A pretty good read about the republishing of a book detailing what happened socially when the banksters and their political puppets lose control of their printing presses, back in the Weimar Republic. What follows, in the historical record, would be classed in the US as a red versus blue civil war (note, red state and blue state are overly simplified, look closer at the records and this red blue schism is urban versus "other than urban", in just about any state you want to look at. Then it turned into a general large war as we all know when they weren't able to repair all the damage, and those "elites" created internal and external patsies to blame all their troubles on.

It can happen again, too...

    The collapse of fiat currency systems lead to the collapse of the blue urban areas *really quickly*..as they have no actual human needed product, none of the necessities I mean. The currency system must be sound, not overly inflated or manipulated excessively for it to keep working. If they screw it up, "bad stuff" happens and the system breaks down.

    In the record, they flee the cities and go on looting rampages, that's the real bottom line, the cities become untenable for the most part. The "blue" areas are completely dependent on imports and exploitation of the red areas, despite claims they "support" the red areas. This "support" is a false notion, it is merely modern day imperialism backed up by the controllers "trickle down" economic theory of credit and currency creation at the top, in the mega blue urban areas, then lending it into existence-complete with charging interest on this newly poof created currency- at lower levels, until eventually a pittance makes it to the red areas, even though they really produce all the needed "stuff".

Of course there are variables, government checks now go to a lot of places, but once you subtract that, and a bout of fiat currency panic, such as loss of the FRN and the world's reserve currency would bring, would certainly subtract that as those checks go worthless for getting much real goods, because look at real wealth production..the red areas start the whole thing rolling, because that's where the food/water/energy/materials come from. All the stuff necessary for modern life. And the manufactured goods today..the stuff that keeps all the retailers busy..increasingly comes from places that might just cease taking fiat currency A as they deem it worth-less and less.

Anyway, a decent little read from Ambrose: Paper money

This is something that is really disturbing to me and I hope to more people, food security and prices. We have a food commodities market now that is skewed way out of proportion, it results in higher than necessary prices for consumers, really doesn't address farmers security, forces people to pay tribute to-once again-that nest of global thieves in Manhattan.

I farm because I want a peaceful life, do an honest job, and just make a living, not a killing, and provide food for people..because all of that is a combined good idea. But see, we all are subject to the parasite tax now, we've become defacto put into economic bondage to these gents, and they try to hide it like saying biofuels drive up the prices of food, etc, which is hogwash, and will also kill off the only viable option we have to use instead of pumped crude for all the millions of existing vehicles out there. This is the same sort of thing they do in the metals markets, and the same guys doing it, game the system because they now pwn the system..and they shouldn't..no one elected these thieves, but they sure have seized control.

Here is a nice interview with an additional link to the original story on manipulations in the global food markets.

Oh, food security? We swapped actual stockpiled mass quantities of food, which is a good idea, for server entries in these investor banks and letting them skim off zillions. That's not security, it's stupidity.

"Ya, Mom, what's for dinner"?

"Here ya go Junior and Sis, nice heaping plate of news reports about some huge banks with their leveraged and hedged futures contracts..dee lish"!

"Wahhh..we wanted real food"!

"Sorry, our betters decided this was..better..it makes them more money, which we all know now is the most important thing in the world..we are lucky we all get to work for them"

"Oh..."

This is an indication of the moves I have been saying that china will do as the economy changes around the world. Now that they have extracted the bulk of the necessary manufacturing knowledge they need from the west, they no longer absolutely "need" the western markets. It's not that they will abandon them, but they now have the wherewithal to not be fixated on them, a significant change. They had to export cheap and work really hard for a long time, just so they could get access to western currencies so they could turn around and get the high tech goodies from those nations. This is done, accomplished for the most part. They can build most anything, in mass quantities, at globally competitive prices, and will now just get better at it.

  Now stage two, the big shift, where they emphasize their internal markets more, the thing I said was 'coming soon". It got here. Here is the reference, China and internal markets They move this way and institute polices to rapidly expand their middle classes, this makes them really much wealthier, and eliminates the potential for mass social unrest (while the western nations are killing off their middle classes and increasing the odds of mass social unrest...)

  Stage three is then another expansionist move they will make into areas of the world where they source raw materials from. This will be an almost unprecedented diaspora type event, millions of people going to set up businesses in cooperation with the locals, on a much larger scale than they are doing now, which is impressive enough. they have to, they have to get millions to move someplace else, they have run out of water and arable land at home. They will develop way more of an interest exporting and trading with these raw resource areas than they have with just the fiat currency "consuming" nations (they want real stuff for their manufactured goods now, they have about had it exchanging IOUs for just relabeled other sorts of IOUs for all their expotts. This has gotten old for them. It's also why they started unpegging from the dollar). This big change will also include exporting just a ton of their population as a necessity move. They *have* to, they have no choice at all, all you had to do to see this was look at some simple data from years ago, demographics and so on, and extrapolate it. They have to lose tens of millions of their people out, or run dry, plus they have this hugemongous young male surplus, plus people with good college degrees and no domestic jobs for them. that means..they have to go expansionist.. They simply do not have the water and the space any more, and need to keep expanding, or their fatcats lose their cushy jobs and heads..so the orders will come down to go this way, because that is the only other option they have, internal collapse, or expand..

  This will be part of the deals they arrange with a lot of foreign nations, offer them all kinds of manufacturing help and natural resource extraction help, and a ton of "engineers" and so on moving there will be part of the deal. That stage three move, when it begins in earnest, will be (IMO) the tipping point for the US to lose world's reserve currency status, right then, and to hit a really fast decline (barring some other real hard to predict wildcard). There will be "enough" indicators for that point to narrow the timing down better once it gets closer, that's when the major dollar rout will occur.

Much fun and games in the USA then.

(just a note: the past full month now my net connection has been more down than up, and even when up really flaky. I was more relying on my slow cell connection and "bent" the TOS a little-tethering- just to have any connection at all, so I didn't want to push it and lose that as well. I use a WISP and they got hammered with a huge batch of the radios we customers use that are all crapping out just a scosh past warranty, and they are proprietary and expensive. They've replaced mine twice now, but only a matter of time before it craps out again, and the speeds are really slow now. So it goes. Allegedly they might switch to a more "4g" technology and apparently I might be on the shortlist for the initial trials. Anyway, that's the reason I was mostly absent for several weeks, I could only skim the major stories and add the odd comment before losing connection, didn't have the luxury of my normal JE back and forths until just a coupla days ago.)

New JonesBlog update. Louisville, Kentucky

We are starting out on a new collaboration on retinal research. Fun stuff.

I hate it when I put work into humor and no one notices, so maybe some folks will notice it here. :)

    There was a story a few days ago titled Giant Planet Nine Times the Mass of Jupiter Found

    Thread, segue, tangent, and a reference to Space Panda's, I doctored up
    this photo.

    Who can't love a cute cuddly planet eating space panda?

    Too bad we can't embed images into the comments, it would have been funnier faster.

    So, enjoy. :)

Jonesblog has finally made the transition to modern underpinnings. It is now running on Wordpress... Huzzah.

When people extol the values of a political philosophy, I like to look to history for empirical data. Obviously republican forms of government with general police powers to enforce the common will are much more common than successful libertarian states. We can look to Athens, the Roman Republic before Sulla or Caesar.

There is one prominent exception: Iceland between the period of Norse settlement (probably 8-9th Century) and Norwegian domination (12th century). Iceland was a remarkable place during these years but due to a number of problems eventually was subsumed into Norway. The country sported a national legislature and a national court system supported through a combination of private enterprise and taxes, but it had absolutely no executive power. People suggest it was the first democracy to rule a country. Well, it wasn't (it's hard not to consider Athens a country), but it was quite remarkable nonetheless.

Icelandic society had basically three social classes based on offices, obligations, and conditions of servitude. The top class was occupied by the "godhar" who possessed property rights to a "godhord" which was a public office which contained legislative, attorney, and priestly roles. The godhord could be sold, loaned out, inherited, etc. In other words it was treated just like real property. The godhar collected taxes on the maintenance of temples, received income from arbitration and attorney services, and had certain rights regarding international commerce, such as first pick of goods from an overseas merchant. While "godhi" is usually translated as "chieftain," they didn't "rule" areas, and only were responsible for people who entered into contracts with them.

The second class were the bondar or thingmen, who were freeman farmers who entered into a relationship with a godhi. The bondi was responsible to represent the godhi's interests when serving on a jury at the thing ("thing" being legal assembly), were expected to serve as guards or soldiers for the godhi if necessary, and so forth. Bondir were allowed under Icelandic law to change allegiances more or less at will, so this relationship had to be mutually beneficial if it was to last.

The third class were thralls, or slaves, who were usually either people captured in raids or prisoners of war. If a thrall was freed, the freed man or woman would have certain legal obligations to the former owner, and the former owner would have paternal duties to the freed individual, but the children of freed thralls would be fully free citizens with no such obligations. Thralldom provided a sort of POW status for those captured during warfare or raiding operations, and provided a limited set of legal rights to those so held. Thralls weren't "slaves" in the way we think of them from American history in terms of simple human chattel, but rather individuals who were captured at war and afforded some legal protections provided that they'd work. Thralls could own property and were afforded the right to purchase their own freedom if such wasn't given by their "owner."

Now, for the Icelanders, life was surprisingly good compared to Continental Europe. While life expectancy from birth in France was about 20 years during the 10th century, assuming the child wasn't exposed to death in Iceland (infanticide was legal), the child could expect to live 45 years. Moreover the rate of dental caries in France over that shorter lifespan was 10% (meaning 10% of teeth were lost on average, or were decayed). Despite the longer lifespan, the rate in Iceland was 2%. The typical theory is that this would indicate a general lack of carbohydrates in the Icelanders' diet (they ate mostly dairy products, meat, and dried fish smeared with butter).

The longer lifespan is all the more incredible due to the way the Icelandic justice system worked: if the sagas are any indication blood feuds were quite common and may have actually had a stabilizing impact on Icelandic society due to how they were structured. These were generally resolved in court via lawsuits where the side which lost most would be compensated by the side which lost less. Often these were arbitrated with the support of extended families, but sometimes they were actually full law suits.

This system worked remarkably well for a remarkably long time (about three to four centuries). However, eventually Iceland was essentially annexed into Norway. The major causes for the Icelandic decline were:

1) Environmental degradation and erosion (a surprisingly common problem in the pre-modern world, but one which was particularly problematic to people on an island with limited land)
2) Climate change (the little ice age) which cut off Iceland from the Greenland colonies and made the island politically and economically dependant on Norway, and
3) The conversion to Christianity and the political struggles over the church in Iceland eventually allowed Norway to annex the island without a fight (though more than 100 years after the conversion)

After losing independence, Iceland would not regain it until WWII. However the system worked surprisingly well for a surprisingly long time period, and was (relative to the time) not a very bad place to live by any measure.

However, of course, this worked fine for an insular area like Iceland. It would not have worked in a place more easily subject to invasion.

Further reading:
"Medieval Iceland" by Jesse Byock
"Viking-Age Iceland" by Jesse Byock
"The Vikings" by Else Roesdahl
"Everyday Life in the Viking Age" by Jacqueline Simpson

My single largest concern with the health care reform bill here is that the law, if upheld, would severely damage some of our most important Constitutional rights as American citizens. These rights are codified in the 5th Amendment and protect us all from unfair prosecution by the government in two ways: by requiring that due process not be denied, and by prohibiting the government from requiring self-incrimination.

It's important to realize how this mandate works as opposed to, say, the mandate to be insured when you drive in this regard. The state cannot force you or anyone else to admit to a traffic infraction or misdemeanor, so the only way this can be enforced is to require proof of insurance to drive, and to write tickets when this is not present during a traffic stop. Nonetheless, at least in my state, this can be challenged in court if you have insurance but the proof of it was not in the car during the traffic stop.

Obviously this sort of enforcement measure doesn't work when requiring people to purchase health insurance. I suppose Congress could make visiting an emergency room without insurance to be a misdemeanor or even a felony but that would just discourage the uninsured from seeking medical help when it was necessary. Consequently, Congress attempted to do something that's unprecedented: require disclosure of non-violation as part of the tax code and penalize people appropriately. This is where things become problematic.

To be sure there's no problem with Congress deciding to raise everyone's taxes by 2.5% and then giving everyone a tax credit equivalent to the current penalty, but that's not equivalent to the current system. Instead, if you make over about 28000 USD/year, you pay 2.5% as a penalty but if you make less, you pay $695 as a flat penalty. This penalty is equivalent to that which is assessed when one is convicted of various misdemeanors. While I think it might be argued that the objection of folks making more than 28k per year might be shadows instead of substance, for those making less, I don't think the law is Constitutional because it imposes a fixed penalty, requiring self-incrimination and denying due process. This is hence a "fine of not less than" structure pretending to be a tax, requiring self-incrimination, and adjudicated to a standard that would be impermissible if assessing a federal misdemeanor. I believe that such would be adjudicated to a preponderance of evidence, which is the standard for civil cases, not criminal cases. There are ways this could bleed over into criminal cases as well.

If this is upheld as Constitutional, then it is not an understatement to say that this is as much a threat to American liberty as any part of the so-called war on terror. The threat here is substantial and one that I don't think most Americans on either side of the isle appreciate: by eroding due process in the name of a social interest, we make it possible to use the tax code to make an end-run around the 5th Amendment, rendering our valued Constitutional protections of limited value. It seems to me that both parties seem intent on destroying due process guarantees in one way or another when it suits them, and I am very concerned about the future of my country. Our last hope at present is with the courts.

If this is upheld as Constitutional, there's no reason why a state couldn't list a bunch of crimes and require self incrimination on tax forms. At that point we move ever closer to a society characterized by "show me the man and I'll find you the crime." This is not what I want for my country. And while I have policy concerns over a single payer system in this country, they do not rise to this level. Let's hope that the courts protect our rights not to self-incriminate, and to ensure we have due process when accused of not having health insurance that the government deems acceptable.

Closer pirate action

And by all means, let us have the feds and fearless leader continue to dump on Arizona, to protect this sort of action. I mean, those are just poor unfortunate pirates who just need jobs, the jobs gringoes won't take..or something like that.

    I mean I didn't really realize that folks down there in Texas refused to take the pirate jobs, maybe it doesn't pay well or something, so we must import "guest workers" to fill those slots. We should offer them nice benefits and retirement packages as well..and instant drivers licenses, any name they want, low interest loans-scratch- outright grants to get better new pirate boats, free healthcare, personal translation services so they can apply for more government help, and subsidized more modern and lethal weaponry. They need decent tools for their jobs. Someone has to protect us from those dangerous bass fishing terrorists!

The FDA is now claiming, in a convoluted case involving raw milk, that you have no inherent right to choose your own food, that this "right" exists solely with the Federal government.

OK, here's a situation where market forces are going to ignore a tremendous source of wealth, wealth that could be taken from what is now a huge environmental disaster, the pine beetle infestations.

  The pine beetle basically kills off entire huge forests. It is unstoppable. Hundreds of millions of pines in western north America are dead. The deal is, this wealth wouldn't show up for years and years..so..it probably won't happen, there are no short term profits, just huge short term expense, but long range it *would* pay off. The "snatch wealth from the jaws of disaster" involves converting all this loose carbon into biochar, before we have regional sized forest fires or it just rots and still releases the carbon. There's enough potential there to improve the soils in millions of acres and provide a ton of really useful rural work. but..that no short term profit catch 22. So, how to do it?

My idea is to stop this carbon credits nonsense, take that same theoretical money and do it. Trading credits on the market just skims that investment potential away from the taxpayer consumers. All I can think of is direct multigovernmental efforts with something this scale, in part because so much of this now standing dead timber is on public lands. Print the loot up (no taxes, I mean print it up and start paying a lot of unemployed people with it), spend it, get it done. Get huge biochar facilities up and running and get that stuff to farmers all over to plow into their soil, the soil where our food comes from. National security, heck, global security.

  Or watch it rot away, or someday with a dry summer, areas like small European nations in size will burn up. That's the choices. Millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, or deep down in the soil where it acts wonderfully to help regulate subsurface soil moisture and help plants grow, and keeps that carbon sequestered for decades to centuries.

That insider whistleblower case about the rigged precious metals market keeps getting interesting. The NY Post is reporting the authorities are now doing a criminal probe of those manipulation allegations.

A rather vivid description of the standard operating procedure for modern high finance.

More or less what I have been saying, but I am not as afraid of any collapse as the "insider" giving the lecture in the article. Because I know the bulk of those electronic promises of future wealth called "pensions" and so on are *already gone*, already "collapsed", and there never was any intention of actually swapping them back for all the retirees so they could have living expenses.

  The whole article is about cons, so really..that was the ultimate magic beans for the milkcow con the grifters have been selling the public..and municipalities..and unions and organizations and other corporations.... "Gives us all your extra loot for decades, we'll "invest it", then we promise to pay you back later on even moar, forever and ever"! I mean, geez loweez,,, The numbers have never added up, it just cannot be done. That money/wealth is long gone. The rest is ..what to call it..chimeric wealth. Giant ponzi scheme. Sure it has paid off for some. that's how they work, they have to build the hype, so the earlier investors get back some big bucks and get all tuplip mania about it, they "sell" the con to their friends, and it snowballs from there.. only for awhile though, then they collapse once too many are "owed" more than what is coming in.

  So...there's no way it can pay off for the vast retiring boomer generation and beyond, because all ponzi schemes rely on new investors to pay the old investors, and the lie is that the money is "working for you" someplace in magical fairyland ville upstream. Once the pool of new suckers slows down, it gets harder and harder for ponzi schemes to operate, because they *don't make money* they just skim a lot and divvy some out to keep everyone faked out that it is a perpetual motion money machine.

    They'll try accounting tricks and come up with even more exotic forms of future credit, plus always the old faithful run the printing presses. Then tell people they should be robbed..err..taxed more.. all of that ...but the real wealth no longer exists, it has already been spent. It's gone.

You know the famous white van and speakers for sale con? It's famous, happened all over the country, I even saw it once in a parking lot in Stone Mountain Georgia when a friend was driving and I talked him out of it, told him straight up it was a con, freakin obvious. Oh man he had instant greed in his eyes and heart though, that blinded him to reality, so he couldn't see it. Anyway, that's the vast bulk of pensions and retirement accounts and so on today, a real impressive heavy box..it even looks like a speaker inside, nice wood cabinet and grill...you get home, plug it in, nothing. Open it up...full of rocks. The sellers are long gone by then. Your thousand dollar speakers that you "invested" 200 in was a *box of rocks*. Because no one is going to give you real thousand buck speakers, except for a thousand bucks. There ain't no free lunch, there is no magical something for nothing, money doesn't work, money is imaginary property, people have to work, and perpetual motion-something for nothing- doesn't ever work at all.

OK, it is pretty bad now, but just suppose..there's nothing they can do about it, and it keeps leaking forever until it runs out. We need to know how much is in that field and estimated recoverable amounts, but my guess is, and it is a total guess, enough to kill the gulf of mexico pretty much once it spreads out all over, which it would. This is also going to put the kabosh and much more offshore drilling for quite awhile.

And here's another thing...I haven't seen any reason for the explosion/fire. How come no one is speculating on a deliberate attack yet? Why is this *crickets* in this day and age? OK, I just did, as a possibility. Maybe not probable, but a possibility.

OK, more links size of the spill

Maybe it is Halliburton's fault

^^^^ that one sure seemed to take a little while to come out, didn't it? I think there's another example of a corporation that is just too big to exist. They have been implicated in just tons of bogus corporate activities and bogus competence in a lot of their endeavors.

With that said, where are the oil sucker ships/tankers? Seems like they could have something like a long pipe they could maneuver down close and just start sucking the oil from as close to the leak point as possible, then load tankers with it and take it directly to a specialized refinery that could deal with salt water contaminated oil easier (they have to do that with our strategic reserve oil anyway, because it is stashed in old salt mines, and that refinery is down in Louisiana IIRC). Then there needs to be a way to quickly separate oil from seawater and put the water back in the ocean, perhaps with a big centrifuge like device? They have something like this on some diesel air intakes, a spinning fan that shoots the heavier dust and dirt off to the side and out and away before it hits the filter.

My guess is, this will wipe out gulf fishing for a long time though. Might be a good time to throw some shrimp, etc in the freezer.

Ha! I thought I was down on our favorite "investment" bank.... Check out Tarpley's rant.

More righteous ranting at the link, including an important point I agree with (although on a lot of issues I don't agree with Tarpley)..the tea party folks have been seriously compromised, mind faked, if they think the R party will do anything constructive with this set of events. Just like they equated unlimited campaign donations by corporations to be "free speech" instead of just looking and going "Hey, a bribe"! There will be no "reform" of the R party..or the D party for that matter..ever. Waste of time. The largest most constructive change we could do in the next election is *every* incumbent out, replaced by independents.