Collapsitalism:

Welcome to the homeland security industrial complex, a world where doomsday scenarios double as marketing pitches, patriotism mingles with capitalism, and the spoils go to whoever can placate a skittish society. "The best thing that will happen is that we will never have a nuclear event in the United States, never have a sarin gas event," Weiss says. "But do you know how much money is going to be spent" preparing for such events? "It's only a matter of time before someone finds something bad in a container coming through the port of Baltimore, Charleston, or Long Beach."
posted by Kevin at 12:17 PM

Not really new...

I was actually in Little Rock, Arkansas for the past several days. As the aircraft approached the Little Rock airport, I looked out the window at the mostly empty landscape.

I mumbled to myself, "I wonder how many bodies are out there..."

You see, Bill Clinton's relationship with George Bush goes back at least to the mid 1980s. Clinton's Arkansas was---according to the heaviest narcotics trafficker ever and CIA contractor, Barry Seal---a, "Banana republic." Anything and everything was for sale, and "tithings" could be paid to stay one step ahead of the curve. So, when Bush needed to move guns and drugs by the ton, he didn't go down to Georgia.

He went to Arkansas.

The Contra-related cocaine and weapons operations, which were run out of the Mena airport, were ordered by Bush and facilitated by none other than Governor Bill Clinton. I guess those antics made for some strong bonds. At the minimum, Clinton got to play president for a couple of terms: A) as a reward; or, B) because he was in a position to take the Bush dynasty down with what he knew.

See:

Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA

and

The Boys on the Tracks

In any event, it's all hugs and kisses now.

Make sure you send this story to all the dumbsh*t Democrats and limousine liberals you know:

President George W. Bush says Bill Clinton has become so close to his father that the Democratic former president is like a member of the family.

Former President George Bush has worked with Clinton to raise money for victims of the Asian tsunami and the hurricane disaster along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Asked about his father and Clinton, Bush quipped, "Yes, he and my new brother."

"That's a good relationship. It's a fun relationship to watch," Bush said in an interview with CBS News broadcast on Sunday.

While attending Pope John Paul's funeral, Bush said, "It was fun to see the interplay between dad and Clinton. One of these days, I'll be a member of the ex-president's club. ... I'll be looking for something to do."

He said ex-presidents share rare experiences that others cannot understand. "And so I can understand why ex-presidents are able to put aside old differences," he said.

Bush said he checked in with Clinton occasionally.

"And you know, he says things that makes it obvious -- that makes it obvious to me that we're kind of, you know, on the same wavelength about the job of the presidency. Makes sense, after all, there's this kind of commonality," he said.

Bush jokingly referred to speculation that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former president's wife, will seek the Democratic nomination for the presidency. He had earlier referred to the former first lady as "formidable."

"Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton," he said, referring to how Bill Clinton had followed his father, and Hillary Clinton could follow him.

HAHA. Get it? HAHA.
posted by Kevin at 6:21 PM

Note to Non-Nerds: Don't bother reading this.

Hosts from all over the place are crawling every page on Cryptogon in an automated manner, at semi regular intervals. Did the NSA user from earlier today order his zombie army to lock and load after he meandered around Cryptogon?

Who knows...

The client running on each of the hosts shows up in the log only as Java 1.4.1 or Java 1.5.0. There is no way this activity is due to run-of-the-mill webpage archiving robots. You might see one of those, every once in a while. But over and over again, from different hosts in quick succession, all reporting Java?

I don't think so.

This smells like a DDOS hit to me.

Here are some of the culprits. The fields are hostname, ip, number of pages accessed, client name:

24-207-169-81.dhcp.stls.mo.charter.com 24.207.169.81 185 Java 1.4.1

OL5-42.fibertel.com.ar 24.232.42.5 185 Java 1.5.0

adsl-065-081-092-212.sip.gsp.bellsouth.net 65.81.92.212 185 Java 1.5.0

beckham.socceramerica.com 69.228.251.169 185 Java 1.5.0

I'll be adding these and others to Cryptogon's IP sh*tlist. I doubt anything will happen, but if Cryptogon goes down, it means someone launched a DDOS attack on my server.

Update: Cut Off In Mid Slurp

This thing just returned to have another go:

65.81.92.212

It was cut off in the act by the IP ban list.

This could get interesting. I wonder how many zombies They have? Put on your best Carl Sagan voice and say it with me, "Billllyons and billllyons..."

Update: Additional Hosts Showing Up; Doing the Same Thing

Now blocking:

71.225.253.21
207.104.94.249
68.122.151.90
72.51.34.157
posted by Kevin at 6:20 PM

The U.S. National Security Agency user (host: moses.radium.ncsc.mil, ip: 144.51.73.129) conducted the following Google search: "192.31.19.50"

The NSA user visited the following Cryptogon pages:

http://cryptogon.com/2005_01_02_blogarchive.html

http://cryptogon.com/about.html

http://cryptogon.com/blogarchive.html

Session initiated: 30/Jan/2006:08:43:40 -0700
Session ended: 30/Jan/2006:09:04:02 -0700

Related Story: U.S. Central Command Hits Cryptogon... Again

I went back through recent logs and found that the same NSA system directly accessed this Cryptogon page back on January 5:

http://cryptogon.com/2005_09_25_blogarchive.html

They may have been following up on people who were following this story: NSA Applies for Patent to ID Physical Address of Web Surfers
posted by Kevin at 6:03 PM

The Internet could also be used offensively as an additional medium in psychological operations campaigns and to help achieve unconventional warfare objectives. Used creatively as an integral asset, the Internet can facilitate many DoD operations and activities.

Strategic Assessment: The Internet
Prepared by Mr. Charles Swett
Assistant for Strategic Assessment
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict
July 1995

So, while this is nothing new, it's worth noting:

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.

"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.

The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. "Specific boundaries should be established," they write. But they don't seem to explain how.

"In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States - even though they were directed abroad," says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive.

Related: Phreaking Hacktivists :.

STOD was set up during the Cold War and is the highest-level military focal point for all matters relating to what is called offensive information warfare. STOD is a covert action broker for the Joint Staff. Unlike other offices in the Pentagon that merely push a lot of paper, it also is charged with providing direct military support to operational missions of the CIA and NSA, and of responding to requests for assistance from the National Security Council. Each U.S. regional command... has its own STOD.

J-33's operations branch controls the Special Technical Operations Center within the Pentagon. The center is the most secure facility within the U.S. military. Dozens of special access (or "black") programs are monitored at the center. These include the United States's own hacking activities; strategic psychological, concealment and deception operations; and "directed energy warfare." The latter includes special weapons and capabilities, such as high-powered microwave weapons, that could be used to disable enemy communications, computing, and the production and distribution of electricity.

Related Goodle Search: Special Technical Operations Division
posted by Kevin at 12:28 PM

The Matrix has you:

The numbers are almost incomprehensible. ExxonMobil reported today that it made profits of more than $36 billion for the year, $10.7 billion of that in the final 92 days of 2005.

That means that during the waning three months of 2005 Exxon was raking in more than $115 million in profits a day. It's a pace that has never been realized by an American company at any time in history.

This astronomical daily take was due, in large part, to the high price of oil. A barrel of crude averaged more than $60 during the fourth quarter, 115 percent higher than the average price of a barrel during the past decade.
posted by Kevin at 12:25 PM

And somehow, the band plays on:

In a shocking development, the Treasury Department website is openly stating that as of January 24, 2006 our national debt stood at $8,185.3 billion and on January 26th at $8,190.5 billion.

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm

Yet the US national debt 'ceiling', the maximum amount of debt the US government may hold at any one time, stands at $8,184 billion - a full $5.5 billion less. Although called upon by John Snow, Congress has not yet passed an expansion of the debt ceiling and so the US government is now operating in technical default.

You may recall that when last the debt ceiling was approached in the months surrounding the 2004 elections, the Treasury department furiously employed every accounting trick in the book (and then some) to avoid breaching the limit. They even went so far as to take the unprecedented step of borrowing $14 billion from the Federal Financing Bank to cover up the shortfall.

But they never breached the ceiling.

On January 24th they breached it brazenly and openly and with nary an accompanying explanation. Neither have any lawmakers have broached this indelicate subject.

I suppose we could write this off as merely an unsurprising development from a government that no longer bothers to even appear to be adhering to rules, laws and procedures, let alone actually doing so.

But the silence is all the more troubling because there is an unprecedented level of government borrowing on the books for 1Q06 with next 2 weeks (Feb 1st to Feb 9th) an especially busy period of time. An ambitious ~$70-$80b in Treasury paper will hit the market.

The federal government does not have the legal authority to borrow above the statutory debt limit, which raises the prospect of emergency congressional action to avoid a full-fledged default.
posted by Kevin at 10:46 AM

The April contract for gold futures climbed to a more than one-week high near $570 an ounce Monday, with political tension in the Middle East providing support a day ahead of a widely expected hike in U.S. interest rates.

Gold for April delivery was last up $5.80 at $569.50 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange after trading as high as $569.80.

Prices for the contract rose to a high of $573.70 on Jan. 20. The lead-month contract that day was February gold, which climbed to $568.50, the highest front-month futures level since January 1981.

The metal is expected to continue to trade off political uncertainty, although volumes are lighter than normal with much of Asia closed for the Lunar New Year holiday.
posted by Kevin at 10:23 AM

Thanks, SA!
posted by Kevin at 9:15 PM

More than 4 million people in Georgia were without heat for a third straight day Tuesday after a series of blasts destroyed the Russian pipeline that supplied the country's natural gas needed for its central heating.
posted by Kevin at 9:11 PM

Dollar nosedives versus ruble?! Come on:

The U.S. dollar nose-dived against the ruble on the Moscow Inter-Bank Currency Exchange Tuesday to the level registered in late 2000.

The dollar's swift fall to 27.9898 rubles to the dollar in Tuesday's trading pushed the U.S. currency back to the level registered in December 2000 when the dollar/ruble rate was about 27.93-27.97. Since the start of 2006, the greenback has lost almost 50 kopecks, Russian forex experts said.

Experts say the dollar is largely under the influence of external factors but proportionally the dollar has weakened more considerably against the ruble than against the euro.

"The dollar's fall versus the ruble was extraordinary," Yelena Khrupova from BrokerCreditServis brokerage said. She added that the dollar's depreciation was facilitated by the active sale of the U.S. currency on the Russian forex market.

According to Khrupova, the dollar's plunge against the ruble showed that the Central Bank of Russia was in no hurry to give a helping hand to the U.S. currency. The analyst said the country's chief bank was more concerned about maintaining ruble stability against the dollar-euro currency basket and curbing inflation, which went out of control in the first ten days of January.
posted by Kevin at 11:26 PM

Don't do evil.

Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country's free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet's fastest growing market.
posted by Kevin at 10:24 PM

Total surveillance. Yep. For those of you who don't click through, this is the New York Times:

IT is strangely fitting that President Bush's no-warrant wiretapping came to light during the season of holiday gift buying, much of which took place online.

As Washington huffed and puffed over a new erosion of privacy, untold millions of us clicked just as fast as our little clickers could click through Google ads and Amazon checkout pages, unwittingly updating our "cookie" ID badges at every new screen. We bought our loved ones cellphones with built-in Global Positioning System and flocked to family gatherings in cars loaded with OnStar and EZ Pass. We paid for mostly everything with credit and debit cards. Out of convenience, we embraced technologies meant to track our every move.

There are important distinctions, of course, between government prying and the emerging web of consumer surveillance. But they share a digital universe that facilitates and rewards watching. Spam, spyware and identity theft are only a taste of how exposed we have all willingly become as we enjoy the benefits of the networked world.

If the American public seems a bit confused about the raging debate of security versus civil liberties - Bush/Cheney versus the A.C.L.U. - it may be because the debate itself has been outpaced by technology. In our post-9/11, protowireless world, democracies and free markets are increasingly saturated with prying eyes from governments, corporations and neighbors. For better and worse, free societies are fast entering the world of total surveillance.
posted by Kevin at 8:22 PM

National Institute of Justice?! WTF? I guess The Legion of Doom was busy.

In any event, it's for the children:

When a parent arrives to pick up their child at one of three grade schools in the Freehold Borough School District, they'll need to look into a camera that will take a digital image of their iris. That photo will establish positive identification to gain entrance into the school.

Funding for the project, more than $369,000, was made possibly by a school safety grant through the National Institute of Justice, a research branch of the U.S.
Department of Justice. "The idea is to improve school safety for the children," said Phil Meara, superintendent, Freehold Borough School District, on Monday. "We had a swipe-card system that operated the doors, but the technology was obsolete."

Installation of the iris technology began in October. The system is now operational after two months of testing. The Teacher-Parent Authorization Security System (T-PASS), a software application developed by Eyemetric Identity Systems, was installed on the front office computers at each of the three schools.

. . .

The platform provides entry-access controls, visitor management and the capability to scan a driver's license from 50 states and automatically import the information into the database.
posted by Kevin at 1:45 PM

This is post number 4000 on Cryptogon. * sigh *

A military jury has recommended that an officer once facing up to life in prison for the interrogation death of an Iraqi general be given only a reprimand, a decision that drew applause from soldiers.

Initially charged with murder, Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. now faces no jail time, the forfeiture of $6,000 in salary and what amounts largely to a barracks restriction for 60 days.
posted by Kevin at 12:34 PM

Wow. What's he going to do for his next trick? Roll over? Shake hands? Fetch a ball?

Move over, Oprah. President Bush is making himself into television's newest talk show host by featuring audience participation in his appearances.

Bush has been taking questions from audience members in recent speeches, and the White House says none has been prescreened even though the sessions are limted to invited groups.
posted by Kevin at 9:57 AM

In the process of learning that Spielberg's Munich is nonsense, we find out a thing or two about Kidon:

In reality, each execution was carefully planned by Mossad's "kidon" unit, its team of hand-picked, legally operating executioners.

Some of the terrorists died in their beds, others in souks and alleys that had no names. As well as bombs, the kidon delivered vengeance from a silenced handgun, garrotting with a cheese-cutting wire or a knife thrust into a larynx. Sometimes they used nerve agents which smelled of newly mown grass or spring flowers.

It took two years to find and kill all the Black September terrorists involved in the Munich massacre.
posted by Kevin at 11:29 PM

Well, it looks like this thing is going to go all the way:

Switzerland's largest bank UBS has stopped doing business with Iranian customers, according to a report in a Swiss paper yesterday.

A spokesman for the bank told SonntagsZeitung newspaper UBS had stopped dealing with Iranian individuals, businesses or state institutions since the beginning of the year, though Iranian exiles were not affected.

The bank refused to be drawn on whether the decision was directly linked to the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme.

The process leading to the termination of relations with Iranian clients had already begun last year, according to UBS.

Swiss radio reports said the bank was considering similar measures against Syrian customers.
posted by Kevin at 8:10 PM

Crisis:

Explosions have ripped through Russia's main natural gas pipeline to Armenia and Georgia as well as a power line, halting supplies amid freezing temperatures and sparking accusations of sabotage from Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Two explosions occurred on the Mozdok-Tbilisi gas supply pipeline in the Russian Caucasus province of South Ossetia early on Sunday, Russian officials said.

A third blast in the nearby province of Karachayevo-Cherkesskaya cut supplies along one of the main electricity cables supplying power from Russia to Georgia, the emergency situations ministry said.
posted by Kevin at 7:39 PM

Technical problem? Or the beginning of World War III?

Iran reduced the amount of natural gas to Turkey to 6 million cubic meters giving 'cold weather' as a reason, based on an agreement, Iran has to pump 20 million cubic meters of gas per day to Turkey, Cihan news agency reports.

This latest development has alarmed the Turkish Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources.

Meteorology officials warned that Siberian cold weather expected in western Turkey next week. In addition, the same cold weather threatens neighboring Iran.

The new cold weather wave which will hit Istanbul and Izmir on Monday is reported to be one of the coldest of the last 100 years.
posted by Kevin at 7:35 PM

It's drifting into mainstream news now. From UPI:

The world could be about to change much faster than we think, whether or not Iran tests an atomic device. There are other, possibly more devastating weapons available that could hit a financially vulnerable American where it hurts most.
posted by Kevin at 6:58 PM

Just like the morning of 9/11... But They wouldn't pull that one again, would They? Probably not, but just in case:

WASHINGTON - Low-flying fighter jets and other military aircraft are scheduled to run a series of training exercises around Washington Sunday tonight and early Monday morning.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command is conducting the training exercises over the Potomac River and around the city.

The exercise is designed to test NORAD's ability to intercept and identify aircraft that could pose a threat to the nation's capital. It involves several small Cessna aircraft and Learjets as well as an F-16 fighter jet and a Blackhawk helicopter.

NORAD has conducted such exercises throughout the US and Canada since the September Eleventh terrorist attacks. The exercises also help prepare for major events including the president's State of the Union speech later this month.
posted by Kevin at 6:46 PM

I'd expect bin Laden sightings to begin in Bolivia pretty soon:

Evo Morales, raising a clenched fist as tears streamed down his face, took office as Bolivian president today after promising to help the poor and seize control of the nation's energy reserves from international oil companies.
posted by Kevin at 6:28 PM

Doug writes:

First of all, thanks for Cryptogon; it's a daily stop for me.

Last night, I posted a link on deconsumption to the same article of Petrov about the oil bourse. Even though I'm trained in mathematics, the one thing I can't get my head around: "America was able to tax the world indirectly, through inflation." If you know of any articles that would help me get a grip on this, I'd appreciate a link.

I wrote back:

Hi Doug,

I would explain that statement about inflation like this:

Decoupling the dollar from gold allowed Them to print money at will. Everyday, more and more dollars are put into circulation. What must happen over time, with more dollars put into circulation, rising debt and rising trade deficits?

Inflation.

Forcing oil transactions in dollars externalized the costs associated with American profligacy to the rest of the world. Even though the tangible value (buying power) of the dollar has been in decline for 30+ years, that decline has been orderly due, in part, to the constant demand for petrodollars.

Additionally, countries that are reliant on exporting goods to the U.S. have decided to strap themselves to the sinking U.S. dollar by buying all order of U.S. debt instruments. What other choice did they have?

This is simply a large scale Ponzi scheme, backed up with nuclear weapons and glitzy images out of Hollywood. And we all know what eventually happens to Ponzi schemes.

Or, do we?

The thing actually seems to have broken down in 2004, but They were ready to keep it going. Billions of dollars from private accounts in London and the Bahamas provided liquidity after the national banks of other countries tapped the mat. See:

Who Is Financing America's Current Account Deficit?

Maybe They can keep it up forever. I mean, why not? The thing is now $8.1 trillion in the hole.

Why not $10 trillion? Or $50 trillion? $100 trillion??? What's another order of magnitude when the thing isn't real to begin with?

Other articles:

US dollar hegemony has got to go

US DOLLAR HEGEMONY: THE SOFT UNDERBELLY OF EMPIRE

Kevin

posted by Kevin at 6:26 PM

HA! There goes the neighborhood.
posted by Kevin at 6:24 PM

This just about sums up the whole damn show. If you want to understand U.S. imperalism, why it has worked up until now, and what drives it, this article is all you need:

Several soldiers interviewed estimated they earned an extra $700 to $800 per month while in Iraq, totaling up to an extra $9,600 for some from their year overseas.

"Without the extra money, I couldn't go out and get this stuff," said Spc. Sherrod White, 21, of Fayetteville, N.C., as he picked out a $1,499 desktop computer with a $599 flat screen monitor at Doering's store.

"A lot of people, they just go crazy with it," he said.

At Hinesville Ford, where Strange picked out his Mustang, general manager Fred Mingledorff said he's on track to sell more than 120 cars this month — compared to 80 during a typical month and 40 while the 3rd Infantry was overseas.

And the troops aren't settling for economy cars, he said.

"They've been fighting a war for a year. When they get back, they sure deserve to be able to spend their money," Mingledorff said.

The Hinesville Wal-Mart Supercenter has conspicuous gaps in its wall of large-screen TVs because impatient buyers have taken the display units.

Even the shelves of pots, pans and other mundane household items have been picked practically bare as soldiers furnish homes and apartments.

"This is something that typically we would never have out of stock," said Wal-Mart manager Ted Sells. "As you can see, they've just wiped us out."
posted by Kevin at 5:26 PM

If Syngenta is granted this patent, it will make Monsanto look like Santa Claus.
---Kathy Jo Wetter, ETC

I've never heard of Syngenta---probably because it's an undead reanimation of Zeneca/Novartis/Ciba---but after less than an hour of reading, I have to ask: Is Syngenta the most evil corporation of them all?

This leviathan has made an almost comedic attempt to dress itself up as, "sustainable," WHILE AT THE SAME TIME TRYING TO TAKE CONTROL OF ALL MAJOR FOOD CROPS ON THE PLANET:

Syngenta's 323-page application, WO03000904A2/3 claims monopoly control of DNA that regulates flowering development, flower formation, whole plant architecture and flower timing in rice - in up to 115 countries. But the claims are not limited to vital rice gene sequences. According to a study prepared by Dr. Paul Oldham at Lancaster University (UK), the scope of this massive patent application is virtually limitless - extending to flowering plants in general, including those not yet classified by taxonomists. Syngenta's claims extend to key gene sequences of 23 major food crops annexed to the FAO Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.
posted by Kevin at 6:49 PM

This news seems to conflict with the story below about the Iranian oil bourse. Or does it? Maybe Iran will have more Euros than it can pack into its vaults when the energy exchange opens? Maybe they're looking to diversify early?

In response to the threat Iranian central bank governor Ebrahim Sheibani revealed earlier in the week that Iran had begun the process of shifting its assets from Europe, the Iranian Students News Agency said on Friday.

"We transfer foreign currency reserves related to all sectors including oil foreign exchanges to wherever it is good for us and we have started this transfer," the agency quoted him saying.

"Iran has started withdrawing money from European banks and transferring it to other banks abroad," a senior Iranian official told the Reuters agency.

It was not immediately clear where the assets were being moved to, although reports have suggested that Iranian funds could be heading out of Europe to Asia.

Iran's assets in the US were frozen after the revolution of 1979, which saw the pro-Western Shah toppled and a clerical regime installed in Tehran.

It is difficult to estimate the amount of assets that Iran has abroad, but the Asharq Al-Awsat Arabic daily said that about $8bn (GBP4.5bn) had already been moved, mainly to Asian markets.

Other sources have put the total value of Iran's foreign assets at somewhere between $30bn and $50bn.
posted by Kevin at 9:52 AM

This is the best essay I've read in a LONG time. Pity, I have to sell my gold:

The Iranian government has finally developed the ultimate "nuclear" weapon that can swiftly destroy the financial system underpinning the American Empire. That weapon is the Iranian Oil Bourse slated to open in March 2006. It will be based on a euro-oil-trading mechanism that naturally implies payment for oil in Euro. In economic terms, this represents a much greater threat to the hegemony of the dollar than Saddam's, because it will allow anyone willing either to buy or to sell oil for Euro to transact on the exchange, thus circumventing the U.S. dollar altogether.
posted by Kevin at 1:02 AM

It's for the children:

The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases.

The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.
posted by Kevin at 12:43 AM

Copper is used in everything from automobiles to ordnance. Copper allows electricity to be generated, transported and conducted to the various outlets in a modern home. Copper is also relatively scarce compared to other metals like iron or aluminum that make up a good portion of the earth itself. So copper serves as an excellent metallic bellwether for potential future resource scarcity, according to a group of researchers who compiled data on its extraction, use, recycling and discard to estimate whether there is enough copper available to make a developed standard of living available to all the world's people. The short answer is: no.
posted by Kevin at 12:30 PM

The U.S. trade deficit is a bigger threat to the domestic economy than either the federal budget deficit or consumer debt and could lead to "political turmoil," billionaire investor Warren Buffett warned.

"Right now, the rest of the world owns $3 trillion more of us than we own of them," Buffett told business students and faculty Tuesday at the University of Nevada, Reno. "In my view, it will create political turmoil at some point.... Pretty soon, I think there will be a big adjustment," he said without elaborating.
posted by Kevin at 2:31 AM

My time in the U.S. is coming to a close and I need to start turning my stuff into cash so Becky and I can pay off our farm in New Zealand and buy some chickens!

This is off topic, but I'm selling my small reserve of hard currency on eBay. Here are some manageable lots of U.S. silver dimes and quarters. Those of you who are making plans don't need any explanations as to why these small denomination silver coins will come in handy at some point. If you don't get it, try to derive a clue from what just happened in Japan.

Have a nice day, and thanks for biddin'!
posted by Kevin at 2:20 AM

Just wait until the "banking holidays" start kicking in:

Japan's main stock market nose-dived for a second day Wednesday on growing investor jitters from "Livedoor shock," the widening criminal investigation at an Internet startup that has sparked a sell-off, especially in technology shares. The benchmark for the Tokyo Stock Exchange plunged 2.9 percent Wednesday in a session that had to be shortened by 20 minutes because of a surge in transactions.

The Nikkei 225 index dropped 464.77 points to close at 15,341.18 points, its biggest drop since May 10, 2004.

Share prices extended losses from Tuesday, when the Nikkei fell 2.8 percent, following Japanese newspaper reports that the investigation begun Monday was expanding. The index has fallen nearly 6 percent the last two sessions.

"Individual and foreign investors are selling in a panic," said Satoru Otsuka, senior economist at Mizuho Research Institute in Tokyo. "The problem is that we have no idea how the Livedoor problem will unfold."
posted by Kevin at 2:15 AM

[IFR Forex Watch]
[SQUAWK BOX]
[04:20 Nikkei Down Over 4%, TOPIX Over 5%, TSE Announcement Scare] Tokyo, Jan 18. The TSE announcement that it will suspend trading due to capacity limits has thrown a scare into the market, and many players are seen rushing to pare down positions ahead of any such event.

- - - - -

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Nikkei share average fell 2.94 percent on Wednesday before the Tokyo Stock Exchange halted trade 20 minutes earlier than usual, as a flood of orders on world's second-largest stock market taxed its computer system.

More than $300 billion in shareholder value has been wiped out of the market this week -- equal to about the gross domestic product of Sweden -- much of it from the fall-out from an investigation into Internet portal company Livedoor Co.

Internet firms and other companies popular with individual investors were among the hardest hit, with Softbank Corp. ending the day down by its daily limit of 500 yen, or 13 percent.
posted by Kevin at 10:31 PM

A rout in Japanese stocks deepened today, helping to wipe away more than $300 billion in value from the world's second-largest equity market this week.

Technology shares including Tokyo Electron Ltd. and Toshiba Corp. dropped after earnings from Intel Corp. and Yahoo! Inc. fell short of estimates and heightened expectations profits in the industry will disappoint.

Internet-related shares including Softbank Corp. and Yahoo Japan Corp. fell for a second day. The Yomiuri newspaper said today that Livedoor Co. falsified earnings to show a profit instead of a loss in the year ended September 2004.
posted by Kevin at 10:14 PM

I don't laugh at Democrats anymore. I pity them:

President Bush deserves plenty of blame for secretly authorizing domestic spying by the National Security Agency. But some of the president's fiercest critics in Congress gave him the political cover to do so. The question why they did so says much about the nation's brittle democracy and how Democrats have covertly joined with Republicans to restore the imperial presidency and effectively remove any checks on the executive branch of the U.S. government.
posted by Kevin at 2:01 AM

Iran stepped up its defiance of international pressure over its nuclear programme yesterday by warning of soaring oil prices if it is subjected to economic sanctions. As diplomats from the US, Europe, Russia, and China prepared to meet today in London to discuss referring Tehran to the UN security council, Iran's economy minister, Davoud Danesh-Jafari, said the country's position as the world's fourth-largest oil producer meant such action would have grave consequences.
posted by Kevin at 10:16 PM

Greed is a bottomless pit
Our freedom's a joke, we're just taking a piss
And the whole world must watch the sad comic display
If you're still free, start running away

Bright Eyes - Landlocked Blues

The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document.

The NSA's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups.

In its "Transition 2001" report, the NSA said that the ever-changing world of global communication means that "American communication and targeted adversary communication will coexist."

"Make no mistake, NSA can and will perform its missions consistent with the Fourth Amendment and all applicable laws," the document says.

However, it adds that "senior leadership must understand that the NSA's mission will demand a 'powerful, permanent presence' on global telecommunications networks that host both 'protected' communications of Americans and the communications of adversaries the agency wants to target."

What had long been understood to be protocol in the event that the NSA spied on average Americans was that the agency would black out the identities of those individuals or immediately destroy the information.

But according to people who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists during this time, that's not what happened. On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law.
posted by Kevin at 1:42 PM

Tony Blair is preparing to scrap a 40-year ban on tapping MPs' telephones, despite fierce Cabinet opposition, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

He is expected to formally announce to the Commons within weeks that MPs can no longer be sure that the security services and others will not intercept their communications.

Until now, successive administrations have pledged that there should be no tapping "whatsoever" of MPs' phones, and that they would be told if it was necessary to breach the ban.

But that convention - known as the Wilson Doctrine, after Harold Wilson, the prime minister who introduced it - is to be abandoned in an expansion of MI5 powers following the London bombings.
posted by Kevin at 1:32 PM

AB wished Cryptogon a Happy New Year and sent along a donation of $30. Thanks, AB, and I hope your plans are working out well!
posted by Kevin at 5:58 PM

Yaah sure, you betcha:

Norway is planning to build a "doomsday vault" inside a mountain on an Arctic island to hold a seed bank of all known varieties of the world's crops.

The Norwegian government will hollow out a cave on the ice-bound island of Spitsbergen to hold the seed bank.

It will be designed to withstand global catastrophes like nuclear war or natural disasters that would destroy the planet's sources of food.

I didn't have the energy to compose useful commentary on this story. Hereticfig, on the other hand, nailed it to the wall.
posted by Kevin at 8:39 PM

More: WMF Flaw not a Backdoor

Leo and I carefully examine the operation of the recently patched Windows MetaFile vulnerability. I describe exactly how it works in an effort to explain why it doesn't have the feeling of another Microsoft "coding error." It has the feeling of something that Microsoft deliberately designed into Windows. Given the nature of what it is, this would make it a remote code execution "backdoor." We will likely never know if this was the case, but the forensic evidence appears to be quite compelling.

Research Credit: MT
posted by Kevin at 2:40 PM

Asking if a suspect---in what amounts to a political assassination---has been altered is as natural of a question to me as wondering what the weather will be like tomorrow. In the early 1990s, I bought photocopy of a book called Operation Mind Control by Walter Bowart. And that was just the beginning down the path into this dark area of inquiry. So, I've had a long time to let all of this stuff sink in.

If you're a MK newbie, read up on alters over at Rigorous Intuition. Of the thousands of places on the Internet to read about mind control, Jeff's site is probably my favorite.

I'm not saying that the Rosenbaum murder is a MK situation. I'm not saying that it isn't, either:

A man was arrested Thursday night in the fatal assault on David E. Rosenbaum, a retired reporter for The New York Times, and was charged with felony murder, the police said.

District of Columbia detectives said the man, Michael Hamlin, 23, a maintenance worker from southeast Washington, had seen himself on an evening news report that broadcast surveillance photographs of him the police released in late afternoon. The photographs showed a man using Mr. Rosenbaum's credit cards at a gas station and an auto parts store.

Detective Anthony Paci, the lead detective in the case, said Mr. Hamlin had walked into the Seventh District Police station in southeast and said he "wanted to know why my face is in the news."

Detectives drove to the station house, picked up Mr. Hamlin and brought him to their offices for questioning.

"After about an hour, he confessed," Detective Paci said.
posted by Kevin at 1:47 AM

This was the last article written by New York Times reporter and editor, David E. Rosenbaum. He was murdered on January 8th.

One of Alito's harshest critics (with any kind of audience), beaten to death during a robbery.

This sends a concise message to critics of the regime. F*ck with us too much, and you're dead. You know, like Barb advocates:

The attorney general should be immune from lawsuits for ordering wiretaps of Americans without permission from a court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, wrote in a memorandum in 1984 as a government lawyer in the Reagan administration.
posted by Kevin at 8:43 AM

An infectious fungus aggravated by global warming has killed entire populations of frogs in Central and South America and driven some species to extinction, scientists said on Wednesday.

In research that showed the effects of rising temperatures on delicate ecosystems, a team of researchers found that a warming atmosphere encouraged the spread of a fungus that has wiped out species of harlequin frogs and golden toads.

"This is the first clear evidence that widespread extinction is taking place because of global warming," Dr Alan Pounds, an ecologist of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica, said in an interview.
posted by Kevin at 8:30 AM

Like I said, "Random acts of violence, car crashes, suicides and heart attacks are quite common."

David E. Rosenbaum, a longtime editor and reporter in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, died yesterday after being beaten and robbed Friday night near his home in upper Northwest Washington.
posted by Kevin at 3:11 AM

U.S. Intelligence services have always been opening mail. They just don't feel the need to cover it up anymore. Rather, it's overt, in your face, jackbooted fascism. They're not making any effort to hide it. This isn't "clumsiness," as Mr. Goodman asserts. It's by design. The same logic will eventually lead to people being taken away and placed in concentration camps, and worse. Oh, woops, that's already happening.

I wonder if the raw COMINT traffic between my wife---who isn't American, and also happens to be outside of the U.S. at the moment---and I rates the attention of a human analyst, or if parsing by machine is sufficient... You know, do They keep a file on how many chickens we plan to fatten, vs. how many we'll keep for eggs? Maybe the more juicy intel involves the location of where Becky wants to plant some green vegetables... I make jokes about what the NSA machine must think about our own personal lingo. HAHA! I'm not in denial about what's happening, I just have to laugh about it, even though it's not funny.

From, They Thought They Were Free, by Miltion Mayer:

Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle... one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

And now, from the MSNBC piece on Homeland Security opening private mail:

In the 50 years that Grant Goodman has known and corresponded with a colleague in the Philippines he never had any reason to suspect that their friendship was anything but spectacularly ordinary.

But now he believes that the relationship has somehow sparked the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the agency to place him under surveillance.

Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words "by Border Protection" and carrying the official Homeland Security seal.

"I had no idea (Homeland Security) would open personal letters," Goodman told MSNBC.com in a phone interview. "That's why I alerted the media. I thought it should be known publicly that this is going on," he said. Goodman originally showed the letter to his own local newspaper, the Kansas-based Lawrence Journal-World.

"I was shocked and there was a certain degree of disbelief in the beginning," Goodman said when he noticed the letter had been tampered with, adding that he felt his privacy had been invaded. "I think I must be under some kind of surveillance."

Goodman is no stranger to mail snooping; as an officer during World War II he was responsible for reading all outgoing mail of the men in his command and censoring any passages that might provide clues as to his unit's position. "But we didn't do it as clumsily as they've done it, I can tell you that," Goodman noted, with no small amount of irony in his voice. "Isn't it funny that this doesn't appear to be any kind of surreptitious effort here," he said.

One day it is over his head...
posted by Kevin at 4:53 PM

The rioters are shooting at police, and other weird antics of one of Uncle's lackey contractors.
posted by Kevin at 4:42 PM

Do you have friends and family members with short attention spans? Even they might be able to get it after reading these.
posted by Kevin at 2:17 PM

I. Have. Heard. It. All.

The old AQ will be responsible for disease outbreaks in Iraq...

Hmm.

I wonder how many people are being given vaccinations in Iraq now, both Iraqi and American?

Hmm.

What is the recommended daily allowance of feces in drinking water?

Hmm.

Nevermind all that. The Al-Queda suicide bombers are biological weapons now, don't ya know?

AL-QAEDA is recruiting suicide bombers who are infected with the AIDS virus, according to documents revealed to the Sunday Mirror.

Terror chiefs are also targeting fanatics who suffer other lethal blood diseases such as hepatitis and dengue fever in order to increase their "kill rate" from an explosion. The chilling new threat is revealed in papers distributed to British military camps in Iraq and across Europe.

Under the heading "HIV/Hepatitis" the document states: "There is evidence that terrorists might be deliberately recruiting volunteers with diseases that are spread by blood transference."

Experts have found that bones and other blood-spattered fragments from a suicide bomber could penetrate the skin of a victim 50 metres away and infect them.

In the papers (part of which is summarised above) soldiers are warned to wear special protective clothing when on guard duty or if they have to deal with casualties in the event of an attack.
posted by Kevin at 2:15 PM

Remember the alien in Predator? I wonder if U.S. troops will also start collecting the skulls of their victims?

Troops conducting urban operations soon will have the capabilities of superheroes, being able to sense through 12 inches of concrete to determine if someone is inside a building.

The new "Radar Scope" will give warfighters searching a building the ability to tell within seconds if someone is in the next room, Edward Baranoski from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Special Projects Office, told the American Forces Press Service.

By simply holding the portable, handheld device up to a wall, users will be able to detect movements as small as breathing, he said.

The Radar Scope, developed by DARPA, is expected to be fielded to troops in Iraq as soon as this spring, Baranoski said. The device is likely to be fielded to the squad level, for use by troops going door to door in search of terrorists.

The Radar Scope will give warfighters the capability to sense through a foot of concrete and 50 feet beyond that into a room, Baranoski explained.
posted by Kevin at 1:03 PM

A panel of linguists has decided the word that best reflects 2005 is "truthiness," defined as the quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts.
posted by Kevin at 11:33 AM

If you're not into trading the global financial casino, please skip down to the next article.

I'm looking for advice from any experienced FOREX traders out there. None of the tools I used to make money with daytrading stocks circa 1998-2000 (stochastics, moving averages, moving average crosses, MACD, support/resistance antics, etc., etc.) seem to work. It doesn't appear to be worth it to try to range trade these things. I happened to be watching EUR/USD the other day when that thing had the biggest one day move in something like five years. That move seemed to behave, probably because the thing was clearly trending. Buy the dips, take some PIPs, repeat. But when they settle into consolidation mode, it's not fun.

Ok, here's where I need help: I'm only interested in taking 10 to 15 PIPs at a time on momentum cranks. I'm looking for a tool to help me buy or sell only those moves that get the juice for a few minutes, while avoiding the crappy fake outs and noise, which is most of this market to begin with. All I'm after is 10 to 15 PIPs (net profit) per day on 1 lot deals! It's bum change! That's not too much to ask, right? * chuckle * Any ideas?

So far, I've seen nothing that would get me to trade this thing with real money, but the simulator account is free.

DISCUSS
posted by Kevin at 12:27 AM

Par for the course, I'd say. I mean, what else can anyone say? I'm sure experts at some university will have a simple explanation for this. A mass cow fart emission, or something. Not to worry. Fill your baskets at Walmart and go about your business. Only crackpots and lunatics think this could be anything out of the ordinary...
posted by Kevin at 11:11 PM

While you may feel the need to wash after reading the O.C. Weekly, the rag occasionally prints articles worth reading. Just be warned: The publication is 90% advertising. Ads for every conceivable plastic surgery procedure. Ads for people with LOTS of tattoos. Ads for depression treatment. Ads for hookers, etc.

Now that I've presented my disclaimer on the O.C. Weekly, behold, the real estate market in Orange County:

Stanton. Beautiful, beautiful Stanton. Home of Venus' live nude ladies, "theaters" that feature bruised, hollow-eyed girls waving their clean-plucked naughty bits in the air, and a plethora of pawn shops where I like to do my Christmas shopping.

Stanton is the place the rest of us here in Orange County make fun of when we're tired of mocking Fontana.

Stanton-let's face it-is a nasty, stinking hole, and therefore the perfect place for your first-time home-buying needs.

...

Burd seemed like a swell guy. I'd met him at an open house for a sprawling five-bedroom in Stanton, desperately in need of updating, that was listed for $649,000. Two months ago, a smaller house across the street sold for $630,000, but this listing wasn't even getting lookie-loos.

"This market's almost done, Rebecca," he told me frankly. "It can't go much further."

"But what about all those people who said the market might stagnate, but California real estate never crashes?

Yeah, Burd said, that's what they said back in '89... If you can weather that kind of downturn because you're planning to stay in your house for the next 40 years, and you don't have any balloon payments coming due at just the time the market's dropped, that might be fine. But if you're counting on this tulip craze continuing, just remember: a house can't quadruple in value every five years indefinitely. If it did, that would mean in five years, our Stanton townhome, already beyond the reach of almost everyone in the county, would be worth $1.6 million. And do you really think that's going to happen?

Burd did have some good advice for me, though: he told me I should get married. "Find a rich old guy who won't live that long," he said sunnily. "You're a good-looking girl!"
posted by Kevin at 11:10 PM

Since the U.S. government has "highly classified Special Access Programs" to deal with people like Mr. Tice, I would suggest avoiding trips involving airplanes. Unfortunately, random acts of violence, car crashes, suicides and heart attacks are quite common...

It probably makes more sense for Them to let him live, say what he has to say, and sit back as the entire matter is quickly forgotten:

A former National Security Agency official wants to tell Congress about electronic intelligence programs that he asserts were carried out illegally by the NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Russ Tice, a whistleblower who was dismissed from the NSA last year, stated in letters to the House and Senate intelligence committees that he is prepared to testify about highly classified Special Access Programs, or SAPs, that were improperly carried out by both the NSA and the DIA.

"I intend to report to Congress probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted while I was an intelligence officer with the National Security Agency and with the Defense Intelligence Agency," Mr. Tice stated in the Dec. 16 letters, copies of which were obtained by The Washington Times.

The letters were sent the same day that the New York Times revealed that the NSA was engaged in a clandestine eavesdropping program that bypassed the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. The FISA court issues orders for targeted electronic and other surveillance by the government.

President Bush said Sunday that the NSA spying is "a necessary program" aimed at finding international terrorists by tracking phone numbers linked to al Qaeda.
posted by Kevin at 8:33 AM

* yawn * Corrupt politicians... Imagine my shock:

From the Oval Office to Capitol Hill, prominent Republicans scrambled Wednesday to shed campaign contributions linked to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, as his guilty pleas in fraud and corruption cases opened a painful debate within the party over its leadership and direction.

President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and DeLay's temporary successor in that post, Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., joined a lengthening list of politicians whose campaign committees have returned or donated to charities money they received from Abramoff, his associates and his clients.

More lawmakers were expected to follow suit in what was becoming a stampede by lawmakers to distance themselves from a lobbyist who once enjoyed easy access to Washington's corridors of power.

The cloud surrounding Abramoff grew Wednesday when he pleaded guilty in Miami to federal fraud charges arising from his purchase of SunCruz, a Florida gambling boat fleet. Tuesday, he pleaded guilty in Washington to three federal felonies stemming from his lobbying activities.

Anxieties on Capitol Hill are mounting because Abramoff -- once a key player in a lobbying project that DeLay built into a powerful tool to help maintain Republican majorities in the House and Senate -- is cooperating with federal prosecutors in a wide-ranging corruption investigation. The probe is focused on whether at least a half-dozen members of Congress and several aides traded legislative action in return for lavish trips, gifts and campaign contributions orchestrated by Abramoff.
posted by Kevin at 8:31 AM

Make your time:

You know those cheap mortgages that everybody's been getting to speculate on housing? Where somebody at the other end of a toll-free phone will lend you $200,000 and your payment will only be $678 per month?

Lenders who started making those teaser-rate loans a few years ago are getting ready to charge real-world payments on them.

Starting in 2006 and accelerating into 2007, as much as $2.5 trillion worth of the fancy mortgages called "hybrids" are coming to the end of the free-lunch part of the deal.

...

The best-case scenario for the future, the one from the real estate agents, is that prices will level out to single-digit appreciation rates.

Assuming that scenario, some would-be investors -- those who took out highly leveraged loans with extremely low payment options -- could soon find themselves owing more on a house than it is worth.

That's called being "upside down" in a loan.

Many more will simply find that their monthly bill has instantly risen by roughly the amount of a car loan.
posted by Kevin at 6:39 PM

This is an oldy, but a goody.

This is for all the "Christians" out there who support the Republican party. Family values, etc.:

Porn star, political candidate. And now you can add one more line to Mary Carey's resume: Republican booster.

Carey was in Washington on Tuesday to attend the President's Dinner, an annual fund-raiser put on by the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

A few hours before the dinner, Carey met with reporters to show off her evening gown and talk about a Republican lunch she and her boss, adult film executive Mark Kulkis, attended.
posted by Kevin at 3:19 PM

MOSCOW Russia's natural gas monopoly Gazprom has begun reducing pressure in its lines to Ukraine as the deadline for stopping sales to the country loomed.

Gazprom says it's stopping natural gas sales to the country of 48 (m) million people because Ukraine refused a demand to pay more than quadruple the price for Russian gas.

Gazprom provides about half the gas consumed in the European Union and some 80 percent of that amount is sent in pipelines that cross Ukraine. The price dispute has raised wide concerns that European supplies could be affected.

Ukrainian officials have said the country has sufficient gas reserves to weather a Gazprom cutoff for at least several weeks, but have declined to specify how much it has in reserve.
posted by Kevin at 2:44 AM