Big Trouble in Little South China Sea

Greetings, dear reader, and apologies for the long hiatus. Your faithful marsupial correspondent has been occupied with the tedious business of earning a (marginal) living.

It's been a year since I last wrote about the situation in the South China Sea. That gap was due not to a lack of events, but rather to my perception of utter disinterest in the subject on the part of my fellow Americans. We do have a serious blind spot when it comes to events outside our own borders. None the less, with events continuing apace, the issue of territorial disputes in the South China Sea has even started to appear in the mainstream corporate media. And what a report that is. Do you like the header? "BATTLELAND - Where military intelligence is not a contradiction in terms". News Flash, sweethearts; military intelligence is always a contradiction in terms.

But my objection is not to the silly trappings of the thing, but rather to the slipshod manner in which the facts are presented. It's disturbing to note that this video, which is essentially a Taiwanese propaganda cartoon, actually contains more useful information, (after the first 35 seconds of silliness), than the print report in Time linked above.

  I'm going to include here a graphic that I used in my first post on the South China Sea, about two years ago. The map is a beast, but it's needed to show the relationships.


Map courtesy of Wikimedia

Look in the center, near the top. See that blob of land with the pipeline running north-east up to Hong Kong and Macao? That's Hainan Island, and part of the People's Republic of China, (henceforth the PRC, to distinguish it from Taiwan, which is also has claims in the Spratly Islands).

Now look down and to the right from Hainan. See the Paracel Islands? Those are (mostly) within the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone of the PRC, as measured from Hainan Island. Note, however, that the Paracel Islands are also (mostly) within the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone of Vietnam. The PRC seized the Paracel Islands from Vietnam in a brief campaign during the mid-1970's, and has held them since then. It was here, in the Paracel Islands, that the new Chinese garrison was recently emplaced, as described in the MSM story linked above.

Now look further to the right and down a bit, see Scarborough Reef, just west of the Philippines? That was the location of the confrontation between the PRC and the Philippines in May of this year (2012). See this article in the Asia Times Online for a discussion of that altercation, (and notice how this is treated as a very serious issue by Asians, in sharp contrast to the casually dismissive attitude of US media). Here, however, the situation regarding boundaries is very different, and really quite unambiguous. Scarborough Reef is within, (again just barely), the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone of the Phillipines, but roughly 600 miles from Hainan Island, the nearest point of land claimed by the PRC. So what is the PRC claim based upon? History. The People's Republic of China asserts that Scarborough was historically Chinese, and therefore modern China is entitled to claim it.

OK, for the last hotspot, look down and to the left from Scarborough Reef to the legend "South China Sea". Directly below that is a mass of colored dots, and legends stating "occupied by" followed by the names of the five main disputants, and a legend marking Mischief Reef. That whole area is the Spratly Islands, although it bears repeating that the word "islands" is a highly optimistic label. The Spratlys consist mostly of partly-submerged islets, rocks, and reefs. What few actual islands exist are low coral mounds, never more than 5 or 6 meters, (call it 15-20 feet), above sea level. Most are partly submerged at high tide. Although the Spratly Islands are spread over 170,000 square kilometers of sea, they total less than 10 square kilometers of land.

So, you ask, if they're just a collection of wet rocks and bottom-ripping reefs in the middle of god-forsaken nowhere, why all the fuss? There are three reasons.

First, right of passage. The South China Sea is the second busiest shipping lane on the surface of planet Earth. More than half of the oil which transits the oceans of the world in the hulls of the so-called supertankers, passes through the South China Sea at some point during its journey.

Second, fish. The world's fisheries are being depleted at a frightening rate, with multiple staple food species, such as the blue fin tuna, staggering on the edge of utter collapse. Some of the Asian nations which are party to the disputes in the South China Sea depend heavily upon fishing to feed their growing populations. Any government which cannot feed its people cannot maintain itself in power for long.

Third, oil and gas, the single biggest cause of war and misery in the world today.  In July of 2011, retired US diplomat David Brown penned an interesting article in the Asia Times Online, in which he asserted -

Chinese petroleum geologists are thinking big, however. Luo Donghong, a senior manager of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), predicts that China will confirm reserves of 22 billion barrels of oil in South China Sea deepwater fields by 2020, according to Bloomberg. That's half again the size of Daqing, China's largest onshore oilfield - which is now nearly depleted. CNOOC's Zhang Gongcheng says upwards of 200 trillion cubic meters of natural gas are in the South China Sea seabed as well, the Economist reports.

So, 22 billion barrels of oil, and 200 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. But there's more. There are also enormous deposits of Methane Hydrates, what some have called, "the ice that burns". What the US Department of Energy calls "the gas resource of the future". (And also, potentially, the environmental disaster of the future, but I suppose we can burn that bridge when we come to it. After all, we've never planned ahead for such problems before, why start now?)

While technologies for the extraction of usable energy from methane hydrate deposits have yet to be developed, a PRC report in 2007 estimated that the methane hydrate deposits found in the South China Sea so far could hold as much energy as 10 billion tons of oil. At roughly 6 barrels per ton, (a conservative estimate), that's the equivalent of 60 billion barrels of oil.

Sanctions In Trouble

Oh, my, but the world is not cooperating.

China's response to Geithner's arm-twisting visit was not just refusal, but outraged refusal.

Japan is remaining politely equivocal , which means they're not going to play ball either. After all, the Japanese never say flat-out "No", it's just not polite.

South Korea has also refused to go along with US plans for unilateral sanctions against Iranian oil.

Asia in general is not impressed.

And the Russians have flatly refused to play.

Europe might be a different story, and then again, it might not. One could wonder if the sudden downgrade of European credit ratings by S&P over the weekend was not either a threat or a punishment for Europe's reluctance to screw its own fragile economy through soaring oil prices. For that matter, what the fuck is Obama thinking? Doesn't he need an economic recovery in the US if he hopes to get re-elected this Fall?

And what news source has not just the best coverage of the topic, but the only comprehensive coverage, who are the only ones willing to ask the ugly questions? PressTV again, much to my embarrassment and disgust. Not that I have anything against PressTV, just that I'm outraged by the fact that they're the only ones willing to really discuss the issue.




(Open Salon readers can watch the video here .

Debt Jubilee

The time has come for a debt jubilee.

By now, it should be clear to everyone that the current status quo is absolutely unsustainable. The world's governments are staggering under a crippling load of debt. And, because of this, the bankers have taken control of the government of every major nation in the world. The working people of the world, those fortunate enough to still have a job, are likewise staggering under a never-ending mountain of debt, and facing a lifetime of economic enslavement.

The only answer to saving our nations, the only answer to breaking the power of the bankers, is a complete repudiation of all debts, by governments, by small businesses, by individuals, by everyone except corporations.

Of course those who profit from the status quo will scream bloody murder at the suggestion. Of course they will heap scorn upon the idea, and predict that it will bring about the apocalypse. Of course the powers-that-be will do anything they can to prevent this idea from even being seriously considered. But let's think about it logically.

Who would suffer, in the end? Well, the bankers would. Individuals would prosper, small businesses would prosper, governments would be relieved of a huge and crippling portion of their mandated budgets. There would no longer be any excuse for cutting vital social programs, and of course the Conservatives would hate it for that reason alone.

The only people who would really suffer would be the rich,. and the banks they control. Yes, the banks would take it in the ass. But, who caused this financial crisis in the first place?

Well, the bankers did.

Why is it so outrageous to suggest that those responsible for creating the problem should pay the price of fixing the problem?

Think about it.

Is Greece Being Abandoned?

With their own financial problems growing apace, the EU nations are showing some signs that they may perhaps abandon Greece.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, (who belongs in a prison cell for his role in the 2008 meltdown, and subsequent robbery of the US taxpayer), took the unprecedented step of actually attending a meeting of EU Zone financial ministers. And if, at this point, you find yourself wondering just why this is unprecedented, join the club.

Watch carefully the comments of Finnish Finance Minister Jutta Urpilainen in this video. And speaking of her, how come the Finns get a hottie like her, and we get stuck with an ugly jug-eared motherfucker like Geithner? There is no justice in the world.



Open Salon readers can view the video and an AJE text article with some further information here.

And, for a totally different take on the issue, see this editorial at The Asia Times. Be aware as you read, however, that this is a very conservative paper, in financial terms.

A New Campaign For The 99ers

The problem we 99ers have is that we have become invisible. We get no attention from media or politicians, and ignoring us has become far cheaper and easier than helping us. Now, we cannot do anything about the cost of helping us. That is a fixed number, although it keeps creeping up as we grow in numbers.

So, the problem is that variable A (cost of helping us) is greater than variable Z, (cost of ignoring us).

We need to reverse that, so that Z, (cost of ignoring us), is greater than A, (cost of helping us).

And we cannot reduce the value of variable A, (cost of helping us).

Therefore the only way to achieve our goal is to increase the value of variable Z, the cost of ignoring us.

In summary,we have to make it prohibitively expensive to keep ignoring us. And, at least for now, we need to accomplish this without breaking the law.

So, here is a simple suggestion for a first little baby step in that direction.

I want to convince every 99er in America to re-apply for unemployment once a month. There is no rule against this, there is no prohibition whatsoever. We just fill out a new application every calendar month, telling the full and honest truth. And every month, the state unemployment machinery has to process all those applications, and send us a form letter saying "you have already received the full 99 weeks of blah blah blah, etc, etc".

The California EDD admits that there are 469,000+ of us in California alone. That means about 120,000 applications a week for them to process, deal with, and respond to.

There is also a secondary benefit to this idea. If and when something like HR 589 should ever be passed, all of us will still be active in the files of our state unemployment departments. Until today, Cal EDD hadn't heard from me in over a year. If HR 589 did pass, would they remember me?

Anyhow, I am truly fired up about this idea. It's something we can do, and do for free, and in most states we can do it online.

London Is Burning

Watching the live video from the London riots on Al Jazeera English, I was amazed at how many times a commentator said something to the effect that this was "difficult to understand". Anyone who feels that way, obviously has a job.

It's almost amusing to listen to the government Talking Heads like Nick Clegg declare indignantly that "there is no excuse", calling the rioters thugs, criminals, etc. While I'm not suggesting that the situations are equivalent, the similarity of the UK government's rhetoric to that being employed by the Syrian government is impossible to ignore.

Then again, they are not completely dissimilar. In both cases, there is an incumbent government which does not represent the people, but rather a rich elite. In both cases, that government employs force to repress the popular will.

So now, on the third day, the rioting has spread to Birmingham and Leeds. And the Cameron government is still frantically denying that this could possibly have any connection to the recent round of vicious cuts to public services, to the brutally high unemployment rate, to the whole ruthless package of "austerity measures".

While my sympathies are with the rioters, that doesn't mean I think what they're doing is at all clever. Burning down their own neighbourhood is dumb, and puts no pressure at all on those actually responsible for their misery. If they want to do some good, they need to march to the neighbourhoods where the rich people live, and burn down their houses.

US Credit Rating Reduced; Geithner Eats Crow

Standard and Poor has followed through on its threat, and reduced the credit rating of the US Government from AAA to AA+, at the same time as the other two major credit rating agencies confirmed their AAA ratings.

Here's the story, just broken at The Hill about an hour and a half ago. Note that they did this late on a Friday, so that it will tend to fall into the "black hole" of the weekly news cycle.

Oh my!

Now, here's another story, from back in April of this year, in which Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says there is "no risk" that the US will lose its top credit rating.

Ohhhhh, Timmy! What will you do now? Your record isn't looking very good, is it?

Possum's Budget Plan

Early in my working life, I learned that you should never go to your boss and point out a problem, unless you also have a proposed solution in hand.

Given that I'm totally against, with every fibre of my being, the proposed "give away the store" budget plan agreed to by our thoroughly emasculated Eunuch-in-chief, I felt I should offer my own counter-proposal.

So, without further ado, your favorite marsupial varmint presents, The Possum Budget Plan -



Raise the maximum tax rate to 95%.

Eliminate the capital gains tax, and tax all income the same.

Cut the Intelligence budget by 50% over three years; cutting 20% the first year, 35% the second year, and 50% in the third year.

Put an absolute end to "black budgets" for the intelligence community. Such practices are pernicious to democracy, and they have no place in a free state.

Cut the Pentagon budget by 50% over three years; cutting 20% the first year, 35% the second year, and 50% in the third year.

End all special appropriations for the Pentagon. No more off-budget special appropriations of $60 Billion whenever the generals ask for it. If they can't afford the war, then don't start the war.

Immediate forced retirement of 30% of all military officers of flag rank, (O-7 and above, i.e. generals and admirals), without the customary automatic promotion on retirement. No further promotions to O-7 or above except on a one-for-one basis as existing flag officers retire. (Explanation- The circa 400-ship US Navy of today has more admirals than it did in the days of the 600-ship Reagan navy. There is no need for that much useless, clueless brass. They just interfere with the captains and lieutenants who actually get things done in the military.)

End all federal subsidies to corporations. All of them, no exceptions. Agricultural subsidies to individuals can stay on the books.

Terminate the existence of the Most Favored Nation trading status.

Place an immediate 30% tariff on all imports, of everything, with no exceptions, unless Congress determines that certain imports need to have an even higher tariff.

Immediately and permanently terminate the H-1b visa program, and give all current H-1b visa holders 90 days to leave the country.

Compensate for the item above by instituting a massive government program to re-train American workers, with preference given to veterans, the unemployed, and those over 45 years of age.

Institute an immediate and absolute moratorium on all immigration until the U-7 unemployment rate in the USA has fallen below 3%.

Require the immigration service to conduct frequent raids on businesses that hire illegal aliens. Require that each single illegal alien employed by a business be considered separately for purposes of assessing fines and other legal penalties, rather than allowing a judge to lump them all together and impose but a single fine. In short, make it prohibitively expensive for anyone to employ illegal aliens.

Institute an immediate and absolute moratorium on all foreign aid, in any form, until the U-7 unemployment rate in the USA has fallen below 3%.

Permanently end all aid to Israel, and institute collection proceedings against Israel to recover the approximately $1 Trillion in US taxpayer money already embezzled by the Zionist mafia. We want our money back.

Declare AIPAC and its mouthpiece WINEP to be what they are, paid lobbying organs of a foreign power, and an arguably hostile foreign power, at that. Order the FBI to commence an immediate criminal investigation against AIPAC for massive political bribery and influence-buying.

Open a true investigation of the sinking of the USS Liberty, with no white-wash this time. File a case before the World Court to collect compensation from Israel for the next of kin of those US servicemen murdered by Israel in that sad incident.

Institute new Labor legislation at the Federal level to empower unions, to make it easier for employees to unionize, and to prevent union-busting by the state governments.




I think that would do the job of balancing the budget quite nicely.

Dems Fold Again

Well, the news out of DC is grim as hell, but I cannot claim it's unexpected.

The Democrats are apparently set to bend us over and spread our cheeks for the Republicans, again. And this time, we're not even getting any Astroglide.

You can read the story at The Hill linked above, but the gist of it is $3 Trillion, (yes, Trillion), in cuts to things like Social Security and Medicare, with no additional revenue at all. None, zilch, zip, nada, bupkis. Not even closing any tax loopholes, let alone actually raising taxes rates on the ultra-rich, who are paying less taxes now than at any time in the last 75 years. Oh, no, the Republicans insist that we must not tax the "job creators".

But there's a problem with that label. Over 90% of the new wealth created in the last decade has gone to the uber-rich. Yet, at the same time, the US job market has seen its worst decade since the Great Depression. If the ultra-rich are the job creators, where are the jobs they should have created in the last decade, with all that new money they made? Obviously, those jobs were not created. So, clearly, labeling the ultra-wealthy as "job creators" is total bullshit.

And where is our Fearless Leader in all of this? Wringing his hands and playing the Peevish Professor, or scolding us like "Dad" in some 1950's black and white TV show. Gee, Mr President, I'm really sorry. Can I have a job now, please?

My "wishful thinking" side cannot help but imagine how different this could be if Hilary had won the Democratic nomination back in 2008. The woman is not a saint by any means; if anything she's a ball-busting bitch. But I doubt she'd have gotten herself into this ugly a budget mess in the first place, and if she did, I'm sure she'd have the courage to fight her way out of it.

Gods have mercy, but we are so well and truly screwed.

Sad Times In Africa

In addition to the hideous situation in Somalia, which is spilling over into northern Kenya, (and which has made the news cycle), there is more grim news out of Africa.

South Africa is preparing a mass expulsion of between 1 million and 2 million Zimbabwean refugees. Now, to refresh your memory, those Zimbabweans fled across the border to South Africa because their nation has been reduced to a basket case by 30 years of dictatorship under a man named Mugabe. More specifically, they fled a cholera epidemic, government violence against political opponents, and an inflation rate that ran into five digits. Yes, I'm serious.

Zimbabwe, where to begin. Zimbabwe is one of the most promising nations in sub-Saharan Africa, and all of that promise has been squandered, murdered, bastardized, prostituted, and sold down the river. Zimbabwe was once a major exporter of food to its neighbours. Today, Zimbabwe is a major importer of food. Zimbabwe once had the best educational system on the African continent. Even today, after thirty years of neglect, 90% of all Zimbabweans over age fifteen are literate in English. Yes, the official language of Zimbabwe is English.

It's enough to make you scream for the sheer criminal waste of human potential.

And further north in Kenya, the government has just carved a big chunk off the Selous Game Reserve, a World Heritage site, in order to make room for a uranium mining project.

Now, let's think about this. A game preserve, a place where a small fragment of East Africa's rapidly vanishing wildlife is given a home relatively safe from poachers and bulldozers. And they're going to carve a chunk off of that for a massively polluting, incredibly toxic uranium mining complex.

Granted, there are other problems closer to home. Granted, as a 99er, I have umpteen bazillion things to worry about, and which have more to do with how well I eat next month, and whether I can keep lights, water, and internet turned on for another 30 days. But in the end, I am only one person. If I fall over dead five minutes from now, the planet will keep spinning and life will go on and the species will survive. But if we irretrievably fuXX0r our planet, the species Homo sapiens will not survive.

New Golden Gate Bridge, Made In China

The New Golden Gate Bridge, Made In China

Yes, sadly enough, I'm serious. The replacement for the old Golden Gate Bridge, to stretch across the San Francisco Bay to Oakland, is being made in China.

The claim is that the state of California has saved "millions" in labor costs by building the bridge in Shanghai. But let's think about that. If those millions had been paid to California workers, what would have been different?

They'd have paid income tax, to both Federal and California governments.
They'd have paid Social Security taxes on that money.
They'd have spent that money here in California.
The follow-on effects would have generated more millions in economic activity.
And we'd have an American-made bridge.

So, given that all of this is painfully obvious, my questions are as follows.

Why hasn't the mainstream media reported on this?
Who was bribed to make this happen?
Who profits from this boondoggle, other than the Chinese?

Hidden Lies In June Jobs Report

So, you've seen the June jobs report by now. According to the Obama administration's official figures, only a net 18,000 jobs were added in June. In evaluating that, remember that we need to add 150,000 new jobs per month just to keep up with new workers entering the workforce, before we can even start making any headway on putting the unemployed back to work.

Well, that 18,000 is a lie. The truth is that the net number of jobs added was negative. The economy actually lost 157,000 jobs. Yes. The truth is not +18K but rather -157K.

Let's look at the deceits employed to make that appallingly negative number look at least a little positive.

First, the administration chose to add a totally imaginary 131,000 to that number. Their explanation is that they "believe" this many new jobs were created by newly formed companies, and therefore they are invisible. They have no evidence of this, not a thing to base it on, they just pulled a number out of their collective ass because they felt like it.

But that still left them with a net loss of 26,000 jobs, and they couldn't have that. So they moved 44,000 jobs from May to June. That's right, they just arbitrarily adjusted the May report downwards by 44,000, and moved those jobs into June instead, in order to get themselves the positive number they felt they needed. To quote John Crudele, "It's like moving the fences at Citi Field so the Mets players can hit more home runs. It might make Jose Reyes feel better, but it doesn't actually make him more powerful."

Read the rest of the Crudele's report here.

I can't wait to see how the Obamapologists spin this one-

"He had to do it, there was no choice!" or
"The Republicans forced him to!" or even
"Bush did it too, you know" or maybe that tired old standby
"You just don't understand economics"

As if that wasn't bad enough, the U-6 unemployment rate, the number that really matters, increased from 15.8% to 16.2%, and that number doesn't even include the six million 99ers.

BP Anniversary

April 20th marks the 1-year anniversary of what is shaping up to be the greatest environmental disaster in the history of mankind. Although, to be fair, we still haven't seen the worst of the Fukushima meltdown disaster. But, back to BP.

One year ago on the 20th, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, beginning an oil spill that would eventually dump at least 5 million barrels of oil into the ocean. A barrel, by the way, is 42 US gallons, (or 34 Imperial gallons, or 160 liters). If we do the math, that is 210 million gallons of oil. Minimum. It could have been two or three times that much, we just don't know.

In the "clean-up", which was more like a cover-up, BP sprayed roughly 2 million gallons of toxic dispersants, which are so toxic that they are banned in 19 countries, including the United Kingdom.

In August of last year, a study by the University of Georgia suggested that 70% or more of the oil which was spilled, "has not been recovered and remains a threat to the ecosystem".

Rather than quoting extensively from what is, after all, someone else's work, let me just suggest that you read the article at AJE.

US Corporations Threaten Ireland

In a move of breathtaking corporate hubris, the American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland, chaired by senior Hewlett-Packard executive Lionel Alexander, has threatened to move its operations to India or China if Ireland raises its incredibly low corporate tax rate of 12.5%, which is currently the lowest in the EU.

For those who haven't been following the international news, the Irish economy is in desperate straits, (sound familiar?), and has just agreed to accept a multi-billion-euro bailout from the EU and the IMF.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy said, "It's obvious that when confronted with a situation like this, there are two levers to use: spending and revenues. I cannot imagine that our Irish friends, in full sovereignty, [would not use] this because they have a greater margin for manoeuvre than others, their taxes being lower than others."

Consider, if you will, the incredible arrogance of these US corporations. They outsourced our jobs to Ireland in order to avoid paying taxes in the USA, where they sell their products. Now they are threatening to flee to China or India if the Irish do not continue to allow them to rob the public treasury by paying a pathetic pittance of an excuse for their fair share.

My friends, the only solution to corporate behavior like this is a tariff on all imports. The corporations, and the evil rich bastards who control them, have sent millions of our jobs overseas, in order to exploit cheap labor. Then, having produced their goods in some third-world country, under sweat-shop conditions, they import those cheap and shoddy goods into the USA, and sell them to us at an obscene profit.

Only by making those corporations pay a steep tariff, of 50% or more, when importing their foreign-made goods into the USA, only by this measure can we bring those career-worthy jobs back home to the USA once again.

All the empty propaganda about "Free Trade" is so much bullshit. This issue is about exploitation of the working people of this world, by the rich, for the profit of the rich. And it has to stop.

Original story in the UK Telegraph here

99ers Are The New Okies

I have made it a practice to avoid this subject in my scribblings here at The Possumhole, simply because it is an issue which touches me too personally for any semblance of objectivity. But we have come to a crossroads, and it is time to speak.

The 99ers are the new Okies.

Like those refugees from the Oklahoma dustbowl of the late 1920's, the 99ers have become a symbol of a national economy in shambles. And at the same time, the 99ers have become that category of persons upon whom it is acceptable to heap scorn and contempt. You've all heard the things that Glenn Beck has to say about the 99ers, and the oft-quoted slams from various Republican politicians. The 99ers have been called everything from stray animals to drug addicts, and worse.

If such insults were directed at minorities, or at members of the LGBT community, the howls of outrage would be heard from here to Timbuktu. But when politicians direct such outrageous slanders at 99ers, no word of objection is to be heard, from anyone.

Who are the 99ers? They're your neighbors, the people you see at the grocery store, the lady who used to work at that business down the street before they filed Chapter 11 and laid her off. The 99ers are you and the 99ers are me, literally. The 99ers are simply Americans, like any other Americans, who happened to be employed by a business that didn't make it.

There are at least six million 99ers in the USA. Roughly three-quarters of them are 45 or older. Their credit ratings, after 2-years-plus without a job, read something like "shoot on sight". They are too young by decades for retirement. But what employer will touch them?

These are people who have worked all their lives, paid their taxes, voted their conscience, and in general done nothing wrong, done nothing to deserve this nightmare in which they find themselves.

And so, dear readers, I ask you this. What are the 99ers supposed to do? Are they supposed to simply crawl off into the bushes and become homeless? What are they supposed to live on? Where are they supposed to go? What are they supposed to do in order to put the shattered pieces of their lives back together?

Federal Employees Pork It Up

In a revelation that is both depressing and unsurprising, the Federal payroll is porking up like mad.

According to a recent study published by USA Today, (I know, but news is news), the number of Federal employees earning over $150,000 per year has increased by a factor of 10 since 2005, and more than doubled since Obama took office. Let's see you blame that on Bush, Mr President.

And the number of Federal employees earning over $180,000 per year, is 20 times what it was 5 years ago.

Speaking as a 99er, I have to say I find that incredibly disheartening.

Change we can believe in, yeah!

Lily Allen has the right message

Gulf Disaster Part II - The Gulf Stream Is Dying

It has been brought to my attention that the contaminated seafood I wrote about yesterday is not the worst effect of the massive disaster inflicted upon us by BP and the Obama Administration.

It would appear, from satellite data, that the Gulf Stream is dying or has already died.

I confess, I needed a refresher on how the Gulf Stream works. Essentially, a warm water current comes up the NE coast of South America, does a loop in the Gulf of Mexico, and then passes by the tip of Florida before heading diagonally across the Atlantic to pass by the British Isles and Scandinavia. Technically, the part before the tip of Florida has a different name, but it's all one continous current, or it used to be.

The dumping of a billion gallons of crude oil, and two million gallons of toxic dispersant, (brand name Corexit), into the Gulf of Mexico, however, has screwed this up royally. Instead of flowing across the Atlantic, the Gulf Stream is now breaking down in a series of whirlpools in a region that stretches from off the Carolinas to the mid-Atlantic.

Here is a graphic showing how the Gulf Stream is supposed to flow. Apologies for not embedding it, but if I reduced it to fit, you wouldn't be able to see WTF was going on.

Here is a site with weekly-updated satellite data.

Here is an archived graphic from late October of 2009, roughly a year ago, from the same site, showing the same data.

At first glance, the two appear substantially the same. But look at the top right corner. In the graphic from a year ago, the stream continues off the map, toward the UK. In the most recent graphics, nothing makes it off the map. The Gulf Stream is breaking up in mid-Atlantic.

What does this mean? Well, for starts, it's the warmth of the Gulf Stream that keeps Europe from freezing solid in the winter. And it's the Gulf Stream, continuing as the North Atlantic current, that flows over the top of the Asian landmass and determines weather across much of Russia.

Russia, which has had the hottest Summer on record, causing massive wildfires, and devastating their wheat crop to the point where all exports have been banned.

So, dear reader, it would appear that BP, with the help and collusion of our oh-so-dearly-beloved President, has screwed us at least three different ways. The Gulf seafood is not safe to eat, much of the Atlantic seafood will soon be unsafe to eat, and the weather is screwed up to the point that grain production will be curtailed severely, has already been curtailed severely.

Can you say rising food prices, boys and girls? And at the same time, we can look forward to renewed inflation, since Ben Bernanke has just decided to print another 900 billion dollars in paper money, and give it to the bankers.

Because, after all, those poor bankers really need the help...

Obama Sides With Bankers - Will Not Ban Foreclosures

In another display of just what a shameless corporate lackey he truly is, President Obama has refused to institute a temporary moratorium on foreclosures.

After one million foreclosures last year, the USA is currently on track for 1.2 million foreclosures in 2010. Recently, it came to light that tens of thousands of these foreclosures are not legitimate. Even some banks have instituted a voluntary and temporary moratorium on their own foreclosures.

But our beloved President, the man who promised us "Change You Can Believe In", has refused to do anything about a temporary moratorium while the confusion over legitimacy is investigated.

Senate Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd said last week, "American families should not have to worry about losing their homes to sloppy bureaucratic mismanagement or fraud". This seems like a reasonable statement. But Obama remains unconvinced, offering instead a weak and whining excuse that "there are a number of unintended consequences".

Think about this, my friends. Our President has decided that it is better to have American families fraudulently evicted from their homes, than to have investors temporarily unable to recoup their investment.

Excuse me, but, the last time I checked, the concept of "investment" carried with it the idea of risk. You risk your capital in hopes of earning a profit. The greater the risk, the greater the expected return, if the investment goes well. A mortgage is not like that.

I am hard pressed to say which is more appalling in this action, (or rather refusal to act), by the administration. On the one hand we have the utter craven cowardice of the President's decision. And on the other hand we have the shamelessly brazen pandering to bankers and other corporate interests.

Story at BBC News here

Japan-China Dispute Continues to Escalate

The dispute between Japan and China over the ownership of the Senkaku islands continues to escalate.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao earlier today threatened Japan with "further action" if the captain of a Chinese fishing boat that rammed Japanese coast guard vessels last week is not released. Given that China has already canceled all high-level contacts with Japan, and broken off all on-going talks, the phrase "further action" could take on ominous overtones.

The real dispute over the islands has little to do with fishing rights, and a great deal to do with the vast gas and oil deposits which are believed to lie beneath the seabed in the area around the islands. It is becoming clear that China, repeating a pattern of behavior seen in the Spratly Islands of the South China Sea, sent the fishing boat into Japanese waters specifically to provoke a confrontation, which it is now seeking to exploit. This theory of deliberate provocation is bolstered by the convenient proximity to the anniversary of the 1931 Mukden Incident, which China still makes much of, even 80 years later. There too, much of the "public outrage" in China over this recent incident has a definite flavor of being orchestrated.

The Japanese, however, have their own agenda. In the first place, Japan desperately needs an oil source of its own. Japan requires a half-dozen supertankers full of crude oil per day in order to keep its economy running, oil that it has historically obtained through the Persian Gulf. But with Persian Gulf oil sources, and indeed all Middle East oil sources, fast becoming of ever more uncertain reliability, Japan very much needs a long-term solution.

In the second place, a confrontation with the Chinese now could serve as a casus belli for Japan to amend its post-war constitution and openly re-arm, especially given that any such re-armament would inevitably infuriate the Chinese in any case.

See earlier entry on this incident here
Al Jazeera story on the latest developments here
UK Telegraph story here, but with an odd perspective.

Troll Tactics Plus

I stumbled across an interesting little entry this morning, which includes a very succinct description of "troll tactics", the sort used by forum trolls, paid or unpaid, to disrupt meaningful discussion.

I have always felt I have something of "a nose for a knave", (to steal an expression from the author of the Flashman series), and I recognize trolls fairly quickly in any forum situation, but I have never before seen the type analyzed and described in such a manner.

The tactics are simple and easy to spot. When they first confront you they do it subtly while interjecting an insult. When you try to respond to them using logic and common sense, their next message will be an insult that they know you will feel you have to refute. If you answer that insult they have you hooked and have achieved the desired effect, which is to disrupt debate and the exchange of ideas and information.

No doubt most of you recognize the loathsome creature from its description. But the mention of trolls and their habits was only in passing. The gist of the article, the part that made my wicked old heart go pitty-pat, was this -

We know what is wrong with our country and what has to be undone if we are ever to live in freedom and prosperity again. We must break away from the false left-right paradigm and realize that those posing as our representatives can only be identified as a single party: the corpora-demo-publicans, of the international corporate mafia, by the international corporate mafia, and for the international corporate mafia.

The only way that we are going to see the living wage jobs returned to this country is through the destruction of the laws that reward the sending of our jobs overseas, the instituting of large tariffs on all foreign goods and huge taxes on all moneys taken out of the United States being invested in foreign countries, and laws forbidding our natural resources from leaving our country except in the form of manufactured goods, and I don’t mean a board, I mean a table.

It sounds like a far better plan than any other I have heard lately.