Thursday, March 10, 2011

earliest evidence for magic mushroom use in europe





multicellular evolution not linear

The Scientist | Multicellular blue-green algae made the transition from single-celled to multi-celled not once, but several times over the course of history, according to a study published last week (February 14) in BMC Evolutionary Biology, giving support to the idea that the evolution of multicellularity may not have been as big of an evolutionary leap as scientists once believed.

"Simple multicellularity has evolved a number of times within the bacteria and as many as two dozen times within the eukaryotes," paleobiologist Andrew Knoll of Harvard University, who was not involved in the research, said in an email, but relatively little is known about how that transition occurs. This paper provides an "explicit phylogenetic reconstruction" of one group that has evolved multicellular forms, and shows that it's not a simple linear progression of complexity.

In cyanobacteria, "multicellularity is easy to lose and regain," agreed Bettina Schirrmeister of the University of Zurich, who co-authored the study. "It's not this classical transition from unicellular to multicellular to more complex forms as we might have expected in the past."

Blue-green algae, photosynthetic prokaryotes also known as cyanobacteria, first appeared in the fossil record almost 2.5 billion years ago, and have since populated most of the world in a variety of unicellular and multicellular forms. Using gene sequences from 1,254 species of modern cyanobacteria, a team of researchers led by Bettina Schirrmeister of the University of Zurich
created over 11,000 different phylogenetic trees that helped pinpoint when multicellularity evolved in this lineage.

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

how the swedes set up julian assange...,

Video - Claes Borgstrom explains how a Swedish politician became involved in the Julian Assange case.

CounterPunch | Our hero has found himself in quite a mess. And meanwhile, in order to create more confusion and undermine Julian’s unflagging popularity, the Guardian team has cooked up a new charge: this time it is anti-Semitism. It is much easier to shout “Anti-Semite!” than to defend The Guardian against these very real accusations: falsification of cables, plagiarism, manipulation, deliberate smearing of Julian Assange…

tyranny, rebellion, and corporate media monopolies

MediaLens | Julian Assange recently said of the Guardian, formerly one of WikiLeaks’ media partners:
‘There’s a point I want to make about perceived moral institutions such as the Guardian and the New York Times. The Guardian has good people in it. It also has a coterie of people at the top who have other interests…

What drives a paper like the Guardian or the New York Times is not their inner moral values; it is simply that they have a market. In the United Kingdom, there is a market called "educated liberals". "Educated liberals" want to buy a newspaper, they buy the Guardian, and therefore an institution arises to fulfil that market, and that institution needs to be managed. And those people at the top of that institution simply manage the institution that fulfils that market.

‘What is in the newspaper is not a reflection of the values of the people in that institution. It is a reflection of the market demand for particular material. Not a reflection of good values.’
The world really does need to take the golden opportunity offered by the internet to break from corporate media driven by market demands. Just as Obama and Cameron are selling themselves as passionate supporters of revolution in the Middle East, so the liberal media are selling themselves as enthusiastic partners in the social media revolution.

But we need an authentic people’s media rooted, not in profit, not even in revenue, not in power, status or phoney establishment respectability. We need media driven by an uncompromised commitment to investigating the true causes of the problems afflicting our world. Many of these problems are rooted precisely in corporate greed.

welcome to the abyss

Guardian | In the history of painting one can sometimes find strange prophecies: prophecies that were not intended as such by the painter. It is almost as if the visible by itself can have its own nightmares. For example, in Breughel's Triumph of Death, painted in the 1560s and now in the Prado museum, there is already a terrible prophecy of the Nazi extermination camps.

Most specific prophecies are bound to be bad, for, throughout history, there are always new terrors. Even if some of the terrors disappear, there are no new happinesses - happiness is always the old one. It is the modes of struggle for this happiness that change.

Half a century before Breughel, Hieronymus Bosch painted his Millennium Triptych. The left-hand panel shows Adam and Eve in Paradise, the large central panel describes the Garden of Earthly Delights, and the right-hand panel depicts hell. And this hell has become a strange prophecy of the mental climate imposed on the world, at the end of our century, by globalisation and the new economic order.

Let me try to explain how. It has little to do with the symbolism employed in the painting. Bosch's symbols probably came from the secret, proverbial, heretical language of certain 15th-century millennial sects, who believed that, if evil could be overcome, it was possible to build heaven on earth. Many essays have been written about the allegories to be found in his work. Yet if Bosch's vision of hell is prophetic, the prophecy is not so much in the details - haunting and grotesque as they are - as in the whole. Or, to put it another way, in what constitutes the space of hell.

There is no horizon there. There is no continuity between actions, there are no pauses, no paths, no pattern, no past and no future. There is only the clamour of the disparate, fragmentary present. Everywhere there are surprises and sensations, yet nowhere is there any outcome. Nothing flows through: everything interrupts. There is a kind of spatial delirium.

Compare this space to what one sees in the average publicity slot, or in a typical CNN news bulletin, or any mass-media commentary. There is a comparable incoherence, a comparable wilderness of separate excitements, a similar frenzy.

Bosch's prophecy was of the world-picture that is communicated to us today by the media under the impact of globalisation, with its delinquent need to sell incessantly. Both are like a puzzle whose wretched pieces do not fit together.

And this was precisely the phrase that the Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos used in an open letter about the new world order. He was writing from the Chiapas, southeast Mexico, where he leads insurgents fighting for liberation from the Mexican state. He sees the planet today as the battlefield of a fourth world war. (The third was the so-called cold war.) The aim of the belligerents is the conquest of the entire world through the market. The arsenals are financial; there are nevertheless millions of people being maimed or killed every moment.

The aim of those waging the war is to rule the world from new, abstract power centres - megapoles of the market, which will be subject to no control except that of the logic of investment. "Thanks to computers and the technological revolution," he writes, "the financial markets, operating from their offices and answerable to nobody but themselves, have been imposing their laws and world-view on the planet as whole. Globalisation is merely the totalitarian extension of the logic of the finance markets to all aspects of life." Meanwhile, nine-tenths of the women and men on the planet live with the jagged pieces which do not fit.

how the end begins: the road to nuclear ww-III

NYTimes | When Rosenbaum turns to the Middle East as a hot center of nuclear danger, however, he hits his stride. He’s already explored the question of the morality of deterrence, of threatening to kill millions of people in a retaliatory nuclear attack if the United States were struck with nuclear weapons. He’s noted that the World Court in 1996 adjudged “that the entire system of nuclear deterrence was a war crime.” That may be so, Rosenbaum acknowledges, but what is Israel, in particular, to do?

Surrounded by enemies who call for its destruction, Rosenbaum writes, Israel has assembled a substantial if unacknowledged nuclear arsenal. An attack by a ­nuclear-armed regional enemy — perhaps Iran at some future date when it has acquired nuclear weapons and the missiles with which to deliver them — could materialize without effective warning, and only a few nuclear weapons would be enough to destroy the country. Israel has therefore deployed nuclear cruise missiles on a small fleet of German-made submarines that reportedly patrol the Iranian coast. The submarines give Israel a secure second-strike capability, which deterrence theory predicts should be adequate to prevent a rational enemy from attacking. But what if deterrence fails?

The Jews would then be visited with a second Holocaust, Rosenbaum observes. He calls this possibility “Hitler’s chain reaction,” noting that the United States had raced to develop the atomic bomb in the first place because it feared that Nazi Germany was working on such a weapon. “The contemporary Middle East is a Hitler dream come true,” he writes sardonically. “The Jews have been compelled by the Holocaust and history to, in effect, round themselves up and may feel compelled by history to inflict an attack with genocidal consequences on others that could well precede a second one for them.” That is, either Israel would attack first with nuclear weapons, pre-emptively, and then be attacked in turn, or its submarines would retaliate after Israel was destroyed. Either way, a second Holocaust would result.

why no defence of saudi "right to protest"?

ActivistPost | Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been exhaustively in front of cameras promoting the right for people to protest in Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, and Libya. She's been touting the freedom to use social networking sites as a way for Arab people to organize against their oppressive regimes. Now, the Administration is even considering arming the opposition in Libya.

Clinton's perpetual propaganda efforts exposed her blatant hypocrisy when a silent peaceful protester was violently removed from one of her recent speeches on the very subject. However, the hypocrisy now seems to go much deeper in her deafening silence over the prospect for protests in Saudi Arabia.

After Human Rights Watch revealed that a nationwide "Day of Rage" protest had been planned in Saudi Arabia for this week, March 11th, Bloomberg reported that the Saudi government claims that demonstrations and marches are "strictly" prohibited by law. A Saudi Interior Ministry official said protests "contradict Islamic values" and "They harm public interest, infringe on the rights of others, spread chaos and lead to bloodshed."

This prohibition of popular dissent proves beyond a shadow of doubt that Saudi Arabia is indeed the most tyrannical authoritarian regime in the Arab world. Yet, U.S. Administration officials have been strangely silent about supporting the people's uprising there.

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

The Story of Citizens United v. FEC (2011)

Video - The Story of Citizens United v. FEC (2011)

aljazeera has won the information war...,


CounterPunch | None other than the US Secretary of State herself, Hillary Clinton, paid fulsome tribute to Al Jazeera last Wednesday, March 2. Appearing before a US Foreign Policy Priorities committee, she was asked by Senator Richard Lugar to impart her views on how well the US was promoting its message across the world.

Clinton promptly volunteered that America is in an "information war and we are losing the war," and furthermore, that "Al Jazeera is winning".

"Let’s talk straight realpolitik," Clinton went on. "We are in a huge competition" for global influence and global markets. China and Russia have started multi-language television networks, even as the US cuts back in this area. "We are paying a big price" for dismantling international communications networks after the end of the Cold War. "Our private media cannot fill that gap."

As noted here across the past couple of weeks, there’s been a flourishing little internet industry claiming that the overthrow of Mubarak came courtesy of US Twitter-Facebook Command. The New York Times runs numerous articles about the role of Twitter and Facebook while simultaneously ignoring or reviling Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

Of course, in any discussion of the role of the internet in fuelling the upsurges across the Middle East, WikiLeaks should be given major credit. But WikiLeaks, along with Twitter and Facebook, all pale into insignificance next to the role of Al Jazeera,

Millions of Arabs can’t tweet. Facebook is unfamiliar to them. But most watch TV, which means they all watch Al Jazeera. And of course it was Al Jazeera which detonated the IED exploding under the Palestinian Authority, namely the cache of documents known as the Palestine Papers.

There were huge ironies in Clinton’s confession to Senator Lugar and his colleagues. In the late 1970s, radicals in the United Nations were eagerly promoting the need for a 'New World Information Order' (NWIO) to counter the lock on world communications and hence propaganda by the advanced industrial countries, preeminently the United States.

distorting the essence of the arab revolutions

Counterpunch | “Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the West. . . As a cultural apparatus Orientalism is all aggression.” ~ Edward Said

In his book “Manufacturing Consent,” Noam Chomsky discusses the role of the mainstream, corporate media in conditioning the public to conform to the views and policies of society’s powerful ruling elite.

Regarding these media outlets- as supposed to independent ones- he argues that “their role is quite different, it's diversion.” He describes those who distort facts to suit the interests of the powerful as living “in a world of comforting illusion.” They present a narrative that is more fiction than fact, one of fantasy rather than analysis. It’s actually “a form of propaganda, which is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state,” Chomsky argues.

One such enabler is New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. His frequently shallow and eccentric analysis of events in the Middle East has been noted for many years, whether it is his deliberate misrepresentation of the Camp David negotiations in July 2000, or his hyped columns regarding alleged – and as it turned out non-existent- weapons of mass destruction in Iraq on behalf of the Bush administration in the prelude to the 2003 war.

And now he’s at it again, with his incredible contention that the revolutions sweeping the Arab World, from Tunisia Egypt, and Libya, to Yemen, Bahrain, and beyond are due to external factors. In Friedman’s delusional world, the presence of decades-long repression, police state, corruption, poverty, economic strangulation, lack of infrastructure, or, in short, the collapse of the modern civil state in the Arab World for the benefit of thugs, thieves and Western underlings were not the real factors in the uprisings and revolutions of millions of Arabs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf.

In his column on March 2, 2011, Friedman gives five reasons for these great revolutions, none of which is true. He starts by ridiculously claiming that it was President Barack Obama who inspired the Youth in the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, and other countries because of his race, middle name, and his 2009 Cairo speech. Clearly such opinion is an ethnocentric and distorted view of the Arab Middle East. Obama may inspire minorities in the West, but why would his skin color or the religion of his forefathers inspire people in the Middle East?

Former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice did not inspire the Arab masses although they were also African Americans occupying high positions in government. On the contrary these Secretaries attained the Arabs’ scorn because they represented a U.S. administration that invaded two Muslim countries, killing tens of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, with millions more suffering. Their administration used torture, carried out unjust prosecutions, and abused its power against Arabs and Muslims not only in Guantanamo Bay and other prisons around the world, but also inside the U.S. against many Muslim leaders and charitable organizations. Arabs are not so naïve as to be inspired by the symbolism of skin color or middle name. It is a government’s policies and principles that inspire the oppressed whether in the U.S. or the Arab World.

Undoubtedly people around the world had hoped that the election of Obama would bring a new dawn of American foreign policy that would not only reverse much of the previous administration’s atrocious policies with regard to the Muslim World, but also institute pro-people policies against their dictators.

But Obama has broken nearly every meaningful promise he made in his June 2009 Cairo speech (see my article Promises Made.. Promises Unkept). If anything, Obama is perceived as a big disappointment across the Arab World. He exhibits the image of a weak and ineffective leader, as in the case of closing Guantanamo, as well as an unprincipled and hypocritical politician with regard to the illegal Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian lands.

How could Obama inspire a small child, much less revolutionaries, when he has just vetoed in the U.N. Security Council his own declared policy that the Israeli settlements are illegal and must stop? During the 28 and 18 revolutionary days of continuous demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt respectively, not a single statement by any opposition figure had mentioned Obama in a positive light.

Monday, March 07, 2011

the high cost of oil..,

Video - Matt Damon "I no longer hope for audacity".

LATimes | The spread of popular revolt in the Middle East to Libya has exacerbated a spike in oil prices and gasoline costs at the pump. In turn, this has stimulated widespread complaints about the lack of a coherent U.S. foreign policy toward despots in the region. This is not the first time this has happened.

More than four decades ago, a military coup, led by a 27-year-old Moammar Kadafi, overthrew Libya's ineffectual King Idris and expelled all American and British troops from their large Libyan airbases. The new regime demanded a substantial increase in the price of Libyan oil — at a time when Libya supplied about 30% of Europe's oil.

Following Kadafi's lead, Abu Dhabi, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia soon sought higher prices for their oil. But the price increases didn't satisfy Kadafi or the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries for long. The nations of OPEC demanded "equity participation" in the oil companies. This was a turning point as the oil-producing nations established control over the oil in their lands. The Arab embargo of October 1973 soon thereafter made it unmistakable that control over Middle East oil production had shifted from U.S. and European oil companies — which for decades had controlled both output and prices — to the nations in whose lands the oil was located.

President Nixon had a clear foreign policy response to this. The United States turned to our Cold War allies Saudi Arabia and Iran for support, in spite of their autocratic nature. Washington provided them with military aid and encouraged economic interdependence, hoping that in exchange the countries would serve as the Middle East's "two pillars" of anti-Soviet stability and free-flowing oil. Needless to say, that plan failed miserably.

The Iranian "pillar" collapsed a few years later in an anti-American Islamic revolution. And even though Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states of the Persian Gulf have nominally remained U.S. allies, they, not we, hold the key strings in the relationship. The United States continues to support and aid these regimes despite their authoritarianism. If the sheiks of the Persian Gulf decide to put down popular unrest with the same fervor Libya has, the hands of U.S. foreign policy almost certainly will be tied.


The fundamental difficulties that brought energy into the policy forefront then remain unabated. The United States has 4% of the world's population, but we consume 25% of the world's oil. Today, we import more than 50% of our oil, compared with 35% in 1973, the year the Arab oil embargo shocked consumers at the pump.

tap the strategic petroleum reserve? why?

CNN | This isn't like the last time the U.S. tapped the SPR back in 2005. That followed a huge surge in oil and gas prices in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which did actually wreak havoc on production in the Gulf of Mexico.

Despite all the worries about supply disruption, the U.S. still is not facing any shortage. In fact, it's the exact opposite.

"If you really look at the inventories in the U.S., frankly we're oversupplied," said Blake Fernandez, an analyst who covers shares of integrated oil companies and independent refiners for energy research firm Howard Weil in New Orleans.

According to the most recent figures from the Department of Energy, the stockpile of oil is 1.4% above levels from last year. Fernandez added that according to his firm's estimates, inventories are 4% above their 5-year average.

Tapping the SPR is short-sighted, said David Pursell, managing director with Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., a Houston-based investment bank focusing on the energy industry.
CNN iReport: How much is gas where you live?

Pursell said he recognizes that lawmakers must be getting angry calls from anxious constituents about gas prices. But that's not an excuse to do something without fully thinking about the consequences

"Outside of Washington, this plan doesn't make sense," Pursell said. "But we don't have a shortage of crude, just a fear of a shortage. So where would you put the oil you release from the SPR?"

moore on monopoly's endgame...,

Video - Speech delivered at Wisconsin Capitol in Madison, March 5, 2011

HuffPo | America is not broke.





singin those $4.00/gallon blues already...,

Fox4News | AAA reports gas prices rose by four cents on Saturday night. The new national average is $3.47. People is Kansas City say they're feeling the pain at the pump as prices continue to soar.

FOX 4 visited Poco's Mexican Restaurant on Sunday morning. Customers say they eat there because the food's good and the prices are good too. Still, the owner admits sometimes people keep a watchful eye as the gas prices change across the street from the restaurant. Poco's also pays attention to the price of gas because delivery is a part of their business.

"It's really tough for us because we also do catering and we're always on the road," said Claudia Gutierrez with Poco's. "We had to up our prices a little bit and the customers aren't really happy about that."

Raymond and Gina Munoz say they take their kids to Poco's twice a month. On Sunday, their bill was about $50.

"That's a tank of gas for one of our vehicles," said customer Gina Munoz.

The Munoz family says they may have to cut back on eating out.

"You've gotta have gas to go places, so it's like, what do you do?" said Raymond Munoz. "You've got to find ways to compensate I guess."

The Munoz family say they may end up walking to the restaurant next time. Other customers say they'll keep a bright outlook even though it doesn't look so bright at the gas station across the street.

The owner of Poco's says they shop around for the best gas prices in both Kansas and Missouri before they head out on a food delivery.

Sunday, March 06, 2011

is you is or is you ain't fit'na tap?!?!?!



There has been support among Senate Democrats for tapping the reserves. Senator Jay Rockefeller on Thursday became the third Democrat to ask President Barack Obama to tap America's emergency oil supply to cool prices that have risen past $100 a barrel on the strife in Libya.

In a letter to Obama, Rockefeller said a "limited draw-down" from the nation's 727-million-barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve "can protect our national security by preventing or reducing the adverse impact of an oil shortage."

On Wednesday, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu ruled out releasing oil from the reserve, saying ramped up oil production in Saudi Arabia should lower the crude price.

"That's going to mitigate the price increase," he told reporters on Wednesday. "We're hoping market forces will take care of this."

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Thursday the United States and other major economies could tap strategic reserves to keep oil prices from derailing a global recovery.

Geithner said high food and oil prices were causing hardships in many parts of the world. But he said Americans were feeling less impact.

the top vs the food-powered make-work multitude

The L-Curve | The red line represents a graph of family income across the population. The height of the curve at any point is the height of a stack of $100 bills equalling that income. Unless you have a very old browser you will be able to zoom. Be sure to zoom both in and out.







What are the implications of this picture?

I am not an economist, but then again, most likely you aren't either. On the other hand, the economy affects you and me, so we need to come to grips with these issues to participate intelligently in the political process. There needs to be a genuine national dialog on these issues at all levels. The L-Curve graph represents income, not wealth. The distribution of wealth is even more skewed.

how will america handle the fall of its middle-east empire?









Saturday, March 05, 2011

the collapse of the old oil order: how the petroleum age will end




Ending the Petroleum Age





saudis mobilize thousands of troops to quell revolt






why washington doesn't care about jobs






Social distance of this sort isn’t new, of course. The “out of touchness” of the Beltway is such a cliché that Beltway denizens themselves love to invoke it to demonstrate their self-awareness. But I’d wager the social distance that characterizes this moment is probably as bad as it’s been in at least a generation. We’ve had more than three decades of accelerating inequality that has placed the top 10 percent further and further away from the bottom 90 percent, followed by a financial crisis and “recovery” that has only exacerbated these distributional trends. There were already Two Americas before the Great Recession, but in the wake of that seismic disruption, those two continents have only moved further apart.

Friday, March 04, 2011

when the game is over, it all goes back in the box...,

Video - Zeitgeist Moving Forward


Part I: Human Nature
The film begins with a brief animated sequence narrated by Jacque Fresco (founder of The Venus Project). He describes his adolescent life and discontinuation of public education at the age of 14 to study under his own will. Fresco's radical views resulted from his experiences during the Great Depression and World War II. Studying the social sciences, mechanical and social engineering, architecture among numerous other fields of study for 75 years have failed to alter this initial radical disposition, which is outlined in greater detail later in the film. The discussion turns to human behavior and the nature vs. nurture debate. This portion begins with a small clip with Robert Sapolsky summing up the nature vs. nurture debate in which he essentially refers to it as a "false dichotomy." After which he states that "it is virtually impossible to understand how biology works, outside the context of environment." During which time the film then goes onto describe that it is neither Nature or Nurture that shapes human behavior but both are supposed to influence behavior. The interviewed pundits state that even with genetic predispositions to diseases, the expression and manifestation of disease is largely determined by environmental stressors. Disease, criminal activity and addictions are also placed in the same light. One study discussed, showed that newly born babies are more likely to die if they are not touched. Another study which was mentioned, claimed to show how stressed women were more likely to have children with addiction disorders. A reference is made to the unborn children who were in utero during the Dutch famine of 1944. The "Dutch Famine Birth Cohort Study" is mentioned to have shown that obesity and other health complications became common problems later in life, due to prolonged starvation of their mother during pregnancy.[4] Comparisons are made by sociologists of criminals in different parts of the world and how different cultures with different values can often have more peaceful inhabitants. An Anabaptist sect called the Hutterites are mentioned to have never reported a homicide in any of their societies. The overall conclusion of Part I is that social environment and cultural conditioning play a large part in shaping human behavior.

Part II: Social Pathology


Part III: Project Earth

Part IV: Rise
The current world state of affairs is described in a dire light. The peak oil phenomenon is seen as a threat to civilization’s progress, potentially resulting in extinction. A strong case is presented that pollution, deforestation, climate change, overpopulation, and warfare are all created and perpetuated by the socioeconomic system. Various poverty statistics shown as progressive worsening of world culture. According to the United Nations, currently 18,000 children a day die from starvation.[8] Also according to the UN, global poverty rates have doubled since the 1970s.[9][10][11] Not directly mentioned, currently the gap between the rich and the poor is wider than at any time since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The top 1% own more than 40% of the planet’s wealth.[12] In other estimates not mentioned, the top 2% own more than 50% of the planet’s wealth.[13]


a dirty little oil market secret

KCStar | Oil markets are settling down this morning as analysts report Saudi Arabia has boosted their oil output to over 9 million barrels / day.

Holy smokes. Are we gullible!

Have the Saudis really boosted oil output?

Fresh Saudi oil output or are they just tapping storage?

In spite of this short term respite, it’s becoming increasing evident; we are in one heck of an oil related economy crunching quagmire. Oil prices are moving to catastrophic levels and there doesn’t seem to be much we can really do about it. Contrary to what’s been foretold by economists, new energy supplies aren’t gushing into these higher oil prices. Nor is it really curtailing the global demand.

So how did we get into this crucial societal dry hole?

I’ll contend we’ve been led astray by a false faith in economics, a misunderstanding of basic geologic depletion and an intentional false yarn spun about prolific oil supplies.

Although most think oil producers withhold supplies to evoke higher prices, it might well be that oil producers- including Saudi Arabia- are currently producing flat out. There’s just no more there! This is exactly the definition of ‘peak oil’. With the world’s voracious consumption of +87 million barrels / day, we are now up against the limits to growth. Oil production might not ever be able to expand from here. It’s either a downhill slide, or it soon shall be. Sure there will be new oil fields brought on line but this fresh output won’t even counter the current depletion rates of existing aging fields. After all, the average age of the world’s giant oil fields (+500,000 barrels/ day) is 55 years! We aren’t out of oil, but we are out of the capacity to produce more.

How did we miscalculate so badly on something so crucial?

norway: drillers hit record dry spell as reserves wane...,

Bloomberg | Statoil ASA (STL) and Eni SpA (ENI) are among companies with plans to drill a record number of wells in Norway’s far north this year to help the world’s second-largest gas exporter to sustain output. So far, they’ve struck out.



The Barents Sea “is extremely important for Norwegian oil production given that the mature areas are in extreme decline,” said Torbjoern Kjus, an analyst at DnB NOR ASA in Oslo. “Every dry well is a setback, but we have to keep trying where there might be resources left if we’re going to maintain Norwegian production going for as long as possible.”

Thursday, March 03, 2011

the rise of "anti-western" christianity

BrusselsJournal | Occidental Christians assume that Christianity is Western. After all, “Europe is the faith”, asserted Hillaire Belloc. Although by birth a Middle Eastern religion, Christianity, at least as Westerners know it, soon became a European religion in the sense that it melded with various forms of European paganism. Christianity, the story runs, cannot exist in a vacuum. It conforms to the various cultures with which it comes in contact. In its European manifestation (after syncretization with Celtic, Germanic, Greek and Roman paganism), Western Christianity became the religious expression we know today. Comfortable with pagan-Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter, most Westerners could not conceive of Christianity any other way. (By “Westerner” is meant a European or someone of the European Diaspora.)

Yet Jenkins maintains this is not the entire picture. The idea of “Western Christianity,” he maintains, “distorts the true pattern of the religion’s development over time”. First, even during medieval Europe (which is heralded as the epitome of European Christendom), many Christians lived outside Europe and practiced other forms of Christianity. To the Armenian or Ethiopian Christian, European Christianity would have seemed odd. Furthermore, in more recent times, the missionary work of modern Europe has laid the foundation for a new type of Christianity that is different from anything that preceded it.

If “Europe is the faith” for Western Christianity, then, Jenkins maintains, “Africa is the faith” for the coming Christianity. In 1900, Europe possessed two-thirds of the world’s Christians. By 2025, that number will fall below 20%, with most Christians living in what Jenkins calls the “Global South”, largely a proxy term for “Third World”. The Global South could be thought of as slightly modified Gondwanaland, including Africa, Latin America, Philippines, southeast Asia/India, etc. This Global South, not the West, will be the new heart of Christendom.

The statistics are compelling. By 2025, nearly 75% of the world’s Catholics will be non-Western (mostly African and mestizo). At present, Nigeria has the world’s largest Catholic theological school. Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro may be the world’s largest Catholic church. India has more Christians than most Western nations. By 2050, more than 80% of Catholics in the U.S. will be of non-Western (often mestizo) origins. By 2050, only a small fraction of Anglicans will be English or of the European Diaspora. Nigeria, not England, is the new heart of Anglican Christianity. Lutherans, Presbyterians and other mainstream denominations find their chief centres of growth in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Then there are the ever-growing Pentecostal and other indigenous Christian churches. Pentecostals have made tremendous inroads in Latin America, and churches like the Zion Christian Church have grown tremendously in South Africa. The Zion Christian Church attracts over a million pilgrims every Easter (more than greet the Pope in St. Peter’s Square on Easter mornings).

But this is not simply a matter of static (European) Christianity being implemented by people of other races. Christianity itself is radically changing. The New Christendom is “no mirror image of the Old. It is a truly new and developing entity”. Jenkins writes:
“As Christianity moves South, it is in some ways returning to its roots. To use the intriguing description offered by Ghanaian scholar Kwame Bediako, what we are now witnessing is ‘the renewal of a non-Western religion.’”
As once Europeans appropriated Christian iconography as their own, so does the New Christianity in Latin America, where images are filtered through the lens of mestizo identity. The Catholic Church has proclaimed the Virgin of Guadalupe as the patron of all the Americas. Probably the result of syncretization with the Aztec goddess Tonantzin, the Guadalupe Virgin, the dark one (La Morena) as she is called, looks like the local Americanian and mestizo populations, not like Europeans. Likewise, images of the Cuban La Caridad show her “appearing to rescue black and mestizo sailors”. In Equador, the Virgin of El Quinche is popular “because her skin color is that of the local mestizos”. “Ethnically as much as spiritually,” these non-European Virgins are their Virgins.

mormon socialism?

Salt Lake Tribune | Whether one accepts the historical or theological claims of the Book of Mormon, one theme in it is obvious: At their most righteous, the Nephites presented in the book were benevolent socialists; at their most depraved, they were greedy free-market capitalists.

In the zenith of Nephite culture, “the Lord called his people Zion because they were of one heart and one mind and they did have all things in common — and there were no poor among them.” Having “all things in common” suggests a society invested in public infrastructure and welfare for the whole.

Redistribution is not an anomaly in Mormon scriptures. Joseph Smith declared that “It is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin.” (Doctrine and Covenants 49:20).

For any conservative this is surely commie talk! Yet Smith persisted, “If you are not equal in earthly things ye cannot be equal in obtaining heavenly things” (D&C 78:5-6).

Early Mormon leaders advocated a United Order to redistribute wealth for the benefit of all Saints.

Though redistribution is the highest economic order in Mormon scripture, Sen. Chris Buttars vehemently denounced Alpine School District for allegedly advocating “democratic socialism.” He, Mitt Romney, Glenn Beck and others seem to believe that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a de facto 14th Article of Faith: We believe in the unquestioned virtue of unregulated capitalism.

But Mormon scripture makes such a belief indefensible. The notorious villains of Nephite civilization were the Gadianton Robbers, who perpetuated policies that exacerbated class inequality. They eventually “did obtain the sole management of the government, insomuch that they did trample under their feet and smite and rend and turn their backs upon the poor and the meek, and the humble followers of God” (Helaman 6:39).

Many politically powerful Latter-day Saints have also turned their back on the poor and working class in this country. The Patrick Henry Caucus, Eagle Forum and Romney are determined to eliminate the very social programs that have traditionally protected vulnerable populations. Conversely, they are equally invested in protecting the wealthy.

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

can open science end the climate-change war?

Video - Two hour lecture on Berkeley climate science.





could small nuclear war reverse global warming?









Reversing Global Warming?




are nukes the most urgent environmental threat?


Scary? It gets worse. New research by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) suggests that the above scenario of a "limited" nuclear war would also burn a hole through the ozone layer, allowing extreme levels of ultraviolet radiation to reach the Earth's surface, which would greatly damage agriculture and most likely lead to a global nuclear famine.




nuh-UHN...,did NOT!!!!!!

Nasdaq | Bahrain's government Tuesday denied rumors that Saudi Arabian tanks had crossed into the island kingdom.

"There are no Saudi Arabian tanks in Bahrain," Bahrain's information ministry said in a statement, adding that tanks identified in news reports as crossing the border Monday evening were Bahraini tanks returning from Kuwait, where they had taken part in national day celebrations.

"Tanks identified on Monday evening were Bahraini tanks returning from Kuwait National Day celebrations, where military from several Allied countries participated in an event commemorating Kuwait's liberation in 1991," the statement said. Fist tap Dale.

bahrain "borrows" a few saudi tanks?

Citywire | A report that Saudi Arabia has sent tanks to neighbouring Bahrain knocks UK shares and pushes oil and gold prices higher.

The Saudi Arabia stock exchange fell nearly 500 points or over 5% after a local news agency reported Saudi tanks were heading to neighbouring Bahrain while other reports suggested unrest in the kingdom was picking up momentum.

Eyewitness reports say Saudi Arabia is sending 15 tanks to Bahrain to help shore up the country's government ahead of pro-democracy marches in the country.

Last week Saudi's ruling King Abdullah unveiled $36 billion worth of benefits for the country's poorest people to help prevent unrest spreading.

According to the BBC, a Facebook site calling for a 'day of rage' in Saudi Arabia on 11 March has seen its number of subscribers increase from 400 to 12,000 in recent days.

Saudi Arabia has the fifth largest oil and gas reserves in the world and is the second largest exporter after Russia. The unrest that is sweeping the region and led to changes in government in Tunisia and Egypt and violent struggles in Libya has raised concerns that Saudi too will become embroiled. That could lead to a sharp spike in oil prices and potentially throw the global recovery off kilter.

Many analysts believe if the cost of oil climbs and stays at around the $120 per barrel level global growth will slow. Commentators point out that soaring oil prices have often been a precursor to recession in the US in the past.

Yesterday the cost of a basket of oil from the OPEC nations rose to $108 while the cost of North Sea Brent was back on the rise today at over $112 per barrel.

The price of gold jumped another $11.10, or 0.79%, to $1,421.

In the UK the FTSE 100 edged to a day's low of 5,979 points, down 0.2% on the news, having touched a peak of 6,040 earlier in the day. Fist tap Dale.

Tuesday, March 01, 2011




The economy as an entity is a projection of the collective human psyche, but particularly of the "Big Wetikos," who hold a disproportionate power in crafting its operating system and in running its day-to-day operations in the world. In the wetikonomy, money has become indispensable for our biological survival, as well as our psychological well being and need for social prestige. This results in the drive for acquiring money becoming hardwired into the most primal centers of our lower, animal nature. This can generate a dependency that can easily lead to a treadmill that spirals downwards towards degeneracy, a true ‘rat race' in which we become addicted to chasing after ‘the buck,' as we increasingly worship Mammon (the God of the love of money; Interestingly, the esteemed economist John Maynard Keynes considered the love of money a form of mental illness). Our need for money becomes the ‘hook' through which the Big Wetikos, who control the supply and value of money, can ‘yank our leash' and manipulate humanity. To say it differently, the economy is engineered by a few, the "Big Wetikos," who then utilize their creation to manipulate the collective human psyche and in so doing influence and warp it in a wetiko-like way.


wetiko: malignant egophrenia




A Disease of Civilization