It's Cooked And We're Boned? No. It's Boned And We're Cooked!

New photos show what remains of No. 4 reactor building’s eastern wall  The top photo shows how much progress TEPCO's cleanup has made.  Cleaner?  Yes.  Sturdy?  For now..

The fact Spent Fuel Pool/Reactor 4 remains standing is the only thing standing between us and global catastrophe.  Earthquakes happen almost daily.  There's enough material here to contaminate..  Everything, eventually.  And there's a good chance a quake will come along sooner rather than later, thereby causing civilization to effectively end.  

I, for one, are doing things I will miss when they become unavailable.  Went to a movie tonight.  I haven't been in a theater in two years.  Small crowd, no one talked..  It was really nice! 

I will be, in the very near future, doing more items on my Fukushima Bucket List.  Small, accessible activities I love.  Up next, Thai or Indian, and frozen custard.  Jogging outdoors.  A day of photography.  Asking ______ out.  This really is the time, friends.  There might not be any more.   Don't say no one ever told you.. 

I Keep Crawling Away, But The Zombies Keep Pulling Me Back..

The meme gains cohesion.  Presented as a grouping of events, whatever this is is ominous.  How many more high profile attacks happen before mass hysteria begins?

Zombie Instances, May 2012   Reports of flesh eating bacteria included.  Clinically described Super Crazy.

Is this what happened?  Scientist accused of playing God after creating artificial life by making designer microbe from scratch - but could it wipe out humanity?  Unintended consequences, much?  (Found this through Godlike Productions.)

Unrelated, but included for the shocking brutality and Drama:  Mailing body parts?  This guy's a psychopathic attention whore, but he's no zombie.  And he seems to be escaping much faster with more success than his fellow murderous weirdos.

Girlfriend: 'Miami Zombie' may have had voodoo spell that made him chew off a man's face  If he's close to who she describes, I bet this tragedy would be devastating.  Tampa Bay Times.  Excerpts:


The man being depicted by the media as a "face eater" or a "monster" is not the man she knew, she said. He smoked marijuana often, though had recently said he wanted to quit, but he didn't use stronger recreational drugs and even refused to take over-the-counter medication for simple ailments like headaches, she said. He was sweet and well-mannered, she said.


Eugene's girlfriend has her own theory on what happened that day. She believes Eugene was drugged unknowingly. The only other explanation, she said, was supernatural — that someone put a voodoo curse on him. The girlfriend, who unlike Eugene is not Haitian, said she has never believed in voodoo, until now.

"I don't know how else to explain this," she said.

Possible Zombie Outbreak? Or Mass Hysteria?

Eurozone epidemic meltdown: Spain in emergency crisis, Danish banks downgraded

From The Extinction Protocol.  Excerpts:


Spain in emergency crisis: “We’re in a situation of total emergency, the worst crisis we have ever lived through” said ex-premier Felipe Gonzalez, the country’s elder statesman. The warning came as the yields on Spanish 10-year bonds spiked to 6.7pc, pushing the “risk premium” over German Bunds to a post-euro high of 540 basis points. The IBEX index of stocks in Madrid fell 2.6pc, the lowest since the dotcom bust in 2003. Chaos over the €23.5bn rescue of crippled lender Bankia has led to the abrupt resignation of central bank governor Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez, who testified to the senate that he had been muzzled to avoid enflaming events as confidence in the country drains away. Markets are on tenterhooks as Spanish yields test levels that forced the European Central Bank to respond last November with its €1 trillion liquidity blitz. “Nobody is short Spanish debt right now because they are expecting ECB intervention,” said Andrew Roberts, credit chief at RBS. “If it doesn’t come — if we take out 6.8pc — we’re going to see a hyberbolic sell-off,” he said.
And:
Mr Roberts said the collapse in Spanish tax revenues is replicating the pattern in Greece. Fiscal revenues have fallen 4.8pc over the last year, and VAT returns have slumped 14.6pc. Debt service costs have risen by 18pc. The country is caught in a classic deflationary vice: a rising debt burden on a shrinking economic base. “Once you get into such a negative feedback loop, you can move beyond the point of no return quickly,” he said.

It's not like one country's financial implosion stops or gets better--Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Ireland are still in bad shape--The focus just switches whenever new, horrible economic data is reported.  In hindsight, the multiple paths to economic Armageddon will become clear when they all become critical simultaneously.  Buckle up:  Here we go!

Seriously, This Can't Be Too Surprising..

Snake-handling W.Va. pastor dies of snakebite..  Bound to happen?  Saw it coming?  Let X=X?  The Raw Story.  Excerpts:



Flamboyant Pentecostal preacher Mark Randall “Mack” Wolford, who was one of the last serpent-handling preachers of his kind in the U.S., passed away on Sunday after being bitten by one of his snakes, according to the Washington Post. The Washington Post Magazine profiled Wolford in November of 2011, telling of his ongoing faith in his ministry in spite of his own father’s death by snakebite in 1983.


Wolford was holding a outdoor service at Panther Wildlife Management Area in his native West Virginia when he was bitten. The pastor promoted the event on Facebook on May 22, calling it “a homecoming like the old days. Good ’ole raised in the holler or mountain ridge running, Holy Ghost-filled speaking-in-tongues sign believers.”

On May 23, he wrote on Facebook, “Praise the Lord and pass the rattlesnakes, brother.” He had invited his congregation, his family and extended family to the event, which was located roughly 80 miles west of Bluefield, West Virginia.  They did and they did, and now he's dead.
..
Wolford’s sister Robin Vanover told the Post on Monday that snake-handling had been a family tradition, “At one time or another, we had handled [snakes], but we had backslid. His birthday was Saturday, and all he wanted to do is get his brothers and sisters in church together.”


Snake-handling Pentecostals claim that they use their practice as a means of getting closer to god by testing their faith. They take as their inspiration verses 17 and 18 from Chapter 16 of the Gospel of Mark, which reads, “And these signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

The practice is legal in West Virginia, but not in most states. Wolford was struck on the thigh by a rattlesnake he had owned for years. It is a tenet of snake-handlers’ faith that they rely on only god for healing if they are bitten in the course of their worship.

After being bitten, Wolford halted the service and was taken to a relative’s home to recover, as he had on the four other occasions when he was struck by one of his snakes. This time, however, he was unable to shake off the effects of the rattlesnake’s venom.

Hours after the bite, frantic prayer requests began to appear on Facebook. Paramedics were called, but by the time help arrived, Wolford was dead.

By the standards of his own belief system, he lost faith.  By his own standards, yes:  It is that simple. 

Sometimes faith is almost impossible to summon.  Must it have such severe repercussions for not "getting it right?"  And who or what gets to decide what's right?  God?  Physiology?  Random snakes?  Maybe theirs is The True Path, but for the life of me, I don't see it.

BBC News uses 'Iraq photo to illustrate Syrian massacre'

I'm sure this is all one gigantic mistake, and will never happen again.  The Telegraph.  Found it on Urban Survival.  The Whole Thing:

Photographer Marco di Lauro said he nearly “fell off his chair” when he saw the image being used, and said he was “astonished” at the failure of the corporation to check their sources.



The picture, which was actually taken on March 27, 2003, shows a young Iraqi child jumping over dozens of white body bags containing skeletons found in a desert south of Baghdad.


It was posted on the BBC news website today under the heading “Syria massacre in Houla condemned as outrage grows”.


The caption states the photograph was provided by an activist and cannot be independently verified, but says it is “believed to show the bodies of children in Houla awaiting burial”.


A BBC spokesman said the image has now been taken down.

Mr di Lauro, who works for Getty Images picture agency and has been published by newspapers across the US and Europe, said: “I went home at 3am and I opened the BBC page which had a front page story about what happened in Syria and I almost felt off from my chair.


“One of my pictures from Iraq was used by the BBC web site as a front page illustration claiming that those were the bodies of yesterday's massacre in Syria and that the picture was sent by an activist.

“Instead the picture was taken by me and it's on my web site, on the feature section regarding a story I did In Iraq during the war called Iraq, the aftermath of Saddam.

“What I am really astonished by is that a news organization like the BBC doesn't check the sources and it's willing to publish any picture sent it by anyone: activist, citizen journalist or whatever. That's all.

He added he was less concerned about an apology or the use of image without consent, adding: “What is amazing it's that a news organization has a picture proving a massacre that happened yesterday in Syria and instead it's a picture that was taken in 2003 of a totally different massacre.

“Someone is using someone else's picture for propaganda on purpose.”

A spokesman for the BBC said: “We were aware of this image being widely circulated on the Internet in the early hours of this morning following the most recent atrocities in Syria.

“We used it with a clear disclaimer saying it could not be independently verified.

“Efforts were made overnight to track down the original source of the image and when it was established the picture was inaccurate we removed it immediately.”

Cold-Busted!  Does anyone proofread major publications anymore?  This really is too big of a mistake to be a "mistake."  Never let the facts stand in the way of a vivid image, eh?  Too bad those responsible will probably do it again, and no one will remember.  Again..

Why Italy's Earthquake Was Weird

Discovery News.  Found it on Goro Adachi.  Kind of goes against conventional scientific expectations.  Seismically surprising to scientists.  Huh.  Excerpts:

A strong and unusually shallow earthquake struck northern Italy over the weekend, fracturing pavement, sending torrents of brick and rubble raining down from buildings, and killing seven people. The powerful shaking was a first for the region in centuries — and fairly surprising to seismologists.

Data indicate the magnitude 6.0 quake, which struck just after 4 a.m. local time on Sunday (May 20), just north of Bologna, was a thrust quake — the type of earthquake caused when two tectonic plates smash together — yet it occurred at a depth of just 3 miles (5 kilometers).

"It is kind of surprising that it's that shallow, because it's pretty far from the plate boundary," said Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "Normally we expect things to get deeper as they move northward," he told OurAmazingPlanet.


The quake hit about 470 miles (750 km) north of the plate boundary — the place where the two colliding plates meet — which runs along the sole of Italy's "boot."
It is here that the African plate is plowing slowly northward, crashing into the Eurasian plate.

Caruso explained that the shallower a quake, the more damage it can cause. "If a quake is 500 kilometers deep, and you're right on top of it, you're going to feel it a lot less strongly than if it's 5 kilometers deep," he said. "As the seismic energy moves through the ground some of it is dissipated."

The strong quake rocked an area with a long history of earthquakes, yet one that has kept relatively quiet for hundreds of years.

"There has not been a whole lot of action in that area," Caruso said. "The fact that they do have records of earthquakes going back a couple thousand years shows this area hasn't been seismically active for a long time," he said. (Notice what they didn't say?  How long has it been?  Has this specific area within a seismically active region ever seen an earthquake?)
..
The most powerful quake to hit Italy in decades occurred in 2009, in central Italy, near Rome. The 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck the medieval city of L'Aquila, killing close to 300 people and causing widespread damage.


After that earthquake, Italian officials put several Italian scientists on trial for manslaughter for not providing better warnings ahead of the deadly shaking, a move that has caused an outcry in the international scientific community(This is bullshit.  Seismology is not an accurate enough science for a legal response like this to be credible.  How can its accuracy be on trial when we don't have even close to all fault lines mapped?).

The two Italian quakes were caused by different geological mechanisms. The L'Aquila earthquake was caused when massive rock faces jerked away from one another, where as the recent earthquake was caused by their collision.

Several aftershocks have rocked the affected region, and it's not clear if this recent earthquake is a harbinger of things to come.

A lot of anomalous activity surrounding this event..  I wonder what caused it?

Meet Flame, Son Of Stuxnet

Surprise!  "Hackers" up the ante!  Not really surprising, is it?  They're not really "hackers," either..  IT World.  Whole Thing, plus some comments:

Remember Stuxnet, the malware targeted at the Iranian nuclear industry? Say hello to Flame (Win32.Flame), a 20MB piece of modern cyberwar weaponry.



Detailed by Kaspersky Lab Expert Aleks in a Questions and Answers entry on SecureList, Flame is 20 times larger than Stuxnet and has been floating around the Middle East for two years or more. It is "a backdoor, a Trojan, and it has worm-like features," according to Kaspersky, and reports to about 80 command-and-control domains. Various Flame modules can be initialized on infected systems to change the information gathered.


Flame is able to infect a fully patched Windows 7 system, indicating it leverages a zero-day exploit not yet known to security researchers. The complexity and size of Flame indicates the likely developer was a "government-sponsored entity" according to the Wall Street Journal. Other names for Flame are Flamer, Wiper, Viper, and sKyWIper. It may be the "most complex malware ever found," according to a CrySyS Lab report.


Short sighted comment:

This is an advanced mechanism employed by a state agency. The article isn't overt, but the implication is clearly that this device is of US origin and purpose. Personally, I'm happy to see the US engaging in this sort of behavior. National Defense with low cost and no lives lost!



Andrew Middleton on wired.com

How ya gonna feel there, Andy, when Flame takes out the control systems of that nuclear plant you live downwind from?  How many lives will be lost if, during the middle of summer, entire power grids across the country are taken out, for weeks, even months?  Any cyber weapon we use can ultimately be used against us.  When you design software for cyber attack, that code can be captured, re-created and sent back at us with variants we might not be expecting.

These technologies are Digital Djinn:  They are magnificent powers, and should be treated with utmost respect.  Already though, it's too late.  They're already out in the cyberscape, ready to destroy, waiting to fulfill their programmed purpose, waiting until such time when the order does come.

Technologically Modern Society stands on a precipice much, much shakier than Technologically Modern Society could ever admit.  Most of the world will be oblivious to full on cyber warfare, though:  When it happens, no one will have power, so no one will fully know what's happening..  Besides, they'll probably be more focused on more immediate needs, like life during extended blackout chaos.  But trust me, there will some Episodes of Spectacular-ity during that conflict, that is for sure..

Man hospitalized after throwing own intestines at police

Super crazy doesn't bluff.  Coincidence; or The Walking Dead?  The Question remains:  What's causing this particular version of ultra-violent lunacy?  The Raw Story.  The Whole Story:

Police on Sunday responded to call from someone saying 43-year-old Wayne Carter was threatening to hurt himself with a 12-inch knife.


When police arrived at the residence, the man yelled at the officers and stabbed himself. As police entered, he threw pieces of his own body at them and threatened them with his knife.

When pepper-spray had no effect on Carter, police retreated and called the SWAT team, who subdued him with beanbag projectiles. (There's that adrenalized, super human strength again, resistant to police efforts to subdue him.)


“The scene was a bloody mess,” a police official told Cliffview Pilot. “The SWAT team members had to be decontaminated due to the amount of blood.”

Carter reportedly damaged a major stomach artery and had more than 50 stab wounds.

Police are awaiting the results of a blood test to determine if Carter had ingested any psychoactive substances.

Further confirmation that everyone is losing their damn minds.  Bath salts?  Lame.  All of the sudden people are skipping over "violently crazy," to "blood-drenched crazy," from bath salts?  Naw.. 

Yes, at the moment, these incidents are anecdotal.  If more incidents occur, and a trend develops, the question remains:  What is it that is not only flipping these people's switches, but completely overloading their systems?  Even by 2012's insane-society-standards, these two events (Miami Cannibal Zombie included) are shocking for the singular, vicious delirium exhibited by both attackers.

Bad-Case scenario:  This is just a symptom of  Modern Society.  People make chemicals (by accident or for profit) that shouldn't be ingested, but people ingest them anyway.  These events are coincidental, but could foreshadow future events on a much larger scale.  Psychoactive drug users as "Berserkers," stoking fear, wreaking havoc, always unexpected.  Always.  Dis-topian, much?

Badder-Case scenario:  This seems to be a distinct new level of violent behavior.  A definite step downward towards chaos.  We are just now in the early moments of this new behavioral stage.  Each new manifestation will be more shocking than the last.

Worst-Case scenario:  Zombies have been created, and they thrive under intense radioactive contamination.  Fukushima makes them stronger. 

Best-Case scenario:  Reality IS a computer simulation!  Hooray!

Yeah; I'm only half-kidding about this one.. 

What I'm not kidding about:  The feeling of intensifying dread.  It's going to be a long, hot summer, here in Universe B.  Turbulence approaches..

Northern Italy struck by a 5.8 magnitude earthquake

The Telegraph.  Found it on Lunatic Outpost.  Excerpts:

Northern Italy has been struck by a 5.8 magnitude earthquake, just 10 days after a 6.0 magnitude quake killed seven people and destroyed dozens of castles, churches and other buildings in the same region.




The quake was felt throughout northern and central Italy, including Milan and Florence.


It struck about 25 miles north of Bologna in the Emilia Romagna region, at a depth of six miles.


It is not yet clear if there have been any injuries, but there are reports that buildings have been damaged in towns which were already reeling from the earthquake of May 20.


The epicentre of Tuesday's earthquake was the town of Medolla, near the city of Modena.

Buildings collapsed in Finale Emilia and San Felice sul Panaro, two of the towns which were badly hit by the first quake.

Japan's radiation found in California bluefin tuna

I'm sure everything will be all right.  Are we still on for sushi?  San Francisco Gate, via The Extinction Protocol.  Excerpts:

For the first time, scientists have detected radioactivity in fish that have migrated into California waters from the ocean off Japan, where radiation contaminated the sea after explosions tore through the Fukushima nuclear reactors last year.


Radioactive cesium was detected in samples of highly prized Pacific bluefin tuna, but it is well below levels considered unsafe for humans, the scientists say.


The evidence is "unequivocal" that the tuna - caught off San Diego a year ago - were contaminated with radiation from Japan's nuclear disaster, the researchers said.


Virtually all bluefin tuna on the market in the United States is either farmed or caught far from the Fukushima area, so American consumers should not be affected by radiation contamination in their fish, seafood distributors say. The migratory bluefin studied by the researchers were all caught by sport fishermen and were not headed for the market.
And:
The finding was wholly unexpected, Madigan said. It came about when he was researching the migratory patterns of bluefin tuna as part of a broader study of Pacific fish migration.


Madigan had collected samples of muscle tissue from 15 2-year-old tuna given to him by San Diego fishermen in August, and when tests detected radioactivity in one sample he sent all 15 samples to Fisher in Long Island, he said.


The young tuna, averaging about 13 pounds apiece, were found to be contaminated with two radioactive forms of the element cesium. Isotopes called cesium-134 and cesium-137 do not exist in nature but are produced only in nuclear explosions such as the weapons tests of the Cold War era.


Before the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, low levels of the radioactive cesium-137 , which decays to harmlessness only over thousands of years, had been measured in Japanese waters, while the shorter-lived cesium-134 was undetectable, the scientists said. That difference, they said, was crucial in concluding that the radioactive contamination was linked to the Fukushima disaster.

Increased concentrations of radioactivity contaminated nearly 60,000 square miles of the ocean off Japan after workers at Fukushima pumped thousands of tons of seawater over reactors last year to prevent a complete meltdown of the reactor cores.

As with previous estimates about everything regarding Fukushima, the 60 thousand square mile contamination zone is most likely a vast under-estimation, and that estimate will be revised upward.

Police: Miami cannibal was overdosing on new, super-potent LSD

Holy, holy shit.  Raw Story.  Entire article, but the last sentence and video(Go to the link if you want the video.  I won't watch it.):

Disturbing new details have emerged about an incident in Miami, Florida in which police shot and killed a man who was tearing off and eating another man’s face. According to Miami’s WSVN, the victim, who is believed to be homeless, lost 75 percent of his face in the attack and is in critical condition at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Police claim that the dead man was overdosing on a new, powerful form of Lysergic Acid Diethlymide, the hallucinogen commonly known as LSD.



Eyewitness Larry Vega was bicycling on the MacArthur parkway on Saturday afternoon when he saw the two naked men locked in a grisly struggle. The scene, he said, was like something from a horror movie.

“And the guy was like tearing him to pieces with his mouth, so I told him, ‘Get off!’” Vega said, “You know it’s like the guy just kept eating the other guy away like ripping his skin.”

Vega flagged down a police officer, who ordered the attacker to let his victim go. The attacker ignored him, but when the officer jumped the concrete divider and shouted, Vega said, “the guy just stood his head up like that with a piece of flesh in his mouth and growled.”


The officer opened fire, striking the suspect, who barely paused as he continued to rip away the homeless man’s face. The officer fired several more times until the attacker was dead.

More police swarmed the scene and the victim was caught on Miami Herald surveillance cameras as he struggled to sit up. His face, said Vega, “was just a blob of blood. You couldn’t really see, it was just blood all over the place.”

Police spokesman Armando Aguillar told reporters that the suspect may have been overdosing on a new, super-potent form of LSD. ”What’s happening is whenever we see that a person has taken all of his clothes off and has become violent, it’s indicative of this excited delirium that’s caused by overdose of drugs,” he said, “What’s happening is inside their body their organs are burning up alive.”

Neither man’s identity has been released to the public.

That's a real bad societal omen, don't you think?  Awesome. At best, this is "Killer LSD Side Effects Include Severe, Violent Zombie-ism, Flesh Eating, Hyper-Strength, And Bullet-Tolerance."  At its worst, this is "Zombie Attacks Man; Eats Face.  Cause Of Event; Unknown."  Has Science finally created a new type of drug, similar to whatever it mimics, but much, much stronger and horrifying?  Is there really a need for hyper-violent hallucinogens?  Could we not work on technology that helps humanity, not fills it with The Hallucinating Undead?

Instead, we get Zombie LSD.  Or Zombies.  Par for the course in "Universe B." 

Also:  I'm not totally convinced this isn't a zombie, or something similar to that archetype..  The small, but high-profile  flesh eating bacteria outbreaks around the world are..  Disturbing, and terribly coincedental.  And yes, this is 2012, so, well, whatever happens; Happens..

Stories like this make me really doubt our chances for survival.

Germany Walks Away From Greece

This is going to be a nasty break up.  Zero Hedge.  Excerpts:

Preparing for Greece’s exit from the Eurozone has been picking up momentum and has reached critical mass—on the way to a fait accompli. Still unspeakable in public discussion last year, it has become a routine topic at all levels of government. While everyone at the very top still hues to the line that Greece should stay in the Eurozone, out of the other side of the mouth comes the but—especially since the focus is on Spain, the real problem, the one problem that the Eurozone will have trouble digesting.


Even if it could digest bailing out Spain or losing Spain, the next step up, Italy, due to its size, is beyond bailout and would cause the Eurozone to fracture into its component pieces—unless the ECB decides against all treaty limitations and stiff German opposition to monetize directly and without qualms any sovereign debt that needs to be monetized. And even that would tear up the Eurozone because Germany and a handful of other countries would refuse to be tied to that kind of loosey-goosey management of their currency.

There are political realities in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel, slipping in the polls, is trying to decipher the scribbles on the wall. Her people, who vacation in Greece more than any other people, have handed her some clues: 60% said they wanted Greece out of the Eurozone, a jump from November when an already shocking 49% had wanted them out, according to a ZDF Politbarometer poll released Friday. Only 31% wanted Greece to remain in the Eurozone, down from 41% in November, with 9% not giving a hoot.
And:
But the next big battle may actually revolve around keeping Germany in the Eurozone: 50% of the respondents saw more disadvantages than advantages, up from 43% in February; only 45% saw more advantages, down from 51% in February. The more costs and risks rise for Germany, the more this number is going to skew away from the euro. A scary trend for Eurozone bailout freaks. And suddenly Germans woke up to the headline, "Greeks Pay less Taxes"—taxes being a sore subject for Germans who pay out of their noses to get their welfare-state budget into balance. For a debacle without equal, read.... The Confiscation Conundrum in Europe.



"The notoriously tax-sinning Greeks paid their government even less than before," the article began unnervingly. Turns out, Reuters had gotten two anonymous “senior” finance ministry officials to talk: Greeks were refusing to pay their taxes in euros in anticipation that they could soon pay them in drachmas, albeit with minor penalties. And lacking a government, they wanted to wait for the outcome of the next election on June 17, which hopefully would produce a government, any government. And so tax revenues in May were on track to drop 10%. Outside of Athens and Thessaloniki, tax revenues would fall between 15% and 30%. First capital flight then quiet bank runs, and now a refusal to pay taxes to a government they don’t have, in a currency they might not have much longer.... The Greeks are preparing for a reversion to the drachma, and they're trying, very understandably, and very smartly, to protect whatever they can—which, of course, simply speeds up the process of reverting to the drachma.

Forced to answer, I'd say that by July 1st, Greece's Eurozone exit will be the foregone conclusion.  Momentum in Greece's June 17th election is swinging towards anti-austerity Syriza, and they won't hesitate to drop the hammer on all prior agreements. Bank runs have already begun, and will most likely intensify.  Greece's collapse will also effect non-E.U. countries like Romania and Bulgaria.  Greece's exit also hastens Spain and Italy's demise.  Further chaos in Greece really could get this whole party started.  Yeah.  By July 1st, things should be coming to a boil. 

Buy canned goods and water!

Chinese TV promoting the 2012 UEFA cup, flagging the destruction of London!

File Under:  Oddly Specific, Animated Promotional Doom.  Subcategory:  Weird as HELL!  Or maybe, a Vision of Hell..  The accompanying video has been removed(Before I got to see it, by the way..), but the stills provide some creepy context.  Disturbing.  Check it.  The Truth Behind The Scenes.  Excerpts:

Chinese TV promoting the 2012 UEFA cup and flagging a nightmarish scenario of warfare and bloodshed in Europe.



The upcoming UEFA 2012 soccer championship is being promoted in China in a very peculiar manner: bombers are carpet-bombing major European capitals, like London (UK), Paris (France) and Rome (Italy), tanks and rocket launchers releasing their deadly shells and soldiers are shooting the sportsmen.

But the most disturbing subliminal message is the clash between a human team, represented by a Lion, and a non-human team, represented by a Serpent.

I think the tendency would be to dismiss this as some marketing campaign gone wrong, a mis-fire of a commercial.  This Championship is a major event, and much thought from many, many people goes into every moment of each commercial message.  But, what are the Chinese trying to say? 

Isn't this just like any American, over-the-top, nu-advertising type, sensory overload assaults-called-commercials we see all the time?  Or maybe this is just the Chinese version of extreme advertising?  These images of war and alien combat  not out of bounds within Chinese advertising sensibility.  Just the way they don't understand the rhythm, the style, or the types of images used to sell us on things:  Our sensibility.

Or might there be more significance to these chosen images, the order in which they are presented, and what they imply?  I don't know about you, but I'm totally rooting for the human team!

If I can find this video, I'll update this post.