Daily Archives: May 11th, 2007

“Beeing” Survivors

Remember a couple of weeks back I posted some news about bee colonies dying off? Well, it seems that “organic” bees aren’t dying:

Over the past few weeks we have highlighted reports that suggest bee populations are declining at rates of up to 80% in areas of the U.S. and Europe. Experts are calling the worrying trend “colony collapse disorder” or CCD.

While no one can pin point the exact reason as to why bees are declining so rapidly it is interesting to note that no organic bee keepers are reporting losses.

A recent report at sci-tech website redicecreations.com cites a statement from longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper Sharon Labchuk from Prince Edward Island who states:

I’m on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies.

Labchuk has twice run for a seat in Ottawa’s House of Commons, making strong showings around 5% for Canada’s fledgling Green Party. She is also leader of the provincial wing of her party. She is adamant that it is the rigors of the commercial agricultural industry that are wiping out bee populations.

Yah. So much for the “cell phone” and “powerline” theories that penetrated the airwaves by the CMSM. I was talking to a farmer friend of mine at work today and we talked about the bee die-off. We both agreed it had to do with pesticides.

And now who wouldn’t want us to know about any nasty pesticides killing off the nice bees that make us honey and enable us to have veggies and fruits?

It wouldn’t be those nice chemical corps like Monsanto, Bayer and Dupont would it?

Nah.

The CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) and Absurd Currency

I was just checking out prisonplanet.com on a lark when I came across  a link and followed it home:

Foreign Affairs is the most important and influential journal of International Relations in the world. It is the mechanism by which the Council on Foreign Relations disseminates the game plan to people in polite circles. CFR’s positions on core issues represent the raw building blocks for most of the gibberish spewed by the corporate media and the maniac fascist policies of the “developed world.” Publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are dumbed down versions of Foreign Affairs that are published daily. Television news is the same thing, but dumbed down again. Foreign Affairs is also where politicians from several countries look to determine what’s safe to say, which policies are doable and what needs to be done. A degree in International Relations is largely a certification of a student’s ability to internalize CFR jargon and concepts.

Got the picture?

Now, what did the most important and influential journal of International Relations in the world just say about the U.S. Dollar and the global economy?

In summary: The U.S. dollar is an “absurdity” and the only way to stave off a global disaster is for most countries to join one of three global currencies, based loosely on: the dollar, the euro and a pan Asian currency.

I encourage everyone to read The End of National Currency in its entirety, but I’ll quote some of the more remarkable parts below:

The dollar’s privileged status as today’s global money is not heaven-bestowed. The dollar is ultimately just another money supported only by faith that others will willingly accept it in the future in return for the same sort of valuable things it bought in the past. This puts a great burden on the institutions of the U.S. government to validate that faith. And those institutions, unfortunately, are failing to shoulder that burden. Reckless U.S. fiscal policy is undermining the dollar’s position even as the currency’s role as a global money is expanding.

Four decades ago, the renowned French economist Jacques Rueff, writing just a few years before the collapse of the Bretton Woods dollar-based gold-exchange standard, argued that the system “attains such a degree of absurdity that no human brain having the power to reason can defend it.” The precariousness of the dollar’s position today is similar. The United States can run a chronic balance-of-payments deficit and never feel the effects. Dollars sent abroad immediately come home in the form of loans, as dollars are of no use abroad. “If I had an agreement with my tailor that whatever money I pay him he returns to me the very same day as a loan,” Rueff explained by way of analogy, “I would have no objection at all to ordering more suits from him.”

With the U.S. current account deficit running at an enormous 6.6 percent of GDP (about $2 billion a day must be imported to sustain it), the United States is in the fortunate position of the suit buyer with a Chinese tailor who instantaneously returns his payments in the form of loans — generally, in the U.S. case, as purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds. The current account deficit is partially fueled by the budget deficit (a dollar more of the latter yields about 20-50 cents more of the former), which will soar in the next decade in the absence of reforms to curtail federal “entitlement” spending on medical care and retirement benefits for a longer-living population. The United States — and, indeed, its Chinese tailor — must therefore be concerned with the sustainability of what Rueff called an “absurdity.” In the absence of long-term fiscal prudence, the United States risks undermining the faith foreigners have placed in its management of the dollar — that is, their belief that the U.S. government can continue to sustain low inflation without having to resort to growth-crushing interest-rate hikes as a means of ensuring continued high capital inflows…

In other words, from what little I understand about financial-gobblety-gookese, is that although the US economy with our fake fiat currency is in deep doo-doo with our deficit, the Chinese don’t dare stop financing us because if they don’t, our economy tanks too quick and theirs might crash too. On the same token, if we don’t get our deficits under our control and interest rates rise too fast, we and the Chinese are still screwed!

Bu$hcon and Cheneyburton couldn’t have planned it any better; empty the Treasury to load their offshore accounts, have a war financed by the Chinese and the American consumer, load up their friends offshore accounts and still get more loans for their banking buds via of Americans buying cheap Wal-mart shit!

The Wal-Mart gravy train might be ending soon though, sales are declining across the board for them. But the elite claim that the economy is slowing down in an orderly fashion. Uh-huh, sure.

Hmmm, if you have the means, buy gold. That’s in the above article also.

Or if you think you’re smart enough to take your CFR poison straight, God knows I’m not, hook onto this for your pleasure. Bon apetit!

Don’t Go On A Diet, Move To Canada!

When I spyed the title to this article in NewScientist.com, my eyebrows did a “Mr. Spock” arch. How can one part of the Earth have different gravity than other sections? That would mean the mass of that part of the planet would be lighter or denser, right?

If it seems Canadians weigh less than their American neighbours, they do – but not for the reasons you might think. A large swath of Canada actually boasts lower gravity than its surroundings.

Researchers have puzzled for years over whether this was due to the crust there rebounding slowly after the end of the last ice age or a deeper issue involving convection in the Earth’s mantle – or some combination of the two.

Huh? Bouncing planetary crust? Weird science indeed!

Satellites solve mystery of low gravity over Canada