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Friday, January 7, 2011        10:03 AM CST   
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Special Update

Public Win of Fluoride Levels

The government is proposing to lower the maximum level of fluoride in the nation's water supplies.  This is something which has been kicked around in the alternative health community for years - and it looks like ongoing public questioning of the use & safety of fluoride (an industrial by product) is starting to take effect.  Here's how the HHS/EPA press release begins:

"WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today are announcing important steps to ensure that standards and guidelines on fluoride in drinking water continue to protect the American people while promoting good dental health, especially in children. HHS is proposing that the recommended level of fluoride in drinking water can be set at the lowest end of the current optimal range to prevent tooth decay, and EPA is initiating review of the maximum amount of fluoride allowed in drinking water.

These actions will maximize the health benefits of water fluoridation to Americans by continuing to prevent tooth decay while reducing the possibility of children receiving too much fluoride.

“One of water fluoridation’s biggest advantages is that it benefits all residents of a community—at home, work, school, or play,” said HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Howard K. Koh, MD, MPH. “And fluoridation’s effectiveness in preventing tooth decay is not limited to children, but extends throughout life, resulting in improved oral health.”

“Today both HHS and EPA are making announcements on fluoride based on the most up to date scientific data,” said EPA Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water, Peter Silva. “EPA’s new analysis will help us make sure that people benefit from tooth decay prevention while at the same time avoiding the unwanted health effects from too much fluoride.”

And just what are those unwanted health effects referred to somewhat obliquely?

 

A visit to the Fluoride Action Network website cites a recent report out of China that correlates fluoride levels in children's blood to lower IQ, for one thing.  Lots of YouTube and Google video content, here.

 

Besides reports that fluoride was used in concentration camps to dull down people into submissive states, the Prison Planet article from 2008 mentioning a potential link to cancer is also worth a read.

 

So victory?  Not quite...just a step on a long journey.  naturally occurring fluorides in water are normally sufficient, otherwise humans would have all died off long before modern dentistry arrived with extra-cost fluoride treatments.  Dandy way to get rid of industrial waste, though...

 

Table 15 U6 Unemployment 16.6%!

800 Lb Gorilla Day: 9.4%? Right....

Although the job report is out this morning, I'm sure this one is going to be contentious. Let's start with the report itself from the Labor Department:

"The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 9.4 percent in December, and nonfarm payroll employment increased by 103,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in leisure and hospitality and in health care but was little changed in other major industries.

Household Survey Data

The number of unemployed persons decreased by 556,000 to 14.5 million in December, and the unemployment rate dropped to 9.4 percent. Over the year, these measures were down from 15.2 million and 9.9 percent, respectively.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (9.4 percent) and whites (8.5 percent) declined in December. The un- employment rates for adult women (8.1 percent), teenagers (25.4 per- cent), blacks (15.8 percent), and Hispanics (13.0 percent) showed little change. The jobless rate for Asians was 7.2 percent, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

In December, the number of job losers and persons who completed tem- porary jobs dropped by 548,000 to 8.9 million. The number of long- term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 6.4 million and accounted for 44.3 percent of the unem- ployed. (See tables A-11 and A-12.)

The civilian labor force participation rate edged down in December to 64.3 percent, and the employment-population ratio was essentially un- changed at 58.3 percent. (See table A-1.) "

Now let's just into some analysis:

 

Labor Force Edges down:  This number proposes that the number of people "in the work force' in December dropped by 260,000.  Sorry, but I have a problem thinking that that number of people available for work dropped.

 

CES Birth-Death Model:  The Labor Department figures assume that jobs were 'created but not measured' because the proposed hiring was by small business and the like.  24-thousand jobs appeared this way.  True, 21,000 jobs in construction went away, but that was more than offset by 12,000 more in trade, transporation, and utilities, along with financial activities (ahem, cough, cough, tarp me baby, tarp me) and education and leisure and hospitality.  Maybe it was a GREAT season for hiring at ski lodges, just can't say.

 

Total Unemployed and Underutilized:  Where my more skeptical (if now downright cynical) view of things really shows up is in the Table 15 U-6 statistics which shows that non-compensated unemployment and under employed zoomed up from 16.3% of the workforce to 16.6% of the workforce in December.

 

I'd suggest the Mark Twain comments about liar, damn liars, and statistics would fit about here, if a person was so cynical as to suggest it. Which I'm not, of course.

 

Market Down

The price of gold may turn out to be this week's leading indicator.  After being up around $1,420 last week, wasn't it?, gold was down overnight to the $1,355 level which is a decline of what?  4.6%, or thereabouts.

 

And the futures look like 50 or more Down points down should be expected today.

 

This afternoon we will gather round the monitors to see what the Fed Consumer Debt report looks like.  If the American public starts getting thrifty, that will cast a second dip into stone, otherwise, muddle-through is what's ahead.  Bet'cha can't figure out my inclination....

 

Quake Watching

While we wait to see if we get any big quakes, we've been watching the activity up in Iceland which you can see for yourself here.

 

Military Spending Libretto

Let's see here:  Obama administration sending more troops to Afghanistan we covered. 

 

OK, then, how about a member of congress calling Afghanistan a national embarrassment? 

 

This is almost laughable - here we have a democorp calling it a national embarrassment when the democorps had fully two years they could have closed Gitmo, gotten us out of the sand box and whatever else?  Now that the republicorps have the House, they are positioning like this....

 

How can they not expect the public to ask WTF?  Gotta wonder how much dough the defense lobby is passing around to make their puppets go through such laughable antics.  Except my tax bill this year ain't no joke....

 

Then there's word the Pentagram (sic) is planning to cut troops on active duty?

 

So lemme see...we send a huge portion of our nation's vital young people overseas and then cut funding for them.  Yep, sure makes sense to me.... B-52 for breakfast?

 

But it will be weeks and maybe months before life returns to anything approaching normal in Queensland, Australia hard hit by recent flooding.  Leading edge of famine, given that this was one of the world's key grain and livestock producing areas.

 

Gun Rights Story

While the anti-gun folks have a field day with their horror stories about kids brining guns to school and such, we often find (and try to mention from time to time) stories like this one:

 

"Fed Up" 82-year old held alleged thieves at gunpoint."

 

Mssrs. Mossberg and Ruger send their regards.

 

Up Against the Cream Cheese

The headline off NBC-Miami just screams for comment:  "Florida Professor Arrested for having a "suspicious" bagel on a plane".

 

No word on whether authorities lox'ed him up, or not.

 

(more after this ad)

 

 

Woo-woo Friday

Coping: Something Fishier Department

A number of reader emails have popped in wondering ( to average them out) "What is the connection you were talking about with regard to fish and birds and earthquakes...can you explain?"

 

Oh sure...simply done. 

 

The theory goes that prior to an earthquake, the earth builds up tremendous electrical charges in the vicinity of an earthquake.  The notion that twisting of rock, particularly semi-conducting rocks - like quartz - which is used in radio gear as highly stable quartz crystals in oscillator circuits and so forth, can create enough electricity to produce various physical effects.

 

The Wikipedia entry on Piezoelectricity is the main thing to read.  Twist crystals and electricity comes out - the phenomena is used for microphones and lots of other devices.

 

With that out of the way, into the mailbag...which is stuffed:

"Military nerve agents killing the fish and birds? Not my first guess. I'd suspect an electromagnetic device/event, particularly when you see a single species being targeted. Think more along the lines of a resonant frequency device that selectively targets DNA, much like the evoked potential biofeedback machines commonly used in the alternative medicine world. Royal Rife meets HAARP by way of a satellite based system. Why satellite? Look at the ground track in the attached (or linked) map, and tell me you haven't seen that NE to SW slanted line on a ground track depiction of a satellite in a polar orbit, that shifts west on each orbit as the earth spins below it.

It appears to me as though someone is establishing an initial operational capability for a weapons system, after testing for 2-3 years. That's probably why you are getting fish now, as well as the birds. Guess who's next?

I had a good laugh when I saw the LameStream Media story saying the incidents were caused by fireworks on New Year's Eve. Last time I checked with the fish, fireworks didn't bother them at all!"

Sunny he'd mention the idea of a satellite - since earlier this week, on Monday around 10:30 AM I was working (aren't I always?) at my desk when I frelt a twinge of nausea.  Curious, I took my handy-dandy microwave oven leak detector and sure enough, from roughly overhead (although I've never checked the calibration of the meter) there was about 0.18 watts per square centimeter of RF coming in.  After about 10-minutes, it declined.

 

Then on Thursday - around 11:45 AM - just had a strange 'feeling' so I turned on the microwave detector and started getting readings.  Top reading was 0.28 watts per square centimeter and this time the angle was to the southwest, about 30-degrees above the horizon.

 

I had enough presence of mind to jump in my pickup truck and head out for a quick survey - and a couple of miles south the signal dropped but I don't know what would cause that.  Nevertheless, I will keep my meter handy, and since I have an old satellite dish, I might tape the microwave detector onto the LNB mount and see if I can get some directivity out of it. 

 

Microwave detectors are not that expensive and the one I'm using I picked up off Amazon for about $35: Digital Microwave Oven Leakage Meter.

 

So, maybe there is something to the tinfoil hat discussion?  Not sure, but the microwave anomaly could be caused by lots of other things...still, it was there about 20 minutes and then gone.  In other words, measujrements since have returned to normal (0.00) readings including right next to my wireless router and so forth.

 

Obviously, it's got me interested, and I will likely have the microwave detector going in future weeks.

 

Doesn't mean anything out of place is going on; could just be a low earth orbit satellite doing radar altimetry (radar altitude mapping), but noting the periodicity and apparent  angle might confirm or deny the involvement of a satellite in polar orbit.

 

It hasn't escaped our notice that in addition to sharing being in the New Madrid quake zone, the bird kill in Beebe, AR last week and the birds reported killed in Labarre, LA are close to a north-south line.  Labarre is 91.539 West, while Beebe, AR is 91.879 West.

 

Not like I'm the only one looking in this direction.  Tom Bearden's fine website also has a post which begins...

"Actually it's probably unintentional precursor engineering. "

No weather control/engineering without breaking a few eggs, perhaps.  Damn inconvenient that happen to be in flight at the time, however.

----

If I seem a little too focused on this stuff, it's because we had a bird kill reported just north of us about 90-miles northeast of us, up where Texas 155 crosses Lake of the Pines.

---

The idea that the earth is doing strange things isn't new (lemme put on the tinfoil hat here).

 

There are lots of stories around the net going to the idea that the closing and renumbering of the Tampa Florida airport to change the runway heading numbers may indicate the earth's magnetic north is moving much faster than anyone anticipated.

---

No one is saying yet, whether there's a single underlying cause to all this, especially since there are both air and water creatures, like those crabs washing up on the Kent coast of England, while at the same time we see reports that new gamma ray activity may be coming our way from somewhere int he Crab Nebula...timely, is it not?

 

Gotta hand it to Universe, the sense of humor with the timing of things can sure be curious at times.

---

The thing I'm doing now is plugging major earthquake dates into my spiral calendar software, so generously provided by a long-time friend who has been active in longwave economics study for years.  I won't try to begin to describe Chris Carolan's work; I'll just suggest that you read The Spiral Calendar and Its Effect on Financial Markets and Human Events which should be of great interest, both in terms of figuring out future news developments, as well as things like financial market movements and so forth.  But, I digress.

 

I've got February 12th circled as the "f2" day ,from the January 2, 2011 quake in Chile, while the f2 day for the Argentina quake is February 11th.  The f2 date for the  12/25 Vanuatu quake is February 4, and the f2 date for the Bonin Islands 6.8 back on 11/30 of last year comes up this coming Monday.

 

Not saying anything will happen on any of these dates, but with mass bird and sea life kills, and tossing in a few other items, like an odd low-level microwave reading and the acceleration of the move of magnetic north, one does tend to "go Reynolds Wrap, if you know what I mean.

 

Oh, date of 4/29 is popping up on some sites if you're looking for energy weapon demos.  I won't be staying up late for it, LOL.

 

Then there's the left-brain dominant readers who send items like this one:

"Enough of the conspiracy nonsense. It seems that you have not noticed that in each of these cases it was just one species of animal involved. So, then, why was just one species affected in the area they were in and all ALL LIFE in that area killed?

What kind of conspiracy have you got that can target just ONE species?

It's pretty well established that all organisms have certain frequencies that they are susceptible to.  For example, all of us who are pilots know that blinking a  light at the right frequency (varies by person) can induce everything from small effects like vertigo to full on epileptic seizures (see: Flicker Vertigo) - and that's just light.

We also know of RF effects, and to believe that the earth can produce electromagnetic effects is hardly a stretch, given precursors like 'earthquake clouds' date back to as early as 505-587 AD...

---

We try to keep that balance between "open mind": and mind so open "brain falls out"...

 

Is the Electric Grid Killing Earth?

We were chatting earlier this week about a friend of mine (ham radio buddy of almost 50-years)  who raised the question whether all the AC power plants in the world we essentially "deguassing" the earth.  Just as you'd use 50-60 Hz AC to erase magnetic tapes, audio video, and cassettes, he's been looking at data like China bringing on a new power plant a week for a while in 2009 and wondering if that's not part of 'what ails earth'.

 

So in response to that, a reader sent in this comment:

"Just checked my ground current and it's less than 20 mA RMS.

In my case goes to the city water pipes. It once had up to 22A when we had a downed neutral in the service drop for us and the church next door, so I know it's not open either.

Utility Co. took three weeks to get out and fix it.

Also: Bear in mind that to have any sort of decently efficient transmission line far field effects must have been minimized.

Mind experiment: build a 600 Ohm balanced line from 2 parallel 4" copper sewer pipes and see how much 2.4 GHz energy arrives at the far end.

Junk cars under a 245 KV line will get quite a buzz on, but that's the net capacitance to the nearest conductor. A bit of twist cancels this out over distances. "

To which, my long-time friend replied:

There are no copper pipes used for sewer, the acid would eat them up. In our country we might be cleaner than almost anywhere else on earth as it relates to grounding and shielding of our electrical grid, They do what they can to de-tune the lines so that they are not resonate but thats all based on a fixed load condition. It's all about the 100 million miles of copper wiring that is radiating the field that is down stream from the main grid. buzzing junk cars, they are conducting to ground yes they are a big capacitor, same difference, that energy is going deep into the earths field to be part of the problem.

 

There is a world of difference between 2.4 GHZ and 60cycles. You cant demagnetize at 2.4 Ghz. You can't twist 245KVA to cancel the field, you can do that with microphone wire or telephone wire and such but not the power grid. The only tools they use is a ground wire on top of the lines and good grounding of the towers at the base. They also do there best to keep them out of resonance but thats a loosing battle given changeling loads on the line at any given time.

 

Look this is not rocket science: one side of the alternating field is in the ground..FACT, the other side travels in the air we are impossing our feilds on the existing earth field. if you don't think the earth field is in the air try turning off your compass. If you don't think the 60 cycles is in the air build a 60 cycle tuned circuit and hold on to the antennae end as you walk under a powerline. (please don't try this, you will be dead). WE HAVE PROBLEM HUSTON>>>>>>>

I haven't mentioned to my friend that he ought to read what is stillk one of the best books ever on the topic of alternating current "pollution".  I'm talking about Paul Brodeur's classic Currents of Death which got into the relationship between proximity of AC power lines and the incidence rate of cancer, among other things.

 

Still, the way I figure it, the odds of the whole world swearing off alternating current is about zilch.  And as another friend pointed out, we've been having earthquakes and such long before we had AC power plants...and besides the amount of energy relative to the size of the earth is so small.

 

Yet, there was that rumored Tesla 'earthquake machine' even though that was 'busted' on Myth Busters as likely not true...

 

 

 

No, we haven't used electric blankets since....not saying they are dangerous, of course.  I'm just a Reynold's wrapped fellow who avoids even potential risks....

 

Wilhelm Reich Note

Also served up this week was some comment on the use of $7-million British pounds to make 50-rainstorms in Abu Dhabi, which prompted a reader to remind us that rock artist Kate Bush has an album out in the early 1990's titled "Cloudbusting" with a picture of her on a Reichian cloud busting machine.  We assume she knew someone in the family....

 

 

Send your comments to  george@ure.net  

 

Last week's report is always here.

 

---

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Global Animal Deaths:  Cover-up?

Although it's not our standard fare - economics is - nevertheless, a check of what some friends have put up as a Google Map of the bird, fish, and animal deaths poppirem:anet is indeed startling and concerning.

 

Despite some suggestions that the bird deaths in Arkansas were related to military nerve agents, that doesn't explain the fish kills in places like Brazil and so forth. 

 

We're left asking a very serious question::  What's going on that's not in the public eye, yet?  Meantime, we're swimming in reader emails like this one:

"Could these die off events be the tipping point that the fast food worker in Fla talks about? This would also fit the MSM saying ridiculous things like "fireworks killed them". Two hits in one event."

Tomorrow and the 11th are out next hot dates to watch.  Popcorn and tranks for breakfast, anyone?

 

Saber Rattling - Missile Sighting

We have a number of stories 'clumping' around the meta layer "sabre rattling" which may be viewed by some as an attempt to  shake up the public and 'move us along' from asking the tougher questions about animal die-off.

 

For example, KIII TV has video of another missile shot.  This one off South Padre Island which is along the Texas gulf coast, 20 miles northeast of Brownsville. 

 

This is a much faster missile - as you watch the KIII TV video - than the one reported off the California coast around November 8.  And again, a close inspection of the video seems to rule out passing it off to contrails.

---

While that first missile shot sure looks like something off a submarine, possibly Chinese, we note this morning the Voice of America is citing a (Japanese) Kyodo news report that China is changing its military doctrine in ways that may do away with its "No first strike" nuclear policy.

 

Of course, once the word of this started to make the rounds and get traction in the global mediasphere, China went to great lengths to reassure the West that they still back a 'no pre-emptive strikes' policy, but when conflicting reports come in, we hark back to the old saying "Where there's smoke, there's usually..."  But is it a worry?  Not really....

 

One of our well-informed sources points out that a pre-emptive strike against the US by any nation would be tantamount to suicide:

"What may not be widely known is that there exists 'more than one' copy of the infamous nuclear 'black book' (yes, it actually had a black cover) typically portrayed as being carried in a briefcase (aka 'football') by a special military officer traveling with the president. In fact, limited copies are covertly distributed to CONUS various locations in order to ensure that trained individuals called SIOP (single integrated operational plan) advisors survive a surprise attack (or massive natural disaster for that matter) and are available to assist the surviving national command authority and presidential successor with appropriate military responses against hostile, WMD wielding adversaries.

And why do you think we're putting most of our national time and effort into placing a missile defense system in the Pacific? Two unknowns in that region -- whacky N. Korea, and the 800lb gorilla, China. China realizes this. I believe this leak, if from somewhere in China, is intended to intimidate the Pacific rim, particularly Japan and S. Korea. If the news leaked from Japan, they are letting the Obama administration know they feel threatened and want us to show stronger support.

My favorite Cold War saying goes something like: "you only need to be close to play horse shoes and use nukes."

And so we continue watching the disputed island (Senkaku), North Korea, and the general nervousness of Japan whether it's a matter of 'when' more than 'if.'

 

Vaccination Debate: Fraud Charged, But....

A doctor who did a study purportedly linking vaccinations to an increased risk of autism has lost his license and is accused of taking money from lawers who were trying to sue drug makers.

 

But wait!  It doesn't end there:  The doctor involved in the study defends his work and refers to an article questioning the work as a 'hit' piece.

 

So, again, the question remains:  With so much money at stake, is it possible to even question use of vaccines?

 

Jobless Claims Up Some

From the Labor Department, just out within the hour:

"In the week ending Jan. 1, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 409,000, an increase of 18,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 391,000. The 4-week moving average was 410,750, a decrease of 3,500 from the previous week's revised average of 414,250.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.3 percent for the week ending Dec. 25, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate of 3.3 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Dec. 25 was 4,103,000, a decrease of 47,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 4,150,000. The 4-week moving average was 4,122,500, a decrease of 2,750 from the preceding week's revised average of 4,125,250.

UNADJUSTED DATA

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 577,279 in the week ending Jan. 1, an increase of 52,038 from the previous week. There were 645,446 initial claims in the comparable week in 2010.

The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.5 percent during the week ending Dec. 25, an increase of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 4,390,661, an increase of 273,882 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 4.2 percent and the volume was 5,484,997.

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending Dec. 18 was 8,765,952. "

The monthly unemployment rate for December is due out tomorrow.  My latest dart throw is 9.7% which would be a tiny improvement, but remember, the number comes from Washington and so anything from 9.6 to 10.1 is in the realm of possibilities.

 

THE real number will be the Fed's Consumer Debt number tomorrow afternoon just ahead of the close.

 

Surging

Remember all those people who ran for office promising (among other things) transparency, closing Gitmo, and pulling out of Afghanistan?  Well, here's a report in the WSJ Online that the "US Boosts Afghan Surge".  We'll file this under promises versus performance, and expect 99.9% of our countrymen still won't get it.  War is a business and it soaks up people...how much more clear can things be?  OK, toss in opium crops, then.  Pipeline routes, too, then...

 

How to Read a Press Release

A story came out - about midsession on Wednesday - that is a classic example of why clients pay me to write press releases and counsel them in business strategy which is my 'real' job. 

 

We start with a press release from the US Dept. of Transportation.  It goes like this:

BTS Releases North American Surface Trade Numbers for October:   October 2010 Surface Trade with Canada and Mexico Rose 14.9 Percent from October 2009

            Trade using surface transportation between the United States and its North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners Canada and Mexico was 14.9 percent higher in October 2010 than in October 2009, reaching $70.6 billion, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) of the U.S. Department of Transportation. The value of U.S. surface transportation trade with Canada and Mexico in October 2010 remained 2.9 percent below the October 2008 level despite the 2009-2010 increase.

BTS, a part of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, reported that the value of U.S. surface transportation trade with Canada and Mexico rose 3.3 percent in October 2010 from September 2010. Month-to-month changes can be affected by seasonal variations and other factors. 

            U.S.–Canada surface transportation trade totaled $40.7 billion in October, up 12.2 percent compared to October 2009. U.S.–Mexico surface transportation trade totaled $29.9 billion in October, up 18.8 percent compared to October 2009.

Surface transportation consists largely of freight movements by truck, rail and pipeline. In October, 86.1 percent of U.S. trade by value with Canada and Mexico moved on land.

            See BTS Transborder Data Release for summary tables, state rankings and additional data. See North American Transborder Freight Data  for historic data.

###

That's interesting data (though not exactly exciting) and sure seems to be supportive of the idea that things are boy, oh boy, clicking right along on the recovery path for sure now.

 

But they're not.

 

Most journalists (having been one for 15+ years) are way to busy to do more than basically rewrite a story like this, do a stand-ujp if TV, pull some B roll from film film and maybe pick up a talking head.  Package is done in an hour, or two, including the wrap and it runs in the 5:30 show, the 6:30 and on the 11 with maybe a shorty version for the following morning - and that's that...endo de news story.

---

But here's what doesn't happen much - except maybe around here - the reporter could go a little deeper and realize that current business with Canada and Mexico is still below 2008 values.

 

What's more, the fact is that on a year-to-date basis, the level is still down about (corrected)  8% - OK, 8.32% percent, although it's normally too early in the day for me to be doing zeros!  From Table 1 (with a George column added):

 

Month	2008	2009	2010	Percent Change      2008-2009	Percent Change 2009-2010	Percent Change 2008-2010
January	65,160	47,459	56,697	-27.2	19.5
February	69,406	47,938	59,492	-30.9	24.1
March	70,787	51,055	69,943	-27.9	37.0
April	74,317	49,729	65,831	-33.1	32.4
May	74,128	47,881	66,805	-35.4	39.5
June	74,139	50,753	69,859	-31.5	37.6
July	71,628	51,545	61,260	-28.0	18.8
August	72,254	54,254	67,964	-24.9	25.3
September	71,801	57,294	68,324	-20.2	19.3
October	72,683	61,400	70,565	-15.5	14.9
	716,303	519,308	656,740	-27.50%	---	-8.32

 

This is exactly the kind of news story that doesn't exactly mislead us about the shape and size of the recovery.  It's more along the lines of what I'd call reframing the discussion.   Reframing being the art of taking a conclusion and then citing from available facts to sway an impression this way - or that.

 

While it's true that the report properly noted a comparison of October 2008 with October of 2011, we need to be starkly clear on the year-to-date trend.

 

There's another inference that might be had from the data.  That Ross Perot was right and yes, American companies are getting tons of sub-assemblies done for least-cost dollars in Asia, and then assembling them in Mexico.  So, yes, at some point, the Mexico trade data will simply swamp previous years because why?

 

We won't have any manufacturing jobs at all left in the USA.  But boy, I bet those border statistics will look dandy, though.

 

Headlines We Love

CBS Dallas reports "Airport Steaming Over Strip Club Neighbor".

 

The  story seems to be that the airport doesn't want to be next to an upscale gentleman's club.

 

But I've got another theory:  Outright Table dancing might compete with the security checkpoints.

 

Thursdays at the WuJo

Coping:  Hidden in Plain Sight?

One of those people I have known for a very long time (pushing 50 years, some to think of it) is a friend who lives in SoCal and who's a very successful businessman and a ham radio operator  Anyway, I walk into the office this morning and find this amazing email he's written me which brings up a damn fine question which may be related to the recent changes in earthquakes and a whole lot of other geophysical phenomena.  Read it yourself and it's graceful how he takes the obvious data  and asks a terribly logical question...

As you might know the earth is loosing it's magnetic strength and is changing it's magnetic position.

The BIG question is: Is our man made electrical grid all over the earth that is transmitting 50 or 60 cycles of high energy into the earth part of the problem. If you know how magnetism works you would know what I'm talking about,

The low frequency of 50 to 60 cycles per second of alternating current is a perfect field for degaussing.

That is to say, a field of alternating current that is perfect for de-magnetizing . Maybe this shouldn't be taken lightly, I don't know.

It is a proven fact and many devices take advantage of this demagnetizing field. To name just a few.. Audio tapes have routinely been erased in bulk by putting them into the alternating magnetic field, the old color picture tubes needed degaussing/(de-magnetizing) every so often, some stores use the field to disconnect their security tags, but these small applications are nothing compared to the massive word wide electrical system grids.

As civilization has expanded so has the electrical grid of alternating current all around the world. World wide we are using a great deal more electrical power and as such putting more into the ground. Think about any local city and think about all the extremities to the electrical grid as they flow through every ones house and place of business. Every wire that is under load will emit a small amount of this degaussing energy.

Have we gone to far??

This thought came to mind when I was reviewing the Coral Castle information & the gentleman there would transmit through the earth a magnetic field. Then I thought about all our power lines all over the earth and just wondering what effect they have on our planet. I guess the real question is who do you ask?? Maybe you know the answer??

My, oh my.  This is a tough one, particularly since the movie "The Core" was about just some of the effects of the Earth losing its magnetic field.  From Wikipedia's entry about the film's plot:

"After a series of strange events over the world connected by variances in the Earth's electromagnetic field, leading geology expert Dr. Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart), a University of Chicago professor, teams with Serge Leveque (Tchéky Karyo) and Conrad Zimsky (Stanley Tucci) to learn that the rotation of Earth's molten core is slowing down, leading eventually to the collapse of the electromagnetic field which will expose the surface to the Sun's lethal radiation."

If you remember your history of electronics, there was a very key turning point in electronics early on when Thomas Edison was arguing for a direct current (DC) distribution system while Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse were promoting alternating current, or AC systems.  This is well-described in the literature as "the War of Currents" and the Wikipedia entry here offers a lot of insight into the issues.

 

Humankind made a key leap - when it chose to head down the alternating current path.  It would be years - about a century, in fact - before the advent of high efficient DC-DC conversion would become commonplace; a result of advances in transistors and related solid-state technology.

 

This leads my long-time ham radio buddy to task this horribly simple question.  And if you remember your National Electrical Code, you no doubt know full well about the requirements that we have all systems "grounded" with what are typically 8-10 foot grounding rods at the service entrance of all homes.  Is there a correlation between the installation of such grounds and geomagnetic field weakening?

 

We might be guided - or at least informed - in such matters by a quote attributed to Tesla in 1925:

"There is no thing endowed with life—from man, who is enslaving the elements, to the nimblest creature—in all this world that does not sway in its turn. Whenever action is born from force, though it be infinitesimal, the cosmic balance is upset and the universal motion results. "

Of you have a little time on your hands and want to sketch up a graph which we could kick around, here's the data sets to look for:

Set 1: The number of electrified homes and businesses by year with approximate power consumption by year, thereby tabbed and used as one data set.  E.g.  x number of kwHrs per year globally.

 

Set 2:  The reciprocal of the earths magnetic field strength, again by year, such that you'd have a higher number the lower the field went.  This would line up the AC kwHr data and the decline in magnetic field data.

Please send it along as an .xls or .xlsx format spreadsheet with embedded charts and we'll share the results with people.

 

Is it possible - I mean just wildly so - that because  we took a turn down the AC path instead of DC that we somehow set up long-term conditions which are now cascading us toward a collapse of the magnetosphere and, in turn, ending life as we know it?

----

Sitting down with the first cup of coffee for the day, a lot of extensions of this question come to mind.  For example, in answer to "Where does the magnetism come from?" one has to wonder if the north-south oceanic currents (like the slowing Gulf Stream, just to name one, m ight somehow be involved in all this.  Maybe there's some  ultra long-term effect of water rubbing over earth, that might slowly magnetize a planet over eons of time.  Just as stroking a magnet along a steel bar tends to magnetize the bar...

 

Lots to think about, but a fine question indeed, and thanks to my friend Vince for asking.  Maybe someone with some real expertise can line up the data and show us if there's a correlation.

 

Orgonite: Doing the Reich Thing

As long as we're kicking around the WuJo this morning - that being the mental dojo [a material arts place] where left brain intellect dukes it out with the right intuitive brain to try and arrive at higher truth - we were discussing Wilhelm Reich and his work in orgone (life force) energy a while back.  Got a very interesting note from a reader...

George, Sorry for the long read - it is about my foray into orgon energy and producing "orgonite" a few years ago and what drove me away from it. It may be a very interesting read to you. A few years ago I had a very intense period of synchronicity going on which led me down various alternate paths of research. It was during this time that I was experiencing 11:11 all over the place, having sync winks on a daily basis, and plenty of woo-woo phenomenon such as psychic links to family members. One of my favorite stories is when I was introduced to "divine" shapes: (story below, read later if you are short on time) --- Here I was, looking into the "Golden Ratio" and the conch shell... I thought to myself that it would be great to have a nice conch shell to look at, inspect, and use as inspiration for some devices I was building. It stuck in my head that day, so later in the evening while on the phone with my parents (who live in Florida) I asked my mother if they could send me a conch shell if they every see one on the beach. They have a few very small ones around the house and finding larger ones (adult fist sized or larger) is a very rare occurrence. I made it clear that I did not want one from the store - just one straight from the beach the next time they stumble across one on their walks. There was silence on the other end of the line. I asked what the problem was and she told me that she was giving the phone over to my father and that I should tell him exactly what I told her. I proceeded to do so and immediately my father started laughing. He went on to explain that just that morning he was walking on the beach and saw a near perfect blue conch shell, larger than any he had picked up that year. He was immediately attracted to it and just HAD to take it home with him that day. --- Back to the point... for quite some time I was having so much sync that it was getting scary. I was convinced that if I kept listening to the sync winks, I would be led on a path to some personal revelation. The winks led to my studying divine shapes and I came upon orgone energy as well as the creation of "orgonite". I invested in some metal shavings, plastic molds, and marine epoxy and proceeded to build orgonite pieces to see what this was all about. For some reason these did not impress me much. I then used quartz crystals and even went as far as to build what is called a "mobius coil" around a quartz point embedded within a mold of orgonite which I ran different frequency pulses through. Unfortunately, I did not know exactly what I was trying to accomplish in all of this! It was almost as if I were running experiments for an invisible scientist or something.

After awhile I lost interest partly because of a lack of "results" and also my sudden involvement with some intense work for some serious G types (who came to me) which necessitated that I put down a certain herb which I used to meditate/reflect with... This is also when I lost the 11:11 sightings (for the most part) as well as a lot of the sync winks; although I cannot attribute the herbal catalyst with the sync phenomenon. It was a bit of a letdown, actually. It was like I lost a partner that I was communicating with on a daily basis, and I came to miss it. This was about a year to 18 months ago.

Toward the end of 2010 I started wondering if I made the right decision in working with the Gs since they keep stringing me along to the point of frustration - and they seem to pop up every time I start delving into these alternative research topics. The timing is uncanny and this work is certainly not something I want to make a career out of, but the pay is good and the people are pretty friendly albeit rather intense. As I started to question my involvement and what direction I should focus my energies for this coming year, I started seeing the 11:11 a bit more! This past weekend the fiancee and I were discussing how to de-clutter the apartment a bit for the new year an I saw the boxes full of orgonite-making materials up there on the shelf. I decided that I may want to look into it a little more before throwing it all out.

....and then I read your column this morning where you mention orgonite! Well, needless to say, I am strongly considering resuming my work on orgone energy incorporating designs and material compositions which utilize the golden ratio. I also intend to use magnetic fields to align the metal filaments embedded within the orgonite - something I was considering when I abandoned work on this project. Think about it, if something like zero-point energy or harnessing discrete energy were possible it would necessitate that the design be perfect, no? This is where the golden ratio becomes such an important component to any design!

Please keep us readers informed with your progress in this fringe science, and feel free to ask me any questions you may have!

I haven't been doing much in the way of orgone studies of late, although I will be working on a somewhat controlled experiment this spring if time permits.

 

Here's the experiment:  You mix up a batch of orgonite and pour it into an appropriate shape.  That in itself would be a small book's worth of discussions because there are so many shapes and so much power behind the symbols each is related to.

---

I assume you've noticed that when armies go out onto a battlefield to do a lot of killing, that they do sop under 'symbols'?  Stars with so many points, circles, crosses, and other symbols which fit psychologically under the 'signs and portents' category and work down at the archetype/co-creation of Universe level?  Whole different rap, but much of it has to do with the power of shapes and why legends have sprung up around Viktor Shauberger and John Keely.

 

Both had purportedly done work in alternative energies - both of which seem rooted in diamagnetism and in Shauberger's case, drift off in direction of levitating craft.  Whole books have been written about his Zokwendle - a diamagnetism based engine with levitation capabilities, which may be related to the WW II German experiments involving De Glocke and are detailed in numerous books.

 

Probably a good survey of how all this woo-woo stuff has been pulled together is Joseph Ferrell's The SS Brotherhood of the Bell: Nasa's Nazis, JFK, And Majic-12.  It's a kind of soup to nuts that covers a continuum from purported German WW II experiments with De Glocke on up through modern UFO technology and the Navy's rumored off-planet activities. 

---

Getting back to the experiment, the ideas is that if you put a properly shaped and ratio'ed orgonite device on a patch of lawn, you ought to see a kind of 'bulls eye' around the device, which (could) indicate that growth rates differed around the device, which might then be taken as 'evidence' of differential growth rates due to 'life force'.

 

All of this being interesting, but like so many other things in life, while it would be fun to step out into the shop and shave down X different kinds of metals and pour them into Y different mold shapes and then spread them out on the 2-acres of lawn around here, the real issue is "How does this help revenue on the personal income statement?"

----

Ah, we return - perhaps refreshed - from the little diversions of the morning.

 

Time to lock down the WuJo and wander back to the revenue-related reading and work.  The number of clients who have signed up for "breakthrough in levitation/orgonic energy for restoring youth and perfect health is.....Zero!

 

The number of clients who are trying to work their way out of the Great Recession is a little higher.  And since we all seem hooked on three-squares a day, ya'll come on back tomorrow.

 

Maybe someone will  have charted the growth of rural power distribution systems with changes in the magnetosphere - and that is something we can actually measure and ask questions about...

 

More Reading?

Particularly of interest to those of the female persuasion is  SurvivalWoman's "Brilliant beautiful on a budget: How to save over $2,000 in 2001.

---

Speaking of SurvivalWoman, a number of readers sent me emails asking - in so many words - "Are You nuts?  (yes, but continuing...) How can SurvivalWoman consider herself a minimalist when she & her hubby have been on 35 cruises?"

 

A couple of points here.  First, her piece "Frugal is a state of mind" gets into some of it.

 

The other part is that we both know people who spend large parts of their retirement on cruise ships.  Stop and think about this - since we've both 'run the numbers' on such things:  A cruise can sometimes be had for $300 per person per week.  That's about $1,500 per month.

 

Where else can you get food, exercise equipment, entertainment, travel, and on and on for $1,500 a month?  There are people who make it a practice of sniping the last-minute cheapy rooms (the ones down in steerage) and have just as much fun as the upstairs folks who might be paying $3,000 for week's worth of a midship Veranda 'suite'.

 

Like pappy used to say, once you close your eyes, most of the cabins are pretty much the same.  The idea isn't to rent a lot of square footage on a cruise, it's to enjoy the shipboard life and sitting in a tiny cabin or a  H U G E cabin is not why people go cruising.

 

Oh - and maybe I'm telling secrets out of school here - but S/W and her hubby are pretty accomplished ballroom dancers.  Not too many places you can get the bed, food, yada,yada and a dance floor with music for $1,500 a month.

 

So, yeah, cruise sniping is what some people do when they come off their out of the way homes...and in a way, if I didn't have two left feet and deplore exercise as a waste of good heartbeats, I might even be tempted in that direction myself.  Next life, maybe.

 

---

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Contrary Indicators

Over the past few weeks I've been talking to a number of friends/colleagues and everyone seems to have pretty much the same take on things:  The world financial system, although intact (as of this writing) doesn't feel like it's at the peak of robust health.  I thought it would useful to point out some of the contradictions in the market that are leaving a lot of analysts, including guess who, scratching their collective heads:

• The price of gold just took a hit.  After hanging around the $1,420 mark January 3rd, gold Tuesday collapsed to $1,381.30 and this morning traded $1,380.  We can quibble a few cents, depending on if you look at the Kitco live gold chart, or if you are following the near-in commodity prices, but no matter how you slice "them apples" the price of gold is down about $40.

• The Baltic Dry Index is back in collapse mode.  This isn't a perfect indicator of the global economy, but when you click over here and punch up the 3-year view you can see where at the housing bubble peak in 2007/2008, the BDI was up around 12,000.  It closed yesterday around $1,693.

• The US Federal Reserve released the minutes of its December 14 FOMC meeting.  If you read between the lines of their report, the data hasn't moved very much (this was mid December, remember) and as a result, the Fed is going to continue sopping up bonds:

  • "Accordingly, in their discussion of monetary policy for the period immediately ahead, nearly all Committee members agreed to continue expanding the Federal Reserve’s holdings of longer-term securities as announced in November in order to promote a stronger pace of economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with the Committee’s mandate. The Committee decided to maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its securities holdings into longer-term Treasury securities. In addition, the Committee agreed to continue buying longer-term Treasury securities with the intention of purchasing $600 billion of such securities by the end of the second quarter of 2011, a pace of about $75 billion per month. While the economic outlook was seen as improving, members generally felt that the change in the outlook was not sufficient to warrant any adjustments to the asset-purchase program, and some noted that more time was needed to accumulate information on the economy before considering any adjustment."

  The problem here being that without Fed intervention, the global economy might realistically have collapsed by now.  Some are reading this as even more pumping to come which, given how cheap ink is, what the hell.

• There are ominous  - what'd I call "creaking" sounds from the global markets under strain.  Although you don't hear much about Taiwan, their market was down 1.68% overnight and early on, the losses in both the French and German markets were approaching 1.5%.

• I'[m mention the lukewarm (at best) Manufacturing report, but since the period covered is November, looking at it here, might be misleading as that's part of the data I call "rearview economics".  Just says where we've been, not where we're going.

Several people have mentioned the similarity of this period to 1987/  If I get some time today, I'll maybe do some chart work, but the thing to look at will be the advance/decline line in the US markets.

 

Although the Dow as up about 20 points on Tuesday, the broader market was far less constructive.  The NYSE was 62% down volume, while the NASDAQ was 57% down and the AMEX down 73%.  That doesn't sound healthy to me and although there's a technical case for the Dow to head as high as 12,100 before turning down, there are plenty of other possible outcomes.

---

The predictive linguistics report from www.halfpasthuman.com has a rather specific big clump of 'release language' coming on Friday which we'll be looking for.  Something like a Germany (or other major EU cornerstone) announcing plans to reassert its national independence from what's going to be a very expensive bailout of the under-funded PIIGS countries would make economic sense.  Just all depends on how soon a solvent player asks the reasonable question "Why are we subsidizing the losers?"

---

None of this is to be taken as trading advice, just some comments on how things look.  Despite my doggedly (and perhaps stupidly) hanging on to a short position in the financials, I'm willing to test the old axiom "Markets can remain irrational longer than George can stay solvent".

---

A piece in the UK's Financial Times offers one reason why my bearish outlook may be justified that we haven't touched on too deeply:  "Rising oil price threatens fragile recovery."

 

Job Roulette

Although the US unemployment rate data (offishul stuff) won't come out until about this time Friday, we have two reports to ponder in the ADP report and the Challenger  report.

 

Here's how ADP sees things:

Private-sector employment increased by 297,000 from November to December on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the latest ADP National Employment Report® released today. The estimated change of employment from October to November was revised down but only slightly, from the previously reported increase of 93,000 to an increase of 92,000.

 

This month’s ADP National Employment Report suggests nonfarm private employment grew very strongly in December, at a pace well above what is usually associated with a declining unemployment rate. After a mid-year pause, employment seems to have accelerated as indicated by September’s employment gain of 29,000, October’s gain of 79,000, November’s gain of 92,000 and December’s gain of 297,000. Strength was also evident within all major industries and every size business tracked in the ADP Report.

And in the Challenger/Gray report also out this morning:

After reaching a seven-year high in 2009, downsizing activity in 2010 fell to its lowest level since 1997, as employers announced plans to eliminate 529,973 positions. The year came to a close with the lowest monthly job-cut total since 2000. Planned layoffs totaled 32,004 in December, down 34 percent from 48,711 in November, according to the 2010 year-end job-cut report released Wednesday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. December job cuts were 29 percent lower than the same month a year ago when 45,094 cuts were announced. December surpassed August (34,768) as the lowest job-cut month of the year. It was the lowest monthly total since June 2000 when employers cut 17,241 jobs.

Will this be enough to flip the market around?  Probably not.

 

Not that it's bad news; it's really good.  But - that means it's really bad, too.

 

Confused yet?

 

OK, here's the underlying business logic:

• The US may be stabilizing.  Jobs data this morning is a help, and I have to guess that Friday's Labor Department report could be showing 9.7 and maybe 9.6%  - wildly optimistic 9.4%.

• However, what that means is that money woulde start flowing into US denominated whatevers.

• And that would raise the purchasing power of the US dollar.

• As the dollar strength comes up, the price of gold gets hammered.  Like, oh, yesterday, for instance.  When someone apparently got tipped as to what was coming, you think?

• Which would mean - since fewer dollars buy more, that the Dow could drop today because of the changing world money dynamics.

• But wait...didn't the World Bank just issue their first Yuan bonds?  Ah, yeah, see this is where it gets really squirrely.

• So China is making a run at world reserve currency, realizing their have a number of domestic time bombs ticking, on such fronts as pollution, an product quality issues....and.....you get the idea.

Whew.  Makes you feel like you're a kid again and just got off the whirly-gig.  I think I'm gonna puke.

 

Confused Yet?

If you think that's confusing, wait till you read the latest Treasury Department press release.  You need a whiteboard or a note pad just to read it: (good luck)

"The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) implementation team currently housed within the US Department of the Treasury and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) today signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish a foundation of state and federal coordination and cooperation for supervision of providers of consumer financial products and services.

Specifically, state regulators and the CFPB will endeavor to promote consistent examination procedures and effective enforcement of state and federal consumer laws and to minimize regulatory burden and efficiently deploy supervisory resources. Further, the MOU provides that state regulators and the CFPB will consult each other regarding the standards, procedures, and practices used by state regulators and the CFPB to conduct compliance examinations of providers of consumer financial products and services, including non-depository mortgage lenders, mortgage servicers, private student lenders, and payday lenders. "

Enough!   Our "C-level" banking source remarks:

"Whenever I read things like this, it reminds me of “Colossus: The Forbin Project,” where the American and Russian supercomputers begin to talk to each other."

Food Growing

I have to point out the Bloomberg story under the headline "World food prices rise to record on sugar, meat costs."

 

With the disaster in the wings being global famine in 2011 - a disaster for grains, especially with the inland sea now covering much of Australia's prime grain and cattle lands - I won't call you an idiot for not putting in a home garden.  You'd be a damned idiot.  Although, if you can't diet on your own, maybe Universe will provide...

 

Logical Frank

Up...Clif over at www.halfpasthuman.com has some notes on the Logical Frank and his red book which has taken Europe by storm.  And there's some additional insight into the January 7th date in predictive linguistics, so go read and then come back...since in today's "Coping section" I have some terra entity and bird kill speculation to go over with you...Irish notwithstanding.

 

Planely Too Much Coffee

Hard for me to imagine such a thing, short of enough to cause arrhythmias and PVC's, but here's another one:  An airline pilot's coffee spill apparently forced an emergency landing.  Apparently, the pilot was able to stay awake anyway.

 

Know those clear keyboard covers used in industrial settings?  Wonder if Boeing will come out with a clear cockpit cover for the 777 flight deck, you think?

Our Slickest Reporting of the Day

Oh yeah, the prince of puns is back featuring this item to polish off the newsy part of today's report:

 

"Spider-Man's accident all over the Web."

 

Good thing I'm not flying a 777...

 

 

Probably Not Phosgene - Check Your Quake Kit!

Coping: Terra's Biggest Bite To Come?

A number of readers have suggested there could be something to stories around the web that go to the idea of an accidental release of a nerve gas agent  is somehow linked to the death of a former Pentagon advisor.

 

I don't think it's related, and here's why": Yes, John Wheeler, who is a retired military consultant who worked for three presidents was found dead in a landfill, possibly having been dumped in New Jersey.

 

But linking this to a purported leak of phosgene gas and then tying it up as all somehow linked?  Goes a bit far even for our penchant for connecting the dots.

 

For one thing,  Beebe, Arkansas is 32-miles northeast of Little Rock as the (dead) crow flies.

 

The fish kill was reported in several places, but typically, the references were to Roseville, Arkansas which is 95-miles to the northwest of Little Rock.

 

Distance between the two?  109 miles.  That's reason #1.

 

Reason #2 is the absurdity of supposing that a dispersal of phosgene gas would kill the fish.  People don't seem to have much mental acuity anymore, and I feel totaly ridiculous pointing out that fish don't breathe air.  Further, in order to reach the required levels in water, there'd not only need to be 'bubblers' of the gas, but at those kinds of levels, there would be dead humans all over the place.  Not any dead zones of humans that we've noticed so far.

 

Reason #3 is that fish kills are popping off all over the place.  There was a fish kill in Brazil (hundreds of thousands - 15 tons worth), as well as Japan, and now this morning, we're reading about a fish kill of two million fish in the Chesapeake Bay from the Bay Bridge to Tangier Sound.

 

Reason #4 is the distance from Reason #1 to Reason #3 is 900+ miles.  That dog don't hunt.

 

Reason #5 is the hundreds of birds that died off along a stretch of highway in Pointe Coupee Parrish, Louisiana. (Think Baton Rouge.)  That's over 300 miles south of the Friday night bird kill up in Arkansas.

 

"OK, Mr. Wise-ass, what's going on?"

 

What ties together all those parts of Arkansas, has been associated with bird kills, and might also be somehow related to Baton Rouge down river?  You aren't going to like the answer, but here goes:

 

New Madrid.

 

Not only have we had some earthquakes in the central Arkansas area in the past couple of months - and there was a 4.2 in that area back in February of 2005 if memory serves me right.  We has a little tiny 1.9 quake, just wesat of the Arkansas bird kill, too:

 

 

Oh, then there's the nearby quaking in Oklahoma including a 3.0 in area area whose historical map seismicity map may be seen here. Or just keep your peeps another second:

 

 

Were there some other quakes going on recent which we should be concerned about?  You mean like the 6.3 in the Loyalty Islands?

 

Well, yes, and no. 

 

Let me pop up a map I developed last week for Peoplenomics subscribers and then put forth a wild hypothesis:  I drew a great circle line around the globe which very roughly links all the big quakes from the China quake, down through the south Pacific, across the Pacific and Nazca plates to Chile, and let's not forget Argentina last week.

 

 

Now imagine for a moment that nature tends toward symmetry.  We notice this line happens to come down through the Middle East very near those anomalous quakes in the Gulf of Aden, and then it comes down where that big Rift is developing in Africa which scientists figure may turn into a new inland sea in the future. And possibly something much bigger - think ocean.

 

Suppose that with all this activity in the southern hemisphere that some outburst of quakes might come to the northern hemisphere as a result. 

 

If such wild guessing - and it is only that for now - held, then activity might be expected 90-degrees offset from the line - and since nature would likely quake along existing faults instead of creating new ones, maybe the the range would be somewhere in the area of +75  to +105 degrees.  Uncertainty due to the bulge of the earth and so forth.

 

Now take the the Araucania, Chile quake from this week - 38.354 south see how far south my "circle of quakes" goes.  About -43.

 

Add anything from 75 to 105 to that and you cover (at the lower number) and you get latitudes from about Vicksburg, MS all the way up into Canada.

 

Oh, did I mention the dead birds in Manitoba...ooops.

 

If you're looking for something to do this week, consider looking into lost pet reports where you live - they seem to go up before huge quakes.

 

I don't suppose I need to drop another hint on you do I?  OK, notice how that quake in southern Iran overnight (5.4 details here) also fell very close to  my great circle of quakes developing... 

 

So will my "shadow quake line" generally north of the equator appear?

 

I'll leave you with this reader email to ponder while suggesting it may already be appearing...

Hi George,

Two weeks ago, on 21 December, there was an earthquake in N.W. England and on Monday night, 3 January, there was another on, this time in N.E. England. It was about 30 miles North of here and we felt it go under the house, shaking everything up a bit, just after 21.00pm GMT. Only 3.6 on the Richter scale and no damage reported. Last one in this area was in 1970.

Very unusual for the UK to get 2 quakes so close together. And geographically they were more or less on the same latitude. I believe they may also line up longitudinally with the Atlantic plates that meet near to Iceland to the North North West of here and which also created the Pennines, the mountains that run North to South through the centre of the country. Commonly called the backbone of England.

And coincidentally, both of the quakes coincided with the lunar eclipse on the Winter Solstice and the partial solar eclipse at 08.00am GMT Tuesday morning.

Oh, and from my 43 South extreme, England is about 93-96 degrees north.

 

Cheers.

 

---

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Public Debt Climbing

Most mornings, you probably don't wander through the Treasury Department's "Office of the Public Debt" to review their public debt to the penny report.

 

But, as of the end of 2010 we'd managed to tack on a billion dollars in the preceding seven months to push the total public debt over $14-trillion dollars.

 

The public's portion of the debt is about $9.3 trillion while intergovernmental holdings make up an addition $4.6-trillion.

 

Here's where things get interesting.

 

We can see with the way money is being created how a 7.6% increase in debt might be interpreted as highly inflationary.  And, if you push that out to an annual rate, it's well north of 10%.

 

So the question you might want to ask yourself is this:  Can America have a soaring public debt, a soaring money supply (going up 20.5% annualized based on the most recent 3-month rate for M1)  and at the same time allege that prices of general goods are going up at 3% (or lower) rates?

 

When I see things like the Dow going up almost 100 points on Monday, I have to grab the ViseGrips and give myself a pinch:  Things are not operating like they should in the economy...classical economics be damned.

 

My personal view - but not offered as investment advice, since you're on your own there, is that things sure have a feeling of "blow off top" at the moment.

 

Foreclosure Deal?

We could be nearing a settlement between give of the largest mortgage servicing outfits and the attorneys general of all 50-states who set off after the banks in October.

 

Just guessing here, but I expect the banks will write a big check to each state, then promise never to be bad again, and that will be "it" as far as 'justice' is concerned.

 

Gulf Fallout

With the price of oil nudging up to the $100 level, interesting to see that even after the offshore drilling ban was lifted, US oil exploration in the Fulf is way down. 

 

The thing to remember - as I explained last summer) wqas that these big floating exploration & production platforms (E&P) which can run upwards of a million a day in costs to the major oil concerns, aren't just going to sit idly by while Washington makes up its mind. 

 

Nope.  What's happened, I hear from our friends down in the Houston oil patch, is that many of the rigs went to other locations around the world.  The 'day rate'; for the equipment owners might be a bit lower, and there might be higher risks, but the flip side is these platforms don't last forever, and the money behind them has to make sense.

 

For a chart of the short-term Annual refiner average crude oil acquisition cost, click here.

 

The job outlook might not be recovering, but the cost of oil sure is.

 

Milwaukee Flash Mob

An interesting report of a mall up in Wisconsin closing early over the holiday weekend due to a 'mob' incident involving upwards of 100 young people.

 

What's interesting if you read the Journal-Sentinel coverage is the reference to the possibility that a social media platform might have been used to get things rolling.

 

And this, in turn, could be another nail in the coffin for a 'free' internet.  Might even say that when used in this way, such events constitute "home grown domestic terrorism".  Difficult balancing of rights versus responsibilities in this.

 

Quake/Birds, and Fish

A lab seeks clues after 3,000 birds die in Arkansas...and more than 100,000 fish died off in the same period about 150-miles distant if I read the maps right...

 

 

(if the above space is blank you don't have your browser set to play video)

 

Curiouser and curiouser...so we'll step away from this rabbit hole for a day or two.  Except maybe to mention this happened up the road in Kentucky as well, maybe...

 

Oh, OK, in Japan, too, then...

 

Someone up in space have a monster appetite for black bird pies?

 

OK, and the fish kill in Parana...(takes a sec to translate) which has the attention of Brazilian authorities.

 

Oh...and this reader note:

"I am remembering that dead black bird scene from the TV sci fi series FlashForward that preceded the blackout...that enabled people to see their future..."

I'll get back to you in....er....137 seconds.

 

 

(more after this ad)

 

 

 

Coping: With Weather Modification

Calling that Dundee Fella  (and Wilhelm Reich)...

 

Not that things needed to get much worse down in Oztralia where flooding has wiped out a huge amount of this year's crops, devasting homes and lives.  But now things are reported deteriorating more as snakes (or the poisonous sort) and crocodiles are swimming into the towns which are still flooded.

 

You wanna lend 'em a hand, Mick?

---

Meantime, a hawk-eyed reader asked if we'd seen how there's been a secret $7-million pound (money, not weighty, foo) weather modification program going in Abu Dhabi which has created "dozens of man-made rain storms".

 

The underlying technology uses "...giant ionisers, shaped like giant lampshades, to generate fields of negatively charted particles, which create cloud formation..."

 

All of which sounds very suspiciously close to the work done by Wilhelm Reich who was a psychiatrist who found what he called "orgone" energy which some have referred to as the "vital energy of life".

 

There's actually a Wikipedia entry on this stuff describing his work on "cloud-busters"...

A cloudbuster (or cloud buster) is a device invented by Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich with the purpose of draining clouds of "orgone energy". Reich believed that such energy surrounded the earth, and that a cloudbuster would act as a rain-maker.[ Reich conducted dozens of experiments with the cloudbuster, calling the research "Cosmic Orgone Engineering."

At the heart of Reich's work was the idea that orgone energy could be harnessed and put to good use.  Just an assortment of empty pipes is all you need, according to what's known of his works.

 

There are also two kinds of orgone.  The healthy (good) orgone, which is variously described as the sexual or creative energy - he was a psychiatrist, right?) and then there was the negative version called "deadly orgone" which was like an anti-life force.  You'll see this latter abbreviated as DOR.

---

Curiously, this is an area I'm doing a bit of research in at the moment since there are some wild claims made about orgone energy.

 

For one, there's speculation that the Ark of the Covenant was really an orgone generating (or concentrating) device.  Followers of this note that orgone is created (or captured) when alternating layers of highly conductive material (copper or gold) are spaced with layers of organic material (like dry wood).  The thinking was that the Ark of the Covenant could be used to create DOR and thus smite whoever is bugging you while you're leading your people on a desert walkabout....

---

A kind of related conversation over the weekend is of note, since Reich was hounded out of the medical profession by the FDA.

 

While some have argued that Reich was "mentally ill", others say he was right up there with Tesla as one of the greatest minds to visit this rock and that the handling of the Reich case was the analog to the Salem witch trials.

 

The thing about Reich's case which is so disturbing is the official book burning  in 1957 of his materials; thus denying researchers an opportunity to assess and interpret those works which might have shed additional light on orgone and more especially on DOR.

 

The conversation I had this weekend was with an MD who is a leading expert in the field of alternative health and complimentary medicine., who observed, in so many words:

 

"Funny how this stuff works:  New technologies which don't work the government tends to leave alone.  But when something really seems to work, then the government get's really aggressive about shutting down that line of research.  Kinda funny how that works, isn't it?"

 

Indeed it is.  Toss in the famous Air Force 2025 study, and in particular, flip open Chapter 15 "Owning the Weather in 2025" which includes this dandy little bit from the executive summary:

"Technology advancements in five major areas are necessary for an integrated weather-modification capability: (1) advanced nonlinear modeling techniques, (2) computational capability, (3) information gathering and transmission, (4) a global sensor array, and (5) weather intervention techniques. Some intervention tools exist today and others may be developed and refined in the future."

Now that we're reading about "dozens of rainstorms in Abu Dhabi for about $10-million of investment, the question is where does it stop...or is this what's arriving right now?

---

Related, as long as we're talking subtle energy, is the curious chapter 11 title in the 2025 study: "The DIM MAK Response of Special Operations". 

 

What makes this so interesting is that Dim Mak, as any practitioner of advanced martial arts knows, is the "death touch".  It works by screwing up the chi - the life force energy referred to by martial artists.

 

And this related to weather and orgone, exactly how?  Ah!  The reference in the Ch. 11 summary to "ether targeting".

"Ether targeting missions expose or exploit vulnerabilities in the electron medium used by either peer or niche competitors. Special operations ether targeting requires rapid and stealthy insertion and extraction of individuals. Long loiter in the target area significantly increases probability of detection and mission compromise."

Is this a hint at militarization of basic electrons at down at the orgonic life-force-level, or is this more like zapping folks remotely with energy weapons to cook them on the spot?  Not the kind of thing to be talked about at our pay grade.

 

But, like it or not, there's a convincing body of evidence that strongly intimates that the government by going after original thinkers, such as Tesla and Reich, may have developed technologies which might once have been considered woo-woo and borderland.

 

And that further, the financial barriers to entry may not be that high; instead if the conceptualization of alternative science that seems most dangerous.

 

Still, there's an important subtext that has leaked into the mass consciousness: The notion that life energy  is being manipulated in sometimes subtle, other times in-your-face, ways.

---

Oh, at those atmospheric heater projects, Platteville, Colorado, HIPAS outside Fairbanks, and HAARP  (as does it have a companion?)...they are all part of a continuum of research that may hold many breakthroughs not yet in the public eye outside of works of fiction.

---

If you don't think there's an economics angle to all this stuff, this 'new world" will be much different in its speed of arrival.  Think about the Kurzweil book about how  "The Singularity is Near" as you read the recent Broad Area Announcement from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which is shopping for "disruptive manufacturing technologies:

"Ironically, at the same time, increased lethality of our modern weapon systems has resulted in a reduction of the number of large systems required to accomplish missions. This new environment places a premium on fast and affordable manufacturing processes. Furthermore, when the cost of manufacturing spare parts is taken into consideration, it becomes clear that new approaches to defense manufacturing are critically needed to guarantee the future success of the military.

 

To address this shortfall, this Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) is focused on disruptive manufacturing technologies that will have a pervasive impact on DoD systems and platforms, both current and future. Note that while the substitution of higher performing components (for example, ceramics for metals or new semiconductors) is an important area of research, this is NOT the purpose of this BAA.

 

Successful proposals to this BAA will be focused on reducing the fabrication time as well as the cost of materials and/or components that are currently used (or currently programmed for use) in existing platforms or would be used if their price was reduced. Thus, each proposal must have at least one component challenge problem that will culminate in the qualification of the manufacturing approach for existing materials/components where time, price and performance metrics exist for benchmarking."

Woo-woo, war, and job-jacking one-upped...a curious mix, is it not?

 

And arguably, a fine synch-wink from Universe in here, since we recently were talking about the mind-altering "spirit molecule" DMT.  Now here's another occurrence of DMT, except this time as "disruptive manufacturing technologies."

 

Was that a synch-wink?  They keep going by faster and faster...

 

2011's First Good Gaffe

Every time I put fingers to keyboard, there's bound to be something odd come out, especially if done before the morning rtation of coffee hasn't quite seeped in and done its work.

 

Along about mid morning Monday I realized that there was something wrong with the article about Stéphane Hessel.  Sure enough, a reader email asking if we had been unauthorized gender surgery put me on the right track and within a few hours things fell into place. This part of the story was right:

A 93-year old war hero's 30-age book has turned into something of a European phenomena.

What was wrong was the 'wild colleen' reference in the linguistics.  Should have been a reference to the linguistics in the SOTTC report about the  'logical Frenchman'.

 

Somewhat Lost

Meantime, a reader sent in a couple of questions about past articles:

"Last night I watched the movie "Tron: Legacy 3D" with an underlying theme of keep freeware free. I think you wrote something about that but I can't locate it now.

Another out of the blue item is the Russian media has mentioned alleged arms dealer Viktor Bout in recent days. He was extradited from Thailand to New York a few months ago. What an ironic world we live in that his USA foe has retired from public service and now is a member of SPECTRE International. Again I sense you wrote about this but can't quite place it. "

Neither can I.  However, if you scroll down this page, just past the Elliott Wave news section, there should be a Google search tool.  When people write in as ask me where something it, I invariable end up using it, since I have a hard enough time remembering where the coffee pot is prior to sunrise...

 

Tuesday at the WuJo

Our earthquake 'sensitive" has had another one of his visiony thingies about a pending quake.  Don't know what to make of it:

Hi Its 4:30 am and i thnk im sensing a Quake coming 1 to 3 days out.? As i had my Bible out a Ambulance went by with Sirens blaring . Is that a sign.? Im wide awake with coffee and got 8 hours of Sleep george. am i seeing a Solar eclispe coming in a couple of days.? and things can start moving .?Like that carol King song 1970 I feel the earth move under my feet. i see the Sky come tumbling down. You got to be Kidding me God another Quake.? george I want to be wrong

Well, if it's any consolation, we'd all just as soon you be wrong on this and that the ambulance going by was just a coinky-dink.

 

Except there are no "coincidences", of course.

 

---

Monday, January 3, 2011

User Note:  A special Peoplenomics update has been issued at www.peoplenomics.com on the two 7.0 + quakes.

 

Worth a Warring Over?

Depends how you want to do the accounting of the Iraq War (either, thanks) as to whether it was worth it, or not.

 

On the one side, we see this morning the headlines that "Iraq's daily oil production exceeds 2/7 M barrels".

 

All of which would be nice as a fairytale, except that we keep a link to the US Energy Information Administration handy and sure enough, on this page here you can find the following graphic:

 

So, as near I can figure it, about all that has happened as a consequence of the Iraq conflict is 1) we didn't find the promised WMD's, but then again, everyone outside of Washington knows that the Niger uranium notes were forged, 2) we got to sell some purple ink, and 3) as a direct result of the conflict the unemployment rate in the United States is today 2-3% below where it would be if a) the death industries didn't get the artificial stimulus of war spending and b) the didn't have more than 4-million people employed (directly and indirectly) in the military and security industries.

---

My friend Howard Hill seems to hold to the notion that most wars are really fought on behalf of F500 corporations and have little to do with politics, except those of money.

 

Word overnight from the Associated Press that oil is close to $92 seems to argue that we'll surpass $100 oil handily and in short order.

 

And if the underlying crude goes up, there are dozens of stories out that $4/gallon gas may be the national average for the year, although according to a WTSP TV report, $5/gallon gas is not imminent. 

 

Yet.

 

Still, this continues to make the economic case why 9/11 could not have been pulled off without complicity of global governments along the way at some level.  There has been just too damn much money made, controlling oil production, hiring TSA foot soldiers, and the massive expansion of the armed forces to conclude anything else, as I see it.

 

Still, 20/20 hindsight doesn't help, since no one in Washington seems open to anything more than standing by the previously released (and woefully inadequate) 9/11 report which failed to offer a  believable answer why WTC 7 came down, or what that phrase "pull it" meant. 

 

But we're not - as a nation - supposed to remember such things.  Instead we should be dancing in the streets that oil in purple-finger land  is now back to pre-war levels.

 

The very notion that 'terrorism' and that oil mess in the Gulf of Mexico are about rationing of oil in order to support prices while at the same time keeping the economy from collapsing is not something to talk about in polite circles.

 

Which we won't...except, of course,  insofar as the facts continue arrive in alignment with that analysis.

 

Oh, also don't miss the CNN report on the hookup of a new Russia to China which was turned on over the weekend. 

 

Remember the part recently about Russia-China deals no longer being solely dollar-based?

 

What is it we say around here?  Oh yes:  Everything's a Business Model.

 

Throwing Out Healthcare?

With the new year, a new Congress is about to get down to work in Washington where one of the top agenda items seems to be undoing "Obama victories" which were comparatively easy before the Harry & Nancy show got cancelled.

 

Normally, I try to stay away from overtly political shenanigans, such as healthcare has become.  The way I figure it, corporate interests have allowed it to go forward this far, simply because there are enough loopholes for most of the monied players who have financial 'skin in the game' to continue making money, even if the rules have changed.

 

But where I begin to get a bit peeved is when IRS has gotten so many changes that it will take them another month, or so, before Schedule A itemizers and others, will be allowed to file their income tax returns.

 

All of which is mighty disconcerting.  Besides, what if the new congress rolls back other tax changes?  I'll leave that to your imagination.

---

Meantime, the head of the Council of Economic Advisors is bemoaning the apparent game of chicken being played with the federal debt ceiling.

 

My pet theory on this is that lawmakers are driven to such activities because playing a more honest game (5-card draw comes to mind) would reveal their wild-eyed gambling tendencies a little too clearly.  So let's all wrap it up in 'statesmanship' and not call it what it is.  Poker played with the public purse backing both hands.

 

We lose either way.

 

Seat Belts Week

There was a huge increase in China's Hang Seng overnight - up a tad over 400 points.  One reason:  China has just increased its long-time static minimum wage rate by 20.8% in Beijing.

 

It's pretty clear what China is setting off to accomplish:  Now that the US/West is so dependent on China for producing goods, they are starting to get a little 'pricing power' and that will be wielded to increase the ranks of China's middle class.  At some point, they're not going to need the West anymore.

---

Not everyone is sure China will make it through the next few years.  In fact, the Business Insider piece "Albert Edwards: China is a "Freak economy" and it will crash, and take down the rest of the world..." is a pretty grim read of things.  Around here, that's saying a lot.

 

Not too much on the economic calendar here in the US this week.  A small pop up at the open would not be out of line, since the first hour of trading any week is generally akin to Original Amateur Hour.  Or, the opening of a new casino, take your pick.

 

Construction spending is not worth doing a special update on when it's released, my appointment with breakfast taking priority.

 

Tomorrow we get factory orders (which ought to tell us how the four remaining factories in America are doing).  Fed minutes come out tomorrow which always make me wonder how slow the typing pool is at the Fed that it takes this long for them to type them. 

 

Along about Wednesday things will pick up steam with the ADP and Challenger job reports coming shortly after the Mortgage Bankers data. 

 

Thursday's weekly unemployment report may be a bit of a snoozer since the Unemployment Rate Friday morning will be the 800 pound gorilla.

 

Unless, that is, you follow the most meaningful number of them all - the Consumer Debt report (mis-called consumer credit).  The Fed will release that on Friday afternoon with just one hour of trading left in the week, but I figure by the time we get there, the market may be down a good bit from whatever the intraday high today is.

 

Oh, don't forget there's a predictive linguistics "hot date" in the data that comes up Friday (plus or minus maybe 3-days).  If you're like me, you'll have a Maalox cocktail at the ready.

 

Terra's Bites

So much for the 'routine' stuff.  This morning I've got to mention that the real story to be watching may not be related to finance at all, but may instead be related to the large earthquakes which popped off over the holiday.

 

One was a 7.0 down in the Argentina hinterlands, then on Sunday we had a 7.1 down in Araucania, Chile.

 

If you're a Peoplenomics.com subscriber, I will be posting an important map for you to look at later on today (a note will be posted on the UrbanSurvival site when it's available) but it screams of another "coincidence" like the one we were talking about on Sunday which has become a real "in your face" kind of thing.

 

If you have no idea what that means, no, it doesn't relate to the Feb. 27, 2010 Chilean earthquake.

 

Instead of that, you need to be thinking about the "coincidental quake" that just popped off this morning in Utah as a 4.5:

 

If you're not a subscriber but you do want to 'catch up' a bit, take the 7.0 earthquake in Argentina, draw a great circle line through Arkansas where the killer tornados were over the weekend and where there was a bird kill reported Friday night as well as a fish kill 20-miles long.....and then proceed north to the what US State is north of British Columbia.

---

Why the bird kill should come before midnight New Years is an absurd explanation, and a 20-mile long fish kill all at the midpoint between something up north (think stringed instrument here) and the 7.0 Argentinean quake...well coincidence, right?  LOL....

---

Next, I want you to draw a line (again, Great Circle) from the 7.1 quake yesterday through the Utah quake this morning and again, go north till you hit America's biggest state.

 

Then ask yourself:  What's up?  More pieces for subscribers shortly.

 

Oh, and if you're a ham radio operator, the path midpoint for the somewhere up north to the Argentinean quake is about Arkansas.  The Utah quake was only about a third of the way to Chile, so a double-hop with the imperfections of the distance likely a result of F2 layer height (and tilt) differences in the pathing.

 

Cool, huh?

 

Well, er, or not because that does have some rather startling implications...

 

And speaking of implications, you have been watching Tony Ring's continuing tally of earthquake magnitudes from 1973 to present?

 

 

Left axis is quakes per month and the lower axis is 1973 far left to Dec. 2010 on the right and no, this does not include the two 7.0 quakes this month.

 

See a trend?  In case you don't you might want to check Tony's site for one other very interesting chart.

 

Oh, circle January 21 (plus or minus 3 days), too, while you're at it. Terra not-so-firma...

 

The Turmoil Ahead

OK, so this month might not be so much fun after the opening pop today.  Bloomberg has a good interview on with Paul Saffo who is predicting a decade of turbulence ahead for the USA.

 

Why does that sound familiar?

 

Coping:  Preparing for the Right Threat

Had an interesting conversation with my son this weekend about 'preparing for the right threat.'  He, along with some of his friends, are what could reasonably be called "preppers."  As a parent, this pleases me no end, since it's somewhat reassuring that young people (about age 30) do understand at some level how very dicey the human condition on earth is.

 

Among the items on his list, getting a ham radio license has come up to the top of the list so he - and his friends - can keep in touch. 

 

Our conversation was really quite wide-ranging and covered everything from walking shoes to firearms, such are the interests of his friends, as well.

 

Somewhere in the conversation, he got around to mentioning that he was involved in his friend's "planning" and what did I think about that?

---

A lot of people who get into the self-sufficiency/prepping study often get the wrong idea; namely that 'preppers' are wild-eyed gun nuts.

 

Sure, personal protection is one aspect of prepping, but what is the macro threat view?

 

This morning's data on earthquakes is a fine example.  I expect that even with large earthquakes, having guns is not nearly as important as having a month or three of food and water on hand.  Not to mention the need for first aid skills, a good medical kit, a water purifiers, and above all, good walking shoes that have enough miles on them to be comfortable.

 

Might make some interesting stereotyping - useful if you're trying to justify large budgets by conjuring up crazed militia members - but the reality is that failure of government is not the major threat to be preparing for.

 

Depending on where you are in America, the threats that are most important to plan for are (in no particular order) extremely cold weather, gasoline shortages,  hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes.

 

Then when you see that China is upping the local minimum wage in Beijing by 21% you can certainly see the handwriting on the wall there:  Goods coming to America are not going to get cheaper.  Once all the 'cheap' labor out in the world is soaked up by the emerging economies, that will mean that generally the price of goods sold in the USA will go up.

 

To my way of thinking, this means long term we will likely continue to see inflation, or at a very minimum, a conflicted economy where something things we need will go through the roof (food and gasoline?) while the things we can do pretty much without will continue to crater.

 

Another story that should be slapping people 'upside the head' and getting them all worked up into a frenzy to get a garden in, is the report off the BBC this morning that the flooding in Australia's major farm producing area will be lasting weeks into the future.

 

That doesn't spell cheaper food.

 

So, yes, a good eye with an iron sight at 100-meters is a fine skill, as is a first-sized pistol grouping at 45-feet.  And a bow & arrow and sure, shotguns are fine, too.

 

But the real thing to remember is that prepping is not about having the longest 'reach out and touch' round chambered.  It's having the cached supplies so that regardless of what the future brings, you'll be able to take care of yourself so that in turn, you can take care of others.

 

Of all the earthquakes which have gone on in the past year, Haiti, Chile, and so forth, you don't read about gunplay.  You read about food, water and injuries.

 

Once a person is competent with a longarm, a shotgun and a sidearm, all of which can be used as food gathering tools once your away from a city setting, the next most important tool to own is a shovel and the brains on how to use it to turn over dirt and get something out of the ground worth eating.

 

Monday at the WuJo

Good Star for Our Earthquake Sensitive

Remember what I posed last week about earthquakes?

Quakes Over New Years...

4.2 in Indiana of all places overnight?

Our consulting earthquake sensitive sends this:

"yes George its me again Sensors are Picking up a 7 hitting someplace Around new years or After a few days. Im praying as of Now No God no please Let me be wrong . george i was Outside 3 days ago sweeping my carpet and a 7.9 Quake flashed in my mind for 2 seconds. WHAT.? I wasnt going to email you this cause You think i Need the Nuthouse. I think i am nuts to tell you this.No More said. I see the sun is going to do some Crazy stuff in 2011 if so this earth is going to pop off some Big mommy Quakes like 8s. "

If we get a 7.7 or larger between now and Tuesday, then I'll have to issue another gold star.

So this morning I have to issue a 'virtual' gold star to our contributing earthquake sensitive.

 

But what's coming...that's what we want to know now...

"I see a 7.1 hit near santiago Chile today I read my email of Dec 30 and said sensors are picking up a 7 around New years or a few days after, and to my surprise a 7.1 hit in the near same place as the 8.8 last year in Chile Sending thousands of people running .george i put myself out on a limb to predict this on Dec 30. And bingo it happened . If this is going to be a pattern Can there be a Big Quake In the carribean Near the date of the Haiti Quake .? Oh Perish the thought but it can happen.a 6 or near 7.?Do to get the Gold Star.?or is there a bigger one coming in a few days .??????????. Watch and wait ..."

The bow is seemingly justified, supported by the facts now arriving.  So here's a virtual gold star and a sincere wish that our sensitive wasn't so right.

 

"To the Barricades!"

Been watching the data flow by - while now and then thinking about the linguistics around the 'wild Colleen' who's supposed to be around.

 

Sure enough, this may be her:  A 93-year old war hero's 30-age book has turned into something of a European phenomena.

 

In the UK Guardian coverage of the book by Stéphane Hessel, we read this bit which seems to fit the 'wild colleen language':

"Hessel's book argues that French people should re-embrace the values of the French resistance, which have been lost, which was driven by indignation, and French people need to get outraged again. "This is an appeal to citizens, young and old, to take responsibility for the things in our society that don't work," he said. "I wish every one of you to find your own reason for indignation. It's precious."

If the GlobalRev fits, wear it, eh?  I expect translations into English shortly.