Our Awful Situation

Archive for March, 2008

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The mother of all bailouts

Posted by patriot on March 30th, 2008

Jim at the Survival Blog has a post discussing the latest “mothers of all bailouts”, using taxpayer funds to correct the mistakes of business owners and banking empires. One of the summary paragraphs reads:

All of these macro-level implications might seem fairly abstract, so let me put them in real world terms and take the risk of extrapolating on some trends that I’ve observed: There will be a recession, and it will be deep, and long-lasting. A recession will mean that there will be some big corporate layoffs. Be ready. There will be bank runs and banking “holidays”. Be ready. There will be huge flows of “bailout” funds that will effectively nationalize many industries. Be ready. There will probably be a stock market collapse. Be ready. There will be a further collapse in residential real estate that will make the recent declines seem small, by comparison. Be ready. Credit delinquencies and foreclosures (on car loans, home loans, credit card bills, etc.) will dramatically increase. Be ready. There will be a collapse of the commercial real estate market. Be ready. Even though the credit available for IPOs and private mergers and acquisitions has dried up, there will be news of some large and seemingly inexplicable acquisitions in the near future, all sanctioned by and in some cases, underwritten by, and even funded by, the Federal government. Be ready. There will be shortages of key commodities including fuel and food. Be ready. Strapped for cash, America’s highway, rail, water, sewer, telecommunications, and power infrastructures will degenerate. Be ready. There will be mass inflation of the US Dollar that will devalue any dollar denominated investments. Be ready.

In case you missed it, the main idea to glean from the article is to be ready. :)

North and South Korea playing with fire

Posted by patriot on March 30th, 2008

The AP reports a tense exchange between North and South Korea:

North Korea threatened South Korea with destruction Sunday after Seoul’s top military officer said he would consider attacking the communist nation if it tried to carry out a nuclear attack.

A man in traditional dress at a display of North and South Korean missiles at Seoul’s Korea War Memorial Museum.

The statement from North Korea’s official news agency marked the third straight day of bellicose rhetoric from the North, which is angry over the harsher line the South’s new president has taken against the country since assuming office last month.

“Our military will not sit idle until warmongers launch a pre-emptive strike,” said an unidentified KCNA military commentator. “Everything will be in ashes, not just a sea of fire, if our advanced pre-emptive strike once begins.”

Prepping a nuclear attack on Iran?

Posted by patriot on March 30th, 2008

The Lew Rockwell blog has a post about some stories going around about a possible nuclear attack on Iran:

A couple of news sites I have never heard of are quoting the Jeddah-based Saudi newspaper Okaz (owner of the Saudi Gazette, a former employer) that Saudi Arabia’s governing Shura Council has approved plans to deal with fallout from a U.S. nuclear attack on Iran.

The post has two clips of news articles/posts worth reading. Check it out.

New York City attempts “overly broad’ subpoena in text messaging case

Posted by Charlie Kilo on March 30th, 2008

From Valleywag:

In representing the New York Police Department, which is facing charges that officers improperly detained hundreds protestors during the 2004 Republican convention, the New York City Law Department has subpoenaed MIT doctoral candidate Tad Hirsch, creator of TxtMob, demanding he turn over the time, content, and identity of people who sent and received SMS messages through the service. Hirsch says most of the data is gone, and his lawyer argues the subpoena is overly broad.

Text messages have become a favorite tool of direct action organizers worldwide, because they make it easy to quickly disseminate information to large groups and can be read and written even while sirens wail or helicopters make low passes. The NYPD was aware of the service at least a month before the convention, according to secret internal documents revealed last year by the court. Why not just ask the NSA to turn over their archives from the event? That seems easier.

Here’s detailed coverage from the New York Times.

Unconstitutional - The War on Our Civil Liberties

Posted by Charlie Kilo on March 30th, 2008

Via Google Video:

Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties, is the third in a series of Public Interest Pictures films that follows Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election and Uncovered: The War on Iraq. True to their legacy, Unconstitutional provides the facts and stories that illuminate administration lies, wrongheaded policies, and the real victims of these actions–the American people. Here, you’ll get the real story behind the USA PATRIOT Act and other administration policies and the gut wrenching stories behind those affected–from law-abiding store clerks to United States Olympians unable to travel. It’ll remind you of what America used to stand for and what it seems we’re falling for now. In short, this one-hour film will affirm why you’re angry and give you a tool to help others join your ranks.

Watch the documentary 

An indictment of the Sequoia voting system

Posted by patriot on March 30th, 2008

The Black Box forums highlight a report regarding the use of Sequoia voting machines in Arizona:

1) Appendix A is a scathing indictment of the security and legality of the Sequoia product line. Taking advantage of material that wasn’t available to California Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s top-to-bottom review team, they’ve shown that Sequoia must now be considered the least secure and most illegal black box voting system in America - “dethroning” Diebold. Appendix A is a standalone section that can be read independently of the full report.

2) Also of national interest: this report forms a blueprint on how to do central tabulator observation missions, whether as a citizen or partisan representative. By carefully observing the hardware being used and asking pointed questions and public records digging, they’ve shown that it’s possible to pierce the veil of secrecy over election (mis?)conduct.

Findings include the outsourcing of the entire mail-in vote process including the use of a private company to print, mail out, -=receive=- and scan the ballot signatures … all by a private company outside of the scope of public records access and proper accountability.

3) For any Arizona voter, the report is a must-read to see just how badly an election can be run in the 4th largest county in America! It’s also a message of hope - they can’t get away with running a system this sloppy without getting caught.

The PDF report can be downloaded here.

Dropping the T bomb

Posted by patriot on March 30th, 2008

The AP reports Mukasey’s latest push for anti-terroristic tactics:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey warned Friday that the huge profits generated from piracy and counterfeiting are increasingly flowing into the coffers of terrorist groups.

In remarks to Silicon Valley executives at the Tech Museum of Innovation, Mukasey said the economy and national security of the United States are increasingly threatened by violations involving copyrighted software code, patented inventions and trademarked properties.

Can these neocons not go anywhere without mentioning the T word?

Early Zimbabwe Results

Posted by patriot on March 30th, 2008

MSNBC reports:

Zimbabwe’s opposition claimed victory on Sunday based on early results from an election that could unseat President Robert Mugabe after nearly three decades in power.

“It’s a historic moment for all of us. We have won this election, we have won this election,” Tendai Biti, secretary general of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change, told reporters, diplomats and observers at a briefing.

The opposition, headed by former trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai, has accused 84-year-old Mugabe of employing election-rigging tactics in an attempt to stay in power.

The Movement for Democratic Change said it was investigating reports of thousands of voters being turned away from polls and the discovery of stuffed ballot boxes in one district. African observers also questioned thousands of names on official rolls.

Should he lose, don’t look for Mugabe to relinquish his power easily.

Trucking news: Talk of an April 1 trucking shutdown gains momentum

Posted by Charlie Kilo on March 29th, 2008

Speculation about a possible trucking shutdown on April 1 has been gaining momentum recently, according to media reports and Internet discussion boards. 

Independent truckers are the life blood of the U.S. economy and diesel prices are sucking them dry. Consider this:

The shutdown, which would be conducted primarily by owner-operators, is in response to the current run-up for diesel gasoline prices. Nationwide, diesel is currently averaging $3.989 per gallon and has gone up 70.9 cents in the last five weeks—all of which have been record-breaking—according to the Energy Information Association, a unit of Department of Energy. And in some parts of the U.S. diesel is already exceeding the $4 per gallon mark.

 

What’s more, the American Trucking Associations (ATA) called on the White House earlier this week to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to curtail this ongoing historical run-up in crude oil prices, which continue to hinder myriad segments of the U.S. economy and freight transportation—especially trucking—in general. And last week the ATA projected a record-high diesel bill for 2008, noting that that trucking industry is on pace to spend $135 billion on fuel in 2008—based on current price forecasts. This estimate, said the ATA, would be a $22 billion increase over the trucking industry’s $112.6 billion 2007 fuel tab.

 

 Continue to full story

 

First official boycott of Olympic opening ceremony

Posted by patriot on March 29th, 2008

From Germany:

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, yesterday became the first world leader to decide not to attend the Olympics in Beijing.

As pressure built for concerted western protests to China over the crackdown in Tibet, EU leaders prepared to discuss the crisis for the first time today, amid a rift over whether to boycott the Olympics.

The disclosure that Germany is to stay away from the games’ opening ceremonies in August could encourage President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to join in a gesture of defiance and complicate Gordon Brown’s determination to attend the Olympics.

The groundswell of opposition is growing. China, who wants to sit at the table of industrialized, “free” nations (yes, free goes in quotes since most nations are anything but), is trying to save face with Tibet and show the world that it is civilized and human.

Yeah, right.

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