Just In Case You'd Forgotten Greece Was In Meltdown..

2,000 locals attack riot police with Molotov's, sticks, stones and gun shots in Keratea, Attica; Athens gears up for long week of anti-cuts mobilisations and General Strike

In the past two days, local residents of the area of Keratea in Attica (Greater Athens) have been engaged in a fierce battle with riot police (MAT). The riot police are there to protect the construction of a waste burial site (HITA). Such burial sites have not only been judged to be illegal by European courts but additionally, the site in Keratea is of archaeological significance.

On Saturday, riot police arrived at the site to protect the ongoing construction works from the enraged locals. Clashes quickly erupted, with locals attacking the police with sticks, stones and scores of Molotov cocktails. The police responded with tear gas while for the first time ever in Greece, water cannons also made their appearance. On Sunday evening, gunshots were aimed in the direction of the police from nearby hills.

And there's a General Strike scheduled for Wednesday. As Greece's economy deteriorates, so does Grecian society. Don't look for an improvement in Greece's overall situation, either. No one seems to be getting anything right that might prevent catastrophe.

And, please don't forget who caused this crisis in the first place.. (Short answer: Creation of the Euro, Bankers gone wild, and Governments guaranteeing banker's gone wild bad debt.)

The Beginning Of The End: Detroit Edition.

This sucks.  Detroit Is Halting Garbage Pickup, Police Patrols In 20% Of City: Expect Bankruptcy In 2011

Excerpts:

In a futile attempt to stave off the inevitable one last time, Mayor Bing's latest plan is to cutoff city services including road repairs, police patrols, street lights, and garbage collection in 20% of Detroit.

City officials suggest this will not shrink the size of the city. Perhaps it won't shrink Detroit on Google Maps. However, Bing's plan would effectively surrender 20% of the city to gangs and the homeless.
..
The Wall Street Journal discusses Bing's plan in Less Than a Full-Service City

More than 20% of Detroit's 139 square miles could go without key municipal services under a new plan being developed for the city, with as few as seven neighborhoods seen as meriting the city's full resources

Those details, outlined by Detroit planning officials this week, offer the clearest picture yet of how Mayor Dave Bing intends to execute what has become his signature program: reconfiguring Detroit to reflect its declining population and fiscal health. Yet the blueprint still leaves large legal and financial questions unresolved.

Mr. Bing's staff wants to concentrate Detroit's remaining population—expected to be less than 900,000 after this year's Census count—and limited local, state and federal dollars in the most viable swaths of the city, while other sectors could go without such services as garbage pickup, police patrols, road repair and street lights.

After the Global Economic Collapse, many cities will devolve into what the abandoned 20 percent of Detroit will become shortly.  The chaos will begin there almost immediately after the societal net of government services disappears.  I hope Mayor Bing and his administration reconsider this catastrophic course of action.  In our society, there has always been a thin line separating order from anarchy.  Like it or not my Libertarian friends, much of it has to do with established laws and a governmental system of enforcement.  If this plan is carried out, people will be shocked to see how quickly lawlessness will fill the void.  There will be murders; murders and fires.  Will the city stand by as this happens?  Really?

As for the money/budget situation, I can't think of a more urgent example that would benefit from marijuana's legalization and subsequent taxation.  Once the most powerful manufacturing hub of the most powerful nation on earth, Detroit has become the metaphor of The American Dream Destroyed.  Legal and Taxed pot represents the inventive spirit and innovation-despite-adversity that could, Could reverse the downward momentum for what was once one of America's premier cities.. 

But it most likely won't happen.  It's too bad that Reefer Madness phobia still exists in this country.  Otherwise sound fiscal and societal avenues aren't ever considered because of hateful anti-Mexican, paper industry propaganda..

WikiLeaks: Saw It Coming..

WikiLeaks backlash: The first global cyber war has begun, claim hackers  Excerpts:

He is one of the newest recruits to Operation Payback. In a London bedroom, the 24-year-old computer hacker is preparing his weaponry for this week's battles in an evolving cyberwar. He is a self-styled defender of free speech, his weapon a laptop and his enemy the US corporations responsible for attacking the website WikiLeaks.
And:
Before WikiLeaks, Operation Payback's initial target was America's recording industry, chosen for its prosecutions of music file down loaders. From those humble origins, Payback's anti-censorship, anti-copyright, freedom of speech manifesto would go viral, last week pitting an amorphous army of online hackers against the US government and some of the biggest corporations in the world.

Charles Dodd, a consultant to US government agencies on Internet security, said: "[The hackers] attack from the shadows and they have no fear of retaliation. There are no rules of engagement in this kind of emerging warfare."

The battle now centres on Washington's fierce attempts to close down WikiLeaks and shut off the supply of confidential US government cables. By Thursday, the hacktivists were routinely attacking those who had targeted WikiLeaks, among them icons of the corporate world, credit card firms and some of the largest online companies. It seemed to be the first sustained clash between the established order and the organic, grassroots culture of the net.

But the clash has cast the spotlight wider, on the net's power to act as a thorn not only in the side of authoritarian regimes but western democracies, on our right to information and the responsibility of holding secrets. It has also asked profound questions over the role of the net itself. One blogger dubbed it the "first world information war".

This is happening, and it's been planned longer and more sophisticated than you think.  I'm interested to see how the American government and corporate interests respond to attacks world wide, not just from American hackers, and how each side will respond to the other's attacks and how the hackers' increased and increasing cohesion will factor into future strategies..

I'm guessing it'll be bad timing for some entity that Stuxnet was introduced right before this first world wide cyber war..

I Bet The Royal Family Is Still Freaked Out Over This

UK confirms protesters ‘made contact’ with duchess Of course, the Royals have dealt with protesters before.  But not this close..

Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May confirmed on Sunday that rioters who surrounded Prince Charles' car during violent student protests made physical contact with his wife Camilla.
..
A window on the Prince of Wales' side of the car was smashed, while the back of the car was spattered with paint hurled at it. The vehicle was also kicked.
..
Asked by Sky News television about reports that Camilla had been jabbed by a protester through a window, May said: "I'm not sure about the term 'poked with a stick'. I understand there some contact made.

"This is an incident that needs to be looked at by the Metropolitan Police."

Now everyone's got to re-assess:  The government, as they now have to consider security precautions for all the Royal, all the time.  The protesting public, as any demonstration near a Royal will probably be met with more "security"  and the potential for more brutality.  Students and other future angry mobs will have to factor in a heightened physical risk because of last week's events.  In order for success, opposition groups will probably have to be more inventive in delivering their message.

And finally, The Royals themselves.  I bet Camilla never saw that jab/poke comin'(I wonder just how severe it really was.  Was she shaken or physically injured?)..  Do you really think the Queen can process how mad sectors of the English public really are?  What they must consider in this period of tension and uncertainty is how much they can add to their security balanced against the inaccessibility and increasing totalitarian appearance a heightened security presence would create.  If their subjects fear The Royals, how long before they come to hate them? 

But then again, with the coming Euro crisis already in progress, will appearances even matter, say; four months from now?

Holy Crap! "The DaVinci Code" Was A Documentary!

Historians discover letters and numbers in Mona Lisa's eyes (It's a short read, and yahoo australia won't let me excerpt it, so just click the link.  It's worth the trip..)

WikiLeaks Roundup, December 11, 2010

Latest WikiLeaks Reveal Embarrasses Vatican

Julian Assange, “The Truth Will Always Win”

“In 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win." His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign. Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

WikiLeaks cables: Russia 'was tracking killers of Alexander Litvinenko but UK warned it off'

Russia was tracking the assassins of dissident spy Alexander Litvinenko before he was poisoned but was warned off by Britain, which said the situation was "under control", according to claims made in a leaked US diplomatic cable.

The secret memo, recording a 2006 meeting between an ex-CIA bureau chief and a former KGB officer, is set to reignite the diplomatic row surrounding Litvinenko's unsolved murder that year, which many espionage experts have linked directly to the Kremlin.

 ‘The Fourth Estate is dead,’ former CIA analyst declares

Traditional lines of communication between the people and the press have fallen into such disrepair in America that a whole new approach is necessary to challenge the military-industrial-governmental complex, according to a former CIA analyst sympathetic to WikiLeaks.

"The Fourth Estate is dead," Ray McGovern, of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, told Raw Story in an exclusive interview. "The Fourth Estate in his country has been captured by government and corporations, the military-industrial complex, the intelligence apparatus. Captive! So, there is no Fourth Estate."

WikiLeaks supporters’ group to republish cables

A loose grouping of cyber activists supporting WikiLeaks has abandoned its strategy of online attacks on organizations seen as hostile to the site in favor of spreading the leaked documents far and wide online.

Internet activists operating under the name "Anonymous" temporarily brought down this week the websites of credit card giants MasterCard and Visa -- both of which had stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks.
..
In an overnight blog post, Anonymous announced a change of strategy, saying it now aimed to publish parts of the confidential U.S. diplomatic cables as widely as possible and in ways that made them as hard as possible to trace.

WikiLeaks cables: Former Croatia PM flees over corruption claims

DPRK says its army and people ready for all-out war

From Xinhuanet dot com..   Excerpts:

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said its army and people were ready for escalated conflicts and all-out war that would not be confined to the peninsula, the official news agency KCNA reported Saturday.

According to the KCNA, a spokesman for the National Peace Committee of Korea said in the statement released Saturday that the recent moves of the U.S. indicated that it was fully joining in South Korea's moves for a war of aggression against the DPRK after "throwing away the disguise of a hypocrite".

It was clear that if the South Korean army mobilized all flying corps, warships and missiles for a war against the DPRK and the U.S. joined them with the latest weapons, it would develop into an all-out war, not a local war, he said.
..
It was ridiculous for the south to talk about a "right to self-defence". It was no more than "war servants and colonial stooges" of the U.S., he said.

The level of regional (and correspondingly international-by-proxy) tension is not leveling off or decreasing.  And North Korea's sending an Ambassador to Russia is also a little unsettling(As in diplomatic pre-disclosure, "Here's when we're gonna strike" unsettling)..  While this conflict has been reported on in the American media, it's coverage is partial at best, and fails to underscore this plateau to slowly escalating tension and dread surrounding the past 19 days. 

North Korea has always been tagged with "enemy status" as long as I've been alive, and always strongly aligned with China.  These incidents have happened before, and they've always calmed down.  And statistically, that's probably what will happen.  But, at the moment, that outcome seems..  Less possible with each passing day.

WikiLeaks: Ron Paul Has Something To Say..

Video: Ron Paul Tells The Truth About WikiLeaks In front Of Congress,

Granted, he's no Jeri Blank, but who is?  Of course these two aren't related; I just miss "Strangers With Candy."

The Housing Market? Yeah, It's Still Really Bad..

Early 2010 Housing Stabilization Fizzles; U.S. Homes Set to Lose $1.7 Trillion This Year

Despite the housing market’s strong start to 2010, the latest data from Zillow shows that homes will likely have lost more value by the end of the year than they did in 2009. Using our housing market data from the first 11 months of the year, along with some forecasting for December, our research arm has calculated that U.S. homes are set to lose $1.7 trillion in values during 2010. That’s 63% more than the $1 trillion lost in 2009.

Since the peak of home values in June 2006, more than $9 trillion in values has come out of the housing market.
And:
For starters, not every market we analyzed saw a drop in total market value. Places like the Boston and San Diego metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) actually saw an increase in total market value. It’s important to point out that most of these gains were made in the first half of the year, before the effect of the home buyer tax credits wore off, but an increase still represents good news for homeowners.

The housing market is continuing to hemorrhage value (it's overinflated, imaginary value, that is..), and will continue to do so, as its ties to American banks and the whole global monetary system is unsustainable and will crash, sooner than later. The housing market, Ireland/Portugal/Eurozone Crisis, China controlling our debt, and whoopsie! Derivatives is more than enough firepower to insure that, after the crash, nothing will ever be the same when it comes to local, national, and international finance..

Aww.. He Thinks He's People

Eerie image captured in woods

Click, then Yikes!

I'll Take Geopolitical And Thermonuclear Trash Talk For $800 Please, Alex..

N.Korea 'will rely on nuclear might for defence'


Pyongyang will rely on nuclear might to defend itself against the United States and South Korea, North Korea's Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun told Russia's Interfax news agency Friday.

Anyone taking this threat seriously?  Russia, I'm looking in your direction..

Moments after his comments, the Russian foreign ministry issued a statement stating that "all sides must avoid taking any actions that can escalate the situation."

Japan seems a little agitated by how this whole crisis has unfolded..

Japan's usual quiet approach to tensions with its neighbors is giving way to more military exercises, critical statements and discussions of what was once unthinkable: development of a nuclear arsenal.

In recent weeks, Japan has issued blunt positions against North Korea and China over the North's attacking of a South Korean island and China's refusal to rein in its Korean ally.

This month, Japan refused to renounce its claim to islands to its south whose waters are rich in minerals and that China says is its property. And Friday marked the eighth day of military drills with the U.S. aimed at countering a ballistic missile attack on Japan.  (If I were Japanese, I'd be more worried about China directly, rather than indirectly via North Korea.  But that's just splitting nuclear hairs..)

And, despite favorable talks between China and the U.S., no one seems ready to blink just yet..

It's Pretty Obvious This Is A Battle, But Who Is It That's Fighting?

*ALERT* UFOs OVER SAKURAJIMA JAPAN! *ALERT*  Awesome video narrated by BeePee Oil Disaster(Who, evidently, is a lover of the weed..) showing some kind of battle, but it's not clear who or what is fighting who or what.  But something is happening.  Watch the video.  I honestly don't know what to think.  Is this alien, or scalar warfare?

You Know The Pressure's High When Someone Flees TO Palestine..

Report: Assange accuser flees to Middle East, may not be cooperating with police  Jaw dropping excerpts in italics:

One of the two Swedish women who have filed sex complaints against the founder of WikiLeaks has reportedly left Sweden and may no longer be cooperating with the criminal investigation.

According to a report at Australian news site Crikey.com, Anna Ardin has moved to the Palestinian territories to volunteer with a Christian group working to reconcile Arabs and Israelis.
..
Ardin's blog shows that she has recently posted from the Palestinian territories. Her most recent blog posts make no mention of WikiLeaks or its founder, Julian Assange.

Some of Ardin's most recent Tweets suggest sympathy for WikiLeaks.

"MasterCard, Visa and PayPal -- belt them now!" Ardin urged in a Tweet Wednesday, evidently referring to the cyber-attacks launched on those institutions after they severed their relationships with WikiLeaks.
..
"CIA agent, rabid feminist / Muslim lover, a Christian fundamentalist, flat & fatally in love with a man, can you even be all [these things all] the time?" she Tweeted in Swedish.
..
Assange's lawyer, renowned British advocate Mark Stephens, told CBS News Thursday that prosecutor Marianne Ny is staging a "show trial," in reference to the politically motivated prosecutions of the Stalin-era Soviet Union.

(Assange's lawyer)Stephens said not only have formal charges not been filed against Assange, but the prosecution has failed to provide him with any documentation relating to the investigation. As a result, he says it's impossible for him to begin crafting a defense.

It's unclear what US laws Assange could have broken with his release of US State Department cables, as he is not a US citizen and therefore not bound by US treason laws, and his activities with WikiLeaks were carried out outside the US.

Now this is an interesting turn of events.  The most visible witness against Julian Assange has left Sweden, isn't co-operating with authorities, and is expressing support for him.. *And*  The prosecution hasn't filed charges, nor has it handed over any documents. 

Two what ifs:  What if  the second witness balks or is deemed un-credible in a decisive-enough fashion, and What if no one can arrest him on anything?

Will they hold him?
Will they let him go?
Will they "Oswald" him?

Mind you, this is only one facet of this expanding, multifaceted event, and the overall pace of events is accelerating.  Although I'll be posting something regarding WikiLeaks, I have no idea what it will be, how huge its impact will have, or from what angle it comes. 

Only that it will come:  Of that, I'm sure..

That Was Quick, or File Under: Hatian Election Riots

Haiti protesters rampage against election results  Excerpts -Italics:

Thousands of protesters rampaged through Haiti's capital and other cities on Wednesday, hurling stones and wrecking property in a wave of unrest against election results they say were rigged by the ruling government coalition.


At least two people were killed in the flaring violence, which appeared to dash international hopes that the U.N.-backed elections held on November 28 could create a stable new leadership for Haiti, an impoverished nation struggling to recover from a devastating January earthquake.


Port-au-Prince descended into chaos as supporters of popular musician and presidential candidate Michel Martelly, who failed to qualify for an election run-off in results announced by electoral authorities, set up burning barricades of timber, boulders and flaming tires across the city.
..
Haiti's outgoing President Rene Preval, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon all appealed for calm, urging election candidates with grievances to address them through the legal channels provided by the country's electoral laws.  (This is funny, right?)


"Breaking everything, destroying everything is not going to solve the problem," Preval said in Port-au-Prince.
And:
Preliminary results from the turbulent November 28 elections announced late on Tuesday showed former first lady Mirlande Manigat and Preval's protege, Jude Celestin, going through to the January run-off, with Martelly narrowly in third place and so excluded


But these results flew in the face of voting returns previously cited by media and Haitian election observers that had shown Manigat and Martelly as the two run-off qualifiers, not government technocrat Celestin. Martelly had already accused Preval and Celestin of trying to rig the results.


The United States, through its embassy in Port-au-Prince, cast doubt on the CEP results late on Tuesday, saying it was concerned they were "inconsistent with" vote counts observed by "numerous domestic and international observers."


Why get mad when so many things in Haiti are flammable?


The protesters in Port-au-Prince set fire to the headquarters of Preval's ruling (Inite) coalition. Businesses and schools stayed closed and many fearful residents stayed home, off the rubble-strewn streets. There was no traffic apart from an occasional police or U.N. vehicle.
..
Plumes of black smoke rose above the sprawling, crowded city, which bears the scars of the January 12 earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people in the Western Hemisphere's poorest state. Haiti is also battling a cholera epidemic.
..
The protests erupted in the Petionville, Delmas and Canape Vert districts of the capital, among other areas.
..
Local radio reported protests in the southern town of Les Cayes in which Martelly supporters burned down government buildings, including the tax and customs offices.
..
Enraged Martelly supporters tore down, or hurled stones at election posters of Celestin and also of Manigat.
..
"Hang Preval!" other protesters yelled.

So much for holding on to social order..  Again, the runoff election isn't scheduled until January 16th, so likely we'll more variations of this story..

Big Mac Attack! Shaq Attack? Oh Right: Hack Attack!

It seems to be "on" in cybersphere..  Hackers hit Mastercard and Visa over Wikileaks row  Opening salvo excerpts in italics:

Hackers have attacked the websites of credit card giants Mastercard and Visa.

The attacks came after the Anonymous group of hackers pledged to pursue firms that have withdrawn services from Wikileaks.

Mastercard payments were disrupted but the firm said there was "no impact" on people's ability to use their cards.

Visa's website also experienced problems. The attacks came after both companies stopped processing payments to the whistle-blowing site.

So far, it's Hackers, Master Card, Visa, and now.. Twitter..

Entries on the Twitter page of Operation Payback, the Anonymous campaign, said the Visa site had been taken down.
Then..
But in a day of fast-moving developments, the Anonymous Twitter page then went down, replaced by a message from Twitter saying the account had been suspended.  (I'm guessing they're next, or on the list..)
..
Earlier the BBC was contacted by a payment firm linked to Mastercard that said its customers had "a complete loss of service".

Master Card downplays the event, as expected..

"While we have seen limited interruption in some web-based services, cardholders can continue to use their cards for secure transactions globally."
And:
Anonymous, which claimed to have carried out the attack, is a loose-knit group of hacktivists, with links to the notorious message board 4chan.

It said that it has hit several targets, including the website of the prosecutors who are acting in a legal case against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

An Anonymous member told AFP news agency the group would extend their campaign to anyone with "an anti-Wikileaks agenda".

These people are fucking serious, and they're strong enough to inflict some serious damage before they're all apprehended or decide they're done.  As a precaution, you might consider how you'll live your life with extended Internet(and possibly electrical, but that's another topic..) outages, banking disruptions, distribution chaos..  Me?  I plan on lots of jogging, yoga, and P90X.

12,000-year-old mine found in Chile

Archaeologists from the University of Chile have discovered a 12,000-year-old iron oxide mine in the north of the country. 

Researchers say it is the oldest mine discovered in all the Americas.

Chief researcher Diego Salazar said the iron oxide was used by Huentelauquen Indians as a pigment in dying cloth and in religious rituals, revealing an unexpected sophistication in what was previously considered a primitive group of people.
..
The ancient mine was discovered near the town of Taltal, in the Antofagasta region, 1,100 kilometres north of Santiago, in October 2008, but its antiquity was not determined until tests were conducted this year in US and Polish laboratories.
..
Before this find, the oldest mine in the Americas was 2,500 years old and located in the United States.

The world's most ancient mine is in South Africa and is about 40,000 years old.

But..  But..  Isn't the world only 6000 years old?

Happy Anniversary, Norway Spiral!

Has it really been a year since you appeared? You captured our imagination, inspiring believers and debunkers alike, and generally making a worldwide phenomenon of yourself. So it's hardly surprising that one year later, you're back, making a cameo appearance in this year's Most Sensational Event: Wiki Leaks. And no one's more suited to write about you(again!!) than the Order of Sorcha Faal, a bunch of Russian nuns, or David Booth(I don't know) on their/his site What Does It Mean. Awesome; truly.

Norway Spiral, you are the inter dimensional event/failed missile test our dreams. Thanks for the laughter and the tears, but mostly.. for the weirdness.

You Can Have Your Gold And Silver When You Pry It From My Cold, Dead Hands..

Jim Rickards: At Least One Swiss Bank Has Started Refusing To Hand Over Physical Gold To Clients  Excerpts in italics:

He tells King World News of a client of a major Swiss bank who was refused access to his one ton of physical gold ($40M) and was forced to make threats to convince the bank otherwise:

“Correct, and through all of that eventually the individual did get his gold...it took lawyers, it took threats of publicity, it took a lot of pressure to do that, which my inference is that that gold was not there.  The bank had to scramble, go out and find it somewhere before they could make good delivery.”

There's a shortage of physical metals, especially gold and silver, and banks will face more and more clients who want posession of their metal assets.  The problems arise when the Banks cannot fulfill these increasingly frequent requests.  The problems can be described ultimately, with terms like "default," and "implosion."  There is no "if" involved, only the inevitablily of "when."  Stories like this are just the precursor, not random or anomolous.  The coming metal storm continues to strengthen, to solidify..

Meanwhile, Haiti's Election Fiasco Sucks, But, Considering The Year, This Isn't A Surprise..

Haiti presidential election goes to 2nd round  Excerpts:


Government-backed candidate Jude Celestin and former first lady Mirlande Manigat will advance to a second-round runoff in Haiti's presidential election, officials announced Tuesday as furious protests led by supporters of the third-place contender broke out in the capital.


The results were immediately questioned and matters are far from settled in the race to lead a country wracked by a cholera epidemic and still recovering from a devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.


Much of the concern centered around conflicts between the announced results and those reported recently by a local election monitoring group financed by the European Union — the National Observation Council — which said that Celestin, a protege of outgoing President Rene Preval, would be eliminated


"The Government of the United States is concerned by the Provisional Electoral Council's announcement of preliminary results ... that are inconsistent with the published results of the National Election Observation Council" as well as U.S. observers and vote counts monitored by domestic and international observers, the U.S. Embassy said in an e-mailed statement.
..
The Nov. 28 election was plagued by allegations of fraud. Thousands of voters were disenfranchised by confusion on the rolls and there were many reported incidents of ballot-stuffing, violence and intimidation confirmed by international observers.


Officials acknowledged the rolls were both "bloated" and "incomplete," with hundreds of thousands of earthquake dead still registered and many living voters waiting for ID cards. In the last days of counting, tabulators had to sort out clearly fraudulent tally sheets.
..
After results were released Tuesday night, flaming barricades were set up near the Petionville restaurant where the tallies were announced. Martelly supporters threw rocks at people passing nearby and gunshots rang out. An Associated Press journalist was robbed.


"If they don't give us Martelly and Manigat (in the second round), Haiti will be on fire," said a protester, Erick Jean. "We're still living under tents and Celestin wastes money on election posters."


In the last eleven months, Haiti has dealt with the fifth deadliest quake in recorded history, almost total devastation of the major metropolitan area and capital's infrastructure, glacial debris removal, two million instantly-homeless people, a burgeoning, unfortunate cholera epidemic, and now, election fraud with not only the threat of turning the entire country into a riot zone, but effectively paralyzing any significant progress until an acceptable answer is reached.  I can't imagine the level of rage on the streets of Port Au Prince that is now the New Normal..


If you ever needed evidence of the existence of the Multiverse, Haiti is it.  Mind you, there are "distorted energies" at work planet-wide, but wow.. There's just so much..  Dissonance..  Working together In Terrible Concert, inhabiting such a small physical area..   There has always, always been a higher level of malevolent energies than in other countries, but now, that level of pain must be almost absolutely unbearable.


What can life be like, moment to moment?  All that sadness, rage, helplessness, all around, all the time, from the constant, to the new and surprising disappointments that present themselves daily.  It's amazing the situation hasn't devolved any further than it has.  Each person has a breaking point.  So do entire populations.  I salute the people of Haiti for not descending into total anarchy, and honor their tremendous internal fortitude for not doing so..  But with election results over a month away, though, I wonder if this event will end up being The Final Straw..

Lest You Forgot WikiLeaks Had Hackers On Their Side..

Payback: Bank That Froze Julian Assange's Bank Account Has Now Been Taken Down By Hackers.  Assange was a hacker.   Those aligned with him would be fairly close to him in abilities, I would guess.  Do you really think they couldn't be say..  seven jumps ahead in their overall strategies?  I'm sure we'll see many variations of today's events forthcoming as the the Cyber War heats up..


Just a thought.

If You Live Anywhere Other Than America Or Korea, These Will Be The Two Big News Stories Today..

Asia Session: Awaiting the Irish Budget

The Euro continued to move higher in Asia as markets looked ahead to the hopeful passing of the 2011 Irish budget which is due later in the day. Now loaded with new austerity measures in order to appease the EU and IMF after securing a bailout package the proposed Irish budget for 2011 was to be put in front of the parliament later today. The passing of the budget without any hitches would surely help the Euro currency and that optimism was seen in today’s Asian moves from 1.3280 to 1.3350 in EUR/USD. The ECB’s move to extend its bond purchasing program also proved beneficial to the European currency as investors welcomed the determination of the European Central bank.

At the moment, the proposed budget looks like it will pass. Of course, bankers and politicians are pretty happy with that projected outcome, but the non-ultra rich, non banker, non politicians aren't happy, and will be expressing their displeasure later today, and probably frequently for quite some time..

And then there's the World wide bank run, originating in France, scheduled for today.  Your host?  Eric Cantona.:

Following an idea put forward by Eric Cantona recently the 7th December is planned to be ‘bank run’ day. The general idea is that nowadays protesting in the street doesn’t achieve much – but if we all withdraw our money from the banks at the same time the banks will collapse.

Will this destroy the European banking system?  Probably not, and most likely not in America, but people in other countries are paying attention, and we won't know what the end result will be tomorrow, or in the near term..  And it all starts today.

So much information, so much to disseminate, so little time..

Silver Broke $30 Dollars An Ounce Today. Will It Hold?

Kitco chart via UrbanSurvival.  Once again, the question is:  Will it hold?

Assange making arrangements to meet police, lawyer says

Just when you thought you couldn't stuff any more SuperInteresting into your eye and ear holes, Julian Assange gets closer to Freeing the Beast /Dropping the Poison Pill by agreeing to meet with Police regarding charges against him.  This story continues to explode out in all directions, and it's becoming obvious that we're only at the beginning stages of this one..  And that it's execution was much more thought out than is currently, publicly thought..  But first, today's events:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is "in the process of making arrangements" to meet with British police regarding a Swedish arrest warrant, his attorney said Monday.

Assange is wanted for questioning by Swedish authorities over sex-crime allegations unrelated to WikiLeaks' recent disclosure of secret U.S. documents. Mark Stephens, his British lawyer, told the BBC no time had been set for the meeting as of Monday evening, but one is likely "in the foreseeable future."
And:
WikiLeaks, which facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information, has been under intense pressure from the United States and its allies since it began posting the first of more than 250,000 U.S. State Department documents November 28. Since then, the site has been hit with denial-of-service attacks, been kicked off servers in the United States and France and found itself cut off from funds in the United States and Switzerland.
In response, the site has rallied supporters to mirror its content "in order to make it impossible to ever fully remove WikiLeaks from the Internet," with more than 500 sites responding to the appeal by Monday evening, it said.
..
In addition, WikiLeaks has posted a massive, closely encrypted file, identified as "insurance" -- a file Assange's lawyer has described as a "thermonuclear device." Assange has said the more than 100,000 people who have downloaded the file will receive the key to decoding it should anything happen to him or should the site be taken down.


At first glance, it looks as if WikiLeaks is in trouble, but this isn't necessarily correct.  I'm assuming that Assange prepared for much more political and cyber blowback than any government anywhere can throw:

"Nobody has really picked up on this yet, but apparently there is a schedule. And where there is a schedule there is a plan. And looking at where things are going, the plan is for radical change, and it relies on an open source model."
 
Xymphora says it perfectly: 

"Wilikeaks is a hologram, breaking up into innumerable little pieces each containing the same information. The shattering was planned." 

Cyber Jujitsu, anyone? The entire WikiLeaks saga has, as I said earlier, only just begun.



I really do believe that all the pieces are already in place, and it's just a matter of release, but the release is more confirmation of already-posessed information, not something new to download.  Just an assumption, there, but the absolute thorough- and thoughtful-ness of Assange's actions point to a studied, cyber-apocalyptic outcome.  Whatever you think of this event so far, you should not forget that you are watching History in the making, and the more you pay attention, the more detail you can provide your descendants, when you tell them about all you witnessed.

Japan’s Akatsuki to Reach Venus Today

From UniverseToday.  Excerpts:

Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft will arrive at Venus later today, and will enter orbit around the planet. The box-shaped orbiter will make observations from an elliptical orbit, from a distance of between 300 and 80,000 kilometers (186 to 49,600 miles), looking for — among other things — signs of lightning and active volcanoes.

The Akatsuki probe (Japanese for “Dawn”)((Which is really interesting to this guy)) has been traveling for six months, and launched along with the IKAROS solar sail mission. The timing for the orbit insertion burn is Dec. 6 at about 6:50 p.m. EST (2350 GMT), which is early Tuesday morning Japan Standard Time.

 Lately, enthusiasts of The Unusual have been on quite a roll.  Webbots, Wikileaks, Solar filaments, UFOs, Major Space Discoveries..  So far, it's been an amazing year, our species adding new elements to our understanding of "reality," and how our universe works.  While Mars is certainly worthy of our continued research and exploration, so is Venus.  And, judging by these last eleven months, Japan might provide some amazing insights into our closest neighbor.  Thanks, Japan, and here's hoping for something Wonderful..

Silver's One-Thin-Dime Away From $30 An Ounce..

12:55 p.m. CST $29.90/oz. The link's to Urban Survival's Kitco chart at the top of the page. Oh yeah, it's already broken $30 today, and is hanging out just below that mark. Will it break the barrier at the close of today's trading? Monday, Monday..

Tungurahua volcano prompts evacuation in Ecuador

The authorities in Ecuador have begun evacuating people from the slopes of the Tungurahua volcano after it started spewing ash.

Scientists say fast-moving currents of extremely hot gas and rock could be seen flowing from the volcano's crater.
..
Scientists with the Ecuadorean Institute for Geophysics say the number of explosions has increased. They say the ash cloud has reached 2km (1.2 miles) in height.

People living on the slopes reported the ground and buildings shaking, and a rumbling sound coming from the volcano.
..
The tourist town of Banos is one of those being evacuated.

In 1999, its 15,000 inhabitants were forced to evacuate when the Tungurahua had its last major eruption. Residents were not able to return to their homes for a year.

South Korea Holds More Live Fire Excercises, North Korea Still Not Amused

South Korea to Begin Artillery Tests  Excerpts:

South Korea's military said Monday it would test-fire artillery at 29 locations this week, including one of the islands in the Yellow Sea maritime border area where North Korea was angered by such testing two weeks ago.
..
On Sunday, North Korea's state media maintained its barrage of criticism at South Korea, saying Seoul was "far from drawing a lesson from the deserved punishment" of the North's attack on the South's Yeonpyeong Island nearly two weeks ago.

The latest statement, issued by Korea Central News Agency, said South Korea is "getting more frantic in military provocations and war moves." The statement also showed that Pyongyang closely watched Friday's confirmation hearing of South Korea's new defense minister, Kim Kwan-jin.

Mr. Kim said South Korea would respond to any fresh attacks by North Korea with air power, something it didn't do during the Nov. 23 assault on Yeonpyeong, an island in the Yellow Sea a few miles from the North Korean coastline. Four South Koreans—two civilians and two marines—died in the attack. South Korea has added new weaponry, including multiple rocket launchers, to the island since the attack.

Yeah, so no one seems to be backing down just yet.  As I write this, live fire exercises have been going for a little over six hours.  Happy Monday, everyone!  It's gonna be one exciting week, huh?

Oh X37B, The World Has Changed Since You Left Seven Months Ago..

Top secret American spy plane returns to Earth after seven months... but U.S. still won't say what it was doing in space

The U.S.'s first unmanned re-entry spacecraft landed at an airfield today, seven months after it was launched.

The X-37B's exact purpose remained shrouded in secrecy when it touched-down at at Vandenberg Air Force Base on the California coast 130 miles north west of Los Angeles.

It was launched by an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 22, with a maximum mission duration of 270 days and is suspected of being an advanced spy plane.

The rest of the article is a yawner, as it basically tells you nothing more than these three sentences.  But that's what's intriguing:  One knows nothing more about Why it went on a Seven Month Mission.  Words were strung together, but nothing was said.  So what is it's real purpose?

Bradley Manning Is So Much More Intelligent Than The Official Line Portrays Him..

WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning "designed Facebook" as a schoolboy, friends say

This person sounds much more.. capable of the know how needed to engineer such a massive transfer of information, and the thoughtfulness to understand and stand up for his beliefs and motivations. Excerpts:

Bradley Manning, the prime suspect in the leaking of top secret documents to the WikiLeaks website, was such a computer expert that he designed a version of Facebook years before modern social networking sites took off, friends have disclosed.

Friends remember the teenager as a shy schoolboy who was determined to speak his mind and “had his own sense of right and wrong”.

"He produced a website with another schoolmate. It was pre-Facebook. It was like a community site. It didn’t really lift off, but it was a good idea.

"It was pretty much a social networking site before its time. You could log in and find out about local news."
..
..Those who befriended Manning when he arrived in Wales aged 13, after his parents divorced, suggested that he had always possessed some of the character traits which may have prompted the biggest-ever leaks of confidential information from the US government.

Mr Dyer told Channel 4 News that Manning had quickly established a reputation for computer expertise at his West Wales comprehensive.
..
He said: “He's always had this sense that 'I'm going to right a big wrong'. He was like that at school.

Mr Dyer insisted that Manning never meant any harm but was simply determined to stand his own ground.

"He has his own sense of what is right or wrong,” he added. “It’s not directed against another person in particular. He's certainly not malicious in any of his actions."

This portrait of Manning doesn't really fit the Lady Ga Ga narrative pushed when the story initially broke. Will his early friends stand by and not respond to the "Manning is treasonous" talk thrown around the punditsphere? I find the differing reactions to the event so far very interesting. The calls for Assange's arrest, execution(Very Christlike, Mike, by the way..), assassination, re-classification as terrorist, and yet, fascination with the cables they might have interest in...**Like this:

I would not want to be in Mr. Assange's shoes right now. Assange gave an interview to Forbes earlier this month. Wikileaks is supposed to be unveiling a major U.S. banking scandal in early 2011, consisting of thousands of documents obtained from a major U.S. financial firm (Goldman Sachs ??? Those are some documents I wouldn't mind seeing). **

Ron Paul, though, gets it right.. "In a free society we're supposed to know the truth," Paul said. "In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it."

I can't attribute this yet, but something I picked up this week's readings was this: If the government can know all of your secrets and peer into so many aspects of your private life, why shouldn't they be held by the same standard? Do not forget, they indeed work for us; not us for them. Whether or not you agree with Bradley Manning's actions, it does sound like he stands behind his convictions and probably hasn't changed his mind about what he has brought about. This story becomes more compelling with each passing day..

Gold and Silver? It's Back On.. For The Moment..

Gold Breaks $1400 - Silver over $29.