of Ebola that was 30,000 times more potent than the virus’ most lethal strain, which already has a measly 10 percent survival rate."
Army Biolab’s Missing Vials May Never Be Found
CDC Shuts Down Bioweapons Lab After Infections
Biolab Breakdown Caused Cattle Outbreak
The Dangers of Turning Spies into Generals (and Vice Versa)
New South Wales Gvt. Recording Features for Facial Recognition
Why Pat Tillman Shouldn't Be in Pro Football Hall of Fame
Oil Disaster
Gulf Oil Damage Could Spread to Atlantic
MIT Oceanographer on BP Disaster
"Some scientists argue that the surfactant, or soapy wetting agent, being added at the bottom source and at the surface of the ocean to help disperse the oil, could ultimately cause more damage to the health of the water column than the oil itself."
Washington Post Exposes BP ties to Eco-Groups, Other Media Ignore Controversy - from Rice Farmer
Sarah Palin claims environmentalists caused the Gulf oil spill
BP Oil: Coming to a Beach Near You in Summer 2010
BP Says Cap May Be Able to Retrieve More Than 90% of Crude From Gulf Well
Regulator: Canadians don't need to worry about a BP disaster
Scientist Fears Govt Muzzle on Deepwater Horizon Data
"I'm essentially being told that the data I'm collecting on my hypoxia cruise may or may not be subject to quarantine," DiMarco says. "Which means that we will not be able to publish it, pending the liability litigation. Oh, yeah, 20 years from now, we may be able to publish it."
JO comment: Unintended consequences of a lawsuit. Or perhaps not so unintended.
GOM Shallow Drilling to Continue Despite News to Contrary
Israel May Join Gas Exporting Nations With Leviathan Discovery
Environment
Oman: Tropical Cyclone Phet May Reach Catgeory 5
Africa drought leaves 10m hungry
Oregon's small-scale farms worry about sweeping food safety bill - from Rice Farmer
Britain faces fine for air quality after final warning from EU
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8 comments:
tar balls and oil sheens are making their way into the florida keys. there've been sporadic reports over the last couple of weeks of tar balls washing ashore at various places (ft taylor state park in key west, hawk's cay in the middle keys, to name a couple) and the "experts" say that the tar balls are not from deepwater horizon. let's see if i have this right: oil gusher in gulf spewing millions of gallons of crude for 6 weeks straight, but the stuff coming ashore right here right now isn't from deepwater horizon? tar balls were never a hazard here in the keys before. i've lived here 15 years and to my knowledge there haven't been any tar balls or oil sheens around...suddenly there is, but it's not from deepwater, according to the "experts", the same "experts" who've been lying about the whole mess since day 1. if what's coming ashore in more frequent, larger quantities isn't from deepwater horizon, where's it from?
Regarding Sarah Palin claiming that environmentalists caused the Gulf oil spill, I don't ever remember someone achieving such massive success by arriving on the national political stage as an absolute buffoon.
Mish doesn't seem to understand that the future of law enforcement is a reversion to the past.
The old timers I used to know, referred to these private police forces as 'Company Men'. They were used to keep local population / factory workers in line. Solving crime was a secondary responsibility that came after doing their employer's bidding.
Although the city would be paying a corporation to run the police department, the police employees would well understand that their loyalties should not lie with the citizenry, but with the CEO that cuts their paychecks.
Mish thinks that such a deal is smart and wise.
I would imagine that he'd change his tune if he were a victim of a crime, with such a police department in charge. It wasn't unheard of for police in the old days to ask for tips, in exchange for actually working the case.
Would Mish be happy to pay their salaries in taxes, then have to pay them a daily fee to work his case? I would bet not.
That Sarah Palin would claim that "environmentalists caused the Gulf oil spill" and "achieve massive success" for saying so nicely indicates the source & gravity of mindlessness much of the US population suffers from.
UK Parliamentarians for World Governance is old news.
Its One World Trust was founded in 1951. It is partially funded by the Ford Foundation and the World Federalist Movement. Its agenda is expressed in highly abstract terms, anesthetically general and monotonous, but the aims appear to be intervention in the national affairs of African states and India (sometimes called neocolonialism) and international regulation of the world economy along “free trade” lines.
Nationalists may cringe at the One World movement, which has certainly made leaps and bounds lately in the Lisbon Treaty and in the new internationalism of the Obama administration (with respect to US-EU cooperation, NATO-EU integration and a streamlining of US executive functions among various agencies that were formerly more independent). But it’s hard to see this group as being particularly powerful, or its rise being sudden or alarming.
Nationalism is pretty much a dead letter anyway. The clever balance to internationalism is localism. If ye don’t like the news, go out and make some of yer own. (Or better yet, localize without making headlines!)
Weaseldog,
Good call on the "company men".
The tip-based police service you mention is common in Asia and, I've heard, in Latin America. Probably Africa, too.
Also common is selective enforcement of laws. If reasonable things are illegal, and therefore a lot of people are doing them, the police can charge to go away and leave you be. Similarly, if permits for a necessary social function (such as a market or a nightclub) are hard to obtain, such that most of them are unlicensed, the cops can bust those who are competing with the ones who pay them. It's a pay up or get out situation that takes a huge premium for social regulation, and puts the poor at a huge disadvantage in organizing activities and doing business.
And I agree with you that the future, at least in a lot of places, looks just like that.
Throw in such advanced tools as ubiquitous cameras, data mining, drone aircraft, crowd control weapons and killer robots -- tools largely unavailable to citizens -- and whoever controls the security forces and wields these tools will have a tremendous advantage over the rest.
But chances are that there will not be enough security forces to Big Brother everyone when TSHTF. A good rule of thumb is to stay out of the way of the gawdawful mainstream, which will be bullied and fleeced. If it's too hard to really hide in this age, keep an uninteresting presence, and try to stay out of the range of the other, easy targets. And be willing and able to pay if necessary, at such times as not coughing up the squeeze means destruction.
Don't you guys get it? American politics is no more real than Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs! McCain & Palin were mere props to make sure Obama got elected. Palin's only job now is to remind us that it could be worse!
@eyeballs
"But chances are that there will not be enough security forces to Big Brother everyone when TSHTF."
You forget about the huddled masses, with their cellphone cameras and their youtube accounts; who, for want of a slice, will hand you over to the "authorities" without giving it a second thought.
"Groupthink" has always been the most powerful tool of political control. How many Nazis were there per-civilian in the 1930s Germany? No more than the police to civilian ratio in most other countries (even now). And yet, somehow they still managed to systematically exterminate upwards of 11 million people; and the civilian population went right along with it.
People do what they're told. Even worse... They do what they think "looks good" to whoever is in charge. That's where the real danger comes from!
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