: “As the official timescale keepers deliberate the introduction of the Anthropocene and a Holocene-Anthropocene boundary (Anthropocene Working Group of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy; Zalasiewicz, J., M. et al., 2010; http://goo.gl/wIm6X0 ), they should consider the alternative: Remove the Holocene Epoch from the geologic timescale. Whereas any timescale change is a contentious issue, let alone changes to an existing epoch, modern human society’s interactions with its planet and…
So I have been listening to some of these shows lately and find them thought provoking, balanced, fair and well outside the mainstream pap shoveled at us. Sort of like Coast-to-Coast radio but without the delusionas and voices coming out of the toasters and such. Go here and check it out: http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/nonsubscriber.php I will add a permalink to the blogroll. GE.
… Despite the Obama administration touting a budget deficit of “only” $680 billion in 2013, the GAO’s more accurate accounting shows a total government cost of $3.8 trillion on total revenue of $2.8 trillion.
In other words– the administration wasn’t exactly honest with the American people– the deficit was more like $1 trillion, not $680 billion.
But it gets worse.
The GAO added up ALL the US government’s assets in 2013. Aircraft carriers. The highway system. Land. Cash and financial assets. The total is $2.97 trillion. The liabilities, on the other hand, total $19.88 trillion. This includes the official public debt, plus all sorts of IOUs and loan guarantees.
This means the net EQUITY of the US government is -$16.9 trillion [poster note: yes negative folks. GE.]
Moreover, the US government’s cash position is a mere $206 billion… roughly 1.1% of its public debt. This isn’t enough to cover net interest payments for the next year.
Unlike a savvy investor who borrows cheap money to purchase productive assets, the US government borrows money to pay interest.
via Sovereign Man and H/T to ZeroHedge where we saw it first
Everyone knows about the military-industrial complex, which, in his farewell address, President Eisenhower warned had the potential to “endanger our liberties or democratic process” but have you heard of the “Deep State?”
Mike Lofgren, a former GOP congressional staff member with the powerful House and Senate Budget Committees, joins Bill to talk about what he calls the Deep State, a hybrid of corporate America and the national security state, which is “out of control” and “unconstrained.” In it, Lofgren says, elected and unelected figures collude to protect and serve powerful vested interests. “It is … the red thread that runs through the history of the last three decades. It is how we had deregulation, financialization of the economy, the Wall Street bust, the erosion or our civil liberties and perpetual war,” Lofgren tells Bill.
Lofgren says the Deep State’s heart lies in Washington, DC, but its tentacles reach out to Wall Street, which Lofgren describes as “the ultimate backstop to the whole operation,” Silicon Valley and over 400,000 contractors, private citizens who have top-secret security clearances. Like any other bureaucracy, it’s groupthink that drives the Deep State.
In conjunction with this week’s show, Mike Lofgren has written an exclusive essay, “Anatomy of the Deep State.”
Producer: Gina Kim. Segment Producer: Lena Shemel. Editor: Rob Kuhns. Intro Editor: Sikay Tang.
Nice hype by Matt Drudge, whose three linked quotes are all from the BBC’s one brief paragraph of text, but the accompanying video (full transcription below) is more substantial, with scientists talking about the likelihood of an extended Maunder Minimum type period low solar activity and the cold temperatures that coincided with the Maunder Minimum during the 1600’s.
Professor Richard Harrison from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is clear about the correlation [at 1:57]:
The Maunder Minimum of course was a period of almost no sunspots at all for decades and we saw a really dramatic period where there were very cold winters in the northern hemisphere. It was a period where you had a kind of mini ice-age. You had a period where the Thames froze in winters and so on. It was an interesting time.
BBC science correspondent Rebecca Morelle doesn’t shy away…
GE Comment: It is high time that this asinine program be demolished. Like AGW and the carbon scare, the greens and sheeple were duped by corporate ag into believing that pouring topsoil, RoundUp and tractor fuels into the gas tanks on their Honda Accords would ‘save’ the planet. Facts are, indeed, stubborn things.
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Source: politicalclimate
Ethanol producers are panicking amid speculation that the ethanol mandate could be drastically reduced or scrapped entirely this year as the biofuel loses its allure and bipartisan allies and former friends team up against it.
December saw California Democrat Dianne Feinstein—a renewable fuel champion–coordinate efforts with Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn to come up with a Senate bill to get rid of ethanol from the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), citing fears that corn-based fuel production mandates will harm livestock producers.
In November, Washington proposed cutting the biofuels mandate for 2014 by 16% to 15.21 billion gallons. This would be the first cut in biofuels requirements, which were ideally set to grow each year with incremental increases in renewable fuel targets laid out in a 2007 law.
For renewable fuel targets, this represents a major setback because not only is 15.21 billion gallons for 2014 much less than the originally intended 18.15 billion gallons, it is also less than this year’s mandate of 16.55 billion gallons.
Two years ago the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the E15 blend, which contains 15% ethanol and 85% gasoline, for vehicles manufactured in 2001 or later. There has been little progress towards widespread use of E15 though, and today’s blend is commonly E10. Continue reading →
“… The US consumes roughly 19 million barrels a day. The Bakken and Eagle Ford shale formations produce about a million barrels a day combined now, and guaranteed to get a whole lot lower within the next five years. Today’s near-peak production is based on furious drilling and fracking of extremely expensive wells — known as “the Red Queen syndrome” because they are running as fast as they can to keep production up. Meanwhile, the depletion curve on shale oil is a reverse ‘hockey stick’ …
Preparation for disaster, whether natural or man-made, should be as vital as any ideal found in the various practices of religion and spiritualism. Preparedness should be treated with reverence, discipline and duty. The drive for preparation should be seated in the very heart of humanity. As individuals and as a society, we should hold preparedness dear, for it is an expression of the desire for survival and the key to maintaining our inherent freedoms. Without self-sufficiency, we set ourselves up for endless failure and enslavement. Continue reading →
Interview by James Stafford of Oil price.com. We couldn’t pin down global warming, exactly, so now it’s re-labelled as climate change, which is an incredibly vague loaded term that no-one fully understands. The difficulty of pinning down this “wicked problem” has produced more uncertainty than ever and rendered the subject the purview of politics that has polarized the public and turned the issue into something reminiscent of the dark ages and conjuring up of weather-focused demons.
Amid these dark ages, the voice of former TV meteorologist and meteorological instrumentation specialist Anthony Watts has become unusually controversial. The knee-jerk reaction of a polarized public has been to place him in one of two climate change camps, and to categorize him as a “denier”. But Watts insists his latent climate change scepticism is pragmatic and based on his experience as a meteorologist and a long process of connecting the scientific dots. His message, he says, is misunderstood, and he best describes himself as “lukewarm” on the issue. He believes that climate change is happening, but that there’s no need for panic. Continue reading →
As is clear by this chart, inflation was virtually unheard of until the Creature from Jekyll Island the Federal Reserve took over. However, more importantly, things didn’t really start to get bad until the 1970?s right after Nixon took the nation off the gold standard in 1971. Since that time, America has seen a period of non-existent real wage growth and a huge gap grow between the rich and the poor ever since. Nothing like livin’ the debt slave dream!
…Our nation has entered into the last stages of fascism. Both parties have supported this path since Hoover and FDR of the 1930s, both parties are guilty. The only way to avoid a repeat of Germany 1933-45 is to go all out to defeat fascism here in America by any means necessary.
That means renouncing the programs that transfer power to the federal government such as social security, Medicare, education, transportation, and banking regulations, everything that allows centralized planning needs to be opposed. This means conservatives have to stop giving capitalism lip service and embrace the free enterprise system.
We need to understand government produces nothing; they can only create poverty, death, and destruction…. Continue reading →
Note: This article was written by Daisy Luther and originally published at The Organic Prepper.
Last week I wrote an article in response to the media’s vilification of preppers in the aftermath of the horrible tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. The article was quoted in an article on Yahoo.com, to my great astonishment, and that is when I saw how little most people understand about prepping. You can see in most of the 4492 comments the article received that many folks just don’t “get it”.
My inbox was filled with a barrage of hate mail and a number of people felt compelled to leave angry and rather ignorant comments on my website. I got messages from people that called me “batshit crazy”, messages from gun control advocates, messages from people who directly blamed me and all other preppers for the massacre, and even one particularly hate-filled email from a person who said “I hope that your kids are killed at the next school shooting.”All of this leads me to reconfirm my belief that people sincerely do not understand why we do what we do, and that ignorance leads to fear.
People fear what they don’t understand and hate what they can’t conquer. — Andrew Smith…
The Department of Homeland Security’s production of domestic intelligence has increased substantially over the last few years according to a brochure of “intelligence products” published last month by Cryptome. The 2012 DHS Intelligence Enterprise Product Line Brochure is “a standardized catalogue of intelligence reports and products that represent the full breadth” of the agency’s analytical capabilities. It provides descriptions of each type of product created by the DHS Intelligence Enterprise as well as the classification level and instructions on how DHS “customers” can obtain the products. Continue reading →
A business enterprise is solvent when its operations are supported by its after-tax cash flow. Should cash flow be temporarily insufficient, borrowing against accounts receivable is the classic remedy. With serial borrowing however, operations-plus-debt-service eventually becomes unsupportable by cash flow, real or anticipated. Creditors withdraw when they see this, it’s insolvency or near enough. The business closes, its assets are liquidated and the proceeds distributed among its creditors. This is what’s happening to the US, aside from the liquidation part. Debt repudiation by inflation—watering down the currency—holds such comeuppance at bay, at least for a while. Continue reading →
“…Just like we are presented with the illusion of choice every four years, we’re also given various movements that appear to be supporting real change but in reality are supporting the status quo. Therefore, real successionism [sic] starts with the individual… ” via Silver For The People
GE Note: I have it from a very, very close & reliable source that this accident was mentioned on local Ocean County / Lacey Township NJ OEM and police dispatch radio frequencies, but that it was kept very quiet… Ocean County OEM, Sheriff and local municipalities were deliberately NOT putting it over the radios, but were instead instructing each other to call on cells phones and land lines.
credit: Chicago Tribune
… On October 29, 2012, Oyster Creek declared a Notice of Unusual Event followed by an Alert due to high water levels in the intake structure. Elevated intake structure water levels are of concern as excessive levels can flood certain plant components and render normal cooling systems inoperable. No safety systems were adversely affected by the high intake level. The site also experienced a loss of offsite power. Both emergency diesel generators started as designed and supplied power to the emergency electrical busses. Shutdown cooling and spent fuel pool cooling were temporarily lost but subsequently restored, after the busses were reenergized. At 9:59 a.m. EDT on October 30, the licensee restored one line of off-site power via a start-up transformer. Oyster Creek terminated the Alert at 3:52 a.m. EDT on October 31 when water level dropped below 4.5 ft and off-site power was fully restored…via NRC
This past Wednesday, nobody reported that a squadron of 8 Israeli F-15 jets dropped 4 two-ton bombs on the giant Yarmouk missile factory on the outskirts of Sudan’s capital Khartoum. Which is just as Israel wanted it. Because what otherwise would be a provocative incursion tantamount to war (if only Sudan wasn’t a complete basket case of a country), was really nothing short of a dry-run for an Israeli attack on Iran. At least according to the Sunday Times… via ZeroHedge.
Project censored: The expanding police state tops the annual list of stories under-reported by the mainstream media, By Yael Chanoff – Thursday, October 11,2012
People who get their information exclusively from mainstream media sources may be surprised at the lack of enthusiasm on the left for President Barack Obama in this crucial election. But that’s probably because they weren’t exposed to the full online furor sparked by Obama’s continuation of his predecessor’s overreaching approach to national security, such as signing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the indefinite detention of those accused of supporting terrorism, even U.S. citizens.
We’ll never know how this year’s election would be different if the corporate media adequately covered the NDAA’s indefinite detention clause and many other recent attacks on civil liberties. What we can do is spread the word and support independent media sources that do cover these stories. That’s where Project Censored comes in. Continue reading →
Ann Banhardt on The Hagmann & Hagmann Report, Sept 24, 2012.
Wobbly audio quality in parts of first half, but worth the perseverance.
I love Ann, I do, but she tends to the dramatic in her presentation. The facts she lays out are, however, stark and I fear on the money. Go here for Ann’s site and her youtube channel
…Forget the UN, the Post-American order isn’t a blue flag, it’s a black flag with Mohammed on it. There are far more people in the world who believe in a world order based on the violent ravings of a 7th Century madman than the number of people who believe in a world order based on 19th Century European wishful thinking. And it helps that the supporters of 7th Century violence over 19th Century internationalism are far more willing to use murderous violence to get their way…via Sultan Knish
… U.S. oil output surged to the highest level in 13 years in July, according to weekly Energy Department data. The U.S. met 83 percent of its energy demand from domestic sources in the first five months of this year and is heading for the highest annual level since 1991, department figures compiled by Bloomberg show. Continue reading →
“Governments everywhere are becoming more distressed and desperate as economic realities dominate the political doublespeak. The world is at a dangerous point. Much of what we thought we knew and assumed regarding governmental behavior and economics is beginning to be reassessed. Governments of the world are out of money and out of ideas. The ponzi scam that has been perpetrated for over fifty years is collapsing under its own weight. There are not enough suckers and capital left to sustain the fraud. Let me explain further….” Continue reading →
With Senate Majority Leader Reid’s (D-NV) decision on Tuesday to not pass a budget for the third straight fiscal year, the Washington game of fiscal chicken–this time over $19 billion–is in full swing once again. To provide perspective, this is less than one-half of one-percent of the 2012 budget and less than 1.5% of this year’s expected deficit. It’s also about one-eighth of one percent of our national debt.
While politicians bicker, Rome burns and the budget grows. While some pundits blame Obama, and others blame Bush, and still others blame everyone in the Beltway, the fact is neither president or party has instituted the wisest fiscal policy. Still, the increase in spending under both has not been driven principally by new spending initiatives. It has instead been driven by the increasing number of retirees and resulting growth of social spending and especially Social Security and Medicare. Continue reading →
An independent global think tank, LEAP/E2020, recently reported the opinion that “this second half of 2012 will really mark a major inflection point of the global systemic crisis;” “The shock of the autumn 2008 will seem like a small summer storm compared to what will affect the planet in several months.”
In fact LEAP/E2020 has never seen the chronological convergence of such a series of explosive and so fundamental factors (economy, finances, geopolitical…) since the start of its work on the global systemic crisis. Logically, in our modest attempt to regularly publish a “crisis weather forecast”, we must therefore give our readers a “Red Alert” because the upcoming events which are readying themselves to shake the world system next September/ October belong to this category. Continue reading →
Iranian lawmakers have drafted a bill that would close the Strait of Hormuz for oil tankers heading to countries supporting current economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
“There is a bill prepared in the National Security and Foreign Policy committee of Parliament that stresses the blocking of oil tanker traffic carrying oil to countries that have sanctioned Iran,” Iranian MP Ibrahim Agha-Mohammadi told reporters. “This bill has been developed as an answer to the European Union’s oil sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran. ” via RT
Starting with some piecing insights into the state of the economy, “peak oil”, energy costs, social trends and money, Mr.Hagens concludes with some thought provoking observational predictions for where we are headed. Worth the 49 minutes. GE.
Those hoping for a quick and painless resolution to the Iranian question may have just seen their hopes dashed, following the breaking news from Iranian Press TV, according to which not only is Iran not seeking to appease its Western counterparts, but is, in fact escalating. From Press TV: “Tehran has cut oil supply to Spain after stopping crude export to Greece as part of its countersanctions, unnamed sources confirmed on Tuesday. Tehran also mulls cutting oil supply to Germany and Italy.”Continue reading →
Most Americans take for granted the intricate systems that make it possible for us to engage in seemingly mundane day to day tasks like filling up our gas tanks, loading up our shopping carts at the local grocery store, obtaining necessary medications, and even pouring ourselves a clean glass of water. When we wake up each morning we just expect that all of these things will work today the same way they worked yesterday. Very few have considered the complexity involved in the underlying infrastructure that keeps goods, services and commerce in America flowing. Fewer still have ever spent the time to contemplate the fragility of these systems or the consequences on food, water, health care, the financial system, and the economy if they are interrupted. Continue reading →
…So why aren’t Democrats making the case that the spike in prices is a good thing? Isn’t this basically our energy policy these days? How we “win the future”? If high energy prices were to damage President Barack Obama’s re-election prospects, it would be ironic, considering the left has been telling us to set aside our “dependency”—or, as our most recent Republican president put it, “addiction”—for a long time…
This video is a must watch, MUST. Long, but worth it. Chris hedges is a terrifying voice of reason with a solid grasp on history, policy and culture. We must move past the illusion of Dems v Reps, Liberal progressives v conservative constitutionalists, or we are simply f’d.
According to the report, written by the paper’s senior opinion writer David Ignatius, Panetta is concerned that Israel will launch an attack before Iran enters the so-called “immunity zone” when its nuclear facilities will be heavily fortified and a military strike will no longer succeed.
Ignatius does not quote Panetta in the article but he is currently traveling with the secretary of defense in Brussels.According to the article, Israel might decide to strike before Iran completes the fortification since afterward only America will be capable of stopping Iran militarily….via JPost
“…The future can evolve in three ways,” he said. “Iran and the international community could agree to a negotiated settlement; Israel and the United States could acquiesce to a nuclear-armed Iran; or Israel or the United States could attack. Nobody wants to go in the direction of a military strike,” he added, “but unfortunately this is the most likely scenario. The more interesting question is not whether it happens but how. The United States should treat this option more seriously and begin gathering international support and building the case for the use of force under international law...”
After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012. Perhaps in the small and ever-diminishing window that is left, the United States will choose to intervene after all, but here, from the Israeli perspective, there is not much hope for that. Instead there is that peculiar Israeli mixture of fear — rooted in the sense that Israel is dependent on the tacit support of other nations to survive — and tenacity, the fierce conviction, right or wrong, that only the Israelis can ultimately defend themselves.
“… In one sense this latest war is, if not right, at least understandable. A fight is clearly brewing and the US wants to both protect an ally and keep the oil flowing. But in another sense it’s absurd. Multiple simultaneous wars are for solvent superpowers with sound currencies and flexible finances, and the US no longer qualifies. Our military is overextended and exhausted and this year Washington will borrow its defense budget from China, add another trillion to the official national debt and maybe three trillion to unfunded liabilities and other off-balance-sheet but very real obligations…” via DollarCollapse.com.
The chances of military action between Iran and the United States are “very high” George Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley warned in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV.“We could get into a situation of confrontation fairly easily,” due to the instability of the Tehran regime, he said…. via Newsmax
“… The US, under George W Bush, decided to privatise the invasion of Iraq by employing private “contractors” like the Blackwater company, now renamed Xe Services. In 2003 Blackwater won a $27m no-bid contract for guarding Paul Bremer, then head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. For protecting officials in conflict zones since 2004, the company has received more than $320m. And this year the Obama government contracted to pay Xe Services a quarter of a billion dollars for security work in Afghanistan. This is just one of many companies making its profits out of warfare.
In 2000 the Project for the New American Century published a report, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, whose declared aim was to up the spending on defence from 3% to 3.5% or 3.8% of American gross domestic product. In fact it is now running at 4.7% of GDP…”
LIE 1: “There were Human rights abuses in Libya and Gaddafi slaughtered his own people”
The primary justification for intervention in Libya by NATO was because “there were severe human rights abuses” under Gaddafi’s rule. These claims were in reality, far fetched and laughable, because Libya probably had far better human rights than any other country in Africa. What YOU were told by those Mainstream Media fanatics including all those so called “human rights” groups like Amnesty International (which is no doubt another front controlled by the Elite), were all either fabricated lies or deliberately exaggerated for the justified NATO intervention.
This damning piece of evidence (dated 4th January 2011) from the UN Human Rights website which clearly shows undeniable proof that there was absolutely NO EVIDENCE of serious Human Right’s abuses as accused by NATO and UN presently. Libya Human Rights Report by UN – 4th January 2011…