Or also, from the last several days...

Political Punch: Liberal bloggers sayin Clinton ads darken Obama. Some others say it is a YouTube artifact effect.

Atmosphere released a free MP3 from the next album.

Hillary, Obama and the Establishment Machine | The Agonist

Hm. Definitely interesting: The Man Between War and Peace, Admiral Fallon.

Cuban Cyber Rebels and their flash drives and blogs! Viva Cuba flashdriva!

Smashing Magazine has nice design and free fonts.

io9 has random sci fi stuff. cool design too.

When in doubt, check out the Gary Webb video @ Archive.org, late in his life reflecting on the whole Los Angeles CIA crack cocaine thingy.

Global Guerillas is pretty buzzwordy, but it's pretty good. For your daily dose of super-modern open source insurgent warfare, extortion through DDoS - both Russian and Botnet variants, the imminent insect techno-eschaton, and how one super-empowered individual guerilla Henry Okah has brought Nigeria into total chaos and propelled oil over $100 a barrel. This Robb guy is definitely paying attention. National security bureaucracies are doomed?! Not if they can hoard up their own very biggest bestest haystack!

Meanwhile the economic crash continues apace. Much hand-wringing at one of my favorite spots, the Agonist . Wheat is over $12/bushel.

Buffett: it's a recession, stupid.

Banks face systemic margin call, $325 billion hit: JP Morgan!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street banks are facing a "systemic margin call" that may deplete banks of $325 billion of capital due to deteriorating subprime U.S. mortgages, JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N:Quote, Profile, Research), said in a report late on Friday.

JPMorgan, which sent a default notice to Thornburg Mortgage Inc. (TMA.N: Quote,Profile, Research) after the lender missed a $28 million margin call, said more default notices and margin calls were likely. The Carlyle Group's mortgage fund also failed to meet $37 million in margin calls this week.

"A systemic credit crunch is underway, driven primarily by bank writedowns for subprime mortgages," according to the report co-authored by analyst Christopher Flanagan. "We would characterize this situation as a systemic margin call."

The credit crisis that began about a year ago will likely intensify after Friday's weak February U.S. employment report "that most definitely signals recession," JPMorgan said.

Bush Family Piggy Bank Receives Default Notice! | The Agonist

The best news I have heard is the insane bastards in Florida who have taken advantage of the crashed system. They are sitting in their homes, paying nothing at all, waiting for the totally conked court system to struggle with the lost paperwork at every level of the mortgage. An awesome thing to behold!! The Big Picture | Foreclosure-proof Homeowners:

What is shocking, that in each and every case, I have been told by brokers and banks that the owners, have ceased paying their mortgages in some cases for nearly 2 years and have continued to occupy these homes. Now, these are homes in excess of $2,000,000 in the very best neighborhoods in South Florida. Brokers have added that these buyers further complicated things by putting huge home equity lines on top of their mortgages and now have no possibility of selling their homes for amounts needed to cover their accumulated debt.

America is amazing. Ok.

Bloomberg.com Citigroup needs Arab cash, fast!!!! Rlly fast!!!

Russians pissed off about American/Pakistani opium smuggling support in Afghanistan: (via cryptogon)

Narco Aggression: Russia accuses the U.S. military of involvement in drug trafficking out of Afghanistan by Vladimir Radyuhin

Global Research, February 24, 2008: Global Research Editor's Note

The global proceeds of the Afghan drug trade is in excess of 150 billion dollars a year. There is mounting evidence that this illicit trade is protected by the US military.

Historically, starting in the early 1980s, the Afghan drug trade was used to finance CIA covert support of the Islamic brigades. The 2003 war on Afghanistan was launched following the Taliban government's 2000-2001 drug eradication program which led to a collapse in opium production in excess of 90 percent.

The following report, which accuses the United States of using military transport planes to ship narcotics out of Afghanistan confirms what is already known and documented regarding the Golden Crescent Drug Trade and its insiduous relationship to US intelligence.

February 23, 2008

Russia, facing a catastrophic rise in drug addiction, accuses the U.S. military of involvement in drug trafficking from Afghanistan.....

....“Unfortunately, they [NATO] are doing nothing to reduce the narcotic threat from Afghanistan even a tiny bit,” Putin angrily remarked three years ago. He accused the coalition forces of “sitting back and watching caravans haul drugs across Afghanistan to the former Soviet Union and Europe.” As time went by, Russian suspicions regarding the U.S. role in the rise of a narco state in Afghanistan grew deeper, especially after reports from Iraq said that the cultivation of opium poppies was spreading rapidly there too.

“The Americans are working hard to keep narco business flourishing in both countries,” says Mikhail Khazin, president of the consultancy firm Niakon. “They consistently destroy the local infrastructure, pushing the local population to look for illegal means of subsistence. And the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] provides protection to drug trafficking.”

U.S. freelance writer Dave Gibson recalled in an article published in American Chronicle in December what a U.S. foreign intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told NewsMax.com in March 2002 of the CIA’s record of involvement with the international drug trade. The official said: “The CIA did almost the identical thing during the Vietnam War, which had catastrophic consequences – the increase in the heroin trade in the USA beginning in the 1970s is directly attributable to the CIA. The CIA has been complicit in the global drug trade for years, so I guess they just want to carry on their favourite business.”

AFP

(A USAF cargo plane takes off from the U.S. airbase in Incirlik in Turkey in March 2003. A Russian news channel reported that drugs from Afghanistan were hauled by American transport aircraft to the U.S. airbases in Kyrgyzstan and Turkey.)

Now Russia has joined the fray accusing the U.S. military of involvement in the heroin trafficking from Afghanistan to Europe. The Vesti channel’s report from Afghanistan said that drugs from Afghanistan were hauled by American transport aircraft to the U.S. airbases Ganci in Kyrgyzstan and Incirlik in Turkey.

The Ganci Air Force base at the Manas international airport in Kyrgyzstan was set up in late 2001 as a staging post for military operations inside Afghanistan. The Kyrgyz government threatened to close the base after neighbouring Uzbekistan shut down a similar U.S. airbase on its territory in 2005, but relented after Washington agreed to make a one-off payment of $150 million in the form of an assistance package and to pay $15 million a year for the use of the base.

One of the best-informed Russian journalists on Central Asia, Arkady Dubnov, recently quoted anonymous Afghan sources as saying that “85 per cent of all drugs produced in southern and southeastern provinces are shipped abroad by U.S. aviation.”

A well-informed source in Afghanistan’s security services told the Russian journalist that the American military acquired drugs through local Afghan officials who dealt with field commanders in charge of drug production.

Writing in the Vremya Novostei daily, Dubnov claimed that the pro-Western administration of President Hamid Karzai, including his two brothers, Kajum Karzai and Akhmed Vali Karzai, are head-to-heels involved in the narcotics trade.

The article quoted a leading U.S. expert on Afghanistan, Barnett Rubin, as telling an anti-narcotics conference in Kabul last October that “drug dealers had infiltrated Afghani state structures to the extent where they could easily paralyse the work of the government if decision to arrest one of them was ever made.”

Sure, they can say the Russians are grumbling like usual. But from Moscow's perspective, the U.S. is just trying to keep on top of all the Players in the Game. And they run the Wire all over the whole territory, so they know exactly who is doing what where, and can watch the opium caravans go cruising by. The fact that this doesn't track in American conventional wisdom is a monument to the intentional ignorance of Baby Boomers, regardless of how accurate the Russians are here.

The planes, the drugs, the detainees, it all seems to be part of a nexus of secret military/DHS contractor airlines. These guys are soooo 1980s. The ponzi scheme depends on information asymmetry, which can always be disrupted......

Yeah, I don't know if it's true, but it won't surprise me if it is. A Canadian guy with a big head injury discovered that THC-rich medicinal hemp oil relieved his suffering, but then he also discovered that hemp oil kills cancerous brain cells while leaving the good cells unharmed. In fact, there's a video of the bad brain cells shriveling up into dead little balls after THC treatment.

SETH: Using the same tests used to judge new chemotherapies, the SETH team discovered that this herbal compound kills human brain tumor cells at a concentration that is nontoxic to normal brain cells. A computerized microscope captured images of the cells every 5 minutes to compile the time-lapse videos. After 20 hours of treatment, Δ⁹-THC kills all cancer cells but leaves normal brain cells alive. Cell death is evidenced by cells shrinking to inanimate whitespheres.

Here's the photos:SETH. Parallel experiments were performed testing the effect of Δ⁹-THC on human brain cancer cells (glioblastoma multiforme, or GBM) and also on normal brain cells. Putting this herbal compound through the same tests that a new chemotherapeutic agent would go through revealed a potent and remarkably specific anti-cancer effect. Both types of cells were treated with the same concentration of Δ⁹-THC but after 20 hours only the cancer cells died. Cell death is seen in the lower right panel as cells shrinking to inanimate white spheres. For more information about this project, click toLEARN MORE.

More here: The SETH Group: background:

The major active component of the medicinal plant cannabis, Δ⁹-THC, has been shown in experiments with rats to have therapeutic potential against brain tumors. SETH Group scientists Garret Yount, Ph.D. and Sean McAllister, Ph.D. designed experiments in a time-lapse microscope to test whether Δ⁹-THC can stop the growth of human glioblastoma multiforma (GBM) brain cancer cells. Using the same tests that are used to judge new chemotherapies, the team discovered that the herbal compound kills human GBM cells at a concentration that is nontoxic to normal brain cells. Click here to see Featured Experiment.

future development: Test whether a combination of active components of medicinal cannabis, as present in the plant, will act synergistically and prove to be a more effective treatment against the growth of brain cancer cells compared to Δ⁹-THC alone.

Implications: No chemotherapy can match this nontoxic anti-cancer action. The implication is that this plant compound could be a safe medicine against brain tumors, without the side effects of chemotherapy. These exciting results may be just the tip of the iceberg, however, because Δ⁹-THC is only one of many active compounds in medicinal cannabis. Other active constituents of the Cannabis plant (called cannabinoids) are also likely to have a nontoxic anti-cancer action.

******

Alright, well who is this Canadian guy? And is there a BitTorrentable documentary about it? Sure is!

TorrentBox.com - Torrent details for "Run From The Cure - The Rick Simpson Story". I'm downloading it right now!

And also, here is the guy's website: Cure Cancer with Hemp Oil - Phoenix Tears

A couple clips from that: Follow this link for CBC Journalist Wendy Mesley's documentary about the cancer industry unapologetically and unashamedly making billions of dollars through human misery. The programme was rerun on Sunday, April 2nd, 2006 at 7pm on the main CBC network.

"I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked..." Hippocrates

"Disabled retroviruses-fossils of molecular battles that raged for generations-make up eight per cent of the human genome." --New Yorker

In the category of awesome stuff, consider how retroviruses have apparently spent billions of years INFESTING YOUR DNA and indeed THE PLACENTA itself descended from VIRUSES. X-Files Black Oil is already here, people!!

How great is that? Feeling weird? It's not Scientology's "Thetans", instead it is the fragmented DNA of thousands of retroviruses that infected someone's sex organs during the last 5,000,000 years. And also these fragments effectively stuff up the actions of many new viruses: this is why chimps don't get sick from human HIV. Some insane old paleovirus (yes paleovirology) actually blocks the HIV from hurting the chimps from within the natural chimp DNA. It integrated to the chimp after they diverged from humans!

All these ancient diseases integrated with humans at such a slow rate, you can pick out the branching points of species' evolutionary chains by the sets of virus fragments their DNA picked up, cruising out the evolutionary tree.

PS who wants a flu vaccine now?

This seems to resemble the upcoming Will Smith flick "I Am Legend" perhaps?

Darwin’s Surprise Why are evolutionary biologists bringing back extinct deadly viruses?

by Michael Specter December 3, 2007

Disabled retroviruses-fossils of molecular battles that raged for generations-make up eight per cent of the human genome.

Thierry Heidmann’s office, adjacent to the laboratory he runs at the Institut Gustave Roussy, on the southern edge of Paris, could pass for a museum of genetic catastrophe. Files devoted to the world’s most horrifying infectious diseases fill the cabinets and line the shelves. There are thick folders for smallpox, Ebola virus, and various forms of influenza. SARS is accounted for, as are more obscure pathogens, such as feline leukemia virus, Mason-Pfizer monkey virus, and simian foamy virus, which is endemic in African apes. H.I.V., the best-known and most insidious of the viruses at work today, has its own shelf of files. The lab’s beakers, vials, and refrigerators, secured behind locked doors with double-paned windows, all teem with viruses. Heidmann, a meaty, middle-aged man with wild eyebrows and a beard heavily flecked with gray, has devoted his career to learning what viruses might tell us about AIDS and various forms of cancer. “This knowledge will help us treat terrible diseases,” he told me, nodding briefly toward his lab. “Viruses can provide answers to questions we have never even asked.”

When the sequence of the human genome was fully mapped, in 2003, researchers also discovered something they had not anticipated: our bodies are littered with the shards of such retroviruses, fragments of the chemical code from which all genetic material is made. It takes less than two per cent of our genome to create all the proteins necessary for us to live. Eight per cent, however, is composed of broken and disabled retroviruses, which, millions of years ago, managed to embed themselves in the DNA of our ancestors. They are called endogenous retroviruses, because once they infect the DNA of a species they become part of that species. One by one, though, after molecular battles that raged for thousands of generations, they have been defeated by evolution. Like dinosaur bones, these viral fragments are fossils. Instead of having been buried in sand, they reside within each of us, carrying a record that goes back millions of years. Because they no longer seem to serve a purpose or cause harm, these remnants have often been referred to as “junk DNA.” Many still manage to generate proteins, but scientists have never found one that functions properly in humans or that could make us sick.

Then, last year, Thierry Heidmann brought one back to life. Combining the tools of genomics, virology, and evolutionary biology, he and his colleagues took a virus that had been extinct for hundreds of thousands of years, figured out how the broken parts were originally aligned, and then pieced them together. After resurrecting the virus, the team placed it in human cells and found that their creation did indeed insert itself into the DNA of those cells. They also mixed the virus with cells taken from hamsters and cats. It quickly infected them all, offering the first evidence that the broken parts could once again be made infectious. The experiment could provide vital clues about how viruses like H.I.V. work. Inevitably, though, it also conjures images of Frankenstein’s monster and Jurassic Park.

“If you think about this for five minutes, it is wild stuff,” John Coffin told me when I visited him in his laboratory at Tufts University, where he is the American Cancer Society Research Professor. Coffin is one of the country’s most distinguished molecular biologists, and was one of the first to explore the role of endogenous retroviruses in human evolution. “I understand that the idea of bringing something dead back to life is fundamentally frightening,” he went on. “It’s a power that science has come to possess and it makes us queasy, and it should. But there are many viruses that are more dangerous than these—more infectious, far riskier to work with, and less potentially useful.’’

This explains pretty much every insane thing I've ever heard. "It wasn't me mom, it was ancient viruses inside me that sprang back to life!!!"

They are like ancient Linux patches that fix you up so you don't get the latest expl0it virus. Literally.

If that is how life really works, then frankly people we have to consider the idea that some of the dumbest conspiracy theories ever. Because the evil Iluminati are actually Different Viruses. Everyone's favorite crazed internet conspiracy theory: "The Elite are Shape Shifting Reptilians from Shangri La or whatever!" takes on a whole different spin. See Wikipedia:

Wikipedia, thanks: Reptilian humanoids are a common motif in mythology, folklore, science fiction, ufology, and the conspiracy theories of John Rhodes, David Icke, and Riley Martin. They are variously said to be extraterrestrials, supernatural entities, or the remains of a pre-Human civilization, and are known by many names, including Reptoids, dinosauroids, lizardfolk or lizardmen.

Alright now google is leading me in weird places: Reptilians and 2012.

And this one, which gets to my favorite conspiracy subject, conical hats:

Get Weird: Reptilians and 2012: it has to do with Sumerians: Quetzalcoatl - Crystalinks and Sumerian Gods and Goddesses. Sweet!!!

Shut up. Right now I am watching a video contending that over President Bush's shoulder is a GRAY ALIEN reflection during a press conference. Sounds crazy? Oh yeah well YOU'RE MADE OF VIRUSES! Via TheWatcherFiles.com - self-proclaimed X-File Christians who say that everyone in Congress are basically aliens or reptilians. What an awesome idea for a horror movie.

Wow. They have exposed these Reptilians in DC:

Akaka, Daniel (D - HI) Reptilian

Allen, George (R - VA) Reptilian

Bayh, Evan (D - IN) -- Alien/other type

Biden Jr, Joseph (D - DE) -- Reptilian

Bond, Christopher (R - MO) -- Reptilian

Boxer, Barbara (D - CA) -- Alien supported

Bunning, Jim (R - KY) -- Alien supported

Byrd, Robert (D - WV) -- Reptilian

Campbell, Ben Nighthorse (R - CO) Pleiadean (fallen to the other side)

Carper, Thomas (D - DE) -- Alien supported

Clinton, Hillary (D - NY) --Alien/other type

Conrad, Kent (D - ND) --Alien/other type

Crapo, Mike (R - ID) --- Alien supported

Daschle, Thomas (D - SD) --Reptilian

Dodd, Christopher (D - CT) -- Alien supported

Domenici, Pete (R - NM) --Reptilian

Dorgan, Byron (D - ND) -- Reptilian

Durbin, Richard (D - IL) --Alien supported

Feingold, Russell (D - WI) -- Alien/other type

Even Russ Feingold is an alien. How deep does it go? save us David Icke!

All right people... This post turned from sweet to completely ridiculous. Fuck it. It was the paleovirus!

There is no doubt that this is somehow related to an unprecedented number of categories!! Haha!

No doubt about that! You can purchase a linked slice of one freakin awesome image map. Most assuredly, if you follow all the links on this page, you will surely find the Ultimate Truth until the Black Helicopters come and take you away!!

Visit conpix.thegatekeepers.biz today, and find out the secrets which only the awesome wall of links may tell you!! They gots a blog too!

Ah shit: Sarkozy calls for UN-led 'new world order':

The United Nations should avail itself as an instrument for a "new world order of the 21st century," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday in his first address to the General Assembly. Sarkozy, who won the presidency this year on a strong reform platform to modernize France, urged the world body to embark on programmes ranging from equal wealth distribution to fighting corruption in his speech full of references to France's past revolutionary ideals.

Jacobin Commie! Yikes!! The Neo Con New World Order etc. w00000!!11!!!

An ugly scenario: World War III: What World War III May Look Like - by Philip Giraldi - a former Intelligence officer:

The United States uses a neutron-type bomb against the main Iranian nuclear research center at Natanz, which it had already bombed conventionally and destroyed. It vows to bomb again if Iran continues to resist. Iran is defiant and fires another wave of Silkworms at U.S. ships, sinking one. Suicide bombers hit U.S. targets in Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia and China place their nuclear forces on high alert. Pakistani militants take over parliament, aided by radical elements in the army and the intelligence service. India launches a preemptive strike against the main Pakistani nuclear centers at Wah and Multan, where the country's arsenal is believed to be concentrated. Pakistan has hidden some of its nukes elsewhere, however, and is able to strike back by bombing New Delhi. World War III has begun.

Someone said recently that this stuff with total NSA surveillance and paramilitary Blackwater insanity looks like Baron Hausmann's reorganization of Paris: the creation of new forms and institutions that aren't really helpful against Islamic terrorists, but quite useful against violent domestic insurrections. Haussmann built those big Parisian avenues so that revolt organizers couldn't blockade parts of the city. Saddam took a page from this when rebuilding Baghdad...

Here is the legal framework on that. More from Prof. Juan Cole:

A big feature of the literature on decolonization is the delight leaders such as Gamal Abdul Nasser and Ruhollah Khomeini took in abrogating laws bestowing 'extra-territoriality' on colonial personnel and even just civilians from the metropole, while in the subject country. Now extra-territoriality is back with a vengeance; and, of course, no colonial enterprise can be run without it. One can't have persons of the superior race hauled before a native judge; bad show, old boy, to let the wily oriental gentlemen get the upper hand that way.

The argument about whether Cheney/Bush went into Iraq over petroleum is not interesting. Of course they did, one way or another. The question is what exactly they thought they were doing about Iraq's petroleum. I would argue that they threw public resources (perhaps as much as two trillion dollars worth when all is said and done) to secure profits for private companies.

Fake terror threat manipulates Congress to further spy powers: The insanity continues as Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) claims that "bogus" intelligence claims were bandied about by the White House in order to get the extension of spy powers. Here you have a legislative example of the classic fear "staged war on terror" dynamic. It's all right here.

When did the dissing of generals start? Right wing noxious fumers like Jonah Goldberg have been ripping on generals since quite a while ago: VAPAHS!!!

Hence, in any case, conventional wisdom will always be happy if Republicans More Happy With the "Democratic" Congress than Democrats.

Dan Rather: the video producer, Mary Mapes, who got nailed by some kind of repackaged info bomb, thinks Dan Rather's big lawsuit is courageous. Mary Mapes: Courage for Dan Rather.

The Drugging of our children: Someone made a video, mainly about ADHD and pumping the kids' heads full of psychotropic social control agents. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's by someone named Gary Null (Google Video), who seems to have some other weird offbeat medical videos on Google Video.

AT&T going to tap the Internet & scan to catch your bad movies: Slashdot carried the story that:

Save the Internet writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the MPAA is trying to convince major ISPs to do content filtering. Now, merely wanting it is one thing, but the more important point is that 'AT&T has agreed to start filtering content at some mysterious point in the future.' We're left to wonder about the legal implications of that, but given that AT&T already has the ability to wiretap everything for the NSA, it was only a matter of time before they found a way to profit from it, too."

The chic TASER police state: Andrew Meyer was that kid at the Kerry rally tagged for no particular reason (though of course it's not safe to suggest elections are rigged in Florida, let alone mention secret societies!) Creepy embrace of tasers by the establishment media. Bill O'Reilly was really creepy about the whole thing. Emil Steiner in the WaPo says creepy stuff too. Protest for Tasered Student Continues. More creeps - a connection between ominous neocons and violence-loving O'Reilly: A marriage made in Hell. Media Matters - Beck said he "enjoy[s] watching" Taser videos; O'Reilly rolled out "Don't Taze me, bro!" bumper stickers. Stunning future ahead for Taser.

We have our own police state issues around here. PrisonPlanet has a new web page devoted to classic police brutality incidents. The new Pain Ray Gun "Silent Guardian" which basically is a microwave weapon that hurts a lot. Let me share a bit of probably-classified wisdom about microwave weapons: they are perfectly defeated by aluminum foil. Tinfoil hats at the ready!!! (Apparently, ISBN numbers are intellectual property nowadays too - no sneeking into your university bookstore to steal those serials and order 'em online! Yikes) Police Culture In the US. America’s Police Brutality Pandemic by Paul Craig Roberts. Veterans Disarmament Act To Bar Vets From Owning Guns if anyone says they have PTSD. Underground militia here we come, before the blue helmets sez ya crazy!

Great moments in Homeland Security: Because if you're not a terrorist, no problem (via here):

Zakariya Reed, a Toledo firefighter, said in an interview that he has been detained at least seven times at the Michigan border since fall 2006. Twice, he said, he was questioned by border officials about "politically charged" opinion pieces he had published in his local newspaper. The essays were critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East, he said. Once, during a secondary interview, he said, "they had them printed out on the table in front of me."

Better yet: Alex Jones guys discover the horrible! Denver Sheriff's Office Helps Private Companies Take Blood And Saliva At Checkpoints. Nice! Ex-FEMA Leader Says Feds May Overreact. Michael Brown expects crazy feds. Shit!

Blackwater looks like the TASER International Comintern: At least those shady bastards are on the map right now. They're gonna get pegged by their own Zapruder film, hopefully. Here's an overview video from Jeremy Scahill, who was really good recently on MSNBC Countdown:

Bad economic news & views: "Greenspan Working To Destroy US Economy", at least suddenly talking down with great shock the excesses of Wall Street. Greenspan's Oil Claim in Context - by Dilip Hiro and Tom Engelhardt. Really helpful.

Financial Times reported:

Fresh economic shocks on the scale of the current credit squeeze will occur if US house prices continue to fall, one of the country’s leading housing experts warned on Wednesday. Robert Shiller, a Yale university economist, told a US congressional panel that he feared “the collapse of home prices might turn out to be the most severe since the Great Depression”.

Fears of dollar collapse as Saudis take fright. The Saudis Call Bernanke's Bluff. Foreign reserve currencies quietly getting ditched. Krugman asked if this is the Wile E. Coyote moment (where he looks down and falls through the air). (On a side note, the NY Times has made its editorial stuff free again - and the old article archives going back many years. They want to sell more ads now. Sweet!)

Why the dollar is taking another beating now. First World Government junk bonds on the way. Suddenly, the British pound looks vulnerable. West ‘complicit’ in Third World corruption. How the Bush economy worked.

Looks like a good book: Naomi Klein's The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

On a more funny note: Chinese buy into conspiracy theory. yes the hokey tale of the Rothschilds has become a hit Chinese book, read by all apparatchiks, nomenclatura and bureaucrats of note!

If it's all coming down, the operative question might be: If Humans Are a Virus, Then What Is the End Game? Worth considering I suppose.

Discrediting the North American Union: Reason Magazine calls NAU agenda "a Xenophobic Fantasy". I wish. I found these weird MnDOT documents, there is a real something big out there. Of that much I am certain, and it has Minnesota manifestations.

How about those loose nukes: Simple Error My Ass, says Larry Johnson, a former CIA guy.

Mideast tensions: Israeli rightwing Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu claimed some credit around the suspicious Israeli airstrikes on Syria. It's worth noting that this was certainly a kind of hegemonic shifting, a frame bump in the discourse of international politics. War strikes become the norm, and Netanyahu is positioning himself to bask in the glory. Syria’s Illusory Nukes: More Propaganda.

This stupid prancing shit with Ahmadinejad: Grow Up. Hell yeah. Newt Gingrich: Bush Should Blow Up Iran's Natural Gas Insfrastructure. A good point:

Gingrich said: "I can't imagine why they put up with this. I mean, either General Petraeus is wrong and the military spokesman's wrong or the current policies we have are stunningly ineffective. ... We should finance the students. We should finance a Radio Free Iran. We should covertly sabotage the only gasoline refinery in the country. We should be prepared, once the gasoline refinery's down, to stop all of the gasoline tankers and communicate to the Iranian government, that, if they want to move equipment into Iran - into Iraq - they're gonna have to walk."

What was legal beagle Greta's response to this bloodthirsty, illegal and immoral suggestion?

She said, "That actually seems rather simple and easy to do." The sheer insanity of this is mind-boggling.

Gingrich's open call for sabotage of Iran's gas industry lends more credence to my theory that Iran's natural gas infrastructure, including recent construction on a pipeline to India, is the real target of the Bush administration, not the nuclear plants.

That's why they've over-hyped the nuclear issue. Seek the money to find the hidden agenda. The target is gas, not the atom.

Better yet! Think Progress: Durbin: Lieberman-Kyl Amendment Is ‘Dangerous,’ ‘Puts Us On Record’ In Support Of Iran War. Fuck he's right!!! It's another batshit insane blank check thing. Iran promises missiles will fly if US attacks. UK Times throws out major neocon propaganda, but still: Secret US air force team to perfect plan for Iran strike.

Senate Neocons Provoke Iran. Dress Rehearsal for War. For more,Informed Comment always good. Michael Scheuer, formerly known as CIA's "Anonymous," has one on Why Does Norman Podhoretz Hate America? about the "Islamofascist" bullshit. Quite good.

Iran's Ahmadinejad, public enemy No. 1? shorter: "Demonizing the Iranian president and making his visit to New York seem controversial are all part of the neoconservative push for yet another war" by Juan Cole.

The Russian oil company LUKoil gets West Qurna oilfield development. Good thing American soldiers liberated the contracts to such field by fiat of the gun. What it may cost to stay in Iraq (to secure Russian oil contracts, which may or may not become petrodollars).

Michael Ledeen vs Michael Ledeen: Sell arms to Iran vs. Iran is a warring enemy of America!! Neocons have all this evil innuendo about crushing the liberals, but they themselves are the treasonous bastards since they were selling weapons to Iran during the Iran-Contra Rockstar Geopolitical Party of All Time.

Old news: Greg Palast on Alex Jones in 2002 - old stuff but it mainly checked out. Venezuela, Florida elections, Saudis and Pakistanis in 9/11.

Last bits: The unmasking power of the freedom of speech and dialogue - on the Columbia academic situation. It's really ugly scene with Peter King on mosques, really bad: Extremism in religion is not against the law.

Interesting from dailykos: Hadrian's Forum: Catiline and Rome's "Housing Bubble"; Roman Progressives, Part 1.



A town uses social networking for the Edwards campaign. Sounds like Matt Bai wrote an interesting book on the blogger roots blasting against the Democratic Party establishment.

Some crazy freakin' conservatives have a song about how much God hates America right now. This kind of masochism is how they are starting debates now. WHY SHOULD GOD BLESS AMERICA?!? These people WANT to KNOW!

Ok. ok...

Once in a rare while you come across a truly impressive conspiracy theory, one that rises above mere 'urban legend' status to give you the Creepy Crawlies and inspire a really sweet movie. Morgellons are that theory. The screenplay awaits.

Combine these two ideas: A) There were reports recently that laser printer toner generates nasty clouds of tiny nano-particles, worse even than street pollution. B) If you're a methamphetamine user, the noxious synthetic drug components can't break down and exit your system, so they come out in nasty lesions of drug goo. (when you go into jail, you get passed around for other people to lick the goo and get high). Combine these ideas and add a splash of AKIRA or the Cartman-Trapper Keeper episode:

Here's a quick Akira video. The part about 3:30 is what I'm talking about, where Kaneda becomes this super mega mechanized blob monster. I am REALLY sorry someone put this video to Linkin Park. Yikes.

The idea is that some people manifest mysterious fibers coming out of lesions in their body. Mysterious nano-fibers of unknown origin, growing out of wounds, transmitting radio and electromagnetic energy. Microscopic observation shows suffers' skin seething with fibrous materials under the skin. Tests show it's a non-biological material. It's not just lint on a sticky rash. But tests also show latent infections in many: for indeed, Lyme Disease, found in many Morgellon's sufferers, suggests a complex of infestations which erode immunity response.

Image showing striking autofluorescence of fibers from child's lip skin lesion.

Nothing was added to skin sample, except Gel/Mount mounting media and

coverslip. Image is an overlay of red and blue images. Imaging was done

using an Olympus Provis Microscope which employs standard wavelengths

for rhodamine (Excitation 550 nm/ Emission/565 nm ) and Fluoroscein/alexa

488 (Excitation 494 nm/Emission 519nm)

There is a long-familiar disease called delusional parasitosis, which is the 'bugs under your skin psychosis' thing. Here is what purports to be the only video of morgelons, really friggin fuzzy and weird:

Here is another better video which I couldn't embed and another one of Morgellons Disease "Alive and with Intelligence." The description material contains:

Please "Sign the Following Petition" to Congress regarding the Centers for Disease Control, that they would Investigate and Research Morgellons Disease: http://tinyurl.com/yu4tnb

"Alive and with Intelligence"

Fresh out of skin and muscle tissue, these sand like granules as they are sometimes referred to can contain the Fibers, just as the fatty tissues, or the cysts, or skin sample samples, which Fibers seem to move occasionally, as being "Alive"

These Fibers initially surrounded the granule, of which there was some movement, promting investigation. Upon pulling the Fibers off of the granulated center, this Fiber seemed to reach across towards the separated bundle.

Hello to everybody who are involved in the Dreaded and Disabling Disease called Morgellons, and "Welcome" to those of you who ought to be and soon will be.

My Website is "MorgellonsUSA.com".

In many of these Videos are seen Fresh Sample Tissues Showing the "Colored Fibers" Growing and are Produced Within the skin, the muscle and the fatty tissues. Sadly, this is only one aspect of the Disease, which is also very disabling, as it affects the brain and the neurological system also, among other things.

The many persons, Dermatologists and Physicians who fight this, and who say that it is only a phsychological Illness, have a hallucination and a delusion themselves. They don't wish to be

accountable for their great and major contributions in helping to spread this Illness, and for ruining the many peoples families, and lives of the persons who suffer from this. They

say that this Disease is Delusional, and call the patients who have this "DOP" or "Delusions of Parasitosis"

Many persons have been commited to Mental Institutions or given Anti-Phsychotic Drugs. Perhaps you know somebody or have a loved one who is going through this, and furthermore, the CDC has not done one single thing to Investigate or Fix this Problem. Are you next???

My email Address:

Admin@morgellonsusa.com

Also do please visit:

http://www.morgellons.org/

http://www.cherokeechas.com/

http://healthsciences.okstate.edu/morgellons/

On the other hand, Morgellons Watch is the obligatory debunking site, claiming that "morgellons" are a product of the enviroment, and the perceived disease is a combination of other stuff. And someone is out there saying that the aerial Chemtrails and government-engineered Lyme disease are at the root of it all.

Basically I thought this was a pretty wild tale, unexpectedly creepy-crawly and already full of peculiar medical paranoia, hazy videos and unknown factors. What If the Government has created special bioweapons to turn nanoparticle pollution into sinister fibers that will eventually integrate you into the Evil Biomatrix!?!!? Can the morgellons inter-communicate? Mwahaha!

This scientist Ettmuller made this drawing in 1682. The little bugs marked 'E' are typical scabies mites. Ettmuller found weird horrible itchy fibers in sickly little British children. Etc.

Like I said, the screenplay is waiting to be written.

Over the weekend I got a pretty rough (and intensely visual) migraine while I was finishing the Politics in Minnesota legislator profiles. I called up a friend of mine who has an interest in biochemistry, asking if they have figured out what the heck a migraine actually is. I certainly attribute this migraine to too much coffee and cigarettes, since when I moderate these substances I don't get the damn things. I rarely have cigs except when things are stressful.

Anyhow this led me to take a look at biochemical websites, and - gasp - the structures of illegal drugs. My friend told me that since migraines are somehow related to serotonin, the prescription migraine medication Imitrex (sumatriptan) is actually a somewhat altered psychedelic mushroom variant.

I went to go check this out. This Canadian website had a ton of useful biochem info for Imitrex (and everything else), including receptors, gene sequences and various genetic racial differences in affected alleles.

Indeed we can see that big Pharma wanted to use the weirder serotonin receptors activated by hallucinogens like mushrooms: Imitrex is the first image. The second two are the major components of magic mushrooms via Erowid, and finally serotonin:

Indeed, my very basic chemistry knowledge indicates that everything except the red sprong is the same between mushrooms and Imitrex. Actually i think the N-S-02 structure isn't even that different from psilocybin. (wikipedia notes that Imitrex can give you heart attacks because its main purpose is vasoconstriction of dilated arteries)

While it is certainly not well-understood why mushrooms generate hallucinations, it's believed they activate certain odd serotonin receptors - perhaps the same ones that thrash around when I get a migraine. The visual effects of a migraine - the "halos" of shimmering incongruence that made it impossible for me to read the computer screen for a full 36 hours - are perhaps not that different than the wobbly weird look of intense mushroom trips.

Only LSD has been isolated as an agonist for the 5-HT6 serotonin receptor, according to the Wiki. I found that LSD itself (lysergic acid diethylamide-25) was actually created by Dr. Hofmann and Sandoz while they were making variants of ergot to treat migraines:

In 1918, Arthur Stoll isolated ergotamine, which was introduced by Sandoz (now Novartis) under the trade name Gynergen in 1921 and marketed as a safer and more reliable form of the medieval midwife's nostrum. Controlled trials in the 1930s showed it to be effective in relieving migraine headache.

Also during the 1930s, two U.S. chemists succeeded in identifying the common nucleus of the ergot drugs, which they named lysergic acid. With this information, it became feasible to synthesize the ergot compounds, a project undertaken by Albert Hofmann in Stoll's laboratory at Sandoz, among others (2). In 1935, Sandoz chemists succeeded in synthesizing ergonovine, which was developed as methylergonovine (Methergine) and widely used to control postpartum hemorrhage. Further efforts to isolate the various alkaloids occurring naturally in ergot led to the development of a preparation of ergoloid mesylates (Hydergine) for treating dementia. In 1943, Hofmann synthesized dihydroergotamine (DHE), marketed for the treatment of blood pressure and later shown to be highly effective for migraine.

Migraine drugs

In the course of Hofmann's trial-and-error synthesis of lysergic acid derivatives, the 25th compound, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25), failed to show any therapeutic promise in early testing on animals. In 1943, five years after it was first synthesized and tested, Hofmann decided to synthesize LSD-25 again for further testing. While completing the synthesis, he was overcome by strange sensations, which later developed into mild euphoria accompanied by pleasant visual hallucinations.

Surmising that he had somehow absorbed or ingested some of his newly synthesized compound, Hofmann proceeded to test the substance on himself by taking what he believed to be a minuscule dose--0.25 mg--and was rapidly plunged into what can only be described as a very bad trip. Like the natural ergot from which it was derived, LSD proved to be too potent, risky, and unpredictable to have a medical application.

In the course of exploring the ergot family, Sandoz chemists went on to discover yet another important antimigraine drug, methysergide (Sansert). Used for daily preventive therapy rather than abortive treatment of migraine, methysergide is a serotonin antagonist, whereas ergotamine is a serotonin agonist. Interestingly, "unworldly feelings" or hallucinations are among methysergide's possible side effects (3).

Likewise, it is interesting to survey and compare the chemical structures of amphetamine, methamphetamine and MDMA (ecstasy), morphine, heroin, ketamine, and all the other favorites. I thought it was kind of funny that esoteric drugs like salvia divinorum's active parts actually look really weird. So let's survey a few.

Salvia's parts:

We're drawing all this material from the valuable yet rebellious Erowid psychoactive chemistry index. There's even a nifty side-by-side comparison engine. For example, check out amphetamine VS methamphetamine, reflecting on that extra polyatomic ion's effect:

And here's MDMA - ecstasy - which essentially has a speed half (on the right) glued to a hallucinogen half.

DXM and Ketamine: dextromethorphan hydrobromide, a cough suppressant that provokes nasty hallucinations at high levels, and burns holes in your brain called Olney's Lesions. Ketamine is a more powerful (and apparently related) disassociative and anasthetic:

Nicotine: (S)-3-(1-Methyl-2-pyrrolidinyl)pyridin, industrial toxin/stimulant beloved by global capitalism.

LSD: 9,10-Didehydro-N,N-diethyl-6-methylergoline-8ß-carboxamide / D-lysergic acid diethylamide

Caffeine and alcohol

THC: Tetrahydrocannabinols / Tetrahydro-6,6,9-trimethyl-3-pentyl-6H-dibenzo[b,d]pyran-1-ol, which of course have many strange and therapeutic neurotransmitter effects that medical researchers aren't allowed to determine (thanks, schedule One):

Let's get into Opiates: (Please!) It's interesting that heroin was invented to let the painkiller part of the molecule slip through the lipid barrier. Lipids - ie fat membranes - slow down non-lipid-soluble drugs. First is codeine, then heroin.



Absinthe - Thujone - the green dragon:

Cocaine:

I don't write this to celebrate these substances, as of course many of them have destroyed many lives. Namely alcohol and tobacco, mostly. But we don't usually think about the chemistry of drugs, and even though it's hard to visualize, these materials really do work on the atomic level. It's funny how some carbon rings are more political than others, and of course it's funny that cutting-edge pharmacological research basically just recuts mushrooms to treat migraines.

Now that's what I call weird science. Somewhere, Dr. Hofmann is laughing. (late addition: Hofmann's research on Mexican and South American traditional magic drugs)

I have a nasty cold and my job at Macalester ended last Thursday. I wasn't fired, the job was just temporary since they didn't have the cash in the budget to hire another employee. It was quite successful, actually. Today I am reading Bob Woodward's State of Denial and watching season 1 of The Wire. Avon Barksdale is going down! There ain't much else to do today. Supposedly I have a subscription to the New York Times right now but vultures keep stealing it. Or as Richard Armitage would say, "bats."

Quote of the day, from the days just before the war:

As they were getting up to leave, [Richard] Armitage stopped Garner.
"Hey, Jay. Let me tell you one thing. You've got a bunch of goddamn spies on that team of yours. They're talking about you. They're reporting on you, so you better watch your back."

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