Durante il tour di “Lights In The Sky” Trent scrisse sul sito dei NIN che i fan avrebbero potuto riprendere i concerti. In breve tempo la community della band accumulò “tonnellate” di video e immagini dei vari concerti intorno al globo. Durante il tour a supporto delle ultime date del “Wave Goodbye Tour”, nella serata al Webster Hall, è stato suonato per intero l’album manifesto della band; The Downward Spiral. Bene, Se volete scaricare e vedere quel concerto, ora è possibile, grazie agli spettatori presenti che hanno ripreso l’evento, ed organizzatisi tramite la community sono riusciti ad editare le registrazioni (con le angolazioni del caso) e a realizzare un prodotto di buona qualità.

Nel sito ufficiale della band c’è un link dove è possibile scaricare (qui) i diversi formati di quel concerto; Standard – HD video – iPod Video e solo audio.

Un buon modo per riascoltare e rivedere i NIN all’opera.

How do you tell
a heart to stop racing,
a mind to stop pacing
a girl to start facing
her greatest fears?

Hopeless ruminations.
Pathological expectations.
Deep and dangerous downward spirals.

I let gravity drag me.
I let inertia keep me.
I let the whole world think that I don’t care.

When I’m numb,
it’s like I’m not even there.

And who am I?
And who was I?
And who will I be
if I let this
illness
get the best of me?

I’m not calling you a liar, just don’t lie to me
I’m not calling you a thief, just don’t steal from me
I’m not calling you a ghost, just stop haunting me
And I love you so much, I’m gonna let you kill me

• Florence and the Machine [I'm not calling you a liar]

Ahh, today.. Today, today, today. I rarely use the word ‘hate’ because it’s a strong word, a top-shelf one, but I think I can say I hated most of this morning. The sudden realization about a few choice private matters brought up a lot of fear in my mind. I’m not scared of a lot of things. I think the only things I’m actually, really scared of are: heights, spiders, people close to me dying, and being hated and/or disliked. Quite honestly, I’m scared of my own self and emotions more than anything else. I have to deal with all of my fears, constantly; but dealing with myself has never been something I’m good at, nor do I even want to know what’s going on with my screwed up brain. However, a dear friend of mine brought up some flaws in my eccentric personality. The problem with that is the entire ’speech’ was just saying to me that I’m a fuck up as a person and as a friend. For hours, tears just poured down my face. Then, when I couldn’t cry anymore, I got pissed. I was absolutely livid. How in the fuck could someone dare tell me that I need to change something about myself?!?! I must say, I wouldn’t of wanted to be somebody who had to deal with me sometimes. But it took about five hours for me to calm down enough to try to understand what this friend of mine was saying. Finally, I just gave up and tried to think about other things. I surrounded myself with talkative people, and we were off. Two of my insanely good friends gave me a few things to keep me happy, and I came back to my apartment.

So as of right now, I’m wonderfully high (which means I’m incredibly happy as well). I feel like my brain is working better now, and I can process information better. This is the main reason I smoke all day long, not only for recreational purposes. Looking back on today, I realize that the morning really fuckin’ sucked. And that the evening defiantly wasn’t bad at all. Overall, today was good, average. It’s nice to be able to say that at the end of the day, have you noticed?

______________________

Live like you’re dying; because the fact is, you are.

Tomorrow is never promised, just because you made it this far.

Since I’m so clear headed now, I suppose actually thinking about my biggest fear would be a grand idea. Quite frankly, I never really understood the idea of being able to control yourself. When I was growing up, control was something that was nearly impossible to have. It’s hard to control yourself when everyone around you wants to kick the shit out of you. Now, I’m much more of an adult that I’ve ever been, and it’s apparent to me that it’s a necessary thing to keep in good practice. Really, when I look at this last year, even; I see so many changes, so many differences, so much about myself that is so much better than it was before. But still, I’m not up to par with society’s requirements, so I must continue to grow and change. I’ve yet to find myself, and I suppose that’s normal. I’m not the person that I want to be for the rest of my life. Dreams of being someone who I can be proud to say I am don’t just happen without any work; I know that. Right now, I feel so lost and vulnerable that it’s hard to imagine working on my self as well as dealing with everyday occurrences. I guess I’ve hit another one of those unexplainable bipolar experiences that I have every so often. I’ve noticed that I can change personalities almost with each cycle of my bipolar that I go through. As of now, I feel like more of a child that I’ve felt in a long time but that’s because I’m feeling so distant from everyone I’m familiar with. This downward spiral I’ve sent myself into seems to never end. On the first of the coming month, I’m going to turn this whole thing around. I’m stronger, smarter, and more alive than any mental illness I have. If I actually try to get out of this instead of lowering myself deeper and deeper, I can figure out how to act like a normal person. I used to have semi-strict morals, I used to have as goal for life, I used to be able to get up in the morning and know that everything was going to be alright. Since no therapist or person of the law or parent could ever control me, I figure I can control myself if I put my mind to it. I’ve been slowly learning to eat like a normal person. I’ve consumed actual meals lately. The idea in my head is to try to reverse some of the horrible habits I’ve gotten together with. In doing that, I can start to work on the better parts of myself, and add to them. As with every change I go through, I expect to lose some of the people I currently call friends. The few friends that I can trust will remain but I don’t think I can let myself continue to deal with the bullshit of other people. Ignorance flows over in this country, in this world. I have no reason to subject myself to it. I fully expect to be some much better by the beginning of the year. Effort is key in this, and I just need a little time.

]]> http://heartshapedlies.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/look-at-me-im-the-tragic-heroine/ Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:23:44 +0000 heartshapedlies http://heartshapedlies.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/look-at-me-im-the-tragic-heroine/

I’ll watch you wallow in the misery,
cut yourself so consciously,
I don’t want to.
But you make me.
Oh, you make me.
Your wounds are so subtly seen,
I can see how you willingly bleed
but your tragedy
is not what you think it is.
You revel in you,
and make me revel in you,
Should I watch you
falling into the darkness?
Should it move me?
Does it move you?
I’d rather see a different movie,
no thank you.
If love had a handbook,
you’d buy it.
If tragedy had a best friend,
you’d be it.
Your falling,
falling,
falling,
falling;
You’re aware of it.
You like it.

POSTED here but I thought it belongs here as well.

Mielőtt még megjelenne egy teljesen hivatalos DVD a Nine Inch Nails búcsúturnéjáról, ingyen letöltető egy közel sem hivatalos, viszont annál jobb minőségű kalóz anyag, amit maga Trent Reznor bocsájtott ki az éterbe. Reznor és csapata a zenekar utolsó bulijának egyikén teljes egészében eljátszotta a ‘Downward Spiral’ lemezt, de ezt az anyagot  a koncertszervező nem engedte rögzíteni, így kapóra jött, hogy a NIN koncertjein a rajongóknak már jó ideje szabad volt  felvenni mindent. Így készült el ez a fullos, több kamerás, menüvel is ellátott lemez (akár iPod/iPhone-ra is), melyet itt tölthettek le vagy megnézhettek HD minőségben itt!

- Elvis Presley

Download/Stream Here

Obama Cautiously Takes Credit for Economic Turnaround – Despite 9.7% Unemployment

President Obama on Saturday continued his administration’s careful efforts to take credit for the slowly improving economy, using his radio address to tout the economic turnaround since world leaders met in London in April.

At the time of the G-20 summit, the world’s economic situation was dire, Obama said in the radio address. The meeting in London marked “a crisis that required unprecedented international cooperation to jumpstart the world’s economies and help break the downward spiral that enveloped all our nations,” he said.

Next week, Obama and the same world leaders will gather in Pittsburgh for what Obama called “a five-month checkup” on the financial actions taken by their countries.

“Because of the steps taken by our nation and all nations, we can now say that we have stopped our economic freefall,” the president said in the address, which is broadcast on the radio and the internet.

But the president was quick to note that he is not satisfied with the extent of the recovery in the United States or globally, saying that “stopping the bleeding isn’t nearly enough.”

“Our work is far from over,” he said. “We know we still have a lot to do, in conjunction with nations around the world, to strengthen the rules governing financial markets and ensure that we never again find ourselves in the precarious situation we found ourselves in just one year ago.”

In their own radio address, Republicans focused on health-care reform, and reiterated their opposition to the Democratic plans making their way through Congress.

North Carolina Congresswoman Sue Myrick, who gave the GOP address, talked about having been diagnosed with breast cancer nine years ago. She said her diagnosis came quickly after tests from her doctors.

“Under the government-run health care system they have in Canada and the United Kingdom, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get those tests so quickly,” she said. “One international study found that three times as many citizens in those countries wait longer than a month to
see a specialist. When it comes to life-threatening diseases like cancer, delay could mean death.”

She added: “Replacing your current health care with a government-run system is not the answer.”

Obama has railed against claims like that, saying repeatedly that people who have health insurance will not be required to give it up and that no one would be forced to join a government-run health plan.

Obama is booked on five Sunday-morning talk shows, where he is expected to continue the push for health-care reform.

Inertia – the route to killing self

I am tempted to quote verbatim the comments made by one of my blog readers

“Plans are nice to read, but difficult to get done. World is not so smooth place to live-in; external factors are always there to crumble your internal wishes! Particularly in this materialistic world, financial hurdles don’t allow common people (like me) to achieve our dreams. One may say, we have no guts to achieve what we dream. But at the end of the day, when I think of spending sometime in blogging or reading an interesting book a sense of job insecurity creeps into my mind spoiling all other interest” .

Death of human physical being is certain. It has its fixed time, place and the manner. It can come through accident, disease, destruction and even destiny. But many a times we tend to invite an untimely blow of sudden death to our souls and inner selves. That happens when we stop growing instead we start the downward spiral of mental de- growth.  We lose not only interest in every thing around us but we also end up distancing ourselves from our desired for and intended goals in our life. This may happen because we have lost interest in surroundings around us or it may happen since we are tempted to opt for the security of our cushy jobs and the perks attached to it. But the worst situation comes when we do no take any initiative because of the fear of the unknown. A look at the reasons for inactivity and its systems will help here to understand our very own personalities and the   gimmicks we indulge into to accept the death of intellect for future growth.

Our inertia causes downward growth when we:

• Leave decisions of our life to others
• Always complain about the lack of time
• Always complain about lack of resources
• Always complain about lack of opportunities
• Get irritated for non achievements
• Can not find any topic of interest to discuss with friends/ family
• Simply talk of doing great things
• Sleep either more or less than necessary
• Avoid career discussions

The way to self realization is replete with many challenges and rewards. Challenges to understand and synergize our strengths and weakness to either thwart the threats and or also to en-cash and en-value the opportunities. This can come only when we make all efforts to take out some time for our own self development.

I am reminded of the famous words of Dov Frohman when he says “every leader should routinely keep a substantial portion of his or her time—I would say as much as 50 percent—unscheduled. … Only when you have substantial ’slop’ in your schedule—unscheduled time—will you have the space to reflect on what you are doing, learn from experience, and recover from your inevitable mistakes. Leaders without such free time end up tackling issues only when there is an immediate or visible problem”.

We get stuck up in the rut of ordinary routine when we refuse to take out time for ourselves. We must take out time to reflect and think as to which way we can improve our lives, our mental ability, our leadership qualities, our positive yet differentiating strengths to keep us ahead from the others in the race to self realization. Every day at the end of the day we must reflect as to what happened during the course of the day. We must examine in the process whether the experience has been a positive gain or a negative abrasion. Such critical analysis of experiencing will make us imbibe the positive within us for future enjoyments and the negatives will either be left behind or accumulated for   future corrections.

Only a very conscious effort made to learn from our experiences and mistakes can open the path  to the progress and make us effective leaders. Let us begin this today itself  by asking ourselves very basic and simple questions:

• What was my today intended for?
• Did I do what I had planned?
• Did I achieve what was I trying to achieve?
• What had contributed to this achievement?
• What could I not achieve and why?
• Is the non achievement any way affecting my life’s long term plans?
• In what way is my non achievement affecting others?
• What can be the long term / short term affects (positive or negative) for me and others?
• Can I do the same thing differently next time?
• Can I do any thing to improve upon whatever I did today?
• Can I make my family, colleagues, co-workers, friends, partners in this route to improvement?

Our introspective reflections will bring forth the positive thoughts amongst others too, whose opinions do count for us and who can be instrumentals/ motivators in helping us get up and get going in a more constructive approach for future accomplishment.

Wired to Worship

From James Kunstler – author of 10 books – the latest “the Long Emergency”:

Anything can happen now.  I certainly wouldn’t rule out international mischief as we arc around into fall.  The air is so full of black swans that the white swan now seems like the exceptional thing. Whatever else happens, it sure will be interesting to see the public’s reaction to Wall Street’s announcement of Christmas bonuses.  The folks at Rockefeller Center better be thinking about getting a fireproof tree.

We are set up to fall like bowling pins.  What plans are you making – even if you think that there is a chance in hell freezing over that anything could touch the world super power and leader of the free world spreading liberty wherever it goes?  It is always wise to have a contingency plan.

The following is an excerpt from “Independent Living, published by American Lantern Press, Inc.”

Alarming New January – April Statistics Show Foreign Capital

Fleeing America –Just as Federal Government Hopes to

Borrow Unprecedented Sums to Fund Its Trillion-Dollar Bailouts…

A Desperately Cash-Strapped Liberal Congress

Will Soon Double-Cross Taxpayers and

Investors With Massive Changes and

Absolutely No Warning.

As “Obamanomics” continues to accelerate the economy’s collapse and with it, the destruction of millions more jobs, the corrupt U.S. political class is circling its wagons in dangerous and disturbing ways. Here are some very recent eyebrow-raising developments:

• The White House is compiling a political enemies list. On Wednesday, an official White House blog urged users to forward the names of any and all Internet critics of the Administration’s proposed plan to crush private medicine and force Americans into government-run healthcare. Specifically, White House allies are being urged to forward the names of anyone spreading “fishy” information on the Internet about their healthcare plan to flag@whitehouse.gov.

• In the last week, the White House launched an attack against the Drudge Report for airing a YOUTUBE segment of a 2003 Obama speech before a union audience where he explicitly called for an end to private insurance. The White House launched a video of its own to counter Obama’s comments, completely ignoring that’s exactly what Obama had said in 2003. Additional comments by Rep. Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi calling for a “single payer” socialized medicine system have also found their way onto YOUTUBE.
• Members of Congress conducting town hall meetings are being met by angry voters who oppose the imposition of national “communal medicine” run by the same kind of bureaucrats who run DMVs. Town hall meetings from Austin, Texas, to Philadelphia to California have seen record attendance by angry constituents opposed to the hard-left agenda being pursued in Washington. Meanwhile, union bosses at the AFL-CIO and the SEIU have stepped in to chill voters from expressing their opposition, dispatching union operatives to town hall meetings with orders to pressure attendees into signing documents promising they will not get angry. (Kinda ironic, considering Big Labor’s especially ugly reputation for militancy.)
• Within the last 48 hours, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has joined with other Democrats to denounce the angry citizens who are showing up for town halls. In a short scratchy video caught on someone’s camera, Pelosi could be heard denouncing the voters, launching a false claim they were sporting Nazi logos as part of their protest. (Major thought-control legislation now looms before Congress – Pelosi and other Democrats catching heat from the public strongly favor “hate crimes” laws, “free-speech zones,” and the like.)
• The Capitol is rapidly being converted to White House levels of security. The much-ballyhooed Capitol Hill “Visitors Center” ends a 230-year tradition of broad public access to the U.S. Capitol by the general public. (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was overheard complaining about having to deal with the “smell” of citizens visiting the Capitol.) Members of Congress are also quietly talking among themselves about the need to add their own personal security at future town hall meetings back in their districts.
• The House of Representatives has quietly purchased an initial fleet of three luxury Gulfstream G550s so top members of Congress can avoid public exposure on commercial airplanes. (Even after raising a stink about “carbon footprints” and corporate executives flying in their own jets.)

Don’t Become Part of America’s Emerging Pauper Class

One of the biggest risks is, too many people are still looking to the government idiots who got us into this mess for salvation. I don’t know what makes me angrier, the rip-off artists in the political class who wrecked the U.S. financial system and chased millions of great jobs overseas, or the gullible general public who continue to believe government ninnies can “fix” the very fiasco they created.

It wasn’t greedy lenders who created the subprime mortgage debacle. The lenders were merely participants in a scheme hatched in Washington by federal authorities to artificially inflate U.S. home-ownership rates.

In 2002, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were issued radical new Affirmative Action lending quotas from politicians kowtowing to the Marxist ACORN and other radical groups.

Their mandate: increase “minority” home ownership by 5.5 million by the year 2010. The only way the mortgage industry could meet such demands was to eviscerate traditional lending standards. Now that the federal government has taken over Fannie and Freddie after having driven them into insolvency, guess who is on the hook for the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of bad mortgages on their books? That’s right, you and me, the taxpayers.

The planning and investment rules you and I have followed all our lives are being re-written — quite literally — as you read this letter! We are witness not just to the government takeover of the U.S. financial sector, but to the many new dangerous pieces of emergency legislation coming down the pike. Each of them will be crammed with bureaucratic power-grabs and other nightmare provisions which will fleece unsuspecting millions.

I am not a clairvoyant – but I read the signs in the U.S. economy and financial sector (being a CPA – I can fiddle around a bit with numbers) – and I predicted in early 2008 that U.S. banks would begin to fail, and that even CitiGroup the largest U.S. bank could go down.  And all that came to pass.

Now I want to warn you of an even bigger crisis that looms just ahead.  The 80,000 troops is but a token piece of info that makes up 1 or 2 % of the story of the end of America as we have known it.

Not to scare you unduly, but the bare facts of the matter are that national bankruptcy and financial chaos are here.  The politicians are rolling out a draconian emergency response which will loot your assets and abolish your financial freedom – YOU REALLY NEED A PLAN NOW ~!!!!

This crisis is still only in its early stages, and it’s rooted in fundamental problems that cannot possibly be fixed with a few federal bailouts and cash injections.

You know BIG trouble is brewing when top federeral Comptroller General – David Walker – recently quit in frustration because as our government’s top accountant had warned in vain – THE NATION’S FINANCES ARE GOING OVER A CLIFF AND NO ONE IS ACTING TO STOP IT…

Or – you might look at this as a warning sign – a recent finding by the Congressional Budget Office details that the federal insolvency crisis is SO DEEP EVERY U.S. HOUSEHOLD WOULD HAVE TO COUGH UP HALF-A-MILLION DOLLARS EACH – JUST TO SAVE THEE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FROM BANKRUPTCY.  And the financial debt leverage of U.S. consumers themselves is even more scary.

Now I know  the “D” word is a big word – but depression is exactly what  is being bandied about by a surprising number of experts.  There are millions of innocents who are in the process of getting financially slaughtered in what respected financial analyst George Whitehurst-Berry describes as “the terminal stages of the world’s most gigantic pyramid scheme…”

To put it mildly I guess we in a scary “unwinding” of history’s largest debt bubble and the growing risk of a catastrophic melt-down of the U.S. dollar under the weight of national bankruptcy.  Take a look at California – the eigth largest economy in the world – straddled with $23+ billion in debt – is selling off many of its prized possessions and building & property.  Arnold is asking most state employees to take mandatory furloughs – which has cut salaries by as much as 25%, causing for some the risk of loosing their home due to foreclosure and winding up with the flood of people streaming in daily to the Sacramento Delta to set up camp in the ever growing tent cities.  A dozen of more states handing out IOU’s as unemployment payments.

It is no accident that savvy investors such as Warren Buffett and Microsoft Founder Bill Gates have all evacuated major assets out of harm’s way.

Former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan just confessed the unfolding liquidity crisis is a “once-in-a-century event, while former Treasury official (and now columnist) Paul Craig Robers recently noted “Financially the UlS. is not an independent country… the U.S. is bankrupt.”

Actually the U.S. formerly filed legal bankruptcy documents in March of this year stating plainly that it is not obligated to pay back a cent to any of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks.

If you want to see the actual filed copy – ask me and I will send you a PDF of it.

A July 22 article from Bloomberg states:

“Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said a potential wave of defaults in commercial real estate may present a “difficult” challenge for the economy, without committing to additional steps to aid the market.

Bernanke, testifying before the Senate Banking Committee today, urged lenders to modify problem mortgages to avert defaults. Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the panel, told Bernanke that some have suggested the commercial market “may even dwarf the residential mortgage problems in the U.S.”

Full article ==>  http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a2mAhkgbWDXc

I think the saying here is – we are waiting for the other shoe to drop.

One of my personal most admired minds of the the American Revolution and post revolution is Thomas Jefferson – who wrote in his timeless wisdom about the mixture of money, debt and external privately owned banks – which the Federal Reserve is – it is as Federal as Federal Express and has doubtful reserves.:

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of ALL PROPERTY UNTIL THEIR CHILDREN WAKE UP HOMELESS ON THE CONTINENT THEY CONQUERED.”

[Emphasis mine]
And the very prestigious monthly magazine The Economist just yesterday – July 27 – published an article that stated:

“WORLD trade has been one of the worst casualties of the global economic slowdown and the source of some particularly startling figures. Towards the end of last year trade all but collapsed.”

Full article can be located here ==> http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14115878&source=features_box_main

“Military Police State. Soon?

Police State; noun, also known as Military Police State
(1) A state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the people.

(2) A nation whose rulers maintain order and obedience by the threat of police or military force; one with a brutal, arbitrary government.

According to the Army Times Magazine, Prez Obama has done another first, never before in the history of this Nation; and I personally cannot help but wonder exactly WHY?

Prez Obama has ordered the full time and permanent Military Response to ANY upcoming social CIVILIAN chaos event here in the United States.

So what exactly does Prez Obama know, or suspect, that the rest of us do not know, yet some people do suspect?

And exactly what kind of “Military Response” to a civilian threat is Obama preparing?

Well apparently the mere threat of civilian chaos is so large that a domestic law-enforcement arm of the U.S. military (referred to by The Army Times as the “Consequence Management Response Force”) has been created to deal with what U.S. officials believe to be a coming, unprecedented wave of massive civilian social chaos.

A recent report by the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute states flatly the U.S. military must prepare for “a violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” that could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.”

The Army Times has reported that the domestic emergency army unit has been increased 80,000 COMBAT trained troops.

Many of these are combat veterans returning from Iraq and who are currently, and will be in the future, being trained and stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia. “

http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/04.09/pandemonium.html#top

Pat Kiley from Follow the Money – 7:30 minutes of truth that a rare individual in the US is aware of.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs17YEiXF34

A blog on a fox news website discussing the 80,000 troops.

http://community2.myfoxdfw.com/_Obama-Earmarks-80000-Troops-for-Chaos-in-US/BLOG/234791/78592.html

The Army Times September 30, 2008 article regarding US troops under NorthCom command and activily training on US soil for a potential military response sometime in the near future.

Quote a few paragraphs and then the link to the whole article.

“The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission with a twist at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or man made emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks. …

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.”

http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/04.09/pandemonium.html#top

Economic Collapse to Trigger Social Pandemonium
Yes, U.S. Officials Are Quietly Preparing for BIG Trouble Ahead
Two Categories of People: The Prepared vs. the Clueless

http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/04.09/pandemonium.html#top

FEMA Camp Coffins for Americans”! – Is America building hundreds of thousands of coffins for an event that they know is soon on the horizon.

http://www.truthed.com/videos/325_fema_camp_coffins_for_americans.htm

Copy of PPD51 – giving the President Nero like dictatorial powers over every aspect of the country.  Hitler burned down the Reichstag in February 27, 1933.  “The day after the fire, Hitler asked for and received from President Hindenburg the Reichstag Fire Decree, signed into law by Hindenburg using Article 48 of the Wiemar Constitution. The Reichstag Fire Decree suspended most civil liberties in Germany and was used by the Nazis to ban publications not considered “friendly” to the Nazi cause.”

Is it possible for Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush or Obama to take the fascist reigns of power as Hitler did?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/7566901/PDD51

Marines performing realistic real time military exercises in US populated neighborhoods.  Pulling cars over at check points and searching them – setting up perimeters.

Watch with you own eyes what is going on in America – “Urban Warfare Training.”

http://www,youtube.com/watch?v=71Jux68F_AQ

- – - – - – - -

“A RUN ON THE DOLLAR,” soberly predicts one Nobel Prize winning economist… “probably the kind of disorderly run that precipitates a global financial crisis…”

…while other monetary experts now warn, “We’re in the terminal stages of the world’s most gigantic pyramid scheme.”

WHAT WILL IT MEAN FOR YOU?

Heed the unmistakable warning signs in this MID-SUMMER ALERT, or risk missing your FINAL CHANCE to protect what’s left of your nest-egg, before the imminent collapse of the once-mighty U.S. Dollar renders it… …VIRTUALLY WORTHLESS!

All signs point toward the U.S. dollar – already down one-third against other world currencies since 2002 – heading at breakneck speed for a precipitous and historic crash.

Anyone holding dollars or dollar-denominated assets is sitting on a ticking time bomb, and the fuse is burning short. There isn’t a moment to lose before we see a worldwide rush to the exits.

Unmistakable warning signs point to a monetary crisis on the verge of spinning wildly out of control at any moment, leading to massive INFLATION and quite possibly, a sudden and catastrophic dollar collapse that will change our nation forever.

Government regulators are at this very moment systematically destroying, seizing, and otherwise transferring to federal control trillions of dollars in private assets. The all-but-certain impact on our currency, your purchasing power and your standard of living could be both sudden and devastating.

With a newly minted administration frantically borrowing and spending in a manic effort to re-inflate the decimated stock and housing markets, the government itself is rapidly going broke.

Here it is, from the fellow whose desk is supposed to have that sign, “the buck stops here” -

Mr. Obama, in a May 22 cable news interview during which he tried to rationalize his multi-trillion dollar spending spree, conceded with a chuckle,”we are out of money now. We’re operating in deep deficits…”

This admission came just 120 days into his term, and even before he committed upwards of $50 billion more in U.S. taxpayer funds to bailing General Motors out of the hole!

Major foreign investors such as China are quickly catching on to the hard reality of impending U.S. insolvency. They are coming to the inescapable conclusion that the only way Washington can keep its Ponzi finances going is by running the monetary printing presses non-stop.

As I mentioned, the dollar has already given up fully a third of its value relative to other world currencies in the last half-dozen years.

The trend is long, clear, and unmistakable, with all signs pointing steeply downhill. I checked FXmarket.com’s trend index on the dollar this morning. Two words – “Strongly Bearish.”

US Dollar Falling Fast

While all currencies on the globe are falling against tangible assets, the U.S. dollar is falling faster.

A massive, catastrophic dumping of the devaluing U.S. dollar looms large. The upshot is – if you don’t immediately begin taking the basic precautions I’ll outline for you right here, you stand a good chance of acting too late and getting caught with your britches down.

Even mega-investor (and high-profile Obama cheerleader) Warren Buffett recently admitted publicly that the frantic spending and money creation underway right now will trigger a currency-destroying inflation that will be much more severe than in the 1970s.

That’s why big-time investment gurus such as Jim Rogers seized on the temporary dollar rally earlier this year to hustle their assets out of harm’s way – before, as he puts it, the dollar “goes the way of pound sterling” and “declines by 90% in the coming years.”

Rogers then dispatched a strongly worded email offering this sobering assessment.  “The world at large does seem to understand innately that governments are bankrupting themselves and destroying paper currency.”

“Bankrupting.” “Destroying.” Strong words indeed. And specifically which nation’s government and currency are on a fast-track to monetary doomsday? As Rogers recently told TIME magazine, “America is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world.”

Do I have your attention? I trust that I do, because this is but the tip of the iceberg…

The Dollar’s Coming “Reckoning Day”: On a Par With Pearl Harbor and 9/11

The dollar’s coming reckoning day is going to be dramatic – correction, traumatic -marking a major milestone in our beloved nation’s decline as a financial powerhouse.

The sheer havoc unleashed by a dollar crisis will be nationally jolting on a par with Pearl Harbor, John F. Kennedy’s assassination and 9/11. And yes, the bottom could drop out in just a single harrowing day. Here’s just a glimpse of the likely fallout:

* A price explosion as Americans scramble over one another to buy tangible assets or simply hoard basic necessities, before the dollar’s purchasing power evaporates fully.
* Widespread shortages, sparse grocery store shelves and the return of long gas lines.
* Failed businesses and economic dislocations far eclipsing anything we’ve seen to date.
* A breakdown in commerce, as longer-term transactions become impossible to make.
* Rising crime and rampant unemployment.
* Government handouts drying up, with an angry dependent class taking to the streets.

You can – in fact, you must – take key steps to protect your family’s way of life. And you must do it soon. “Waiting it out” is not a plan for anything short of a catastrophe.

Respected economist and forecaster George Whitehurst-Berry has offered this astute explanation of the financial gyrations rocking U.S. markets, as quoted in the opening of this letter:

“We are in the TERMINAL STAGES OF THE WORLD’S MOST GIGANTIC PYRAMID SCHEME.”

[emphais mine] he explained, referring to the ultimate collapse of the U.S.-led monetary order that will permanently impoverish millions while making a handful of smart thinking, ahead-of-the-curve investors very rich.

Even the Pentagon is Secretly Planning for Dollar-Collapse Scenarios that Dramatically Tilt the Geo-Political Balance

The looming dollar crisis is no idle theory. This threat is so real that top Pentagon intelligence experts are running live “planning scenarios” in which resource-rich nations like Russia and China exploit U.S. indebtedness to wreak sudden havoc in our financial system and basic economy.

In the March 24 Unrestricted Warfare Symposium at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, intelligence analyst James Richards unveiled a blueprint detailing exactly how U.S. enemies could drop the value of the dollar by a shocking 75%, crippling our economy overnight.

This report’s conclusions are nothing short of chilling. So vulnerable is the U.S. to this scenario, Richards urges U.S. intel agencies to pay close attention to global gold supplies and the financial maneuverings of rival powers (something I do myself for my valued subscribers).

Richards’ prescient paper came out days before Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of China’s central bank, challenged the U.S. to step aside to allow a new global currency to replace the dollar.

The handwriting is on the wall. In late April, the international news media reported a major development underscoring the coming doom of the dollar. The Financial Times of London, for one, noted on April 26: “China has quietly ALMOST DOUBLED ITS GOLD RESERVE to become the fifth biggest holder of the precious metal.” Yet as usual, the celebrity-obsessed U.S. media totally glossed over another harbinger of what is to come.

Or as the always-reliable Casey Report added: “On the bigger global screen, this revelation [about China's gold hoarding] stops the concept of gold as a ‘barbarous relic’ as bankers had hoped it would become in the past 50 years…” Translation: The day of the paper-backed dollar is coming to an ugly end, and soon.

You Must Plan for the Coming Dollar Collapse: NOW

It’s not good enough to know what’s going to happen. You have to know WHAT  to do.  So – what are you going to do?  And you have to do it sooner rather than later – because once the trigger event happens you will be stuck – with no luck of going back and trying to protect yourself.

Specifically, you must have a practical, doable plan to put yourself ahead of the 99% of Americans who are going to get caught completely off-guard when the terrible fundamentals of the U.S. dollar wipe out the purchasing power of their salaries and their retirement savings.

The coming dollar collapse will wreak economic and social havoc far beyond skyrocketing prices. Widespread fuel and food shortages, relentless crime waves and the government’s endless socialistic machinations will devastate the American way of life like a giant tornado.

I don’t like being lied to. And I don’t like being ripped off. That’s why I keep my eyes wide open to understand the government’s shocking financial dilemma – how serious and unprecedented it is and how they are making “their” problem into “your” problem. (At least if you don’t act.)

Experts Deliver Dire Prognosis on the Future of the U.S. Dollar: Your Hard-Earned Money Will Be Debased to Alleviate Federal Insolvency

Nobel Prize winner Dr. Paul Samuelson, hardly an alarmist, has characterized U.S. financial imbalances as so severe and “irreversible that we must accept that at some future date there will be a run on the dollar. Probably the kind of disorderly run that precipitates a global financial crisis.” Or as Dr. Ron Paul, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, recently noted about the rampant, unprecedented money creation going on, “If we continue doing what we are doing right now, we will literally DESTROY THE DOLLAR.” [Emphasis mine]

Here’s How a Worst-Case Scenario is Likely to Play Out: Are You Ready?

The key to understanding the dollar’s vulnerability is the global nature of currency markets.

Our government’s standard operating procedure of manipulating, papering over, and otherwise tricking gullible U.S. voters about the greenback being “strong” is one thing.

Forever fooling sophisticated, objective foreign investors who are financing U.S. consumers and bureaucrats with debt they can’t ultimately pay back is quite another.

What’s important to understand is that global, around-the-clock electronic financial markets make it possible for the dollar to be dumped by millions of people literally at the speed of light. It only takes a nanosecond for pre-programmed computers to initiate waves of devastating trades.

Worse, such panic runs on the dollar are most likely to originate abroad, largely beyond the manipulative fingers of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets (a.k.a. the Plunge Protection Team) who would be called upon to prop up the dollar’s credibility when it is threatened, just as they have in times of stock market stress.

In 2005, a German video producer interviewed financial experts all over the globe on what could happen after the then housing bubble collapsed and U.S. consumers ultimately stopped buying foreign goods with debt (also provided by foreigners). The result is a 50-minute presentation titled Day of the Dollar, a realistically chilling video in which the dollar’s dismal fundamentals catch up with and overtake all efforts by the U.S. political class to prop it up.

A Single Triggering Event Could Collapse the Dollar Overnight as the Over-Indebted U.S. Finds Itself Isolated in a World of Angry Creditors

The Day of the Dollar scenario begins with an unexplained drop in the value of the dollar in Singapore, triggering a greenback sell-off in Hong Kong. As traders in Amsterdam wake up, the dollar is down significantly against the yen and dropping fast. The problem is worsened by the fact that big foreign institutional investors in U.S. government debt – who might otherwise come to the dollar’s rescue – are already over-weighted in dollars and more inclined to dump than accumulate more.

As the dollar continues to drop overseas (with Wall Street still closed), U.S. money wizards at the Fed and Treasury Department have no way to shut down markets for a “cooling off” period. As news spreads, lines form at European ATMs and foreign currency exchanges.

Even before Wall Street can open, the European Union suspends the acceptance of dollars for Euros, triggering an even bigger dumping of the dollar abroad. The U.S. retaliates by freezing all foreign transactions. By the time Wall Street rings the opening bell, trillions of dollars being hoarded by institutions and individuals are flooding onto the market, knocking the purchasing power of the greenback even lower.

Adding to the misery, OPEC no longer recognizes the dollar as a unit of trade. Oil producers will now accept payment only in gold, silver or other hard assets of equivalent value. U.S. oil companies wanting to buy crude must now pony up the funds in the form of a hard currency.

A decent article entitled “De-Dollarization: Dismantling America’s Financial-Military Empire” for some additional information can be located here ===> http://michael-hudson.com/articles/globalism/090614De-DollarizationDismantlingEmpire.html

Americans have to start paying for cab service and food with cigarettes, liquor, and other tangible goods. Those stuck without barterable assets or real money (which is now understood to mean only gold and silver coins) are completely destitute.  Fiat currency will finally be revealed for what it always has been – nothing but Monopoly money used in lieu of tangible real assets,, and loaded up into a fractional banking system that turned one dollar into 9 or more over night.  Money that DID NOT EXIST – EXCEPT ON SOME PIECE OF PAPER – THE BANKERS SO PROFESSIONALLY CALL A BALANCE SHEET AND CAPITAL REQUIREMENTS.

Would you be surprised to learn such a scenario has already nearly occurred? Well, it has.

The Untold Story of How the Wheels Almost Came Off the Cart on September 18, 2008

One Thursday morning this past September, the entire U.S. financial system nearly imploded, coming within hours of unprecedented panic withdrawals from U.S. banks and money market accounts totaling $5.5 trillion (well over a third of the nation’s entire annual economic output).

The respected chairman of the House capital markets subcommittee, 13-term Congressman Paul Kanjorski, recently spoke on the record about the little-publicized incident, noting it “WOULD HAVE COLLAPSED THE ECONOMY OF THE WORLD… IT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE END OF OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM AND ECONOMIC SYSTEM AS WE HAVE KNOW IT.” [Emphasis mine] Months after the fact, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke confirmed this terrifyingly close call in a 60 Minutes interview broadcast on March 15, 2009.

During the September 18 “episode,” the Treasury’s emergency pumping of $105 billion into the financial system was not enough. It was only after Treasury abruptly announced it would expand deposit insurance guarantees to $250,000 that the crisis abated – at least temporarily.

Rep. Kanjorski’s nightmare scenario almost became reality. AND THIS KIND OF SUDDEN FINANCIAL CALAMITY CAN EASILY HAPPEN – FOR REAL.

Suddenly “out-of-service” ATMs. Frozen bank accounts, retirement funds and savings accounts. Locked down small business payroll accounts.  I am not saying that it is exactly the same in all the mechanics – and the U.S. coming crisis will be much larger and longer.  However, a quick study of the Argentine economic crisis from 1999 to 2002 will give a small example of things to come here at home.  For reference to the Argetine crisis peruse this link.

==> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_economic_crisis_(1999%E2%80%932002)

This near collapse of the U.S. banking system happened right under the nose of the media. Yet almost none of them mentioned that anything out of the ordinary was going on – the point being you can’t let your future ride on the media to give you early warning of things to come.

To this day, no one can pinpoint exactly what (or who) triggered the September 18 run on the banks. All officials know is that gigantic withdrawals came upon the system from abroad, without warning or notice, and only extreme measures stemmed the crisis – and just in the nick of time.

The string of unprecedented bailouts may have saved the “too big to fail” banksters from getting their full comeuppance, at least this time. But the bailouts did nothing to resolve the underlying insolvency. They simply changed the time and manner in which the default will occur.

Instead of the country’s largest financial institutions all falling like dominos, IT WILL BE THE CURRENCY ITSELF THAT TAKES THE HIT. The trillions in newly created bailout dollars courtesy of the White House, the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve will help precipitate an inflation tsunami.

U.S. Finances Are an Even Bigger Mess Than is Generally Understood

Even before Obama was sworn in, unfunded federal liabilities had blown past half-a-million dollars per U.S. family of four. In fact, federal finances are in such shambles David Walker, Comptroller of the Currency, resigned in disgust at the tail-end of the Bush administration.

Worse is what’s happened since Walker resigned. As Rep. Ron Paul recently wrote, the trillions of dollars created to bail out banks in just the past six months have added the equivalent of a whole new federal establishment to Uncle Sam’s bloated obligations.

Obama’s new spending obligations stagger the imagination, amounting to…

* More spending than the socialistic New Deal…
* More spending than the entire Iraq War…
* More spending than the 1980s savings and loan bailout…
* More spending than the Korean War…

COMBINED!

And a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows that rising unemployment and falling tax revenue will likely force the Social Security “Trust Fund” into annual deficits as soon as 2010 – a full decade before the Comptroller General’s office had been warning it would happen.

The Next Financial Train Wreck Could Be the “Fail-Safe” Bond Market- Are You Properly Hedged?

Recently Bloomberg tabulated the continuously-growing U.S. government takeover of the private-sector (in the form of loans, guarantees and other commitments). So far, taxpayers have been saddled with an ADDITIONAL $12.8 TRILLION IN UNPAYABLE DEBT. debt.

These federal bailouts now amount to 90.14% of America’s annual gross domestic product – nearly our entire output for a year! Imagine that, for every $1.00 you make, brand new federal bailouts now have a claim to more than 90% of your hard-earned money.

What’s especially infuriating to me is that the Federal Reserve refuses to disclose to the public who has been on the receiving end of all its bailout dough, or exactly what’s now on its ballooning balance sheet. The Fed’s own Inspector General in recent Congressional testimony admitted after much waffling and obfuscating that she CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in off-balance-sheet transactions (think Enron) and has absolutely no idea how much the secretive central bank is losing on its “investments.”

As scandalous as the massive corporate bailouts are, they pale in comparison to those that will be required for Social Security and Medicare. A recent editorial in Barron’s states flatly – “Medicare, Medicaid, pensions, indeed the full freight of the federal government constitutes a PONZI SCHEME IN PLAIN SIGHT. Income is recycled to pay benefits; no new wealth is created.”

How ironic that the feds locked up Bernie Madoff and threw away the key (and rightly so) over his Ponzi swindle, when the U.S. government itself is the operator and tireless defender of the most gigantic Ponzi scheme ever, with you and me and millions of Americans holding the bag!

U.S. public and private debt now amounts to nearly FOUR TIMES the gross domestic product. In the midst of the Great Depression, total debt topped out at three times GDP. That suggests the current financial crisis could be even more severe in magnitude and length.

No wonder Standard & Poor’s quietly reported that Treasury bonds are poised to lose their AAA-rating because of the way Washington is indulging in emergency cash creation and massive spending programs.

MarketWatch recently reported another disturbing and telling warning sign: The cost to buy insurance against U.S. sovereign debt has surged by a factor of seven as compared to a year ago and is 60% higher than at the end of 2008.

A collapsing U.S. bond market will spell disaster for the pension funds, mutual funds, and insurance companies that hold bonds by the billions. Of greater concern to me, when the bond market ruptures, millions of retirees on fixed income could find themselves destitute.

At this point the U.S. government must borrow some $5 billion PER DAY just to keep its head above water. And most holders of Uncle Sam’s debt – foreign powers – are openly speaking out that they are getting closer and closer to cutting our government off or severely reducing its limit.

The desperate money printing now underway is unprecedented in its scope – an attempt to reinflate the deflating credit bubble, which is driving rightly-skittish foreign financiers to make increasingly significant moves to evacuate their holdings out of the U.S. dollar.

The biggest candidates for dollar-dumping are the nominally-communist Chinese, who already hold some $2 trillion in U.S. debt.

The “core” of the Obama “financial recovery” plan is to goose the already-reluctant Chinese to escalate their exposure to U.S. bonds which finance Congressional stimulus pork-barrel spending, subsidize failed unionized industries, and soon, bail out many insolvent state governments.

Worry About the Dollar is Seriously Eroding the Greenback’s Global Credibility

The April 13 New York Times notes “In the last two months, President Wen Jiabo and other Chinese officials have expressed nervousness about their country’s huge exposure to America’s financial well-being.”

Nobu Su, head of Taiwan’s TMT Group (which ships commodities to China), told the London Telegraph on April 15 that Beijing is trying to extricate itself from its vulnerability to the dollar. He notes of major Chinese purchases of hard commodities around the globe: “China has woken up. The West is a BLACK HOLE with all this money being printed.” Jim Lennon, the head of commodities at Macquarie bank, added: “They [the Chinese] are definitely buying metals to diversify out of U.S. Treasuries and dollar holdings.”

Make no mistake – the Chinese (among others) are scouring the globe right now – snapping up copper, oil, gold, silver and anything else tangible they can get their hands on to POSITION THEMSELVES OUTSIDE OF A U.S. DOLLAR HANGING BY A THREAD.

Financially, the U.S. is on a Road With No Turns.

Chinese worries about the debasement of the dollar are quite VALID. The U.S. money supply expanded by a jaw dropping 271% in the opening weeks of 2009. Then in mid-March the Fed announced plans to expand the money supply by another 50-60%! Unfortunately, these inflationary policies come on the heels of a staggering 990% annual money supply expansion in the last four months of ‘08 – as reported by the St. Louis Federal Reserve Board office.

In April, Financial Sense analyst Brian Pretti produced a remarkably well-documented report demonstrating why the Fed has had no option but to begin directly funding U.S. government debt (nearly $2 trillion worth of new IOUs will be issued in 2009 alone) through the creation of printing press money because of flagging demand from China, Japan, and private investors.

We are witness to the end of a 38-year experiment – in which global currencies linked to the dollar (and with no gold backing anywhere) are reaching the final inevitable stages of all fiat money. When the Weimar Republic, and more recently, Zimbabwe, began to monetize their debt, the countries plunged into hyperinflationn.

In short, the United States is attempting to print its way out of debt. And that means the value of the dollars you hold is destined to go down significantly.

Fortunately, you still have time to prepare.

The Smart Money Stampede Out of the Dollar Has Already Begun

If you’ve already heard a little voice in your head warning you that Wall Street paper assets are highly-manipulated certificates of financial folly, you got this letter just in time. While rampant money creation may force the DOW upward in nominal terms, the DOW index itself has been collapsing against the value of hard assets for some time.

For example, it currently takes about 9 ounces of gold to buy a share of the DOW industrials. Yet as recently as 1999, it took 44.8 ounces of gold to buy a DOW share – that’s a whopping 80% crash in the real value of the DOW.

If you had invested in January 2009 in gold American Eagle coins – you would have realized a positive return of around 90%$.  If you had invested in January of this year 2010 – by June you would have realized a positive return of around 50%.

The money magicians in Washington can fool millions of investors in the short-term, true. But they can’t fool those who measure their wealth in terms of precious metals, which retain their value over time. Gold is the mortal enemy of big government borrow-and-spenders. When the gold price shoots up, it signals to the world that the currency upon which government Ponzi finances operate is losing value.

Fort Knox has not been audited to obtain correct data on it storage of gold in over 50 years.

Dow Falling Fast

The Dow may once again fall to a 1:1 ratio with the gold price.

The Richmond, Virginia-based Brinks Security corporation reports record silver and gold deliveries to private U.S. citizens. Tony Klancic of the Chicago-based Lind-Waldock commodities brokerage says he is inundated by calls from individual investors to obtain delivery of physical gold bullion. Scott Thomas, CEO of the American Precious Metals Exchange, says of physical gold and silver sales: “We’re having some of our strongest months ever… the bottom line is our numbers are probably double what they were last year, and last year was very busy.”

The February 25 Wall Street Journal noted, “Investors are flocking to gold coins. At the U.S. Mint, a total of 147,500 American Eagle gold bullion coins were sold in the first two months of this year, a surge of 176% from the same period last year.”

Peter Monk, Chairman of Barrick Gold Corporation (the world’s largest gold producer), recently indicated he has received a significant number of calls from wealthy investors seeking to buy large amounts of physical bullion. Getting physical gold has become so difficult that Wachovia Securities is no longer purchasing physical precious metals for its clients – opting instead for selling paper “shares” in exchange-traded funds.

Last year the Perth Mint had to stop accepting orders for physical gold and silver – the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee notes that the Perth Mint is working seven-days a week, 24-hours a days just to catch up on back orders. Perth Mint treasurer and manager Nigel Moffatt told Bloomberg, “We’re seeing a continuing, but heavy bias toward investors out of the U.S.” And The Financial Times reported in February that retail investors in France have become net buyers of gold for the first time in 25 years. Such examples are almost endless!

For a glimpse of what awaits Britain, Europe, and America as budget deficits spiral to war-time levels, look at what is happening to the Irish welfare state.

. . .  [End summary]:

The Fed’s doctrine – New Keynesian Synthesis – has let it down time and again in this long saga, and there is scant evidence that Fed officials recognise the fact. As for the European Central Bank, it has let private loan growth contract this summer.

The imperative for the debt-bloated West is to cut spending systematically for year after year, off-setting the deflationary effect with monetary stimulus. This is the only mix that can save us.

My awful fear is that we will do exactly the opposite, incubating yet another crisis this autumn, to which we will respond with yet further spending. This is the road to ruin.

To read the entire article = = >

Events have already forced Premier Brian Cowen to carry out the harshest assault yet seen on the public services of a modern Western state. He has passed two emergency budgets to stop the deficit soaring to 15pc of GDP. They have not been enough. The expert An Bord Snip report said last week that Dublin must cut deeper, or risk a disastrous debt compound trap.

A further 17,000 state jobs must go (equal to 1.25m in the US), though unemployment is already 12pc and heading for 16pc next year.

Education must be cut 8pc. Scores of rural schools must close, and 6,900 teachers must go. “The attacks outlined in this report would represent an education disaster and light a short fuse on a social timebomb”, said the Teachers Union of Ireland.

Nobody is spared. Social welfare payments must be cut 5pc, child benefit by 20pc. The Garda (police), already smarting from a 7pc pay cut, may have to buy their own uniforms. Hospital visits could cost £107 a day, etc, etc.

“Something has to give,” said Professor Colm McCarthy, the report’s author. “We’re borrowing €400m (£345m) a week at a penalty interest.”

No doubt Ireland has been the victim of a savagely tight monetary policy – given its specific needs. But the deeper truth is that Britain, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the US, and Japan are in varying states of fiscal ruin, and those tipping into demographic decline (unlike young Ireland) have an underlying cancer that is even more deadly. The West cannot support its gold-plated state structures from an aging workforce and depleted tax base.

As the International Monetary Fund made clear last week, Britain is lucky that markets have not yet imposed a “penalty interest” on British Gilts, given the trajectory of UK national debt – now vaulting towards 100pc of GDP – and the scandalous refusal of this Government to map out any path back to solvency.

“The UK has been getting the benefit of the doubt, both in the Government bond market and also the foreign exchange market. This benefit of the doubt is not going to last forever,” said the Fund.

France and Italy have been less abject, but they began with higher borrowing needs. Italy’s debt is expected to reach the danger level of 120pc next year, according to leaked Treasury documents. France’s debt will near 90pc next year if President Nicolas Sarkozy goes ahead with his “Grand Emprunt”, a fiscal blitz masquerading as investment.

There was a case for an emergency boost last winter to cushion the blow as global industry crashed. That moment has passed. While I agree with Nomura’s Richard Koo that the US, Britain, and Europe risk a deflationary slump along the lines of Japan’s Lost Decade (two decades really), I am ever more wary of his calls for Keynesian spending a l’outrance.

Such policies have crippled Japan. A string of make-work stimulus plans – famously building bridges to nowhere in Hokkaido – has ensured that the day of reckoning will be worse, when it comes. The IMF says Japan’s gross public debt will reach 240pc of GDP by 2014 – beyond the point of recovery for a nation with a contracting workforce. Sooner or later, Japan’s bond market will blow up.

Error One was to permit a bubble in the 1980s. Error Two was to wait a decade before opting for monetary “shock and awe” through quantitative easing.

The US Federal Reserve has moved faster but already seems to think the job is done. “Quantitative tightening” has begun. Its balance sheet has contracted by almost $200bn (£122bn) from the peak. The M2 money supply has stagnated since January. The Fed is talking of “exit strategies”.

Is this a replay of mid-2008 when the Fed lost its nerve, bristling over criticism that it had cut rates too low (then 2pc)? Remember what happened. Fed hawks in Dallas, St Louis, and Atlanta talked of rate rises. That had consequences. Markets tightened in anticipation, and arguably triggered the collapse of Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie and Freddie that Autumn.

The Fed’s doctrine – New Keynesian Synthesis – has let it down time and again in this long saga, and there is scant evidence that Fed officials recognise the fact. As for the European Central Bank, it has let private loan growth contract this summer.

The imperative for the debt-bloated West is to cut spending systematically for year after year, off-setting the deflationary effect with monetary stimulus. This is the only mix that can save us.

My awful fear is that we will do exactly the opposite, incubating yet another crisis this autumn, to which we will respond with yet further spending. This is the road to ruin.

Article can be located at ===> http://is.gd/1GgtJ

Being alert to the dangerous connections between some illnesses can help you avoid a shadow disease or get early diagnosis and treatment, leading to a better outcome.

Seek help for any confirmed illnesses so you don’t find yourself in a downward spiral, with each condition exacerbating the other one.

Source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31152657/ns/health-more_health_news/

Yes, I have skipped work to play Tetris.
Yes, I have dreamed about Tetris.
Yes, I have killed over a game of Tetris.

The only other game I have played as much or as long would be Pac-Man for the Atari.
I can totally still get sucked into playing Tetris, but it’s just not the same unless I’m using an NES controller.

It just makes more sense since that’s what I learned to play it with.
Same thing with the clit & schlong Atari controller and Pac-Man.

This post is dedicated to someone close to me that just commited suicide.  He was very close to me, and when you were around him he seemed so happy, so loving, and he had 2 wonderful children and a great wife.  He was very social and funny, and he had so much love in his life.  What he didn’t realize was that everything he needed was right in front of him, and so in frustration he turned to drugs and alcohol.  We all know that these are just a straight road downwards, a downward spiral…and so that’s where he went…down.

His ways kept getting worse, and after once coming clean, he fell back into his bad habits.  I last saw him a few months ago, I went to visit him and his family.  Everything seemed so much better, he looked happy.  We ate maple syrup straight and drove through beautiful country land, laughing and joking.  But now, I have to live with the fact that he missed everything, he opted out on life and chose death.  I have to face the fact that I will never see him again…and that he made a big mistake.  I wish he was still around, but even in his death, I still wish him well.

Friend, you are missed.  Know that.

I should have put money on it – or at least Twittered – my Monday prediction that Apple would re-allow the new Nine Inch Nails application into the iPhone Store. The Apple store pulled the application because the application – which had NIN albums – included the controversial album, The Downward Spiral.*

Trent Reznor, who’s very internet savvy, first sent out a missive on Twitter and then sent out a press release pushing back against Apple. Today reports are out that Apple has taken back their decision, and the NIN application will now be available for purchase.

Some takeaways:

1. It helps to be famous, and web-savvy**, when trying to push back against corporate censorship***. See also: the Twitter masses push back against Amazon in the #amazonfail story.
2. This is possible, as 9to5mac reports, because of a new ratings systems with the version 3 iPhone. The ratings levels: 4+, 9+, 12+, 17+****.
3. This does not change the structure that Apple has created for not only controlling the products for accessing content (say, iPhones) but also the content that can be accessed on those systems. In fact, this decision, and the voluntary ratings system, bolster that. As Hugh D’Andrade at the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues, this would be like buying a car where you couldn’t freely pick the music you could listen to in the car. D’Andrade concludes: “As we’ve pointed out many times in the past, the [Digital Rights Management] that Apple uses to lock up content isn’t about protecting artists from piracy: it’s about protecting Apple from competition.”*****
4. The language that Apple used to explain why the NIN application was originally rejected is ubiquitous and vague. The reasons: “objectionable content” that was “offensive or obscene content.” The follow-up question: to whom? As new technologies provide new spaces for free expression, private companies must answer these questions. A rating system is one way, at least, to allow content that parents of a 4 year old may object to, while not lowering the bar to the Mark Twain quote: “Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”

* In a conversation yesterday with a friend, I briefly forgot the album name. “What was that controversial album from NIN, you know, in high school?” He knew it. This whole conversation seems somehow so dated.
** Trent Reznor has, for example, 467,113 followers on Twitter. As of Friday noon EST, he’s #51 of all Twitter users.
*** The term “censorship” is, of course, inaccurate. Private companies aren’t beholden to upholding the First Amendment, and it is easy to imagine the kind of content Apple would very much not want to be associated with.
**** I love it! 4+?!
***** I recommend the whole article – it’s short and fantastic.

This quote came from an open response to Apple’s recent denial of a NIN Iphone application.

“What do you want us to change to get past your stupid fucking standards? And while we’re at it, I’ll voice the same issue I had with Wal-Mart years ago, which is a matter of consistency and hypocrisy. Wal-Mart went on a rampage years ago insisting all music they carry be censored of all profanity and “clean” versions be made for them to carry.

Bands (including Nirvana) tripped over themselves editing out words, changing album art, etc to meet Wal-Mart’s standards of decency – because Wal-Mart sells a lot of records. NIN refused, and you’ll notice a pretty empty NIN section at any Wal-Mart. My reasoning was this: I can understand if you want the moral posturing of not having any “indecent” material for sale – but you could literally turn around 180 degrees from where the NIN record would be and purchase the film ”Scarface” completely uncensored, or buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto where you can be rewarded for beating up prostitutes.

How does that make sense? You can buy The Downward Fucking Spiral on iTunes, but you can’t allow an iPhone app that may have a song with a bad word somewhere in it. … Come on Apple, think your policies through and for fuck’s sake get your app approval scenario together.”

You’ve got to love Trent Reznor. He speaks his mind and usually he’s right.