Hit And Run News Roundup

Microscopic Combo Suspected in Killing Bees.  Scientists Believe the Combination of a Virus and Parasite is the Probable Cause of Large, Mysterious, Bee Die-Off.

Hungarian chemical sludge spill reaches DanubeToxic red sludge from a spill at an industrial plant in Hungary has reached the River Danube, officials say.




PM Viktor Orban called the spill an "ecological tragedy". There are fears the mud, which burst out of a reservoir on Monday, could poison the Danube.


Countries downstream from Hungary, including Croatia, Serbia and Romania, are drawing up emergency plans.
And:
Disaster official Tibor Dobson said all life in the Marcal river, which feeds the Danube, had been "extinguished".


The BBC's Nick Thorpe in western Hungary says news that the spill has now reached the Danube is worrying.

Government withholding key data on Gulf seafood testing, scientists say

D.C. Internet Vote Scheme Hacker: 'Within 36 Hours We Had Total Control of Server, Ability to Change Votes, Reveal Secret Ballots'

1st extinction event: Leaked CERN documents state LHC has 70% chances to produce strangelets on 11/9 

Airstrikes in north, central Gaza injure 5

Lou Dobbs' Undocumented Workers

US Banks Fake Documents to Rush Foreclosures

"Hi--Larry Summers. You know that upcoming worldwide economic crash thing? Yeah; I did that.."

His words, not mine. Heh.. No, not really. This, really. Larry Summers and the Subversion of Economics. If you'd like a relatively short explanation as to why MegaCrash is coming, this is it. Excerpts in italics:

The Obama administration recently announced that Larry Summers is resigning as director of the National Economic Council and will return to Harvard early next year. His imminent departure raises several questions: Who will replace him? What will he do next? But more important, it's a chance to consider the hugely damaging conflicts of interest of the senior academic economists who move among universities, government, and banking.
Summers is unquestionably brilliant, as all who have dealt with him, including myself, quickly realize. And yet rarely has one individual embodied so much of what is wrong with economics, with academe, and indeed with the American economy. For the past two years, I have immersed myself in those worlds in order to make a film, Inside Job, that takes a sweeping look at the financial crisis. And I found Summers everywhere I turned.

Consider: As a rising economist at Harvard and at the World Bank, Summers argued for privatization and deregulation in many domains, including finance. Later, as deputy secretary of the treasury and then treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, he implemented those policies. Summers oversaw passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed Glass-Steagall, permitted the previously illegal merger that created Citigroup, and allowed further consolidation in the financial sector. He also successfully fought attempts by Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Clinton administration, to regulate the financial derivatives that would cause so much damage in the housing bubble and the 2008 economic crisis. He then oversaw passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned all regulation of derivatives, including exempting them from state antigambling laws.



After Summers left the Clinton administration, his candidacy for president of Harvard was championed by his mentor Robert Rubin, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who was his boss and predecessor as treasury secretary. Rubin, after leaving the Treasury Department—where he championed the law that made Citigroup's creation legal—became both vice chairman of Citigroup and a powerful member of Harvard's governing board.

And:

Summers remained close to Rubin and to Alan Greenspan, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve. When other economists began warning of abuses and systemic risk in the financial system deriving from the environment that Summers, Greenspan, and Rubin had created, Summers mocked and dismissed those warnings. In 2005, at the annual Jackson Hole, Wyo., conference of the world's leading central bankers, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Raghuram Rajan, presented a brilliant paper that constituted the first prominent warning of the coming crisis. Rajan pointed out that the structure of financial-sector compensation, in combination with complex financial products, gave bankers huge cash incentives to take risks with other people's money, while imposing no penalties for any subsequent losses. Rajan warned that this bonus culture rewarded bankers for actions that could destroy their own institutions, or even the entire system, and that this could generate a "full-blown financial crisis" and a "catastrophic meltdown."

When Rajan finished speaking, Summers rose up from the audience and attacked him, calling him a "Luddite," dismissing his concerns, and warning that increased regulation would reduce the productivity of the financial sector. (Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and Alan Greenspan were also in the audience.)



And:

Then, after the 2008 financial crisis and its consequent recession, Summers was placed in charge of coordinating U.S. economic policy, deftly marginalizing others who challenged him. Under the stewardship of Summers, Geithner, and Bernanke, the Obama administration adopted policies as favorable toward the financial sector as those of the Clinton and Bush administrations—quite a feat. Never once has Summers publicly apologized or admitted any responsibility for causing the crisis. And now Harvard is welcoming him back.


Summers is unique but not alone. By now we are all familiar with the role of lobbying and campaign contributions, and with the revolving door between industry and government. What few Americans realize is that the revolving door is now a three-way intersection. Summers's career is the result of an extraordinary and underappreciated scandal in American society: the convergence of academic economics, Wall Street, and political power.
And:

Over the past 30 years, the economics profession—in economics departments, and in business, public policy, and law schools—has become so compromised by conflicts of interest that it now functions almost as a support group for financial services and other industries whose profits depend heavily on government policy. The route to the 2008 financial crisis, and the economic problems that still plague us, runs straight through the economics discipline. And it's due not just to ideology; it's also about straightforward, old-fashioned money.

This is ultimately why America and The West will fail: This labyrinth that is what Economics has been allowed to become is too murky and unintelligible to the vast majority of society that we can't see the full extent of how badly we are being robbed, and that the damage is catastrophic and terminal. These economists are so incestuous, so inbred between associations and organizations, they've actively advocated and enacted deregulation that artificially grew the entire sector while allowing disproportionate and inappropriate profit to careen out of control. And even now, when Crash is Inevitable, the entire cabal continues to steal, and game the system in their favor. We are royally fucked, kids. Other than Total Systemic Collapse, there is no end in sight..

Life On Mars; Or That Cloud Looks Like..

You decide. Satellite photo analysis of Mars is sometimes like seeing objects in clouds: People see what they want to see. This feels different. If this is a hoax, it's a good one. I'll post this video without further comment, and you see for yourself. Tell me what you think..

"The Fountain Of Youth" Is Not A "Where," But A "What.."

The chemical equation that causes human ageing might have been solved. Video from Russia Today via Godlike Productions.

On the surface, this is amazing news. Skulachev has found the antioxidant that will change History. Imagine a future where people barely(if at all) age, and people easily live to be 150 years old! The overall health of the world skyrockets to previous levels of health, and society can move on to other planetary problems. Awesome, but.. Seven billion people living 150 plus years consuming resources the way we do now? Not so much.

During the 20th century, population control has been addressed in think tanks, books, and UN subcommittees. Family planning and reproductive health clinics were available in the U.S. from the 1960's, and many countries enacted some pretty stringent laws and programs, but far too few(programs) to have any noticeable effect in the overall direction of world population. And people are living much longer, so world population has exploded in the last 50 years to the tune of almost four billion people. There were more people born since 1960 than were living in 1959. Think on that a moment..

If this new antioxidant is indeed the Real Deal, then debate on Population Control will have to follow. Hopefully, with advances like this in societal health, the planet-wide debate can take place publicly, and without the negative connotations that allowed us to reach where we are right now. Please note the difference between immediate Population Control (Which I find to be sinister, to say the least), and long term, planned Population Control, aimed more at zero population growth, gradually reducing resource usage to acceptable, sustainable levels. Population Control for the future without the buzzkill of aggressive Eugenics is called Proper Planetary Planning.

The Government Wouldn't Do That; Would They?

I guess they would.  U.S. apologises for scientists DELIBERATELY infecting mentally ill patients with STDs.