ch.annel2-i.s-n.ow-a.ngry

move along

Things are not OK.

“I fear we might start eating one another. We will never stop protesting until traders accept the notes.”

I guess Ted Turner was right. Only he predicted 50 years from now, not tomorrow.

Though agriculturally fertile, the violence and anarchy in Somalia makes it dependent largely on food imports.

Sad fucking world. Go read Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix.

Local authorities and traders held crisis meetings in Mogadishu on Tuesday in a desperate move to quell the growing anger among residents of one of the world’s most impoverished and well-armed cities.

Correlation? Probably obvious, but under the radar for some voters.

U.S. crude oil futures rose to a new record high for a second day on Tuesday, with crude oil futures for June delivery touching a record of $120.70 a barrel.

London Brent crude oil futures set a new record of $119.03 a barrel.

Supply disruptions in Nigeria have helped push oil to new peaks. Royal Dutch Shell’s production from Nigeria, for example, is down by about 164,000 barrels per day.

Strikes and attacks by militants on oil installations have caused a succession of supply problems in the OPEC member country, the world’s eighth-biggest oil exporter.

Weakness in the U.S. dollar has also contributed to oil’s rise, as this had boosted the price of commodities denominated in the U.S. currency.

FUN!

UBS, the largest Swiss bank, said Tuesday that it expected to cut about 5,500 jobs, including 2,600 in its investment banking unit, as it announced a first-quarter loss of about $10.9 billion.

FUCKED!

UBS wrote down $19 billion in soured American subprime mortgage securities and other investments in the first quarter, bringing its total write-downs since the beginning of the credit crisis to about $38 billion.

40$ bil in less than a full year, more still to come, and currently all our fault. Wait until the rest of the world starts feeling the pop after their bubbles that were blown from ours pop.

Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida has been fighting to cut 10 cents from the state’s gasoline tax for two weeks in July. Lawmakers in Missouri, New York and Texas have also proposed a summer break from state gas taxes, while candidates for governor in Indiana and North Carolina are sparring over relief ideas of their own.

Oh, RIGHT, cuz paying $3.90 a gallon as opposed to $4.00 is SO FUCKING SIGNIFICANT. If you have a 12 gallon tank like my and you’re completely dry, you fill up - you save $1.20!!!!! HOLY SHIT! I’m fucking rich again! I can spend that buck twenty on coffee! But only because Starfucks is lowering their prices!!!!! We’re in great shape! Economy’s coming back, food is good, oil supply is totally in the positive and prices are coming down across the board!

Right?

Oh, no, wait, that last paragraph was total fucking bullshit.

We’re boned.

More than half of U.S. doctors now favor switching to a national health care plan and fewer than a third oppose the idea, according to a survey published on Monday.

“Many claim to speak for physicians and represent their views. We asked doctors directly and found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, most doctors support national health insurance,” said Dr. Aaron Carroll of the Indiana University School of Medicine, who led the study.

“As doctors, we find that our patients suffer because of increasing deductibles, co-payments, and restrictions on patient care,” said Dr. Ronald Ackermann, who worked on the study with Carroll. “More and more, physicians are turning to national health insurance as a solution to this problem.”

So, you say being a debt-slave for your body is just as bad as being a debt-slave to your bling? Nah, can’t be.  My fiancée can’t get her school’s clinic to bill her insurance company for squat, despite her insurance coming from her father who is a doctor. Who works at a very nice hospital.

The United States has no single organized health care system. Instead it relies on a patchwork of insurance provided by the federal and state governments to the elderly, poor, disabled and to some children, along with private insurance and employer-sponsored plans.

Many other countries have national plans, including Britain, France and Canada, and several studies have shown the United States spends more per capita on health care, without achieving better results for patients.

Well, Bush says that just plain isn’t the case so ya better listen up. It’s totally better to give businesses 30% of what you spend on healthcare instead of 3% to the government. It makes so much economic sense to enrich those denying you healthcare.

The military, for example, administers amphetamines to pilots flying long distances.

Amphetamines.

You’ll have to click the link if you really want to read it, because I really want the artist to get ad revenue.

You’ll have to click the link if you really want to read it, because I really want the artist to get ad revenue.

You’ll have to click the link if you really want to read it, because I really want the artist to get ad revenue.

You’ll have to click the link if you really want to read it, because I really want the artist to get ad revenue.

Every day, the Reuters news agency compiles a roundup of security developments in Iraq. The summaries show that although the U.S. troop surge has tamped down the bloodshed, Iraq remains extraordinarily violent. Monday’s developments, as Gen. David Petraeus reported to Congress on the surge, were fairly typical:

• Baghdad. Seven U.S. soldiers were killed and 11 injured in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

• Near Mosul. A suicide truck bomb killed 10 people and wounded 78, Iraqi police said

And the list goes on…

spent on the Iraq occupation ’till President Bush is out of office, according to current estimates of $275 million per day. Assuming no more surprises or unexpected expenses or cost-overruns or whatever fancy term you want to put on the problems with our current “turn up, fuck up, blow up” strategy for Iraq. I will probably never personally know what $275 megadollars means to a person. I realize it means nothing to a country… but there are only 300 megapeople in the US. It’s costing us personally a dollar a day to run this war, but that’s a dollar a day deeper in debt. Is that really where we want to be? A dollar isn’t much. But a dollar after taxes and with however much interest there is….

Oh hay! We’ve hit the $9 trillion debt mark for the good ol’ U S of A. Somehow I missed that story in the national headlines…. Seems the milestone ticked by on August 31st, go find out for yourself if you’re curious.

Seriously, though, finally? Finding out why people hate us enough to kill us indiscriminately, making us hate them enough to kill people near them indiscriminately?

Six years after the September 11 attacks, a few cautious voices are beginning to suggest the unthinkable — maybe it is time to consider talking to al Qaeda.

Criminals should be brought to justice - but! if we continue that ideological slant to our foreign policy without joining international criminal courts, we have no rational standing by which to call ‘terrorists’ criminals and our soldiers ‘fighters for freedom and democracy.’ If there is no accountability for how we bomb multitudes of their brethren, how can we possibly act indignant when they kill a few of ours?

“Information contributing to the recent arrests was not collected under authorities provided by the Protect America Act,” Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said in a statement issued Wednesday.

However, McConnell told the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Monday that powers granted by the new Protect America Act helped stopped the planned attacks.

I dunno, I mean, do I really gotta say anything else about this?

Reading about poor polar bears this morning. We’re still hunting the things, Americans and foreigners alike. Americans are doing it dishonestly, importing their trophies through Canada to avoid breaking US law. But what really shocked and awed me was this:

 The Arctic crisis has become so compelling that leaders of the world’s main religions gathered this weekend on the iceberg-studded sea off this small town, deep in the Arctic Circle on the west Greenland coast, to pray for the planet. Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox church – who convened the group – told them: “the danger of an avoidable catastrophe is now more acute than ever.” On Friday senior representatives of the Roman Catholic and protestant churches, Sunni and Shia Islam,and the Hebrew, Hindu, Shinto and Buddhist Zen religions joined the Patriarch in silent prayer on the prow of a liner under a lowering sky in the shadow of giant icebergs.

When its bad enough that you’ve got every religion praying against it, that’s something, because they’re usually busy praying against one another.