Unmanageability
We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.
-Step One of the 12 Steps to Recovery for Narcotics Anonymous
As 2011 hits its stride, members of the United States Congress from both sides of the aisle are demanding that the United States Armed Forces be employed to establish and enforce a no-fly zone over Tripoli, the capital of Libya. The rationale for this demand is that the United States can provide tactical space for the forces of popular rebellion against a long standing US bete noir Mummar al-Gaddafi – “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.”
In fact, 2011 has borne a crisis for the US government in the region, and this absurd proposal has been co-presented by those manly-man Vietnam veterans of the Senate, John McCain and John Kerry, two former candidates for the nation’s highest office, proving once and for all that – no matter your political affiliations – when all you know how to use is a hammer, the world begins to look like a nail.
It’s a desperate idea for re-establishing influence in a strategic region, where an outbreak of popular rebellions is threatening some key US satrapies. The political linchpin of US regional geopolitics, Egypt, is now well on its way to breaking its contracts. Bahrain (where there was noticeably little outrage about the government gunning down protesters), harbor for the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, is also under duress. Then there is the nightmare of nightmares – glimpsed past the foreground of rising oil prices anticipated throughout the coming summer – that something might happen to overturn the rule of the House of Saud, the venal offspring of Muhammed bin Saud who rule Saudi Arabia, geopolitical vessel of 20 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves.
Not a peep from Congress, the TV Commentariat, or our esteemed Chief Executive so far about this “friendly” nation-state, where political detention, torture, and murder are political devices as common as catered parties. But the fear is there. Saudi Arabia could erupt, and the US economic linchpin in the region could be lost. The victors in any popular rebellion are unlikely to welcome the arch-Zionist Hillary Clinton in for a meeting to discuss diplomatic continuity.
The “Muslim world,” as it is called, is surely viewing the recent viral video of Orange County, CA whitefolk staging a deranged and hatefully offensive demonstration against Muslims who were meeting to raise money for homeless shelters. In this video, where American flags blotted out the Disney-fied background of affluent Yorba Linda, shrieking lunatics in designer clothing, inflamed by speeches from Congressmen Ed Royce and Gary Miller, and Villa Park Councilwoman Deborah Pauly, issued insults to Allah and death threats to all Muslims – described as “terrorists.”
This manifestation is surely a sign of unmanageability.
This, too, is just as surely a form of diplomatic crisis, because it happens at the same time that covert operator Raymond Davis is being held in Lahore, Pakistan, after shooting two Pakistanis in the back on a public street as part of some US provocation. Davis is likely an active duty member of the US military – his records tucked securely away in a restricted file – who was using what is called in the trade “an official cover.” That is, he was given a diplomatic passport that let him claim to be a State Department official.
Davis shot two men, then jumped out to photograph the bodies; but something went awry, and Davis got stuck before he could make good on his getaway. A chase vehicle, also “covered” with diplomatic plates, rushed to his rescue, whereupon the reaction team ran down and killed yet another Pakistani. Long story short, Davis was apprehended by Pakistani authorities, and is being charged by the Pakistani courts – rightly – with criminal homicide.
In the wake of the Davis affair – after the US unsuccessfully tried every manner of arm-twisting on the Pakistani government to release Davis “because he is a diplomat with immunity” (Right!) – an entire cover ops network has been dismantled, and numerous unknown US subjects have been sent home to their neglected families, while the State Department, et al, erect a flimsy barricade of lies to obstruct the view.
Meanwhile, unbeknown to most Americans, there are still 75,000 troops in Iraq – where yet another rebellion threatens to break out; Commander-in-Chief Obama continues to oversee a lost and cruel war in Afghanistan; the CIA continues its covert drone war against rural Pakistan; and Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke has successfully reflated a financial bubble, ensuring that the next crash – coming to a theater near you – is even more traumatic than the last. Then, we’ll see more Yorba Linda-like lunacies, because this is what middle-classes do when they are frightened.
I believe what the Irish bard said was, “the center cannot hold.”
The empire, in a word, has become unmanageable, but like any addict, it continues to do the same things, while expecting a different result. We 12-steppers call that “insanity.”
At last, I’ll get to my point, and link the article that this is leading into. Empires always become unmanageable, because they are inherently “addicted” to the exploitation of peripheries. As those peripheries are exhausted, the core must continually seek further and further afield to satisfy its habit. This core-periphery dynamic is, in fact, not only a feature of empire. Empire is one manifestation of the same process – an ecological one at bottom – that we call “civilization.” Because no core can continually feed on a periphery without materially exhausting it, no core can go on indefinitely. It will eventually overreach, and at that point, it loses the ability to manage its own system – a system that turns out at the end of the day to have created a fatal dependency on that periphery, even as it has pillaged it.
Here is the article I wanted to highlight.
The search for knowledge has drawn both Trella and Wattenmaker to Upper Mesopotamia, which spans modern Iraq and part of Syria and Turkey. Here, in the Fertile Crescent, humans first domesticated animals and cultivated crops like wheat and barley. Five and a half thousand years ago, city-states in the region left behind the earliest evidence of writing and elaborate burial rites for kings. Trella draws on 14 years of experience, which includes sites in Turkey and Syria, where he studies the Early Bronze Age, between 2500 and 2000 B.C. He uses bones, both animal and human, to trace changes in population density and food sources that reveal a compelling narrative of early civilization—and how we view progress.
“From the vantage point of the modern industrialized world, history appears to many to be a slow progression from less complex social organization to more complex—hunter-gatherer to chiefdom to city-state to empire,” Trella says. “This notion of progress that leads inexorably to us—Western civilization—has big value implications, the most significant being that things are getting better. And that complex societies are better.”
But the cities didn’t simply get bigger and better. The archeological record reveals that different eras showed vastly different populations in the cities as they went through boom-bust cycles. Cities grew for several hundred years, then dwindled as populations dispersed into the countryside—and later grew again…
Mark folk:
Part of this unmanagagablity is the neo-plutocracy putting people in the presidency who have background weaknesses that is destroying American imperialism. First they put in an ex-drunk and ex-cokehead whose unrealism and ambition mired the US in Iraq and Afghnaistan. He was then replaced, at a cost of a a half billion dollars, by Obama, whose CIA connections in his background is putting the US in a terrible geo-strategic position in Pakistan.
According to Wayne Maddison, Obama’s family had a CIA background and Obama was raised as a CIA diaper baby. When he and his mother and step-father moved to Indonesia in the wake of the CIA-backed massacre there of a half million to a million people, Obama was sent to Packistan to stay in the home of a family whose head became a president of Pakistan.
Obama’s mother worked in Pakistan for five years, funanced by American agencies. Obama when he graduated Columbia, and was mentored by Brzezinski, spent a year working for a CIA front, and was sent to Pakistan for a few weeks on an assignment. Consequently Obama has a long attachment to Pakistan and presumably the CIA.
That may account for the extrordinary defense by the president of the US for a killer who is a US Contractor. although the corrupt president, Zardari, known as Mr Ten Percent in Pakistan, and other leades are on the US payroll, many of the Pakisstani military and intelligence agency ISI, appear to be aiding the Pushtans who are on both sides of the colonial Durand line in both Pakistana and Afghanistan. They can, and have, closed the Kyber and other passes needed by Nato to suppoy their troops.
Why should the US make such a public fuss about ‘Diplomat Raymond Davis’ who is neither a diplomat nor is that his real name? these things are usually handled in a covert manner. It is conceviable that this is a weakness in the Obama’s background that is counterprodutive to US imperialism, just as Bush 2′s unrealism was. What Obama is saying to the Paks is “fuck justice, fuck deplomacy, fuck truth, fuck you.” We can kill anybody we want because we are more powerful than you.
this is reinforced by US racism as is the White uprising in Orange County. But one of the major points of putting Obama in the presidency was that he was non-White, just like 90% of the rest of the world. Perhaps he has to prove that he can be just as brutal and disgusting as a White president. Just as Sec of state Powell was used to tell the UN about Iraqi ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction,’ and non-Whites, such as Gonzales and Yoo used to legitimate and legalize torture, Obama may jsut be displaying his loyalty to the White ruling class. But just as Bush 2 did, he does so against their interests and the interests of the managers of American imperialism.
5 March 2011, 2:28 pmStan:
@ Mark
Shift the signal to noise ratio, please. This is drifting into conspiracy-theory terrain, and there are other websites that are more friendly to that kind of thing. This is a “system” oriented blog. We don’t do CIA-babies.
5 March 2011, 3:08 pmStan:
FULL
FULL
5 March 2011, 3:52 pmJenny:
Still sounds like you’re kinda dabbling in conspiracy there. Wayne himself is kinda kooky:
5 March 2011, 9:18 pmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Madsen
Stan:
Zap – Mark and his last comment have left the building.
6 March 2011, 7:17 amCurt:
Any one who supports Cynthia Mckinne can not at all by called kooky. At least in a cookie sort of way. Furthermore the US military as it exsits today and has existed for the past 200 plus years, except for 1966 through 1973, is not a debate club. I am surprised with having a grandmother who was a member of the Danish Communist Party that Wayne was even allowed in to the navy. I am even more surprised that they let him out, in one piece I mean. Of course the US military would try to purge itself of all potentially subversive elements. I guess that this comment might get deleated becasue it sounds conspritorial. But the sad fact is the situation in America today can really be correctly explained with out using some conspiracy explinations.
7 March 2011, 3:30 pmBut this purging of undesirable elements does create a theoretical problem for any national military. When a military or militia is based on a political party it is clear that anyone who does not support the basic tenants of the political party should be thrown out. Yet in a country all basic political tenants are temporary in nature. The ideological understanding of the population is always changing. It is the job of the Colonel to protect the population from enemies in the literal sense but I think that the word enemeies should be understood as harm in the true spirit of the law. Protecting a nation from a foriegn invasion is for most the militaries of most countries ridiculously easy. One only meeds to be able to make the potential costs to a potential invader high enough to act as a deterence to invasion.
Yet if the General is to protect the population from all enemies (harm) foriegn and DOMESTIC his job becomes much trickier. Dangerous stupidity can not only break out in foreing countries it is just as likely to break out in ones own country. Fortunately Colonels are not and should not be the first line of defense against domestic stupidity. They should be the last line of defence.
I now arrive at the tricky part. In any population some percentage of the population will be infected with subversive ideas. Some of the ideas will be needed changes, some will Daffy Duck lunacy. Some individuals will no doubt be infected with both kinds of viruses. So if a military is to be representive of a broad cross section of society it will be one that would break in to pieces more easily than one that has its own institutional ideology. Yet one that has its own institutional ideology is subject to falling of the control of a narrow band of a countries ideological spectrum and therefore be blind to some of likely threats that the population faces.
Please for give me if I am repeating things that some readers may already know. Maybe what I just wrote is taught in every military college to anyone above the rank of Captain, or First Segeant.
One could say that if it was taught and not made available to the public it was confidential information and there not consistent with democratic principles to say the least. One might even be so bold as to say it was a conspiratorial meeting designed to maintain the rule of capitalists over and at the expense of the normal people.
Michael Anderson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuJtdQOU_Z4&feature=player_embedded#at=1221
22 March 2011, 1:11 amMichael Anderson:
‘scuse—that’s a link to the 2005 BP Texas refinery blast
22 March 2011, 3:11 pmStan:
FULL
7 April 2011, 8:44 pmMichael Anderson:
I’m sure Maliki can be ‘persuaded’ to make the request, Godfather-style.
7 April 2011, 9:35 pmCurt:
I could not really detest where I should place this comment since there is not yet any thread devoted to the subject which is the government shutdown.
8 April 2011, 10:41 amI wonder if anyone would see this the same way that i< do. I have absolutley no evidence what so ever to back up my suspicion but I see the manuvering of both parties on the budget as being pure theater. There would not have been any need to explicitly agree on the dance steps as they seem so perdictable.
The Republicans are engergizing their base by demonizing government workers, except of course those in the military. The Democrats are energizing their base by defending government workers. This issue will help keep voters in the two party system, especially government workers who will now be to terrified to vote for anyone except a democrat for fear of helping to inadvertently electing a republican. Republicans get to show that they are against ""rich" lazy"" people in the public sector not against ""rich "hard working"" people in the private sector.
The only thing that I hope for is that some of the Government Workers decide that when it comes to US democracy if all of the criminal republican voters were removed from the rolls and all of the insane democratic voters were removed from the rolls and all of the mentally challenged independents were removed from the rolls there would not be enough left over to hold an election as the only people left would be a few paleo conservatives, some libertarians, and a few million socialists.
No this is not an intellectual arguement. Yes it is name calling. The thing is when I read what passes for intellectual arguement amongst the population it seems to me so stunted that I can hardly phantom it.
Besides I am not trying to win and hearts and minds by saying this I am only saying that hopefully some government workers will wake up a cross the trench lines that I have been built by the rulers in their heads. I am not trying to persuade government workers of anything. The events of the comming days might help some of them figure it out for themselves.
They might figure out that they should be happy with less money if there is a settleing of accounts with those who are trying to push the country back to the 18th century.
You know I have heard for decades people tell me that Khomeni and then Khameni have been trying to push Iran back in to the 7th or 8th century. Was the 18th century really any better than the 8th?
You be the judge.
I claim dibs on being be the executioner.
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Plum pudding anyone?
Michael Anderson:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/human-resources/
It’s a documentary about Social Control, examining the history, the philosophy and ultimately the pathology of elite power.
Overall, Human Resources is rough around the edges but still overloaded with gems. Set aside some time to digest this – and take notes.
Scott Noble does an admirable job of fitting ten hours of material into two. He gives the space to all the people he interviews… there’s a metric ton of ideas here and he lets almost all of them unfold and breathe at their own pace.
The footage itself is very low-fi and some of the interviews feel like they drag on for too long, or wander in circles. Impressively, those moments are few and far between.
Noble can’t cover everything, but the scope of this movie alone makes it the most ambitious entry in this strange genre so far, more complete than The Century of the Self and less hysterical than the Zeitgeist franchise.
8 April 2011, 1:44 pmCurt:
Michael,
8 April 2011, 6:12 pmWhen I started watching your link it had not been long since I had eaten and I was stuffed. Yet I had to stop the film every 15 minutes and go get something to eat. I guess it was a subconscience desire to get something to calm me down.
That film is not a very flattering portrayal of the human spieces. One could say that it would rob many people of hope that positive change could ever come about in the US becasue the number of people involved in maintaining the system is so large. It seems to prove the saying of some robber baron in the begining of the film that he could pay on half the working class to kill the other half of the working class. I do not have much hope that people in other countries behave in a much more civilized manner than the US either.
As to fear not love being the primary motivator of human behavior, the claim seems logical to me, it seems to apply to me, but one thing that surprises me is that masses are so easily fooled about what it is that they need to fear. Also that there are so many who are charged with protecting the people who are themselves either idiots or they have very little intrest in setting the record straight.
I do not mean by this the debate over nuclear power what I do mean is hyping fear of the Muslim the Gay, the Jew, the Black, and the Hispanic. Of course there would be an urgent necccessity to create a fear of the Communist and even the L I B E R A L because that is who the eliets really fear.
I do not think they would really give a shit if everyone became a Muslim or a homosexual because that will not prevent them from pursuing their psychotic behavior. Muslims societies are just as capatalistic as Christian ones.
I wonder how many law enforcement personnel will see this film? Will any of them have enough sense to know that it makes fools of them? Since they have been so foolish I doubt that they will be able to figure it out.
ttttt ttttt ttttt ttttt ttttt
Stan:
Excellent film!
8 April 2011, 8:33 pmHenry:
Video: Libya, Syria and the Road to World War III
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27845.htm
9 April 2011, 4:45 amMichael Anderson:
More ‘unmanageable’ humor:
Understanding Engineers #5
11 April 2011, 1:08 pmThree engineering students were gathered together discussing who must have designed the human body. One said, “It was a mechanical engineer. Just look at all the joints.” Another said, “No, it was an electrical engineer. The nervous system has many thousands of electrical connections.” The last one said, “No, actually it had to have been a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?”
Michael Anderson:
…many levels, there…
11 April 2011, 1:10 pmCurt:
just a funny liitle story. a man pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud.
13 April 2011, 9:51 amHe claimed to be a retited special forces colonel.
He claimed to be a counter terrorism expert.
For many years he had earned money by speaking at MIC functions.
during that time no one complained about his lack of expertise.
ha…..ha…..ha
Stan:
FULL
*
FULL
18 April 2011, 3:02 pmStan:
Mission Creep
19 April 2011, 4:36 pmMichael Anderson:
More mission creep…and the residents are buying it.
http://www.wnep.com/wnep-brad-leroy-gas-drillingemergency20110420,0,1884646.story
Gas Drilling Emergency in Bradford County
6:23 p.m. EDT, April 20, 2011
Officials said thousands of gallons of fluid leaked over farm land and into a creek from a natural gas well in Bradford County.
Now there is a massive operation underway to contain the spill of drilling fluids.
The rupture near Canton happened late Tuesday night, contaminating nearby land and creeks.
The blowout happened on the Morse family farm in LeRoy Township outside Canton, a farming community.
Chesapeake Energy officials said a piece of equipment on the well failed.
Now a major response is underway to stop the leak of frack fluid and get control of the well.
Water is gushing from the earth at the Chesapeake well pad. It has been all hands on deck to put a stop to the leak of fracking fluid that, according to company officials, spilled thousands and thousands of gallons into nearby land and waterways.
“We’ve been able to limit the flow. We’re still doing additional work to regain full control,” said Brian Grove of Chesapeake Energy. He added there is no telling yet how much of that extremely salty water mixed with chemicals and sand has impacted the nearby Towanda Creek, but no gas has escaped into the air.
“The biggest thing is the footprint on the environment. Well obviously this is a big footprint,” said neighbor Ted Tomlinson. “It’s one of those things that happens. Gotta live with it, I guess. Here to stay.”
Neighbors like him were asked to leave their homes as a precaution. Some did, and some did not. “Our family’s been on this corner a long time and expect to stay and expect a good-faith effort from Chesapeake so that we can live here,” Tomlinson added.
His concern is for his drinking water well just several football fields away from the blownout gas well.
“That’s typically everyone’s concern in the area, is well water,” Tomlinson added. We don’t want all that other stuff. We want to keep on drinking it.”
“It’s just one of those things,” said farm owner Randy Morse. He leased his property to Chesapeake. His beef cattle will no longer be able to drink from the brook that has been contaminated. Morse is broken up over the whole thing, hoping others don’t blame him. “As it looks right now, all the water that ran into that tributary did run into the creek , without adverse affects right now,” Morse said.
Neighbor Ira Haire is one who does not worry over the leak, saying he trusts Chesapeake will make it right. “I will drink my water. I have salt water as it is,” Haire said.
Officials with DEP said the flow of frack fluid has stopped flowing into the nearby creek and its tributary.
Public safety officials in Bradford County said they, along with DEP, will continue to monitor the Towanda Creek which empties into the Susquehanna River. According to officials with Chesapeake Energy, the fluids that spilled all over farm land and into the creek have a very high salt content and contain numerous chemicals used to fracture the rock below.
“We’ve got our best crews out here working on it and we’ll keep at it until we get the situation resolved,” Grove added.
Officials have not said how long they expect to get the well under control.
DEP said they have crews monitoring the waterways and drinking wells and that aquatic life has not been affected yet.
20 April 2011, 5:30 pmMichael Anderson:
http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/714/63/
The Problems With Smart Grids: Dumb and Dangerous
22 March 2011
Culture Change note: As if you weren’t getting enough radiation: now comes really bad news in the form of smart grids. GE — the designer of Fukushima nukes and 23 nukes in the U.S. like Fukushima’s — is the largest manufacturer of Smart Meters in the world. The con job continues. The System is out to get us. – JL
How is it that so many intelligent, inside-the-beltway environmentalists are buying into an eco-health-safety-finance debacle with the potential to increase energy consumption, endanger the environment, harm public health, diminish privacy, make the national utility grid more insecure, cause job losses, and make energy markets more speculative?
Answer: by not doing their homework.
Welcome to the Smart Grid — a government-funded money machine capable of intruding into every aspect of our lives. Smart Grid technologies — initially funded to the tune of $3.4 billion through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and slated to cost $11 billion through 2011 — are enough to make even die-hard liberals demand a claw back of misspent tax dollars.
On the surface, Smart Grids sound ‘green’ — with promises of saving energy, creating new power-line corridors run on wind and solar, way-stations to power-up electric vehicles, energy-efficient upgrades to an aging power infrastructure, and real-time customer knowledge of electricity use.
And there’s the enticing communications factor: a nationwide high-speed broadband information technology barreling down high-tension electric corridors called Broadband-Over-Power-Lines (BPL). What could be more perfect for communicating facts about the planet, funding enviro-candidates, pushing legislation, and organizing Earth Days?
But few who actually study how these new systems function want anything to do with them. Other than those who stand to make enormous profits and the physicists or engineers who dream up such stuff, Smart Grids are giving knowledgeable people the willies.
http://refusesmartmeter.com/
21 April 2011, 12:09 amMichael Anderson:
http://refusesmartmeter.com/Bioeffects_of_Selected_Non-Lethal_Weapons.pdf
21 April 2011, 12:15 amDeAnander:
I wonder how long before “frack” enters the language as a semi-euphemism for f**k, as in “not fracking likely” or “that’s really fracked up, man”…
trying to hang onto my sense of humour in face of yet another tragedy, another bite out of life.
“gotta live with it I guess” — but what if we can’t? it’s pathetic really, the patient peasants enduring yet another outrage from their arrogant rulers.
21 April 2011, 12:48 amMichael Anderson:
@ De:
It already has entered the language—”one big fracking mess” (Google that). It will be used as a sub for the “F” word….and rightly so.
23 April 2011, 4:46 pmRobert Karaffa:
Fracking is gonna be a big deal around my county. Gas folks are sniffin around the neighbors and doin the usual deal. The Dry Creek Valley is first. Maybe. The nicest cuts of hardwood have been “veneered” already with casual indifference…including the piece of my childhood stomping grounds that made me who I am. I hope folks won’t sell out on this as well..A couple grand….or be able to drink your well water…its gonna be the same currency eventually…meanwhile my village wants to outlaw backyard hens…funny to watch these folks play with language..giving conflicting messages about…everything, “Harmless Seismic Testing” “Harmless hydraulic intrusions into shale” “Harmless disruption of beds under the aquifers way to low to be a problem” until it spills out all over the land and creeks and seeps into the aquifer and actually intrudes into that before it hits the surface..to quote Hans Solo “Can’t we just leave this party?” People get mad about the forest destruction..but excuse it cause they think it will improve deer hunting..no..but they can see the trees on the ground. They can’t see the FRACK until it vomits its ferocity into their cornfield and the creek that runs past their house. Worked in PA dint it?
23 April 2011, 8:23 pmaskod:
I think the new Battlestar Galactica was largely responsible for entering frack and fracking in the vocabulary. Wheter intended as a pun upon the oil related fracking, a way to escape censors, or both, I do not know.
Also the first big production to show the iraq occupation from the side of the occupied, though in the costume of robot occupation of humans.
24 April 2011, 6:57 amMichael Anderson:
The next three months will be interesting…
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/china-proposes-cut-two-thirds-its-3-trillion-usd-holdings
China Proposes To Cut Two Thirds Of Its $3 Trillion In USD Holdings
All those who were hoping global stock markets would surge tomorrow based on a ridiculous rumor that China would revalue the CNY by 10% will have to wait. Instead, China has decided to serve the world another surprise. Following last week’s announcement by PBoC Governor Zhou (Where’s Waldo) Xiaochuan that the country’s excessive stockpile of USD reserves has to be urgently diversified, today we get a sense of just how big the upcoming Chinese defection from the “buy US debt” Nash equilibrium will be. Not surprisingly, China appears to be getting ready to cut its USD reserves by roughly the amount of dollars that was recently printed by the Fed, or $2 trilion or so. And to think that this comes just as news that the Japanese pension fund will soon be dumping who knows what. So, once again, how about that “end of QE” again?
26 April 2011, 12:11 pmStan:
Ominous, but I wonder… Not at all sure China can replace that many dollars with… what? Euros? Yen? Rubles? That’s a lot of dollars. And given that the US is the key Chinese export market, I wonder what they’d gain by risking a sell-off of the dollar that would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs at US box stores.
26 April 2011, 2:52 pmCurt:
Stan,
26 April 2011, 4:42 pmIf the Chinese start to sell what ever it is that they make to other Chinese why do they need dollars? I have always wondered how the world seems to be so stupid.
The only answer that I could come up with that made sense to me was that US real estate supported the value of the dollar. But I would think that if the directors of a Central Bank decide that they would never want as much real estate as their dollars could buy they would no longer need as many. Chinese Central Bank directors might have figured out that with the fall of US real estate prices they can now buy twice as much as they could have 2 years ago, whcih might be twice as much as they ever thought that they would want.
Michael Anderson:
Plus that would take the pressure off the Chinese on oil prices, if they weren’t denominated in dollars—I think one of the reasons for high oil prices (besides Peak) is to slow China down. They certainly need oil, and Russia, who is doing OK now with oil being high again, would certainly be a willing customer. They have said they would like to see a ‘basket’ of reserve currencies (diversity is good in money, too, as well as nature), instead of one—our beautiful Monopoly money.
26 April 2011, 5:16 pmMichael Anderson:
Here’s a new word—-
“Fraccidents.”
http://www.frackalert.org/index.asp?page=64&ref=ogshare
28 April 2011, 1:44 amMichael Anderson:
Liquefaction in Japan…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GviJkVEMfwQ&feature=related
28 April 2011, 1:47 amMichael Anderson:
I see liquefaction happening on the Oregon Coast in the event of an earthquake/tsunami here—soft soils and sand everywhere.
28 April 2011, 1:52 amaskod:
Curt,
28 April 2011, 2:34 amwhat the chinese has needed and to some extent still need is expertise in high-tech, high-quality production. By buying dollars they depress the value of their own currency which gives good sales for the international corporations that move their production there. The dollars collected at teh bank of China is a side-effect of keeping China’s cionsumption low for the benefit of international corporations. If China is selling dollars, they probably see the tech-transfer as complete and has no more need to sponsor international corporations, but can instead produce for the chinese market.
Curt:
askod,
28 April 2011, 2:46 amvery interesting
Stan:
FULL
28 April 2011, 5:40 pmMichael Anderson:
“The best minds in the world are working on this”…
http://www.allgov.com/Unusual_News/ViewNews/Nixon_Use_of_Nuclear_Bombs_Comes_Back_to_Haunt_Natural_Gas_Industry_110427
Nixon Use of Nuclear Bombs Comes Back to Haunt Natural Gas Industry
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Nixon Use of Nuclear Bombs Comes Back to Haunt Natural Gas Industry
Calling it “nuclear stimulation technology,” the Nixon administration exploded nearly half a dozen atomic weapons in the American West in the hopes of solving what was then feared a coming natural-gas shortage.
Until now little has been written about this forgotten effort in energy development, which called for detonating thousands of warheads under the earth’s surface to break up rock formations containing gas and oil deposits.
A total of five bombs were set off in Colorado and New Mexico. However, federal officials soon realized that there was a major problem with the plan…nobody wanted to buy natural gas that might be tainted with radioactive gas.
The government gave up on the ambitious idea in the 1970s. Exploding bombs as an energy program appeared to have ended up being nothing more than a bizarre episode in U.S. history…but now it may be coming back to haunt some people in Colorado.
A new method of accessing natural gas is surging. Hydraulic fracturing, better known as “fracking,” entails injecting millions of gallons of chemicals, sand or fluids into a well to crack open the rocks and allow easier access to the natural gas. Fracking has been accused of dangerously polluting water supplies. Its extension, disposing of wastewater from the natural gas drilling into injection wells, is suspected of causing earthquakes in Arkansas.
Recently, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission issued permits for natural gas drilling within three miles of two of the “nuclear stimulation technology” detonation sites. Commission officials insist that the all is safe and there is no cause for alarm. However, nearby property owners are distrustful of the state government.
In December 2008, two Garfield County couples, Cary and Ruth Weldon and Wesley and Marcia Kent, who live near the site of a 1969 nuclear blast, sued the commission to stop Encana Corporation from drilling within three miles of the detonation. The case is still bouncing around the Colorado court system.
29 April 2011, 2:08 pm-David Wallechinsky
Stan:
FULL
15 May 2011, 5:48 amMichael Anderson:
I think the Chinese are the endgame here, again. The Chinese-built and financed port of Gwadar is a liability for the U.S., being situated on the Red Sea, close to the oil (it’s the oil, again and again). The Chinese have accelerated development of the port since 2001, when the US/Euro Empire invaded Afghanistan. We sure don’t want the Chinese in the Middle East Oil Patch.
Excuse me…did I say “oil” enough? (LOL)
The termination of the OBL legend was/is a convenient excuse to ratchet up the pressure on Pakistan—and China. He’s been gone a while, according to Benazir Bhutto, who was dead a month after she said as much.
Confucius versus the mongrel dog…
PS…the link does not work—”Item not found”. Removed?
16 May 2011, 2:26 pmMichael Anderson:
I guess global climate change COULD have an upside—-if you look at it inside out and upside-down (sic):
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-13/worst-drought-in-more-than-a-century-threatens-texas-oil-natural-gas-boom.html
Worst Drought in More Than a Century Strikes Texas Oil Boom
By Joe Carroll – Jun 13, 2011 1:49 PM PT
Drought Threatens Texas Oil Boom
The water crisis in Texas, the biggest oil- and gas- producing state in the U.S., highlights a continuing debate in North America and Europe over the impact on water supplies of an oil and gas production technique called hydraulic fracturing. Photographer: Eddie Seal/Bloomberg
The worst Texas drought since record-keeping began 116 years ago may crimp an oil and natural- gas drilling boom as government officials ration water supplies crucial to energy exploration.
In the hardest-hit areas, water-management districts are warning residents and businesses to curtail usage from rivers, lakes and aquifers. The shortage is forcing oil companies to go farther afield to buy water from farmers, irrigation districts and municipalities, said Erasmo Yarrito Jr., the state’s overseer of water supplies from the Rio Grande River.
Concern over water usage is especially acute in southern Texas’s Eagle Ford Shale area because drilling there is more water-intensive than other regions, said Robert Mace, a deputy executive administrator of the Texas Water Development Board.
“It’s pretty dry down here and a lot of oil companies are looking for water,” Mace said.
17 June 2011, 12:32 pmDeAnander:
In Fort McMurray, tar sands operations are suspended due to unseasonable intense rainfall.
17 June 2011, 2:05 pmMichael Anderson:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110620/ap_on_re_us/us_aging_nukes_part1
US nuke regulators weaken safety rules
LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. – Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation’s aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.
Time after time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided that original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril, according to records and interviews.
The result? Rising fears that these accommodations by the NRC are significantly undermining safety — and inching the reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public and jeopardize the future of nuclear power in the United States.
Examples abound. When valves leaked, more leakage was allowed — up to 20 times the original limit. When rampant cracking caused radioactive leaks from steam generator tubing, an easier test of the tubes was devised, so plants could meet standards.
Failed cables. Busted seals. Broken nozzles, clogged screens, cracked concrete, dented containers, corroded metals and rusty underground pipes — all of these and thousands of other problems linked to aging were uncovered in the AP’s yearlong investigation. And all of them could escalate dangers in the event of an accident.
Yet despite the many problems linked to aging, not a single official body in government or industry has studied the overall frequency and potential impact on safety of such breakdowns in recent years, even as the NRC has extended the licenses of dozens of reactors.
20 June 2011, 1:22 pmStan:
Facebook. Good tag.
20 June 2011, 2:29 pmMichael Anderson:
I love (sic) the typically NYTimes-ey schizophrenic tone of this article—-Europeans bad, Americans good; because we plan our cities around cars & they don’t. Agitprop for the proles here. Once again—America—-too smart by half. Great title for a reality show, eh?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/science/earth/27traffic.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
ZURICH — While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.
Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of “environmental zones” where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter.
Likeminded cities welcome new shopping malls and apartment buildings but severely restrict the allowable number of parking spaces. On-street parking is vanishing. In recent years, even former car capitals like Munich have evolved into “walkers’ paradises,” said Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University who specializes in sustainable transportation.
“In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving,” said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. “Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.”
29 June 2011, 8:37 amMichael Anderson:
And the beat goes on….
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=13984360
Exxon Oil Spill in Mont. River Prompts Evacuations
An ExxonMobil pipeline that runs under the Yellowstone River near Billings in south-central Montana ruptured and dumped an unknown amount of oil into the waterway, prompting temporary evacuations along the river Saturday morning.
Company spokeswoman Pam Malek, who was at the scene, said the pipe leaked for about a half-hour, though it’s not clear how much oil leaked.
The cause of the rupture wasn’t known.
3 July 2011, 12:03 amStan:
David Harvey interviewed on the Chinese real estate bubble.
6 July 2011, 5:17 pmMichael Anderson:
When Harvey explains things, it seems so perfectly transparent that you wonder “how did I miss this?”
6 July 2011, 8:52 pmMichael Anderson:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=7156
No one is in control…
11 August 2011, 10:48 amStan:
News highlights today: The Eurozone is dragging the world deeper into the neoliberal crisis. Pakistan just closed off 1/3 of NATO/US supplies to Afghanistan because NATO/US killed 28 Pakistani soldiers last night. Bombings in Baghdad. Crackdown in Egypt. So it goes.
26 November 2011, 10:58 amStan:
Hat tip to Micheal.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/27/pakistan-orders-us-leave-shamsi-airbase
28 November 2011, 8:00 amMichael Anderson:
A “think piece” from the belly of the beast. The beast is worried…that it can’t make the war it wants.
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20111129-pakistan-russia-and-threat-afghan-war?utm_source=freelist-f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20111130&utm_term=gweekly&utm_content=readmore&elq=7cffe27852b2445e8c8c454741a799ff
Pakistan, Russia and the Threat to the Afghan War
30 November 2011, 10:22 amStan:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/07/memogate-pakistans-terrible-mess?newsfeed=true
7 December 2011, 3:15 pmMichael Anderson:
There was a news item this morning citing the Prez’s “Chest Pains”, and pointing towards a “Possible Heart Attack?” O-O-O-O-KAY!
8 December 2011, 2:55 amCertainly a less messy way for us to end Zardari’s rule than an all-out war.
Michael Anderson:
Something old/new buried in the latest batch of Senate legislation, the NDAA. “Management” in late period Capitalist/Empire terms:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=7684
Military to Gain Power of Indefinite Detention in Senate Bill
Ray McGovern?: Amendment to NDAA gives military the right to operate on American soil, detain people without trial for an indefinite period of time including US citizens
Will growing your own food be a terrorist act, now?
8 December 2011, 12:04 pmCurt:
I just read something that I found quite interesting. Yahoo links a Forbes magazine report that claims that the Chinese real estate market may soon collapse. If so will US taxpayers have to bail out US banks again that invested to much in China? Will we have to bail out Chinese Banks?
The thing that really caught my attention is that construction accounts for 70% of GDP in China according to the report. OK some of that 70% or much of that 70% is for construction of infrastructure. But the article reports that there is a growing surplus of inventory.
9 December 2011, 12:40 pmIs Marx still taught in China? Were the useful translations burned? Is Mao’s widow saying I told you so from her grave?
Will Batman return?
Stan:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/20111130121556567265.html
12 December 2011, 11:09 amMichael Anderson:
Hobson’s choice—-a spook or an oligarch.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203430404577094252356699954.html
12 December 2011, 7:27 pmMichael Anderson:
The effects of Roundup, for science geeks here, from Dr. Ron Huber, who actually works in the belly of the beast. It’s not that hard to understand for us non-science people, too.
I suspect Dr. Huber will be victim of character assassination soon.
http://farmandranchfreedom.org/sff/Huber-May2011-Acres.pdf
http://www.realliberalchristianchurch.org/2011/12/15/must-watch-dr-mercola-interviews-dr-huber-about-gmos-especially-monsanto-parts-1-2.html
17 December 2011, 1:16 pmDeAnander:
Thanks Mike, I’m fb-ing that interview asap. I read about the Fusarium connection, oh, must be 2 or 3 years ago now. Now the rest of the ugly truth is coming out. I am amazed that Monsanto remains in business. Their cold, calculating criminality staggers the imagination. Makes one realise that the industrial efficiency of the Nazi atrocities was not an aberration (as so often described), but more like a *symptom* of something more systematic, the industrialisation of evil… “Cold evil” as someone called it — Andrew Kimbrell that was. I have no word for the enormity of the crime of killing the soil, vandalising whole germlines of essential crops. “Atrocity” is a good powerful word, but it’s been worn down a bit by over-use in the last century or so. Biocidal criminality undermines the very basis of our survival, frays the fabric of life itself: omnicide, a new and barely imaginable crime.
18 December 2011, 3:33 pmMichael Anderson:
….thank you, De. It underlies the concept of ill-thought out, short-term “solutions” that create more and worse problems. I was quite amazed, given Huber’s background in the military-industrial-academic complex, at his honest and candid acknowledgement of the connectedness of the bioshpere, and the concept of balance.
This affects us ALL, rich and poor. “Such is the folly of princes…”
19 December 2011, 10:29 am