Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

The Proliferation of Space Warfare Technology

The Proliferation of Space Warfare Technology

By Matthew Hoey
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12526
Global Research, March 3, 2009
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists - 2008-12-11

Artic...

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[Source: WAR ON YOU FORUMS

Jim Rogers: Let AIG Go Bankrupt, Not America

http://www.cnbc.com/id/29476319/site/14081545


Jim Rogers: Let AIG Go Bankrupt, Not America
Companies:American International Group Inc
By: CNBC.com | 03 Mar 2009 | 04:24 PM ET
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American International Group s...

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[Source: WAR ON YOU FORUMS

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Why isn"t the oil industry bailing out the auto sector? End of Suburbia: Who Killed the Electric Car?

Importance of The Big Three

SGeneral Motors, Ford and Chrysler weren't labelled the Big Three just because they produced the most vehicles in North America. As giant employers, they had big influence, energizing entire economies with their big union wages and benefits packages. As giant manufacturers, they created style. Status was instantly signalled by black Lincolns and pink Corvettes. Seatbelts, reduced vehicle emissions and electric cars had to wait until the carmakers were good and ready. As giant political contributors, they had big power. The L.A. Times recently calculated that since 1990, the auto industry as a whole has donated $100 million US to Republicans and $34 million to Democrats.

This would explain why, on Thursday, US President Barack Obama stated that:

SWe are committed to the goal of a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win Millions of jobs depend on it. Scores of communities depend on it. And I believe the nation that invented (whoops) the automobile cannot walk away from it.

Collapse of The Big Three

GM, Sthe nation's biggest domestic automaker said Thursday it lost $30.9 billion for the full year and expects to state in its upcoming annual report whether its auditors believe the company remains a going concern."

SGM's loss for 2008 was the deepest among Detroit-based carmakers. Ford lost $14.6bn, while Chrysler, controlled by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, fell $8bn into the red.

SThe automakers were promised a total of $17.4 billion in direct loans from Washington and they had to present restructuring plans by Feb. 17, 2009, if they wanted a second installment. While Ford opted out of the process, saying it doesn't need a loan just yet, the plans GM and Chrysler came up with are costly.

SGM said it would need up to $30 billion from the U.S. Treasury Department to continue operating. GM has already received $13.4 billion of the money, but the other $16.6 billion would be new. Chrysler wants $2 billion on top of the $4 billion it has already received and the $3 billion it is expecting from Washington.

Profits for The Oil Industry

In 2008, five of the relatively smallest Oil and Gas Companies in the world; Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips reported record profits of over $123 billion.

So just one year"s worth of profits for the oil industry is approximately three times what the auto industry is asking for in their bailout package. If these five companies bailed out the US auto manufacturers, they would still be able to report billions in profit.

Exxon Mobil's staggering $40.6 billion earnings for 2007 Sbeat its own one-year-old record for the biggest corporate profits ever by 3 percent. Put together with the announcement by the No. 2 U.S. oil company, Chevron, of an $18.7 billion year, up 9 percent over 2006, plus the earlier results of Shell and ConocoPhillips, and that's more than $100 billion in profits from four companies.

And just last month, Exxon Mobil reported the largest annual profit in U.S. history, Smaking $45.22 billion on the back of record oil prices The company reported total revenue in 2008 of over $477 billion, giving the company a profit margin of about 9%.

Auto Sector Bailout

That gives us a pretty good idea of what type of numbers we are dealing with, so here is my question: Since the oil industry is making record profits and the auto sector is on the verge of bankruptcy, shouldn"t the oil industry, instead of the US citizen, bailout the auto sector, especially considering how interconnected their business models happen to be?

The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and The Collapse of The American Dream (1:17:37)

Who Killed the Electric Car? (1:32:27)

Keep in mind that if you apply the Iraq war multiplier to the bailouts, then all bets are off. Just wanted to through that out there.



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Saturday, February 21, 2009

Arizona Legislators introduce Internal Passports/ Real ID

HB 2507Introduced byRepresentative Pancrazi, Senator Aguirre: Representatives Ableser, Meza AN ACT amending sections 28-3001, 28-3002, 28-3101, 28-3165 and 28-3171, Arizona Revised Statutes; amending title 28, chapter 8, article 1, Arizona Revised Statutes, by adding section 28-3007; relating to driver licenses. (TEXT OF BILL BEGINS ON NEXT PAGE) Be it enacted by the [...]No related posts.

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[Source: War On You: Breaking Alternative News

Monday, February 16, 2009

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Internment Camps Readied For Mass Illegal Alien Influx?

Internment Camps Readied For Mass Illegal Alien Influx? Texas officials say contingency plans are in place for collapse of Mexico, policy only covers law enforcement needs, does not address humanitarian issuesPaul Joseph WatsonPrison Planet.comWednesday, February 11, 2009The news that Texas officials are working on contingency plans to deal with a sudden influx of illegal [...]No related posts.

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[Source: War On You: Breaking Alternative News

The Western secret government is still planning genocide

The Western secret government is still planning genocideThere are many indicators that the current rulers of the Wests financial system are not only blocking the introduction of a new financial system but are also still planning to kill billions of people.It is not hard to find evidence of their plans in various news items. They [...]No related posts.

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[Source: War On You: Breaking Alternative News

Friday, February 13, 2009

The Great Derangement: A Late-Night Thank You to Our (Vaguely Frightening) Hate Stalkers

I've recently become aware that I have a few blog stalkers - ie. people who spend inordinate amounts of time blogging about how much they hate my writing (see here, here, here, here and here for just a few recent examples). Evidently, these people have oodles of time on their hands (and personally, I think the funniest of them are those who still insist Hillary Clinton never supported NAFTA, despite Clinton's own repeated public speeches promoting NAFTA). But I just want to give them a shout out - I sincerely love them all, both because they are providing a few extra links to OpenLeft, and because at a level far deeper than meta-narrative navel gazing, they reflect the broader societal anger that I think could make this the transformative historical moment we all want it to be.
On the link score - hey, the more traffic, the better. It's kinda like that exchange from the movie "Private Parts" about Howard Stern. After the station manager says "the average Howard Stern fan listens for an hour and 10 minutes" he then indignantly recounts that "the average Stern hater listens for 2 and a half hours a day." I don't aim to be Howard Stern, but the principle from that exchange is right-on. We'll take the traffic from the stalkers - traffic is traffic, after all, and readers are readers (and check it out - OpenLeft's traffic has been awesome of late).

But beyond just the self-interest of having blog stalkers inadvertently help us with traffic, I want to reiterate that I think the frenzied rage that's out there - whether directed at me, OpenLeft, or at any other progressive institution - is to be expected in times like this.

The country is coming apart, we're handing over $8 or $9 trillion to Wall Street, the government - as I and many others repeatedly warned - is being stacked with those who engineered this crisis, and people are violently angry. And so some of the angriest are desperate for scapegoats and conspiracy theories to help them make sense of it all. My good buddy Matt Taibbi documented this pretty well in his last book - the fringe left (from the LaRouchies to the "everyone is awful" Naderites to the Obama-hating Clintonites) and the fringe right (from the anti-immigrant lunatics to the militia sympathizers to the libertarian ideologues) find common cause in turning their righteous frustration at the Establishment into chest-thumping anger at phantom demons that seem more easy to slay than the massive institutions and powers that have destroyed the country.

And so if I or OpenLeft or any other good progressive institution/voice serves as one of those proxies that seems more easy and fun and tangible to scapegoat than giant concepts like The Government or The Establishment or The System or towering cultural icons like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or George W. Bush, then, at a certain level, that's really OK with me. And I don't say that in any kind of martyr-like, please-fee-bad-for-me kind of way - I mean it sincerely.

If, for instance, the fringe left needs to blame me for Hillary Clinton losing to Barack Obama; or Hillary Clinton stupidly campaigning for NAFTA and the Iraq War; or Ralph Nader not being able to mount a real presidential campaign in a money-dominated system; or Barack Obama not fulfilling his campaign promises; that's fine by me. I can take it, even if I don't agree with it, even if I can acknowledge (like most rational human beings) that such a line of thinking is crazy, insane and absurd.

I can take it because it is entirely predictable in what Taibbi calls "The Great Derangement" - that is, in a country whose political system has made people feel so desperately powerless that they need delusional theories to make them feel they have some shred of control over the nation's destiny. If me serving as a punching bag helps make people feel they have some shred of control or vested interest in political engagement, then that's ultimately a good thing. Indeed, in Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky says that anyone truly committed to organizing and activism and political empowerment needs - at times - to be willing to serve as such a punching bag for precisely this reason.

The anger that's welling up across the country is real and it needs to be channeled somewhere, and if some of it is being channeled here at us, that's ultimately a positive. Why? Because for every one of the stalkers who has gone completely off the deep end - for every sociopath who spends oodles of time writing whacked-out Unabomber-like manifestos blaming me, or another individual writer, or a blog or or the progressive movement for the end of civilization in a country where individual progressive writers and blogs and movements are still incredibly outgunned by the monied Establishment - my guess is that there are 10 people just as angry but far more sane who can be brought into the fold to channel their anger into the kinds of constructive causes and movements that I have devoted my career to, that this community at OpenLeft is all about and that will ultimately bring lasting change to America.

UPDATE: Within moments of this diary posting, one of my most devout stalkers requested that I link to an extra one of his/her stalker posts. The timing, of course, reiterates the stalky-ness of it all. But in the interest of obliging, here's that link calling me a blind Obama loyalist. I'm guessing you'll find it pretty funny, if you've read any of my work.

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[Source: RETROGRESSING

Emerging global elite to use new global media to educate global citizens

The following is based on a report by Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media.Elite members of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, recently considered a proposal for a new global television network to usher in a state of global governance. The concept strikes some as authoritarian, even totalitarian. But the parent company of [...]No related posts.

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[Source: RETROGRESSING

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Biden promises Iran talks, toughness

US Vice President Joe Biden says Washington will move toward direct talks with Iran but at the same time warns of a continued tough line.In a Saturday speech on his first foreign trip since taking office, Biden attempted to draw a line between the policies of the new US administration and certain confrontational aspects of [...]

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[Source: vote tags: Tracking the Vote

FAA says Hackers broke into agency computers

Source: Associated PressWASHINGTON Hackers broke into the Federal Aviation Administrations computer system last week, accessing the names and Social Security numbers of 45,000 employees and retirees.The agency said in a statement Monday that two of the 48 files on the breached computer server contained personal information about employees and retires who were on [...]

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[Source: Mint Dollar

Another Individual Stands Up To Illegal Border Patrol Checkpoint Detention

Another Individual Stands Up To Illegal Border Patrol Checkpoint Detention
An individual successfully asserts his rights at an internal suspicionless Border Patrol checkpoint in New Mexico while being illegally detain by overzealous Border Patrol agen...

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[Source: Ron Paul forum

Friday, January 16, 2009

Communities making their own currencies

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — Diana Felber brought her groceries to the checkout and counted out her cash — purple, blue and green bills that are good at only businesses in western Massachusetts.Known as “BerkShares,” the colorful currency is printed by a nonprofit group to encourage people to spend close to home in the state’s Berkshire [...]No related posts.

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[Source: War On You

Neocon Columnist Calls For Military Draft, Cites Possible Invasion Of Pakistan

Says new American nationalism needed for survivalSteve WatsonInfowars.netTuesday, Jan 13th, 2009A Washington Times columnist has claimed that a universal military draft is a key necessity if America is to survive throughout and beyond the 21st century.Tony Blankley, also a former Reagan speechwriter, a former Newt Gingrich press secretary, and currently a Fellow at right wing [...]No related posts.

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[Source: War On You

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

What in the world? Cult members bidding on Alex Jones' bullhorn?

yes, they certainly have most people trained to only have motor reactions about sex and violence.  we push sports and gangster shows instead of art and learning.  sign of a sick society led to the slaughter by an even more sick, secret society...

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[Source: WAR ON YOU FORUMS

Monday, January 12, 2009

Countering The Marxist Critical Theory

Countering The Marxist Critical Theory

We need to defy Political Correctness at every level. We need to hold PC institutions such as the media responsible for obscuring the truth about the origins of violent crime and those responsible for it in our co...

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[Source: Ron Paul forum

National Safety Council seeks total* cell-phone driving ban

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/13/cell_phone_ban/


National Safety Council seeks total* cell-phone driving ban
By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco

Posted in Mobile, 13th J...

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[Source: WAR ON YOU FORUMS

Friday, December 19, 2008

Mass. Investor Saw Inside Madoff Scam 9 Years Ago

Massachusetts investor saw inside Madoff scam 9 years ago, but few listenedBy JAY LINDSAYThe Associated PressBOSTONHis repeated warnings that Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff was running a giant Ponzi scheme have cast Harry Markopolos as an unheeded prophet.But people who know or worked with Markopolos say it wasn’t prescience that helped him foresee the [...]

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[Source: War On You

Monday, December 15, 2008

IEA sees peak oil in 2020

Global oil output could peak by 2020 - much earlier than expected - amid a collapse in investment due to the financial crisis, the International Energy Agency's (IEA) chief economist Fatih Birol claimed.

In an interview published today Birol told London-based newspaper the Guardian that conventional crude output could plateau in 2020, a development that was "not good news" for a world still heavily dependent on petroleum.

The IEA has never before been specific about the point at which conventional oil would peak, although last month it said total crude output could peak in 2030.

Birol's comments follow other signs that the IEA is rapidly changing its view. In its 2007 World Energy Outlook, the IEA predicted a rate of decline from the world's existing oilfields at 3.7%, only to admit 12 months later that the speed of the fall was more likely 6.7%.

Read more: Upstream Online



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[Source: ASPO International | The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas -

Qatar warns of crude supply shock

The world faces a crude supply shock if oil prices remain below $70 per barrel, Qatar's Energy Minister Abdullah Bin Hamad Al Attiyah said on Wednesday arguing that lower prices would discourage investment in new capacity.

A price of $70 per barrel is needed "to avoid any (supply) shock in the future," he said, explaining that this price level should be sufficient to encourage companies and oil producers to continue investing in capacity expansion projects. "Below $70, it will be non-economical to invest in the hydrocarbon sector," Al Attiyah told the Gulf Petrochemical and Chemical Association (GPCA) forum. "Today there is no cheap oil" he added.

Now that the price has fallen dramatically to below $50, this could discourage investment in finding new deposits and extracting them from difficult places. Countries and oil companies may postpone many upstream projects if they do not get a return on their investments.

"So this is our concern that when the economic crisis is over and demand starts (to pick up) again, then the world will face a big shortage of supply," Al Attiyah said.

read more



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[Source: ASPO International | The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas -