Disturbing Trends

2011-11-13T00:56:00.001-08:00

Disturbing Trends - the inner sanctum carried on commenting on the world on

This site, distrends.blogspot.com was an earlier edition (on Blogger) that broke - so we moved it over there. Now this site is back and operational, once again...

OSAMA KILLED

2011-05-02T01:57:00.001-07:00

Osama Bin Laden is dead. Disturbing Trends Epitaph

Also, Guardian article

Russian view of America

2011-04-29T04:04:00.001-07:00

RT's outspoken Keiser Report on the US economy

Sony Hacked

2011-04-27T05:47:00.000-07:00

Sony Playstation network was shutdown after a hacker stole nearly 80 million identities of people who are obviously ready to spend online. Who is at fault, and why?

In Memory of Tim Hetherington

2011-04-22T01:18:00.001-07:00

Diary (2010) from Tim Hetherington on Vimeo.

Full article

Social Equity

2011-04-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

The very act of enacting laws is an erosion of the unfettered freedom some believe is necessary for business to succeed

from Social Equity
Read the full article

Energy

2011-04-13T23:53:00.001-07:00

Tsunami terror

2011-03-13T08:17:00.001-07:00

This amazing footage shows exactly what the terror of the Tsunami feels like as yachts stumble over the beach line, and water starts pouring onto roadways. It is well shot, with good sound by someone who must have survived along with the beach-side property it was shot from.

Full article including a theory for increased seismic activity

Nuclear threat

2011-03-13T03:31:00.000-07:00

"There are now problems at the number three reactor - the concern is that it is overheating. They're trying to pump sea water through it at the moment. That's an unusual, somewhat innovative solution to the problem. But the fact that they're prepared to consider unusual solutions like that gives you a hint of just how serious the problem is." - Chris Hogg - BBC

Stopping the Tsunami

2011-03-11T14:31:00.001-08:00

The Tsunami

Theories as to what causes Earthquakes are well established. The Earth has a group of tectonic plates which move gradually. This causes continental drift and parts of the world that are more likely to get volcanoes and earthquakes. There are a few countries that are more likely to get seismic activity due to their location and indeed origin as land masses drawn out of the Earth's mantle, the product of volcanic activity.

Tectonic plates

Examine the plate map around the Ring of Fire - the edges of the Pacific plate. Japan and New Zealand are both dissected by subduction zones, where the plates are pushing towards each other. So is Iceland (although the Atlantic plates are moving apart. Other trouble zones are evident around the Pacific rim, Indonesia and north of the Indian Plate. Mutual subduction results in mountain ranges and continental drift takes these land deposits and slowly but certainly reorders them. So New Zealand and Japan, in Geological time, are likely to both increase in land mass. The water in the atmosphere and sea and the fuming vents of the Earth appear to have interdependent roles in the maintenance of the conditions of life.

Tsunami

A Tsunami arises from the sudden upward thrust of one plate, the friction causes the earthquake and the land mass suddenly moving up creates a powerful wave that radiates rapidly. The displacement of large amounts of water is carried on the waves and move like a rapid tide. The laws of gravity counterbalance the effects of these waves, and the tide is drawn back out to sea. This has disastrous consequences for shorelines close to the wave and certain types of shoreline that may be distant but have a "line of sight" to the event.

Preventing a Tsunami

A Tsunami can not be stopped from our current technological options. Ideas are listed below of theoretical means by which a tsunami could be stopped or prevented from causing remote damage.

Ideas to Stop a Tsunami

a tractor beam wall from a network of satellites protecting coastlines near faults that can be switched on when an earthquake is detected
offshore barriers or baffles close to the fault line that absorb the energy of the wave
giant fans that blow the waves away on potentially hazardous coastline
underground plumbing
hoping it will never happen again

Poetry

The Tsunami (poetry)

The Vote

2011-03-06T09:16:00.000-08:00

Cameron is going to have to come up with some better arguments about the alternative vote if he wants to win the argument. In his speech he used this analogy:

Imagine it's the Olympics, London 2012. We're all watching the 100 metres. Usain Bolt powers home over the line. But then he gets to the podium, it's the guy who came third who gets the gold. We wouldn't put up with this in the Olympics. We shouldn't put up with it in our democracy.

If Cameron carries on like this, he's going to have to hand back that Oxford PPE first. An Olympic final is designed to establish who can run the fastest. An election is designed to establish who can govern with consent.

from The Guardian

The UK is about to vote between First Past the Post and AV (the system used in Australia).

AV? Alternative Vote means that you do not vote for one candidate but exercise a sort of "internal democracy" apportioning a diminishing vote from your first to last choice of candidates. In this way, a tie can be broken by a third vote that is marginally larger, who receives a large majority of second votes. By allowing the preference vote to cover more than just the first three or five selections, it becomes an exercise in democratic ignorance for most, most of us are not familiar with every point of view on offer nor should be be over concerned for the opinions of those we find philosophically untenable to be significant.

The attraction of FPP is that history can be blamed on the proportionality of the sub legislature, by which is meant that constituencies are not "equal" in that they may encompass populations that have no chance in overturning a local majority due to the established conservatism of the very wealthy (who in turn consider that social immobility is of value), or where the enterprising have no chance for a political voice because of a dominance of the more frequently occupied seats of economic fortune in the council estates of cities.

The constituency system has its illusion of traditional democratic choice. But it is more likely to express a government that slowly swings harshly to the left or right. A coalition government where significant minority voices are at least able to express policy options does not seek to divide peoples only by where they live.

A real democracy is enriched by the input of many voices. Nick Clegg has not a shit show of selling AV over Cameron backing the more decisive and "intelligent choice" or whatever soapsuds he will manage to briefly enchant the voter with until they wake up.

More ideas for progress are available if no regard to artificial "original" values are ascribed to them. Egalitarian societies would be a fortunate but unlikely result of Cameron's philosophy. What he hopes to foster is unfortunately coloured by an increased perceived imbalance, a widening so sharp one can not help but view this Big Society as something very unpleasant that can also be subject to whitewash as well as swallow it as necessary punishment.

Egyptian Democracy

2011-02-05T21:55:00.000-08:00

Noam Chomsky on the people power revolution that the Egyptian government appears intent on suppressing with violence.

Guardian article

Swine Flu updates

2011-01-13T16:30:00.000-08:00

While millions in the UK remain unvaccinated against H1N1, good news for those who lived through it. The virus seems to result in a sort of super immunity against most other strains of flu.

Murder or Assassination

2011-01-08T14:21:00.000-08:00

Assassination Attempt

The Right Wing (Tea Party/Sarah Palin) rhetoric did not create an extremist, but their words effectively authorize violence

US Congress member Gabrielle Giffords was shot by Jared Loughner an individual brandishing a semi automatic execution weapon. A bullet through her brain, and at this moment she is undergoing surgery in a critical condition. Among the 5 dead was a US Federal Judge.

Although it brings the gun laws into clear focus as a dangerous option in today's world, it is very unlikely to shift the view that an armed citizenry prevents invasion, and the US almost religious adherence to the risks of such a view is the correct basis in American law.

Bluntly, it is an act of terrorism and appears possibly inspired by rhetoric from the Tea Party, Sarah Palin most directly who placed advertisements with weapon sights targeting each Democrat by State. But there is no provable offense when the interpretation is causing the fanatic to attach themselves to it like a religious truth.

That could be Sarah Palin's personal 9/11 event.

"Giffords had been named as a political campaign target for conservatives in November's elections by former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin for her strong support of Obama's reforms. Palin had published a "target map" on her website using images of gun sights to identify 20 House Democrats, including Giffords, for backing the new health care law. At an event in 2009 which was similar to the one Giffords was holding today, a protester was removed by police when his pistol fell to the supermarket floor." - Guardian, UK.

It appears to be political assassination. Worse than an act of terrorism. It is an act of treason, a crime against the State, the people and the Law. A tear in the meaning of the flag.

Update: Giffords' assailant was last night named as 22-year-old Afghanistan veteran Jared Lee Loughner

Update: Sarah Palin's Facebook still shows the map with crosshairs encouraging extremists to kill politicians. The map was removed from her website.

As unlikely as it may be that this map with cross hairs and the statements that Democrats should have an M16 taken to them are the primary justification of this insane individual's acts of terrorism, the fact remains that it could cause that kind of behaviour.

Is the map with crosshairs an incitement to terrorism? Is it a hate crime or poltical dialogue? More succinctly, is it what the Tea Party want folk to consider as a solution to their woes? Whatever political leaning you have, encouraging violence like this is the voice of extremism.

For God's sake. Change the message.

Update: Jared Loughner has been charged with 5 charges, including a charge of Attempted Assassination and Murder

Swine Flu

2010-12-21T13:45:00.000-08:00

It looks like an epidemic of one of the more dangerous viruses to face our medical science. It is not as though we did not know about Swine Flu, but is the UK ready for it?

In a land obsessed by the snow and the Prime Minister speaking about the terrible state of delays and cancellations at Heathrow (which is a failure of privatisation and necessary Government action), thousands of stranded passengers sleeping rough at the airport provides the perfect incubator by collecting together people from all over the UK in one unhealthy environment who are then going to fly all over the world.

More than 300 people lie in critical care beds and at this writing, 17 people have lost their lives. Lost their ability to breathe.

And the Government worries about what a minister says. David Cameron has failed to govern and if his Government holds together it will not be due to his taking courageous or necessary action to prevent disaster.

What is the Government going to do? They are going to take apart the National Health system by the looks of what they are doing to schools and universities. It is back to tooth and claw. Do not sneeze.

Guardian article

Dec 24th update: the situation worsens Telegraph 460 now in intensive care, 27 deaths

Dec 31st update: Government immunisation efforts - the Government has left the immunisation campaign a little late, but is mass immunisation the answer? Is it necessary for people to suffer a new flu variety or is protection better in that it does not provide continued opportunities for the virus to mutate?

Dec 31st update: The Department of Health says 738 people with confirmed or suspected flu are in intensive care, up 60% on last week's figure of 460. They include 42 children under five.

WIkileaks

2010-12-12T09:44:00.000-08:00

Ron Paul on Wikileaks.

Pakistan

2010-12-01T14:04:00.000-08:00

Disturbing Trends warned about the danger of Pakistan about 5 years ago and it seems that we were not alone in the glaringly obvious analysis. A country with nuclear weapons and assassinated leaders, terrorists and religious friction, a huge population, 170 million people sandwiched between two world powers, two wars, disputed territory, high inflation and a passing economic crisis - is a country that holds significant pressures and risks. Now Wikileaks has released documents and communications by the US government that echo this great concern, exposure of Pakistan's nuclear weapons to terrorist organisations or terrorists.

They are very concerned about this, and kept it away from the general public. One must consider the question as to why Governments should want to keep this secret. The prospect of mass panic does not seem to apply, the public has lived under the yoke of nuclear threat for so long and it would seem important to raise public awareness rather than to hide the obvious.

China

2010-11-30T01:06:00.000-08:00

China does not want any more trouble. North Korea should be absorbed by the vastly more successful South in the private views of the Chinese government. It would make a lot of sense, but a peace treaty between Korea and China, and another one with Japan does not guarantee stability, but 1,000,000 soldiers burning all the oxygen is disproportionate to the potential for goodwill in the world for a resurgent, united Korea.

It would mean the end of fear. It would be the end of poverty for the population of the North. Gradually, things would improve because the North would be able to produce something to exchange with the rest of the world. At the moment all it produces is fear. China may isolate it, but will it change or will it now start to threaten China also?

Aspirin

2010-11-24T04:57:00.000-08:00

Salicylic acid, or Aspirin may be a health food - a naturally occurring plant defense that helps dispose of rubbish (old cells) in the body. A daily intake of about 75mg has been considered medically a good idea for most although the side effect of intestinal bleeding for 0.1% of the population deters general use. But for most a daily small dose of Aspirin is an inexpensive way to ward off heart disease, various cancers and dementia.

See: http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Salicylic:acid.html

Sarah Palin gets personal

2010-11-23T03:42:00.000-08:00

Sarah Palin's new book explores Obama's background. Early shots in a nasty campaign to come.

Who is a trusted enemy?

2010-11-23T03:38:00.000-08:00

A Taleban "leader" sent to negotiate with Hamid Karzai turns out to be a shopkeeper.

Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AM19920101123

Happiness defined as "Being in the Moment"

2010-11-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

If you define happiness as being in the moment, then the corollary sounds logical.

To say that the wandering mind causes depression is to tell every parent to be concerned when their child is introspective. Most intellectual behaviour may be like that.

Dreaming does not result in depression. However, addiction to external stimuli do create patterns in modes of thinking and when the stimuli is removed bad feelings logically follow.

Creativity often involves introspection and the mind wandering. Creativity is being in the moment of thought.

See also:

The Drug War

2010-11-13T04:48:00.000-08:00

From the village folk in the Peruvian jungle product pickups to the corrupt cops and the culture and guns of New York, the drug trade forms a commercial interaction between certain counties. Hardly "fair trade" because of the level of violence and stealth required to achieve such profit levels. There is talk of changing laws, however a recent vote in California that supported continued prohibition of cannabis.

With thugs and guns what otherwise looks exactly like a fertilizer shipping business, the distribution of cocaine or heroin, becomes criminal. Is it so because it is harmful or because there is an untaxed profit? Or is the Afghanistan war part of the war on drugs? What does "winning" mean? Will it change anything?

That the Taleban seem to survive on the export of drugs to a snorting army of customers is the war against the rest of the world. It is as though one country had the one weapon that could destroy whole cities. It wealds power over the part of the world affected by its deadly threat. Nuclear weapons will not return a sustainable profit but the drug trade does.

Edited rap lyrics and music

Political Science

2010-11-07T01:07:00.000-07:00

I suspect that politics is not a science. It may be the art of pinching the nose of society while forcing down the wrong medicine. It may seem to be the art of finding an equilibrium by polarising opinion. A bit like saying the art of boiling water by freezing it. And that can be done - as you may find out in the rare air of the tops of mountains. The economics of mountain climbing, if you miscalculate and get it wrong, you run out of breath, not due to a crisis of competition but through engine failure. A traffic jam is made worse by more powerful vehicles spewing their fumes into the air until the drivers are stupefied. The same model of self defeat exists across the political spectrum.

Prince Charles believes in the politics of harmony - being in tune with the direction of nature. The Green movement in varying degrees believe humans to be part of something far greater that affords our respect, our humility. Objectivism at the other extreme believes in the power of individual achievement. When the objective is achieved the result looks tastes and smells like fascism. The rights of ownership and control of assets become the rights of ownership and control of people.

The politics of the "Liberal Democrats" is fundamentally two faced. It is the convenience of truth that informs it. If Liberal means more freedom to exploit and democrat means in the hands of the people, the amalgam of these two ideas is everyone screwing everyone else. No wonder Clegg won so much power.

Strange Events

2010-11-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

While cosmic rays hit the earth, we look inside the actions of viruses, how they infect cells by injecting the cell with itself and changing the cell's DNA. But meantime the body has been able to fight viruses by attaching immune cells to the protein well of the virus, and thus being injected with it, attracting special virual cell deconstruction factories that tear the virus cell to pieces. The goings on at the cellular level follow very severe war policies, take no prisoners, in fact, evaporate them!

So research is going on for anti-virals that work in a similar fashion.

"The discovery, which is reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could pave the way for a new generation of antiviral drugs that fight infections by supercharging the body's own defences.

"Future treatments based on James's work are only expected to work against a class of viruses that do not shed their protein coats when they invade healthy cells. Those that do would leave the attached antibodies outside the cells, and so not trigger the cell's own immune attack."

Guardian, Nov 1, 2010

The idea of a virus that sheds its protein coat and thus defeat the virus defences sounds like a virus that would cause a cell to mutate, and as cells become virus factories, effectively grow - a hybrid semi foreign version of the cell. If antivirals can defeat this type of virus, it seems quite possible that there may be hope of attacking the many cancers will may be caused in this way.

Mind Reading

2010-10-30T00:21:00.000-07:00

Machines that read our minds have been the subject of experientation. By finding the location of certain receptors and providing feedback that resonds to it, images can be faded. This is research into how our brains focus predominantly on one thing (while containing other ideas which are put into the "background".

Explosives Found on Planes

2010-10-29T23:54:00.000-07:00

How will Obama deal with the credible terrorist threat from Yemen? He shows confidence that the measures in place will work. Gone are the air of automatic false reassurance. Obama calmly and swiftly relays the finding of smuggled explosives (in printer toner cartridges) is indeed a matter of concern.

FULL article

The Celebrity of Politicians

2010-10-20T14:31:00.000-07:00

What does she do all day? Shake hands and sign books? To ensure she is understood that she and her tea party members are definately not racist? To blame the media reporting it? To decry her enemies for any reason at all? What does she stand for? One suspects that reading her book will not make you wiser. She signs and agrees and shakes hands. All day. Most days on the campaign trail. High hopes for this candidate. High hopes inherited from the incumbent? Obama swept into office on a tide of a hope. A mandate of hope is a fear of hopelessness. No matter what he does, his actions are compared to the hope raised. And that could never be beat.

I suspect it is the same for Sarah Palin. Unless she saves the world, or actually does bring Armageddon down from the heavens, which seems oddly unlikely, she is destined to be less spectacular in office than she is under the floodlights of admiration.

Watch the video on this link to the Guardian, if you have not found it already. The fan who has been there from the very first tea party is attached and probably has attended every appearance of her star performer, Palin. Does she want a ruthless Diva who will toss out any vestige of liberalism? She certainly wants Palin to be President and believes it will be.

What are her policies? We will get to that, when she is in office, then you will find out. Until then we can listen to the same generalised platitudes and insistent accusative denials.

One can only hope as Obama's popularity wanes, he starts to use his brain and inspires the population by winning the war in Afghanistan. He had better.

Government Cut Backs

2010-10-15T17:42:00.000-07:00

The Government of the UK, the Conservative/LibDem coalition is about to embark upon a withering reduction in funding public services. Included in the list of targets is the Police. Included in this list of targets is defence. This does not bode well for bastions of the left: education and health.

The duty of a government is to protect the vulnerable. This government appears to distrust the public service, and distrust the public. It distrusts those who are employed to administer its laws. A state of seige exists with the government threatening economic mayhem on any and all but the bankers. A state of distruct exists. The agenda has been hidden from view. Once they have finished cutting away their control of the state, there will be little for Government to do. Is that their aim?

The Food Chain

2010-07-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

The food chain has been attacked by pollution since the start of the industrial age and human denial is not going to change that. Poisons being added to the vast oceans do not just go away they are absorbed by the plankton - the tiny sea creatures that form the base of the food chain. And if we continue to reduce their habitats through pollution we endanger every form of life on the planet. Most of all ourselves.

LA Times story

The Failure of War

2010-07-22T14:12:00.000-07:00

Tony Blair's Britain entered the fray with GW Bush's America. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were justified by distorted facts, plain old lies and inaccurate intelligence. Does this make the citizens of either country any safer?

More...

A wound in the Earth

2010-06-19T14:06:00.000-07:00

Gulf oil spill: A hole in the world

The Deepwater Horizon disaster is not just an industrial accident – it is a violent wound inflicted on the Earth itself. In this special report from the Gulf coast, a leading author and activist shows how it lays bare the hubris at the heart of capitalism...

Read the article by Naomi Klein published in The Guardian

Biodiversity Threat

2010-05-22T01:47:00.001-07:00

The threat to human existence by our waton destruction and pollution of natural environments is more severe than the effects of climate change, says a UN economic report.

Economic exploitation is already leading us to ruin. What we are doing to nature is so much worse. As we cheer on the destruction of retirement funds by corporate speculation, do we fund the destruction of the world that we rely upon?

There is no certainty in a future when greed dictates. Nature will overgrow our paltry efforts at self organisation and impose a far more brutal environment that no longer supports human viability.

We either act within the laws of nature or continue to believe in our fictions that make it seem logical to overpopulate, destroy species and burn resources. Nature is blinking in our brightness, but we are so very doomed if we think we can exist without mother Earth.

Guardian

The consequences of global warming

2010-05-16T01:02:00.000-07:00

What happens if we continue to pollute the atmophere?

The Great Energy Challenge

"The Exxon-Valez every four days"

2010-05-14T01:29:00.000-07:00

The scale of the unnatural disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is a horror. The responsibility of BP in drilling this hole in the seabed and then not managing the risk so as to prevent destruction of sea life for generations and use excuses like "the sea is very large" when they made record profits last year in a time of international recession deserves more scrutiny.

Click to read article

Is the UK Democratic?

2010-05-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

The world's most democratic countries are not the United Kingdom or the United States of America. Both use outdated systems for democratic choice that do not grant equality to each vote, and allow entrenchment of a sitting government via the drawing of electoral boundaries.

FULL Article

The Environment

2010-05-03T01:32:00.000-07:00

The most serious issue facing the world today is more far reaching than the financial crises and worse than war. It is the serious threat we pose to ourselves through over-population and pollution of our environment.

The end days of the oil industry are brought into stark reality by the risk taken and inability to repair an oil well off the coast of America that threatens all sea life in the Gulf of Mexico. Rampant capitalism and growth entail mistakes and this one is huge. Failure to build into the cost of oil the risk it presents when drilling for it offshore results in "unexpected disaster".

The entire problem of messing with nature without taking adequate measures to protect the environment are illustrated in this catastrophe. It brings the viability of the entire oil industry with its wars and pollution, also un-costed, into question.

Possibly more severe is the mysterious disappearance of honey bees. Why are they abandoning their hives? Instead of coming up with answers, there seems to be a hope the problem is temporary and will resolve itself, but it is not. It is getting more severe with each passing year and it threatens the crops of the world. Our trusted little friends who pollenate flowers are dying and it is being caused by something we have not noticed?

The "most likely" theory is some disease or parasite is at work, but logic indicates that it is just as likely that we are to blame. If for example, it is our genetic modification of crops causing the bees to stop recognising them, and they therefore simply end up starving themselves as they can no longer gather the right ingredients or are unable to produce enough royal jelly to make queens, then they would die externally to the hive. In fact the genetic modification of plant may be messing with the bees ability to navigate home as ancient reliable signals now appear like a colour blindness test with flashing lights.

Suddenly their life cycle, interrupted, no longer works. Our failure since 2006 to properly establish what is causing this may cause the most horrible food crisis in much of the world, and is therefore a horror far worse than oil wars or even marine pollution.

See also:

Capitalism

2010-05-02T03:43:00.000-07:00

The system we have lacks a genuine human philosophy. Capitalism is more of a mechanism to fund ventures than the best way for humanity to prosper. We ignore its horrible side effects.

We would do far better if banking was not such a highly rewarded pyramid scheme. Banks produce security. Politicians are remiss for backing fat horses.

Our present society lacks the heroic altruism and cooperation that carried us out of the wars, terrible epidemics and human crimes such as slavery.

Wealth is a pretence without genuine value. It is merely good fortune and it is a sadness that those who have it believe it motivates those who do not.

First UK Leadership Debate

2010-04-15T18:58:00.000-07:00

The leaders of each political party gave their views on a leadership debate.

My reading is that David Cameron is not appealing to the Centre as well as he hopes, Gordon Brown only seems to appeal to the Centre, whereas Nick Clegg's appeals to the Left and Centre. Ring wing voters may have already made up their minds. But the Liberal Democrats may have secured their position as holding the balance of power.

The Guardian picked Nick Clegg as the winner of the debate. His theme of the old duality making and breaking the same old promises rang true.

UK Election: The Tory Trouble

2010-04-11T05:29:00.000-07:00

Speaking during a visit to Cheam, in south London, Tory leader David Cameron said: "We should have a society where we back commitment and where we recognise marriage and civil partnerships in the tax system. Would it be a good thing if more people came together and stayed together and showed commitment? I think it would."

Brown said Labour's offer to voters would be credible rather than exciting. "It is about substance in the end," he said.

Clegg said he was "not campaigning for a hung parliament" but it would be preferable to rule by a party with a tiny majority based on a minority of votes. "Do I think politicians working together can be a good thing? Of course it can."

Quotes from Guardian.co.uk

The UK election offers several "choices". None of these seem at all democratic except for the dreaded "hung parliament". In the case of no absolute majority, the outdated First Past the Post system offers governments formed with less than a majority of the votes. With an electorate where not everyone votes and of those who do, the prospect of every Government based on a minority of voters is plainly undemocratic and Nick Cleggs forecast of social unrest is not only inevitable in this but in every election.

The current "government" is only based on 22% of the eligible vote. When you have two main parties who gravitate at the "centre" and a third party that is actually a centrist party - there is no real choice except the personalities involved. The policies and policy reputations of the parties are not to be relied upon. Whomever "wins" this election will have to take actions that make their political future very dim. A coalition is almost necessary to avoid any individual party being tainted, but that is certainly the wrong reason to go into coalition.

Democratic politics is not about the winning. It is about the representation. If all three parties went into coalition to implement their austerity measures, they would still be doing so with less than 50% actual support. Only the Lib Dems are coming out to say it and only because they have little hope of winning enough seats for the "absolute majority" that the first past the post system appears to offer. Based on less than a quarter of the will of the people it is bound to leave a bad taste in the mouths of the majority.

Proportional representation with all its problems is a far better way to evolve good government.

Give a damn

2010-04-03T01:49:00.000-07:00

One of the last frontiers of equality is sexual preference. Those human beings who are differentiated by being gay, lesbian or bisexual are routinely discriminated against. Whether you are gay or not, this is as unacceptable as racist hatred and gender inequality.

Discrimination against homosexuality was outlawed in New Zealand in 1994 ten years after homosexual acts were no longer criminal. New Zealand has a healthy respect of racial, gender and sexual equality and this strengthens it as a society.

America still discriminates against "gays in the military". It is a violation of human rights to make people lie about those they love, their families and their choices. There is no longer any excuse for it.

Disturbing Trends gives a damn and supports the campaign to Give A Damn

Health Care

2010-03-22T00:05:00.001-07:00

Barack Obama achieves the impossible and gets Health Care passed. This may signal the start of an America that is not only there to help those who help themselves. Indeed it may signal the beginning of the end of the age of greed.

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2010-03-14T05:17:00.001-07:00

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Unbelievable Malice

2010-03-14T03:28:00.000-07:00

The Right Wing strikes back! In memoirs published by Karl Rove and reflecting attack dog Dick Cheney and his daughter, truth is not respected but the myth that Bush did everything to contain terrorism and that "no attacks happened in America during his term of office" would be a joke if it were not for a sizeable slice of American that actually buy this twist on reality.

More

More on "Broken Britain"

2010-03-07T00:58:00.000-08:00

The trouble with negative campaigning is the feeling that it is all mouth and no head. That is what we can see in David Cameron's harping on about "Broken Britain" - the social disorder he disingenuously ties to the Labour Government due to a few isolated incidents of teenager violence - which were hardly representative of all teenagers. His remedies were insipid as his understanding of the root causes of social disorder seem to be. As has been the case with Labour. Giving freedom to gambling and too much leash to the banking community while allowing so many to fall below the irretrievable line demarking endemic poverty and persistent unemployment.

A credible conservative solution would be to encourage investment in enterprise. Instead its volunteer groups and marriage. How is that going to fix things, exactly? "Look your kids have been robbing the local pensioners, so anyone going to volunteer to give them a bollocking?". Or, perhaps - "your teenage daughters are getting pregnant to get on welfare. So we have changed the law so they have to get married to get on welfare."

Victorian times were wealthy times due to the British imperial expansion. Face it, conservation of those values is hardly a 21st century recipe for progress.

The intellectual poverty of British politics is what is broken. There is no credible solution from either side due in part to weak leadership and mouthing of solutions without much brain behind them. It becomes a matter of who we trust the most not to continue to ruin people's lives with their hollow greed rather than which party has the highest quality ideas.

The expenses crisis was not a financial crisis. It was a catastropie of trust. The sheer embarrassment of the Lord Aahcroft affair is evidence of just how little the Conservatives really care about due process and respect for the average man on the street and his progress in life. Conservatives will not just slash public services, but now it seems they feel they have to raise taxes in order to reduce the deficit.

The lack of inspired confidence shown in the people of Britain by both sides of the house is the problem. It is us, not they, who will pull the country out of the mess that has erupted after both parties went mad for the fruits of capitalism without regard for education.

Is Cameron the problem?

2010-03-03T00:35:00.000-08:00

The Conservatives, rattling on about black clouds and being generally negative about future prospects are creating a bleak outlook with an up to now near certainty that they will form the next government. The UK economy is reliant upon Government spending and this is what Cameron sees as the "real" problem. The Ashcroft affair (his non-dom tax status has just been revealed, and he is high in the ranks of the Conservatives) threatens to derail the very sincerity that Cameron so relies upon so his negative electioneering not only seems mean on the surface as he talks of cutting basic public services - a response to the structural debt arrived at after the public bought loss making banks - but it is also shaking the pound into devaluation.

Is that such a bad thing? Well, it increases the level of the deficit in pound terms. It makes it harder for the Government to reduce debt and instantly increases it.

So is Cameron and his razor gang of the greedy not in fact the problem?

The Conservatives and the Social Fabric

2010-02-28T17:43:00.000-08:00

The Conservatives have a difficult job convincing the electorate that it is not their fault when they complain of a "Broken Britain". It was after all they who exposed the manufacturing sector to world competition, not necessarily a bad thing, but the legacy of millions of unemployed left festering has led to a generation of people conditioned to rely upon Government spending, not by choice, more by circumstance and an inability to change that.

Reliance on private investment largely failed due to the "bling economy", the Yuppies of the 80s who invested their gains into fast cars and property contributing to the huge bubbles of that burst through the last decade. The most severe being the credit crunch recession that has seen a reduction in available capital that no political party seems to have confronted and said: "we need to rebuild by causing investment in the people of Britain by the people and Government working together" which seems now the path back from evaporation of supposed capital?

Vote, damn you Vote

2010-02-28T05:17:00.001-08:00

Democracy depends on people casting votes that are meaningful to their lives.

In this article voters are being encouraged to "vote strategically", basically to encourage voters to prevent a change of government to Conservative by not "wasting" a vote on the Liberal Democrats but going for more of the same (Labour) as a change to the right-wing Conservatives is "untenable".

What utter nonsense.

If everyone examines the actual policy of each party and casts their vote for that, then a government can be formed that reflects the democratic wishes of the majority, not manipulate the vote according to fears of what may happen if "we let the Tories take power".

Democratic choice is about evolution, not fear.

The change mechanism that depends upon fear is called War. Revolution results from massive disapproval following a failure of democratic choice.

Corporate Pollution

2010-02-18T18:51:00.000-08:00

Freedom means many things to many people. One of the supposed freedoms we are born with is to exist in nature. This is not a right bestowed by Government or God, but is part of what and who we are. One of the greatest crimes against humanity is the pursuit of profits to line the pockets of the wealthy with scant regard for natural consequences.

Read the full article

New Economics

2010-02-14T18:02:00.000-08:00

350 economists agree, it is time to change the parameters of finance. A suggested tax on the transactions between banks of 0.05% and a suggestion of a tax on speculation to alleviate poverty in this unbalanced world are two ideas which may take hold.

Full Article

What is Conservatism

2010-02-08T17:27:00.000-08:00

If we look after our children, give them the best opportunities that we can to get educated and get ahead, make sure they are given the best chance of healthy living, we are doing the right thing. So why do conservatives rail against medical care for all? What is the point of denial of human rights for the sake of the choice of the few?

Why Terrorism is a Failure

2010-01-17T08:12:00.000-08:00

Terrorism fails to exert political pressure on governments, as nobody in the world wants random acts of violence to take the lives of their children, or indeed themselves.

Full article

Freedom

2010-01-13T02:22:00.000-08:00

UK Police have had an EEC ruling against stop and search activities.

In the meantime, a Muslim group has been denied their right of protest and have been labelled a terrorist group. This seems a popularist measure by the Brown Government increasingly clutching at straws to find votes in the upcoming election Labour seems destined to lose. Having moved too far right, they will almost certainly lose as the Conservatives seem to put on a more moderate face. I have seen this sort of political reversal happen in New Zealand.

And enquiries into Britain's role in starting the Iraq war with George Bush is being defended by Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair's master of spin.

Politics is the art of finding the middle ground. The war with Al Qaeda has been detrimental to the life of Great Britain but hardly as devastating as it has been to Iraq civilian life. Similarly, the war in Afghanistan seems, from the outside, to be a war against the poppy and criminal ideals. Terrorism is a political act when it creates a threat to everyday life. But Britain lived through its own Blitz in WWII and the threat of terror attacks is not going to stop this once world ruling nation from defending itself.

Freedom is too important to ignore. But is the medicine proscribed by Bush, Blair and now Brown any good for freedom? Not if the laws they enact reduce individual freedom. I returned to the UK expecting stop and search and intrusions by the law to be hard to deal with, but so far, I see people being indoctrinated behind their brick walls into being frightened of each other. The police presence is extreme but accepted. Most of the coppers go about their guardianship of civilised behaviour with good will and life goes on.

Google is concerned that Chinese hacking of freedom activists' gmail accounts has raised question by the US Government and a threat by Google of pulling out of google.cn completely. This will mean less freedom for the most populated country in the world.

Meantime, earthquakes destroy Haiti and millions die the world over from disease and starvation. Is this emphasis on terrorism all that wise? Are the acts of Osama bin Laden really going to make any difference in terms of Islam? Probably not. It is just a dirty war that will be over in another 2000 years or so.

Or both sides could signal an end to hostilities and the start of toleration and freedom.

Yeah, right.

What are we feeding our children

2010-01-11T03:42:00.000-08:00

Read the effects of drinking a can of Coke or other soda drinks, within one hour it has as much potential to promote disease as smoking a cigarette or consuming heroin. And due to the "sugar crash" the physical addiction is fairly instant, requiring "refuelling" within an hour. One of the most successful companies of the twentieth century is in essence a drug pusher? Read the link and judge for yourself!

A comment about the high fructose corn syrup used as a sweetener is truly alarming:

and this doesn't even touch on the negative impact of the sweetener used in most soft drinks now, high fructose corn syrup. To make a long story short, high fructose corn syrup causes your body to deposit fat around your major organs (liver, kidneys, heart, etc.) and slowly chokes out their function.

I find it very intriguing that the slave trade of the nineteenth century supported the sugar plantations and the war on the health of humanity continues with misleading advertising that relies upon the same symbols that the tobacco industry falsely used.

To be healthy, turn to nature. Evolution has ensured we are designed for raw unprocessed foods and not addictive chemicals and sugar.

Obama's Response

2010-01-07T23:36:00.000-08:00

When a flaw in the protective shield that makes airflight possible (without holding your breath) exposed American flights a new kind of designer suicide bomber with a chemistry set to be set off by an "emergency injection", the media in the UK highlighted how detailed scanners would fail to show such a kit but would expose people's nakedness to the security police, as if that exposure was indeed sinful. Making people the "apparent victims" of the potential they they exist as a parade of pornographic images is what the purient are most concerned about? Is that their response?

More (full article)

Happy new decade

2010-01-02T00:55:00.001-08:00

The year 2000 was a fine boundary, because of the mathematics of dates. 2010 seems a little more mathematical, in that the century count is double that of the year count. 2000 however exposed a hole in thinking shared by everyone who entered a two figure date into their computers. Time marches on, and it is necessary to record the details.

The 2000 decade was the decade that Tony Blair and GW Bush decided that the Geneva Convention prevented them from dealing with the threat of Iraq. There is a movement to bring them to justice as their actions were not legal or desirable.

More

Overpopulation is the main problem

2009-12-15T02:34:00.000-08:00

Overpopulation is the world’s top environmental issue, followed closely by climate change and the need to develop renewable energy resources to replace fossil fuels, according to a survey of the faculty at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) reported in April 2009.

“Overpopulation is the only problem,” said Dr. Charles A. Hall, a systems ecologist. “If we had 100 million people on Earth — or better, 10 million — no others would be a problem.” (Current estimates put the planet’s population at more than six billion.)

I agree.

Russian Dead Hand Defense Strategy

2009-12-14T21:42:00.000-08:00

The "Dead Hand" defense, a sort of Russian Roulette with the certainty of death for the other side in the event of a nuclear explosions that had not been responded to due to no orders from whomever carries the football in Russia these days.

The West believes that hand to now be Vladamir Putin's; making the existence of a system, such as the "Dead Hand", perhaps a little redundant. What it did, upon detecting nuclear tremors, is launch a devastating attack on America. Lucky no major earthquakes triggered this!

Now that the Cold War is over, we can look back at its horrific potential for errors leading to the annihilation of all life on the planet. So last decade. So not current thinking. The constant terror of being educated as a child about nuclear fallout shelters and the possibility that the accelerating state of tension between the USSR and the USA was punctuated with moments of greatness, such as Yuri Gagarin, Sputnik and the Apollo programmes. It was not the putting a man on the moon, which factually achieved less than putting the second one there as well, and so on; but, the very act of being able to populate another world was a significant stage in the evolution of humans.

Insofar as we know, humans seems to adapt more rapidly and inherently in our behavior, primarily language, and as such are the very least stable artifact of nature. Impatient to the very nucleus we are, increasingly prodded into grand magical majesty of change and recombination of elements.

There is no "should" that can dictate to us what we do next. Our self belief has been superseded by our technology. It is only by a process of mutual responsibility and love can we see a path past war, past suffering, where agreements are made as a token of faith in each other rather than a unworthy belief that another causes our decisions.

Can humanity evolve enough frugal inventiveness to conquer the limitations of growth? Imagine one day if the entire earth was one city. Due to the nature of growth, in its second year there would be so many homeless. We must share our resources with all the generations that follow, and we must somehow put an end to this need to destroy each other. If populations were stable, the differences would not matter as much, but there would be budget crises keeping up with pension costs.

Our generation took a time of extreme plenty and turned it into grand larceny on an exceptional scale. Gambling with the future is extreme folly.

Iran Nuclear Memo

2009-12-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

A memo leaked in Iran that indicates as recently as 2007 there were discussions about nuclear weapon development. Disturbing, certainly, for Europe and Israel, for the UK and of course for President Barack Obama who will be seen by the world as the person who has to lead the charge against Iran for surging on with their nuclear arms aspirations.

Of course the leak could be propaganda, the BBC was unable to verify if the document was genuine. If it is propaganda, it is disturbing for Iran - what is the motivation?

Either way, it is a sadly revealing moment. Occams razor says that it is more likely that the memo is real, simply as it is reflected by the behaviour of Iran - a leadership that dictates to its population how they must vote, how they must not protest and how they must respond to religious edicts. As well as the ten reactors they have planned.

Danger to Food Chain

2009-12-14T10:39:00.000-08:00

Climate change is not being viewed as a complex problem, but more in black and white terms of the likelihood that mankind is causing it.

This article

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8411135.stm

on the BBC introduced a new idea to Copenhagen. The idea that changes in the climate may endanger the food chain by changing the composition of the oceans - to more acidic. Therefore changing the basis of what life survives, thrives or starves.

Dubai bailed out

2009-12-13T23:04:00.000-08:00

Abu Dhabi has bailed out Dubai's extraordinary property ventures with a US$10Billion grant to its sister state.

Blair justifies Iraq War

2009-12-13T12:27:00.000-08:00

Tony Blair states that Saddam Hussein "had to go" as justification for the invasion of Iraq.

"I would still have thought it right to remove him. Obviously, you would have had to use and deploy different arguments, about the nature of the threat," he said.

"I can't really think we'd be better with him and his two sons still in charge," he added.

This logic puts government above the law. The reckless disregard for international agreements and the sovereignty of nations was not respected by the British Empire, or any other. Although it is hard to defend the acts of Saddam Hussein and the apparent evil in his heirs, it is also hard to defend a "we will employ any rhetoric we can think of" as a reasoned course of action for international intervention.

The rationale is bias. It has led the West (the UK and USA) into the worst deficit crisis in history. It may have been right for the sensibilities of Tony Blair and GW Bush. But the rest of the world thinks that this intervention was handled in the worst possible way.

To have continued to use the Rule of Law would have been far more effective, than a war that has not solved the issue of Iraqi political stability.

Fuel alternative

2009-12-11T12:15:00.000-08:00

A genetically engineered bacteria converts CO2 into a liquid fuel. Brilliant - is this the solution to global warming? Perhaps. The disturbing trend we see following discoveries such as this is the justification to continue to produce pollution as it is now safer to do so.

China's inverse bubble

2009-12-08T18:20:00.000-08:00

A population constriction, when the population is forcibly reduced by war, disease or policy requires a different set of release valves than a growing economy. Instead of inflation vs interest rates, it is deflation sets in because decreasing numbers of people create demand, in other words nobody is there to buy things. It is hard enough to sell your products into a niche in competition, but when your customer base erodes, there is a sense of that being economically troubling.

Continued/...

The crisis is Energy

2009-11-30T18:14:00.000-08:00

The climate change debate has been set on edge by the revelation that records were "homogenised" and the original data lost by the East Anglia researchers. The conservative columnists seem to be convinced that disproving human created pollution is affecting our environment is their duty, even if it is. The risk to cities and low lands over the next 90 years or so, notwithstanding.

It is as though the threat to business, if the oil taps are turned off one day, is simply untenable. It is as though the status quo was a holy relic to be preserved for ever and a day.

The answer is not limiting productivity; it is finding better and less expensive ways to use energy. The oil industry is not really that different to the cancer causing tobacco giants - oil is however intimately tied with the economic model of industry. Industry can change direction, replace oil use by creating opportunities and find ways to produce energy without risk or damage to the environment.

As it is possible to achieve this, and failure to do so results in no conservation of the world as it was, the progress of clean technology remains an important priority for research and development.

Sovereign Debt - UPDATE

2009-11-26T18:37:00.000-08:00

Dubai has asked that it may suspend payment on it's extraordinary property development schemes including Palm Island, projects that are owned by a holding company, 100% owned by the Dubai government. It is therefore "Sovereign Debt".

What is disturbing is that loaning governments may respond to Dubai effectively giving the Dubai economy a bail out. There really is no reason to, as the holding company is limited in liability therefore creditors may sit it out and not seek it's downfall, as they have too much invested and the incomplete project has less value than a completed one.

The actual risk involved (apart from the unnecessary environmental intrusion) if Dubai borrowed more to cover payments and keep building, seem minimal. If the company cannot borrow more, then creditors may tolerate late payment.

The news of Dubai's possible default had a large impact on world financial markets

December 1st, 2009
UPDATE: Dubai government will not support the debt as it is a problem for negotiation with creditors BBC

Views of Dubai - "you can go to prison for a bounced cheque" "I am trapped here"

Loan Traps

2009-11-25T13:56:00.000-08:00

Organisations that feed off poverty by lending with ridiculous rates are coming under a bit of a spotlight of protest in the UK. As they should. Anyone who loans money to another person is entering a business transaction. If the APR is over 15% per annum, and the borrower has to pay more than 15% of their income in loan repayments, it is bound to fail. With APRs as high as hundreds of percent per annum, and incomes being uncertain, it does not take much fancy maths to see that it is a trap that the poor will never see the end of.

However, the same could be said of credit cards, sub-prime mortgages in general and much business debt. It simply has a future of not being repaid.

What does that mean? It means suffering, stress and the undoing of the potential of real lives for the sake of enriching a person or organisation that is essentially criminal in their intent. To profit from the suffering of others.

A new economic model is required. The current one may have suited a smaller world but the majority of humanity is being used by a small rich minority in an intergenerational scam that enslaves the lives of the many.

One solution is revolution. Economic revolution.

US Debt Tsunami

2009-11-24T15:34:00.000-08:00

The US debt emergency is coming, and it is a man made Tsunami – after the erasure of an accumulation of massive fictional wealth – the complex debt structures borrowed with leverage against assumptions that have resulted in systemic deficiencies and bailouts – and may result in the collapse of one set of rules in favour of a new set.

More

Head of IMF says keep stimulus

2009-11-23T16:46:00.000-08:00

When the head of the IMF speaks, the bankers sit up and listen. But is his advice going to be any more accurate than anyone else's?

It is hard to continue to mount up the debts investing in stability when jobs replacing all those that have vanished from the economy seem to fail to appear again anywhere else.

Governments may not recognise it is not just stability of the institutions that exchange and invest funds but the intergenerational pause that may work out far more costly.

There is a tendency to inherit old political stances and watch polls, instead of knowing what you are doing and hanging on for dear life as your popularity finally rises toward the end of your term.

More... Change is necessary

Grisly Cosmetics

2009-11-23T15:28:00.000-08:00

A Peruivan gang made a "wrinkle cream" from human fat collected from scores of murdered peasants.

"The gang have been nicknamed the Pishtacos after the ruthless assassins of indigenous Quechua legend who ambushed solitary victims and drained their fat as an offering to gods to make the land fertile. Another version depicts them as cannibal bandits who ate the skin and sold the fat. The stories date back to before the European conquest."

One answer

2009-11-20T10:31:00.000-08:00

Intellectual Ventures - a group of scientists who are coming up with viable scientific ideas that can help quell the effects of arctic ice loss due to global warming but imitation of volcanic spewing of sulphur dixoide into the stratosphere at about 60 degrees north, should cool the atmosphere.

Scientists love to isolate a problem and think outside the box. Intellectual Ventures has some innovative solutions.

The Problem with Global Warming

2009-11-16T12:08:00.000-08:00

Reduction targets as a goal seem ignore a fundamental problem. We are overheating the world by increasing our activity levels year on year. It is politically unsound to rail against productivity growth.

More on NZ being the worst climate offender - and what is wrong with our approach to global warming.

Making Peace - Summary

2009-11-08T15:43:00.000-08:00

Full article: Automatic Removed Warriors here, ends with this summary:

Military action always brings chaos.

Imagined political change is not sufficient reason to justify violence.

In 40 years nobody has tried peace as a solution.

Sharing the wealth with education and respectively putting up with the strange rituals of the other as something private is progressive as successful pluralities emerge.

Security Asylum

2009-10-24T20:53:00.000-07:00

The big difference between today and thirty years ago - nobody needed passwords then. Just a drivers licence. Now they want our retina and finger prints. Next they will be after more...

CO2 emissions

2009-10-23T23:42:00.001-07:00

Check this countdown timer for when the atmosphere has 1,000,000,000,000 tonnes of carbon in it - which is approximately past the threshold when the atmosphere will go above 2 degrees average and the real climatic instability proceeds with potentially disasterous consequences predicted.

More

America

2009-10-17T14:01:00.001-07:00

America has changed culture more than most modern civilizations. This mutability or adaptability is a threat to the older established rigid moral compass of a world that did not have so many variables and survived as a reason of taking great care with physical rules.

Full article

OBAMA WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

2009-10-09T03:39:00.001-07:00

President Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said.

"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

Natures Design

2009-10-06T18:08:00.000-07:00

More about natural invention

Afghanistan – prospect of failure?

2009-10-05T13:57:00.000-07:00

Army chief warns of prospect of failure in Afghanistan.

When the chief of the army starts a claim for more pay with dire warnings of losing a war in Afghanistan it takes away some edge from the argument he is making. Losing in Afghanistan is a worse result than underpaid soldiers, certainly.

Full article on DT: Predicting Future Politics

The New Wars

2009-09-19T09:04:00.000-07:00

In this excellent TED presentation PW Singer talks of military robots and the future of war, being depersonalised by the massive growth in robotic military hardware being employed in the Iraqi war. Perhaps the motivation of GW Bush to go to war was in part to satisfy battlefield testing of a great deal of new technology that the military industrial empire of America was sitting on. Perhaps it was his motivation when early in his presidency, before 9/11 he absolved American's from war crimes in the theatre of modern war he wanted never to be considered for conviction at the world court.

By introducing mechanical toys and sophisticated robotics into the theatre of war, the forced imitation by the perceived enemy will mean that a condition of mutually assured destruction will also inevitably be reached, the "warning" sounded in the ridiculous "terminator" concept of machines having the logic to notice its masters were the real problem is not the future I see, it is more a wasteland of horrific pollution and scrap metal jungles that inevitably deadlock as attrition sets in.

Article continues inside

Shoe Thrower Release

2009-09-13T13:53:00.001-07:00

The Iraqi man who was jailed for throwing shoes at George Bush, after 9 months spent paying for his protest, is being released.

It is farcical to observe how the "free world" respected the right of the man to protest at the already naked emperor of GW Bush's presidency. 9 months prison for pointing out the war criminal in the room.

Risking Unemployment

2009-09-05T16:30:00.000-07:00

Unemployment is climbing and is rather bound to get worse. The 2 huge banking bailouts followed by the “Main Street” relief aimed at troubled mortgages will not solve the problem. By bailing out the banking industry, that had become a bit of a ponzi scheme attempting to leverage itself to heaven, the gold bricks have been left in place. The rescue of Ma and Pa Mortgages is well and good, but the future payments are still going to be a problem.

read the full article

Global Warming

2009-08-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

The rate of global warming since 1886 can be seen in this map.

Leonard Druyan and colleagues at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, US, analysed past weather patterns to determine how well commonly-used climate models performed when replicating this past weather. Source: New Scientist

Map link

The right to bear arms

2009-08-17T21:20:00.000-07:00

Political protest is a sign of a healthy democracy.

In America, the Second Amendment gives a citizen a right to bear arms. Right wing protesters carrying assault rifles may be a legal right but is it a legitimate protest? How many presidents has American guns assassinated? On the Right we have Ronald Reagan, on the Left we have JFK. If Reagan had died, perhaps the Right would be a little more sensitive.

Is the right to carry arms relevant in today's world? And is that in fact a valid political protest or just perpetuating the myth that being under the threat of random death is a benefit to anyone?

A man mistaken by a security guard was shot in the back, and left his child without a father. In the back. He kept walking when the guard started to shout at him, trying to get away. He was innocent of any crime. Having a gun does not make you right. It makes you into a potential murderer.

Imprisonment and Torture

2009-08-11T19:08:00.000-07:00

The Economic Recovery

2009-07-31T14:15:00.000-07:00

Signs of an economic recovery are starting to appear. After recapitalising the financial system, President Obama kept the US economy liquid. This is may have averted more depressing news but as the bankers start to return funds they were lent by the tax payer the question arises, where to now for the US economy?

read more

Shatner does Palin

2009-07-30T18:29:00.001-07:00

A view from before the beginning

2009-07-17T15:53:00.000-07:00

Time capsule - from 14 March 1998 when the Carlyle Group started to put pressure on Fanny May and Freddie Mac, how quickly the capital on which Bear Stearns dried up and then went super bad. The blog seems to have stopped just as things started to get nasty for the early "victims" of the credit crunch calamities that followed.

Sarah Palin's First Swipe

2009-07-14T19:21:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin has been published in the Washington Post criticizing Barack Obama's "Cap and Tax" energy policy. This appears to be an early evidence of why she resigned her appointment as Governor of Alaska. To take over the role of "Leader the of Opposition" as the now disheveled GOP Republican Party seems to have nobody but the ineligible Dick Cheney to foster its support base? That certainly seems the case, or Dick would have been less assailable in the media. Sarah Palin fares no better.

Sarah Palin, Voice in the Wilderness - full article.

Cultural Definition

2009-07-11T18:18:00.000-07:00

The need for culture to define itself in terms of relative values interferes with rightful progress. As we carry past solutions to now non-existent problems, our culture is subsumed by a need for tradition – the tired old call of parents too confused by their offspring to do much else but bark orders to limit action. We exceed our parents as we start where they left off.

Full article

The Dispossesed

2009-07-09T16:20:00.000-07:00

Saddam Hussein and Hitler had something in common. From their point of view it was a steel resolve but as a defeated enemy theirs became the view of the discredited. However it could be argued that Hitler’s eventual fate hastened the fate of Palestine whereas Saddam’s fate has given the Kurds more political power.

Full article

Sarah Palin, Politically Spent

2009-07-04T01:30:00.001-07:00

In a move universally seen as ridiculous, Sarah Palin resigns as Governer of Alaska. Not during the good times does she hand it over to a well groomed successor, no epic battle, no scars, no situation. Just givin' up is all.

Full article

Iran Government Legitimacy

2009-06-28T14:53:00.000-07:00

Two quotes from this article give a fair comparison of the relative positions of the EU and Iran.

"Obviously the regime is trying to preserve its position by very harsh repression," said Carl Bildt, Sweden's foreign minister, whose country takes over the EU's rotating presidency on 1 July. "But that cannot hide the fact that this is a weakened regime. It has lost legitimacy both internally and externally."

and

On Friday a senior cleric, Ahmed Khatami, lashed out at Britain in a televised sermon. "In this unrest, Britons have behaved very mischievously and it is fair to add the slogan of 'down with England' to the slogan of 'down with USA,'" he said. He also called for the execution of what he called "rioters' leaders". The previous week Khamenei had criticised Britain as the "most evil" country.

Taking prisoners from hospitals

2009-06-27T21:39:00.000-07:00

The Basaji - the Iranian military secret police are taking prisoners of protesters following their treatment in hospitals.

We have heard on Twitter that PersianKiwi has been taken prisoner by the Government.

More here - article continued with the most disturbing Tweet stream from PersianKiwi...

North Korea

2009-06-27T21:35:00.000-07:00

Is North Korea so insecure that it believes that it needs to threaten the United States in order to maintain its independence? The answer is most probably yes.

Read more...

Iran Demonstrations

2009-06-17T14:38:00.001-07:00

Live Feed (or video of a live feed) from the Iran Election demostrations. Also see: Article: The Dictator

The above article contains predictions. It was published 12 hours before this appeared (on my screen at least): UPDATE NY Times

The demonstrations in Iran show the Iranian people have an emerging confidence. The corrupt establishment has shaken the illusion that they have the interests of the people at stake.

Fair democratic election must be internally perceived as such, and when it isn’t - economic health becomes impossible.

Regardless of what the West thinks could or should happen - Iran’s government is now perceived by it’s own people as cheating and lying and committing acts of sinful cowardice.

It has damaged the theocratic authenticity it relies upon.

New Zealand Most Peaceful Country

2009-06-02T19:34:00.001-07:00

New Zealand has been voted the Most Peaceful Country in the world on Vision of Humanity by an Australian think tank, the Institute for Economics and Peace.

Last week, thousands of Aucklanders marched in a 100% peaceful demonstration of political unity with the Maori people who retain a seat of sovereignty over this nation, undivided but cooperating.

Link

Vision of Humanity site

Images of Maori Hikoi (march) in Auckland

State of Denial

2009-06-02T02:59:00.000-07:00

Irate passengers disagree with being held on board ship in quarantine claiming "this is not what we paid for" and calling it some kind of disgrace. They were let ashore and then the motel they were staying in asked them to move as they were "not a quarantine facility".

If the swine flu had mutated into a more deadly form already and not spread over most of America (far far worse), this kind of behaviour would be deadly and very unpatriotic. No human has the right to infect others therefore a maritime state of quarantine is not something that a mere tourists commercial or even freedom can trump and letting these passengers ashore abrogates everyone else's human right.

Stupid idiots.

Predicting the next 100 years

2009-05-29T16:05:00.000-07:00

There is a Stratfor article going around the the mainstream media predicting that America will remain the major superpower in the world ultimately due to geo-politics.

Predictions rely upon assumptions which are not definite, it all rather depends upon what individuals chose to do. “Disturbing” Trends represent just a few of those decisions - as they start to show their ugly signs. Predicting the future is not so much a science, as an art and if one is to be very good at it then you need to consider more than one side of the coin.

Military dominance only has so much value.

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P - the disease we can not talk about

2009-05-20T10:24:00.000-07:00

P - the drug - its use and manufacture is criminal in most democracies as it should be. The Western meme, “The War on Drugs” is a poor model of how to combat what is a contagion of deliberate disease that quickly spirals into addiction. Catching it early is not as good as prevention but if prevention fails, then catching it early is vital.

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