Excess Tomato Emergency

Incredulous,

Jenny and I got back to Austin about 2:00 PM today, to find it overcast, 70 degrees, a gentle north breeze, 2.5 inches of water in the rain gauge, and way too many ripe tomatoes, more than you see pictured below in the basket. The garden is a scraggly mess. 

A whole vegetable drawer in the fridge is full of cucumbers, and I just cooked up a huge stir-fry with green beans, tomatoes, onion, eggplant, peppers, carrots and celery from the garden. The garlic isn't ready yet, so store-bought garlic, and tofu rounded it out. 

I'm sure we can't eat to keep up with this, so I'm about to quickly learn how to can stewed tomatoes. 

My brother says I can find pickle recipes "on the internet", and that his pickles "weren't bad" last year.

What a MESS! It isn't even June yet. This situation can only get worse for the next couple of months.

Well, it's a temporary distraction from the Global political-financial reset. 

The American Empire is over-the-hill, and can either start a WW-3 that we can never rebuild from, or fade gracefully, like a puking, writhing, shitting junkie in the throes of heroin withdrawal. 

I vote for the latter. Easy choice...

Take away the reserve-currency status of the $US. That'll be like a big shot of Narcan to start the cold-turkey for us. If the US, the current sea-empire, having replaced Britain, loses control of the lanes of trade, then the $US will logically fall from the grace of reserve-currency prom-queen, like all the reserve currencies before it.

Investigative Journalist, Wayne Madsen has this impolite story about the naked emperor: World Leaders Gather in Beijing, While the US Sinks Into Irrelevancy (Ouch!)

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/05/20/world-leaders-gather-beijing-while-us-sinks-into-irrelevancy.html

Seth Rich is still dead, but his memory is enjoying a breath of fresh life, as Kim Dotcom comes forward to say that he was in contact with Seth, and knew him to be the Wikileaker, just before he was murdered and not robbed of the $2k of money and jewelry he had on him, a block from home, after John Podesta sent that email, saying he "wanted to make an example of the leaker". The (DC Insider) post went on to claim that a "smoking gun in this case is out of the hands of the conspirators" which has resulted in near "open panic" in DC circles.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-22/seth-rich-plot-thickens-dc-insider-confirms-complete-panic-highest-levels-dnc

John Podesta unloads on "absolutely unfit, crazy Trump":  

"Podesta seems to be in the 'Comey was completely incompetent but Trump shouldn't have fired him' camp...which is a position that seemingly only makes sense to John Podesta and Maxine Waters. "

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-22/john-podesta-confirms-hes-still-sore-loser-unloads-absolutely-crazy-unfit-trump

Jim Kunstler sums-up America's current politics clearly and elegantly yet again. Damn! I seem to have copied and pasted almost the entire essay.

"In case you wonder how our politics fell into such a slough of despond, the answer is pretty simple. Neither main political party, or their trains of experts, specialists, and mouthpieces, can construct a coherent story about what is happening in this country — and the result is a roaring wave of recursive objurgation and wrath that loops purposelessly towards gathering darkness. What’s happening is a slow-motion collapse of the economy. Neither Democrats or Republicans know why it is so remorselessly underway. A tiny number of well-positioned scavengers thrive on the debris cast off by the process of disintegration, but they don’t really understand the process either — the lobbyists, lawyers, bankers, contractors, feeders at the troughs of government could not be more cynical or clueless... So along came the dazzling, zany Trump, who was able to communicate a vague sense-memory of what had been lost in our time of American life, whose sheer bluster resembled something like conviction as projected via the cartoonizing medium of television, and who entered a paralysis of intention the moment he stepped into the oval office, where he proved to be even less authentic than the Wizard of Oz. Turned out he didn’t really understand the economic collapse underway either; he just remembered an America of 1962 and though somehow the national clock might be turned back. The industrial triumph of America in the 19th and 20th century was really something to behold. But like all stories, it had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and we’re closer to the end of that story than the middle. It doesn’t mean the end of civilization but it means we have to start a new story that provides some outline of a life worth living on a planet worth caring about. For the moment the fragmentary stories of redemption revolve around technological rescue remedies, chiefly the idea that electric cars will save the nation. This dumb narrative alone ought to inform you just how lost we are, because the story assumes that our prime objective is to remain car-dependent at all costs — when one of the main features in the story of our future is the absolute end of car dependency and all its furnishings and accessories. We can’t imagine going there. (How would you, without a car?) The economy is collapsing because it was based on cheap oil, which is no longer cheap to pull out of the ground — despite what you might pay for it at the pump these days. The public is understandably confounded by this. But their mystification does nothing to allay the disappearance of jobs, incomes, prospects, or purpose. They retreat from the pain of loss into a fog of manufactured melodrama featuring superheros and supervillains and supernatural doings. Donald Trump could never be a Franklin Roosevelt or a Lincoln. These were figures who, if nothing else, could articulate the terms that reality had laid on America’s table in their particular moments of history. Mr. Trump can barely speak English and his notions about history amount to a kind of funny papers of the mind. A sinister host of adversaries who ought to understand what is happening in this country, but don’t, or can’t, or won’t, are coming after him, and they are going to get rid of him one way or another. They have to. They must. And they will... And then what? "

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/do-you-mr-jones/

Working Something Out

Incommunicado In Rochester

Missing the News,

Jenny and I have spent this week in Rochester, New York, visiting our daughter Amber, who has just graduated from her Masters program in Mathematics Education.

I spent the week putting in an 8-bed vegetable gardening system. The picture at the bottom tells the story. All went well.

The Real Meaning of "Sensitive" Intelligence (It compromises a source, who can be killed. It's not the news itself.) Thanks Eleni.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-real-meaning-of-sensitive-intelligence/?mc_cid=3fa62ec43b&mc_eid=28e250b52d

"We are witnessing an assault by the national security state and its liberal media on a President of the United States that is unprecedented." Paul Craig Roberts (Dennis Kucinich, too. Thanks Tom)

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/05/18/the-assault-on-trump/

http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/05/17/deep-state-government-destroying-donald-trump-kucinich-says-hannity

"As did almost all of its predecessors, including those which led to the resignation of President Nixon and impeachment of Bill Clinton, Mueller’s investigation seems certain to drag on for years." 

"In the United Kingdom, the odds are growing that Trump may not finish his term." Pat Buchanan

http://buchanan.org/blog/rosenstein-joins-posse-127090

Chinese media says that US social division shows that "Western Democracy is Crumbling". (They left out the word "fake", before "western", huh?)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-19/chinese-media-warns-us-social-division-shows-western-democracy-crumbling

"If China can fund infrastructure with it's own credit, so can we", says Ellen Brown. (How much "credit" do "we" have without the threat of military and covert attacks? Just askin'...) Thanks Tom

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/05/17/if-china-can-fund-infrastructure-its-own-credit-so-can-we

Who killed Seth Rich, the apparent leaker of 44,000+ DNC emails to Wikileaks? He was shot in the back with $2000 in cash and jewelry left on his person, about a block from home. He had been talking to his girlfriend on his cellphone. The 2 men who directly walked the other way on a grainy surveillance video were "robbers", who "botched it."  You don't need to know who killed Seth. The DNC has given the family a "spokesman", who says "leave 'em alone" and stuff.

The latest is that the Russian Embassy in London tweeted the question of who murdered Seth, with a big, red Hillary Clinton scowly face behind it. What's that supposed to mean, huh?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-19/russian-embassy-implicates-hillary-tweet-asking-who-killed-seth-rich

Yesterday a small battalion size force (~2-300 men) of the regular Syrian army, Syrian National Defense Organization volunteers and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF/PMU of the Kata'ib al-Imam Ali) marched on the road from the west towards al-Tanf. They were about 23 kilometers away from the border station when they were attack by U.S. aircraft coming in low from Jordan... The U.S. attack was clearly a willful, illegal attack on Syrian ground against legitimate forces of the sovereign Syrian government. (The Iraqi PMU contingent in Syria is a legitimate allied force under control of the Iraqi prime minister.) There is no clause in international law, no UNSC resolution or anything similar, that could justify such an attack. The U.S. military has no right at all to be at al-Tanf or anywhere else in Syria. There is nothing to "defend" for it... Moreover - the U.S. claims it is "fighting ISIS" in Syria. Why then is it attacking the Syrian government forces while these launch a large operation against the very same enemy?

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/05/us-attacks-syrian-government-forces-it-now-has-to-make-its-choice/comments/page/1/#comments

SRay, Larry and Jeanine all sent me this story about the "Doomsday Vault" of seeds getting flooded because the permafrost is melting. How doomsday-ready is that, huh? This thing is brand new. The electricity never even went out. Which "doomsday" scenario are we protecting genetic diversity from again?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-stronghold-of-worlds-seeds-flooded-after-permafrost-melts

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-20/arctic-doomsday-seed-vault-save-world-has-flooded-thanks-global-warming

So, the minimum doomish-day the seed vault should have been prepared for is that thing that melted the glaciers 12,900 years ago, right? We know that happened recently in geological time, and may have been the basis for hundreds of verbal traditions of massive flood killing everybody, in both the new and old worlds. It seems very likely that a comet hit the North-Polar ice caps. Poof, there went the giant sloths and woolly mammoths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis

Certainly all of our nuclear reactors are buttoned up better than that these days... 

We learned from those prior leaks, and the tsunami at Fukushima, and Chernobyl, and fixed things, right? Right? right? 

(Another one already, THIS week, on top of last week? Shit.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-20/everybodys-freaked-washington-nuclear-facility-admits-second-radiation-leak-workers-

Seed-Vaulter

Leading Somewhere

Meal Tickets,

Here is another story in the "Parasites Consume The Host" series.

It starts by looking at hiring and pay for American Physics and Engineering PhDs, typically hired by large, research & development companies. Yes, it looks at getting visas to hire all those young foreign grads, but notices, that it was not about supply-and-demand in the marketplace for the most part. It was about feeding on the live carcass of American industry for the past 30 years (You may have noticed.)

"Contrary to popular belief, in aggregate U.S. corporations fund the stock market, not vice versa. Note that almost all of the buybacks in the decade 1976-1985 occurred in 1984 and 1985 after in November 1982 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopted Rule 10b-18 that gave license to massive buybacks, in essence legalizing systemic stock-price manipulation and the looting of the U.S. business corporation."

"In the case of Apple, we have shown how Carl Icahn used his wealth, visibility, hype, and influence to take $2 billion in stock-market gains by buying $3.6 billion of Apple shares in the summer of 2013 and selling them in the winter of 2016, even though he contributed absolutely nothing of any kind to Apple as a value-creating company..."

"From 2011 through the first quarter of 2017, Apple spent $144 billion on buybacks and $51 billion on dividends under what it calls its “Capital Return” program. But the company is “returning” capital to shareholders who never gave the company anything in the first place; the only time in its history that Apple has ever raised funds on the public stock market was $97 million in its 1980 IPO."

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/05/impact-marketization-financialization-science-engineering-grads.html

Ralph Nader is still cognitively intact, after all these years. We are easily duped into supporting the empire of global chaos and unwinnable wars.

“A people untouched (or seemingly untouched) by war are far less likely to care about it. Persuaded that they have no skin in the game, they will permit the state to do whatever it wishes to do.”

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/05/11/losing-warfare-state

New Jersey Republican Congressman, Tom MacArthur, who revived AHCA (aka "Obamacare-lite") gets it (for hours) from his poorer constituents, who want Medicare for All.

"It shouldn't be a market! My health care shouldn't be market," one yells. "When did we become a society that doesn't care about each other?"

"You've been talking a lot about your constituents on the other side of the Pine Barrens and how they affect your policy decisions. When are our ideas, on this side of the Pine Barrens, going to affect your policy decisions? Everybody here is talking about single-payer, and you're still trying to push this other stuff on us, but we are the constituents – if you want to go back [to D.C], if you want another turn, you might want to listen to what these people have to say."

Now someone tell that to Nancy Pelosi.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/americans-demand-single-payer-health-care-at-gop-town-hall-w481941

The Bipartisan "Single Payer" Solution, Medicare-Advantage premium support for All 

(A plausible compromise to be worked out in the coming financial reset.)

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2017/05/11/the-bipartisan-single-payer-solution-medicare-advantage-premium-support-for-all/

U.S. House Resolution 676 — the Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act 

The establishment of a "Medicare for All Program to provide all individuals residing in the United States and U.S. territories with free health care that includes all medically necessary care, such as primary care and prevention, dietary and nutritional therapies, prescription drugs, emergency care, long-term care, mental health services, dental services, and vision care.

"The program (would be) funded: (1) from existing sources of government revenues for health care, (2) by increasing personal income taxes on the top 5% of income earners, (3) by instituting a progressive excise tax on payroll and self-employment income, (4) by instituting a tax on unearned income, and (5) by instituting a tax on stock and bond transactions. Amounts that would have been appropriated for federal public health care programs, ... are transferred and appropriated to carry out this bill."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/zorn/ct-medicare-for-all-who-s-in-and-who-s-out-in-the-illinois-democratic-congressional-delegation-20170510-story.html

"Wanna Cry" Ransomware attacks, largely on hospitals and medical records (critical, easily accessible and weak, due to government regulatory burdens and unfunded mandates), in what might be the largest such attack ever. Thanks NSA, "your tax dollars at work" again. Blame the leaker or something...

"The hackers, who have not come forward to claim responsibility or otherwise been identified, likely made it a "worm", or self spreading malware, by exploiting a piece of NSA code known as "Eternal Blue" that was released last month by a group known as the Shadow Brokers."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-13/24-hours-later-unprecedented-fallout-first-global-coordinated-ransomware-attack

“We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world,” Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith wrote in a blog post this afternoon. “This attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-14/microsoft-slams-nsa-letting-its-hacking-tools-cause-global-malware-epidemic

Two days after the latest provocative missile test by North Korea, in which it launched a "new type" of ballistic missile, one which experts warned had a substantially longer range than any existing rocket North Korea had fired, on Monday morning North Korea announced that it had successfully conducted a mid-to-long range missile test on Sunday supervised by leader Kim Jong Un which was aimed at verifying the capability to carry a "large scale heavy nuclear warhead." (Aww, they're just bluffing. Anyway, we're protecting everybody in South Korea and Japan.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-14/north-korea-test-deliver-large-scale-heavy-nuclear-warhead-was-successful

Meanwhile, in a more entertaining interlude, Russian President Vladimir Putin, also present in Beijing for the Silk Road event, decided to show off his softer side when he sat down to play piano on Sunday. According to AP, after speaking at the summit in the morning, Putin headed to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at his residence. While waiting at a state guesthouse, Putin sat down at a grand piano and played two tunes: “Evening Song,” by Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi, and “Moscow Windows,” by Tikhon Khrennikov. "Evening Song,” usually performed with lyrics by Aleksandr Churkin, was written in 1957 and is considered an unofficial anthem of St. Petersburg, Mr. Putin’s hometown, formerly known as Leningrad. "Moscow Windows,” usually performed with lyrics by the poet Mikhail Matusovsky, is a tune about friendship. Both songs are from the late 1950s, when Putin was a child and the Soviet Union was emerging from the shadow of Stalin, who died in 1953. (Video here, piano needs tuning. I see the little boy...)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-14/putin-plays-soviet-classics-badly-tuned-piano-during-china-summit

More on Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov's Washington visit. Lavrov: "The dialogue between Russia and the US is now free from the ideology that characterised it under the Barack Obama Administration. US President Donald Trump, his Administration, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are the kind of people who want to maintain a dialogue not as a means of demonstrating what they can achieve in the area of ideological preferences, but rather as a means of solving particular issues which have great bearing on the nation's progress, peoples' well-being and settling conflicts in different areas... It is always better for relations when people do business rather than try to promote their ideological preferences or engage in propaganda. This forms the basis for our expectations. " Thanks Eleni.

https://www.sott.net/article/350800-Assessment-of-Lavrovs-visit-to-Washington

Sen. Rand Paul, the former Republican presidential candidate and vocal champion of civil liberties, has received allegations that the Obama administration sought intercepted intelligence from the National Security Agency on him and other members of Congress and has asked President Donald Trump to conduct a formal investigation. "An anonymous source recently alleged to me that my name, as well as the names of other Members of Congress, were unmasked, queried or both, in intelligence reports of intercepts during the prior administration," Paul wrote Trump in a letter dated April 10. "In light of the revelations that the names of persons associated with the Trump campaign were unmasked, I believe the allegations that myself and other elected members of the legislative branch may have also been unmasked or caught in intelligence gathering warrants investigation." Thanks Eleni

https://www.sott.net/article/350502-Rand-Paul-accuses-Obama-of-spying-on-him-using-NSA-intercepts

UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn: "We do have public ownership in UK rail and energy markets. It’s just that the government ownership is by foreign governments."

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-labour-manifesto-renationalisation-rail-energy-banks-europe-a7731961.html

Ticket Home

Machines Vs People

Worker Bees,

Revealed, The Capitalist Network That Runs the World

Previous studies have found that a few Trans-National-Corporations own large chunks of the world’s economy... Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them... PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the “real” economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues... When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world/

To which countries does the US owe debts, and what countries owe the US? The US owes China a lot, so China is invested in the vale of the $US, and has reason not to destroy it, for instance. Look how isolated Russia is, but definitely owes the US some payments (so paying back debased-dollars would be nice). Look at how Japan is somewhat a net creditor of the US, also invested in the status quo. What the hell is going on with the Cayman Islands?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-11/visualizing-who-holds-us-debt-internationally

"At its heart economics is a study of human behavior, where that behavior is specific to certain activities. It is thus deeply rooted in psychology, so it is more closely associated with biology than physics. This is not a new idea: some of the greatest economists of the past have argued as much. Trying to transfer in ideas from physics, even metaphorically, therefore tends to lead to dead ends... There is in evolutionary biology, as I am sure you all know, a notion called a “fitness peak”. Roughly speaking, this is the idea that a species refines its survival strategy and succeeds in a certain context. As it does so it “climbs” higher up a successful strategic slope that defines it relative “fitness”. Problems arise when the context subsequently changes. The more superbly refined fitness becomes, there more difficult it is to go back down and climb a different and more relevant slope. Yesterday’s cleverness becomes todays’ ignorance. The advantage of the old peak becomes a hindrance in the newer landscape." (Very good article to understand the dichotomy between human economy and economic-command-and-control structures.)

https://rwer.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/limits/

Click Farming Social Media to buy-friend and "likes", a growth industry, a service industry, a big employer now...

"But it is not only sport stars with chips on their shoulder, or fading move and music gods who are willing to dish out in order to get the fake adoration and fake fans: as the AP reports, In 2013, the State Department, which has more than 400,000 likes and was recently most popular in Cairo, said it would stop buying Facebook fans after its inspector general criticized the agency for spending $630,000 to boost the numbers. In one case, its fan tally rose to more than 2.5 million from about 10,000... As recently as March of this year, scientists at USC and Indiana University discovered up to 15% of Twitter accounts could be fake. Since Twitter currently has 319 million monthly active users, that translates to nearly 48 million bot accounts." 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-11/look-inside-chinese-click-farm-fake-followers-fake-likes-fake-reviews

"The first half of the oil age now closes," says Campbell. "It lasted 150 years and saw the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade, agriculture and financial capital, allowing the population to expand six-fold. The second half now dawns, and will be marked by the decline of oil and all that depends on it, including financial capital." Thanks Charles

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/apr/21/oilandpetrol.news

"The Robot Revolution Will Take Your Car, Your Mom's Car and All the Oil in 13 Years", Thanks again Charles. This has been my analysis since those self driving cars started to be on my bike routes in 2015 and I really looked into it closely. It keeps central control of people and economy, and really is efficient if nobody owns personal vehicles, you can have a lot fewer vehicles, and run them 5 feet apart at 75 mph, as long as the computer network is working right. Hey, what if it hiccups? Anyway, bicyclists rule when the computers are working right.)

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-robot-revolution-will-take-your-car-your-moms-car-and-all-the-oil-in-13-years

How Amazon Killed the Department Store in 5 Charts (Big Malls and parking lots will be available for urban rebuilding from this effect, as well as from the robo-cabs. Amplifies central control even more. Global capitalism "Likes" big time.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-12/how-amazon-killed-department-store-five-charts

"What Was the Liberal International Order?" Thank Eleni. This really lays out global financial capitalism in the post-WW-2 era clearly and explicitly; towards the end, gut-wrenchingly. Read to the end. I'm really sorry...for the horrors it contracted-for to "expand it's holdings"...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/05/what-was-the-liberal-international-order/

Mourning the Dead

Underground

Scratching the Surface,

Tass gives as much news as we are likely to get about Lavrov/Tillerson/Trump meetings in Washington yesterday. There is a lot in here. It looks like a beginning. 

"President Trump has clarified his interest in building mutually beneficial and practical relations, as well as in solving issues," Lavrov pointed out. "This is very important," he said.
http://tass.com/politics/945302

North Korea might be a target for CIA acquisition, like Afghanistan was.

North Korea, according to the Chosun Ilbo, produces around 40 tons of opium annually — comparable to Pakistan’s opium industry. Most of its opium is smuggled into and sold in China and cannot be targeted by sanctions, since it is hard to trace on the black market.

http://theantimedia.org/north-korea-major-opium-cia/

Brief Putin interview with CBS news catches the Russian President dressed out, and about to enter the rink to play hockey with some hockey fans. He does not believe that the Comey-firing is anything unusual, or that it will affect US/Russian relations. 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-10/caught-video-hockey-playing-putin-reacts-comey-termination

Barack Obama, on the other hand, flew to Milan, Italy and drove in a 14 car convoy to give his $3.2 million climate-change speech for 90 minutes, then ran that whole program in reverse to get back home. This is a dramatically reduced carbon footprint for the former POTUS, huuuge reduction...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-10/obama-takes-private-jet-14-car-envoy-his-32mm-climate-change-speech

In the UK, Labor Party plan to re-socialize the mail, railways and utilities, and to spend the money to the benefit of citizens, has to be "leaked", and meets with much derision about "going back" and "chaos" and so on. Free college again, too.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/10/labour-party-manifesto-pledges-to-end-tuition-fees-and-nationalise-railways

Israel's New Cultural War of Aggression, by Professor Richard Falk, recently labeled a "self-loathing Jew" for talking about the unfair treatment of Palestinians in the homeland which has been wrenched from them by military violence, and in which they are now prisoners on a few small plots. Thanks Eleni.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/08/israels-new-cultural-war-of-aggression/

Is it bad that we're killing off all the bugs? Who needs 'em? I don't have to clean the windshield, like I used to. (Anyway, I've got MY fireflies in MY garden...)

 "The Krefeld Entomological Society, has seen the yearly insect catches fluctuate, as expected. But in 2013 they spotted something alarming. When they returned to one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%. Perhaps it was a particularly bad year, they thought, so they set up the traps again in 2014. The numbers were just as low. Through more direct comparisons, the group—which had preserved thousands of samples over 3 decades—found dramatic declines across more than a dozen other sites... We've lost huge amounts of habitat, which has certainly contributed to all these declines," Goulson says. "If we turn all the seminatural habitats to wheat and cornfields, then there will be virtually no life in those fields."

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone

"Earthships" are buildings which engage the boundaries between earth and sky, dug in deep and strategically glassed-to-the-south to invite winter sun, adjust airflow as needed for the seasons, catch and store water, maybe have some solar panels... This project is a work in progress, and began over 30 years ago in Arizona. The embedded work is the big issue here. The company will build you an earthship for something like $250 per square foot, and $20k for the plans. This is a staggeringly high cost. looking at the "Simple Survival Model Earthship" video (scroll down) gives a clear idea of just how much work is required to get a very small enclosed space. It is really hard to conceptualize this amount of work and the amount of material. 1000 used tires, pounded hard and full of dirt with sledgehammers, one at a time, is just the beginning...

http://earthship.com/a-look-at-the-models-of-earthships

This link looks further into the construction materials. Got 10,000 aluminum cans? Got 10,000 beer bottles? This is really a lot of hand work. All the comments are that the process is "simple" and requires "an army" of fairly low skilled (but diligent) workers. They highly recommend that you participate in a build or two before starting your own.

http://earthship.com/construction-materials

Here is Jordan's earthship on Prince Edward Island in Canada. He got a degree in "construction technology", went to Arizona and helped build a couple of earthships, came back and got all of his friends to help him build his own. I see a whole lot of expensive building materials here, as well as that takes-an-army level of build-intensity. Funding for the project is never mentioned.

http://tinyhousetalk.com/earthship-home-young-mans-inspiring-building-and-living-experience/

Here is a gallery of pictures of the build on Prince Edward Island, and the new build, which is now underway.

http://earthshippei.com/gallery-2/

Here is an earthship that a couple built themselves in California, 560 square feet, took "a long time" living off grid to do it. They managed to scavenge masterfully and held monetary cost down to $10k.  This home looks to be their lives... Bathroom not mentioned.

http://tinyhousetalk.com/taylor-stephs-10k-earthship-home/

Digging In

Businesslike Wars

Misconceptualized Laborers,

Maybe a war for oil in Venezuela will be juuust-right. Let's stage the coup openly.

'US President Donald Trump's national security adviser Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster has met with Venezuela’s opposition leader and Parliament Speaker Julio Borges, who seek to oust the oil-rich country’s President Nicolas Maduro amid an economic crisis fueled by the 2014 crash of oil prices... Meanwhile, Maduro insists a new constitution is essential to fend off what he refers to as an attempted foreign-sponsored “coup” against his government."

http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/05/07/520840/US-National-Security-Adviser-H-R-McMaster-Venezuela-opposition-leader-Julio-Borges-White-House

Right on cue, multinational military exercises, led by the US: "Given the U.S. fear of Venezuelan oil becoming the property of the Russian government, as well as the U.S.’ documented history of overthrowing and undermining leftist governments in Venezuela, “Operation: American United” may be less of a drill and more of what its name implies – a way to bring Venezuela, along with other South American nations, back into the fold of U.S. influence."

http://theantimedia.org/us-military-drills-embattled-venezuela/

Russia points out that a military blockade against ocean trade with North Korea is an act of war against the countries whose ships are stopped and boarded by the navy. (Just in case you forgot.)

https://www.rt.com/politics/387256-declaration-of-war-senator-blasts/

"A State Department official on Friday said that the Russian proposal calling to bar U.S. military aircraft from flying over designated safe zones cannot “limit” the U.S.’s mission against ISIS in the country in any way. “The coalition will continue to strike ISIS targets in Syria,” the official told The Wall Street Journal. “The campaign to defeat ISIS will continue at the same relentless pace as it is proceeding now.” A deal hammered out by Russia, Turkey and Iran to set up "de-escalation zones" in mostly opposition-held parts of Syria went into effect Saturday."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-dismisses-russia%E2%80%99s-ban-on-military-aircraft-over-syria-safe-zones/ar-BBANG3d?OCID=ansmsnnews11

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov remarks that the members of the Trump administration "have not yet fully adjusted to each other". Thanks Eleni.

"There’s the traditional neo-con/deep state friendly galaxy where General McMaster and to a degree James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis reside, there’s the Samantha Power 2.0 galaxy which is home of Nikki Haley, there’s the conservative, anti-Salifist/non-Russophobic galaxy of a seemingly isolated Steve Bannon and then there’s the Donald Trump galaxy where a long time ago and seemingly far away, Donald Trump actually knew what he stood for. Sean Spicer is meanwhile living in a strange galaxy where Hitler didn’t gas his people but Bashar al-Assad did. This place isn’t even worth exploring. One can only hope that Rex Tillerson, who for all his problems at least looks and acts in a professional manner, will be able to conduct relations with his counter-part Sergey Lavrov that by July, might be able to put an end to the confusion that seems to have paralysed the Trump administration."

http://theduran.com/russian-fm-lavrov-trump-admin-not-yet-fully-adjusting-to-each-other/

(Today, 5/10/17) Sergei Lavrov, Moscow’s top diplomat, will be in Washington for the first time since 2013. He is scheduled to meet Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at about 8:30 a.m. before huddling with Mr. Trump later in the morning. The Russian envoy’s visit reciprocates Mr. Tillerson’s trip to Moscow last month, when he met with President Vladimir Putin after meeting with other Russian officials. Russia has said it is working toward establishing a meeting between Messrs. Trump and Putin... Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Lavrov comes as a plan by Russia, Iran and Turkey to set up “de-escalation zones” in Syria has been accompanied by Russian demands that U.S. planes stay away from the protected areas.

Update: Lavrov reacts to the Comey firing news... Shaking his head, he chirped sarcastically “Was he fired? Was he fired? You are kidding?!”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-10/president-trump-meet-russian-foreign-minister-lavrov-today

President Trump “clearly stated his desire for businesslike” relations with Russia, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who met with President Trump Wednesday. "Very, very good meeting", remarked Trump.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-10/trump-has-very-very-good-meeting-lavrov-live-feed

The Future of Islam in Western Europe is a careful analysis, Thanks Eleni:

The threat has never been Islam. The threat is Takfirism. Here is how Wikipedia defines the concept of “Takfir”: In Islamic law, takfir or takfeer (Arabic: تكفير‎‎ takfīr) refers to the practice of excommunication, one Muslim declaring another Muslim as kafir (non-believer)... “Takfirism” is first and foremost a mindset. Guns and bullets cannot defeat a mindset. In fact, only ideas can defeat other ideas. The Russians know that... Islam and the Muslims who practice it were never the enemy. That the enemy was a relatively small sect of para-Islamic crazies which originated in the 13th century and which remained largely in the fringes of the Islamic world until it was given an immense boost first by the House of Saud and, later, by the US CIA. Today, the Takfiris are still the instrument of the AngloZionist Empire, they are the infection which is unleashed against any country daring to reject the Empire’s dominion. Furthermore, the Takfiris are, first and foremost, a threat to any and all other variants of Islam, whether Shia or Sunni.

http://www.unz.com/tsaker/the-future-of-islam-in-western-europe/

There is a sudden massing of hundreds of American military vehicles, tanks and supply trucks, on Jordan's border with Syria (drone pics here). Also the deal is set to massively increase weapons supply to Syrian Kurds, an effective fighting force, hated by Turkey. (Erdogan says Trump can still turn back from this.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-09/drone-images-expose-major-us-jordan-military-build-syrian-border

Who wants to be FBI Director? Let's see a show of hands!  Free sword-of-Damocles!

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-10/fbi-turmoil-over-comey-ouster-chaos-ensues-search-new-director-gets-underway

Wikileaks offers Comey a job in Washington office.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-10/wikileaks-offers-hire-james-comey

Barack Obama is paid $3.2 million for a 90 minute talk in Italy. What a lucky guy! Thanks for the news, Ray. (New term "pre-bribery" just means "guaranteed payoff for services rendered". This is public advertising for how profitable it is to serve the masters well.)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-09/obama-pockets-32-million-speaking-gig-milan

Pat Buchanan, who worked in the White House the entire Nixon presidency, draws parallels between Nixon and Trump, who both feared and hated the CIA. Nixon went into the job fully prepared... There are differences.

http://buchanan.org/blog/nixon-trump-now-126940

Modern Monetary Theory, the Trillion $ platinum coin, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump... (Lincoln spent greenbacks into circulation. Global banking hated him with a vengeance.)

To a layperson, MMT can seem dizzyingly complex, but at its core is the belief that most of us have the economy backward. Conventional wisdom holds that the government taxes individuals and companies in order to fund its own spending. But the government—which is ultimately the source of all dollars, taxed or untaxed—pays or spends first and taxes later... “It’s a theory insofar as arithmetic is a theory.” “The contribution of MMT is not the discovery of new facts,” Galbraith says. “It’s a teaching core of things which are factually uncontroversial.” But its implications can be radically humane. What’s threatening to the establishment, Galbraith adds, “is that the narrative is very compelling.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-rock-star-appeal-of-modern-monetary-theory/

Pension cuts mandated by the Eurogroup are ruled illegal under Greek and European law (a minor formality...)

http://www.ekathimerini.com/218286/article/ekathimerini/news/court-finds-new-pension-cuts-to-be-unconstitutional-sources-say

Paid-in-Lies