One of the unresolved mysteries surrounding September 11 are what have come to be called the 2001 Anthrax attacks. The basic facts of the case are simple. Someone sent envelopes containing anthrax spores to the offices of two Democratic Senators, “killing five people and infecting 17 others. According to the FBI, the ensuing investigation became ‘one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement.’”
But despite this massive effort the results were inconclusive. Two major suspects were identified, both of them American. The first was exonerated. The second, Bruce Ivins, committed suicide and his guilt was widely disputed.
A major focus in the early years of the investigation was a bio-weapons expert named Steven Hatfill, who was eventually exonerated. Another suspect, Bruce Edwards Ivins, became a focus of investigation around April 4, 2005. Ivins was a scientist who worked at the government’s biodefense labs at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland. On April 11, 2007, Ivins was put under periodic surveillance and an FBI document stated that “Bruce Edwards Ivins is an extremely sensitive suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks”. On July 27, 2008, Ivins killed himself with an overdose of acetaminophen …
Shortly after the anthrax attacks in the United States, another letter containing traces of a second strain of anthrax was mailed to a pediatrician in Santiago, Chile. The letter was postmarked in Switzerland and sent via DHL, which used a Swiss bulk mail shipper in New York. This letter had an Orlando, Florida return address. No one is known to have been infected from it…
All of the material was derived from the same bacterial strain known as the Ames strain … First researched at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, Maryland, the Ames strain was then distributed to sixteen bio-research labs within the U.S. and three other locations (Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom).
One of the main reasons why investigators believed that Al-Qaeda was NOT involved is that the “coatings” on the pathogens were believed to be beyond their capability to produce. Suspicion momentarily shifted to Saddam Hussein, but nothing came of it.
But like many things associated with September 11, anthrax attacks have surfaced — of all places — in Pakistan. The New York Times reports that the Pakistani Prime Minister’s security men intercepted “a postal package containing anthrax spores four months ago”.
Government officials gave contradictory accounts of the identity of the sender, and they offered little sense of motive. While Islamist militants have repeatedly targeted senior government officials in suicide and bomb attacks, an assassination attempt using biological weapons would be an anomaly.
And like the 2001 attacks, the package was mailed from a school. “The packet had been sent from a small post office on the Jamshoro University campus, he said.” And just as the 2001 anthrax attacks were also directed against media outlets, the Pakistani anthrax spores were sent to a major Urdu language newspaper.
What gives? One thing is for sure. Bruce Ivins didn’t send it. Not unless there is a mailbox in the grave.
Of all the loose threads of September 11 the anthrax attacks are the most fascinating. What do they mean? Were they connected with the attacks on the Towers? Are they part of a campaign of misdirection? And are they connected to Pakistan?
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This may be slightly O/T, but over here in Afghanistan there have been a spate of poisoning incidents in the last few weeks, aimed at the Afghan security forces. One of the worst incidents occurred recently at the Kabul Military Training Center, where poisoned food sickened over 200 Army personnel.
I also heard a rumor that police at a checkpoint in Helmand Province were killed by insurgents after being incapacitated by poisoned food.
Over the past 5 or 6 years, I’ve heard of many other poison attacks in Afghanistan, but these recent ones stick out to me because they seem to be far more effective than previous attacks, indicating the villains have found a source of more lethal toxins. I’ve got more than a sneaking suspicion that either Pakistan or Iran is providing them with the poison, given that both countries have rather robust chem/bio programs. Given the number of infiltrators the Taliban and other insurgent groups have in the ranks of the Afghan government and security forces I think we’re going to see an increase in number and lethality of these kinds of attacks.
And the news out of Afghanistan just keeps getting better!
One day we will see repeated attacks on undefended points like mailboxes. The threat isn’t that a politician or journalist will be poisoned but that people, the public or workers, will refuse to use the government postal system, or private services like UPS. This could crash the economy. Other extremely vulnerable spots include seaports, water supplies, and transit systems. One reason the US created the extraordinarily expensive airport security system after 9-11 was to overawe the sense of vulnerability that kept people from flying. It was deliberately made disproportionate because that is what works. The point is not to catch a given threat but to keep a critical section of the economy functioning.
The same need to use a disproportionate response applies to other aspects of terrorism. On this as so many other things Bush-Cheney were correct and the sneering NYT Left were wrong. It is a War on Terror because that is how the public perceives it.
Pakistan is a festering hole of toxic threats. It needs sterilizing. If proof can be found that the Chinese have been providing anthrax to enemy agents then our response would have to be biblical. Eventually smallpox could get out of a laboratory and then all bets would be off. The consequences would be so terrible that there would be great pressure to keep it from the public.
“Of all the loose threads of September 11 the anthrax attacks are the most fascinating. What do they mean? Were they connected with the attacks on the Towers? Are they part of a campaign of misdirection? And are they connected to Pakistan?”
Wretchard, come on now! Don’t you believe the official story? Or are you one of those wacked out wing nut Ron Paul type truthers? You can’t have it both ways.
This commercial interruption was brought to you by Ron Paul and his supporters, the grift that keeps on giving…
The envelopes used in the 2001 attacks had the return address of a school, the “Greenhill” school, I believe it was. That was one reason Hatfield was suspected; he had lived in a place named Greenhill. But the Ivins turned out to have ties to a school with links to the attacks as well; I think it was a place with a college sorority he resented.
In any case, the “school” aspect maybe be more important than at first glance. Many of the Pakis, Iranians, and Arabs are in the West as “students,” Atta and his ilk were “students,” and even back at home terrorists are described as “students of Islam.”
The real question is whether the Feds are carfully averting their eyes from something they do not wish to see – as they so clearly did and are doing relative to the truth about Pakistan – or there really is nothing there. When a high profile case such as the anthrax attacks occurs there is a powerful incentive to do whatever it takes to get it off your desk. Organizationally and collectively that incentive is greater than the interest that can be brought to bear by dedicated individuals. If you doubt that, consider the loss of the Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia – the names were different, the faces changed, and the circumstances altered, but the organizational attitudes persisted.
“What gives? One thing is for sure. Bruce Ivins didn’t send it.”
When it comes to alibis, death pretty much heads the list.
If you want to spread a biological weapon you concentrate on infecting truckers at truck stops. They will take it to warehouse and rail yard offices. Local drivers will take it to the retail outlets. So far, the jihadis prefer a Hollywood style big explosion or bullets flying. Muy macho. Blaze of glory martyrdom. That could change. I wonder how many Hezbollah sleepers Iran has in this country.
RWE @ 5 – Organizationally and collectively that incentive is greater than the interest that can be brought to bear by dedicated individuals.
Please elucidate more regarding your meaning, if you will.
How credible is the Pakistan Anthrax story?
Here’s the chain of reporting: Pakistani Lab to unnamed Pakistani Government security officials to Pakistani President Spokesman to New York Times.
I think, each one of those links is substantially less than 100% trustworthy.
And then we read: “Government officials gave contradictory accounts of the identity of the sender”
So we already know there is some Pakistani government BS involved. So the relevant question is, how much?
Y’know, this reallly catches my attention, cuz back in 2001 when the attacks occurred, something about the sophistication of the anthrax and the lack of sophistication of the delivery, suggested to me the same kind of third-world style was involved, and wondering what Islamic country had the most scientific achievement I came up with Pakistan, envisioning a doctor or researcher associated with a US lab generally in the US northeast, … but then we heard about nothing but US suspects, so I sort of gave up on it. If there were any such Pakistani candidates in the US there could not be many …
… but hey, as I watched the Twin Towers come down, I was thinking “demolition!” there in realtime, which idea I gave up before most others ever adopted it, so whatever, first guesses tend to fade away as evidence is gathered and the patterns change. But I’ve just always wondered about the shape of what was ever publically revealed about the US anthrax attacks. So anyway, when I read this post and Pakistan and anthrax, all my little synapses lit up.
7. Gary Ogletree “So far, the jihadis prefer a Hollywood style big explosion or bullets flying. Muy macho. Blaze of glory martyrdom.” Lee Harris wrote what I still think is the best description of the theatrical fantasy style of Al Qaeda’s signature atrocities:
As you say, it could change, and in fact there is a range of terrorist “styles” in the Muslim world. The big spectacles are genuinely rare, and perhaps easier to intercept and thwart because they require a LOT of planning. But practically every day we read reports from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world of rinky-dink suicide bombings at vegetable markets and bus stops. The Western media keeps straining to find links to al Qaeda (and if they don’t, the incidents seem to be considered of a less important level of terror) when it’s more likely that there are lots of little regional players, with their own sense of the effect they want to create.
Harris mentions the anthrax mailings as falling into the pattern that WE would expect IF our enemy was operating according to our usual Clausewitzian pattern: big attack, followed by sustained campaign once the enemy is off-balance. But things didn’t happen that way after 9/11, because there would have been no DRAMA to it. And that’s what counts the most to Muslim fantasists:
http://www.lee-harris.org/2340/al-qaedas-fantasy-ideology
The bombshell for me in the NYT article yesterday was this:
“in November 2001, suspicious letters contaminated with anthrax spores were sent to three private businesses, including the country’s largest Urdu-language daily in the southern city of Karachi.”
I may be wrong, but I don’t remember it being mentioned in the American media in 2001 that three anthrax attacks occurred in Pakistan… The media seemed determined to avoid linking the anthrax attacks to Muslims or Jihad or 9/11, which always seemed ludicrous to me. And they did everything they could to de-link the 9/11 attacks from Islam, Muslims, the ME, etc. The press worked assiduously with the Gov’t to attempt to pin the anthrax attacks on anyone but Muslims. Steven Hatfill was persecuted mercilessly – and has sued for (and possibly rec’d) multi-millions for the monstrous demonization he endured at the hands of the American authorities and the media. Perhaps the other guy simply couldn’t endure the sintering heat of blowtorch from the media and US agencies. Few could.
Was anybody else as stunned as I was to learn that anthrax went out in Pakistan in 2001? Did I simply miss it? This nearly proves to me it was all a Muslim affair, and possibly a state sponsored affair given the breadth and swiftness of the anthrax attacks. The misdirection seemed very professional. I’m still not sure I believe all the malarky about the extremely sophisticated “milling” which could only be done by a Gov’t with access to weaponized anthrax. Under dry conditions i understand anthrax naturally ocurs like that. Frankly, it has always seemed far more was known than the Gov’t let on, and the salacious data they spread on Hatfill seemed like trashy persecution – I never bought it, nor did I think the second guy’s suicide proved anything, though the Gov’t treated it as ‘case-closed’. Again, anything to prevent linking Muslim terrorism with Islam, the Koran, Saudi Arabia (pakistan’s puppet master), etc.
We’re making progress on Syria. Today’s Wall Street Journal reports a deal is in the making in the Security Council for Assad to step down http://tinyurl.com/82vhoz8
He went to school in Paris, so we offer him a sweetener, we let him go into exile there. It’s so frustrating that tried and true diplomacy methods such as exile or gunboat diplomacy etc have fallen into such disfavor!
The Syrian people trade his one life for the hundreds or thousands that would die if he stayed. a fair trade.
This then sets the new post-Qaddafi model for retiring autocrats. Putin are you listening??? Remember I offered you a gig with NBC Sports to do color for the Sochi Olympic Games??? And a few guest spots on MSNBC???
With your talent you’d probably be able to stage a hostile takeover of MSNBC in about 15 minutes flat! What would we care? With the bunch of Commie/Libs they’ve got (Rachel Maddow anyone)you’d seem reasonable by comparison. Everyone would forget Gorby! Their ratings would double!! Remember Marx saying the capitalists would sell you the rope for their own hanging? Go for it Dude, flee Russia and go into exile at MSNBC!
MD @ 12: Was anybody else as stunned as I was to learn that anthrax went out in Pakistan in 2001?
Hmmmmmmmm.
But then the timing, so close to 9/11, was it officially sponsored by bin Laden and/or al Qaeda?
It can be almost impossible to know, the built-in plausible deniability of the individual franchise nature of Islam and jihad, and just plain third-world chaos, and first-world Internet connections.
And if there was any kind of connection, what do our intelligence (sic) guys know, and when did they know it? And your question of course, what do they allow themselves to know, or say?
I don’t know enough about anthrax to know if it took sophisticated knowledge or equipment or not, but if they traced the genetics back to a source, then maybe it was the source that was sophisticated and not anything like the perps, which might be a chain of two or three or ten long as well, in fact might have had the anthrax kicking around for months or years before the attack.
There is one piece of evidence that links Bruce Ivins to the attacks that gets little play. The 2001 letters were mailed from a post box near a Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house. Ivins was a cross dresser and had an obsession with KKG. He typically dressed like a KKG girl. It would be extremely unlike coincidence that someone else just happened to mail the letters from the vicinity of KKG, unless of course someone else was setting Ivins up.
There are so many ways to poison any Town or City it’s just unhealthy to think about it and that goes for any place on earth not just here. My favorite is getting a few legal/illegal workers to work in processing plants and just drop in some concentrated ecoli by the time they start a recall you will have sickened 100′s (possibly 1000′s) and depending on the ecoli killed many, by the time they get around to the processing plant it came from it will be to late to narrow it down to an individual so the company gets the hit and pays the fine and is promptly sued out of business by the survivors… Now do this at several plants around the country at one time and your gonna scare the ba Jesus out of the whole place and you will still get the loss of identifying the individual yet closing the industry, suing the companies out of business and crashing the economy too! Then follow it up with a few letters of ownership to several news outlets claiming water supply is next and Hysteria and Chaos will reign supreme!!!
Not that I would do any such thing but it just shows how simply easy it is to randomly sicken and murder lots of people and not get caught unless you were really really stupid… Gov can’t be everywhere all the time even with camera’s, you have to give up your right to “Freedom” or you have to stomp your enemy to the point they would rather die than try any such mayhem!
I am for Stomping! once they’ve had enough teach’n about peace and love….
Meanwhile ten years later My towns mail delivery personnel still wear rubber gloves when they deliver the U. S. Mail to our mail boxes. Occasionally the mail persons M/F wear dust masks. Someone, somewhere in a Government Office still believes in anthrax terrorist attacks. Even if Obama doesn’t.
It depends on the method used to “weaponize” the spores. The strain of anthrax means very little. Turning the stuff from something which is only a threat to sheepherders and shearers into a real biological weapon, which depends on factors such as lethality, ease of manufacture, shelf life, etc., is more difficult. There are lots of ways of doing so, but all require some work, and there are always trade-offs between those three factors.
Some methods of weaponizing raw, and relatively inert, anthrax spores are possible with a well-trained individual and a moderately well-equipped lab, but the shelf life is too low to be effective for more than terrorist purposes.
The Soviets devoted enormous resources to the issue and found the shelf life issue so large that they deemed more feasible to manufacture the stuff in bulk only on the eve of war.
There is disinformation out there that readily infective, aka lethal, anthrax is easily found in nature. This is not true. It takes work to weaponize the stuff.
The method used to weaponize the anthrax used on us in 2001 was not known to any American, xSoviet, or American allied experts. The cone of silence descended promptly as to its shelf life, i.e., lethality period.
Given that developing a new _means_ of weaponizing anthrax (as opposed to manufacturing it with an already-known weaponization process) requires an industrial-scale research and development effort. I.e., the anthrax used on us in 2001 was developed in secret by a government.
The most probable theory I know of is that it was developed in Iraq or Syria, proved to be infeasible as a war agent for some reason (this happens a lot) and was pretty much a laboratory curiousity until Saddam Hussein had a small quantity of it delivered to the 9/11 terrorists. Those guys were identified by a Florida doctor who diagnosed one of them, shortly prior to 9/11, as having lesions which in hindsight he realizes were anthrax lesions.
And they used it on us. There is even a connection between them and American Media International where the first deaths occurred.
@4. Annoy Mouse
This commercial interruption was brought to you by Ron Paul and his supporters, the grift that keeps on giving…
So this is what you think distinguishes Ron Paul from the other 2 Republican front runners? Romney of crony capital specialty company Bain Capital and Gingrich of the revolving door and $25K per month retainer from Fannie Mae? Compared to the pediatrician who wants to swindle you into voting to get your constitutional rights restored? Awesome come back Mouse.
This is what infuriates you BC old timers so. You won’t stand up and say that you truly believe the official line on 9/11 and the anthrax poisonings yet you cannot refrain from smearing others (like Ron Paul) with MSM meme of “truther” when they merely have the courage to express the same doubts that you have. This leads to self loathing.
And this BC oldtimer hypocrisy applies to virtually all the things that Ron Paul supports that y’all claim makes him a kook. Such as:
- War on Drugs. An unmitigated disaster with millions of lives wasted in wealth and culture destroying prisons for committing victimless crimes. Fast and Furious, thousands executed in Mexico, financial freedom lost to AML. Meanwhile banks like Wells Fargo get wrist slapped with an out of court settlement for a few million and no criminal charges for money laundering billions in illegal drug profits made by their cronies. Add the stupidity of repeating to a greater degree all the mistakes of prohibition, even to the extent that the Chicago gangsters control the entire executive branch. Obviously we need more war on drugs.
- War on Terror. Bwaaaa. Go ahead Mouse, tell me about all these great achievements. The entire middle east smoldering or on fire and seething with hate for America. NDAA, Patriot act, DHS. This one is going to come back an get bite the US in the ass. We need more of this too.
- Cut military spending by bringing the troops home. Who could object to the MIC, Xe, their revolving door and all those lobbyists buying influence. Anyone who wants to take away money from the MIC that wastes more than the rest of the world combined is surely a grifter.
- No more undeclared wars. Damn you Ron Paul, you are such a grifter.
- End the Fed. Grifter par excellence.
- Gold and Silver as legal tender. After all, only a grifter would want honest money.
Charles@16: “by the time they get around to the processing plant it came from it will be to late to narrow it down to an individual so the company gets the hit and pays the fine and is promptly sued out of business by the survivors”
Doubtful…at least soon that won’t be a possibility. Oh, they may be able to pull off the attack, but I worked for awhile at an agricultural software company. The project I helped launch and which may or may not by now be finished would allow one to scan a can or other food article, the program would hit our database and it would come back with where the contents were grown (down to the particular section of field/farm), who the farmer/grower was, who was driving the combine(s)/harvester(s), what truck drivers and trucks handled the contents, what plant(s) they were processed at, what employees were on the particular production line (from which all employees in the plant could be determined), the times at each step in the process, and so on up until delivery to the store. The purpose of the project was to tailor recalls more narrowly…but it would also for sure be used by any antiterrorism investigators to target their investigation.
Anybody who pulled an attack like that would have to be very tricky in order to not get caught, I think, if this system or another like it was up and running.
Tom Holsinger @ 20 said:
“The most probable theory I know of is that it was developed in Iraq or Syria, proved to be infeasible as a war agent for some reason (this happens a lot) and was pretty much a laboratory curiosity until Saddam Hussein had a small quantity of it delivered to the 9/11 terrorists.”
This story has a “ring of truth”. However al Qaeda was not that involved with Saddam Hussein (they didn’t trust him). It’s possible that a well placed al Qaeda sympathizer got a small sample of anthrax from either a Pakistani or Iraqi biological weapons lab and then forwarded it without authorization to al Qaeda. Al Qaeda’s leadership would have then handed the spores off to the 9/11 terrorist cell for use as they deemed appropriate. Given that we have limited information, we can only use Occam’s Razor and search for the simplest explanation.
Off topic: The stockmarket is currently being pumped by the supposed reduction in the unemployment rate. The chart that is important is the following link:
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
The labor participation rate took a significant dump. Unemployment statistics are based upon people who are actively seeking work. If everyone in the US was unemployed and had also given up trying to find a job then the unemployment rate would be 0%.
Once again, we’re being lied to about the state of the economy and the PPT is using the lies as a cover story to pump the markets. The key “tell” that we are being lied to is the Fed admitting that they will keep the prime interest rate at zero for the foreseeable future. If the economy was healthy then the Fed would be bumping up the prime interest rate.
“So this is what you think distinguishes Ron Paul from the other 2 Republican front runners?”
No, I just think you’re an a$$hole that’s all. Sorry to have sent you to the dictionary with my play on words.
Epi #8:
You are not familiar with the situation where an organization ignores a problem while one lone person keeps telling them it is worth addressing?
There are many known examples.
My edit option for comment #23 timed out before I could finish. Getting back to the URL:
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
Reset the chart’s span to 2008 to 2012 and press “go”. You’ll see that the labor participation rate was buzzing around 66% and then began near monotonic decline after the economy failed in Autumn 2008. There was a significant recent reduction in the labor participation rate.
Next reset the chart’s time span from 1984 to 2012 and what you will see is frightening. More than once at Belmont Club, I’ve talked about Peak Oil. What you are now seeing is “Peak Employment”, i.e. employment peaked in 1999. Things have been going to hell since the Dot Com imploded and became seriously bad after the subprime mortgage fiasco.
The “happy talk” about the employment situation improving are lies. Also, anyone can do this analysis. The MSM doesn’t do it because they’re too stupid, too lazy or part of the deception (they want Obama to get reelected).
Mysteries surround us
The anthrax and the spores
With questions that confound us
The afters and befores
Agoraphobic Plumber (#22) Just read the recent Peanut jar stuffing plant in Georgia story… sure water under the processing walk area was the spot BUT no individual, business suffered, when story first broke Peanut butter suddenly was a very scary thought to many a Mommy!!! And that was all “Accidental” have it done at several different company plants across the nation at the same time and you got major problems from something that grows without Lab work… more out there them ecoli too. why spend time on man engineered mass murder bio when nature gives you nearly as potent stuff for free and the hysteria will act as a effects multiplier.
ch @ 21: You won’t stand up and say that you truly believe the official line on 9/11 and the anthrax poisonings yet you cannot refrain from smearing others (like Ron Paul) with MSM meme of “truther” when they merely have the courage to express the same doubts that you have.
ch, how is it you miss the point like this? there is a huge difference between expressing doubts about X, and being in kumbaya fellowship with everyone who doubts X. anyone at this point who doubts “the official line about 9/11″ is an idiot. and some crazed fool who doubts everything, is good for nothing.
@24. Annoy Mouse
“No, I just think you’re an a$$hole that’s all. Sorry to have sent you to the with my play on words.”
My wife was driving to Spain on Wednesday with our Lab and Terrier. After she stopped for gas outside of Alicante she stopped at the rest area next to the gas station to let the dogs out and a car drove up right next to her and a nice looking (we think) Gypsy man and woman stopped next to her. The woman came up to her with her cell phone and started asking her questions. The car was locked and the dogs were running around. She looked back over her shoulder and the man was just leaning back out from inside the car with my wifes purse in hand. He had unlocked and opened the car door in a matter of seconds. My wife managed to get the man to put back her purse, but then the gypsy woman started cursing and yelling at her. Then the gypsey woman spit at her. My wife couldn’t believe how mean and nasty that woman was. She was glad the dogs were there. You remind me of that gypsy woman, Annoy Mouse.
You just remind me of an a$$hole.
RWE @ 25 – OK. I’m with you now. The original sentence had words with more that two syllables.
30. ConfederateH
24. Annoy Mouse
To me, you’re both out of line and cramping my enjoyment of the site; knock it off.
Confederate is either a moby or sincere; either reflects poorly on him. Annoy Mouse has been posting around here forever, and even if I don’t always agree with him he respects the blog. Confederate, please stop spewing all over Wretchard’s blog.
I may end up voting for Ron Paul (against my better instincts), but Lord, deliver us from Ron Paul’s followers.
The anthrax/Hatfill/Ivins story is fascinating; a modern tragedy. The circumstantial evidence against Ivins was overwhelming, but it always seemed like there was nothing definitive.
What I find interesting is that the original attacks suddenly halted. From this I surmise that either:
a. The attacker(s) had a very limited supply of the anthrax and had to quit when it was exhausted.
b. Someone outside the US law enforcement/publicity complex got to the attacker(s) first, and we shall not be troubled by them again.
Recall the foiled truck bomb attack in Amman in 2004? Could have killed more people than 9-11.
Here’s a link:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,117414,00.html
You can follow it up to find if there was any official word of where they got tons of explosives and the poison gas. Any speculation, officially or journalistically. Any reports of attempts to find it.
Not half of jacksquat, or even less.
From which I deduce the source was known immediately after the usual gentle Arab interrogations. But, probably because the Bushlied meme was so useful, nobody wanted to talk about it. See Valley, Bekaa. IMO.
I have always thought there was a state sponsor of the anthrax attack just because this sort of weaponization isn’t easy and I was REALLY surprised at how crude the delivery system was. Pakistan makes since to me although Sadam was equally likely. I NEVER thought that it was a rogue US emplyee and that the local case was to satisfy the media that something was being done no matter who was injured in the chase for a scape goat.
Another immediate post-9-11 event to be skeptical of was the airliner that went down over Staten Island or Long Island, I forget which.
Sure seemed to be the perfect Stinger missile attack profile – some dude with a missile hiding in the swamps near LaGuardia, pulls the trigger on a plane just taking off, at low altitude. Hits plane and it goes down just down the flight path.
Can’t prove it, but I ain’t buying the official line either.
Josh,
“anyone at this point who doubts “the official line about 9/11″ is an idiot.” unlike ch, I won’t go off on this remark, but I would submit that to believe the 9/11 Commission exhausted what happened on that day, or completely investigated non Iraqi or Iranian involvement (i.e. Saudi/Pakistani) in the attacks is to be very naive in the extreme, given that Pakistan was already a nuclear weapons state and the U.S. establishment never wanted to contemplate direct conventional war with nukes in the equation. You see this in the Duck of Death and Saddam all getting removed swiftly but the NoKos getting the kids glove treatment when they (unlike Iran or Syria) could actually be starved out.
In fact I thought the whole point of this thread and numerous Wretchard threads was how duplicitous Pakistan has been all along — and yet we still see not only the maintenence of the status quo, but not a few ‘classical liberals’ insist we gotta keep bribing them to keep the supply lines open, anything to avoid the Ron Paul idea of just getting the hell out or giving another dime to the hated Russkies for the ‘Northern Supply Route’.
Ditto for the Saudis, not only in 01′ were they still the world’s largest oil producer (only surpassed by Russia, thanks to Schlumberger, in 02 or 03′, not coincidentally since Russia agreed to pump more to calm world oil markets post-9/11, and got the Rose Revolution that installed the Tie Eater in response)
I do sympathize though with CH’s resentment of the ‘piss on my boots and tell me it’s raining’ attitude demonstrated by AM. And he has certainly hit on something that the cognitive dissonance between what many conservatives and even BCers claim to stand for and what they back is truly massive, as massive as the welfare-warfare state. And it cannot be settled with the old Jacksonian saw that there is one standard for those within the U.S. and another without. Not when the State is trying to apply the laws of war to American citizens via the NDAA, and starting to beta test using drones at home (see North Dakota police using a Predator to find…accused cattle rustlers).
Thus, while I don’t agree with all of CH’s points particularly where he veers off into suggesting one ethnic group has some sort of grip on American foreign policy (the anti-Russia lobby for example, is remarkably diverse, but still nonetheless fueled by historic grudges that have nothing to do with U.S. vital interests)…the hate constantly spewed towards ‘Paulbots’ and ‘Ronulans’ can only be explained as the hatred a man feels for his old priest who catches him out with a woman not his wife. Prophets have always been stoned in every age.
What Ron Paul is sneered at for saying now will probably be increasingly conventional wisdom four years from now when all this printed money becomes a tsunami. Hence, I don’t have to rage, because I know Ron’s position that the Fed can no more determine the optimal supply of money than can the Politburo predict how many doctors or engineers the old USSR needed is fundamentally correct, regardless of for how long the banksters can print and patch up too. To quote the old Barry Goldwater poster, in your hearts, you know he’s right about at least that. Josh loathes the Fed banksters but can’t quite bring himself to call for their abolishment and replacement by a basket of commodities.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be such as spore loser.
Eggplant #26:
The thing I don’t know is what “normal” is. Given the Dot Com Bomb and the Housing Bubble (which ran in parallel with the Dot Com Bomb to a degree) we have had a distorted economy and labor market for some time. Add to that the end of the Cold War that was just before the Dot Com Bomb and all that implied and the War on Terror.
This seems to be more than even Kondratief’s Cycles, even if you believe in that theory.
The people doing IPOs for websites selling dry dog food and being worth theoretically $500M at the ripe old age of 27 back in 1998 think that was “normal” and have been looking for a politician that can bring back the good old days; they voted for Gore and then elected Obama. So do the people who were working for outfits like Puente and Mercedes Homes in FL, NM, AZ, and NV and literally were watching people line up around the block outside their offices to buy houses they did not even plan to live in. And the people working in Circuit City selling people big screen TVs based on using their grossly inflated housing values as ATM’s think that was normal. These people all think that some Dr. Evil in the Rebublican Party or Haliburton or Wall Street or The Fed blew up their dream life for the hell of it, cackling as he did so.
But when you look at a report, as I did back in 2008, one that shows in our in our county 25,000 homes were built over the previous year with a population increase of only 5,000, then you realize that economy was not real.
So how many of those people in 1999 had real jobs? I have no idea. I do not think that anyone really knows.
RWE @ 41 said:
“So how many of those people in 1999 had real jobs?”
I went back to the URL:
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
reset the chart’s span to 1948 to 2012 and pressed “go”.
I observed that in 1948 the civilian labor force participation rate was about 59%. I first asked myself: “Why was it so low?”. Then I remembered that one of the “success stories” of the last half century has been the transformation of women from being purely mothers/housewives into being fully integrated into the work force. This is actually a very mixed “success” because in 1948, a family could sustain itself on one income alone and mom had the option of staying at home and minding the kids. In 1999, we were in the situation where both mom and dad were obligated to work while the kids were at daycare. Fortunately in 1999, both mom and dad could find a job. Now we are heading back to the situation where either mom or dad are obligated to stay at home with the kids because they can not find work. Unfortunately, unlike 1948, two incomes are still required to keep the family afloat. Consequently, families are going to be bled white because their income was halved but their living expenses remained the same. The long term consequence will be a reduction in our standard of living until one income is sufficient (our standard of living will be cut in half).
Another aspect that I find interesting is how this long term trend is invisible when looked at purely as an unemployment statistic. Again, we can have a 0% unemployment rate if everyone is unemployed and given up trying to find a job. Likewise, half the work force can be unemployed and we still have a 0% unemployment rate if all the unemployed people are staying at home as housewives or househusbands and not looking for work. An interesting analog to this is currency exchange rates. The US dollar to Canadian dollar exchange rates have had rough parity for decades (it’s currently 1 US dollar = 0.9992 Canadian dollars). However the price of gold has skyrocketed, refer to:
http://www.kitco.com/charts/popup/au3650nyb_.html
Both the US and Canadian dollars have depreciated together in lock step. The price of gold in US dollars is a useful metric for economic health but not the exchange rate between the US and Canadian dollars. At one time the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was a useful metric. However Bernanke figured out how to manipulate that number through money printing and now the DJIA is no more a useful metric than the US and Canadian dollar exchange rate.
Viktor @ 43 mentioned that James Cameron (who is NOT a nice guy) is heading off to New Zealand. That is definitely a bad sign. New Zealand is definitely the preferred hiding place after TSHTF. It’s obvious that Cameron has connected the dots and acted accordingly.
RWE, you make good points…I’m not sure we’ve had an economy based on reality since the mid-1990s when the maquiladoras shut down and jobs started flying to China at warp speed (Josh’s theme).
Ron Paul aside, let’s get back to one of the old standbys of BCers…either WWII or SF. Am I the only one who thinks this chip looks a lot like the Miles Dyson chip from Terminator 2? And is it a coincidence this week that James Cameron is decamping to New Zealand? Do you have to be an Alex Jones to think Cameron and the .01% are expecting trouble ahead?
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2012/02/mr-drone-and-the-199-universal-dronepilot.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T-3OvBdPl4&feature=related
I for one welcome our new SkyNet overlor…[SCRUNCH as drone swarms move in for the kill] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/02/flying-robots-nano-quadrotor-drones-swarm_n_1249442.html
If they made Terminator 5 now, would the shocking plot twist be that another Kyle Reese guy goes back in time to discover that SkyNet started as a system that was created by a tiny group of men to control all other men and just decided to eliminate the human controllers?
And maybe if presume, a post about how the all-powerful Planned Parenthood just sent the Susan G. Komen Foundation scrambling with their tail between their legs. Who new PP was the new Big Brother? You must learn to grovel and tell everyone how much you love Planned Parenthood.
That was the background I believe to the Butlerian Jihad in the pre-Dune universe of Frank Herbert.
Sci fi references done now. I’d love to see Wretchard posts about how the speed of drone technology and autonomous kill capability is vastly exceeding human morality and any reservations about deploying them (see Neibuhr’s reflections on the Bomb in the 50s).
I ran across an article from the weekly standard circa 2002. It relates the story of a Pakistani gent, possibly linked to 9/11 hijackers. He ran a check kiting scam, netting a bit over $100k and bought a food prep machine with the proceeds. The machine mixed and would dry and powderize the ingredients, the way pancake mix would be prepped. He had it sent to Pakistan and followed it there.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/470lfsdb.asp
The author felt it was related to the anthrax mailings.
Don’t like Putin for constantly slamming the U.S. and the West? Wait’ll till you get a load of…Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/NB04Ag01.html
End of thread for me.
42. eggplant
“The US dollar to Canadian dollar exchange rates have had rough parity for decades”
In 2003 the Canadian dollar was worth 63 cents U.S. Today it is trading at 1.0059 $U.S.
here is a chart of the exchange rates for the past ten years
Most recently the Canadian has been around par since about 2010 and before that for a good part of 2008. Not near par from 2003 to 2008, nor in 2009.
The Ivin’s case (“Amerithrax”) is more an indictment of the medical profession (income maximizing physicians) and the general decay of any and all government institutions founded in response to a crisis but in just a few decades proving Pournelle’s Iron Law. Aka fertile ground for conspiracy theories.
Here’s what amounts to a (damning) self-assessment by the profession:
https://www.researchstrategiesnetwork.org/images/docs/EBAP_Report_ExSum_Redacted_Version.pdf
Note the report has findings like “Failures in supervision, documentation and communication allowed Dr. Ivins to avoid scrutiny before and after the anthrax mailings.”
It appears if you’re an MD you can obtain the unredacted version which names names – of the doctor and his “pill mill,” including a member of his practice who filed reports putting the doctor on notice, got yelled at about it, and quit in both disgust and fear of what Dr. Ivins would do, was likely already doing – and FBI personnel who seem to be shell-shocked incapable of normal investigative procedure after misbehaving in the Hatfill case.
And USAMRIID is no gem either. Appears senior people get to play with class 4 materials in BSL-4 lab without a partner. In much less dangerous and sensitive areas violation of the “rule of two” (always work with a buddy) is a termination-without-appeal offense (sometimes the door control are set up to require two badges simultaneously – no such protections at Ft. Detrick). Nor did any of his supervisors or clearance investigators ever talk to his prescribing physician (as recorded on his security forms) – not once – even though coworkers and lab technicians were reporting threats and intimidation, some sexual. And some were moved to other jobs by the supervisors in response. His wife looks like a gem as well (no surprise given the documentation on his relationships with other women) – he could have been saved with a (partial) liver transplant (he shut it down with a Tylenol overdose) but she refused.
We’re lucky we survive.
The first person to die in the anthrax spree in the US was a photographer for a major tabloid. The tabloid front page had recently featured humorous suggestions about Osama Binladin’s manhood. The photographer’s wife, a Realtor in Florida, had helped two of the 9-11 hijacker’s find a rental property.
It was determined that a letter was sent to the tabloid office– residue was found in the dead photographer’s work spot.
CH,
Are you telling us that 9-11 was an inside job?
Are you telling us that the Jihadis are not waging war on us? Are you telling us that the Koran does not demand devout muslims engage in Jihad?
Are you telling us that Iran is not trying to build the bomb and has not declared war on the USA?
Are you telling us that Iran was not responsible for many. many deaths of our service men and women in both Iraq and Afghanistan?
While Ron Paul has made some good points, he and his supporters have chosen to believe in some sort of foreign policy alternative universe fantasy, just like the deranged Left, where we can retreat back to island America and the bad guys of the world will leave us alone.
I can only surmise that Ron Paul supporters don’t understand our very Constitutional Republic with its Bill of Rights and it’s right of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is an existential threat to Islam and many other thug dictatorships around the world. Their very survival demands that they extinguish our system of government, or sooner or later, the shining light of our Liberty will arouse their populace to yearn to be free of them and their abuse.
#38..
If the source of the explosion was actually in the vicinity of the central fuel tank as reported I’d say that causes a MANPAD like Stinger to not be the cause. They’re heat seekers so I’d expect a Stinger or like weapon to take out an engine, possibly, which would hurt something the size of a b747, but not likely to take it down. IIRC a static discharge in a supposedly mostly empty central fuel tank was blamed, mebbe, but I think a bomb was ruled out rather too swiftly. Don’t want to stampede the populace, don’tcha know?
Re Eggplant @ 42 — thanks for the link.
The former Soviet Union used to have its tractor production statistics, which apparently caused lots of knee-slapping amusement for collective farmers who were lucky to have spades. Now Obama has his Official Unemployment Statistics, which appear to be a little less reliable. Even the New York Times drones churning out the Party line must notice that their newsroom is not as “occupied” as it used to be.
Will putting out official happytalk that conflicts with so many people’s direct experience backfire on the Bamster? Or will “Events, dear boy” soon render all today’s official lies and distortions irrelevant? We must be getting close to what life was like for thinking people in the mid-late 1930s.
5. RWE
We are living 1984 plus 27. Believe nothing you see or hear on the media.
The method used to calculate unemployment is bogus. GIGO means any numbers it produces are bogus also.
I would like to see a simple comparison of workers to population. After all, what’s important is how many are working.
Yes I know we could never reach 100% but so what? I like the total population to total workers because those numbers go back to the first census and would make an excellent metric.
@39. Viktor (not that Victor)
“Thus, while I don’t agree with all of CH’s points particularly where he veers off into suggesting one ethnic group has some sort of grip on American foreign policy”
What I wrote Viktor, was the “heavily Jewish influenced media” and I have been branded as an anti-Semite here ever since. I will stand by this statement, and I would also add that AIPAC and the Israeli lobby punch way beyond their weight. I for one do not understand why so many think that America should be more joined at the hip to Israel than any other country on planet, Canada included. Or put it this way, is it less racist to so blatantly favor one country or ethnic group over all others than it is to disfavor another? This is really the same issue with Obama being such a flaming racist. He can hate cracker counties but still pretend that he is immune from racism because he favors “afro-americans”.
@49. Unsk,
“Are you telling us that 9-11 was an inside job?
Are you telling us that the Jihadis are not waging war on us?
…
he and his supporters have chosen to believe in some sort of foreign policy alternative universe fantasy, just like the deranged Left, where we can retreat back to island America and the bad guys of the world will leave us alone.”
I would not rule out it being an “inside” job although I am very skeptical about how they could have pulled it off. By “inside” job I include the possibility that some group provoked or aided and abetted the efforts of the 19 terrorists. And I include in “inside” actions by any group directly connected to factions in the US government. So I am proud to be a Truther (and a Birther) and I agree with Viktor that anyone who believes the official line is at best very naive.
As far as America returning to the isolationist leanings of its founders, yes she can. All this American “police” subsidy to the rest of the world has been as unhealthy as Roosevelt’s and Johnson’s social welfare programs. If Europe, Japan, Korea and the rest of the world had been forced to pay more attention to their defense then America would not only be a lot richer, but also a lot freer. And this is the issue that you American Exceptionalists refuse to recognize: that all this intervention has corroded society at home. Viktor is right to go on about these drones, it has horrible implications for America’s future.
@52. stoicheion
“Believe nothing you see or hear on the media.”
Well stoicheion, I certainly agree with you on this. So you believe that we are being fed dis-information too. But to what purpose and by whom? Could it be that certain factions within the government are feeding this to us, such as Fast and Furious, and how the majority of all those Mexican drug gang guns came from the US in a blatant assault on the second amendment?
And could different factions feed us contradictory dis-information? You bet, especially when there is $4T spent on the federal government annually. What about the corporatists and their big businesses, could they help promote this disinformation? Sure. And is the MIC immune from this with their trillions in spending? So how do we deal with this? We massively shrink the ALL BRANCHES of the federal government in order to try to put an end to this stealth fascism.
The employment/unemployment/labor pool numbers are all there at the BLS. In 1984 the labor pool was roughly 65 million and in 2011 it was roughly 64 million. With a population increase of 74 million people over those years, why did the labor pool fall 1 million? More interesting is why did the labor pool fall two million in the past two years?
@ CH 53
You live in a fantasy world -inside job, isolationist really?
Do you understand what is required to keep a conspiracy like the one you are alluding under wraps: controlled demolition or faulty Air Defence -please.
You look for demons under every rock yet avoid the self-identified ones in front of you. You are not a serious person
“So you believe that we are being fed dis-information too. But to what purpose and by whom?”
Does Not Matter. I’m Retired Military, with over a decade at NSA. Intentions are for amateurs, professionals look at capabilities. Worrying about intentions will have guys with nets chasing you so they can fit you with a funny coat and put you in a room with bouncy walls.
So anyone with access and motive and money is a suspect. Only they all have different motives. Some only slightly.
Everything depends on POV. One of the Brain guys upstairs at Ft, Mead had a picture of the 7 blind men and their elephant. He kept it on his wall to remind him that no matter how nutty it was to him, it made perfect sense to somebody.
Ever seen an American football game? It isn’t unusual to see some lite weight safety come running up and jump on the pile after the play is over. I think that is sort of what happened with the Anthrax attack.
The Anthrax was manufactured by a ‘real’ (National) weapons lab. Then somebody got their hands on it. That somebody, or more likely a partner, sold it to somebody else. No telling how many times it changed hands before it got to AQ.
Anyway, AQ sent it off, probably not expecting much. Modern Arabs have a tendency to put rounds in the air and let Allah do the targeting.
As far as the catamite goes, somebody didn’t like him and saw an opportunity to do him in. That will happen a lot in the future, now that Obama has declared open season on Sodomites.
46 Stevesmith “Most recently the Canadian has been around par since about 2010 and before that for a good part of 2008. Not near par from 2003 to 2008, nor in 2009.”
Don’t I know it! My husband is a Canadian foreign service officer, and we were posted to Boston from 1998-2002. Being paid in Canadian dollars, we were all too aware of just how weak our dollar was in comparison to the U.S. Life would have been a lot different if our dollar had been at par. The weakness of the Cdn dollar to the U.S. is so longstanding, our book industry even priced the fact into the cost of books here. On the back cover of a paperback, or on the dustcover of a hardback, there were always TWO prices listed, and they typically went something like “U.S. $6.99 / Canada $8.99″. Books and magazines were automatically priced approximately 30% higher in Canada, to take into account the weaker Cdn dollar. This “custom” has only been changed within the last 2 years, as people finally became outraged at paying 30% more for books than Americans, and in a lot of cases it still persists. Go into any Canadian bookstore and check the cover prices if you don’t believe me.
The strengthening of our dollar came with the increase in oil prices. We hadn’t noticed it, but the Canadian dollar had become a petrocurrency; now it rises and falls with the oil market.
AT @ 47 – Excellent post and fascinating link. The document certainly makes the case agains Ivins sound good.
The remedies suggested were typical, however. I counted at least nine additional government bureaucrats needed in order to muddy the waters further.
Richard Aubrey (#36) I don’t know how many remember the last few days of the Iraq war where US troops had a clash with Russian SF concerning a very large convoy headed to Syria with the Russian Ambassador in tow… Now Russian threaten war if US/NATO attempt a Libya style action in Syria…. Hmmm makes one wonder since Israel did but didn’t destroy a construction site that wasn’t radioactive afterwards… Both Syria and Iran are holders of Russian secrets that are not for world consumption. The downward spiral has already begun, how much 2012 effects the vortex we will find out soon?!
Some people don’t seem to know “BC oldtimers” very well.
I have long been a critic of the “war on drugs”. If you don’t know that, you haven’t read BC for very long. However, I am fiercely opposed to radical libertarian attempts to decriminalize hard drugs; they require legalization, heavy-handed regulation, and taxation – we shouldn’t treat crack cocaine as if it were just like caffeine.
Although the military spending on the “war on terror” needs to be based upon a far more frugal “Truman-style” model of logistics and procurement (as per the Truman investigations during WWII), the radical libertarian view of national security appears to be, “Thank you sir, may I have another?” That is not acceptable. Showing weakness to terrorists only encourages them.
If the United States simply pulls the rug out from underneath our allies, we will not have allies in the future. Any withdrawal must be done carefully so that it does not cause a run on our currency. Even if our currency were ostensibly a cross of gold, it is actually backed by the faith and credit of the United States. If the Canadian dollar is a petrocurrency, the American dollar is a military currency – no military, no value.
Remember, Confederate bonds were backed with cotton, yet those cotton bonds became worthless when the Confederacy lost control over its ports. Likewise, the value of the infamous Weimar currency of 1923 reflected the weakness of the German military at the time. So, if we had a weak military demanded by radical libertarians combined with a militant level of Isolationism that even Warren Harding didn’t live up to, it would be no surprise if existing holders of American bonds dumped their holdings.
If one wants to dump the Federal Reserve, fine. As an expression of national sovereignty, the federal government needs a central bank. Remember, were it not for Alexander Hamilton’s creation of the Bank of the United States, the USA would have become bankrupt in the 1790’s. While federal bankruptcy may suit radical libertarians just fine, given how many of them apparently want to dissolve the Union, it is not acceptable.
It is amazing how so many radical libertarians are gold bugs. They absolutely idolize that metal, perhaps not realizing that almost any tangible and durable object can function as an effective currency. One cannot eat gold or silver anyway, so they must be exchanged for food in any case. So why not base one’s currency on food?
Currency could be based upon a bushel of wheat. It could be based upon a bale of cotton. Or beef jerky. Or a bag of dried corn. Or dried bananas. Cigarettes functioned as currency in WWII prisoner of war camps. One of my favorites is a currency based upon lutefisk. Insistence upon a metallic currency is blatant idolatry – as if metallic currencies were inherently superior to digestible ones.
If we are going to wean our way off fiat currency, we need a better alternative than the metal idolatry espoused by radical libertarians, which effectively amounts to aggrandizing gold mine operators at the expense of everybody else.
Radical libertarians are often like radical leftists – they care more about being “right” than taking responsibility for the “collateral damage” of the policies they espouse.
Alexis (#60) Well Said!
Insistence upon a metallic currency is blatant idolatry – as if metallic currencies were inherently superior to digestible ones.
Portability and shelf life play a prominent role in the selection of gold and silver. I live in Minnesota and even here interest in lutefisk approaches treasury bond interest rates.
CW@61
I second that!
MSO (#62) “Portability and shelf life play a prominent role in the selection of gold and silver” My 4 buried cases of Whisky will be worth three times their wait in gold or silver and will trade for anything faster than ether gold or silver when the time comes! Fools think Gold or Silver will save them, not that I think my Weapons or Supplies will save me anymore, I am just gonna last longer than the gold munch’n idiot’s will.
It seems Hillary bungled the negotiations in the Security Council by getting coy. Just like a woman!! When asked what was in store in 15 days if Assad did not go into exile, she refused to give a reply.
Okay, Hillary I’ll help you (OH Great Leader From Behind), if Assad does not go into exile in 15 days, we will impose a naval blockade of the port of Tartus to enforce an arms embargo.
Is that clear enough ol’ Vlad the Impaler II, old buddy, old pal? No No-Fly Zones, no invasions, and no more discussions, just a few well placed CAPTOR mines somewhere in the Med. Just like the old days off Haiphong Harbor!!
Do I make myself clear enough? Somehow I think those tens of thousands of protestors in the streets of Moscow might be able to discern my meaning. Russia under Putin will become a pariah state. And they probably would prefer that such a possibility is safely avoided. Pitchforks and torches in the streets of Moscow or Assad lolling away his time in Paris, what’s it gonna be?
I appreciated both discussions – the spores and unemployment – for a lighter note – just received this joke:
I was eating breakfast with my 7-year-old granddaughter and I asked her, “What day is February 20th this year?”
She said “It’s President’s Day!”
She’s a smart kid. So, I pressed on asking “What does President’s Day mean?”
I was waiting for something about Washington, Lincoln, etc..
She replied, “President’s Day is when President Obama steps out of the White House, and if he sees his shadow we have one more year of unemployment.”
You know, it hurts when hot coffee spurts out your nose…
Yes, there are a ton of dots that are out there right now wanting and or avoiding connection. The behind (smart power) leaders are the… avoidance. Does it seem to anyone else hereon that we are in an extremely reactive mode more so these days?
v @ 39: Josh loathes the Fed banksters but can’t quite bring himself to call for their abolishment and replacement by a basket of commodities.
Nor a bouquet of roses. Wish I could. Things aren’t that simple.
–
Meanwhile here’s some creative thinking:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21416-i-think-we-should-let-elephants-loose-in-australia.html
It’s creative, but if you need more herbivores, won’t sheep,goats or cows – or rabbits – do the job?
–
k @ 66: LOL, thanks, already copied and circulated!
CharlesWhite…
The ONLY thing holding up the ‘value’ of whiskey is excise taxes and presumed scarcity.
Once the Federal government is hobbled its Treasury agents will not be able to stop the absolute explosion of moonshine certain to follow.
In which case, your precious liquid corn will collapse in value.
The case for specie is only based upon 5,000 years of human travail.
BTW, gold is only ever traded as ransom money: as in getting out of Dodge.
For commercial transactions it’s just too much concentrated wealth. For that society has chronically gone to a SILVER standard. Charlemagne did it; as did: Britain, Rome, China, France, Austria, America, Spain…. et. al.
Only in recent years has any attempt been made to stay with fiat. ( Traditionally, fiat is a war-time expedient; Greenbacks, anyone? )
Gold stays vaulted — or buried in the earth even more crudely. BTW, that property, its ability to be directly buried without corrosion is at the heart of gold’s role as money; that, and the fact that it’s a luxury good that always draws the babes.
“Paradise Tossed”
Another drastic change from when we six-decaders were kids is this: EXPECTATIONS.
That is, the encyclopedia of consumer luxuries we now take for granted…
When we were kids, families had a single vehicle if they had any. Now, every teenager expects to have a separate un-shared vehicle, with all the amenities.
A middle class family had a 2 bedroom, 1&1/2 bath home that would fit entirely inside the 2-car garage of the mansion that typifies the “standard” single-family home developers provide in new sub-divisions now.
Use to be enough to have a single television, and a record turntable. Now homes have a giant flat-screen TV for the family room, plus a smaller color tv in almost every room of the house. Individual computers for every adult and child, plus multiple printers, fax machines, scanners, digital cameras, digital video cams, Kindles, GameBoys and plenty of other digital gadgets. Meanwhile, the garage, attic, basement, and a rented storage space are all choc-a-block with older radios, televisions, cameras, projectors, turntables, iPods, computers, printers, and scores of other bits of techno-gadgets and toys, many of which still work, but lack all the latest functions available in the newer cheaper models made by slave labor in the third world!!!!
The X-gens and “millennials” have from their earliest days seen this sort of heedless and reckless chewing through the department stores, so that to their thinking the vicious “Cash for Clunkers” was just another entirely normal gambit to encourage people to go ahead and buy a newer better vehicle. Meanwhile, those of us whose parents lived through the straightened circumstances of the GREAT DEPRESSION, were trained to “Fix it, Repair it, Make it LAST!” Even the freaks and hippies of the 1960′s and 70′s at least gave a nod to the wisdom of keeping and preserving things. It used to be a joke that when you won the lottery, you could get a new car when the ash tray filled up.
Whether these expectations are reasonable is, I suppose, determined by the myriad factors in the GLOBAL economy – along with the sustained hostility of the eco-fanatics and the Marxist-indoctrinated LEFT who have knee-capped U.S. nuclear power, domestic fossil fuel exploitation, the agricultural industry of California (one of the most productive regions in the WORLD), the U.S. Military, Healthcare, Education, etc., etc.
The parasites have damn near killed their host.
Where will they go when there is no more life-juice to suck?
And What about all the third-world residents who are willing to work feverishly to have the standard of living we enjoyed 50 years ago?
“Tough cheese,” say the Marxists. “That’s all been declared EVIL. You can’t have any of that. It’s just for the Nomenklatura.”
blert (#69) Your wrong… “your precious liquid corn will collapse in value”. I do agree Moonshine will be everywhere and it will trade as common drink, refined whisky which will become a very scares commodity and will indeed be worth its weight in gold, Canadian Whiskey and Russian vodka will become precious beyond price while moonshine will be everywhere along with the type of moonshine that will lead ya to blindness and death while my “Safe” whiskey fetch what shiners could only pray for! I’ll take Tennessee whisky over moonshine any day (I’ve had shine from IA, ILL, TN, FLA, GA and LA) the home brew is good for occasional but its Gut Rot brain kill’n for anything more than that (it’ll make your kids retards (just jok’n)).
stevesmith @ 46 said:
“In 2003 the Canadian dollar was worth 63 cents U.S. Today it is trading at 1.0059 $U.S.”
You can track the exchange rates between the US and Canadian dollars at:
http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/exchange/can-us-rate-lookup/?page_moved=1
On 2002-01-21 the Canadian dollar was 0.6179 USD and on 2007-11-07 it was 1.1030 USD (these are the lows and highs since October 1950). Yes there has been a 56% variation with respect to the US dollar over the last half century. However this variation is small compared to the variation in the value of gold in US dollars, e.g. 656% over the last decade or an order of magnitude greater than the variation in the Canadian dollar. Given that Canada is a major producer of primary products including gold, the Canadian dollar should be leaving the US dollar in the dust. However it damages the Canadian export economy if the Canadians allow their dollar to appreciate significantly over the US dollar so they arrange for their currency to track ours. This actually raises an interesting question of whether the Canadians are wise to do this. Perhaps a better strategy would have been to allow the Canadian dollar to significantly rise against the US dollar and accept the consequence that their export trade would diminish. The Canadians would have found themselves with greater immediate purchasing power in terms of world trade and retained their nonrenewable resources for future trade when it would have had greater relative value. The short term benefit of retaining rough parity with the US dollar was made at the cost of future economic strength.
Mad Fiddler @ 70 mentioned the relative value of the:
“That is, the encyclopedia of consumer luxuries we now take for granted…”
The problem of comparing a modern flat screen LED television to a 1960s B&W CRT is the modern television was made by industrial slaves in China while the B&W CRT was made by freemen with a decent standard of living.
blert @ 69 said
“… its ability to be directly buried without corrosion is at the heart of gold’s role as money; that, and the fact that it’s a luxury good that always draws the babes.”
One of my hobbies is collecting ancient coins. Gold is an amazing metal because it will not age. You can take a gold coin, bury it in the ground, dig it up 2500 years later and the coin will be unchanged. Take a bronze coin, do the same and after 2500 years it will be badly corroded unless the coin was in the very middle of the coin hoard and not in direct contact with the surrounding soil. Silver coins have the weird property that the metal becomes brittle after a thousand years. If you drop a large silver ancient coin onto a hard surface, it can shatter like a piece of glass (very heart breaking when that happens). The old joke amongst ancient coin collectors is what to do if someone accuses you of selling them a fake silver coin. The ultimate test is to put the coin in a vise and whack it with a hammer. If the coin bends then it’s a fake but if it shatters then it was real. Iron is a very frustrating metal for archaeologists. There are these tombs from ancient Macedon where inside are large piles of red dust. The piles of red dust were once beautiful swords, lances and body armor. The funny one in terms of archaeology is lead. Medieval Europeans liked to entomb their kings and emperors with shiny lead crowns, lead swords, lead scepters and lead placards listing the prince’s lifetime achievements. These artifacts would have had immense historical value if they were intact. However if you put a lead artifact next to a rotting corpse, the lead undergoes a chemical reaction called “lead disease”. Lead disease causes the lead artifact to transform into a pile of white dust. If you open up a limestone sarcophagus, you may find a pile of black carbon dust that was once the corpse, a pile of red dust that was once an iron artifact, a pile of white dust that was a lead artifact and a gold wedding ring that is perfectly intact.
Looking at that labor chart 1948 to 2012 what I’d say we are seeing is the baby boom getting more and more into the labor force and now retiring. 1964 would have been when the first “boomers” turned 18, 1983 is when the last ones did. The recession of the late 70′s early 80′s would have delayed the entrance of some and held the employment down until the boom times of the late 80′s and into the 90′s with a flat spot in the early 90′s.
The entry of women as was said just made the curve go higher but they started coming into the workforce in the 40′s and 50′s. That long run-up from ’64 to ’90 has to be the large number of baby boom people moving into the workforce.