INTERVIEW - Paul Craig Roberts on Radio Far Side

Changing alliances, parallel financial systems, the emerging BRICS nations, Vladimir Putin leader of the free world, the collapse of the Anglo-American empire.  All this and much, much more on this installment of Radio Far Side.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has been Asst. Secretary of the US Treasury, editor for Business Week and the Wall Street Journal, a syndicated columnist, and member of the Cato Institute.  He has written numerous books on economics and politics and has a worldwide audience for his regular online columns.

Dr. Robers joins Radio Far Side to discuss the sobering but fascinating trends in global events.  From the fall of the dollar to the rise of Russia and China, we explore the Mid-East wars, Germany's next moves, the use of NATO to start a new Cold War, and the deep claws of the Military-Industrial Complex.  Where does Indonesia stand in all this?  What are the likely outcomes of current events over the next few months, and what of the American people caught between opposing allegiances?

Join us for an hour with one of the most respected commentators on economic issues.
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Additional links and information:
Paul Craig Roberts website
Texas Railroad Commissioner Talks Independence 
Break-Up of America?
Fracking and Burning Tap Water
Putin Polls Better Than Obama in US

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Sampai jumpa, y'all!

But Seriously, Folks...

One of the rituals of new year celebrations is nursing the hang-over of over-indulgence, not necessarily from copious libations, but from the realization that all the old problems haven't gone away.

This year marks the third in which the BP Gulf oil spill continues, if marginally abated.  It's easy to hide mistakes that are 10,000 feet underwater.  Most folks have forgotten this little problem and moved on to various other topics du jour, but the problem remains.

What a lot of people don't realize, thanks in large part to a massive media blackout of real information, is that the south central US sits on a massive lake of oil that rides under Texas, Oklahoma, Louisana, and parts of other southern states.  It extends out beyond the continental shelf and has been a major driving force in the development of deepwater oil exploration.

The Mississippi Canyon 252 block, where the blowout took place, is in 5,000 feet of water, where the pressure is roughly 3,000 psi and the temperature is at or below freezing.  These factors require the use of remotely operated vehicles at the wellhead, since the danger and expense of sending people that deep is formidable.

The sheer weight of the water and land mass sitting on top of the oil lake is mind-boggling, which is why, when BP punctured the oil-bearing layer, the resulting spew had massive pressure behind it.  The gushing oil and gas also eroded the rock and sand around the bore hole, causing fractures and fissures that spread out and away from the actual well.  To say the problem is fixed is laughable, at best.

Furthermore, the resulting loss of oil and gas pressure from the oil lake causes a number of cascading effects far from the actual well.  In parts of the lake closer to the surface, the land mass on top would slump and push the oil and gas into deeper crevasses.  This would result in sinkholes as pressure was released from under the overburden.  And that is exactly what has happened.

Another problem that is likely to result is an increase in earthquakes along the New Madrid fault.  This would be caused by the release of subsurface pressure, causing the various faults and rifts in the central US to slip and slide around.  According to various sources, there seems to be an increase in activity along the New Madrid zone.  This is not conclusive evidence that the BP spill is to blame, since EQ activity worldwide is ranging upward, but the coincidence in timing certainly gives pause for thought.

And all of this is overlaid with the inestimable damage to the Gulf coast region.  Beaches, marshes, estuaries, animal breeding grounds, and more have been badly damaged by oil and tar.  There is a thin layer of oil riding just under the surface across the whole Gulf, not to mention a vast pool of oil and liquified methane resting on the bottom of the Gulf, held down by the pressure and temperature of the water, but needing only a slight disruption, like a major hurricane, to bring that little surprise to the surface.

They're still recovering from the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, and that was ship-based.  The BP spill released more oil into the environment than any other spill in history, and the resulting release of pressure from the subsurface geology will have long-ranging effects for years to come.  The problem is that those responsible will skate because few folks will connect events 10 years from now with this one event.

In 1986, a single reactor at the Chernobyl plant in Russia ran wild and melted down.  Twenty-six years later, the effects of that disaster are still being felt.  In 2011, four reactors ran wild at Fukushima, Japan, and depending on who you listen to, somewhere between one and four of the cores have melted down releasing massive amounts of highly toxic radioactive materials into the local environment, the northern Pacific Ocean and all across the northern hemisphere of Earth.

No one can say with certainty what effects will stem from that event.  The only things we have to measure by are the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bomb attacks, and the Chernobyl disaster.  In all these cases, the outcomes were...well, disastrous.

Almost 70 years later, people are still suffering the effects of radiation in the atom bomb attacks.  Physical and mental scars, birth defects and other serious medical problems persist, though rarely discussed anymore.

As for Chernobyl, the town of Pripyat, Ukraine is a ghost town.  Piles of documentation show massive mutations in local wildlife and plants.  Radioactive fallout was measured all across northern Europe, Russia, Mongolia, and Canada.  Who knows how many folks have suffered numerous medical problems that have not and never will be tied to Chernobyl...at least in the public sphere.

Now we have Fukushima.  The sheer scale of this ongoing disaster is mind-boggling.  The core or cores are still spewing radiation, millions of gallons of waste water are still being dumped into the ocean, plants and animals are showing mutations far from Fukushima, and radioactive fallout directly tied to the plant has been detected nearly everywhere in the northern hemisphere.

It will be generations before a full assessment of this disaster can even begin to be assembled, assuming there are generations to come that can make the measurements, and the public has the necessary facts to track.  That such a massive and ongoing problem has slipped blithely from the headlines is telling, though.

Finally, there is a disadter happening in slow motion that is affecting every human soul on the planet.  We have planted a time bomb at the very core of our civilization.  We all know it's there, yet we refuse to do anything about it, whether at the 'leadership' level, or at the collective level.  That problem is debt.

Few people stop to realize that economics are little more than a branch of physics.  Money is momentum, and momentum is energy.  Where money accumulates, it sparks creative force and spurs growth.  It fuels ingenuity and productivity.  There is as much a metaphysical element to money, as physical.  This aspect of money is what drives greed and gives it the power that it has.

In the physical universe, all things have an equal and opposite counterpart.  Bringing the two together usually results in a massive and destructive release of energy and the annihilation of the two objects: electrons and positrons, matter and antimatter, quarks and antiquarks.  Money is no different.

In the realm of money, there is currency and debt.  Think of it as money and anti-money.  Just like our universe, where matter rules supreme, if anti-matter built up to a sufficient mass, it would ignite and destroy Life, the Universe and Everything.  In the same way, if debt builds to a sufficient level, it will destroy an economy and wipe out pretty much everything worth talking about.

It's happened repeatedly throughout history.  Most civilizations that have collapsed and disappeared were victims in one way or another of economic collapse, whether from outside or within.  In those collapses, the destruction was limited to secluded regions because global economies had not been integrated until the last 100 years or so.

Now we face a rapidly growing amount of anti-money within the universe of our global economy.  Any efforts to stem the tide have either failed or were non-starters due to lack of political will and ignorance of the general public.  Consequently, we are facing a cataclysmic collapse when the money-anti-money ratio reaches critical mass.  At some point, if not already, the reaction will become self-sustaining and nothing will stop it.  Many argue that point has come and gone.

In any event, we are careening headlong into a global economic melt-down as the debt ratio continues to climb, and it will annihilate our civilization.  Is it the end of the world?  No...but it will sure set us back a century or two while we sort out the pieces.

Meanwhile, our media feeds us sports 'news' and celebrity faux pas as real issues and information.  Folks blissfully go about their business thinking someone somewhere will solve all these problems for them so that they don't have to drop the TeeVee remote.

As a civilization, most of us are completely ignorant - willfully or not - of the major problems at the foundation of our modern civilization.  Thousands of years ago, Hammurabi was able to fix Babylon's debt problems by declaring jubilee yeats every so often and cancelling all debts.  That's hardly feasible these days.  The nuclear and petroleum disasters are frankly beyond our capability to fix...at least for now.  We have so fouled our nest that we are no longer in control of our destiny.

Perhaps that is the source of our collective desire for a savior.  Perhaps at some level we realize that we are incompetent to remediate our mistakes.  Therefore, we have replaced hope with a burning desire to see the whole thing come crashing down so we can get about the business of rebuilding.  However, rebuilding without having learned the lessons of our mistakes will only lead to more of the same.

The time is long past to begin a global, public debate on where we are and where we want to go as a civilization.  Perhaps collapse is the best answer, but what then, and can we do anything to lessen the blow.  These issues need to be addressed in frank dialogue on a scale never-before attempted by our species.

The problems we face are global and affect every soul on the planet.  The dialogue must therefore involve every soul on the planet.  We have the technology to do it, but not the will.  Nor do we have sufficient information because a variety of interests want to limit liability, control images and wield power.  We can not allow it to continue without severe risk to ourselves and our species.

We only have two choices: demand open and universal dialogue and put all the chips on the table, or die.  There is no weasel room.  The die is cast.  The disasters are piling up and they will run their course regardless of whether we acknowledge them or not.  And we ignore them at a tremendous cost to our civilization.

We must place our 'leaders' in boxes and not allow them to wriggle out.  We must hold our organizations and institutions accountable and demand that they 'fess up so that we can figure out where we stand.  All the dodging and lawyering is destroying us, and secrecy only buries the infection, not cures it.

We have the means, but not the will.  On our current course, we will be like deer in the headlights when the truck of history runs over us.  Only we, mass humanity, have the power to hold our leaders' feet to the fire.

Or we can just watch the tidal wave coming and hope we become fantastic surfers before it gets here.

Car Wreck In Slow Motion

The smackdown has begun.

If you line up a couple of dozen headlines just right, you can see the Big Showdown coming.  There's increasing polarization along hemispheric and ideological lines.  The players are lining up for the key play that will decide the next 100 years of life (or lack thereof) on this planet.

The role of we, the audience, have been assigned is to choose sides, shut up and stay out of the way until called upon to throw our lives onto the pile.  We're supposed to buy our gee-gaws and banners, sit nicely in the stands and cheer politely for our side.  We have no role in choosing the plays or strategy.  That's beyond our simple minds and capabilities.

For the most part, we are all dead anyway.  The BurP Gulf disaster poisoned the Atlantic, and Fukushima poisoned the Pacific.  It's only a matter of time before we all start dropping like flies from a myriad of diseases and lack of safe food supply.  It's part of the design to cull the herd.  Those who survive the onslaught of environmental death will be deemed evolutionarily strong enough to breed labor stock for the master race.

You can bet that it those were not contrived events, if the master race didn't have a plan to save themselves, then the media would be absolutely beside itself getting us all riled up to fix things.  But since the silent death is their game plan, we hear only silence and condescending coos from the 'adults'.

"There, there, little useless eater.  Don't be afraid.  Just go quietly," they tell us.  Like the scene in "Saving Private Ryan," where the German soldier reassures his victim as he slides the knife between his ribs.

So, it's very easy to say these things, but what proof do we have that the Great Ideology War is coming?

China and Japan, as of today, have linked their currencies in direct trade.  Up to now, both nations have had to convert everything to dollars before paying each other for deals.  Now, the second and third largest economies on Earth have completely by-passed the dollar and started trading with each other using their own currencies.

This is historic on many levels.  China and Japan have a lot of bad blood between them.  Japan invaded China during WWII and took over a significant part of the country.  Even now, they occasionally get into dust-ups over certain chunks of ocean and some islands that have been trading hands for centuries.

This is just one of several examples over the last couple of years of China moving to create its own world order, seperate and apart from the more glitzy and famous New (very old) World Order.  They have done the same currency move with Russia, and have taken steps to cozy up with southern and eastern hemispheric countries.  In other words, China is positioning the yuan to be a world reserve currency, at least within its sphere of influence.

The US is showing its nervousness and displeasure by announcing that it is beefing up its naval presence in the South Pacific.  The US is deeply worried that China is slowly cordoning off the batteries of Western economic growth by wooing Korea, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam.  So far, Singapore is the sole redoubt of Western hegemony in Asia, but the significant Chinese population there could easily sway it the other way, especially if Western economies continue to implode leaving Singapore little choice for survival.

In answer to China's PR campaign, the West has been consolidating its interests in Africa and the Middle East.  Crashing Libya and Egypt were just the beginning.  Iran's closest ally on the Mediterranean is Syria.  There is now an all-out effort to invade and destroy Syria before launching into Iran.  If the West were to go straight into Iran, Syria would open a second front much closer to Israel, and that would be bad.

However, Russia nad China are both lining up on the side of Syria, and both have veto votes on the UN Security Council.  The West is trying hard to get Putin to play ball, but he's not buying it.  The West launched a massive campaign to discredit Putin ahead of the recent elections there, but obviously the Russian people are happy with the direction he is taking things.

Furthermore, China has been making in-roads into the US' traditional ally base with one simple tool...money.  Where the US goes in with strong-arm tactics and makes a few deals with dictators to lock up resources, China goes in with an army of engineers to construct roads and infrastructure, making friends by offering friendship and development, not fear and bombs.  As a consequence, South America and Africa have come increasingly under the sway of China, out of loyalty and respect, rather than fear and loathing.

When you place Fukushima into the context of geo-political maneuvering, it could not have been better timed or placed to undermine eastern economic growth.  Not only did it strike at the heart of any economy - energy - but it has ensured an ongoing poison pill in the heart of an economic engine that has slowly been backing away from its Western masters.

In fact, Japan has been quietly off-shoring its manufacturing and intellectual base.  They have been buying up companies, specifically factories, all over Southeast Asia.  I would not be surprised to learn that Japan has made deals vis-a-vis the 'ghost' cities in China, as part of the recent currency moves.

Interestingly, what seems to be happening at the highest levels is the same game the West used on the Soviet Union.  The USSR, bogged down in Afghanistan for a decade, was hemorrhaging money.  Reagan famously threw into the mix Star Wars and a massive military build-up, causing the USSR to bankrupt itself trying to keep up.

In a twist of fate, the same strategy seems to be in play against the West now.  China is pursuing a massive military build-up, while Russia is supplying Syria and Iran with weapons and political backing.  Concurrently, the US and EU are financially imploding in their attempts to solidify their resource bases in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.  The tables have been turned, and by all appearances, it is working.

The EU is in complete financial decay.  It is beyond rescuing now.  The end is inevitable, though the exact landing place and time are still matters for bookmakers in Vegas and Fleet Street.  The Swiss are slowly distancing themselves.  The British are trying to cauterize the blood ties to the tumor.  Germany is pulling the drapes closed while trying very hard to appear engaged.  In fact, if you view Germany as the heart of the EU, then the situation looks just like a living organism, in that the extremities are being cast off in a bid to save the trunk.

Meantime, the US is in the midst of a St. Vitus' dance.  As promised, Ben Bernanke is all but literally taking to the skies to dump dollars on the world in a bid to puff up inflation, and thus face value.  Certainly, the dollar has been on the rise of late as the euro crashes and burns.  But this can only last until folks wise up to the fact that there is no carry value in the dollar.  As fast as you can amass them, they become worthless, much like the Mark in the Weimar Republic.

All this sets up a rally in gold, the likes of which no one has ever seen.  At the moment, it may appear counter to trend, but one must keep in mind that the gold market is the oldest shell game on Earth, and prices are being artificially lowered to, 1) prevent folks from seeing the decay in progress, and 2) to give insiders a chance to load up at bargain basement prices.  As prices drop, us little guys panic and sell off.  When the insiders are satisfied that they have a good chunk of our wealth, then they will pump gold up and trash the currencies into which you converted your metals.

In summary, what we are seeing now is the West panicking and falling into defensive mode.  The New (very old) World Order had a time-table for crashing the world and consolidating power, but there were variables that they either didn't plan for, or didn't gave low odds of happening.  They didn't figure on Russia recovering so quickly or so much, by throwing off the Rothschild banks and issuing state-controlled currency.  They didn't expect China to out-maneuver them by hedging the pile of western debt it had amassed.  They didn't expect a serious and concerted effort on the part of major power blocs to link up in a bid to create an anti-NWO, if you will.

The one economic tool left in the US' box is to repudiate the huge mass of gold bonds it has issued, especially in the eastern hemisphere, since the late 1800s.  Many Asian economies are quietly built on these bonds and pulling the plug is a last-ditch effort to let the air out of the balloon.  This is why you occasionally catch news stories about 'counterfeit' bonds being captured in Italy, the Philippines and elsewhere.  By claiming they are fake and forcefully withdrawing them, the US is trying desperately to pull its gold out from under Asia's feet.  Will it work?  Stay tuned...

What we do know, though we have to discern it from carefully stitching together a dozen loose ends, is that a chess game of monsterous proportions is playing out.  At the moment, the West has backed into defense, while the East is launching a major offernsive on the least protected flank.  Armies and navies are being pushed around the map.  Currencies are being deployed.  Propaganda has been ramped up on both sides.

As pawns, it is difficult for us to get a clear view of the board.  We can see those pieces closest to us, but which way they will go, and which ones will be sacrificed, are hard to discern.  All we can do is extrapolate by knowing what has happened, and what the overall goal of the game is.

Needless to say, whoever wins and whatever their long-term goals are, it will not be pleasant for us little folk.  We are tossed around as human resources, deployed to best advantage for the master race.  The only true and effective weapon we have is to walk away and refuse to take part in this charade.  The only way we can do that is to remove ourselves from their economies and turn off the channels of ceaseless mind-control they use to manipulate our thinking.

What have we got to lose?  We're all dead already.  Just a matter of whether we want to go with our boots on, or with bloody knees begging for scraps from their tables.

The beauty of it is, we don't have to fire a single shot or throw a single punch.  Just turn off the TeeVee and start bartering with our neighbors.  We are suffering already doing their bidding, why not chose our suffering for our own ends?

Call is return on investment.

A Cloud Of Unknowing

One of our many highly intelligent readers is banging the proverbial head against the figurative wall:

Hello B, I came across this article that left me wondering what in the world is going on!  Riddle of the radiation sweeping across Europe: UN nuclear agency mystified by soaring levels I have questions.  Seriously, if the amount of this radioactive iodine-131 is so small, why even mention it.  Did NASA release the images of the Tarantula Nebula in order to explain the radioactive iodine- 131 or did someone just see the description of the radiation and winds produced by this nebula and conveniently link it to the 'riddle of the radiation'. How many patients pee and poo would it take to loft this radioactive iodine-131 into the atmosphere?  Does it become aerosolized when these patients flush the toilet?  Are they referring to the sweat that is 'excreted' by the patients that gets wafted into the air as they walk down the sidewalk? I could go on, but I won't!  What do you think is up with this?  Why would they even bring it up?  Stuff like this makes me crazy!!

Being a man of few words, I briefly responded:

You have a rather intriguing way of opening several cans of worms at once.

To answer your first question, yes, they do think we are stupid.  To a certain extent, they are right, but I think the more appropriate word is 'ignorant,' which suggests at its root that we ignore/look the other way when it comes to a lot of important things.  In my own experience, I used to think that if Hollywood would produce quality entertainment, people would flock to it, but I've found that most people just want mindless pablum and escapist schlock.

In my travels, I've found repeatedly that most people don't have a care outside their neighborhood, much less global or universal concerns.  It's enough for them to feed their families every day and worry about rain or lack thereof.  Wind and sea currents propagating radioactive elements across the globe are beyond their scope of immediate problems.  Heck, I could introduce you to a dozen people of my acquaintance that live on $5 a day.  The other day, I bought a piece of furniture and after assembling it, I took the box out for trash.  I hadn't even set it down when an old man asked if he could have it.  My box was his furniture.  He just landed a new bed!

Those are the vast majority of people, whose cares can not extend beyond the immediate need.  Of the remainder, most are willfully ignorant.  It's easy to lay the blame on media and public education as failing to raise us above the symptoms to see the causes, but I think we all bear a large responsibility to use the skills and talents we have been given to educate ourselves, by asking the appropriate questions and seeking the correct answers.  If, in March, the worst nuclear disaster ever occured (and is ongoing), and by November, folks are detecting unusual radioactive elements around the world at the same latititudes, then WE are responsible for making the connection and then doing something about it.  The corporations and their mouthpieces will do all they can to limit liability, just as with BP.  If they can delay the 'eureka' moments long enough, then most people will forget about the initial problem, as they go about their daily grinds.

And honestly, it seems to work like a charm, except for the few dozen of us who can think a single thought longer than the span of a commercial.  We are marginalized as loons and tin-foilers by the mass media, and the average Joe naturally doesn't want anyone to think he's crazy, so he avoids such people and thoughts.

Because Fukishima has been buried in the mass media, and people who look for conspiracies in such things are marginalized, and most people don't personally investigate such things further than the first 60 seconds of the nightly newscast, most will never make the association between European radiation and Japanese reactors.  Those who inadvertently wander into such territory will run away as quickly as they can because they don't wnat to be marginalized.  Think of how many people became violently angry if someone suggested 9/11 was a set-up.  And how many folks voted for Obama because they didn't want to be labeled racist or stupid?  People will do ANYTHING to appear normal and follow the group mind.

This kind of willful ignorance is unforgivable, to my mind.  That folks refuse to entertain alternative ideas because they are weak and insecure have no excuse.  Even claiming that they are indoctrinated by mass media and education at some level requires capitulation on the part of the individual.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, if everyone is going in one direction, you should go in the other.  I first read that when I was in seventh or eighth grade, and it has stuck with me for life.  It has also rarely failed me, as eventually, folks come around, but by them I'm off on another tangent entirely.

Try to explain to someone that Fukishima caused the European raditation with wind and sea current charts and their eyes will glaze over in five seconds flat.  Yet, it clearly shows that radiation in Norway and Sweden is predictable, given the wind currents at that latitude.  Baffin Island should be rather 'hot', as well, if someone were up there checking.

Eventually, people 'get it', but it takes folks like us talking about it for years for it to sink in.  Occasionally, it helps if an 'expert' comes out and confirms it, like the whole global warming farce.  But we usually aren't that lucky.

As for NASA, there's a group inside that has been communicating visually for many years.  Releasing images that create links in people's mind between disparate subjects is just one of their techniques.  I missed the image you're talking about, but it seems in keeping with their doings.  Wouldn't surprise me in the least.  I'm still debating whether it happens at the highest ranks, or whether it is clever apparatchiks doing it under the radar, but it can sometimes be rather amusing to look under NASA's skirt.  Hoagland thinks it's part of an ongoing educational effort, I think it's to see who 'gets it,' and tag them for later treatment (half kidding).

At any rate, you're not alone out there.  There are plenty of us raging against the machine.

As you can see, we have a habit of being all too terse and abbreviated in our responses, but we will not apologize!

Needless to say, I'm far more willing to buy the Fukishima cause, before considering sweaty, defecating patients.  For one thing, size of the source is far too small.

One thing is clear.  BP causing Oklahoma earthquakes and TEPCO causing the irradiation of the northern hemisphere means that corporations have far too much power and lack of responsibility.  The only argument in their favor is that they can't possibly pay reparations for damage to the Earth on such massive scales.  They can, however, be treated like any other mass murderer and be marched to the figurative gallows and summarily executed and their net worths divvied up and given out as partial repayment for the sufferering and death they have caused, both now and far into the future.  No, it's not justice, but it is a start.  It it could be done to EG Farben after World War II, then it can be done in these cases.  It should also be causing a mass reconsideration of how much leash we give to such creatures.

Since none of these things are happening, one can only assume that the global population doesn't care about being erradicated by a bunch of greedy board members.

Que sera!

In the meantime, Clif High's latest interview is out.  Many thanks to the Bali Bureau for passing on the link.  It seems that what we are unwilling to clean up, the Universe will take care of for us.  The problem is, It is less concerned about collateral damage than we are, and given that we don't care at all, that's saying quite a bit.

Stand by for transmissions from the Far Side!

Physics And The Art Of Sun Tea

Going to show my age here, but what the hell?

Remember going to the five-n-dime as a kid and buying those balsa wood airplanes?  The ones with the big rubber band that made the propeller spin.  After you destroyed the plane, you could use the rubber band to snap your brother on the rump.  OK, hold that thought.

Now, for those who think that the sun has no influence on Earth’s climate, which if you listen to NASA you might, let’s do a couple of experiments.

First, get a big glass jar with a lid and fill it with water.  You’ll want to start this in the morning.  Put a couple of those big tea bags inside and seal it.  Now, place it in a nice sunny spot while we go off on some adventures.

Next, we climb aboard the new LFS private jet.  You know, the new Airbus transparent plane that would make Wonder Woman green with envy.  Now that we’re at cruising altitude, you’ll notice that we occasionally run into some turbulence, where the plane bounces up and down.  That’s because, as the sun warms the surface of the Earth for 12 hours a day, the surface air warms and starts to rise.  As it does, it creates a vacuum that’s filled with cold air from higher altitudes sinking.  This creates a convection current.  That one we just flew through is only one of thousands all across the sun-facing side of the Earth.  Those currents, among other things, create wind, which we use to fly balsa wood airplanes and kites.

OK, now we’re landed in Chile, despite the dire warnings about volcanic ash.  I want you to run back to the toilet and flush.  That’s all, just flush.  Notice how that pretty blue liquid swirls around in a clockwise direction?  Great!  Now we’ll head back north.  Good, now here in Europe, where the entire EU is collapsing before our eyes, I want you to run back and flush again.  Notice how the blue stuff swirls in a counter-clockwise direction?  Excellent!

That’s called the Coriolis Effect.  It’s what causes ocean currents and north-south trains to wear one side of the tracks more than the other.  It drives cyclones and anti-cyclones alike.

So, now we come back to the house and check on the tea.  It’s not finished yet, but notice how the dark tea is sliding down one side of the jar, while the clear water is climbing up the other side.  And since we’re on the equator here at LFS world headquarters, go ahead and flush the toilet one more time.  Did you see that?  The water went straight down without swirling at all.

See?  This physics stuff is really fun, isn’t it?

Why all this running around and making tea?  Because, what happens is the sun warms both the air and the oceans, causing convection currents.  Then, the Coriolis effect creates streams like the Gulf Stream current in the North Atlantic and the jet stream in the upper atmosphere.  Those streams carry the sun’s energy, in the form of heat, and distribute it around the globe in a fairly even way, so that we all experience a pretty narrow range of temperatures across the face of the Earth.

The Gulf Stream swirls around the Gulf of Mexico, picking up the nice warm water, and then carries across the Atlantic, where it releases the heat when the current slams into the west coast of Europe.  Though it’s not a lot, it’s enough to keep the permafrost out of the Queen’s Wheaties.

Back to our rubber band airplane.  Go ahead, wind it up.  Watch the rubber band as you go.  It twists up more and more, getting tighter and tighter, then…POP!  It gets one of those big knots in it, then another and another.

The ends of the rubber band are the north and south poles of the sun.  As the sun spins, its magnetic field gets wound up tighter and tighter, until…POP!  A sunspot appears, then another and another.  This goes on for about 11 years until the magnetic field turns completely inside out, and the poles reverse, clearing all the stress in the system, until the next cycle begins.  Just like letting go of the propeller on our plane and letting the stored energy out of the rubber band.  After roughly 22 years, the poles have reversed twice, so that north is back at north again.

For the past 20 or 30 years, the sun has been wildly active, spewing out tons of plasma and radiation, called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs.  They carry huge amounts of energy at blinding speed out to the far reaches of the solar system.  As a consequence of this very active period, there has been global warming on virtually every planet in the solar system. 

The oxygen levels have jumped in Venus’ atmosphere.  Mars’ polar caps have been receding at an alarming rate.  Huge new storms have appeared on Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus.  Even Pluto’s rather thin atmosphere, which at this point in its orbit usually freezes and falls to the ground, is still hanging in there.

On Earth, we’ve noted some warmer general temperatures, some polar melting and more powerful and frequent storms.  Algore and the Alarmists have tried their damnedest to convince us that it’s our fault, so they could tax us for carbon, which they don’t seem to notice is what life itself is made on, at least on Earth.  Or maybe they did notice, and the whole point was to put a tax on the biosphere itself.  Also, 0.039% of our atmosphere is carbon dioxide, so a fraction of a percent here of there really doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.  Mars’ atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide, and it’s damn cold.  So Algore can jump off a cliff.

Anyway, I digress…

The other day, NASA came out with an announcement that there are signs the sun’s magnetic poles may not turn inside out this time around.  In fact, the whole cycle may slip into neutral for a while, if all the data points are right.  In fact, there are three discreet signs that all point towards a less active period for the sun, and that’s not good.  “Scientists” are saying it could even be the beginning of another Maunder Minimum.

Between the years 1650 and 1700, the sun spot cycle (knots in the rubber band) came to a screaming halt.  What does this concern us?  Well, it seems that the Maunder, Sporer and Wolf minima have corresponded perfectly with a drop in the global average temperature.  Also, the recently passed active period, as well as past maxima have lined up perfectly with generally warmer phases in global temperatures.

At the time of the Maunder Minimum, there was a phenomenon known as The Little Ice Age, which came directly on the heels of the Medieval Warm Period.  In other words, an extended period of increased sunspots corresponded with warmer global temperatures, followed by a period of almost no sunspots, when Europe, Russia and North America experienced incredibly cold, long winters.

Many spots=palm trees in England and record harvests, no spots=famine and freezing to death

Algore can take a hike at this point.  We don’t need him any more.  This is a pattern that has repeated throughout the past 400 years that records can be correlated.

If we are heading into a period of reduced solar activity, then the amount of heating on Earth will lead to cooler air and oceans.  That, in turn, will slow down the convection and ocean currents, which will cause overall colder temperatures, reduced harvests and greater reliance on fuels, such as petroleum, to keep warm…at least until you die of starvation. 

It would also cause the El Niño/La Niña cycle, which is basically warm water sloshing back and forth between Asia and South America, to slow, and even stop.  This would cause devastating droughts in some areas, and equally nasty flooding in others.

If the sun does indeed quiet down, and especially if it reaches the extremes recorded during the Maunder Minimum, then we could be in deep trouble.

One of the biggest fallacies of the whole global warming farce was that we would all bake to death.  First of all, warmer temps would have caused more evaporation from the oceans and poles, which would have increased rainfall and the amount of fresh water available.  It would have also increased harvests and gone a long way to restoring rain forests.  All beneficial to life as we know it.  People don’t catch colds when it warm, right?

On the other hand, if we head into a mini ice age, food production will drop, overall humidity will decrease, more fresh water will get locked up as polar ice, and it will take vastly more energy to keep warm.

What are some of the proposed causes of the Mini Ice Age?

“Several causes have been proposed: cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, an inherent variability in global climate, or decreases in the human population.” – Wikipedia, The Little Ice Age

Ocean currents, sunspots, volcanoes, and…decreased human population?!  You mean all this crazy talk about reducing the population could actually cause the world to freeze in the dark?  Hahahahaha!  What a bunch of loonies those warmists are.

Let’s try another thought experiment here.  Suppose we have the technology and research to lead us to believe that another mini ice age (or worse) is coming.  How would we react, given unlimited resources to make it happen?

First, we would need to store up supplies, like seed, food and other necessities.  Then, we would set out to lock up as much oil as we could get our hands on, even if it meant starting a half-dozen wars and crashing the economy in the process.  We would have to distract the masses by making them look in the wrong direction so they wouldn’t compete with our preparations, or panic in the streets.

“The Little Ice Age by anthropology professor Brian Fagan of the University of California at Santa Barbara, tells of the plight of European peasants during the 1300 to 1850 chill: famines, hypothermia, bread riots, and the rise of despotic leaders brutalizing an increasingly dispirited peasantry. In the late 17th century, writes Fagan, agriculture had dropped off so dramatically that "Alpine villagers lived on bread made from ground nutshells mixed with barley and oat flour." ^[33] Historian Wolfgang Behringer has linked intensive witch-hunting episodes in Europe to agricultural failures during the Little Ice Age.” – Wikipedia, Little Ice Age

Sound familiar?

On the other hand, the Medieval Warm Period went hand-in-hand with the Great Age of Exploration, the Renaissance and some of the most enlightened social and political thinking our civilization has every produced.

Little Ice Age=starvation/death/despotism, Medieval Warm Period=Renaissance/exploration/expansion

I’m just sayin’…

Wow!  That tea is hot, just from the sun’s rays!  Here, let me add a little sugar and some ice, and…VIOLA!  Some delicious physics!  Don’t worry, Algore and the Warmidiots tell us the sun has nothing to do with our climate, and by extension, our civilization.  So, just relax, drink your sun tea and rest assured that everything is j-u-s-t-f-i-n-e.

See you next time!  And don’t get sun burn!
----------
As an aside, if you want to study ocean currents, you need to drop markers of some sort into the water.  Color dye is one way, but is hard to see, when the background is completely black.  The best way is to use radioactive or chemical markers that can easily be traced, even by remote satellite.

What's this?!  Last year, BP dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf Stream, and this year, Fukushima is dumping untold millions of gallons of radioactive water into one of the key northern Pacific currents.

Hmmm...now if you can dump these markers into the water and call them accidents, so that you can get around things like the EPA, wouldn't that be helpful?  And we can map these currents long-term to see how they are changing as the sun's output decreases.

Just a thought...

Okelah Kalau Begitu

Writer's block.

Contrary to popular belief, it's not the absence of ideas, it's a case of too many.  It's hard to figure out where to begin.

It's kind of like Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.  It begins and ends in the middle of a sentence, so that the entire book is a full circle.  I've always thought it would be interesting to make a movie like that, with the credits in the middle, and starting and ending in the middle of a scene.  People would be completely befuddled.  Movies and writing are linear, in that they must begin at some point and end at another point, with a series of building climaxes, until the pay-off.

At the moment, as I sit here trying to organize the bee hive in my head, it's hard to pick a point at which to launch.  I sat for an hour tonight making my world-famous spaghetti sauce, which is a pretty mindless project involving cutting up dozens of onions and tomatoes.  While I was working, my mind was pondering all the events going on the in world.  Obviously, I'm not alone.

There have been so many things happening that folks have comepletely forgotten that the world's worst nuclear accident in still in progress in Fukushima, Japan.  It's belching out piles of radioactive isotopes known to cause all sorts of horrible diseases and birth defects and other really fun stuff.  But, if you look at mainstream media, hardly a word.  Nobody remembers it.

Instead, we've been distracted with 'royal' weddings, birth certificates and farcical bad-guy baggings.  And while we are arguing over whether Obama's birth certificate is genuine, or Usama bin Laden is really dead, we're all literally cooking in our seats.

I've gotten a couple of nasty-grams from folks laughing because I like silver, and the price has dropped nearly $20 in the last two weeks.  I can only answer, "Go out and try to buy a 100oz. bar."  Can't do it.  JPMorgan can play with COMEX to save it's "too big to fail" ass, but it doesn't change the fact that they can't cover their naken shorts.  They're hiding with by playing numbers.

But it doesn't change the fact that we're cooking in our seats.

I got a couple more nasty-grams saying that I'm unpatriotic for not backing Obama and the UBL fiasco.  I can only say, "You're unpatriotic for not questioning every utterance from your government."

Meanwhile, we're all cooking in our seats.

Got one nasty-gram saying I'm seeing boogy men under every rock with all the talk about symbols and stuff.  Sorry, but that kind of stupidity and willful ignorance doesn't deserve an answer.

All the while, we're cooking in our seats.

Take a look at this link.  Don't know about you, but it pretty much takes the wind out of UBL's, Obama's and the 'royal's' sails.  It looks like Clif's web bots talking about ill winds circling the planet nine times are pretty much spot on.  I live 6 degrees south of the equator, so it'll take a little longer to get here, but that crap will eventually end up in my salad, too.

Makes me feel real good about what my grandchildren will look like, not that my genetics were GQ stock to start with, but a healthy dose of plutonium in the zygote stage sure ain't gonna help things.

But hey!  Cop-killing rappers at the White House and Lady GaGa are MUCH more important, right?

Because all the twhile, we're cooking in our seats.

Gee, you don't think THEY'd create all this noise to hide the fact that we're all cooking in our seats, do you?  I mean, just because the 'royal' wedding started at 11:11am, and certain important objects, such as Venus (the Light Bearer) was passing overhead in London at that moment, we shouldn't worry, right?  All's well, brother,  Everything is double-plus good.  Choco rations are up 15% this month!

What's really interesting is that the Untied States are setting up for a truly unique revolution, in which the States themselves revolt against the federal government.  I can't really think of it's equal in history.  It's already begun in States like Arizona, which took away the federal powers to regulate immigration, in California which took away the fed's power to regulate marijuana, in Utah which took back the power to coin money.  Little by little, the States are asserting their 9th and 10th Amerndment rights.  It's a wonder to behold from over here on the Far Side.

Hope it continues.

I think they should just dissolve the federal government and start a fresh one, using the same Constitution, but put it somewhere in Nebraska this time.  The only States that could possibly be against that idea would be, oh say, Connecticut, since they have absolutely nothing but rich New Yorkers there.

Despite all the fun and games, we're cooking in our seats.

Shouldn't we be worrying about things that will affect our great-grandchildren, instead of all this fluff and stuff that won't mean a damn thing next year?

Can't you feel the heat yet?

Dateline - Singapore

One table, four people, five languages.

I love traveling.

"I noticed coming in to Singapore a lot of ships sitting out in the harbor.  Is business that good?"  I thought it was a reasonable assumption, given the 'busy' look of things.

"They're stacked," Azzam said.  He's Jordanian and has 75 ships, and a number of other big-money interests on the side.  Kind of a quiet Onasas.  "Business is way down now and there are more than 500 ships stacked off of Singapore.  It's the same everywhere."

Stacked means 'parked indefinitely,' in ship talk.

"Bulk dry is down more than 20%, petro tankers more than 30%, and container is down more than 40% from 2008.  The only reason dry bulk is holding up is because food prices keep going up, is all," Azzam said gravely.

It didn't sound encouraging, at all.  I sucked on my beer thoughtfully.  I looked over at another companion.  Tafiq is in the shoe business in Indonesia.  He is here trying to drum up some new buyers.

"How's the shoe business?" I asked, sucking beer-foam off my moustache.

"We're doing OK, but Japan hurt us and things were already slow.  America is not buying like it did a couple of years ago," he explained.

"But I was watching the news this morning.  News Channel Asia, I think it was.  One analyst was saying that America is coming back, Japan is not nearly as bad as everyone is saying, and everything will improve in the second half."

The entire table chuckles morosely, as if they just heard one of those jokes that is both repulsive and funny at the same time.

Mark is an analyst with a large accounting and audit firm.  "We're seeing a lot of M&A out of Japan.  I've got a pile of due diligence projects on my desk.  The Japs are bailing out and they're looking for just about anything to keep the supply line going.  Even the Japanese government is talking about moving out of Tokyo.  Problem is they can't think of anywhere they can go to get away from the clouds."

"Should I be worried here in Singapore?" I ask.

We all look up at the clear night sky reflexively.  No one answers that one.

I've been pondering the Fukushima thing.  Was it MIHOP, or a surprise, or did it go off too soon?  There's evidence on all sides, though arguably most of it is circumstantial.  Since HAARP's website has been down, there's no way of knowing whether it was cranked up before 3/11.  I do note the 11 in the date, as well as the 3.  Those PTW just love those number things.  I'm leaning towards the MIHOP theory.  Why?
Well, I suspect that a lot of the DU ammo the US has been dumping all over the Middle East is probably from the Japanese plant to keep the mess from being tracked back to Uncle.  But the amount that has been dumped on Iraq, and now on Libya, was starting to show up in all sorts of inconvenient places...like food.

By blowing up the Fukushima plant, it was a perfect means to cover tracks.  Now, there's plausible deniability.  Now, when someone says, "Hey, there's radiation in my soup," Uncle can just say, "Oh, don't worry.  It's Japanese.  Here, we'll just raise the safe limit.  All better?"

Of course, we'll probably never know the truth.  The truth has been so deeply buried that us regular grunts won't be able to dig it all out in a thousand years.

A guy yelling into his cell phone in Hindi at the table behind us shakes me from my thoughts.  I lay out the idea to the table.

"Coiuld be.  Who's to say," Azzam answers.  "Only Allah knows, and He keeps many things from us sometimes."

Tariq just shugs and Mark stares at his beer.  Perhaps he's trying to catch a little glow in it.

I fly home tomorrow with my spanking fresh work visa.  What do I care if the world goes to hell in a hand basket?  I'm eating and I have all my needs met.  Who cares if my children grandchildren and great-grandchildren won't have a plaent to live on?  I got mine, right?  No worries, mate.

We all part ways after a delicious roast duck dinner and a handful of ice cold Tiger beers.  We all had that look on our faces, like "I wonder if we'll all still be here tomorrow?"

But hey!  Green shoots!  Unemployment claims are down!  The federal budget was slashed $352 million.  The BRICS are calling for an end to the dollar.  And Libya will submit to World Bank control or BURN BABY!  I all part of The Plan.  It's been published for years.  You mean you never read The Plan?  You really should.

Sometimes I wish I coud be the Joker: "I don't have a plan.  I just do!"

A great way of life, if I could achieve it.  Right now, I have to follow My Plan and get back to Jakarta.  Being on the road is tiring for us old guys.

Insanity Is An Eight-Letter Word

The Japanese have now officially expanded the evacuation zone at Fukushima.  As a public service to our readers, we are posting a map of the new zone:

Incidentally, this also happens to be the map of the area affected by the depleted uranium weapons the US is dumping all over the Middle East.

In a moment of clarity, if not honesty, the Japanese government has raised the threat level to 7.  Seems innocuous enough.  After all, it's not 10.  Oh, but the list doesn't have 10, which makes a lot of sense.  Because things always seem the 'most' at 10, don't they?  Amplifiers, women and wine scales all go to 10.  But nuclear disasters only go to 7.  Heck, even the earthquake that started all this was close to 10.

So, now that the cores of five reactors have melted down, the north Pacific Ocean is a radioactive waste dump and the entire northern hemisphere is sucking nuke dust, I guess it's time to call it a '7,' right?  Human beings are now officially the only known species who shit in their own nest.

The whole world (see map above) has gone completely nuts.  We're nuking everything in sight, even with no money we can't shut the feral gummint down, and Oprah is finally signing off.  On top of that, she wants a million bux for every commercial during the final show.  What does she think she is, the Super Bowl?

Not that I'm not sad.  I've made some good money off of Oprah...and Dr. Phil and Montel and the rest of their ilke.  But, the headline just seems out of place with things like Israel's Iron Dome, Libya's woes and drone aircraft killing American soldiers.  Seems Facebook is muscling in on the action, as well.  Something about the owner giving half of it away, or some such non-sense.

OH MY GAWD!  And Justin Beiber won't be playing in Israel!  It's Armageddon, fer sure!

It's enough to make a thinking person curl up in a foetal position and go into a self-imposed coma.  Kind of like Michael Valentine Smith.  It's more than I can grok, you know?  As my mother likes to say, "Crazy people make sane people crazy."

Let's take a deep breath and just look at some of this mess.

The feral gummint got into a big fight over budget cuts, and when the dust settled, they still approved more spending than last year, even after cutting.  WTF?!  If we spin over to the US National Debt Clock, we see that every American taxpayer (all three of us) owes over a million bux!  You got that kinda dough?  Neither does Unca Sam.  The debt now equals the sum total of American output for one year, assuming everyone gives up Social Security, Medicare, welfare, unemployment, and all the other little carrots they've dangled in from of us all our lives to keep us down on the farm.

Over in Libya, Qaddafi is holding back some 'rebel' al-Qaeda/CIA types, Sarkozy, Obama, and what's-his-name-the-British-dude.  And that's with his left hand.  Hell, Reagan tried to kill him.  Clinton (the president one) tried to kill him.  Boosh tried to kill him.  The man's like the Energizer Bunny.  You gotta admire the man's tenacity.  After all, he's smart enough to have an independent central bank and a few tons of gold.  Hey, you think that's why their unloading DU on him?  Or is it just the oil?  If he would just stop selling oil to the Chinese and Iranians, they might leave him alone again.

Then there's Donald Trump.  Talk about having nine lives.  The guy's been bust more times than me and he's a business guru!  I wonder what his secret is?  Now he's making noises about running for president.  Hell, if he can come out of bankruptcy so many times, he might just be able to pull the US out its nose-dive.  All his bluster about birth certificates must be hitting home, since the Bammy Bots are making fun of him.

And Bammy...now there's a piece of work.  He's managed to destroy four countries and two political parties single-handedly.  That was his job, after all.  Yup, he gave us 'change' all right, spare change.  As in 'buddy can you spare a dime?'  I love listening to the wild-eyed right-wing mouthpieces going on about how he's violating his oath of office.  I guess everyone forgot that he never took the oath of office.  Remember?  At least not the one written in the Constitution.

On top of all this madness, the UN wants to give the Earth and all living things the same rights as humans.

I'll let that soak in for a minute.

That's right, every time you buy a can of Raid to kill the roaches in your government-subsidized hovel, you'll be violating their rights and you could go to jail.  Every time you mow what's left of your lawn, you'll be violating the rights of the grass, and if you don't, you'll be violating your deed restrictions.  Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.  This just seems a little weird to me, not to mention like Buddhism on steroids.  I'm all for keeping the nest clean, but this...?  Just the bureaucratic nightmare needed to enforce something like this.  Sheesh!

You know it's bad when David Icke starts to make sense.  Heck, even Lyndon LaRouche is starting to sound like an elder statesman.  Frankly, I think it's time to put the whole mess to rest and think of something new.

The whole empire game is old.  We've had dozens of them for the last few thousand years, and every one of them has gone down the tubes and taken civilization with it.  If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again, expecting different results, then we are all certifiably insane.  It's time to throw open the gates of the asylums, because there is no one inside worse than the rest of us.  The only difference is their psychosis is not in sync with the other inmates.

It's difficult to say who is crazier, the one who doesn't know it, or the one who knows it and continues along with the charade.

It's like the headline in today's Jakarta Post:  Japan Ready to Stop Leaks.  Now that's crazy.  After a month of destroying the world, now they're ready to stop it.  Thanks a ton.

Let's take another look at that map, shall we?

Doesn't look like there's a whole lot of room for mistakes there.
--------------------------
On a side note, we salute Yuri Gagarin today.  Fifty years ago, he willingly strapped into a ballistic missile and took a ride around the Earth in 90 minutes.  First man to do that in modern history.  We take our hat off to him.  A real man's man.

And just think, all these years later, we're still whizzing around in Earth orbit.  Now THAT'S progress, bud!  So glad we've spent all these billions to go where Yuri went 50 years ago.

Liar, Liar Nukes' On Fire

Let’s play a game.  Why not?  The whole world seems to be doing it, why can’t we?

Let’s try to cobble up a scenario that can explain the utter failure of multiple redundant safety systems at Fukushima.  We’re talking about not just one or two, but three and four back-ups, not to mention the complete Keystone Kops response on the part of emergency resonse teams.

How is it that one of the (former) largest economies, and arguably one of the most advanced, have come to this point?  It’s too easy to blame GE, or the US, or just plain old bungling.  There’s something much larger at work here.

Suppose, for a moment, that the emergency response teams were not informed about everything they would be facing at Fukushima?  Suppose they walked in to fight a standard battle against run-away reactors, but instead they found a weapons plant out of control?  Suppose they were not remotely prepared for what they are currently facing?  And what would be the signs that would tip us off that this was the case?

To begin with, if this were a standard response to a plant gone amok, there are dozens of protocols and back-up systems in place to adequately take care of the situation.  Sure, there could well have been some radioactive steam released.  Hell, it happens all the time in the States.  They just never tell you about it.

In standard uranium-graphite cores, even in full operation, the chances of a run-away reaction.  In the case of failure of the cooling system, a back-up system kicks in.  If that fails, then the graphite rods are automatically inserted into the core.  It’s a hydraulic, dead-man operation.  It doesn’t require operators or power.

OK, so 60 years ago, Japan has been nuked twice and has surrendered unconditionally.  As part of the deal, they can't keep a standing army, though they can have a small navy and a civilian space program.  They sign a defense treaty with the US, so that if they need a little bombing here and there, the Yanks will come running.

As time goes by, the Japanese decide they want to diversify their power needs.  After all, they have next to no oil and have to import everything.  Meanwhile, the US is playing around in Korea and has their eyes on Vietnam and China, too.  So hey!  Why not kill two birds with one stone?  Give the Japanese some cut-rate GE nuke plants and help them establish a covert nuclear bomb program.  Just hedging bets here.  Six big reactors ought to cover it.  And the occasional minimum-yield bomb could easily be covered as an earthquake.  Who'd look twice?

Oh, and while you boys are at it, you think you could slice off a little of that plutonium so that us Yanks can have a supply that can't be traced to us?  You guys are real troupers!

Well, everything's fine and good.  The US appears to be sticking with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (after all, the US only has one factory, in Texas no less), no one knows about the Japanese program, and the US has a supply of boomers near at hand, just in case N. Korea or China get uppity.

Yoichi Shumatsu has a damn fine analysis along these lines over here.

Everything is peachy keen until March 11, 2011.  Then...what's this?  A 9.0 just off the coast of our cozy little nuke factory, and darned if that isn't a massive tsunami heading for our toys!

Then everything goes to hell.  The safeguards that protect the generators don't do squat for the bomb factory. Not only that, it's chock full of plutonium, which is a lot hotter than uranium, and a lot more toxic, to boot.  The first response is geared towards the "sunshine" part of the project, and it's woefully unprepared for what they find.

While they're busy scrambling around trying to put out fires, the plutonium is getting really hot, but no one suspects it's there.  The Japanese can't admit it, because well, they've been lying about for 50 years, and because the White House is putting a lot of thumbs on them.

After all, it just wouldn't do if we've been threatening to blow up Iran for 10 years because they want nuke power, too, and here we've been letting the Japanese get away with a secret program, and HELPING them with it, for decades.  That would kind of kill the whole program that they've been building up all this time.  It's the centerpiece for all of the US's mucking around in the Middle East, not to mention Israel sitting off in a corner whispering, "Git 'em, git 'em!"

So now we've got a world-class melt-down on our hands.  The US and Japanese can't admit that it was a bomb factory for a thousand different reasons.  Everyone is surprised at how hard it is to stop the plants from blowing up.  Plutonium and dozens of other goodies are scattering to the Four Winds, literally.  Radiation is already showing up throughout the entire northern hemisphere.

And about all they can do is raise the limits on what's considered safe radiation in our food and drink.  I don't mean just raise them a little bit, I mean 10,000x to 100,000x the former limits.  Yes, you read those zeros correctly.  The EPA has already published the new limits in the Federal Register, which is all they are required to to before they start enforcing them, since Americans are too placated on Final Four and Xanax to notice or care.

There, there, sheeple.  Go back to sleeeeeeeep.

Of course, this is all speculative, but the arguements from people a lot smarter than me make a lot of sense.  They also fit the available facts with more precision than anything the MSM and the PTW are saying.

I mean, even I know better than to cover plutonium rods with top soil, fer cryin' out LOUD!

Now they have two choices:

1) Tell the truth (hahahaha hohoho hehehe!) and risk blowing their little schemes that they've spent centuries building up, or -

2) Poison the world with plutonium dust and play the whole thing off like it's nothing and rework the Plan a little to take it all into acount.

Hmmmm...which do you think they are choosing?

What can you do?

Buy all the freakin' silver you can get your hands on...NOW!!!  Spend the change (or use your Liberty Dollars - *grin*) to buy pre-;ackaged food, Berkey water filters, respirators (N-100 rating), and lots of organic heirloom seeds, and ride it out.  It won't take much longer to crash JPMorgan, and the whole House of Cards will come tumbling down.

Then we can get rid of those lying bastards and get back to human-centered life, like it should be.

ORDO AB CHAO works both ways, baby!

Loki Unbound!

Loki is a rather interesting character in Norse mythology.  He is often portrayed as being Wodin's right-hand man, but with a twist.  Whenever Wodin's not looking, Loki runs around creating havoc, which Wodin then has to clean up.

As we survey the world today, it would seem that Wodin has fallen into a drunken stupor in Valhalla, a bit of deer gristle stuck in his beard, and Loki has taken advantage of the situation.

The world has gone stark, raving nuts.  I can't think of any more appropriate description.  It's not just the natural disasters.  Those are sufficient cause for alarm.  But the people are out of control, as if Loki is moving amongst them with wild abandon, whispering devious schemes in their ears.  How else do you account for the sheer lunacy?

We have a Nobel Peace Prize winner ordering the death and destruction of thousands, while acting like a tyrant, and no one seems to see the irony in that.  We have the only country in history to get nuked in war-time, nuking itself and refusing to admit the severity of it.  We have the Bear and the Panda looking for all the world like restrained adults trying to marshal the unruly children of the West.  Meanwhile, the richest, most powerful nations of the last 300 years are imploding, and they are ordering gasoline thrown on the resulting fires.

Just amazing to watch, really.  Who would have thought Indonesia would become a power-house economy?  I mean, besides me, of course.  Who would have thought India and China would be shoving each other in the hallway over who gets to be the biggest, baddest mofo?  Who would have thought Ireland and Portugal would join together to finally crash the Holy Roman Empire?

And what about Libya?  Here we have a country that was quelling some domestic protests when suddenly the  US/UK empire decided now was a good time to start blowing them up.  No one was paying any attention to Libya.  They were just going about their business feeding oil and gas to Europe and many other countries.  Then, along came al Qaeda, who are supposed to be the bad guys over there (after all, the US has been bombing them into oblivion for 11 years).  They start stirring up some noise.  Qaddafi does what any good dictator does (see Obama) and puts down the protests.  That should have earned him a gold star and extra face time on Dancing With The Stars.  Instead, the Coalition of the Desperate start flying sorties, shooting DU and arming al Qaeda.

What the hell?!

When did the axiom of war become, "The enemy of my enemy is my enemy?"  It's as if only the US can beat up on al Qaeda.  If anyone else touches them, watch out buddy!  Heck, just the ruling junta in the rebel camp is a Who's Who of bad guys right out of the infamous Deck of Cards: al Awali, bin Laden's personal driver, guys the US has shot up three countries to kill.  Now the US is protecting them in Libya and giving them money and weapons.

Pardon me if I have this really confused look on my face, but when did the libretto change?  And what's worse?  The American people are just blissfully sailing along on Hope and Change, hardly noticing what those bastards in Washington are up to.

Meantime, the US debt is now par with the GDP, which means what?  B-R-O-K-E.  But don't let that get in the way of a good spending spree.  Last month the feds spent 8.2 TIMES the monthly revenues.  Let's just pause a moment to let that sink in...  You have a credit card.  The spending limit is $1,000.  So, what do you do?  Spend $8,200, of course.  What's more, the issuer lets you do it, since you always pay the interest (though the principle has been sitting there since Kennedy was sneaking girls into the Oval Office).

Things are much better in Europe, where Ireland and Portugal stepped up to dip from the trough...again.  No one seems to mind or care that all the bail-outs do is create more bail-outs.  When do you suppose Germany will get tired of floating the whole damn continent?

On the war front, Obama, Sarkozy and What's-his-name in Britain are strutting around like a bunch of preening chickens with their 'war postures,' yet not one of them has served a single day in the military.  In fact, it's the women behind the scenes who are starting all the fights, which is what women are really good at.  Hillary and that Power woman and a few other top broads are the saber-rattlers.  The boys are just the strutters.  The really funny part is that Qaddafi is the only REAL man in the whole play.  He's holding off a bunch of so-called rebels AND the combined efforts of three countries.  And that's with his left hand.

Yup, the more you look around, the more you have to assume that Wodin has turned Loki loose.

Over here in Asia, the rupiah has steadily risen from 11,000 against the dollar a couple of years ago, to 8,600 now.  But, Asian stocks took a dump when Japan dumped radioactive water into the Pacific.  I'm waiting for specials on 3-eyed flounder in a few months.  Needless to say, the sushi industry is toast for the next 2 or 3 thousand years.

Pay no attention to the neutron beams.  Those are just part of the light show.  Pink Floyd will be coming on soon.  After all, neutrons are only released when nuclear chain-reactions occur.  That's a good thing.  It means Loki is out of control.

A long time ago, I worked with an old black man named J.C.  He was prone to sitting around in between jobs and smoking his pipe and laughing to himself.

":J.C," I asked him one day, "why are you always smiling?"

"Heh heh heh," he replied.  "I'ze jes laffin' to keeps from cryin'."

I've never forgotten those simple words.  In fact, it's probably why I can see the hand of Loki at work.  The mischievous imp is running amok making black into white and white into black.  You have to laugh.  On some level, this is all really funny.  Great theater.  After all, if you take it too seriously, you'll just die from grief and heart-break.

Loki, wherever you are, thanks!  Now we can all just laugh ourselves into oblivion.  And J.C., thank you, too.  That was one of the most profound things I've learned in all my life.

I'm just laughing to keep from crying...