Title: Mcgowanjm Wire 2012 Source:
[None] URL Source:[None] Published:Feb 26, 2012 Author:Various Post Date:2012-02-26 09:15:13 by A K A Stone Keywords:None Views:1373349 Comments:2390
So, once again, the spineless European Union (EU) political "leadership" - once again acting like the poodles of choice - gloriously sabotaged what it has always billed as its most ambitious energy project; caved in to US pressure; and ultimately sacrificed its energy independence. And all this from people who never lose an opportunity to decry that Europe is a "gas hostage" to Russia's Gazprom.
As with all things Pipelineistan, there are layers and layers of nuance. Moscow is pulling out all the stops to prevent Iran from eventually joining Nabucco - because its top policy agenda is to extend its stranglehold over the EU's gas supply to 30%. ...
The most prominent but false conclusions on the expanding value of oil are centered on assertions that supply is decreasing dramatically, while demand is increasing dramatically. Neither of these claims is true…
Even if Azerbaijan decides to sell its extra gas wealth to Russia, Turkey also wins. Turkey has authorized the underwater passage of the Russian-Italian (Vladimir Putin-Silvio Berlusconi?) South Stream pipeline in its territory in return for even more robust trade and energy ties with Russia.
But most of all Russia wins. South Stream is a go. Gazprom for its part has increased its charm offensive all across Central Asia; this means that the more Gazprom imports gas from them, the less gas will be available for Europe (unless it is sold by Russia ...)
With Putin back in the presidency in May, the strategy that he laid out back in 2000 is graphically paying all kinds of dividends. -pepe escobar
(currently being wined & dined in the USSA courtesy of AIPAC...;}
for instance, knows very well that Russia is the only player capable of determining what goes on in the Caucasus - and on top of it offers great energy deals. So here's the writing on the wall; Russia under Putin will be even more influential from the Caucasus to Central Asia.
Still the most pressing question seems to be whether anybody in Brussels will wake up from its masochistic haze, stop the sanction nonsense, and talk energy with Iran.
"Ironically, stock market activity in the Dow has now come under threat from this inflationary trend in oil. Rising energy costs have essentially put a cap on the epic explosion of equities, and many mainstream analysts now lament over this Catch-22. The problem is that these investors and pundits are operating on the assumption that the Dow bull market is legitimate, and that the rally in oil is somehow an extension of a “healthier economy”. This version of reality, I’m afraid, is about as far from the truth as one can stretch…
In the candy coated world of Obamanomics, high priced stocks are a valid signal of economic growth, and oil is rising due to demand which extends from this growth...."
I'm loving this warm weather. Good for the crops. I may put my garden out a month early this year.
Speaking of planting corn:
"
In the study, Andrea Tapparo and colleagues explain that seeds coated with so-called neonicotinoid insecticides went into wide use in Europe in the late 1990s. The insecticides are among the most widely used in the world, popular because they kill insects by paralyzing nerves but have lower toxicity for other animals.
Almost immediately, beekeepers observed large die-offs of bees that seemed to coincide with mid-March to May corn planting. Scientists thought this might be due to particles of insecticide made airborne by the pneumatic drilling machines used for planting.
#136. To: Fred Mertz, mininggold, lucysmom, A K A Stone (#0)
News for AAPL halted news
Wall Street Journal
1. Apple trading halted, resumes
Fortune - 7 seconds ago By Philip Elmer-DeWitt March 23, 2012: 11:53 AM ET The hearts of Apple (AAPL) traders stopped briefly at 10:57 am Friday when the company's share price, ...
1.
Apple Trade on Bats Triggers Circuit Breaker; Stock Rebounds Bloomberg - 31 minutes ago
The reason for the crash apparently is because BATS stock is ony trading on the BATS exchange, where apparently the APPL halt second before also happened. Pretty much tells us all we need to know about the stability of broken market structure. In other news, the stock, and exchange, have now been renamed BATShit - perhaps the VVIX can trade there next or something... And they wonder why nobody trades this farce of a market any more.
By saying Apple sucks. They do. They lock down and cripple their products. That Iphone thing is a PC. Do you think Apple should be able to control the programs on your phone? I don't. I think that is crap.
That's because you have people like Stone putting their local businesses out of business for a 5% discount [by shopping at Wally World].
I recently remembered that I received a Wal-Mart gift card for Christmas and it is still sitting in my wallet. I imagine it is of low value - $20 or so bucks - so I'm going to have to break my rule and visit Wally World one of these days when the need arises.
You do know that limits the phones power don't you. You know having it locked down by Apple. Would you be ok if you could only put a Ford radio in your Ford car?
They don't allow third party software on their devices without their permission. They also seem to think they still own the Iphone after you purchase it. They are hostile to you modding it. Screw them.
I many own the phone, however, they own the technology.
Actually once you buy it it is yours to do what you choose with it. You own that specific hardware/technology. To think otherwise is to think like a slave.
From a March 19 Bloomberg report by Laurel Brubaker Calkins and Margaret Cronin Fisk:
BP Plc’s (BP/) Atlantis platform, its second-largest oil producer in the Gulf of Mexico, should be shut down until it’s proven to comply with U.S. safety and environmental laws, a whistle-blower’s lawyer told a judge.
BP misled U.S. offshore regulators to win operating permits for the platform, located about 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of New Orleans, according to the whistle-blower. The facility produced an average of 60,000 barrels of oil daily last year and is capable of producing as much as 200,000 barrels a day, according to data on London-based BP’s website.
“Atlantis is presently not fit for service under normal engineering standards,” David Perry, a lawyer for Kenneth Abbott, a former BP contractor, said at a hearing today in federal court in Houston. “We ask the court to take action to oversee remediation to make it fit for service.”
It would seem that BP’s “renewed” commitment to safety and our federal government’s commitment to more rigorous oversight – on the heels of the worst oil spill in U.S. history – are being exposed as a fraud. We’re getting a look behind the scenes at another BP operation, and what is being revealed is frightening indeed. The jig appears to be up, again. More from the Bloomberg report:
Perry told [U.S. District Judge Lynn] Hughes there’s a specific pressure-relief valve “that is protecting a 16-inch pipeline” connecting Atlantis to shore and “that is undersized by a factor of 20 to 1.” A failure in that valve “could cause catastrophe at any time,” Perry said.
"…Abbott, who worked as an engineering documentation supervisor on Atlantis, testified before the U.S. Congress in June 2010 that almost 90 percent of the facility’s design and construction drawings weren’t approved by licensed professional engineers, as required by regulators. BP lied to regulators about its engineering certifications to obtain operating permits for the platform, Abbott’s lawyers said in a March 15 filing.
According to Mr. Abbott, a valve failure on the Atlantis could result in a spill that would “dwarf” the size of the 200-million-gallon Macondo release.
Mr. Perry pointed out in the hearing yesterday that the engineering issues aboard the Atlantis are pervasive and he cited past “well-control lapses.” More from Bloomberg:
Perry said today that a BP “service and operations audit,’ which is under seal in the case, showed that 150 of 500 pressure relief valves on Atlantis never received proper sizing calculations to determine if they were the right size. Some of the valves were “under-sized by very large amounts,” Perry said."
…Atlantis has already experienced multiple well-control lapses, during which subsea well valves opened and closed on their own and platform operators temporarily lost the ability to control some wells, Perry said today. Abbott has accused BP of hiding this information from Interior Department regulators to keep production flowing from Atlantis.
Although the allegations were first leveled in 2009, the same dangerous situation exists today. Nothing has been done to rectify the problems, leading Mr. Abbott to ask Judge Hughes “to move quickly to halt production and appoint a special master to oversee measures to ensure the platform is brought into compliance.”
"I asked that the multiracial left have more empathy for working class whites, and stop stereotyping them and dismissing their political choices, when we disagree, as merely “racist.”
I got your empathy....takin real good care of it...;}
Monday, March 26, 2012 AccuWeather's Excuse For A Horribly Blown Seasonal Forecast: The Tsunami Did It
" A meteorologist for AccuWeather — the forecasting company that predicted a winter so bad, "people in Chicago are going to want to move" — has a theory for the recent Midwest heat wave: Japanese tsunami debris."
" "The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberative and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched."
America's bound by the same standard under fundamental US and international laws. But they're not applied. Mestrovic exposed the "systemic dysfunctions in the army as well as American society." As a result, innocent victims pay for their superiors' crimes.
In violation of international and US law, as well as the Army's own code, brigade commander, Col. Michael Steele, illegally ordered troops to kill every military-aged Iraqi on sight. Disobedience would have brought court-martials and likely imprisonment."
Making it look 'real' can interfere with the message.
Like the USSA Military had to move it's forces before the Kony tape was released.
And now tha the Kony tape has been ridiculed, it's 'author' thrown in the loony bin...
the USSA military Still has to folloow the script, now looking like a bad Monty Python skit....;}
" “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality, judiciously, as you will, we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” - Ron Suskind, NYT, Oct 17 2004
African Union launches US-backed force to hunt Kony Reuters, Mar 24 2012
The African Union, backed by the US, has put together a 5,000-strong military force to hunt down fugitive warlord Joseph Kony, whose profile has shot up following a celebrity-backed campaign against him.
"Too few people have experienced the divine image as the inner-most possession of their own souls. Christ only meets them from without, never from within the soul; that is why dark paganism still reigns there, a paganism which, now in a form so blatant that it can no longer be denied and now in all too threadbare disguise, is swamping the world of so-called Christian culture. his pagan unconscious, which has also influenced our literature and art, is clearly expressed in dreams long before it becomes apparent in action."
Can you imagine the Agit Prop artists at the CIA trying to make sense of the above? 9D
Notice how LF has dropped EVERYTHING to concentrate on the uppity minorities?
The Domestic mirrors the foreign:
"Karzai also spoke to Mullah Baran. Baran’s brother was killed in the shooting spree, but he didn’t see the shooting happen. Baran said he told Karzai what his sister-in-law, who was at the scene, had told him.
When GlobalPost asked Baran to speak directly with his sister-in-law, he initially refused.
“You don’t need to talk [with] her,” Baran said. “I did, and I can tell you the story.”
Eventually Baran relented, allowing GlobalPost to interview her by phone.
Massouma, who lives in the neighboring village of Najiban, where 12 people were killed, said she heard helicopters fly overhead as a uniformed soldier entered her home. She said he flashed a “big, white light,” and yelled, “Taliban! Taliban! Taliban!”
Massouma said the soldier shouted “walkie-talkie, walkie-talkie.” The rules of engagement in hostile areas in Afghanistan permit US soldiers to shoot Afghans holding walkie-talkies because they could be Taliban spotters."
You can't make that shit up.....;}
"The whole point of Jesus’s life was not that we should become exactly like him, but that we should become ourselves in the same way he became himself. Jesus is not the great exception but the great example.
—Carl Jung as quoted by Rob Brezsny in Pronoia (via fernsandmoss)
