Google Goes Back to Pre-Katrina Maps

NEW ORLEANS -- Google's popular map portal has replaced post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery with pictures taken before the storm, leaving locals feeling like they're in a time loop and even fueling suspicions of a conspiracy.

What is with this Disneyland
attitude that permeates Amurika?

How do I know anything on the
planet that Google maps isn't a
lie?

Full article.

Chavez creating a Zimbabwe re-run

Two classic power grabs in action...

From starving Zimbabwe:

First he steals it, then he leases it back to you...

About 250 whites remaining on small portions of their farms will immediately be offered state leases for the land they used to own. Some will be hoping that their full land holdings will be restored at a later stage.

Full article.

Now, a re-run in Venezuela...

Chavez, who hosted Sunday's program from a ranch in Venezuela's sun-baked plains, said his government would move to expropriate large ranches and farms spanning more than 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres) and redistribute lands deemed "idle" to the poor under a nationwide agrarian reform.

Since the reform began five years ago, officials have redistributed over 1.9 million hectares (4.6 million acres) of land that had been classified as unproductive or lacked property documents dating back to 1847, according to a recent government census.

Critics say reform has failed to revive Venezuela's agriculture industry, which does not produce enough food to satisfy domestic demand. The government has been forced to import food amid shortages of staples such as meats, milk and sugar.

Full article.

The only thing keeping this place afloat is
oil. What happens when they run out?

--This has been another Zombie Alert brought to you by jomama.

Making new criminals everyday

Isn't that what gummint does best?

You're next...

Private businesses such as rental and mortgage companies and car dealers are checking the names of customers against a list of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers made publicly available by the Treasury Department, sometimes denying services to ordinary people whose names are similar to those on the list.

Full report.

The bottom line and there's no profit

The most dangerous weapons of mass destruction are phony money, bad economic policy, lost industrial base, coerced emphasis away from future technology, consumption over investment, and corruption waste fraud. The United States Govt has all these, but talks about enemy threats a great deal as a distraction. The war finally was revealed from official sources within the current Administration last autumn as being about control of oil, which is vital to our economy. The truth took over three years to surface, but only after the majority came to that alternate conclusion on their own, using a thought process through a cloud of confusion.

...and some will tell you and me that all
that's needed is a new and improved Decider
or Congress to fix all this.

Bwahahahahaha.

Full article.

The Empire is still here

Now it's official...

Snow to CNN: "There's another principle, which is Congress doesn't have the legislative -- I mean oversight authority over the White House."

Snow to NBC: "Congress doesn't have any legitimate oversight and responsibilities to the White House."

Snow to NBC: "First, the White House is under no compulsion to do anything. The legislative branch doesn't have oversight."

Snow to ABC: "The executive branch is under no compulsion to testify to Congress, because Congress in fact doesn't have oversight ability."

Well, I think we 'got it'.

Take a look.

The only lie that counts

So whenever you see "Our" or "Us" or "We" or "Nation" or "Country" or "State" in a political context, keep in mind that someone is lying to you.

From boredzhwazi

Bill Maher on Sacrifice

I've been writing a lot about sacrifice lately.

Here's another look at a piece of the
total sacrifice syndrome.

Even with this you're only looking at the top
side of the iceberg.

Download or play the video here.

Hey, Johnny, ya got ur gun?

Now, some psychos want to tell you how
and where to use it...

"Civilization" by cookie cutter

Their love consists of bringing us back into the fold of security, by means of rendering us incapable of any form of independent life, by making sure that we are like them.

And all that matters to them, is that we, whether friend or enemy, are like them.

See Pietr run.

Where have all the flowers gone?

A small sample from Google News Alerts.

The details aren't important. The trend is.
Read between the lines.

Listen closely to the pissing and moaning....

State's budget woes have many singing blues
Niles Daily Star - Niles,MI,USA
Jennifer Granholm has proposed in her 2007-2008 budget a 2 percent tax
on nearly 100 services. Some lawmakers have said budget cuts and not
more taxes is a ...
See all stories on this topic

District preparing for potential budget crisis
South Lyon Herald - MI,USA
But with that excitement comes concern for the South Lyon
Community Schools district as the new high school brings budget woes
to the forefront. ...
See all stories on this topic

Regents Aid Budget Woes, Increase Fees
Daily Californian - Berkeley,CA,USA
Last year, the state (l)Legislature bought out an 8 percent fee
increase by raising state allocations, but according to UC Vice
President of Budget Lawrence ...
See all stories on this topic

Clash over San Joaquin General financial woes
Stockton Record - Stockton,CA,USA
The proposed 2006-07 federal budget calls for $25 billion in cuts to
Medicaid - the national version of Medi-Cal - during the next five years. ...
See all stories on this topic

Community expresses frustration to selectmen about Machon School ...
SalemNews.com - Salem,MA,USA
Parents said they were ambushed by the decision to close the school
and view it as a rash reaction to the town's budget woes.
"There's no plan in place," ...
See all stories on this topic

---

 

Impoverishing ideas in action

The reserve bank governor said he received constant pleas from food and petrol distributors, the national airline and the railways for foreign currency that has all but dried up because tobacco exports, once Zimbabwe's biggest source of US dollars, have fallen to a fifth of what they were before the land seizures. The other big earner, tourism, has also collapsed.

Who does your property belong to?

Whoever can take it. In these cases, through force.

Now tell me, is this rule of law any better elsewhere?

Full report.

Trade not war

60 Minutes wanted to test the security situation, so one Saturday morning Simon and the team dropped by the main market in Erbil, the self-styled capital of Kurdistan, just 40 miles from the rest of Iraq. The only disagreements here were about price.

Read.

Top investor sees U.S. property crash

That should read "gambler", not "investor". We're all
gamblers, all the time.

"This is the end of the liquidity party," said Rogers. "Some emerging markets will go down 80 percent, some will go down 50 percent. Some will most probably collapse."

See it all.

Thanks to Rick.

More evidence of collapse

Marine General Peter Pace - the top military officer in the U.S. - stated that "homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral. . . . I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is okay to be immoral in any way." The general did not include, in his remarks, his assessment of the morality of those who make careers out of the systematic slaughter of millions of harmless men, women, and children.

And there are those who wonder why Western civilization is in a state of collapse!

Bingo.

Immoral and stupid.

Link.

Yet another gun in the room

Believe it or not, over the last century America's major media have predicted an impending global climate crisis four different times – each prediction warning that entire countries would be wiped out or that lower crop yields would mean "billions will die." In 1895, the panic was over an imminent ice age. Later, in the late 1920s, when the earth’s surface warmed less than half a degree, the media jumped on a new threat – global warming, which continued into the late 1950s. Then in 1975, the New York Times' headline blared, "A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable." Then in 1981 it was back to global warming, with the Times quoting seven government atmospheric scientists who predicted global warming of an "almost unprecedented magnitude."

Today, to cover all their bases, much of the press is changing its terminology from "global warming" to "climate change" or "climate catastrophe." That way they're covered either way: If the world gets colder, global warming is still at fault.

...Whistleblower shows how all the main players – from politicians and scientists to big corporations and the United Nations – benefit from instilling fear into billions of human beings over the unproven theory of man-made global warming. Indeed, just three weeks after the U.N. ratcheted up international fears over global warming, a panel of 18 scientists from 11 countries has now reported to the U.N. that the only thing that can stop catastrophic climate change is a global tax – on greenhouse gas emissions.

It's all about sacrifice. Back to the Mayans
in more ways than one.

Read.

The shotgun approach to idiocy

This is some of the strangest comic book
thinking I've ever come across.

I can make no sense of it except that I'm
sure you will be forced to sacrifice your
all to the unending crises concocted...

Jonathan Rée seemed to sum it all up: at the beginning of the 20th century, "the main emotion behind most people's politics was hope: hope for science, for free trade, for social democracy, for national efficiency, for world government". That sentiment has now been replaced, he argued, by indignation. "People are more interested in bearing witness to their personal moral righteousness" than in engaging in open-minded debate.

...The rest of us have little faith in the capacity of human beings for self-sacrifice or cooperation to avert climate change or any of the other predicted catastrophes that fill the media.

I sure as shit hope so but I smell more
of what this wise man said:

"The urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule." --H. L. Mencken

Read.

The Distracting Abstractions

But how can the truth be so hard to see? Why do people evade the nature of reality? And why do libertarians have such a hard time trying to reach people with the so simple yet beautiful idea that aggression is wrong? The truth is that aggression isn’t only wrong – it also doesn’t work. So why do libertarians so utterly fail to bring the light of truth to this world of darkness?

Could it be just because they're calling
themselves libertarians or is it because
most people think they can avoid that
aggression against themselves?

...The world isn’t complex unless we try to understand it at higher levels of abstraction. If we try to understand how “the world” works, we’re in trouble; if we try to understand how “the country” works, we are in as deep; if we try to understand how “the city” works, we might be able to figure out parts of it. But the truth is that nothing of this is complex – the apparent complexity is created when we force ourselves to see the world in abstractions rather than as individuals acting.

...particularly the Granfalloon known as
government.

See it all.

Quantum Physicists Tell NSA To Go To Hell

More disruptive technology...

Single photon quantum cryptography: In a nutshell, it’s a completely secure form of communication, impossible for an eavesdropper to listen to without being detected. It’s guaranteed by the laws of the universe, which not even the Decider has the inherent power to ignore.

Read.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

It appears the "religion" of man caused
global warming has been found seriously wanting
in good science.

Who would expect good science in a religion?

See the good science video.

Update:

The Church of Google has pulled the video.

Reminds me of the Holy Roman Church when
they pulled Galileo's credentials for
challenging the geocentric view of the
world.

The Church pardoned him 500 years later.

But maybe I'm wrong. It could be a Google
glitch.

Nah.

Update:

I was wrong.

New link is now working.

Update: Apr. 8, 2007

Google fucked link again.

I just fixed it.

A New Savior on the block

...implied, of course.



Listen to him pluck your heart strings here. (short)

How do you suppose he'll handle the separate
interests of 300 million people?

Thanks to Rick.

The State

Never has Franz Oppenheimer's view of the state been more clearly on display: it is there to dominate, exploit, and protect itself against any challenges to its power. It clings to power like Gollum holding the ring. And that power is deployed, not for the ostensible purpose of protecting people but for protecting the state and its interests. When Oppenheimer theorized in 1908 that this was the true nature of the state, he was shouted down and pilloried for denying the doctrine of government as a social compact. Today his claims read like a description of the day's political news.
...
From the Romans to the Fourth Crusade, and their Venetian and French aggressors, to Genghis Khan to the Spaniards and Napoleon and the Brits, Bonner and Wiggin teach us the lessons of empire, with learning and irony. "A great empire," they note, "is to the world of geopolitics what a great bubble is to the world of economics. It's attractive at the outset but a catastrophe eventually."
...
And this raises a very important point about the reform that everyone seems to agree we so desperately need. We hear about the need for new laws, a new Contract with America, a new class of politicians, or a constitutional amendment. Folks, we've been through this many times. These are diversions. What we face is a massive institutional problem. It is not surprising that we are ruled by a government that wants to spend ever more money to buy votes and rule an ever-larger roost. The mystery that needs explaining is how they come to get away with it.
...
Corporations can run high amounts of debt, as can state governments, but those debts must be marketed on the free market, and they carry a default premium. Corporations that are irresponsible face punishment in the markets. States that go too much in the red are threatened with bankruptcy.

Not so with US government debt. Interest rates are set by markets but they closely track the rates that the Fed charges to its member banks. The risk of holding federal debt, as everyone knows, is nearly zero, which is perhaps the only reason that anyone holds it at all.

On that last sentence:

Regular readers know that's not true
any longer and goes far beyond US
borders as you can see.

Now the question becomes, since
everyone thinks government debt
risk is near zero (everyone's holding
it for that reason) and it isn't....what
might be the result of that?

Now think about that...very carefully.

Later on in the article Lew advocates
a gold standard on currency.

That's been done before and failed.

There is only one way to replace
currencies with gold or any other real
money: after most currencies hit the
bottom of the crapper. At least, that's
what it appears to me and that means
it will happen from the bottom up,
i.e. when everyone starts "voting" with
the replacement, absent direction from
on high.

There is a very high probability that
means great suffering for all who don't
see it coming.
.
Highly recommended.

Why I'm not an anarchist any longer

...or any other group mind-fuck.

We market anarchists reject tribalism. We are just members of the human race, period, and we see every other human being in that same way. We avoid groupthink, for we form our understanding of life by reason alone, rationality being the core of our human-ness. We wish to govern ourselves, and ourselves alone. If we wave a flag, it is black--for we owe no allegiance to any colored, gaudy, irrational collective. We seek no subjects, and reject all rulers. We see the realization of self ownership and self responsibility and the pursuit of self-interest by all as the only hope for the human race.

But there I go, using a phrase like "we anarchists" with the first person plural! It goes deep, this tribal habit. I guess I have some work to do, to root it out and live only as an individual.

Jim's figured it out too.

The thing that will probably bring it all crashing down: Obedience

People who live infinitely controlled lives become accustomed to such control. Obedience becomes natural. And so it has. --Fred Reed

The Marlboro Man, Daniel Boone, God, Marx and
government are dead. Even little green apples are
falling off their trees.

What's left to be obedient to?

The perils of Warren

"...Certain perils that lurk in investment strategies cannot be spotted by use of the models commonly employed today by financial institutions." -- Warren Buffett

I expect these are the perils/addictions
he's referring to.

Almost no one will believe they are perils
until one of them "reorganizes" and/or stops
payments.

Full article.

Whose property is it now?

The mindset of most Americans regarding property is beset with confusion and contradiction. It could probably be reduced to the following proposition: property owners insist upon the inviolability of their interests while, at the same time, being ardent collectivists when it comes to the property of others. Most will strenuously object when the state interferes with what they own, but cheer when the interests of their neighbors are under attack.

Thus do most people accept the legitimacy of zoning ordinances, “master plans,” eminent domain, housing and building codes, and nuisance actions. Their anti-communist conditioning would likely percolate to the surface of their minds if a politician were to openly defend the purpose of his program in the same words used by Marx: “abolition of private property.” Such a phrase would be too blunt a statement as to the nature of all political policies; it would lack in the meter and syntax with which boobus Americanus has become accustomed to his own despoliation. But let this same politician dress his ambitions in the language of “land use planning,” and all right-thinking people – editorial writers included – will embrace him for his “vision.”

Full essay.

How to Make Wealth

I can remember believing, as a child, that if a few rich people had all the money, it left less for everyone else. Many people seem to continue to believe something like this well into adulthood. This fallacy is usually there in the background when you hear someone talking about how x percent of the population have y percent of the wealth. If you plan to start a startup, then whether you realize it or not, you're planning to disprove the Pie Fallacy.

Highly recommended. See why here.

Now I'm feeling like a motherless child

You mean theft isn't legal yet?

Well, I never...

Ripped from Yannone