A Very Sobering Article

Chaos Theory and The End of Life Style

2007-07-31 - By James West
Black clouds swirl in the high stratosphere over the financial continents. The canaries of mines economic are dropping like lifeless flies into the bottomless pits into which they have been lowered. A profound financial catastrophe of global and biblical proportion looms.
Ignore this scenario at your own peril.
Like lemmings leaping off of cliffs in an ersatz embrace of ecstasy, you probably read the first paragraph of 5 stories a day before you hop in your car/truck/suv for the daily commute to the job that facilitates your American dream.
But those little sound bytes on CNN are starting to mingle and mesh into something much bigger and more sinister than even the heads that talk can imagine.
Peak Oil, worthless currencies, natural disasters, severe climatic alteration and events, widespread growth of infectious diseases and bacteria resistant strains, sky high commodity prices, growing areas of major conflict, terrorism spilling over borders into First World countries.
Could you imagine if all of these situations were to consolidate in timing as to be simultaneous:
1. Peak oil production: The global consumption of hydrocarbon products exceeds the industry’s ability to meet that demand, resulting in a steepening price incline with no cap;
2. Currency devaluation/hyperinflation: The value of the money in your wallet starts to depreciate so fast as to be next to worthless between the time the news broadcast that alerts you to the imminence of the problem and the time you walk (‘cause you suddenly can’t afford gasoline) to the bank;
3. When you get to the bank, the manager advises that your mortgage is being sold, and called on for payment in full, because the currency devaluation has put the bank’s ability to service its own debt is no longer possible;
4. You stumble towards home in a daze, thinking you will stop by the supermarket and get some groceries, only to find nothing left for sale because the transportation companies have ceased delivery of foodstuffs;
5. You get home and reach into your mailbox to discover you’ve been laid off from your job because the company you worked for can no longer make money with the high cost of energy and basic materials;
6. Your house has been ransacked and all of your belongings stolen by roving bands of feckless mobs who got the news about the End of Life Style half an hour before you.
Did I make you smile? Albeit nervously?
Sounds impossible, doesn’t it?
Or does it?
Look at last week’s news. Here’s a selection of headlines for you:
Stocks sink on housing, credit concernsStocks plunge; Dow falls more than 400 Mortgage delinquencies could soar - Moody's Economy.com
Staff stunned as manufacturer announces 90 layoffs
LSI announces layoffs, including 225 in Wichita
Rising Food Prices Curb Aid To Global Poor
Food Commodity Prices Have Risen By 21 Percent Since 2005, Stretching Aid Groups' Resources Thin – CBS News
Tasmania's Director of Public Health has confirmed that the incidence of influenza in the state is increasing.
Russia dealing with Legionnaire's outbreak
The Coming Catastrophe - Avian Flu
Caribbean Net News, Cayman Islands
This is one day’s headlines!


Humanity has created such a tightly interwoven manifestation of industries all designed to ease and perpetuate life on a ball of consumable fuels called Earth, that its destruction becomes easier (and more inevitable) with every percentage point in growth.
What are you going to do to prevent your family falling victim to the swirling forces of doom? Are you going to succumb to any one of the myriad scenarios threatening to engulf a large majority of humankind?
Or will you be one of the lucky few who, heeding the advice of visionary editors, avert disaster through a carefully crafted investment strategy?
Let’s face it. Though the scenario described above represents the extreme edge of probability, you’d have to have your head in the sand to deny that the headlines we’re seeing with increasing frequency represent the harbingers of a civilization teetering on the brink of extinction.
In his latest book, James Lovelock, world-renowned author of over 200 scientific papers and several books, writes:
“We have grown in number to the point where our presence is perceptibly disabling the planet like a disease. As in human diseases there are four possible outcomes: destruction of the invading disease organisms; chronic infection; destruction of the host; or symbioisis – a lasting relationship of mutual benefit to the host and the invader”
He continues:
Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves.
Now James Lovelock is no armchair critic. independent scientist, environmentalist, author and researcher, Doctor Honoris Causa of several universities throughout the world, he is considered since several decades as a one of the main ideological leaders, if not the main one, in the history of the development of environmental awareness. James Lovelock is still today one of the main authors in the environmental field.
So when a guy like him pipes up and asserts that this stuff is actually happening, and happening right now, you’d better sit up and take note.
So we find ourselves looking for strategies to fend off the coming storm, or at least find a way for us and ours to whether it without becoming its prey.
A successful investment approach is key to weathering such storms. Mainstream financial America will be the first pillar in the house of civilized man to fall. Already the signs are visible. (Just look at those headlines!)
James Lovelock is in favor of the use of clean nuclear energy, respectful of the environment : read the introduction of James Lovelock to the book "Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy". He supports the Association of Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy (EFN).
So investing in Uranium and uranium stocks is a good strategy.
Gold is the ultimate safe haven asset class.
But the best strategy of all will be health, wealth and prosperity. Check back often to discover the secret strategies that will save you and your loved ones from the dark times ahead.

It'll Be One Big Country Soon Enough

O, Canada! More Americans Heading North
The Number of Americans Moving to Canada in 2006 Hit a 30-Year High
By MARCUS BARAM
July 31, 2007 —
Blame Canada!
It may seem like a quiet country where not much happens besides ice hockey, curling and beer drinking. But our neighbor to the north is proving to be quite the draw for thousands of disgruntled Americans.
The number of U.S. citizens who moved to Canada last year hit a 30-year high, with a 20 percent increase over the previous year and almost double the number who moved in 2000.
In 2006, 10,942 Americans went to Canada, compared with 9,262 in 2005 and 5,828 in 2000, according to a survey by the Association for Canadian Studies.
Of course, those numbers are still outweighed by the number of Canadians going the other way. Yet, that imbalance is shrinking. Last year, 23,913 Canadians moved to the United States, a significant decrease from 29,930 in 2005.
"There has been a definite increase in the past five years  the number hasn't exceeded 10,000 since 1977," says Jack Jedwab, the association's executive director. "During the mid-70s, Canada admitted between 22,000 and 26,000 Americans a year, most of whom were draft dodgers from the Vietnam War."
The current increase appears to be fueled largely by social and political reasons, says Jedwab, based on anecdotal evidence.
"Those who are coming have the highest level of education  these aren't people who can't get a job in the states," he says. "They're coming because many of them don't like the politics, the Iraq War and the security situation in the U.S. By comparison, Canada is a tension-free place. People feel safer."
One recent immigrant is Tom Kertes, a 34-year-old labor organizer who moved from Seattle to Toronto in April.
Kertes attributes his motivation to President Bush's opposition to gay marriage, and the tactics employed during the war on terror since 9/11.
"I wanted a country that respected my human rights and the rights of others," he says. "We joked about it after Bush won re-election, but it took us a while to go through the application."
Kertes, who moved with his partner, is happy in his new home. "Canada is a really nice country. My mother is thinking about it. My stepfather has diabetes and has health issues. So, he'd be taken care of for free if he moved up here."
Not that Kertes doesn't get homesick every once in a while. "I have no intention of giving up my citizenship. I have an American flag at home on the wall  I didn't have that in Seattle. All of a sudden, I'm a nationalist. On the Fourth of July, I really missed being home."
Jo Davenport, who wrote "The Canadian Way," moved from Atlanta to Nova Scotia in December 2001. She also cites political reasons for her move, saying that she disagreed with the Bush administration's decisions after 9/11.
"Things are totally different here because they care about their people here," she says, explaining that she's only been back home once or twice.
Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Canada mocks Moscow's ambitions: 'This isn't the 15th century'

Russian sub plants flag under North Pole
By Guy Faulconbridge
Russian explorers dived deep below the North Pole in a submersible on Thursday and planted a national flag on the seabed to stake a symbolic claim to the energy riches of the Arctic.
A mechanical arm dropped a specially made rust-proof titanium flag onto the Arctic seabed at a depth of 4,261 meters (13,980 ft), Itar-Tass news agency quoted expedition officials as saying.
Russia wants to extend right up to the North Pole the territory it controls in the Arctic, believed to hold vast reserves of untapped oil and natural gas.
But Canada mocked Russia's ambitions and said the expedition was nothing more than a show.
"This isn't the 15th century. You can't go around the world and just plant flags and say 'We're claiming this territory'," Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay told CTV television.
Under international law, the five states with territory inside the Arctic Circle -- Canada, Norway, Russia, the United States and Denmark via its control of Greenland -- have a 320 km (200 mile) economic zone around the north of their coastline.
Russia is claiming a larger slice extending as far as the pole because, Moscow says, the Arctic seabed and Siberia are linked by one continental shelf.
"Then Russia can give foundation to its claim to more than a million square kilometers of the oceanic shelf," said a newsreader for Russia's state news channel Vesti-24, which made the expedition their top news story.
"It was a soft landing," Tass quoted expedition leader Artur Chilingarov as saying from on board one of the submersibles.
The rest of the expedition team, floating on a support vessel between the giant ice sheets of the Arctic, broke into applause when news came through the mission had been completed.
"There is yellowish gravel down here. No creatures of the deep are visible," said Chilingarov, 67, a veteran Arctic explorer and parliament deputy for the pro-Kremlin party.
ARCTIC ADVENTURE
Expedition leaders have said their main worry is to resurface at the ice hole where they dived as the mini-submersibles are not strong enough to break through the North Pole's deep ice cap.
One of the aims of the expedition is to allow oceanographers to study the seabed and establish that Russia and the North Pole are part of the same shelf.
"The aim of this expedition is not to stake Russia's claim but to show that our shelf reaches to the North Pole," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Manila, where he is attending a regional security conference.
The Mir-1 submersible reached the seabed at 1208 Moscow time (4:08 a.m. EDT).
A second Russian submersible, manned by Swedish businessman Frederik Paulsen and Australian adventurer Mike McDowell, reached the seabed 27 minutes later. It reached a depth of 4,302 meters.
Soviet and U.S. nuclear submarines have often traveled under the polar icecap, but no one had reached the seabed under the Pole, where depths exceed 4,000 meters (13,100 feet).
(Additional reporting by Christian Lowe in Moscow and David Ljunggren in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada)

Can You Imagine Being On The Wrong End Of Something Like This?

The FBI's Twisted Priorities: Murder, Wrongful Imprisonment Sometimes Necessary to Preserve Drug Investigations
Last week, a federal judge excoriated the FBI for not only hiding exculpatory evidence that would have exonerated four innocent men who served more than thirty years in prison, but for rewarding those who did the hiding and covering up with bonuses and promotions. For this crime against American citizens, American taxpayers will now shell out more than $100 million. Thus far, none of the government agents actually responsible for this crime have been held accountable. Only rewarded.
Well, we're just getting started. On July 19th, the House Judiciary Committee held hearings on the use and abuse of confidential drug informants. The testimony Assistant Director of the FBI Directorate of Intelligence Wayne M. Murphy gave at that hearing is truly astonishing.
The transcript below was provided by the ACLU. It comes from the Q &A session after the witnesses provided their initial testimony. Murphy's being questioned by Rep. Dan Lundgren (R-Calif.) and Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.). The context: Lundgren and Delahunt have cited incidents in the past in which the FBI has covered up evidence that its confidential drug informants have committed violent crimes (including murder) in order to protect their identities, so that they could continue providing the bureau with information. They've cited other incidents, including the case above, in which the FBI has hidden exculpatory evidence, and allowed innocent people to go to prison. Lundgren and Delahunt want Murphy to assure them that the FBI has instituted policies to ensure that these sorts of incidents won't happen again--that murderers won't be protected and innocent people sent to prison in order to preserve drug investigations.
Remarkably, Murphy refuses to make such assurances. We pick up the transcript just after Lundgren has asked his initial question, and Murphy has obfuscated. Lundgren follows up:
Representative Lungren: If I could just ask my question once again very simply. That is: Is there a policy in the FBI to share information with local and state law enforcement officials when you, the FBI, have become aware that your confidential informants have engaged in serious violent felony activity, not all criminal activity, serious violent felony activity, in the jurisdiction of the local or the state authorities?”Murphy: It is my understanding Congressman that there is not a specific documented policy, directly to answer your question sir.Representative Lungren: Well I thank you for that because you may have given me the basis for enacting our legislation to require that. Do you think it should be?Murphy: I think it's difficult to make a generalization that will fly in every circumstance. And in fact in some cases there are activities which are closely coordinated with a local law enforcement activity but have equities that affect other local law enforcement activities. We're being asked to respect and support the acts of one local law enforcement agency against another. And I want to say again, I don't mean in terms of confrontational but in terms of balancing the equities and the interests of a long term investigation. So I don't think it would be fair or accurate for me to try and characterize a general solution ....Representative Lungren: All I can say is that if I were still a law enforcement officer in the state of California and you were to tell me that the FBI was reserving judgment about whether to tell me that you have CIs in my jurisdiction that are committing serious violent felonies, I would be more than offended.I'll say. And let's keep something in mind, here. This would be a morally dubious policy even if were were talking about matters of, say, national security. But we aren't. We're talking about the FBI concealing evidence of murder and other violent crimes, and of knowingly allowing innocent people to go to prison in order to not disrupt drug investigations. In other words, all of this is necessary, the FBI is saying, to keep people from getting high. And when confronted by the United States Congress, the FBI can't even say outright that this is categorically a bad idea, nor can it promise that it will institute a policy preventing these things from happening in the future.
We get more of the same when Rep. Delahunt questions Murphy:
Representative Delahunt: The scandal occurred in the Boston office in the late '90s, about a decade ago. These issues have existed for decades now.... Is there a legal responsibility on the part of the FBI, in the case of murder, to report information to local or state law enforcement agencies?
Murphy: Congressman the Attorney General guidelines in their infinite...
Representative Delahunt: I'm not talking about the Attorney General guidelines. Do they have a legal responsibility, currently, to report evidence, both exculpatory, or evidence of a crime, when a homicide is being investigated?"
Murphy: If you will indulge me Congressman, I'd like the opportunity to answer that question offline because there are various circumstances under which that question might be answered differently that would include some of the aspects about how we manage sources, how we make decisions about the management of sources. And I would appreciate the opportunity to answer that question for the record offline.The hell with that. If the FBI is "managing its sources" in a way that allows for innocent people to be murdered by its informants, or sent to prison for crimes they didn't commit, we damned well need to know about it.
To his credit, Rep. Delahunt doesn't back down.
Representative Delahunt:I'm not asking about qualities or guidelines or considerations. Does there exist today, in your opinion, a legal responsibility for the FBI to communicate, in a homicide investigation, either exculpatory information to the state and local authorities, or evidence that would indicate that an individual is responsible for murder? That's a 'yes' or 'no' question.
Murphy:I would prefer to answer that question offline if you wouldn't mind, thank you Congressman.
Delahunt: Well I do mind. And I don't see the reason why that answer has to be provided offline. That's a legal question.Now, go back and read about the "House of Death" case.
Delahunt and Lundgren say they plan to introduce legislation that will force the FBI to both divulge exculpatory evidence and divulge evidence that its informants have committed violent crimes. Good for them.
Rather horrifying, though, that we'd need a law like that in the first place.

To All Good Things, Comes An End............

When the Investment Music Stops

Wednesday, August 01, 2007 - FreeMarketNews.com
Just as in most other facets off life, it pays to have a Plan "B" backup. And it makes sense to think things through and plan a bit BEFORE the proverbial "fat lady sings."Dudley Pierce Baker writes in a post on goldseek.com:"Perhaps we have not yet reached the point where the natural resource sector shares will continue higher without the benefit of and support of the general stock markets. But, we believe the day is coming very soon as the U.S. Dollar breaks down and that gold and silver will explode upward as they get the attention and respective of investors around the world. "When this game is over and the music stops there will not be chairs for all players. There will be some winners and many losers. We believe the winners will be those investors that have aligned themselves to the natural resource sector and the many different ways to invest therein. An incredible number of choices, we as investors have, mutual funds, ETF's, gold & silver bullion, mining shares and/or their long-term warrants, etc."The message here has to be one of commitment and patience, picking your investments carefully and enjoying this 'game' knowing that when the music stops we will be sitting down and richly rewarded."Jordan Roy-Byrne at trendsman.com concludes:"This current setting is very bullish. There is key long term resistance at 155-160. Going back the past 10 years we see a cup and handle pattern. Since 2006 the index has constructed the handle and now it appears that a major breakout is at hand. The target for this pattern would be 280. As far as immediate risk-reward, the current spot is one of the three best entry points since 2001. Each time the Bollinger bands have pinched in, the XAU has risen significantly over the next few months." Staff Reports - Free-Market News Network

Nicely Said...................

"Government is very good at taking credit for advancements created in the free market, and very good at blaming the free market for the failures of government." -Harry Browne

Some People Are Stepping Up And Speaking Out Against The NAU

Unrest in Canada Over North American Union

Wednesday, August 01, 2007 - FreeMarketNews.com
Connie Fogal says the SPP is the "hostile takeover" of the apparatus of democratic government and an end to the "rule of law". There has been a kind of coup d'état over the government operations of Canada, U.S.A. and Mexico.The first formal step towards the NAU was NAFTA. Ron Pastor of the Council on Foreign Relations has affirmed that. The Canadian Action Party/Parti action canadienne, a registered federal sovereigntist political party in Canada, began as a party in 1997 precisely because none of the mainstream parties were calling for the clear, outright, unequivocal abrogation of NAFTA, or for control of our national monetary system.Even now, our mainstream Canadian political parties and significant citizen groups are still stuck on re-negotiation of NAFTA (they talk of fair trade) which completely misses the point. As such, they remain blinded, and of no use to the citizens who care about our nation and our sovereignty, our independence, our civil liberties, our civil rights, our culture, our freedom.The second formal step was the integration and subjugation of Canada's military into the US military command under NORAD, NORTHCOM, and the Bi-National Planning Agreement. That is why our Canadian military is in Afghanistan.The third formal step in the creation of the NAU was the implementation of the respective liberty-stripping anti-terrorist legislations, the Patriot Act in the USA and the Anti-terrorist Act in Canada. This has been the mechanism to implement the police state apparatus necessary to enforce Fortress America.The fourth formal step is the SPP, Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement. That agreement is a "hostile takeover" of the Executive branch of government, a coup d'état over the government operations of Canada, U.S.A. and Mexico.(The three branches of democratic governance are: 1, the legislative arm, i.e., the policy makers, the people we elect; 2, the judicial arm, i.e., judges who interpret and apply the laws created by the policy makers; and 3, the executive arm, i.e., the civil service, the bureaucracy, who implement and run the policy and operations of government.)The SPP is a treasonous metamorphosis of our federal and provincial government bureaucracies into formal instruments to implement the agenda of the shadow government - the military/industrial/financial complex exemplified by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives who in turn are dominated by the U.S Council on Foreign Relations, and the US military apparatus. The S.P.P. has created the competitiveness council (10 to 16 people from industry and academe unelected by citizens, unaccountable to citizens, unrepresentative of citizens) in each of Canada, U.S.A., and Mexico. They meet with our Prime Minister and the two Presidents. They actively direct the restructuring of the civil service apparatus and governance of Canada, U.S., and Mexico away from instruments serving the public interest and nationhood, and into tools to serve the power and greed of the industrial, financial, military complex. This Competitiveness Council will be at Montebello directing the three leaders in August, 2007 finalizing the last steps of the NAU. Since March, 2005, under the direction of three senior cabinet ministers of each country, about 100 working groups of unelected officials from government and industry have been meeting at taxpayer expense deciding on and directing the implementation of the restructuring of the apparatus of governance and the form of rule over the people. Their command goes out down the chain of bureaucracy expending vast amounts of taxpayer dollars implementing the changes in our border crossings, in our airports, on our airplanes, in our skies, on and to our roads and highways, in our personal identification systems, in our health, in our vaccines, over our food supplements, in our pesticide safety levels, in our schools and universities, in the exploitation of our natural resources - our rivers, lakes, oil, gas, in our environment, in the arms industry, in the manufacture and use of depleted uranium, in the exploitation of and experimentation on our indigenous people and our military personnel, in immigration, over our right of Habeus Corpus, in our right of due process, our right to assemble and our freedom of speech, etc., etc.For this reason the Canadian Action Party/Parti action canadienne calls for electoral reform not just in how we elect candidates, but why and how the bureaucracy operates. In particular, we call for a curb on the exercise of power in the executive branch of government, and especially in the P.M.s office.This need is of paramount importance because it is the key to why and how three nations (Canada, USA, Mexico) are being dismantled.Remember, if you believe in democratic accountable representation, there must be a universal franchise. Government of the people, by the people,for the people still is right. It is not government by officials of any organization or interest group whether public or private who are unelected by, unrepresentative, and unaccountable to the general public. We need to reform our government structure so that we can recall and replace any person we elect when they fail to keep their promise or do their duty to us, the citizenry; and we also need to turn our executive arm of government back to being the servant of the citizens.The Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement (S.P.P) is deliberately not a formal international treaty such as NAFTA which is set out in a system of rule by international law. As a legal treaty the SPP would never have flown because it would have been exposed to scrutiny. It remains a work in progress agreement of incredible treacherous magnitude. It has already succeeded in implementing profound changes to three nations integrating the geographical region of North America. We do not even know the full extent of what has been completed or what little is left to be accomplished.We know that a powerful think tank chaired by former Sen. Sam Nunn and guided by trustees including Richard Armitage, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Harold Brown, William Cohen and Henry Kissinger, is in the final stages of preparing a report to the White House and U.S. Congress on the benefits of integrating the U.S., Mexico and Canada into one political, economic and security bloc.We know that the final report, published in English, Spanish and French, is scheduled for submission to all three governments by Sept. 30, according to the Center for Strategic & International Studies.We know that the data collected for the report is based on seven secret roundtable sessions involving between 21 and 45 people and conducted by CSIS. The participants are politicians, business people, labour leaders and academics from all three countries with equal representation.We know all this because it is described in a CSIS report, "North American Future 2025 Project."Right now, focus on being at the 25 km perimeter around Montebello, Quebec on August 20 and 21, 2007. In a separate e mail I will send suggestions about Montebello actions.Connie Fogal Leader/Chef, CAP/PAC