The nearest thing you'll find to a Time Machine is Shorpy.com - a photo blog that - I warn you - will suck you in. The images range from the earliest Daguerrotypes to the 1970s. The comments that follow the images are often very insightful. Some posters even look up census data to try to find out what happened to the subjects! These pictures also made me realise that Hollywood hasn't done a very good job of portraying the 1920s in particular.
On the same theme, photos of old soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary war!
In the other Georgia, another bank fail. Friday is becoming known as "FDIC Friday". If you hear your bank's in trouble, don't leave it until the weekend to get your cash, is my advice.
Wa-a??? Kim Jung-Il died in 2003.This would be tinfoil-hat territory, but for the credible person making the claim. I report, YOU decide!
If true, the implications are potentially vast. Among them: former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s summit partner during one or both of his landmark visits to Pyongyang in 2002 and 2004 was not Kim himself but a dummy—the stand-in Shigemura claims has been fooling the world for at least five years.
Just when you think the Brits have plumbed the depths of awful politicos, they reach down and scrape another human abortion from the bottom of the political barrel. Up this time from the fetid depths, hanging from a stick like the afterbirth of a cow, dangles David Miliband - the man who would be the next Prime Minister (God save England). This preening martinet struts onto the Ukraine stage, and proceeds to - wait for it - threaten Russia!
Well David, seeing as how North Sea oil production is falling off a cliff, and the UK gets ever increasing amounts of its energy from Russia, I'd think twice before puffing up your chest and pretending to be Winston Churchill. If I were you, I'd pray for a mild winter - and learn how to say "I'm sorry" in Russian - in case PLAN-A fails...
NOTE: "David Miliband" makes nice anagrams. I like: BAD INVALID DIM
At the beginning of the year, 90 banks were on the FDIC watch list. There are now 117, FDIC chairwoman Sheila C. Bair announced at a news conference this afternoon. That is the highest number in five years, but some analysts expect the list to grow even more in coming months.
"I think there's going to be a steady drip, drip, drip of bad news," said Sean Ryan, a banking analyst with Sterne Agee. "We've only seen the very tip of the iceberg in terms of bank failures."
Even though only nine banks have failed so far this year, Ryan expects that to quickly climb with more than 100 failures before the end of 2009.
"I fully expect the FDIC insurance fund to be depleted," Ryan added. "The FDIC is going to be one of what is going to be an increasing string of government bailouts."
Thanks Uncle Duke for the following clip (ye filthy bastard!):
Yesterday I posted about the mysterious black helicopters flying over Portland. We've got a discussion thread going about it at the latoc forum. (I'm a mod there - you'll see me posting as "dermot"). This is legit, and has been verified by mulitiple sources. FYI - Bush Snr. hates this city, and has described it as "Little Beirut". It's one of the most left-wing cities in North America...which lead me to describe these reckless fly-overs as "Operation Hippie Mindfuck".
NOTE: I think this is just the usual 24/7 US Govt mindfuck crapulence - however, one of the new posters found something quite sinister. A Harvard Stanford study on the effects of a 10 kiloton terrorist bomb on an American city. The sinister thing is that up to page 8 the pdf shows the effects on Washington DC, but on page 9, the map strangely becomes Portland, Oregon (and IS NOT NAMED AS SUCH). Here it is, as it appears:
I've marked my approximate location with the X...two blocks North of Alberta, about 5 blocks West of 33rd. What to make of this? Like I said, most likely it's a mind-fuck. In the event of this lovely city disappearing in a flash of light, I thought I'd be wise to post this as a posthumous "Fuck you GWB".
Sometimes us animators find interesting snips of information. "My Medicated Cartoon Life" has a blast from the past from 2001:
Actually, it was in Germany last time I was there too - in 2001, just after the Trade Tower attack. The only radio station in English I could pick up was one for a local US Army base. They had a news story saying that the US Government had found definitive proof that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attack. I came home wondering why nobody at home seemed to be reporting this - the Army radio seemed so sure. They weren't reporting it as speculation. It was fact.
It was only years later that I realised the Army radio station was priming their troops for an attack as far back as then. They had always just been waiting for their excuse to put the invasion in motion. And they found it.
Quite a title, eh? “The Pain Game.” That really says it all. The author is supposedly talking about how a Georgian insurgency could “pain” the Russian army in this Aug. 14, 2008, piece, but he may as well be cheering the unimaginable pain that such a course would inflict on the Georgian population. It’s that childish callousness that makes this such a classic of Neocon prognostication: “Why don’t you Georgians start a guerrilla war against the Russians? It’d be fun!” Fun, that is, for Koehl, in his living room. Koehl’s advice to the Georgians is almost unbelievable in its stupidity. Like a typical Tom Clancy fan, he reduces the problem to hardware, starting with a long, loving list of the armored vehicles the Russians are using, followed by a list of U.S. weapons that will supposedly neutralize these vehicles. Then, getting really excited, he fantasizes in true Clancy style about how a few cool new weapons can force Russia out...
...What’s most dismally typical of Neocon thinking here is the mad nonchalance with which this suburban hobbyist urges Georgia to let itself in for the sort of slaughter that has been going on in Chechnya for years. The Chechens have lost a substantial part of their total population in a losing insurgency. And the Russians didn’t defeat the Chechens by tinkering with this or that weapons system; they went in and kidnapped, tortured and killed all the young males they even suspected of being insurgents, just like we’re doing in Iraq. That’s how this kind of ugly war is fought. So prescribing guerrilla warfare means telling the Georgians to start a process that will lead to the death of most of their families. That’s what insurgency means.
I strongly suspect that Dolan is, in fact "Gary Brecher" - that being an alias. Brecher's written identical critiques of Clancy and the hardware obsessed maroons of the far right many times.
Here's an excellent article on "The Gospel of Consumption" - it argues for a 6 hour work day/30 hour work week. It's all worth reading, but here's a nice clip:
...in 2004, one of the leading legal theorists in the United States, federal judge Richard Posner, declared that “representative democracy . . . involves a division between rulers and ruled,” with the former being “a governing class,” and the rest of us exercising a form of “consumer sovereignty” in the political sphere with “the power not to buy a particular product, a power to choose though not to create.”
...According to this elite view, the people are too unstable and ignorant for self-rule. “Commoners,” who are viewed as factors of production at work and as consumers at home, must adhere to their proper roles in order to maintain social stability. Posner, for example, disparaged a proposal for a national day of deliberation as “a small but not trivial reduction in the amount of productive work.” Thus he appears to be an ideological descendant of the business leader who warned that relaxing the imperative for “more work and better work” breeds “radicalism.”
It's not as though I wake up and think: "I'm going to find the most depressing stuff online today." Sometimes, it just happens that way. Anyway, doom-alert ahoy:
Goodchild: Transition Silliness. A critique of ecovillages and "transition towns" as realistic coping mechanisms for Energy Descent. Discussion here.
Goodchild: Sorry, no gas. Very long, very grim prognosis for The World.
J.M. Greer: The tempo of change. A more positive view of collapse - though Greer still expects a new Dark Age a hundred years from now. In the doomerverse, he's regarded as one of the optimists!
Britain's bunkers are rusting into ruins. Ironic, for a country that's so paranoid about the threat of terrorism that it's turning itself into an Orwellian police state.
Freaky: Intel's wireless electrical system. Trasmitting electricity through the ether? Very spooky. I'm off to my Faraday cage, to make a tinfoil hat...
Each month, California inmates process more than 680,000 pounds of beef, 400,000 pounds of chicken products, 450,000 gallons of milk, 280,000 loaves of bread, and 2.9 million eggs (from 160,000 inmate-raised hens). Starbucks subcontractor Signature Packaging Solutions has hired Washington prisoners to package holiday coffees (as well as Nintendo Game Boys). Confronted by a reporter in 2001, a Starbucks rep called the setup "entirely consistent with our mission statement."...
...Windows dressing: In the mid-1990s, Washington prisoners shrink-wrapped software and up to 20,000 Microsoft mouses for subcontractor Exmark (other reported clients: Costco and JanSport). "We don't see this as a negative," a Microsoft spokesman said at the time. Dell used federal prisoners for PC recycling in 2003, but stopped after a watchdog group warned that it might expose inmates to toxins...
...A stitch in time: California inmates sew their own garb. In the 1990s, subcontractor Third Generation hired 35 female South Carolina inmates to sew lingerie and leisure wear for Victoria's Secret and JCPenney. In 1997, a California prison put two men in solitary for telling journalists they were ordered to replace "Made in Honduras" labels on garments with "Made in the usa."
Some light relief:
Innocent Londoner harassed by cops in a random search. They look through his possessions and threaten him with arrest, in a brave attempt to save us all from terrorists. And how does this ingrate reward the men with the shiny boots? HE SECRETLY FILMS THEM! Such an example of doubleungood behaviour must be punished. Take the citizen to room 101!
Another amazing account of DHS clowns abusing travelers. What's even more depressing than this article are some of the comments that follow, particularly this one:
As I am active in Second Life, I'd suggest a Second Life event, and if there is interest here, would help to organise it too.
Yeah, cause nothing scares fascists more than a bunch of geeks staging virtual sit-ins from behind their computer keyboards. (I include myself in this, btw). You want change? You'd better start pounding the streets and doing things in REAL LIFE, not SECOND LIFE. Stop buying crap. Boycott corporations. Take your money out of your banks. (No interest? Boo hoo!)
Nothing else is going to work (hell, none of that probably will either, but at least it's REAL).
Have you heard that there's enough oil in Alaska to supply the United States for the next two centuries, more than in the entire Middle East, but a government plot is keeping it underground? If so, attribute it to Lindsey Williams, a kind of oil evangelist, who's been making these claims since the 1970s...
...Now consider reality on Alaska's North Slope, the oil area that includes the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It can take two or three years to drill a single exploratory well there, because such drilling is only possible for a few months at a time in the winter, when the permafrost is frozen hard enough to support equipment. Meanwhile, infrastructure can be transported there only by ship, in two or three summer months. To drill permanent wells, oil companies lay down a thick gravel "pad," acres in size, which allows for year-round drilling, by keeping equipment and housing safe from summer thaws and preventing them from melting the permafrost. Pipeline corrosion problems have been extensive. The EIA forecasts that if Congress opened up ANWR, it would take eight to 12 years to even start production.
Does this sound like a place that will produce more oil than the Middle East?... The EIA estimates that about 10.4 billion barrels of oil can be recovered from ANWR, just over a year of American consumption. Saudi Arabia alone has about 260 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. The verdict here: Get real.
The worst of the global financial crisis is yet to come and a large U.S. bank will fail in the next few months as the world's biggest economy hits further troubles, former IMF chief economist Kenneth Rogoff said on Tuesday.
"The U.S. is not out of the woods. I think the financial crisis is at the halfway point, perhaps. I would even go further to say 'the worst is to come'," he told a financial conference.
"We're not just going to see mid-sized banks go under in the next few months, we're going to see a whopper, we're going to see a big one, one of the big investment banks or big banks," said Rogoff, who is an economics professor at Harvard University and was the International Monetary Fund's chief economist from 2001 to 2004.
There are no military installations in the city of Tskhinvali. In fact, there are no military targets at all. It is an industrial center consisting of lumber mills, manufacturing plants and residential areas. It is also the home to 30,000 South Ossetians. When Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili ordered the city to be bombed by warplanes and shelled by heavy artillery last Thursday, he knew that he would be killing hundreds of civilians in their homes and neighborhoods. But he ordered the bombing anyway.
There was no "Battle of Tskhinvali"; that's another fiction. A battle implies that there is an opposing force that is resisting or fighting back. That's not the case here. The Georgian army entered the city unopposed; after all, how can unarmed civilians stop armed units. Most of the townspeople had already fled across the border into Russia or hid in their basements while the tanks and armored vehicles rumbled bye firing at anything that moved.
What took place in South Ossetia on August 7, was not an invasion or a siege; it was a massacre. The people had no way to defend themselves against a fully-equiped modern army. It was a war crime.
In less than 24 hours, the Russian army was deployed to the war zone where it chased the Georgian army away without a fight. Michael Binyon put it this way in the London Guardian: "The attack was short, sharp and deadly---enough to send the Georgians fleeing in humiliating panic."
Indeed, the Georgians left in such haste that many of their weapons were left behind. It was a complete rout; another black-eye for the US and Israeli advisers who trained the clatter of thugs they call the Georgian army. Soon vendors on the streets of Tskhinvali will be hawking weapons that were left behind with a mocking sign: "Georgia Army M-16; Never used, dropped once."
American hardliners are the first to say that they feel stupid next to Putin. Victor Davis Hanson wrote on August 12 of Moscow's "sheer diabolic brilliance" in Georgia, while Colonel Ralph Peters, a columnist and television commentator, marveled on August 14, "The Russians are alcohol-sodden barbarians, but now and then they vomit up a genius ... the empire of the czars hasn't produced such a frightening genius since [Joseph] Stalin." The superlatives recall an old observation about why the plots of American comic books need clever super-villains and stupid super-heroes to even the playing field. Evidently the same thing applies to superpowers.
The fact is that all Russian politicians are clever. The stupid ones are all dead. By contrast, America in its complacency promotes dullards. A deadly miscommunication arises from this asymmetry. The Russians cannot believe that the Americans are as stupid as they look, and conclude that Washington wants to destroy them. That is what the informed Russian public believes...
A few days ago I made some comments that Putin was playing Chess, whereas the Americans are playing tic-tac-toe (or American football, in the case of the smarter ones). Spengler has a better analogy:
Think of it this way: Russia is playing chess, while the Americans are playing Monopoly. What Americans understand by "war games" is exactly what occurs on the board of the Parker Brothers' pastime. The board game Monopoly is won by placing as many hotels as possible on squares of the playing board. Substitute military bases, and you have the sum of American strategic thinking.
America's idea of winning a strategic game is to accumulate the most chips on the board: bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, a pipeline in Georgia, a "moderate Muslim" government with a big North Atlantic Treaty Organization base in Kosovo, missile installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, and so forth. But this is not a strategy; it is only a game score.
Chess players think in terms of interaction of pieces: everything on the periphery combines to control the center of the board and prepare an eventual attack against the opponent's king. The Russians simply cannot absorb the fact that America has no strategic intentions: it simply adds up the value of the individual pieces on the board. It is as stupid as that. But there is another difference: the Americans are playing chess for career and perceived advantage. Russia is playing for its life, like Ingmar Bergman's crusader in The Seventh Seal.
There is a ton of amazing information in that article about the democraphics of Russia. Their population falls by 700,000 people a year - which is shocking. A Muslim majority is expected by 2040-2050. Would a Muslim Russia go to war against a Spanish US?
National Geographic: 9 page article about soil erosion, and mitigation.
I've been cleaning up some of my "doomer" cartoons. I'm trying
to integrate my Cintiq into my daily work a bit more. The problem is my inherent
laziness. Anyhow, here are a couple:
Remember all the right-wing bleating about the invasion of Afghanistan "liberating" the women of that wretched country? Yeah; the US/NATO/UN backed regime is sending women to prison for up to 20 years - for being raped. Your tax dollars at work.
A fuel crisis is the last crisis most would not expect in the world’s largest oil exporting country. The northwestern city of Ar’ar already facing a diesel shortage for the last month is now faced with a shortage of fuel.
Some nine owners of fuel stations filed complaints to the Ar’ar Chamber of Commerce and Industry against Saudi Aramco for not supplying enough fuel to meet their needs, Al-Hayat reported.
Big Brother watches you, even when you drive. The reader who submitted this link wishes to remain anonymous. I can't say I blame him. Nobody wants to end up in Room 101 with rats chewing on their faces.
Bob Brannigan launches his new blog with an excellent analyis of modern consumerism: Pondering the Endgame
The goal of consumerism is to reduce an individual, or limit a developing individual to a developmental stage somewhere between infancy and adolescence, thereby limiting or eliminating any opportunity for true self-actualization.
In the ongoing, frantic drive for ersatz success, parental responsibilities have been neglected or ignored, and influence from the extended family has been greatly reduced. Through these multi-generational actions we have all but lost any contact with, or access to, key values and knowledge which will be critical to our upcoming survival needs.
Further, reduction or elimination of these positive parental influences has severely impaired the very capacity needed to expose and counteract the above fantasy world. Indeed, once the first generation that is in a state of arrested development starts parenting, the process is almost self-sustaining. We have lost our culture of symbiotic mutual self-interest.
Once the link between material acquisition and so-called fulfillment is forged, the consumer is placed in a never-ending destructive cycle, resulting in sustained discontent, emotional imbalance, and often depression. As the victim is rarely able to discern the error in the underlying premise, correction of this psychopathy often requires professional treatment.
True social interaction, the sense of self-worth and the sense of place that comes from existing in a community has been largely lost.
Consumerism has achieved a Nirvana where shopping is now a recreational activity in and of itself, irrespective of any real need or the means to support the purchase.
The American banking system may not need a shove from Russia to fall on its face. It's effectively dead now, just lurching around zombie-like from one loan "window" to the next pretending to "borrow" capital -- while handing over shreds of its moldy clothing as "collateral" to the Federal Reserve. The entire US, beyond the banks, is becoming a land of the walking dead. Business is dying, home-ownership has become a death dance, whole regions are turning into wastelands of "for sale" signs, empty parking lots, vacant buildings, and dashed hopes. And all this beats a path directly to a failure of collective national imagination. We really don't know what's going on.
When I ponder our curiously unbalanced civilization, able to put golf carts on Mars but unable to equal the verse of muddy Elizabethan London, I wonder why we are as we are. In all things technological the United States is magnificent, the Athens of solid-state physics. Yet the great orchestras die unlistened to, we have no Shakespeare or Dante nor notion why we might want them, and religious expression grows mute, or crabbed and hostile. Why?
I think the answer is that our surroundings determine not just what we think, but what we can think. We live in cities urban but not urbane, among screaming sirens, in air grayed by exhaust and wracked by the blattings of buses. The complaint is not invalid for being trite. I cannot imagine a Whitman composing in a shopping mall.
The rush and complexity of everything take their toll. As a people we might well be called The Unrelaxed. And, therefore, the Uncontemplative.
Watching too much television weakens your grasp on reality on many levels, and that over-reliance on scripted, dramatic outcomes is a key factor in Americans' drift into fantasy.
It is a human weakness that we seek simplistic answers to complex puzzles. Astute correspondent U. Doran recently sent in a humbling list of common flaws in human thinking: List of Cognitive Biases.
On top of these potentially crippling natural biases toward group-think, self-delusion and fantasy, we have a literally endless stream of dramas in which some resolution is reached in two hours, an hour, or perhaps even 22 minutes (the other 8 minutes of the programming slot being reserved for consumptive propaganda, i.e. adverts).
Consider the key features of all television drama. Most importantly, there is always an explosive dramatic "problem" or obstacle. The solution/resolution will either require explosions and violence, a tense stand-off, or some equivalent high-stakes emotional compression and release. Settings which never seem to go out of favor are seething hotbeds of life-and-death drama: hospitals, courtrooms, criminal/police matchups, etc.
Even comedies and so-called "reality shows" follow the same script of ramped-up drama and cathartic resolution. The only difference is the resolution is supposed to be humorous and touching (some thin veneer of self-realization/self-knowledge is popular--"awwww, see, he found out something important about himself") or some decision by other parties is imposed/announced: you win, you lose, you're off the island, you're guilty, you shouldn't have torn the heads off her Barbie Doll collection, etc.
I went on a roll with this one. Here's a permanent link to my animation rant below, for those inclined to share. It's not often that I wax poetic.
A FEUDAL LORD SEEKETH ANIMATORS.
Animators/Artists/Designers will appreciate this risible job posting. (UNPAID)
By this Friday afternoon (5/30), we need the following:
1. We start from a shot of a character's hand with a blue-footed booby on it (we will provide the initial hand shot), and the camera pulls back very slowly away from the earth to reveal galaxies and the universe, all the while following the bird as he flies into infinity. This shot will last approx. 3 minutes.
2. We need a fake time-lapse sequence of this same bird hatching from an egg and growing into adulthood. Would prefer for the background/environment to look like time-lapse, so we'd need the lighting changes of days passing and seasons changing, over the course of a year. Keep in mind that his feathers will have to go from baby chick feathers to adult ones, through several molting stages. Perhaps growing and dying flowers in the foreground, to signify the time passing? I don't know if there will be time for that.
3. We need a shot of the Transformers fighting, but we will change their faces a bit. Similar style to the movie. Also refer to Narnia as a reference (the robot parts, not the animals).
These shots will have to be photo-real in order to match the rest of our film, which is photographed with a film camera. I still don't know much about computers or animation, but I assume we need someone with a good familiarity with Photoshop, or maybe Flash or Shockwave Director.
The fact that they would think nothing of posting the job quoted above, for NO PAY, is a perfect illustration of why I loathe the animation industry, and want to get out. These kinds of posts are NOT UNCOMMON. The assumption that kids out of school or out of work artists will do ANYTHING is a disease that needs to be stamped out - most urgently.
Having explained my inchoate feelings of rage to my therapist, he advised me to seek solace from Thalia, my Heavenly muse, through the art of Poetry. Thus renewed with vital purpose, I rewrote the job posting, giving it some historical context:
A FEUDAL LORD SEEKETH ANIMATORS.
ARISE, ye students, and work for free,
Accept this honour: to toil for me.
Worthy vassals, good and true -
Here line up, and munch my Pooh.
I your Lord, am good and kind,
And seek to guide thy simple mind.
For whilst thy hands are nimble quick,
I do not doubt thy wits be thick.
I'll have ye sketch a hand and boob,
And onwards! though ye be a noob,
Thy labour shall outshine the good,
The greatest ones of Hollywood.
SO COME, ye knaves, and tarry nay;
The deadline is three days away.
And tho' thine hours be full of sweat,
I shall ne'er be in thy debt.
There is one gift I can bestow: Put the work in thine portfolio."
Whilst this is an extreme example of incompetence, the mindset is all too similar to many animation "producers":
* No comprehension of the artistic aspects of the medium.
* No comprehension of the tools/technical aspects of the medium.
* No comprehension of the labour involved, or its true value.
* NO respect for the artists...whom they regard as "wrists".
* An Ayn Randian belief that only executives are truly creative.
The fact that the majority of truly successful animated series (The Simpsons, for example), have been created by cartoonists or artists is beyond them. These shows, however, are the exception. Most people I know have spent their entire careers working on Shr Dreck.
This is one reason why ludicrous buzzwords become so viral in Animation/Design studios amongst the producers (though rarely the artists)...a desperate need to distract people from the fact that THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING. As soon as a fad comes along, they all jump on the bandwagon, shouting the Holy Words like a mantra. "Break the Fourth Wall" was one of the more irksome crazes at Disney Interactive circa 1997. Let's make sure to "Break the Fourth Wall". We broke the fourth wall for about six months; then we broke the bank.
I've seen it happen over and over - a constant quest for the "magic bullet" - the amazing New Thing that will allow the artists to finish the product for HALF THE PRICE. (Hint: it DOESN'T EXIST). But woe betide you if someone invents a marginal method to improve things slightly (linear, not exponential). We'll call this thing a FlangeBlaster. Within DAYS every fucknuckle in a suit will be Flangeblasting you until you're blue in the face, waving it around like King Arthur with Excalibur.
"Hey, can we Flangeblast it?" "Yeah, just have the wrists Flange the thing. It'll be done by Friday." "Flange Flange Flange Flange Fla Fla Fla Fla Blaster......." "FFFLLLAAAANNNGGGGEEEEE BBBLLLLLAASSSTTEEERRRRRR!!!!!!!!" "Please Kill Me. I yearn for the sweet release of Death."
Often, artists are in a separate lower caste to these Brahmin producers (and are even lower than writers on the scat-stained totem pole). Needless to say, they are paid accordingly. The artists are also unable to rise to producer status, having no creativity - that being a monopoly of the self-ordained Producers.
We, gentle reader, are shitmunchers. We munch their shit. They tell us it's chocolate, but nobody believes them - except for the young ones with the bright eyes.
The eyes aren't bright for long. Soon even they must realise the awful truth: that terrible thing sliding down your gullet isn't fair-trade low fat chocolate, harvested organically by buxom Guatamalan peasant women. No, it was squeezed from the puckered sphincter of your boss, freshly laid that morning. There are still undigested lumps of corn in it.
People wonder why 99.99% of the content of TV shows (live action and animation) is unadulterated shite. Every second artist/designer has ideas light years ahead of most producers. We all know co-workers who've had the contents of their portfolios ransacked by Studios for concepts - which are slightly altered, making them "original". Hooray for Hollywood!
Bastards.
This is why the phrase "the invisible hand of the market" makes me shudder. I've felt that hand, slowly and carefully smearing excreta over my face. To Hell with the invisible hand, where it can join the screaming soul of Adam Smith, clawing desperately for a moment's respite from the flames - a respite that shall never come. And rightly so.
Artists Unite! No return to Feudalism without a return of the Guilds!
FOOTNOTE: If you're worrying about the job posting and the studio who asked for it, fear not. A kind-hearted animator came through for them, and did the work ON TIME and ON SPEC. Here it is:
Operation "Drunk Monkey" is in full swing. (Again, note that really nasty gash on his right elbow):
No, ossifer, I'm prefectly sober. What d'ya mean, step out of the car?
This completely disproves the stroke theory. I don't think stroke victims can make faces like this. Pity his wife and daughter. They're crying - and dying - inside (like all good Republican women).
Why do I want to give Bush's daughter a big hug, and tell her that everything is going to be alright? (It's not going to be alright, of course, but I still think the poor lassie needs a big hug and the sweet placebo that is False Hope).
Segway into DREAM SEQUENCE:
"Boo hoo." She cried, her chin turning to dimpled Jello.
I patted her on the shoulder. "It's alright, Babs. Everything's going to be alright."
"I'm not Babs. I'm Jenna."
"Are you sure?"
"I...I think so."
The apple - far from the tree, I thought. I gave her a big hug. I hoped she wouldn't smell the liquor on my breath. Might remind her of Daddy.
"Anyhow, B ... Jenna - you can cry now."
"OK. WaaaaAAAaaaAaaaaA..."
Poor kid, I thought, as her tears and mucus soaked into my manly shoulder. What bloody chance did she ever have, with Chimpy Bomsalot for a father? She'll never be able to take a holiday in the Middle East - not without a Burkha, anyhow. In a very real sense, she's worse off than one of those kids in Iraq who had their arms and legs blown off by cluster bombs.
Life can be so very cruel.
I'm so glad Bush kicked the Dems out of the Whitehouse. He's restored so much of the dignity that was lost under Clinton.
Ugh. I hates tattoos on women. Hates them. Nasty! Mister Preznit - make them stop!
BBC: Russia losing propaganda war. Well, du-uh. The US media mindfuck machine (formerly known as the MSM, and which I will hereafter refer to as the MMM) is the greatest propaganda weapon in the history of the World.
The Bush administration appears to be trying to turn a failed military operation by Georgia into a successful diplomatic operation against Russia.
It is doing so by presenting the Russian actions as aggression and playing down the Georgian attack into South Ossetia on 7 August, which triggered the Russian operation.
Yet the evidence from South Ossetia about that attack indicates that it was extensive and damaging.
The BBC's Sarah Rainsford has reported: "Many Ossetians I met both in Tskhinvali and in the main refugee camp in Russia are furious about what has happened to their city.
"They are very clear who they blame: Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili, who sent troops to re-take control of this breakaway region."
Human Rights Watch concluded after an on-the-ground inspection: "Witness accounts and the timing of the damage would point to Georgian fire accounting for much of the damage described [in Tskhinvali]."
This time, drought has put Hashilan pond near extinction, in a way that according to officials many of the pond fishes are dead and other species are on their last breaths as well.
Hashilan pond is located in 26 km northwest of Kermanshah in Alahyar Khani village on the foothills of Khoorin and Veis; with an area of 450 hectares, this is one of the beautiful environments in western Iran, according to the environment correspondent of Iranian Students New Agency (ISNA).
But unfortunately the latest drought has pushed this valuable pond near extinction and has caused an environment disaster in the region.
Last week, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had just announced record losses, and so had most reporting corporations. Unemployment was mounting, the foreclosure crisis was deepening, state budgets were in shambles, and massive bailouts were everywhere. Investors had every reason to expect the dollar and the stock market to plummet, and gold and oil to shoot up. Strangely, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 300 points, the dollar strengthened, and gold and oil were crushed. What happened?
It hardly took psychic powers to see that the Plunge Protection Team had come to the rescue. Formally known as the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, the PPT was once concealed and its very existence denied as if it were a matter of strict national security. But the PPT has now come out of the closet. What was once a legally questionable "manipulator" of markets has become a sanctioned stabilizer and protector of markets.
Alert: US Mint suspends sale of gold coins. Possibly because they don't want to sell them for $780, when there's a good chance they'll be a lot higher than that in the near future.
Now for the scary part: the world is running out of the raw materials used to make televisions, laptops, mobile phones and many of the other digital gadgets of the 21st century.
An article in New Scientist magazine last year quoted Mr Reller as having said the Earth has 10 years left of indium, which – although only one gram of it is used in a 32-inch liquid-crystal display (LCD) television – is absolutely essential to the screen’s clarity. Indium is also used in the windows of aeroplanes and trains. The metal’s rarity has driven up its price. In 2003, the metal sold for about $60 (Dh220) per kilogram. By 2007, the price had shot up to more than $1,000 per kg....
...Among other metals the Earth is running out of are gallium, also used in mobile phones, and which, with indium, is being used to make a new type of ultra-efficient solar cell; platinum, zinc, copper, nickel and phosphorous.
Environmentalists hate modern flush toilets. Mixing feces with 16 gallons of drinking water and flushing it into the ocean or river is pretty dumb. Now, we have a solution to the problem of shit that's even dumber than that - barbequeing the poop with PROPANE. What, gentle reader, do you think this abomination is called? Satan's shitter? Beelzebub's Bowl? No, of course not. It's called
That's right, because incinerating shit (instead of composting it) is the GREEN thing to do, according to corporate goons. God almighty, unleash thy deadly plague, for we are truly doomed.
Why is everybody mad at AIPAC? Everybody, I mean, everybody that’s heard of it, which means maybe five percent of Americans. Apackers are simply patriots, earnestly trying to do the best they can for their country, which isn’t the United States. I’d do the same thing, if I were one of them. I mean, everybody buys Congress—big pharma, the military companies, the teachers unions, anybody that wants anything pays Congress to do what it wants if it has enough money. I’m surprised they don’t have advertised sales. I guess AIPAC can buy them too.
Why aren’t people mad at Congress instead, which does what The Lobby tells it to? AIPAC isn’t supposed to be concerned about the good of the US. Congress is, and isn’t.
What I reckon is: AIPAC figures it’s helping Israel, but I gotta suspect it may be Israel’s worst enemy. Think about it. Israel is a tiny little country in a bad neighborhood. Everybody where it is hates it. Greater Israel is full of Hay-rabs that hate it, and getting fuller. Does this sound like a recipe for a happy ending?
I remember what a friend said about Phnom Penh during the siege: “It’s hopeless but not critical.”
You’d figure under those circumstances the Israelis would go back in the ’67 borders, try their damndest to get along with the people next door, and thus stay Jewish, which was the point of the thing in the first place. It’s probably their only shot. But they aren’t going to do it.
No. They gotta bomb everybody they can reach, and keep building apartments on Palestinian land, which is why Greater Israel has pretty much turned into South Africa or the US in 1930. Looks to me as if we’re gonna have fewer and fewer Israelis holding down more and more Hay-rabs so they’ll have to be meaner and meaner to do it until the whole shebang falls in. They want this?
For such an athletic man, it's a little sad if you can't get to your seat without six burly arms to assist you... (note the expression of the guy in the top right with the beard. I'm guessing he's a tea-total puritan. Also note the Asian man with specs to the left of Bush - is that Mandarin disdain I detect on his inscrutable visage?
I don't know what kind of pills Laura is on, but I WANT SOME! (I've always had a thing for Laura. She is quite appealing, in a spooky kind of way).
Take a look at Bush's right elbow. That's a nasty bloody gash. Another accidental fall, W? Not to worry though, Dubs - while you were smacking volleyball players on the ass, President Cheney was covering yours from his underground bunker.
Drunks, fools and liars: Georgia's current President is losing it.
It was a claim that could have provoked a dangerous Kremlin response: The United States is readying to take over airports and ports in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
The claim, by U.S.-backed Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili on Wednesday was swiftly shot down by officials in Washington, who denied any such designs on Georgian soil.
Yet, it was the latest in a string of overstated pronouncements by the American-educated Georgian leader that are further fueling tensions with Moscow...
...On Wednesday, he said in an interview on CNN that Russian troops were "closing on the capital, circling," and planning to install their own government in Tbilisi.
Associated Press reporters in the area saw no sign of an impending coup. An AP reporter saw dozens of Russian trucks and armored vehicles heading south from the central city of Gori in the direction of Tbilisi, but they later turned away...
...He later said on Georgian national television that the U.S. arrival of a military cargo plane with humanitarian aid "means that Georgia's ports and airports will be taken under the control of the U.S. Defense Department."
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell responded, "We have no need, nor do we intend to take over any Georgian air or seaport to deliver humanitarian aid. ... We have no designs on taking control of any Georgian facility."...
...In his Wednesday TV address, he said, "Russia has lost more airplanes than in any conflict of this scale since 1939." While such figures are not publicly available, the calculation seemed unlikely given how brief the fighting has been and how uneven the two countries' forces are.[THIS HAS TO BE THE UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE 21ST CENTURY! This maniac is suggesting that Russia lost more planes over Georgia in the last few days than it did in all of World War 2!]
He also cited rumors that Russia was planning to bomb a rally in Tbilisi on Tuesday. The rally ended peacefully.
Saakashvili insists he's not overstating anything, and lamented Wednesday that the West ignored his warnings that Russia was planning a military operation in Georgia as "exaggerations."...
...He has long been derided in Russia, where he is seen as a vassal of the United States as it seeks to expand its influence in Moscow's backyard. The conflict has made that worse. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev indirectly referred to his Georgian counterpart as a "lunatic" on Tuesday.
No argument here.
Ooh; another photo of the other Great Leader:
Pst - it's the wrong way around. The ugly old shit on the bottom left will explain.
I don't know about this story, but it's spreading virally - it alleges that Russia has moved tactical nukes into South Ossetia (Why would they need to do this? To move their nukes FIFTY MILES CLOSER TO THEIR TARGETS? OMFG!!!). The source? A US Colonel interviewed by Amy Goodman on "Democracy Now" (two reasons to doubt the veracity). I couldn't find any other items on google. So, major health warning on the trustworthiness. I apologise if I'm wrong, but this reeks of Propaganda:
Col. Sam Gardiner notes, in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Russia has deployed tactical nuclear weapons to South Ossetia. The SS-21 Missile launchers are relatively weak compared to bombs that have already been used against Georgia by the Russian air force. However, this move does indicate Russia is potentially upping the game from a conventional weapons war to a tactical nuclear weapons war. Gardiner notes that at a news conference on Sunday, the US Deputy National Security advisor has noted these weapons arriving in South Ossetia.
Wired confirms, sort of - but the story still reeks. These missiles have a 100 mile radius, and no mention of a nuclear payload. By the way, Bush has a missile defence system that he'd like to sell you...as well as a new Cold War.
Georgian officials accused Russia of sending a column of tanks and other armored vehicles toward Kutaisi, the second-largest city in Georgia, then said the convey stopped about 35 miles out.
"We have no idea what they're doing there, why the movement, where they're going," Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze said in a telephone briefing. "One explanation could be they are trying to rattle the civilian population."
The U.S. said a move toward Kutaisi would be a matter of great concern, but two defense officials told The Associated Press the Pentagon did not detect any major movement by Russia troops or tanks. There was no immediate response from Russia itself.
"I think the world should think very carefully about what is going on here," Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said. "We need to stop everything that can be stopped now."
What needs to be stopped, Saakashvili, is your piss-poor attempt at Empire-building, and similar efforts by your neoCON masters in Washington - preferably BEFORE the nukes start flying.
Haha: An 'end run' around Russia? You see, this is what happens when you're led by people who think that the world is one big game of American Football. (It's more a combination of Chess, Poker and dumb luck/chaos). No wonder the NeoCons are being ass-raped by reality...
Look, it's not as though I want suck on Putin's pipe, but seriously - our Feudal Overlords really have to put forth a better effort. All you had to do was make nice with the Iranians. Ever met a Persian you couldn't haggle with?
Fucking beltway morons - they'll be the death of us all.
It is certain that the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia was a Bush Regime orchestrated event. The American media and the neocon think tanks were ready with their propaganda blitzes. Neocons had ready a Wall Street Journal editorial page article for Saakashvili that declares “the war in Georgia is a war for the West.”...
...The neocon Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., quickly called a conference hosted by warmonger Ariel Cohen, “Urgent! Event: Russian-Georgian War: A Challenge for the U.S. and the World.”
The Washington Post lifted its skirts and spread wide its legs to neocon Robert Kagen’s war drums, “Putin Makes His Move.”
Only a fool like Kagen could think that if Putin intended to invade Georgia he would do so from Beijing, or that after sending the American-trained Georgian army in flight, he would not continue and conquer all of Georgia in order to put an end to American machinations on Russia’s most sensitive border, machinations that are likely to eventually end in nuclear war.
That despicable whore, the New York Times, spread her legs for Billy Kristol’s rant, “Will Russia Get Away With It?” Kristol thunders against “dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical regimes” that “seem happy to work together to weaken the influence of the United States and its democratic allies.” Kristol presents a new axis of evil--Russia, China, North Korea and Iran--and warns against “delay and irresolution” that “simply invite future threats and graver dangers.”
In other words, “attack Russia now.”
Dick Cheney, the insane American Vice President telephoned Saakashvili to express US solidarity with Georgia in the conflict with Russia and declared: “Russian aggression must not go unanswered.” Cheney’s telephone call is like Great Britain’s “guarantee” to Poland against Nazi Germany. Only a complete idiot would tell Saakashvili anything other than “to cease immediately.”
It's quite a display of madness by the leaders of the West - to be contrasted with - amazing as this may sound - Russia's current restraint ... which is about the only thing keeping this show from going Nuclear at the moment.
Even America’s European allies, chafing under their role of supplying troops for America’s Empire, must now realize that being an American ally is dangerous and has no benefits. If Georgia becomes a NATO member and renews its attack on South Ossetia, it must drag Europe into a war with Russia, a main supplier of energy to Europe.
Moreover, if Russian troops are sent across European frontiers, there is nothing to stop them.
What does America offer Europe, aside from the millions of dollars it pays to buy off Europe’s political leaders to insure that they betray their own peoples? Nothing whatsoever.
The only military threat that Europe faces comes from being dragged into America’s wars for American hegemony.
The US is financially bankrupt, with budget and trade deficits that exceed the combined deficits of the rest of the world together. The dollar has wilted. The American consumer market is dying from the offshoring of American jobs and, thereby, incomes, and from the wealth effect of the real estate and derivatives collapses. The US has nothing to offer Europe. Indeed, American economic decline is killing European exports by driving up the value of the euro...
...The neoconned Bush Regime is furious that the Russian bear was not intimidated by the US supported aggression of the American puppet state, Georgia. Instead of accepting the act of American hegemony that the neocon script called for, Russia sent the Americanized Georgian army fleeing in fear.
Having failed with weapons, the Bush Regime now unleashes the rhetoric. The White House is warning Russia that failure to acquiesce to US hegemony could have a “significant, long-term impact on relations between Washington and Moscow.”
Do the morons who comprise the Bush Regime really not understand that short of a surprise nuclear attack on Russia there is nothing whatsoever the US can do to Moscow?
The Bush Regime owns no Russian currency that it can dump. The Russians own US dollars.
The Bush Regime owns no Russian bonds that it can dump. The Russians own US bonds.
The US can cut Russia off from no energy supplies. Russia can cut America’s European allies off from energy.
Heh, heh, heh...
Hey, have any of my frat brothers spanked any hot volleyball ass lately?
An AP reporter saw dozens of trucks and armored vehicles leaving Gori, roaring southeast. Soldiers waved at journalists and one soldier jokingly shouted to a photographer: "Come with us, beauty, we're going to Tbilisi!"
But the convoy turned north and left the highway about an hour's drive from the Georgian capital, and set up camp a mile off the road. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russian troops were near Gori to secure weapons left behind by the Georgians.
To the west, Russian-backed Abkhazian separatists pushed Georgian troops out of Abkhazia and even moved into Georgian territory itself, defiantly planting a flag over the Inguri River and laughing that retreating Georgians had received "American training in running away."
Two other events are setting the stage for renewed -- and possibly more dangerous -- conflict. First Georgia has resigned from the Commonwealth of Independent States. Second, NATO has announced that it will proceed with plans to admit Georgia to the Alliance. Excuse me...was that the Georgia that existed last week or the Georgia that exists today as a new NATO member? I cannot see NATO admitting a partitioned Georgia. Saakashvili overplayed his hand and will likely lose internal support. So what? Georgia is a U.S. baby no matter who holds office. Russia and NATO do not appear any closer to blinking even though one of them will ultimately have to. And that's where the presuure on geopolitical fault lines has not lessened. This week may have only been a foreshock.
If NATO is dumb enough to begin the process of Georgian membership, then I'll start practicing "duck and cover", just to be on the safe side...
The aftershocks of this wild gamble by Saakashvili are just beginning. This is Russia’s most serious altercation with a foreign country since the collapse of the Soviet Union and could escalate into an all-out war engulfing much of the Caucasus region. Russian warships are not planning to block shipments of oil from Georgia’s Black Sea port of Poti, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said on Sunday, but reserve the right to search ships coming to and from it. Another source naval source said, “The crews are assigned the task to not allow arms and military hardware supplies to reach Georgia by sea.” The Russians have already sunk a Georgian missile boat that was trying to attack Russian ships. Upping the ante, Ukraine said it reserved the right to bar Russian warships from returning to their nominally Ukrainian — formerly Russian — base of Sevastopol , on the Crimean peninsula. On Saturday, Russia accused Ukraine of “arming the Georgians to the teeth.”
Washington's bloody fingerprints are all over the invasion of South Ossetia. Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili would never dream of launching a massive military attack unless he got explicit orders from his bosses at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. After all, Saakashvili owes his entire political career to American power-brokers and US intelligence agencies. If he disobeyed them, he'd be gone in a fortnight. Besides an operation like this takes months of planning and logistical support; especially if it's perfectly timed to coincide with the beginning of the Olympic games. (another petty neocon touch) That means Pentagon planners must have been working hand in hand with Georgian generals for months in advance. Nothing was left to chance.
Another tell-tale sign of US complicity is the way President Bush has avoided ordering Georgian troops to withdraw from a province that has been under the protection of international peacekeepers. Remember how quickly Bush ordered Sharon to withdraw from his rampage in Jenin? Apparently it's different when the aggression serves US interests.
I'd be my left nut that an average Joe Sixpack (if he's aware of the war at all) probably thinks that it started when Russia invaded Georgia (rather than when Georgia invaded Ossetia)...
Putin–the black belt Judo-master–has proved to be as adept at geopolitics as he is at “deal-making”. He has collaborated with the Austrian government on a huge natural gas depot in Austria which will facilitate the transport of gas to southern Europe. He has joined forces with German industry to build an underwater pipeline through the Baltic to Germany (which could provide 80% of Germany’s gas requirements) He has selected France’s Total to assist Gazprom in the development of the massive Shtokman gas field. And he is setting up pipeline corridors to provide gas to Turkey and the Balkans. Putin has very deliberately spread Russia’s influence evenly throughout Europe with the intention of severing the Transatlantic Alliance and, eventually, loosening America’s vice-like grip on the continent...
...Putin has played his cards very wisely, which makes it look like the fighting in South Ossetia may be Washington's way of trying to win through military force what they could not achieve via the free market.
On Saturday, President Bush issued this statement from Beijing: "We have urged an immediate halt to the violence and a stand-down by all troops. We call for an end to the Russian bombings and a return by the parties to the status quo of August 6th."
That was it. Bush then quickly returned to the Olympic festivities. He was last spotted at a photo op with the US girls volleyball team jumping up and down on the beach-sand in his wingtips. The pretense that Bush is leading the country has seemingly been abandoned altogether. Cheney is in charge now.
But what is more important is that the developments that have led the way down until now, keep getting worse. In housing, we see British real estate agents down to one sale per week.
In the US, Alt-A, Option-ARM and prime mortgages are starting to default in frighteningly large numbers. In both countries, the tendency and direction in the financial world is one of an increasing tightening of credit.
No matter what is offered to Fannie and Freddie, they are both so deep in the doghouse that they must cut their purchases of mortgage loans. They cannot take on more risk.
Their shares have entered single-digit numbers, and there is no respite; they lose more every single day, and the point will come when they're worth less than a dollar per share. That is simply too low to be considered going concerns.
That means no-one is left to purchase loans, in no shape or form. Banks and lenders can’t keep them on their books, because they in turn also cannot take on more risk. And investors today feel about mortgage backed securities the way they do about their mothers-in-law.
This will mean that banks have no more credit to lend out, not for individuals looking for a home mortgage, a student loan or a car loan, nor for companies seeking to finance their operations.
Our societies will cease to function the way they always have during our lifetimes, and that will force us to adopt an entirely new (for us) way of living and working.
The only correct way to summarize the state of the real estate industry, in the US, and the UK and soon in many more countries, is "collapse". 90%+ of builders and lenders will go the way of the dodo.
A vast majority of the companies in the field are bleeding money left right and center. They have survived this far because they had some reserves, and their accounting methods are allowed to be borderline criminally creative.
However, the main, and often only, reason they hold on is their hope and faith that things will soon turn around and happy la-la land days will be back.
But finance is not a religion, and faith can’t print money. There will be no magical comeback of anything even resembling the industry as it was until recently, not for many years. We have literally spent our future.
There remain trillions of dollars in unaddressed gambling debt problems in vaults around the world. Some of them are housing related, but many more are not.
The giant Threadneedle and Wall Street casino's have bet on everything that moves, and for good measure also on everything that doesn't. Until we have seen the bets, and they have been properly processed and paid off, nothing will be solved.
And as we saw yesterday, an estimated $1.2 trillion and $6 trillion have vanished from Britain's and America's respective total wealth. In one year.
That is about $20.000 for every citizen of these countries, and $80.000 for a nuclear family. And the losses don't just continue unabated, they get worse. This cannot go on much longer; something's got to give.
The present euphoria is not a sign of a return to stable and well-funded conditions. It's the expected and inevitable sign of dangerous volatility, the kind that can blow up at any given moment.
Just great: Gold is mined with child labour. As is chocolate, btw. So how do I buy gold now, if it's contaminated with child slavery? Homo sapiens = Failed species. I don't lose sleep about our looming collapse any more. We deserve it.
Some big chunks of text about Georgia/Russia/NATO. I tried to whittle down to the highlights (or lowlights), but there's much worth reading. I advise following the links and read all the pages.
Most likely the Georgians just thought the Russians wouldn’t react. They were doing something they learned from Bush and Cheney: sticking to best-case scenarios, positive thinking. The Georgian plan was classic shock’n’awe with no hard, grown-up thinking about the long term. Their shiny new army would go in, zap the South Ossetians while they were on a peace hangover (the worst kind), and then…uh, they’d be welcomed as liberators? Sure, just like we were in Iraq. Man, you pay a price for believing in Bush. The Georgians did. They thought he’d help. And I just saw the little creep on TV, sitting in the stands watching the US-China basketball game...I didn’t even recognize Bush at first, just wondered why they kept doing close-ups of this guy who looked like Hank Hill’s legless dad up in the stands. Then they said it was the Prez. They talk about people “growing in office”; well, he shrunk...
...Luckily, South Ossetia doesn’t matter that much. I’m just being honest here. In a year nobody will care much who runs that little glob of territory. What’s more serious is that another, bigger and more strategic chunk of Georgia called Abkhazia, on the Black Sea, is taking the opportunity to boot out the last Georgian troops on its territory. Georgia may lose almost all its coastline, but then the Georgians were always an inland people anyway, living along river valleys, not great sailors....
...The fretting and fussing and sky-is-falling crap about this war is going to die down fast, and the bottom line will be simple: the Georgians overplayed their hand and got slapped, and we caught a little of the follow-through, which is what happens when you waste your best troops—and Georgia’s, for that matter—on a dumb war in the wrong place. We detatched Kosovo from a Russian ally; they detached South Ossetia from an American ally. It’s a pawn exchange, if that. If it signals anything bigger, it’s the fact that the US is weaker than it was ten years ago and Russia is much, much stronger than it was in Yeltsin’s time. But anybody with sense knew all that already.
the US has no stomach to directly engage a nuclear-armed military state like Russia. We prefer to assault those who cannot defend themselves, and even then, there can be problems, as the Iraqi insurgency and Afghan counter-attacks have shown. And if poor people in slums and the mountains can give the American military fits, imagine what the Russian armored machine would do.
While it's a good and sane thing that the US will not (at least so far) fight Saakashvili's war for him, the larger geopolitical battle goes on. NATO is looking to diminish if not eliminate Russia's influence in the region, of which Saakashvili is a piece, however reckless his recent actions; and then there's the endless war over energy resources, primarily oil, which is global.
Is it possible that the US/Georgia knew what they doing? Could it be a cunning plan to ease Georgian membership in NATO? This is a very different interptretation of events from the Georgian overreach viewpoint. Time shall tell. I prefer to assign stupidity rather than such malicious intelligence. It's not like we've seen much sign of strategic genius from the NeoCons over the last 7 years. Everything they turn has a funny habit of turning to shit - so perhaps this is no different. Nevertheless:
Bush said he is "deeply concerned" and that Russian intervention is a "dangerous escalation ... endangering regional peace"...
...But at the outbreak of violence, Russia had tried to have the United Nations Security Council issue a statement calling on Georgia and South Ossetia to immediately lay down weapons. However, Washington was disinterested. As the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, put it, there was an "absence of political will" within the Security Council...
...What is the US game plan? To begin with, Saakashvili is a progeny of the "color revolution" in Georgia, which was financed and stage-managed by the US in 2003. Georgia and the southern Caucasus constitute a critically important region for the US since it straddles a busy transportation route for energy - like the Indian Ocean or the Persian Gulf. It can be used as a choke point. Simply put, keeping it under control as a sphere of influence is highly advantageous for the pursuit of US geopolitical interests in the Eurasian region. A rollback of Russian influence therefore becomes a desirable objective...
...In geopolitical terms a flashpoint in the Caucasus at this juncture suits Washington. A furious propaganda barrage against Russia has begun. It is already at a high pitch. US statements have virtually overlooked the Georgian onslaught on South Ossetia and the attack on Russian peacemakers. The focus is on the Russian response to the Georgian provocation. An attempt has begun to portray Russia as the aggressor. Washington is carefully cultivating an opinion in Western capitals that Moscow is "bullying" Tbilisi.
This propaganda is bound to strengthen Washington's case for inducting Georgia into NATO. At NATO's summit meeting in April, it became apparent that despite its robust attempts for months, Washington needs to overcome resistance within NATO on Georgia's membership, especially from Germany, France and Italy. The European countries are wary of provoking Moscow and creating new East-West barriers, especially at a time when the imperatives of energy security are in everyone's mind....
...From Washington's perspective, there is nothing like getting Russia bogged down in the Caucasus if it saps Russia's capacity to play an effective role on the world stage. It is all too apparent that Moscow dreads a full-blown war erupting in the Caucasus and was desperately keen to avoid one...
...In sum, it belies logic that Saakashvili acted impulsively. Georgians have a reputation for being hot-tempered, but he is also a trained lawyer - trained in the US. He can't be so naive about the facts of life and the certainty that he would get a bloody nose if he tried to take on the Russian army...
...The point is, the Bush administration cannot afford to fail in this Caucasian venture. It will be seen as needlessly having blood on its hands unless US diplomacy successfully turns the tide in its favor and takes matters to their cold, logical conclusion - induction of Georgia into NATO.
Washington has barely four months to achieve this objective. But it is not a tall order. If the Bush administration succeeds, a page in history is written. We may conclusively say goodbye to the post-Cold War era. Russia's relations with Europe and the US can never be the same again. Blood has been drawn, after all. The Beijing Olympics, in comparison, pale in significance.
William Engdahl: America risks nuclear war with Russia. Engdahl was once a Peak Oiler, but switched to believing in the far-out "abiotic" theory of oil formation. He also thinks that the oil price spike was the result of "speculators". Just FYI.
This past April at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, US President Bush proposed accepting Georgia into NATO’s "Action Plan for Membership," a precursor to NATO membership. To Washington’s surprise, ten NATO member states refused to support his plan, including Germany, France and Italy.
They argued that accepting the Georgians was problematic, because of the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They were in reality saying that they would not be willing to back Georgia as, under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which mandates that an armed attack against any NATO member country must be considered an attack against them all and consequently requires use of collective armed force of all NATO members, it would mean that Europe could be faced with war against Russia over the tiny Caucasus Republic of Georgia, with its incalculable dictator, Saakashvili. That would mean the troubled Caucasus would be on a hair-trigger to detonate World War III.
Russia threatens Georgia, but Georgia threatens Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia looks like a crocodile to Georgia, but Georgia looks to Russia like the cats' paw of the West. Since Saakashvili took power in late 2003 the Pentagon has been in Georgia giving military aid and training. Not only are US military personnel active in Georgia today. According to an Israeli-intelligence source, DEBKAfile, in 2007, the Georgian President Saakashvili
"commissioned from private Israeli security firms several hundred military advisers, estimated at up to 1,000, to train the Georgian armed forces in commando, air, sea, armored and artillery combat tactics. They also have been giving instruction on military intelligence and security for the central regime. Tbilisi also purchased weapons, intelligence and electronic warfare systems from Israel. These advisers were undoubtedly deeply involved in the Georgian army’s preparations to conquer the South Ossetian capital Friday."
Debkafile reported further, "Moscow has repeatedly demanded that Jerusalem halt its military assistance to Georgia, finally threatening a crisis in bilateral relations. Israel responded by saying that the only assistance rendered Tbilisi was ‘defensive.’" The Israeli news source added that Israel’s interest in Georgia has to do as well with Caspian oil pipeline geopolitics. "Jerusalem has a strong interest in having Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel’s oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the Far East through the Indian Ocean."
This means that the attack on South Ossetia is the first battle in a new proxy warfare between Anglo-American-Israeli led interests and Russia. The only question is whether Washington miscalculated the swiftness and intensity of the Russian response to the Georgian attacks of 8.8.08.
So far, each step in the Caucasus drama has put the conflict on a yet higher plane of danger. The next step will no longer be just about the Caucasus, or even Europe. In 1914 it was the "Guns of August" that initiated the Great War. This time the Guns of August 2008 could be the detonator of World War III and a nuclear holocaust of unspeakable horror.
Oil price pullback - Sunrise or a Lull Before the Storm? One thing that's spooked me about the high oil prices was the lack of actual physical shortages (in the West, at any rate. There were shortages - are shortages - in Africa). Another item that must await the test of time. I want to see lines of cars queued around the block, full to the brim of frightened and desperate motorists.
A must-read account of Georgia's recent history by Dmitri Orlov (who has been there, and speaks some of the languages). Dmitri is a superstar in the Peak Oil doomerverse. He's worth more than all the TV bobblehead circus clowns combined.
Georgia: the latest victims of a neoCon con job. Did they really think that NATO and/or the US would fight Russia, and start WW3? To defend a country of 4.5 million? Smoking a crack pipe indeed!
EU's dream of energy independence from Russia may be a pipe dream.
Putin's playing chess, and everyone else is playing Tic Tac Toe. Bush? He's jerking off at the Olympics, acting the brain-dead cheerleader (the only job for which he's ever been qualified). That's it George - while Putin reconstitutes the Soviet Union and steals back 1% of the world's oil supplies, you're busy smacking female beach volleyball players on the ass.
You stupid, drunken twat.
Wow, CNN, you just outdid yourselves. I call these MSM goons corporate stenographers for a very good reason. (Click the image below for a full-res version - in all its glory, with and without commentary).
Oh God - CNN just adding a huge "breaking news" splash - some Americans were stabbed in Beijing. As long as they weren't stabbed in Ossetia or Georgia, that's a relief!
Mike Ruppert does a better job than the "Fourth Estate" - yes, that's what the narcissist US hacks call themselves!
Meantime, not a word from Bush or Cheney who -- I'm certain -- are flummoxed and spasmodic. I can see nothing that will prevent the completion of Russia's Order of Battle within the next few days. So it will be a fait accompli. Russia will not pull out voluntarily. Georgia will be occupied, either totally or enough to make sure that it can pose no risk to Moscow -- ever again. Forget the BTC pipeline. And who is BTC's primary owner-operator? British Petroleum. The simultaneous bombing of BTC by Kurdish PKK (Marxist/Leninist) "separatists" in Turkey drives the point home. "We can take out this pipeline any time we want, from any place we want." Investors in Caspian oil are going to start drastically rethinking their decisions. Caspian production is certain to fall and I can now see a possibility that Russia might eventually get what it has wanted more than anything, a return of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan into a Russian sphere of influence. If that happens, especially as Saudi Arabia is starting t ofade, Russia will be the energy king of the planet, especially in terms of natural gas.
Hell, even the comments sections of the Falls Church News Press are producing better analysis than the MSM hacks:
At this moment the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in Georgia, carrying 1% of the world's oil production, is under attack from Russia as it moves to change the Georgian regime. Russia, fully aware that its Soviet era was sent bankrupt by the collusion of Saudi oil over-production at the behest of America, is now about to reciprocate by monopoly control of gas, and, swing control of oil supply. The Caspian Sea oil and gas producers are now watching the dismemberment of Georgia and realising, at long last, that their future has always been geographically in the hands of their superpower neighbour, Russia.
With China and Russia sharing geopolitical concerns, there is no doubt whatsoever that a major change in the balance of world power is about to occur. Peak oil is here right now and only outright worldwide conflict will be the outcome. All the protestations of those without power, in all the nuances of the word, will mean nothing to those who have it. History is now being made.
Compare the 2 links above with Newsweek's "coverage": Where is Bush?
After surviving a bombing, David Tshimashvili, the commander of a tank military base in Tbilisi, said, "We thought Bush was our friend. We supported them in Iraq. Where is Bush? Will he come here now?" Tshimashvili remembered when thousands gathered in Tbilisi's Freedom Square in 2005 to hear the American president, who declared that the "sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia must be respected."
First, Mister Tshimashvili - if you believe the promises of a politician, let alone one as treacherous as George W. Bush, then YOU HAVEN'T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION. Let's just say that the Russian invasion is a "teachable moment" - a smarmy term often used by American educators.
Does Newsweek want Bush to declare war on Russia? Anyone up for that? I've got my Pottasium Iodide capsules - how about the rest of you? Cause I ain't sharing mine, that's all I'm sayin'. At 39, and not in the best health, I'll probably be able to dodge a general draft. How about you lot? Hmm, Newsweek? Any of you court scribes want to see your young 'uns marchin' off to World War 3, to die on the business end of a Russian bayonet?
And answer there came none.
Here's a gem about the airline industry flying jets with too little fuel:
The Aviation Safety Reporting System — a database maintained by NASA — has reports from pilots expressing safety concerns about airline directives pressuring them to fly with uncomfortably low fuel levels.
It's all to save some dollars. Less fuel = less weight = less fuel. GENIUS! Since we're thinking outside the box, here's an idea - how about LESS PASSENGERS?
Some funny captions from punditkitchen to break up the doom:
One thing is certain: the Russian invasion of Georgia, if it continues, will mark a turning point. Why are the Russians acting in such a bold manner? Some may speculate that it’s about the price of oil, as the world’s second-longest oil pipeline passes through Georgia. And this point should be considered. But more than anything, the invasion impacts U.S.-Russian relations in a decisive manner. It changes the political atmosphere in Europe and the Far East, in Washington and London and Tokyo. The Kremlin strategists already know that the global economy is headed for trouble. This means growing political weakness within the democratic countries.
Already America has been weakened on many fronts. In strategic terms, this may be the perfect moment for Russia to break with the United States. There may never be a better moment to paint America as an imperialist aggressor. In Washington D.C., however, there is no desire for a break with Russia. American policy-makers have long assumed that Russia is a friendly country. They have assumed that disagreements can be worked out, and peace will prevail. There has been no real preparation for a renewed Cold War. Western politicians pose the following questions: Why should the Russians shoot themselves in the foot? Why should they damage their own economic chances? But these questions misunderstand the real situation.
The Russians see America’s weakness. First and foremost, the Americans are unwilling to bomb Iran. They have upset the Saudis by building a Shiite democracy in Iraq. The Americans have angered the Turks by supporting the Iraqi Kurds. The Americans have weakened NATO by admitting too many FSB/KGB-influenced countries into the NATO fold. The Russian leadership probably feels it is time to tip everything over. It is time to expose America’s weakness. What will President Bush do? By the time you read these words, the White House will probably have issued a statement denouncing the Russian invasion. But will American troops be sent to Georgia?
And, let me add - this situation in Georgia, if it continues, will play very nicely to John McCain. His chances of winning in November just shot up nicely.
To quote Mister Burns: "Ex-cell-ent"...
Of course, the fact that McCain is off his rocker won't impede his victory, I hope:
The outbreak of war in Georgia on Friday offers a disturbing and somewhat surreal taste of what to expect from John McCain should he become our nation’s Commander in Chief. As the centuries-old ethnic animosities between Georgia and Ossetia boiled over into another armed conflict, drawing in neighboring Russia, McCain issued a stark-raving statement from Des Moines that is disturbingly reminiscent of the language used in the lead-up to NATO’s war against Yugoslavia in 1999, a war McCain zealously pushed for:
“We should immediately call a meeting of the North Atlantic Council to assess Georgia’s security and review measures NATO can take to contribute to stabilizing this very dangerous situation,” McCain said...
...McCain’s call to NATO-ize the war is not only frightening, it’s also delusional: both NATO and US forces are already stretched beyond the breaking point, even by Joint Chief of Staff chairman Michael Millen’s own recent assessment.
My little inner-devil licks his chops with apocalytpic glee. I really must name him.
But McCain’s brain remains undeterred by reality, a fact that became painfully clear today in Des Moines when he also demanded, “The US should immediately convene an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to call on Russia to reverse course.”
The problem with McCain’s bold demand about going to the UN is that Russia already tried doing exactly what McCain called for–and got rejected by McCain’s neocon pals in the Bush Administration. Early this morning, Russia convened an emergency session of the UN Security Council, calling on both sides to immediately cease hostilities, return to the negotiating table and renounce the use of force–but the last part about renouncing the use of force is exactly what Georgia’s president Mikhail Saakashvili refuses to do.
"Plans within plans within plans". As a novel I recently read suggested, given time, all plots ultimately lead to murder.
So why should we care? Oh, just the prospect of a larger regional war that could drag in Russia – and involve the United States as well. Since early 2002, the U.S. government has given a healthy amount of military aid to Georgia. When I last visited South Ossetia, Georgian troops manned a checkpoint outside Tskhinvali -- decked out in surplus U.S. Army uniforms and new body armor.
A nation of 4.6 million gets some shiny toys from Uncle Sam, then imagines they're a match for RUSSIA? Blimey...now THAT'S delusional.
As The Associated Press’ Robert Burns reported, the Joint Chiefs “laid out their concerns [to Bush & Cheney] about the health of the U.S. force.” First among them is “that U.S. forces are being worn thin, compromising the Pentagon’s ability to handle crises elsewhere in the world. … The U.S. has about 31,000 troops in Afghanistan and 156,000 in Iraq.”
“Five plus years in Iraq,” the generals and admirals told Bush, “could create severe, long-term problems, particularly for the Army and Marine Corps.”
In short, the two long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are wearing down U.S. ground forces of fewer than 700,000, one in every six of them women, to such an extent U.S. commanders called Bush and Dick Cheney to a secret meeting to awaken them to the strategic and morale crisis.
This is serious business. With the Taliban revived and the violence in Iraq rising toward pre-surge levels, the Joint Chiefs are telling the commander in chief that the U.S. Army and Marine Corps are worn out.
Crunch time is coming. And what is President Bush doing?
He is flying to Bucharest, Romania, to persuade Europe to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which means a U.S. commitment to treat any Russian attack on Kiev or Tbilisi like an attack on Kansas or Texas.
/Devil on.
Wouldn't it be hysterically funny if the US went to war against Russia to defend South Ossetia and Abkhazia (two places that 99.99% of Americans have never heard of)? It would be a cosmic joke of the first magnitude - the 24/7 Wurlitzer of CNNCBSABCNBCFOX exhorting their 'news' consumers to rally around plucky little Belgium Ossetia, join the army and fight for the freedom of small nations, we'll be in Berlin Moscow by Christmas, etc. etc. etc.
Overnight we'll have instant experts on the flickerbox prognosticating about Ossetia and Georgia, and within a week an army of armchair generals and AM radio wingnuts spouting off like obedient little monkeys - towing the Party Line, once again.
Come on, you dumb-fuck working and middle classes of America - once again it's your time to spill your intestines on the godforsaken soil of a country you never knew existed until five minutes ago! Hoo-Ah! We Number 1! We Number 1! God Bless Amurca, and God Bless my shares in the Carlyle group!
How I would laugh! Yes, yes, that will happen very soon!
/Devil off.
The surprise isn’t that terrorists appear to be responsible for an explosion that has shut down the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, and sent world oil prices up. It’s that no such attack occurred earlier in the Caspian Sea region.
On Tuesday, a pump near the eastern Turkish town of Refahiye blew up. The thousand-mile pipeline, which connects the Caspian and Mediterranean seas and ships a million barrels of oil a day, could be shut for two weeks.
A Kurdish rebel group known as the PKK says it’s responsible for the explosion.
Well, the Turks blew up my forum, so f*ck 'em. Karmic payback's a bitch, no?
Georgia's tough little army is a U.S. client, but no medium or long-term match for Russian military might. If -- or should I say "when" -- the pipeline is breached it will signal a major earthquake along the over-strained east-west fault line that is Russia v. the West. This earthquake has been inevitable for years and I predicted it clearly. This conflict could signal a point of no return which would play into John McCain'seagerly awaiting hands. Brinksmanship is about to be reintroduced to awhole new generation only this time there is no place to "duck andcover".
I don't for a moment see biofuels as an energy panacea. Having said that, using corn to make ethanol instead of MISCANTHUS is just plain dumb - criminally so. I guess there isn't a "Miscanthus Lobby" of farmers in Iowa to appease though...so tough tit for Miscanthus fans.
What everyone needs to remember is this: the fundamental cause of the recent oil price spike has not gone away. Global demand for oil is still increasing; supply isn’t. The current brief respite from the hammering effect of new oil price records being set almost daily is not an occasion to go back to sleep, but an opportunity to consolidate efforts toward energy conservation and transition.
The days of skyrocketing oil prices will be back soon enough. Will we be ready?
One thing is almost universally agreed upon: the recent slump is not due to the bursting of a speculative bubble. Opec, the 13-member cartel that produces 40 per cent of the world's oil, has long claimed that the steep rise in price was not justified by "fundamentals", blaming it squarely on speculators. But few others believed that. Yes, hedge funds have poured billions of dollars into oil futures contracts, but a recent report by the International Energy Agency concluded that this was largely a result of the price rise, rather than a cause.
Instead, the driving factors are to be found not in the financial markets, but in the real world. It is endlessly reported that the demand for oil in Asian countries has soared since the turn of the century, and that China's thirst has been especially prodigious. What is less realised is that global oil production has been essentially stagnant, at around 86 million barrels a day, since early 2005. Despite soaring demand, production outside of Opec has been persistently disappointing, as international oil companies struggle to maintain production from ageing fields. Opec itself has been unwilling - or unable - to raise its output.
Ha! Here's a gem - one to shove up the fundament of annoying car-fetishists:
In Britain, where the price of unleaded has jumped from around 85p a litre 18 months ago to 112p now, drivers are also cutting back. Yesterday, it was reported that dealers were refusing to accept petrol-thirsty 4x4s in the second-hand market: they cost so much to refuel that they are worth more as scrap.
Many thanks to Robert F. for his $100 donation! (I know, I know, I still need to mail out drawings to all $100 donors. I WILL get to it!) I put the "idle" in idleworm sometimes.
TheOilDrum casts a cold eye on the Hydrogen from water breathrough story. I love TOD - it just blows through the magic-bullet energy fairytales from the MSM. Techno-fix fantasies are criminal - they give people a false hope that the man in a white coat will save them. MAYBE HE WILL...it's just that the chances of such happening are very very low. People who would otherwise prepare for the worst instead read about energy from water (!) or algae (!!) or Cheney's ass, and are lulled back to sleep.
Moving to hydrogen as an end-use fuel presents many challenges, and the cost and efficiency of electrolysis are rather minor in the larger scope. Shifting from concentrated and easily transportable fuel sources (oil converted to gasoline/diesel) to diffuse sources (solar/wind/biomass) converted to a somewhat less concentrated and much less transportable fuel (hydrogen) will result in energy inefficiencies that cannot be overcome (entropy problem). In addition, substantial changes in infrastructure are needed, and in the context of higher energy costs in the near term, making these changes will be difficult. (See the Hirsch Report for a sobering assessment.) Both an articulation and an assessment of the real challenges are somehow absent in the excitement generated by the Nocera et. al. report. Hydrogen will have uses, particularly in energy storage, but solving a few problems (when they are actually solved) will not painlessly transition us to a new energy future.
Georgia has no significant oil or gas reserves of its own but it is a key transit point for oil from the Caspian and central Asia destined for Europe and the US.
Crucially, it is the only practical route from this increasingly important producer region that avoids both Russia and Iran.
The 1,770km (1,100 miles) Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which entered service only last year, pumps up to 1 million barrels of oil per day from Baku in Azerbaijan to Yumurtalik, Turkey, where it is loaded on to supertankers for delivery to Europe and the US. Around 249km of the route passes through Georgia, with parts running only 55km from South Ossetia.
Rising energy prices is driving up demand for cord wood and creating a shortage in some areas of northern New England.
Firewood sellers say they can't keep up.
"Right now I'm refusing work," said Bob Baker. "I had one customer who wanted 14 cords of tree-length wood. I said, 'Good luck.' "
The 80-year-old grandfather says it is so effective at warming up his house that he has been able to switch off his central heating.
It uses just one small bundle of wood - which he often gets free from local tradesmen - to keep his home snug for an entire day.
'I live in a sizeable house and that's one of the reasons I had to fit the stove,' said Mr Breuer, a retired Customs and Excise lawyer who lives in Westcliff-on-Sea, near Southend in Essex.
"There's probably not a week's supply of food here for everyone in Dublin, let alone the country. The shelves would empty of food very quickly in the event of an emergency. We've seen food riots around the world, but it could easily happen here" said Bruce Darrell, an expert with Feasta.
Here's a nifty and simple self-watering garden. This one works for 2 days before needing refilling. With a larger or deeper lower bucket, the system could last much longer than that.
We’re told that the new generation of plants will be different. Just like an alcoholic child-beater, the nuclear plant builders promise us that, “This time it will be different.” Sure. And McCain believes them.
I don’t. Maybe that’s because I headed the government racketeering investigation of the Shoreham nuclear plant’s builders. Stone & Webster Engineering and its partner paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle the civil racketeering claim over the evidence we found of fraud and perjury. Now Stone & Webster will cash in big-time under Plan McCain.
The other big builder which will hit the jackpot under the McCain scheme is KBR, the one-time subsidiary of Halliburton, whose best known project is the rebuilding of Iraq. (Halliburton dumped KBR last year. Can’t blame them.) KBR has built many nukes –not one within a mile of its promised cost.
If you thought we were almost through the subprime mess and that things are going to start getting better, you might want to consider this news: According to some financial experts, the subprime problems are only the beginning. Alt-A (low document and stated-income-type loans) and even prime mortgages are starting to see dramatic upticks in their default rates. Alt-A loan defaults have quadrupled to 12 percent from April 2007 to April 2008, and delinquencies on prime loans doubled during that same period, according to the New York Times. The chairman of JP Morgan Chase, James Dimon, called the outlook for these mortgages “terrible” and said he expected losses on the company’s prime loans to triple in the coming months, according to the New York Times. Economist and New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini went so far as to say in a Reuters article that hundreds of banks were going to fail, and the ultimate price to tax payers would likely be between $1 and $2 trillion.
Fannie and Freddie do not represent the entire US finance sector, far from it. Nevertheless their insolvency would further erode confidence in the rest of the sector, very likely leading to a cascade of death spirals among other institutions. After all, the best-run large non-global US bank, Wachovia, has itself got in trouble by its insanely foolish acquisition of the California mortgage lender Golden West Financial at the peak of the market in 2006, while Bank of America, the largest retail-oriented US bank, voluntarily took on more of the mess by its purchase of the diseased and probably criminal Countrywide Financial as recently as last January.
Citigroup is in deep trouble in a number of areas, particularly relating to its over-enthusiasm for the discredited technique of securitization, while JP Morgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon wrecked his credibility in May by announcing that the financial crisis was “mostly over” - presumably wishful thinking in the light of his huge holdings of dodgy Bear Stearns paper.
Only Goldman Sachs appears serenely above the fray, but don’t forget that at May this year its “Level 3? assets were $78 billion, more than twice its capital. Level 3 assets, you may remember, are those for which there is no market, so can be valued only by the internal mathematical models of the institution concerned. Since this arcane highly illiquid paper is the most likely to suffer catastrophic erosion of “value” in a downturn, Goldman Sachs, like Jamie Dimon, must be keeping fingers crossed that somehow this nightmare must end soon.
It mustn’t; from past experience of such follies it probably has at least another year to go. Thus a total collapse of the US financial system, while not inevitable, is a contingency which should now be planned for.
Lew Rockwell.com: Could your bank fail? Well, one of mine did a couple of weeks ago, which I thought was funny in a cosmic-joker kind of way...
The banking industry is walking on pins and needles, hoping the bad news doesn’t become a self-fulfilling prophecy that drives bank depositors to demand withdrawal of funds en masse. Try to withdraw $10,000 from your bank today and you are likely to be told you can only withdraw $5000 at a time.
The banks know. The news media knows. The FDIC knows. The Federal Reserve knows. But DO YOU know? There is a high likelihood the American banking system will fail, and you will likely be the last to know. The more panicked you get, and withdraw funds, the worse the implosion. In an effort to avert runs on the banks, will the news media delay informing the public of the current dire situation, which appears to be an inevitable system-wide banking collapse?
Course, you could read the links above, or take Cramer's advice and buy a house now it's a great time the only thing we need to fear is fear i just bought two houses last week everything's fine bear stearns is fine don't sell your stock you'd be a fool if you did this is all in our minds and all we have to do is think positive the market's bottomed out this isn't a recession it's a buying opportunity i just put my cash in pork rinds and hog futures that's where the big move will be people will always need bacon i know we've seen some scary things but i said all along that this would happen go and buy yourself that plasma tv and a boat to watch it in yes you'll boost the economy it's all a big circle jerk yes and i want to cash at the top yes and put milk in my coffee yes and retire to an island where the zombies won't eat me yes. (thanks Uncle Duke for the link; apologies to James Joyce).
The government is finalizing its emergency plan this week in order to ensure that the country is protected from foreign dangers in case the regional situation escalates and a war breaks out between Iran and the USA.
An unnamed senior official revealed that the government has learnt that two aircraft carriers are scheduled to arrive in the Gulf and the Red Sea in preparation for the expected war at any time. The official said that this information led the government to accelerate its emergency plan preparations, which include arrangements for protecting all sectors and vital installations.
Interesting: How to travel by cargo ship.Very interesting. If things ever go pear-shaped, it's nice to have a way out that doesn't involve a cattle wagon and a tax-payer funded orange jumpsuit.
Welcome to The Age of Air Rage. Air insanity, more like. I listen to the holiday-maker horror stories with cold, unsympathetic ears. I'm sorry if you fly for your hols - it's nothing personal. It just annoys me to hear people moaning about flying, as though it was a right - not just flight, but CHEAP flight. It especially pisses me off when I hear it on Irish radio, for some reason (maybe because it wouldn't kill them to take a ferry once in a while?)
On my top ten list of companies I'd like to see broken on the wheel? RYANAIR.
The PC contained names, addresses, birth dates and in some cases driver's license numbers and passport numbers for people who enrolled in a program called Clear, according to news reports. Clear allows travelers to expedite their trip through airport security if they are willing to pay $100 per year and surrender biometric information such as iris scans. The stolen laptop didn't contain biometric details, Clear officials said.
I've no sympathy for someone who would surrender their biometric data to a private company, just to save a few minutes in an airport. Let this be a lesson to them. Now Bin Laden has their DNA, and he's cloning an army of white-skinned Jihadis in his supervillain lair, like something from a bad Schwarzeneggar movie. Keeping aMurca safe, one botched security system at a time!
I've accused the DHS/Washington creeps of being Nazis once or twice (OK, a LOT). However, I really must stop. Why?
Because the Nazis, in spite of their occasional flaws, KNEW HOW TO GET THINGS DONE. If they wanted to torture you, they didn't fly you on a wimpy "rendition" to Egypt for a performance of the Nutcracker suite - they took you in and did the dirty work themselves. No bullshit. If stuff like this disappearing laptop happened? You bet heads rolled - LITERALLY. To the Eastern front! If a German city disappeared because of a Dam bursting, it was because of a BRITISH BOMB ATTACK, not a predictable hurricane and piss-poor engineering.
So, here's an apology to the Third Reich. You were evil, vicious bastards, but at least you made the trains run on time (no danger of that ever happening in the US).
Oh, better uniforms too.
The demotion of Pluto from planet to "dwarf planet" would have been forgivable, had the anti-Plutonians actually come up with a non-retarded definition of a planet (as opposed to their current abomination).
The situation is thus: were the Earth in Pluto's orbit, Earth would not be classified as a planet, as it would be unable to "clear its orbit" of asteroids. Funnily enough, no planet in the Solar System has yet managed to do so. Under the IAU's defintion, a trans plutonian object larger than Earth would NOT be a planet - the discovery of such an object (which is statistically probable) would render the IAU an international laughing stock. I hope to live to see the day. Anyhow, the battles not over, glad to say.
Many planet scientists were disgruntled over the 2006 IAU decision, which they said involved a vote of just 424 astronomers out of some 10,000 professional astronomers around the globe. The most recent decision, to categorize Pluto and such as plutoids, further ticked off many astronomers, who felt the term was developed behind closed doors.
"We're going to do something that the IAU did not, which is discuss what we know about planetary bodies in the solar system and around other stars, and discuss the value of different ways of defining objects as planets and what that means," said Mark V. Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz.
When the dust settles, those involved hope a consensus will stand, a classification scheme for all objects orbiting a star.
"If a new consensus emerges it will easily overturn the IAU. This is not an issue," said Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium in New York. "If not, they'll stick with what they've got until something better comes along."
Good news: More than 100,000 gorillas discovered. Excellent! At the rate we've been killing them, they were going to be extinct in 10 to 15 years. This should push the extinction back to ~2030!
Due to the effects of global warming and deforestation, more than half of the Amazon rainforest may be destroyed or severely damaged by the year 2030, according to a report released by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
The report, "Amazon's Vicious Cycles: Drought and Fire," concludes that 55 percent of the world's largest rainforest stands to be severely damaged from agriculture, drought, fire, logging and livestock ranching in the next 22 years. Another 4 percent may be damaged by reduced rainfall caused by global warming. This is anticipated to destroy up to 80 percent of wildlife habitat in the region.
Israeli produce marketing company Otzar Ha'aretz (treasure of the earth) announced on Monday that it will not market produce grown by Arab farmers, and will from now on only sell only Jewish-grown products.
Seriously ill Palestinian patients are being pressured to collaborate with Israeli intelligence by informing on militant and other activities in return for being allowed out of Gaza for medical treatment a report says today.
Israel's domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, is playing an increasingly important role in determining whether patients should be allowed to keep hospital appointments in Israel or the West Bank, Physicians for Human Rights Israel [PHR] will claim.
PHR has collected testimony from more than 30 patients with serious illnesses, including cancer, who describe being pressured by interrogators at the main Erez terminal between Israel and Gaza. They include a 38-year-old man due for treatment at Tel Aviv's Ichilov hospital who says he was told: "You have cancer, and it will spread to your brain. As long as you don't help us, wait for Rafah crossing [the rarely open exit to Egypt]."
Classy, Israel - real classy.
Some great links from boingboing.net (even by their standards):
Lessig on the coming I-Patriot Act. (Time to get out of Dodge when that happens).
Here's to my rotund hero, Rush Limbaugh. I'm sure you'll be enthralled by recent events on his show. Mr. Oxycontin had some "surprise" callers a few days ago:
RUSH: What are...? (interruption) Interrupting for what?
THE PRESIDENT: Hello!
RUSH: Oh, jeez. The president?
THE PRESIDENT: Rush Limbaugh?
RUSH: Yes, sir, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: President George W. Bush calling to congratulate you on 20 years of important and excellent broadcasting.
Yes; those bumpkins in Bumhole, Nowhere weren't going to brainwash themselves with right-wing pablum, you know...
RUSH: Well, thank you, sir. You've stunned me! (laughing) I'm shocked. But thank you so much.
THE PRESIDENT: That's hard to do.
RUSH: (laughing) I know, it is.
THE PRESIDENT: I'm here with a room full of admirers. There are two others that would like to speak to you and congratulate you, people who consider you ... friends and really appreciate the contribution you've made.
Sturmbanfuhrer Albrecht Von Hech, commandant of Furtwangler concentration camp, and Alazar Gonalez, commander of El Salvador's most notorious death squad? Quelle surprise!
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. Put 'em on.
THE PRESIDENT: How you doing? This is my swan song? If this is all you got for me, I'm moving on.
RUSH: (laughing) No! The show's yours; take as much time as you want.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm just calling along with President 41 and the former governor of Florida. We're fixing to have lunch here, and I said, "Listen, we ought to call our pal and let him know that we care," for you. So this is as much as anything, a nice verbal letter to a guy we really care for.
Aw shucks; the Preznit just gawn took it into his head to cawl Rush on his show. Ain't he sweet?
RUSH: Well, thank you, sir, very much. I'm overwhelmed. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this and how much you've surprised me.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, that was the purpose of the phone call.
RUSH: You succeeded.
THE PRESIDENT: Good.
At this point a little vomit burped up in the back of my throat, but I managed to hold it down. Would that I hadn't. It's best to purge, truly.
RUSH: They were waving at me trying to tell me you were on the line, and I didn't know what was going on. So you succeeded here in the surprise. How are you doing, sir?
THE PRESIDENT: I am great. We're doing very good, thank you very much, sir. Concerned about our economy, obviously, but know we need to be drilling for some oil and gas in order to take the pressure off the gas prices -- and I'm pleased with the progress in Iraq.
True; because drilling for oil that will only reach the pumps TEN YEARS IN THE FUTURE will lower prices TODAY. That's the kind of insightful thinking that makes America grate.
RUSH: Have you heard what Senator Obama wants to do? He wants another stimulus check of a thousand dollars to every American paid for by the oil companies.
Aw Rush, can't you keep politics out of it for FIVE MINUTES, and just enjoy the circle-jerk? They even brought a tube of KY Jelly for the man-love! Guess not. Yank the string on the Chimp's back if you must:
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah. Well, what we ought to be doing is encouraging oil companies to find oil, and that's the best way to take the pressure off the gasoline prices. We're on a very strong push to get the Congress to allow for there to be offshore drilling, and most Americans understand now that an increase in oil, particularly here in America, will help take pressure off of price. And I tell people I'd rather, you know, be buying American oil instead of sending our money overseas.
Amen brother! The sooner America burns up the rest of its finite oil reserves, the sooner she'll be energy independent. Err......
RUSH: You know, Mr. President, it's amazing. In 2004 during your campaign, Senator Kerry was constantly criticizing you for not "jawboning" with the Saudis enough to bring the price of oil down. Now, four years later, they're doing everything they can to keep the price from coming down. They apparently want it to remain high.
Um, Rush - you do know that the Bushes are close friends of the Royal family of KSA, right? How rude. Babs is taking him off the guest list for The Bohemian Grove.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, they may want to, but the American people want to see some relief. It would be like a massive tax cut when the gasoline prices decline. So we're in times of economic uncertainty and the more money people have in their pockets the quicker we'll be able to recover, in my judgment. You asked how I'm doing. My spirits are high; I'm going to finish strong. I love my family and I'm spending two days here with mother and dad before I head overseas.
Ah yes, fixing up the compound in Paraguay. A good place in which to bunker down; no pesky extradition treaties there. The neighbour is a lovely elderly German gentleman by the name of Adolph Sticklegruber, or somesuch.
RUSH: Well, that's right. You've got China on your agenda.
THE PRESIDENT: I do. ..
Dear God; it's WW3!
...But listen, President 41. You might remember him.
RUSH: I do. (laughing) Yes, I do. We all do.
THE PRESIDENT: You know what? He remembers you.
RUSH: Good.
THE PRESIDENT: Fondly, I might add. Anyway, here he is. Congratulations.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much, again.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, sir.
Is it me, or do these guys speak English like it's their second language? Well, regular readers will know my theory on that subject...
BUSH 41: Hey, Rush?
RUSH: Mr. President, sir.
BUSH 41: How are you doing?
TRANSLATION: Are you still getting high on Hillbilly Heroin?
RUSH: I am never better. I'm so glad that you three called me. I'm stunned here. It's great to hear from you.
BUSH 41: I've got some advice for you.
Don't be in town on the 21st. Know what I mean, Rush? Take a holiday, at least 100 miles upwind. Pack lots of duct tape...
RUSH: Tell me.
BUSH 41: Slow down your backswing.
RUSH: (laughing)
BUSH 41: (laughing) That's what I'm doing is giving advice. I remember playing with you and enjoying it. How are you?
RUSH: I'm great.
BUSH 41: Proud of you, always.
RUSH: Well, thank you. I'm doing great. And you? You're looking well, too.
I pledge you eternal fealty, my Liege. Were it not for my anal cyst, I wouldst verily join thy crusades in the Holy Land against the Saracens.
BUSH 41: Well, yeah. I'm kind of on the sidelines, but I can't do golf and all that stuff anymore. But life is good. It's wonderful, and it's great having the family up here in Maine, and all is well. Do you see our man Ailes at all?
RUSH: Oh, yeah. I saw Roger at Tony Snow's funeral.
BUSH 41: Oh, did you?
RUSH: And a couple of times earlier this summer.
BUSH 41: Are we on the radio, are we?
RUSH: (laughing)
Respectful pause for Tony Snow, your colleague who recently died of cancer? ... f*ck it, let's just keep chucklin' like a gang of brain-damaged frat boys.
BUSH 41: I didn't know that. I'll clean up my act here. I'm glad they told me.
RUSH: Yeah, we're on the radio.
BUSH 41: It's wonderful talking to you, I'll tell you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir. Same here.
BUSH 41: Wait a minute, Jeb -- Governor Jeb -- wants to speak to you.
RUSH: That's great.
BUSH 41: We've got the whole family lined up.
Oh God, no; we'll be all day if every one of the termite hell-spawn is going get lathered up for this nauseating love-fest.
RUSH: Put him on.
BUSH 41: All Limbaugh fans. Just a sec. Here.
JEB: Hey, Rush, congratulations on your longevity.
TRANSLATION: One never ceases to be astounded by the fact that your gelatinous carcass still has a pulse, considering the epic volumes of Oxycontin you've pumped into it.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. This is a thrill.
JEB: One of the highlights, one of the great things about your show is it's broadcast in the Sunshine State for which a whole lot of Floridians are very grateful, including me.
RUSH: It's a great place to live, governor. It really is, as you well know.
JEB: We've got a few challenges, but it's not a bad place at all.
RUSH: What's your future? What are you going to do?
JEB: I'm staying below the radar. That's what I'm doing. I love policy, and I have an education policy to try to help folks that are running for office be bold on education reform, which I think is a huge challenge and a great opportunity for our country. So my political stuff is really focused on that, which I love.
TRANSLATION: I'm praying for Obama to win so I can challenge him in 2012. We thought 8 years would have been plenty to pillage America, but we miscalculated just a bit. We're gonna need at least four more.
RUSH: Well, good. Keep at it, because if there's something that needs reform in this country, it's certainly that.
JEB: Absolutely.
RUSH: Particularly public education...
I'd start by reforming a criminal system that has one rule for blacks, and another for rich white celebrities who get caught with illegal drugs...and who then have the unmitigated gall to whine about fairness.
...Well, thank you guys so much. This is unexpected and a real honor for me to hear from all of you guys at the same time.
JEB: All right. Take care.
RUSH: Thanks, sir, very much.
JEB: Bye-bye.
By which point, there's no holding back:
Thanks Rush. Thanks Bush (41, 43 & 45). I needed a good colonic.
Bill Hicks, are you up there watching this? I hope they've got stiff drinks where you are (otherwise, it's not Heaven). If you listen to this at work, best use headphones:
My sister recently visited a Wells Fargo. Here's her account:
Interestingly though, the lady who helped us open the accounts used to work with mortgage brokers and decided to get out of that business two and a half years ago when she saw what Indymac and some other banks were doing. We asked her opinion on Wells Fargo and her response was 'this is as good as it's gonna get'. The tone of her voice pretty much implied 'all the banks are fucked - we're just not as fucked as the others. So fingers crossed ... it feels like I'm clinging to that priest on the deck of the Titanic in that shitty movie - oh well. We shall see.
Oil Drum: Peak Oil & Economic update for 2008, update. NOTE: Scroll down that article and read the predictions in bold - those were made back in January. Nice job! One reason why I trust the Peak Oil predictions - you can take the forecasts to the bank (if you'll forgive the expression).
The people who bought into these subdivisions encounter all sorts of other unexpected problems, including burglars looking to steal toilets, appliances and copper wiring. And blight. Krista Anderson, an administrative assistant, lives in a subdivision outside Phoenix where the developer suddenly halted construction last fall, leaving behind not just unfinished houses but also scaffolding, piles of cement and construction material that "is turning yellow and looks bad."
Many residents aren't sure exactly who is in charge of mowing the weeds, maintaining the street lights, cleaning up when someone uses open space as a dump.
These abandoned burbs sound strangely pleasant - foreshadowing their future, as they fall into ruins, the land reclaimed by farmers or, preferably, nature:
Now, many of the region's new subdivisions, with houses that can't be rented, much less sold, are forlorn monuments to disastrous real-estate forecasting. A subdivision called Tuscany, five miles west of Bentonville, was envisioned as an enclave of luxury homes with landscaping meant to evoke an old-world Italian village. Developers installed an enormous hand-built stone wall surrounding several hundred acres of what had been cow pasture. So far, only five houses have been built, and just two sold.
Carol Trees, who paid $570,000 for a 4,800-square-foot house six months ago, admits the solitude is a bit disconcerting. The good news is that her three children have the run of a pasture longer than several football fields. "We love it right now," says Mrs. Trees, a nurse practitioner. "We sit on our back porch and fantasize that we own all this land."...
...The last seven months have been an odd existence. Chickens wander by from a nearby farm, poking around in the brush. Not long ago, someone broke into one of the unoccupied houses around the corner. Now the Pfluegers say they pay close attention to passing traffic, but hardly anybody passes by.
"There's just no noise," Mrs. Pflueger said.
More stupefying ApocaLego - they just keep getting better and better:
For those who like their Lego in the "non-doom" flavour, there'll soon be an official Taj Mahal set, with 6000 pieces. Oh my.
The birthday party has been organized by an outside company bought in to make the birthday wishes of the ‘Fairy Queen,’ a reality. The house is decorated in an inspired fairyland design and the mothers arrive at the house with their very own princess darlings who clutch enormous presents. You watch the numbers, two, four, six and it just keeps going. “How many are coming?" you ask mom innocently. “The whole class,” she answers, removing her fairy wings before deftly maneuvering a pile of brownies through the door. The party lasts for an insane three hours of…fun, punctuated by the occasional melt down amongst the clearly overwhelmed kids. At last the party goers waddle out the door, stuffed with cake and brownies and clutching a goody bag equal in value to the GDP of Montenegro. The fairy queen instead of extolling the party’s virtues, lies in a heap exhausted, ripping off her wings and yelling “How come I didn’t get the pirate party!”
If this sounds like something only those with big fat purses would think of doing for a child’s birthday, I would urge you to think again. In my experience as a parent educator, this scenario or ones like it are played out all over North America on a daily basis. It’s not that people don’t know good sense, it’s that they can’t seem to put it in to practice.
Pemex also is in decline. Since 2005, daily production has dropped more than 300,000 barrels per day, or roughly 10 percent -- and this at a time of historically high global prices. Reserves have been falling since the mid-1980s. This is relevant to U.S. consumers, because Mexico is the second-largest exporter of oil to the United States, behind Canada.
Mexico, which is not a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, was the world's sixth-largest oil producer in 2006. But many analysts believe that Mexican production has peaked and will decline in coming years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Why would anyone assume that opening other coastal areas -- which may or may not harbor large quantities of oil that might or might not be economic to produce sometime in the future -- will have an immediate impact on today's oil prices?
Nevertheless, the assertions continue: lift the moratorium and gasoline prices will fall. And since McCain's Democratic opponent, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, is opposed to ending the moratorium, he therefore is responsible for high gasoline prices.
Drilling proponents point to an estimate from the Minerals Management Service that there are probably about 76 billion barrels of oil waiting to be discovered offshore.
The problem is that little of that oil -- perhaps about 18 billion barrels -- lies in areas subject to the moratorium. A third of the total is off the coast of Alaska, where drilling is extraordinarily difficult and expensive, and most of the rest is in the Gulf of Mexico where drilling is permitted.
Some 3.5 billion barrels in the Minerals Management Service estimate are off the Atlantic coast in the Baltimore Canyon, an ideal geologic formation in which to find oil. It runs from east of Cape Cod all the way to North Carolina.
Beginning in the late 1970s, huge tracts were opened for exploration and oil companies jumped at the chance to drill. About 35 wells were sunk off Cape Cod, New York and New Jersey at a cost, including purchases of the leases, of almost $3 billion.
The result? Nothing. Neither oil nor gas was found.
Tired lately, for some reason. I'm heading up to Seattle today for a few hours; another change of scenery will be good for me. I think the fatigue is partly burn out from (almost) finishing the second sequence of the film. Seven minutes of animation in 5 weeks - sheesh! - Also - I need to mail out drawings to my generous donors over the last few months; sorry about the delay guys - I WILL get to it.
What the surge really proves is that ethnic cleansing works. Baghdad was a city of roughly 65% Sunnis. Now it is nearly 75% Shiites. Most of the million or so Iraqis who have been killed in the conflict, and most of the 4 million who are either internally displaced or have become refugees, are probably Sunnis. This is an important point and one that Americans should understand. The surge was created to disguise what was really taking place on the ground; ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. No one disputes this. The Sunnis have been effectively purged from the capital. That's not a "political solution". It is a war crime.
More important, the United States military has helped the Shiites win their war against the Sunnis. The Shiites control Baghdad now; the Sunnis will never get it back. That is why they are moving on to the next phase of their strategy, which is to demand that the foreign troops leave. So, at least in one respect the surge has worked; it has helped the Shiites and their allies in Tehran win the war. Bush has helped to strengthen Ahmadinejad. Was that the objective?
Iran announced its Shahab-III missile is ready to retaliate against any Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities. This missile is not long-ranged, as media wrongly claims, but a medium-ranged. Iran says it can deliver a two ton warhead over 2,000 km. But Israeli and US sources say Shahab’s maximum range is around 1,200 km, which puts much of Israel out of its range.
This obsolescent missile is highly inaccurate, particularly at maximum range. It is liquid fueled, meaning it is very vulnerable to air and missile strikes while being prepared to fire. Israel has developed tactics using aircraft, missiles and drones to attack enemy missiles in pre-launch phase. Iran has an estimated 24 Shabab-III’s.
The other missiles Iran fired this week were short ranged models of no strategic value. Tehran was even caught doctoring the pictures it issued of the multiple missile launch to cover up the failure of one of the missiles to fly. This embarrassment reinforced the view that Tehran is trying to hide its military weakness behind a lot of chest-pounding and missile theatrics.
Israel, by contrast, has around 50 Jericho-II nuclear-armed missiles with a range from 900-2,700 miles, putting every Mideast capital and parts of Russia, Pakistan, and Europe within range. Each Jericho-II carries a warhead that can destroy a major city.
