Another Boner for the Pentagon?

So here's the scenario. The U.S. Navy is running exercises between southern Japan and Taiwan.

Involved is the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk ... a 1,000 foot supercarrier with 4,500 personel on board. She is accompanied by at least a dozen American warships which are supposed to protect the carrier from hostile aircraft and submarines.

Part of the costly defensive screen usually also includes at least two U.S. submarines.

Everything is going along "just swimmingly" until an undetected Chinese submarine suddenly "pops-up" right smack dab in the middle of the exrcise ... haroh yankee boy ...within missle and torpedo range of the Kitty Hawk. Oh my!

According to senior NATO officials the U.S. had no idea that China's rapidly growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication.

Let me understand this .... with year-over-year multi-billion dollar budgets, satellites, interception of voice and data transmissions, spies, double-agents, triple-agents and God knows what other espionage gadgets and things that go bump in the night the U.S. and its allies use each and every single day to track the "goings-on" of other countries .... after all that .... the Pentagon still had no idea of China's level of naval sophistication? Wow!

Obviously someone has to walk the plank on this one. The only question is ... will it be Larry, Curly or Moe?

How Big Oil and Governments Bend you over the Barrel

As I'm writing this post, oil is trading at $92.84 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gasoline is near $3 a gallon in the U.S and $1.03 per litre in Canada. Meanwhile Exxon Mobil reported a $9.4 Billion (thats with a B folks) dollar profit for the last 3 months.

Here's why it's always your turn to be in the barrel;

• The world's cheapest oil to extract comes from Saudi Arabia and costs $2 a barrel to pump out of the ground. The Saudi's, through their national oil company, produce over 8 million barrels per day which for the most part is off-limits to Western oil companies ... hmmm.
• For Western oil companies it will cost between $5 to $7 a barrel for easily accessible oil. So let's say the cost is $7 per barrel.
• Factor in capital costs, like building the pumping facility at several billion dollars a pop and that will typically add another $5 to $7 dollars per barrel. So for easily accessible fields it costs Big Oil $14 to get that liquid gold out of the ground.
• For expensive fields like the Gulf of Mexico, Texas or the tar sands in Canada, the average production and capital cost is somewhere between $13 and $25 per barrel.

Now look out - here come the governments of the world. They have bequethed upon themselves the mantle of unrestricted taxation. Depending upon where you live on this planet, taxes and royalty payments can range from 40% of profits in the United States to over 90% in places like Russia or Libya.

Add to the mix the fact that there hasn't been one single new refinery built in the U.S. since 1976. As a matter of fact 50 have closed since the 1990's rather than making the necessary investments to comply with pollution laws. The net result are low gasoline supplies caused by a lack of refining capacity.

The domestic refining industry has continued to consolidate, allowing operators to avoid building new refineries, run existing ones at full throttle and thus causing many of the outages which have been experienced over the last few months.

Last but not least big oil companies refine more oil than they pump themselves. For example, Exxon refined 5.6 million barrels a day in the third quarter of 2007 .... but only pumped 2.5 million barrels a day. Chevron sold 3.5 million barrels a day of refined products ..... but only pumped 1.7 million barrels per day.

Mark Cooper, who is the research director for the Consumer Federation of America, said prior to a hearing by a House Judiciary Committee antitrust panel in Washington last May that Big Oil "have no interest in building spare capacity because that would undermine their pricing power." He went on to say at the hearing that "this is a picture of fundamental market failure," and that "Congress and the administration have stood by and done nothing to help consumers." "This is just mismanagement but they get away with it because their is no competitive discipline."

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is quoted as saying "There is near unanimity among economists that there is a concentration of power." The oil companies "have clearly demonstrated that they will abuse it."

To bring gasoline prices down in the short term, Cooper urged Congress to use its antitrust authority and investigate whether the refining industry has become too monopolistic. He also called for creating a strategic reserve to help ease price spikes when a refinery is taken offline.

I would urge Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada, to also address this extremely serious situation ... because at the end of the day ... the citizens of this great country, like the proverbial golden goose, can only lay so many golden eggs.

Does this mean that some Chinese Women can be referred to as (fill in your own joke) - Heads?

Used Condoms are being recycled into hair bands in southern China.

The China Daily newspaper reported that the condom hair bands have been found in local markets and beauty salons in Dongguan and Guangzhou cities in southern Guangdong province.

A bag of ten of the recycled bands sells for just 25fen (three cents).

The paper quoted a local dermatologist who gave only his surname as Dong ... (I know - condoms - dong - what are the chances) as saying that "despite being recycled, the hair bands could still contain bacteria and viruses." "People could be infected with AIDS, genital warts or other diseases if they hold the rubber bands or strings in their mouths while waving their hair into plaits or buns."

A government official was quoted as saying that recycling condoms was illegal.

I can think of at least 10 great one-liners as I'm sure you can ..... go crazy!

Smells Un-Fishey to Me !

In 2004 China became the leading exporter of seafood to the U.S. In 2005 Chinese imports rose by 14% and by a further 23% in 2006. So far, in 2007, they are up another 34% over 2006.

As a matter of fact, China is Number 1 in aquaculture in the world. Now for the nasty stuff!

Every year, 3.7 billion tons of sewage is discharged directly into China's rivers, lakes and coastal waters, some of which is used by the aquaculture industry. Only 45% of China has any sewage-treatment facilities, the worst in all of Asia.

Not only are the Chinese using contaminated water, but then the aquaculture industry crams as much fish and shellfish as possible into their facilities to maximize production. This generates additional large volumes of waste, further contaminating the already contaminated water. Then the Chinese try to control the spread of bacterial infections, disease and parasites by pumping the food supplies with antibiotics and the waters with pesticides. Mmm Mmm Mmm chemicalized fish ... sure am looking forward to dining at my favorite seafood restarant.

Many of the chemicals used by the Chinese are banned in the U.S. But traces of these chemical cocktails have been showing up increasingly in imports - especially from China.

Food & Water Watch in its report titled "Import Alert: Government Fails Consumer, Falls Short on Seafood Inspections." makes the point that, "In addition to potentially making people sick, overuse of such drugs is contributing to antibiotic resistance, a growing health concern in a variety of foods."

Meanwhile back at the ranch, what are the Dunces over at the FDA doing about this? As usual ... very little. They're having a real tough time cutting through the red tape that they always seem to wrap themselves in.

Beijing has put on their mantle of righteous indignation and is adamant that it is doing nothing wrong and characterizes warnings issued by U.S. officials as irresponsible, the exact same phraseology they used after the recent scare over toothpaste contaminated with diethylene glycol.

In that scenario, China's General Administration of Quality Supervision fumed that "so far we have not received any report of death resulting from using the toothpaste." "The U.S. handling of this case is neither scientific nor responsible."

Perhaps its true that no one died from the toothpaste but what about the 100 people who died after apparently taking cough syrup containing DEG, an industrial solvent used in paint and antifreeze ... another fine example of Chinese product quality!

As far as China's contention that its the big bad U.S. government who is being irresponsible? Thought you'd like to know that just recently the Chinese court decided to sentence their country's former top regulator to death ... hmmmmm!

Perhaps he will be executed by being forced to ingest the lead from all of the childrens toys which they're also exporting to the U.S. Now that would be responsible!

PS: Stop buying any product that is manufactured in China and see just how quickly they and all those greedy American corporations who are outsourcing their manufacturing to China get their sorry-ass acts together!

Robert's World for November 12/07

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a device in 2003 that he says diverted and copied onto a government supercomputer every call, e-mail and Internet site access on AT&T lines running through a San Francisco switching station. Hmmmmmm. Is AT&T the American Tattle Tale Company ..... just wondering.

How's this for a MORONIC quote? Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, testifying before a Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill said ... are you ready for this folks ...... "privacy no longer can mean anonymity. Instead it should mean that GOVERNMENTand BUSINESS properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information." Woooooooowwww! Holy brain cramps Batman! ........... Mr. Kerr, please put on your Dunce Hat and go stand in the corner!

Just one day after Dumocratic Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign confirmed that her Iowa political director Chris Haylor had approached Geoff Mitchell to ask a planted question as to how HC would be tough on President Bush about funding the Iraq war, another person has come forth with a similar accusation. In this one a female student at Grinnel College was approached by a person on Silary's campaign staff and asked to pose a planted question about global warning during a campaign stop at a biodiesel plant in Idaho on November 06. ........ Memo to HC's campaign staff: To those of you who thought that planting questions was a clever election strategy ... please don your Dunce Hats immediately and join Donald Kerr in the corner.

In a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. Poll, 53% of those surveyed said that most members of Congress do not deserve re-election, the highest figure since the question was first asked in 1991. Giddy-up .... it's time to clear the deadwood out of Dodge.

Some 250,000 Palestinians currently reside in Jerusalem. Since 1967, an average of 300 citizens a year have sought to obtain Israeli citizenship. But over the past 4 months alone the Interior Ministry has been flooded with 3,000 applications, primarily from residents of the Arab neighborhoods unlikely to remain under Israeli sovereignty after the upcoming talks later this month aimed at carving-up some more of Israel to keep the terrorists happy. This should speak volumes to the Palestinian Authority but me thinks that they're too pre-occupied with "wiping Israel off the map."

Ten schoolchildren in the UK are being tracked by RFID chips in their school uniforms as part of a pilot program. The chipped children are enrolled at Hungerhill School in Edenthorpe England, a school for ages 11-16, and this experiment is supposedly meant to simplify the school's behavioral reporting systems ..... sounds very Orwellian doesn't it? Hey kids ...... here is what you can do to totally mess-up these techno-control geeks ..... just ask someone to carry your shirt around the building while you're somewhere else.

It's Time that the Religious Right had the Guts to Get It Right !

Our Congresses for the past 94 years, starting with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act and the Income Tax Act of 1913, have been nothing less than an absolute, total disgrace.

They have sold us into tax slavery, they have allowed the Fed to devalue our currency through inflation and to blatantly and incessantly cause panics, recessions and depressions as they rip off the US public over and over again, ad nauseam, they have shredded our Constitution in every way possible every chance they get, they have either authorized or condoned the slaughter of our children in an almost continuous series of wars under an ongoing policy of perpetuel war for perpetual peace and perpetual profits in order to line the pockets of trillionaire pigs who never have enough, they have stifled the moral outcry of our pulpits using the Income Tax to threaten their tax-exempt status if they speak out, and now they threaten to launch us into World War III over an issue that should have been settled 90 years ago.

We would have been better off with a dictatorship! Don't laugh, because that is where we are headed!

The leaders of the religious right need to pull their heads out of their butts and stop endorsing candidates because they might be pro-life and anti-gay marriage.

Their myopic and incredibly naive view of our world is something the Lord will hold them accountable for, because like the Pharisees, they have failed to discern the nature and the signs of our times or to distinguish between truth and lies.

They have foolishly allowed a pack of revening wolves wearing sheep's clothing to manipulate them by showering them with a plethora of contrived and worthless platitudes and by approving token actions on moral issues, actions that are taken solely for political reasons and not because of any underlying moral conviction.

They can't even get our s0-called Christian President to sign an executive order that would allow our military chaplains to pray in the name of Jesus without incurring the wrath of their superior officers. Why then does this executive order even need a debate and/or a petition of concerned citizens to get our "beloved", so-called Christian Commander-in-Chief to put it on his agenda?

Our narrow-minded Christian right talks about pro-life and anti-gay marriage platforms as if these were the only issues that mattered. What about honesty and integrity?

• What about outright lies to Congress to get them to approve a war for profit?
• What about traitorous false flag attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the murder of several thousand of our citizens and the baseless and continuing orchestration of a phony war on terror?
• What about the slaughter of millions of Iraqi civilians and thousands of our soldiers and contractors to facilitate a grab for oil fields by an evil group of satanic trillionaires?
• Is it pro-life to kill that many civilians for the profit of some of the most evil men that have ever walked the face of the earth, men whose lusts and perversity would make the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah blush?
• What about the financial scandals, one-bid contracts, obstructed investigations into every manner of graft and corruption and the politicizing of our justice system?
• What about the blatant invasions of our privacy and illegal wiretaps and data-mining of Internet and telephone service records?
• What about a chief executive who thinks he is above the law, who has made the appendage of signing statements to the laws he signs into a form of art?
• What about blowing the cover of one of our CIA agents because her husband dared to speak the truth about some phoney weapons of mass destruction?
• What about the numerous homosexual pedophiles, child pornographers and sadomasochistic perverts who grace the halls of Congress and the White House, many of whom have been caught in the act of soliciting minors and Congressional pages for sex? Do you think they are anti-gay marriage advocates?
• What about the male homosexual prostitute who has spent many nights at the White House?
• What about the torture and the extraordinary renditions of innocent people and the suspension of their rights to habeas corpus, and the humiliation of prisoners, all authorized by the drooling perverts in our current shameless Administration?
• What about the off-shoring and outsourcing of our jobs, the looting of our pensions, the destruction of our middle class, our economy and our currency, which will no longer be the reserve currency of the world thanks to the profligate policies of the current Administration?
• What about the incessant and blatant lies about economic statistics and the illegal 24/7 manipulation of all our financial markets?
• What about the failure to enforce our borders and our immigration laws so big business can have a ready source of slave labor?
• What about the secret destruction of our sovereignty with a clandestine North American Union (with Canada and Mexico) which the current Administration is trying to sneak past us by stealth?
• What about the War in Afghanistan to take over their opium poppy fields so the CIA can continue to fund their black operations, which are aimed at destrying our sovereignty?
• What about all the laws which have just been passed which give our President dictatorial powers over our military and over our state militias if martial law is declared, or which allow our President to declare that people who protest against our government's actions are enemy combatants and are no longer entitled to the protections provided by our Constitution?
• What about allowing evolution to be taught to the exclusion of God's creation? Have they ever done anything at all about this issue?
• Have they done anything about banning abortion completely by overturning Roe vs. Wade? Have they supported any states that have tried to do either of these things?
• Did they fight hard enough to get federal judge appointees of the President confirmed, or did they just make the appointments to make you happy and then not follow-up?
• Do you think we should stop with a ban against partial birth abortion?
• Have they passed any laws, which in any way discourage gay marriage or civil unions or have they supported any states that have tried to do this?

And finally ............ what do you think about a President who thinks that followers of Mohammed, who use the Koran, worship the same God as Christians and Jews, who use the Bible? Wow, the depth of his Christian understanding is nothing less than profound!

The above is an excerpt from an article written by Bob Chapman who is the Publisher of The International Forecaster newsletter (www.theinternationalforecaster.com) a compendium of information on business, finance, economics, social and political isues and espionage/intelligence gathering. Mr. Chapman has also served in the U.S. intelligence community.

This article gave me pause to think. I hope that it will do the same for you.

Welcome to the United States of Islam

In his book "Schmoozing with Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal their Global Plans - to a Jew!" WND's Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein asked mideast terrorist leaders to describe life in America if al-Qaida won the war.

Are you ready? Here's goes .... and you thought our politicians were three fries short of a Happy Meal!

• all American women must cover their hair because uncovered heads are a form of nudity. Those women who refuse may be stoned.
• all Jews and Christians would need to pay a special Protection Tax.
• special taxes for all non-Muslims, including one for the right to cultivate land, but as a non-Muslim you cannot own land.
• no new Churches or Synagogues could be built. Existing ones can remain but services cannot be conducted loudly or in any public fashion.
• the ringing of church bells or blowing of the Jewish shofar would be forbidden.
• Prostitution is punishable by 100 lashes. If the prostitute is married then he or she will be stoned to death.
• prostitution by Islamic definition doesn't mean the selling of sex but rather all extramarital sexual relations.
• a man will be allowed to marry 4 women.
• a thief will have his hand cut off.
• all alcohol is banned.
• American movies and television would be shut down.
• American media outlets that don't conform to disseminating Islanic messages will be closed.
• music videos will be banned and according to The Committee's Abdal-El ... "these whores Madonna and Spears will be thrown in jail until they admit they made sins and return to the moral way. If they don't, they will be stoned to death or 80 times hit with a belt."

Just a few excerpts from Mr. Klein's book.

Good God Y'all ! ..... The Wicked Mr. Wilson Pickett

A little bit of This and a little bit of That

The odds on Ron Paul becoming President have been cut from 66:1 to 12:1 and have him going head to head with Rudy Guiliani for the Republican nomination.

It suddenly struck me the other day just how apropos the party logos for the Republicans and Democrats are. One is a jackass and the other Dumbo the elephant.

Big Blu is a 30,000lb massive ordinance penetrator and is referred to as the Mother of All Bombs. Well boys and girls, the U.S. airforce has just asked Congress for $88m to equip B2 stealth bombers with racks strong enough to carry the bomb.
According to the air force this is an "urgent operational need from theatre commanders."
John Pike a defence expert at the Globalsecurity.org think-tank says that the request for Big Blu has "bombing Iran written all over it."

The U.S. is building a forward base named - Combat Outpost Shocker - just 5 miles from the Iranian border.

Notice the gradual ratcheting-up of rhetoric to acclimatise everyone to the threat of war. The mantra among the dweebs in Washington these days is - "Iran is the new Iraq." Rah Rah Sis Boom-Bah!

The nuclear aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, its strike force and two smaller helicopter carriers, the USS Wasp and USS Kersage, which are marine amphibian assault craft have been taking part in an American Persian Gulf exercise since November 2nd.
This on the heels of Iranian General Ali Fahdavi stating that his forces are ready to strike and block oil traffic through the Straits of Hormuz.

Apparently there are rumours in the intelligence community of a false flag operation that is being planned for either Long Beach or Houston. Apparently it will be a detonated device. Another 911 type scenario to inflame Americans and win their passionate support for the bombing of Iran.
Just a rumour ... let's see if it plays out.

Here are the latest terrorist stats.

• The U.S. has 775,000 suspected terrorists on their terror list.
• 53,000 have been questioned since 2004. What's happening with the other 722,000?
• 269 have been denied entry into the U.S. .... that's it?
• No stats on how many have been renditioned. Wonder why?